It was growing harder to concentrate.
" Nothing seems right to me anymore. Claybore' s words bother me."
" He is your enemy."
" He seems more and more like me. Or I' m adopting his philosophy." That idea made Lan even more uneasy. If Claybore weren' t changing, then he had to be the one becoming more like the disembodied sorcerer. They fought- but were their motives so different now?
He started to speak and found it impossible. Lan' s eyes flashed open and he saw the room had again turned transparent. The slightest movement caused him pain; all he knew as the gut- twisting agony lodged deep within him was that he had failed. Self- pitying, he had let down his guard and now all was lost.
He waited for Kiska to say something, to chastise or to praise. The words never came. Lan retraced the course of their conversation and came once more to the point of her being Claybore' s chief architect of destruction on a dozen worlds- Claybore' s pawn.
Just as he was Claybore' s pawn.
From deep within boiled the power that had once been his and that Claybore had cunningly buried with his spells. The pain in arms and legs lingered, but Lan forced movement into them. He straightened and found the dancing light mote that had become his constant companion. The light mote appeared indistinct, blurred, far away. He coaxed it closer and set it to blazing like a million stars.
Pain dissolved from his body like snow melts in the morning sun. The walls of the room became translucent, then opaque. He cast a spell to insure that Claybore would never again be able to confuse his senses with such conjurings again.
" Claybore," he said softly. " This is one battle that will be fought to the bitter end. One or the other of us will not survive it. We cannot continue together in the same universe, not like this. One of us will perish."
Ghostly, mocking laughter greeted him.
" We are immortal, you and I. Survive this petty difference of opinion? Of course we will. Both of us. The real question you ought to ask is the loser' s condition."
" If I have to, I' ll scatter your body back along the Road. Terrill did it once. I can do it, also."
Laughter. And pain.
Lan doubled over as his insides ripped apart. For a moment he forgot this was a duel of magics. Ruled only by the physical, he sensed his life force slipping away, his body being torn asunder. He reached once more for the depths of his power and came away empty. This attack, as simple as it was, had defeated him.
Lan Martak felt life draining from him.
And then the flow stopped. Seizing the opportunity, he summoned forth his light mote. The light familiar entered and suffused through his body, leaving him weak but in control once more. The memory of pain and the need to avoid further anguish allowed him to fend off Claybore' s renewed attack. The other mage sensed his spells failing and hurled more and more potent, less and less subtle ones at Lan.
They failed. And Lan found conjurings of his own that he hadn' t realized he knew to cast against Claybore.
" Pressure," he muttered. " Pressure unlike anything you have ever felt!"
Claybore let out a scream that almost deafened Lan. The spell compressed the sides of Claybore' s skull, producing more and deeper cracks. The jaw came unhinged and clattered to the floor.
" And more," said Lan, the power his once again. He didn' t understand why the sudden change had occurred within him. He accepted and used it. To defeat Claybore now meant freedom all along the Cenotaph Road, for him and for Inyx and Krek and everyone else. The conquering grey legions Claybore commanded would soon fall into disarray without their mage- general.
The spell crushed down on Claybore' s body, compressing the torso and breaking the reattached arms. Lan almost cried aloud in triumph when he saw the Kinetic Sphere- Claybore' s heart- slowly being squeezed from the chest cavity. Victory was within his grasp. And still the power flowed to him.
" This can' t be," moaned Claybore. " It won' t be!"
Lan staggered as his spells rebounded and found: nothingness. Claybore had vanished from between the anvils of his magic.
" Where did you go?" he cried out. " Let' s finish this now, once and for all!"
Only deathly silence greeted him. He had been close, so very, very close and now victory had been stolen from him. Claybore had eluded him at the last possible instant. Lan sent his dancing light mote forth to seek out Claybore. Long minutes passed and the mote reported no trace of the other sorcerer. Disheartened, Lan propped himself against a table and wondered how he might find Claybore, who had obviously fled this world and traveled the Road.
As he worked out this problem, a new one occurred to him. He sensed another powerful presence on this world, in Yerrary.
" Lirory' s dead," he said aloud.
" Lan, you look so drawn. What' s happened?" Kiska k' Adesina' s concern struck him as hollow and a lie. She cared nothing for him. But even as he thought this, other emotions surfaced and his view toward her softened.
" Claybore has left Yerrary- even this world. I can' t track him down. I' ll have to follow him to other places, but there' s a power emanating from down below I had not felt before. Or rather, I have felt it before."
" You' re not making sense."
Lan realized the woman was right. His confusion centered on the familiarity of that power center and the impossibility of it. The other time when he had flagged in battle with Lirory and Claybore, this source had opened to him with the same feeling of elusive recognition. What it was stayed just beyond his grasp, yet he knew it.
" Stay here," he said to the woman. " I' ve got to explore and see if I can' t get some answers."
" I' m coming with you," Kiska declared.
Lan started to protest but didn' t find it within him to tell her no. He motioned and she hurried along, matching his long strides as he found all the right corridors and down ramps to take him into the newer parts of Yerrary still being dug out from the living bedrock of the planet. The excavations were abandoned and he had to step over piles of rock and go around large boulders, but his stride was sure and his destination plain in his mind. The place he sought glowed with a dark power and drew him like a magnet pulls iron.
" Where are we going?" Kiska asked him.
He didn' t answer. He pushed aside rock, jumped back as the poorly buttressed roof sent down a shower of small stones and dust, and kept on until he came to the chamber Claybore had visited. Traces of the other mage lingered; Lan sensed the magical residues indicating physical presence. Whatever lay within this room was important enough to demand that Claybore actually be here.
" What' s this cistern?" asked Kiska, going up to the low rock wall and cautiously peering down into the blackness. She shivered and looked away. " I don' t like it, whatever it' s for."
" I' ve seen it before. On my home world." Lan experienced a dizziness as sensations rushed in on him.
" It' s only a well."
" It' s more," he said. Lan looked around the room and saw no sign of life. For a crazy instant he considered shoving Kiska into the pit to satisfy the blood urges of the entity living at its bottom- if the pit had a true physical bottom. " Wait here. I' ll return in a few minutes," he said.
Kiska started to follow, but a minor spell rooted her to the spot, her muscles frozen. Lan Martak walked like one still asleep as he traced his way through the diggings and came to a chamber with pipes and vats. His mind had slipped into a curious fugue state, not fully rational and yet knowing what to do. None dared stand in his way now, even if his movements appeared mechanical, alien.
He hardly glanced around the huge room, even though he had never seen it before. Streams of burning water poured down the stone walls all around as pipes leaked and vats were decanted. The troughs spiraling down from above were filled to their rims with the acid water that continually poured from the outer sky.