" The cenotaph opens," said Krek.
Alberto Silvain jerked slightly in his eagerness to leave behind the world of his defeat. Inyx ducked, pulled free, then rolled behind a gravestone. The death beam lashed out and blew the marker into tiny stone fragments. Silvain poised for a second shot when he saw Knoton, Krek, and Lan simultaneously starting for him. The odds were too great, the need to escape this world too binding.
He dived into the already opened crypt just inches under Lan' s death beam.
Even as they approached, Lan Martak knew they were too late to stop the transition. Krek made a tiny choking noise, then sat down, legs akimbo around him.
" He is gone," lamented the spider. " He has walked the Cenotaph Road."
" It' ll be a full day before we can follow, too. Curse the luck!"
" You would follow?" Knoton asked, in surprise. " But if the other side is like this one, why can' t Silvain post a guard who will kill you as you emerge?"
" No reason in this world- or any world. We have to try to stop him, though. Claybore' s evil makes the Lord of the Twistings look puny in comparison."
The mechanical said nothing, studying the two humans and their arachnid companion.
" It opens at any moment," said Krek, peering into the open crypt.
" How are we going to do this?" asked Inyx. " Claybore and Silvain are sure to have their soldiers waiting for us."
" Time flows differently between worlds. We might be able to arrive closely enough on Silvain' s heels that he hasn' t had time to contact Claybore."
" A faint hope."
" Yes," Lan Martak admitted. " But still a hope." He and Inyx stood, arms around one another. The cenotaph began to glow a pale, wavering sea- green, to open its gateway onto a new world. Lan glanced at his companions. Krek' s expression was as spiderish and indecipherable as ever, but a clacking of his mandibles revealed an almost- human nervousness at what lay ahead. Under his arm, Inyx shivered, but Lan knew it was more excitement than fear on the woman' s part. She came from a warrior- world; while she might know fear on a secret level, it seldom surfaced to show its pale face to others. For himself, he was too exhausted to feel anything but the weight of dutyand destiny.
Lan, Inyx, and Krek crowded forward to squeeze into the cenotaph on their way to find and kill Silvain and his master, Claybore.
The transition from one world to another disoriented Lan, as it always did. He might walk the Road for a million years and still not become fully acclimated to the giddy turnings and mind- wrenchings of this magical travel.
" Friend Lan Martak," he heard Krek saying. Lan shook his head, as if to clear the haze from his brain. It didn' t help; it only hurt. Fire bugs chewed through his insides and something kicked unmercifully at the backs of his eyes.
" Lan," came another, softer, more urgent voice. He forced open his eyes to peer up and out of the cenotaph at Inyx. The woman stood above him, long, slender legs widespread, hands on her flaring hips. Her attention wasn' t on him but on something at some distance.
Lan took a deep breath and tasted the wet sweetness of nearby lush vegetation. But undercutting it came a new scent, one he had seldom encountered. This was definitely not the world of the Twistings. That world abounded with fresh growth. Here, the plant life seemed: abbreviated.
The man heaved himself out of the opened grave and followed Inyx' s extended arm. He took in the tiny area around them. Here grew thick grasses and towering plants with stems as thick as his wrist. Just beyond, hardly a bowshot distant, some brutal demarcation had been drawn between life and death. Green, growing life ended and hot sterile sands triumphed. But it was beyond even this ring that Inyx pointed.
" A caravan ambushed by the grey- clads," she said.
Lan squinted in harsh sun and nodded. The scene proved all too familiar for him. On world after world, the grey- clad soldiers commanded by Claybore and his underlings conquered, killing without quarter, seizing power, crushing all dissent.
It happened here, also.
Tired to the core of his being, Lan still drew forth his sword and nodded to his companions. They had not come here to rest. They must fight. And what better side to take than of those already knowing the terror and death brought by Claybore' s rule?
" Aieeeee!" shrieked Krek, his long legs extending to their fullest. The spider charged, death scythes clacking ominously even as his shrill keening echoed forth.
Lan and Inyx were only a few paces behind. Lan' s death tube bounced at his side, but he ignored it, for the moment. The adrenaline pumping through his arteries filled him with bloodlust. The smooth stroke of his sword, the meaty feel of it striking home, the jarring all the way to his shoulder, those were the sensations he now sought.
He found them quickly.
The battle welled up around him like artesian waters. Lan parried, hacked, riposted, thrust. He fell into old, practiced routines that had served him well in the past and served him admirably now. The battle had been going against the scruffy band of travelers; Claybore' s soldiers were too well- equipped and trained for any roving band to easily drive off. But with two additional swords and Krek' s fearsome bulk and intimidating manner of doing battle, the greys fell back to regroup.
" After them!" cried Krek.
Lan reached out and seized one of Krek' s thick back legs. He was dragged a few paces before Krek' s bloodlust died sufficiently for him to realize the folly of pursuit at this moment.
" I am so ashamed," the spider moaned, settling down into the sand beside Lan. " I kill wantonly. Oh my, why is it I do these awful things?"
" You were protecting these others from Claybore' s men," pointed out Inyx, stroking Krek' s gore- stained fur.
" But they are only humans," sniffed the spider.
" Aye, that we are," came the cautious words of one of the men. He approached, sword in hand, wary of the spider. " And glad we are that you showed when you did. Though we find it strange that the likes of you would aid us willingly."
" Do the grey- clads control much of this world?" asked Lan.
" Those dung beetles?" scoffed the man. " Hardly. We hold them off with ease."
From one of the others came a muffled snort of derision. Lan looked at the other men and women in the group. None had escaped injury. Their original number had been twenty. The brief skirmish had cost them half their rank.
" It appears you are doing all right," Lan said, testing the man' s reaction. He introduced himself and his companions. The man he faced had eyes only for Inyx, who smiled at the attention.
" And I, good sir, hight Jacy Noratumi, commander of the desert reaches of the magnificent empire of Bron."
" Magnificent, he says," mocked one of the women in the band, as she held a broken arm to her belly. " Jacy is hardly more than a pirate these days. As are we all. We used to be miners, traders, honest folks earning our living in peace. Those scum drive us like herd animals. Bron is little more than a pathetic huddling of huts hidden behind an all- too- thin wall."
" Silence, Margora," the man snapped. Smiling, he turned back to Lan and said, " She is always the pessimist. We are seldom caught in such a fashion on the sands. The dung- eating greys came upon us unexpectedly. They rode like demons for the oasis."
" To stop us," said Inyx, bitterness etching her voice.
" You?" asked the woman Margora suspiciously. She glanced from Inyx to Lan. When her eyes fixed on the brown lump near the cenotaph, she stiffened visibly. " Jacy," she said, her voice hardly more than a whisper. " We cannot trust one of them!"