The rain came now, falling not heavily but steadily on the small fort and an area of approximately eighty or so meters around it. The man wasted no time in commanding-the wa of the walls to return to form, and as the walls shrunk, he rose until he stood once more on the desert floor with no sign of structure. The naril feces still clung to him, and he shed all but his empty water flask and black skin belt, letting the rain wash him. For a minute or two he just stood there enjoying the rain and the cool relief it brought, but he knew he dared not linger. There was not much water up there, and it could give out any time.
The recovered naril, understanding that their quarry had somehow caused the storm and regaining their confidence, hovered just at the edge of the clouds, waiting for the rain to end.
The parched ground, which had seen rain perhaps two or three human generations ago and not since, could not absorb the water, and this made the hard ground slippery and treacherous going. As the man moved, the center of. the storm traveled with him, keeping him in its center, while at the edges the naril moved at his pace, waiting for the rain to give out. The rain itself would foul the naril’s delicate membranous wings, invisible in flight or hover, but once the rain stopped they would move once more.
The man prayed the rain would hold, and it almost did, getting him to within a hundred meters of the mountains before it started to give out. All the wa in the world could not conjure more rain if there was no more water to use, and he hadn’t time to take the evaporation from behind him and recycle it into the diminishing cloud.
The naril, wary of more trickery and fearful that he had stopped the rain only to lure them in, held back, though, and this extra tune gave him the opportunity to run for the rocky outcrops just ahead.
Seeing him sprint, one naril forgot its caution and, hissing, shot out after him, overtaking him just at the base of the rocks and striking him in the back. He flew against the rocks from the force of-.the blow and gave a terrible scream, but the naril had forgotten to extend its blades, and while the blow was crushing, it neither cut nor sliced.
Though dazed, he managed to crawl into a cleft in the rocks and wedge himself in as tightly as possible. Even so, he knew he was done in, out of strength at last, his bag of tricks used up, the cleft far too shallow to protect him from the naril tentacles. He was done, though; he almost didn’t really care anymore. He passed out there, in the rocks, with a last thought that death at least would give him rest.
“Jatik?”
The voice seemed to come from far away. Go away! his mind shouted. I am dead! Let me have my peace!
“Jatik, you must listen to my voice,” it said again, closer now, more commanding, harder to ignore. “Jatik, this is Koril. You must speak to me.”
“I die,” he muttered, almost angrily. “Let me go.”
“Yes, you are dead,” Koril’s voice agreed. “You are beyond my power or anyone’s to save you. Yet while your wa still burns and struggles against extinction within you, we may yet communicate. Please, Jatik, you were a brave man and a loyal one. Do not pass until your bravery is given meaning by your words.”
He struggled, tried to remember. The. words… The mission…
“Where are the others, Jatik?”
Others? “Dead. All dead.”
“Then you are the last. Hurry, Jatik, for time grows short and my power to hold you weakens quickly. I must know. Did you get in? Did you see the meeting?”
Meeting… what meeting? He struggled. Oh, yes, the meeting. Oh, God! The meeting…
“I—I saw,” he managed. “The Four Lords at Diamond Rock. The Four Lords and the others. Oh, God! The others!”
“Those others—think, Jatik! Hold on a bit more! The others! What were they like?”
“Horrible… Monstrous. They wore the cloaks of men but could not hide from us. They are terrible, Koril, terrible to behold. Spawns of some hell beyond man’s imagination. Slobbering, horrible… Such as they were born in some hellish place far removed from man.”
“The Four Lords—there is an alliance?”
“Yes, yes! Oh, God! You must destroy them, Koril! You must not let them sell man out to such as these! Horrible! You cannot know! I pray to God you never know. Their very sight was enough to drive Latir and Mohar mad.”
“What do they look like, these spawns of hell? Think, Jatik! Hold on!”
“Look like! My mind holds what little it still has by putting that likeness from it. Monstrous… Pulp… Slime… They are evil, Koril! Evil in ways no human can comprehend. They will devour man and then they will devour the Four Lords and us. You must…”
“Jatik! Jatik! Hold on! Just a little more! Jatik! Come back! I need to know… Oh, hell, what’s the use? He’s gone.”
Koril sighed and shook his head, then got up from beside the dead man and looked around his desert domain. The bodies of the two naril still twitched nearby where he had slain them.
He spent the better part of an hour restaging the death scene. Sooner or later he knew that some party from Diamond Rock, even now covering the trail of chase and capture, would happen here, and he wanted to make it absolutely certain that any such party would draw the obvious conclusions. Essential to him was that party’s belief that the naril and Jatik had finally finished each other. They would believe it To get even this far required one of enormous power, and even so, only seeing the dead man’s rainstorm from afar and recognizing it for the signature it was had brought him here. Too late, alas, too late for poor Jatik…
Still, he had learned much from the dead man. Or, more properly, Jatik had confirmed his information and his worst fears. But Koril was old—old and alone now. Power he had in abundance, but there were limits to an old man’s endurance even with the best of powers.
He needed a new Company, he knew, and that would not be easy to assemble, particularly under Matuze’s watchful eye. While she would assume that his messengers had all failed to report, there was no question that she would recognize the dead for who they were and guess who had sent them.
Still, he knew his course was already set and his resolve was firm. No matter what the odds, it must be done. There was no getting around the shock and revulsion of Jatik’s last utterances. Both he and the dead man had been born and raised on worlds far from this one, and both had seen a lot in this universe before being exiled to this hell.
Hell… That was Charon, true enough. Every horror in the mind of man from the beginning of time to now was here, along with a physical landscape, climate, and plant and animal life appropriate for the worst of Dante’s hells.
Koril knew this for a fact, and he knew that Jatik also knew and felt it.
What could a man already in hell see that so frightened him?
What sort of thing could cause a criminal imprisoned in hell with thousands of other criminals to label something unimaginably evil?
What was so monstrous that even the denizens of hell were repulsed and frightened by it?
Jatik had been a sadistic mass murderer without the slightest sense of good and evil. The very concepts had been alien to him. And yet, and yet—even he had now seen something so terrible that he had known evil before he died. There was a certain symmetry in that, anyway.
Still, the Four Lords had made a compact with whatever it was here on Charon. Their egos would protect them, Koril reflected sourly. For a while, anyway.