Ixidor released his hold and stepped back. It was as though he stared into a looking glass. "Come see," Ixidor said to his disciples.
They rioted down around the simulacrum and probed it. Outwardly the beast was identical to its creator, but when the disciples tried to sink through its forehead and read its thoughts, they found only dead clay beneath.
Ixidor smiled. "These new creatures are flesh wandering free of thought. You, my disciples, are thought free of flesh. Together, you will serve me, body and mind. Just as you can duplicate the minds of those who come against me, these folk will duplicate the bodies. Our foes will fight themselves." Staring fixedly at the creature, Ixidor said, "Return."
Color melted away. Line eroded. The figure resumed its smooth shapelessness.
Ixidor strode through the forest of putty people. "Remain here." Rank on rank, the men of clay stood. To Ixidor's glowing disciples, he said "Onward."
The disciples followed. They bobbed in his wake, washing the army in an eerie blue light. Lit that way, the putty people seemed gaunt headstones in a graveyard. Soon enough, they would stand above the dead of Krosan and the Cabal.
Ixidor walked in nervous silence. He was making monsters. It wasn't that such terrors were new to his mind. It was only that he had never before created something simply to kill.
In their monotonous thousands, the army of putty people at last gave way to true desert-endless sands. His next creatures would be craggy like sand crystals.
Ixidor stomped. Dust rolled up in a coiling ring around his foot. It seemed a jellyfish bubbling up through the air. Ixidor needed no more jellyfish, but the forms of the sea gave him inspiration.
Ixidor leaped out on the sand, grabbing a handful of it. He spun and hurled it high. From a dense dust cloud, long lines trailed down. Not pausing, Ixidor whirled and grasped more grit. He flung it up beside the first cloud and moved onward. It was a dance, yes-a dance of exorcism. He was casting horrors out of his mind onto thin air.
Not so thin anymore. Each cloud of dust formed into a body of thick carapace. Each trailing wisp became a chitinous leg. Tall and gangly, twice the height of a man, the things seemed huge spiders. They were, in fact, leggy crabs. Each limb-and some of the beasts had ten or twenty-ended in a deadly spike. Those legs alone could skewer countless invaders. The claws beneath the body, though-long and sharp like shears-would literally cut the foes to pieces.
Ixidor danced, throwing sand and bringing horrors to life. Disciples spun about him in a blue-white cloak. He would make as many crab folk as he had putty people. He would go on dancing his terror until dawn. Sand was getting in his eyes, blinding him, but it didn't matter. His breath moaned in a hoarse half-music. That was fine too.
Let dance and music and vision bring into being a whole host of nightmares.
When Phage came, and Kamahl, and their armies, they would pay in blood for invading Topos.
There is no more dangerous being than a creator hiding in his own mind.
CHAPTER TWENTY: WHO'S WHO
Braids loved her job. It was like playing with toys.
Across the wetlands poled festival barges, their particolored flags snapping in the wind. A few had reached shore and offloaded their patrons onto fringe-covered palanquins. They stood on a path that led up the escarpment to brightly painted caravans. All were toys. So too were the slaves who bore them forward and the rich folk who rode within. Fun, fanciful, expendable toys.
"Welcome, all," Braids shouted to them from atop the Corian Escarpment. "Journey from the wonders of the wetlands to the delights of the desert. You've seen crocodiles and piranhas, now prepare for jackals and buzzards. Beyond lie unimaginable nightmares!"
Barge crews served drinks and shrimp pastries while litter bearers struggled to keep palanquins upright on the switchback path. Before the waiting caravans, escorts danced, promising to help weary patrons "settle in." AH of it delighted Braids. She loved to listen to the rich folk complain, sheep bleating among dogs. How they would bleat when only wolves remained!
"Avail yourselves of every amenity! Where else can you lie at ease, alone or in company, and watch warriors fight and die? Who else can lounge like a god and witness mortal wars? Feast upon red meat and blood wine, upon sweetbreads and marrow! The finest beasts have been slain for your bellies, and the finest warriors will be slain for your eyes."
Braids glanced out toward the army. It rode on grim barges and marched on dusty feet and bore blades instead of flags. How dull-until the killing started, of course. But all this travel… well, it would have been just plain dull if not for the entertainments. It was Braids's job to make the trip fun, and she was very good at her job.
A couple of slaves caused trouble below. Not really. All they did was struggle under a weighty dowager as they climbed the hills. Their motion, though, drew Braids's eye, and she could use them. It was time for a little show starring those fun, fanciful, expendable toys.
"Watch this now, folks!" she shouted as she leaped down the escarpment toward the troublesome slaves. "Where else do you get to witness a summary execution?" Even as she said the words, her mouth was beginning to distend. Something was forcing its way out, being birthed from her teeth, something that would eat the slaves alive. As she vaulted down, Braids smiled, and the thing came into being.
Braids loved her job.
Side by side, Kamahl and Phage rode across the wasteland. They were not brother and sister, not even comrades, but only commanders. To one side, General Stonebrow stomped stolidly, and to the other, Zagorka rode aback Chester. The allied army, twelve thousand strong, followed.
The commanders straddled a pair of gigantic serpents. Kamahl rode Roth, whose rubious scales had been scratched to a dull gray by ever-present sand. Phage's beast had no such difficulty. Its belly had long since worn away, and it wriggled along on rib tips like the white legs of an enormous millipede. Only an undead beast could bear Phage's corrupting touch.
"We'll destroy Akroma," Kamahl blurted, his thoughts suddenly spilling forth, "and the external threat to you will be gone. Then we'll deal with the internal threat."
Phage did not look at him. She only stared toward the gray hills on the extreme horizon. "What internal threat?"
Kamahl barked a laugh and threw her an incredulous grin. When he saw the flat line of her mouth, he grew serious. "This… infection, for lack of a better word. The poison in you that bleeds out of your skin. If it can kill anyone you touch, imagine what it is doing to your insides "The poison is my insides," she growled. "There's nothing but poison."
"I don't believe that-'
"Obviously." At last, she turned to look at him. "Your sister is gone, Kamahl. I am the wolf who ate her."
He fixed her with a level stare. "If you ate her, she is inside you."
Phage's face was dispassionate. "I bit through her neck, crunched her skull, chewed her flesh, and worried her bones. My teeth murdered her, my gullet swallowed her, my gut digested her. She's gone. You look at me and see her, but you don't know who I am."