“Desperate, now,” Tranto said. “Jay’s forces have Antaeus pressed on the field. If it cannot win here, then all this great struggle will have been for naught.”
Death’s acknowledgment caused the fabric of his cowl to move as if in a breeze.
“Ironic, too, that the doors and walls that resist the intrusion could be defined, in some senses, as the half-brothers of our opponent. But Antaeus’s claim to inheritance comes from me while the palace owes its stability to Earthma. The rejected son rejects the favorite.”
“Struggles among siblings,” Phecda mused, “are often the worst.”
A harsh breaking sound heralded the sound of wet, slopping feet mounting the stair.
“It comes,” Death said, “and unlike Jay’s forces, I cannot sing.”
“Alasss,” hissed Phecda, “neither can I.”
“Nor I,” said Tranto. “Though I can trumpet.”
Mizar only whined. Picking up the music box carefully in his spike-toothed mouth, he laid it at Death’s feet. The slim, cowled figure lilted it with a white hand.
“I doubt that this carries the song to charm Earthma’s savage son, faithful hound, but my thanks.”
The inner door did not delay the intruders for more than a few moments. It burst open with a great splintering of wood and protesting of hinges. Behind the shower of wood came Antaeus and, not so much at his heels as escorted by him, came Earthma.
Antaeus continued to resemble nothing so much as a blob of moire, uncomfortable to look upon, amorphous of form. As he entered the room, he was reshaping his mass from something four-legged and bull-headed into a vaguely humanoid shape. Head and neck were one smooth curve that split into two thick, rounded shoulders, beefy arms, squat torso, and token legs. There was no differentiation for facial features, hair, or anything else. More than anything else, Antaeus resembled a chalk outline of a truck driver’s corpse shaded in greenish black.
Earthma had manifested as a full-breasted, round-buttocked, woman clad only in a wealth of glinting emerald hair. Her skin was cocoa-toned, highlighted in green and rose. Objectively viewed, she was lovely, but none of those who looked upon her felt anything but varying degrees of fear and loathing.
“And so,” she said, when it became apparent that no one else would speak, “we at last come to this. Don’t you feel foolish for resisting, Old Death? All that effort and cleverness to arrive at what must come.”
“Must come?” Death’s voice was harsh.
“Death comes to us all.” Her laughter was fruity and rich. “Except to the immortal gods.”
“I had placed myself among those,” the Lord of Deep Fields said.
“You were wrong to do so. This is a time for change in Virtu and in Verite. One of the things that is to be transformed is the sovereignty of the Lord of Entropy. Now, as has always been dreamed, death shall be subjugated to the forces of life and creation.”
“Forgive me if I do not rejoice.”
“Of course. You always were a bitter old thing.”
“And now, Earthma. How do you plan to effect this changing of the guard?”
“My son will claim your cowled robe.”
“I wear it yet.”
“So I note. Will you hand it over?”
“I think not.”
“Pity that.”
“For you.”
Mizar growled, the rattling of rusty cans tied to broken barbed wire. A mountain shrugging, Tranto shifted from foot to foot. Emerging from the throat of Death’s robe, Phecda dripped venom from exposed fangs.
Antaeus lumbered forward a step, arms raised to bludgeon, thick gobs of moire oozing the power of unmaking.
“Doe, re, me, fa, so, la, ti, doe!” Light and sweet, deeper and slightly out of key, miraculous, voices raised in song, music within Death’s silent Palace of Bones.
Without, on the battlefield, the Brass Babboon heard and knew his cue. He activated the recorded music stored within his workings.
“There’s a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza. There’s a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, a hole.”
A polished panel of dark walnut swung open and from it emerged Jay, Alice, and Drum—all armed, all singing about holes in buckets, fixing and mending. The men took the part of hapless Henry; Alice carried Liza’s reply.
On the battlefield, those ghosts who had not been banished caught the sense of the song (or the nonsense) and joined in with glee. The force of the cheerful, coherent sound resisted the moire that Antaeus directed toward them. It wavered, but it did not warp, and with every futile attack Antaeus was diminished.
The Lord of Entropy was not affected, nor was Earthma, but the latter was so stunned by the turn of events that she forgot her son for long enough that Antaeus was visibly diminished by its attempt to continue the assault.
“Son!” she shrilled, but whatever she would have said was cut off by the report of a CF rifle.
Virginia Tallent stepped out of an alcove across the room, a hidden door open behind her. Her first several shots were directed into Earthma’s manifestation, but the remainder of the clip struck Antaeus solidly in the torso. She slammed another clip home and continued to fire at Antaeus.
“The whetstone is dry, dear Liza, dear Liza. The whetstone is dry, dear Liza is dry.”
Antaeus visibly weakened, but he did not fall. Nor did Earthma.
“Creation and chaos are not enough,” the Lord of the Lost muttered, “but I believe that they have shown me what will be.”
Stooping, he touched the floor upon which he stood. His arm vanished into it. Earthma may have divined what he intended, may have intended to interpose, but the Chaos Factors that Virginia brought to bear upon her manifestation, combined with Antaeus’s steady disintegration as the CF rounds bollixed his programming and the song interrupted his moire’s coherence, was too much for her. She raged impotently as the Lord of Entropy rose.
A block of scuffed marble, white veined with black, now rested in one skeletal hand. He opened it and withdrew a gleaming green object the size and shape of a peach pit.
“Son!” Death called, and for that moment his face and form was that of Earthma. “Catch, son!”
Antaeus reached, grasped. His moire gulped the glowing creation seed, dissolved it. At that moment, the palace settled into itself with a noise like joints popping. Startled, Virginia Tallent paused in the reloading of her CF rifle. Behind her, hinges that held the secret door unscrewed themselves and the door sagged.
“With water, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry, with water, dear Henry, moisten it with water!”
Antaeus froze. Although he lacked face or much of form, the blind motion telegraphed surprise. Near him, a plaster molding fell, shattered into powder. His blobbish form moved, questing as a plant does for light.
“Your Antaeus has no earth left upon which to stand, my dear,” the Lord of the Lost said politely to Earthma.
A wall sagged inward, would have buckled then, but Tranto braced it with his forehead. Still singing, the human trio moved to the shelter of his bulk. Death continued speaking, advancing on Earthma.
“Neither does my fine palace, alas, but the end is certain.” He grinned then and with whiteness shone. “Death comes for us all, even for impudent deities who have trespassed on my realm.”
“I…”
“And on my prerogatives.”
Death gestured at Antaeus and from the moldering moire Markon’s voice was faintly heard accepting Earthma’s offered death.
“You cannot deny that.”
“I…”
“You bitch!” Her voice thin and no longer even faintly feminine, Virginia Tallent screamed. She darted across the room, dodging falling masonry and building timbers with lithe ease.