" You had no compunction about stranding Inyx there," said Lan.
" She' s only a mortal."
" What would it be like, Claybore? What would you do for all eternity trapped in a dimensionless space?" Lan fought the other sorcerer as Claybore turned new and different spells against him. They shifted worlds repeatedly- and still their bodies remained in Yerrary.
" What does he do?" asked Tefize. " This is confusing to me. We go to other worlds along the Road and yet we remain in the chamber."
" He is sapping the power of the Sphere. I don' t know how. Damn you, Martak, stop that!"
Lan reached out and employed his world- shifting spells only to the Kinetic Sphere. He guessed Claybore felt as if his heart were being wrenched from his torso.
Lan took a brief moment to regroup his own powers, to muster his newfound abilities. While he didn' t know for certain, he felt he could move between worlds now without either Kinetic Sphere or cenotaph. He was beyond physical instrumentality; he had moved to a more magical plane, transcending even that occupied by Claybore.
The headiness of this revelation left him weak with surprise and intent on putting those powers to their fullest use.
Lan Martak began a new weaving of spells but off in the distance, from a point beyond infinity, he heard, " Friend Lan Martak, what are you doing? Where are you going?"
He had no time for anything but the battle raging between worlds, throughout all time and space. A single gesture made the nagging voice vanish, a spell of dismissal to free him from the annoying spider. And Lan felt amusement rising within. He was more powerful than even the vaunted Claybore. Mere mortals were beneath his contempt now. He could wage a magical battle and win.
Claybore would succumb to him. Soon. Very soon.
" Martak, you overreach yourself," came Tefize' s words. " Look around you and note well this spot. This is your grave. You will never leave here. You cannot!"
" Don' t prattle on so, gnome. Your powers do not affect me in the least."
But Lan did risk a quick glance about. He stood on a mountaintop looking out over a gently rolling plain. In the far distance rose a mountain of incalculable height, dwarfing even the rock on which he stood. That monstrous pillar rose up and gutted the sky with a dozen spikes of the purest jet protruding from its top. Of the blackness that comprised the shaft itself, Lan saw only the depths of space. This mountain of midnight was material and yet immaterial. It sucked in light and yet gave forth reflection. Heat and cold meant nothing to it and Lan Martak experienced those and more from its surface so far away.
" Look upon it and know you will never leave this world, Martak," came Tefize' s softly menacing words. " It is your bane. You will die because of that. Die!"
Lan sent his light mote hurtling for the distant mountain. Incomprehensibly, the vast, thick pillar of night- black represented his destiny. But not now. Not until- what? When?
The light mote went around- through- between that mountain peak in some fashion Lan didn' t even try to understand. The time for knowing would be soon, but not yet.
Laughter welled up, laughter all too familiar to the young warrior mage. Claybore had gained something while his attention had been diverted by the mountain.
" My powers weren' t adequate before, Martak. They will be now. I didn' t approve of Tefize showing you what you have just seen, but it all worked out for the best. Witness!"
Again in the rock chamber, Lan faced the gnome and Claybore. Workers from the Tefize clan toiled to pull out a metallic case from the pit. Lan glanced over the jagged rim and down to a platform fifty feet below where more gnomes frantically dug.
How long had he stood and gazed at the column of blackness on that other world? A second? A year? However long it had been, the pause in the battle had allowed the gnomes to reach their goal.
" You will keep our promise, Claybore?" asked Lirory, oblivious to Lan' s presence now.
" The arms. Give me my arms!"
" Your promise first."
" Yes, yes, of course. All that and more will be yours. Compared to these, what are a few paltry worlds?"
" You might be right," mused Lirory Tefize.
" Give them to me!"
" Very well." Lirory motioned and the gnomes pulled forth the metal- sheathed box. " You will note how well I have preserved them for you."
" Damn your eyes. Stop stalling."
Lan tried to send forth another magical attack and found himself stymied. Simply being in the presence of that metal box snuffed out his most potent attacks. When one of the gnomes opened the box and Lan saw the withered arms within, his heart leaped to his throat.
" Yes, Martak, you' ve lost. Oh, yes, yes, you' ve lost it all now." Claybore cavorted about like a madman while Lirory Tefize reached into the box and reverently lifted forth the left arm. Claybore spun and thrust the shoulder stump out. A blaze of eyesearing light filled the chamber as arm touched torso. Several of the gnomes standing too close caught fire and burned to cinders even before their screams of agony stopped echoing through Yerrary.
" And now the other," said Tefize. He reached out and stroked the mummified right arm.
" Wait," Lan said. " Claybore will never keep his promise to you, whatever it was. Give him this power and he will be invincible. He won' t need you any more. He' ll kill you as he has killed millions!"
Lirory Tefize smiled, revealing broken teeth. The emerald eyes burned with manic fury.
" He will not betray me. I retain control over him. He needs more than just the arms. I have the legs, also!"
" Don' t do this!" pleaded Lan.
The left arm had ignited lightning blasts that illuminated worlds. As the right touched torso, intense cold filled the chamber. Mindnumbing cold, cold from the depths of space, cold more frigid than any borne by arctic winds.
Lan watched helplessly as the arms, now firmly in their proper places, began to swell and take form. No longer desiccated, fingers wiggled and pointed. Power welled up from within Claybore, power unlike any Lan had experienced before. If Claybore had been a menace before, he was a thousandfold more so now.
Irrational fear surged and died within Lan. Claybore was immensely stronger, but he made no move to attack. Since he and Lirory Tefize had played for time to free the buried arms, there had been no new magics directed at him. Lan wondered at this, then allowed his light mote to probe forth, stinging needle- sharp at his foes.
Lirory Tefize shrieked in abject pain and rolled into a tight ball on the floor. He was not seriously injured, but he had been touched. He now knew Lan Martak still represented a formidable opponent.
Claybore' s response was less pronounced, but the mage still had to struggle to retain some semblance of his aplomb.
" Y- you cannot kill me. The gnome, perhaps. Try it and you will suffer the consequences."
" Really, Claybore? Are you truly immortal? Might there not be spells to be found along the Road that will dissipate your consciousness and spread you so thin that you can never regain your present form, your present condition?"
Lan taunted the sorcerer to see the response. No magical attack came. They were stalemated, for the moment. Lirory Tefize was a sorcerer of considerable power, but now that Claybore had regained his arms, the gnome meant nothing. And Lan knew that his own power matched Claybore' s- in spite of his recovering the arms. How or why he couldn' t say, but Lan' s power had grown, too.
Tefize' s revealing the pillar of black to him had augmented his abilities, even as it had delayed him. Nothing had been gained in the exchange when he and Claybore compared relative strengths.
But compared to other mages, Lan Martak knew he was the single most capable anywhere along the Cenotaph Road. He had gone beyond warrior and mage to: what?
Lan Martak felt godhood within his grasp. Who else stood against Claybore? The moment of incomparable ambition passed and Lan found himself staring out into the chamber, Claybore and Tefize rapidly retreating down one of the corridors. He blasted forth a fire spell that only added wings to their feet.