The point of flame? What was that supposed to mean?
All was chaos before him. The closer Prestimion came to the surface of the world, the more incomprehensible everything became. But he found the helmet’s lateral control and forced himself forward through the thick shroud of haze and murk that confronted him, cutting into it like a living sword, and gradually the confusion gave way to some degree of clarity. The effort was enormous. His brain was ablaze. He was entering the zone of Venghenar Barjazid’s defensive screen, now. Great rocking waves of explosive force went shuddering through the firmament all about him, so that he had to fight to keep from tumbling like a spent meteor into the sea, which leaped and foamed like new milk below him.
He regained his balance. Held himself in perfect equipoise. Pushed himself deep into the dark barrier and struggled on toward its farther side.
He could see blazing light beyond.
A point of flame, yes, just as young Barjazid had said, a searing zone of brightness shining through the incomprehensible cloud that still was wrapped about him.
“There they are!” he cried. “Yes! Yes! I see them. But how do I reach—”
Suddenly Prestimion felt support: a friendly hand at his elbow, holding him upright. He sensed that his mother was reaching out to him through her circlet, touching his mind, lending her own strength and wisdom. And she in turn must be drawing on whatever instructions Dinitak Barjazid was able to gasp out to her.
Now was his way clear.
With one of the fine dials on the helmet he centered his mind on that point of flame and the fiery glow thinned and dimmed, and he clearly saw the jungle camp as though he were down there on the ground in the middle of it. The tents, the heaped-up weapons, the bonfires, the floaters and mounts.
Through whose eyes was he seeing all this? he wondered. The answer came immediately. He probed his host’s mind and quickly discerned a bright core of malevolence, burning with terrible intensity; and shuddered at the feel of it, for he recognized within instants that he was touching the soul of the Procurator’s second-in-command, the odious Mandralisca.
To be within that mind was like swimming in a sea of molten lava. It was impossible for Mandralisca to harm him, he supposed, not without one of these helmets. But any sort of contact with the man at all was a foul experience that ought not to be prolonged.
Prestimion shoved. Mandralisca went reeling away and was gone.
It is Venghenar Barjazid that I want. And then Dantirya Sambail.
“Mother? Help me to find the man with the helmet.”
No need. Venghenar Barjazid had already found him, and was fighting back against the intruder in the camp.
The opening defensive move came quickly and stunningly. Prestimion felt a sensation as of a powerful blow on the back of his head, and another at the base of his stomach. He gasped and reeled, tottering under the onslaught. Desperately he fought for breath. But Barjazid was unrelenting.
He had the more powerful helmet. And he was a master of his device and Prestimion was a novice.
Prestimion, his consciousness divided, part of him in a room in Stoien city with his mother and Dekkeret and Din-itak and Maundigand-Klimd, and part of him in a clearing in the jungles of Stoienzar, began to doubt, in the first fury of the struggle, that there was any means at all by which he could fend off this ferocious assault. It looked certain that he must inevitably be destroyed.
But then he pushed, as he had pushed against Mandralisca, and Barjazid seemed to yield to the pressure, and Prestimion pushed again, harder; and this time the force of Barjazid’s fury seemed to diminish, either because Prestimion had succeeded in shoving him back or, perhaps, because he had simply drawn aside to gather his strength for a more conclusive blow. Whichever it was, the lull gave Prestimion a much-needed respite.
But he knew it would not last long. He could see the little man as though he were actually standing before him: thin-lipped, sly-eyed, an old necklace of poorly matched sea-dragon bones around his neck and the dream-helmet on his brow. Barjazid looked supremely confident. His eyes were gleaming with malign pleasure. Prestimion had no doubt that he was readying himself to deliver a second and perhaps final thrust.
He braced himself for it.
Are you still with me, mother? I need you now.
Yes. Yes. She was still there. Prestimion felt her unquestionable presence at his side.
And now, abruptly, he became aware of a second potent power joining the effort also, a new bulwark for him in his battle. A strange force came from this ally, nothing at all like the gentle and loving radiance that emanated from the Lady. Through the eyes of the newcomer he seemed to be seeing in some other dimension of perception altogether. After an instant Prestimion recognized the source of that odd alteration of his field of view, that strange doubleness of vision that had come over him just now. It had to be Maundigand-Klimd who had linked himself somehow to the chain of attack. What other explanation could there be, if not the entry of the Su-Suheris magus into the conflict?
Now, Prestimion. Strike!
Yes. He struck. Even as Barjazid was gathering his strength for the blow that would finish the struggle, Prestimion rushed at him with all the might at his command.
Barjazid’s skill with these devices was far greater than Prestimion’s; but the spirit that had propelled Prestimion to the throne of Majipoor was a stronger one than the dark soul that sizzled and flared within Venghenar Barjazid. And Prestimion had the Lady and Maundigand-Klimd standing at his side, adding their power to his. He lashed out at Barjazid with a tremendous thrust of force and knew at once that he had broken through the other man’s defenses with it. Barjazid went reeling backward, thrown off balance by that single great rush of strength coming from his opponent. He swayed and spun about, striving frantically to remain upright.
Again. Again, Prestimion!
Again, yes. And again and again and again.
Barjazid crumbled. Fell. Lay with his face against the marshy soil, making soft moaning sounds.
Nothing now guarded the path to Dantirya Sambail.
15
“Can you see it now?” Septach Melayn cried. “The tents? The floaters? Is that not Dantirya Sambail himself? Come on, before it vanishes a second time!”
He had no real understanding of what had happened, or why, for the Lady no longer rode within his conscious mind. All that was certain was that the Procurator’s camp, which only a little while before had been cloaked once again in renewed invisibility, had burst into view before their astounded eyes and lay open and undefended before them. Now the world was churning with a mighty strangeness, the web of destiny crossing and recrossing upon itself, and Septach Melayn knew that this was the moment to bring matters to a conclusion. There might not be another opportunity.
It seemed strange, to have the barriers drop away so easily like this. But Septach Melayn greatly suspected that making such a thing happen had been no simple matter, that some tremendous unseen battle had cleared the way.
“There—yes,” Navigorn said, looking baffled. “I see the camp. But how—”
“This is Prestimion’s doing,” said Septach Melayn. “I feel him at work here. He stands close beside us now. Come, brothers! Quickly!”
He ran forward into the clearing, sword already in his hand. Gialaurys was at his right shoulder, Navigorn to his left, and the troops they had brought with them from the north came rushing up behind them from their floaters to join the fray. This was not to be a carefully structured battle but simply a wild raid, headlong and fierce.