"All for you, Nivea. I give these folk only to you."
Just like the immutable flowers, these works of art would not dissolve in the tract of the beast. They would climb through it, giving Nivea company and killing the monster from within.
Or Ixidor was mad.
The wurm would not be stopped. It smelled the true Ixidor among all these false ones and bashed the creatures aside. They scrambled up along its muzzle, and when the beast gnashed at them, the Ixidors leaped into its mouth. An army of semblances invaded the monster and ripped out fistfuls of flesh as they went.
Ixidor laughed. He had reached the farthest vestibule in his gallery, and the wurm thundered angrily toward him. It swallowed its killers obliviously-deadly portraits, beauty against ugliness. Ixidor laughed.
The great beast lunged.
Ixidor hurled himself through another unman. The final three followed. They and their master tumbled to the ground elsewhere in the palace, and the one who had been their portal snapped shut.
Air hissed into Ixidor's inner ears. He clutched his head while the pressure equalized and then looked around at the deep chamber, stony and dark. Though he had created this windowless space, he had never been here before. There was no way into this deep sanctum except through a single stair that wound down within one of the foundation pylons. They were fifty feet beneath the bottom of the lake. Even if the wurm could smell him under stone and silt and water, it could not hope to squeeze down the pylon to reach him. Here he would be safe.
Ixidor smiled. He snapped his fingers. Lights flickered into being along the stony walls. They showed an opulent chamber with thick red carpets. Before him, a long and elegant dining table stood in the midst of tall seats. To one side, a canopy bed waited, and next to it stood a giant wardrobe. With a huge and well-stocked pantry, a deep cesspit, and burgeoning bookshelves, Ixidor could remain in this room forever.
He had forgotten about this place. He should have come here first. Let Topos take care of itself. Let mortals ravage his world, and when they were done, he would rise to live again.
Ixidor strode toward the canopy bed, and his three remaining unmen followed. Heaving an exhausted sigh, Ixidor climbed onto the silken sheets and laid himself out flat. He would wait out the war here with his unmen.
He must have slept. He had right and reason to.
Ixidor awoke to see an unman grasping at him. It tried to shake him, but its empty hands laid hold of nothing. Its silent shouts had not awakened Ixidor either. He rose because of the steady trickle of water off the canopy onto the carpet.
"What is it?" Ixidor asked.
In reply, a deep whuffling noise came from the stone ceiling.
Ixidor stood and stared at the great slab. It had cracked. Water traced out the jag and dripped down to strike the peak of the canopy. Even as Ixidor watched, the drops grew larger, and the crack began to spray.
"What's happening?" Ixidor wondered again. It sounded like something massive was burrowing into the silty bottom of the lake____________________
A chunk of stone bounded free of the crack. Water poured down in a white shaft and spread across the floor. The shaft widened, and the ceiling cracked out in the precise diameter of the deathwurm's head.
Ixidor turned and took a step, trying to spot the stairway out.
The wurm broke through.
Massive blocks shattered and fell. In their midst came a true horror. Where once a slender column of water rushed down, now a fat and meaty wurm crashed through the ceiling. Water poured in a roaring cascade all around it. Its jaws snapped up the canopy bed, crunching it to splinters and feathers. Down stuck to its translucent teeth as it turned its head. Stupid little eyes fixed on Ixidor.
"I should have known. There is no safe place, not even in my mind. Especially not in my mind."
With one last, longing look at the deep sanctum, Ixidor hurled himself through the unman who had awakened him.
He landed on his side in another corner of Locus-a private theater that had never held a play. Ixidor lay there panting. That had been a close one. Would he be running forever?
Water poured out around him, sluicing through the legs of the unman. Ixidor blinked, seeing twin floods gush across the ground. The unman hadn't closed. He yet stood there, a portal between the deep sanctum and the theater. Why hadn't he closed? And where were the other unmen?
Ixidor hadn't seen them since he fell asleep. They should have been incapable of leaving him, for he had never granted them free will.
Two of his unmen had abandoned him. The third remained open, waiting for its companions to jump through. The open gate would allow any creature to pass Ixidor lurched backward Through the unman burst the head of the wurm. Its mouth gaped, teeth spread, and jaws snapped.
Ixidor could not get out of the way.
The thing's mouth closed around him, and its cold gullet swallowed. All was darkness and agony.
The wurm withdrew its head through the unman.
Deprived of its master, the unman only stood and trembled, water pouring through shuddering legs.
He was gone.
Above the ravenous wurms and the sucking pits, Akroma somehow sensed it. The creator was gone. "Ixidor."
She could do no more. Battered and weary, Akroma had killed fifty deathwurms. More than a thousand remained. She had fought because she knew Ixidor wished it. Now he was gone.
Akroma labored into the uncaring sky.
Beneath her feline feet, wurms bounded across the nightmare lands and entered the sandy desert. They continued on, gobbling up folk as they went. They could not bite through the world anymore, but they would scour it of all life.
Akroma hung in the sky and watched the end of Otaria.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: THE SAVED AND THE DAMNED
Kamahl knelt before Jeska. She lay limp in his arms, panting miserably. She was dying once again, dying of the old, unhealing wound. An identical injury crossed his own belly and made him weak. It would kill him too, if he and Jeska and Otaria somehow survived the third laceration-a wound on the world.
Like giant black maggots, deathwurms galloped across the nightmare lands. They had already scoured the battlefield of all living things and left the soil itself riddled with holes. The infection spread. Many wurms had plunged onto the desert, pursuing the routed troops. No one would survive this battle-not warriors, not countryfolk, not anything on Otaria.
A deathwurm bounded straight toward Kamahl and Jeska, its mucousy muzzle homing on their scent.
"Go, Brother," Jeska said faintly. "They cannot kill me."
Clenching his jaw, Kamahl stood, a bulwark of flesh between his sister and the monster that thundered down on them. "They will not."
Jeska shook her head fiercely. "They cannot. They did not kill me from the inside, and they cannot kill me from the outside."
Kamahl turned away and said to himself, "Delirious." He faced down the wurm.
It was lunacy. The thing's head was the size of a house, and its body was a league long. Kamahl did not even have a weapon. Still, rage and desperation had been Kamahl's greatest weapons in the past. He smiled. Of all the deaths that he and his sister could suffer, at least this one could be punched in the face.
The wurm pounded the ground, almost flinging Kamahl off his feet. One more leap and it would be upon them.
Kamahl clenched his hand into a fist, and he reared it back. "Good-bye, Sister."
He swung. His fist crashed into the black nose of the beast, but it in turn smashed into him, hurling him back. Kamahl flew over Jeska. The wurm plunged atop her, its mouth agape.