I had learned one thing of supreme importance from Set. Energy is the key to all powers. Cut off the source of his energy and your enemy becomes helpless. Set’s source of energy was the core tap that reached down to the molten heart of Earth. I had to reach it and somehow destroy it.
The tap was deep inside Set’s fortress, which lay more than a day’s march from where Subotai’s troops had camped for the night. I had to get there, and quickly, before Set unleashed an attack upon Subotai that would slaughter all the Mongols.
But I was cut off from my energy source. Set had put a barrier between me and the heavens that prevented me from utilizing the energy streaming in from the sun and stars. Was this shield merely a bubble that covered the immediate region around me, or had he wrapped the entire planet in a shimmering curtain that blocked the energy streaming earthward from the stars?
It made no difference. The fact was that I was cut off from the energies that would allow me to fight Set. There was only one thing to do: reach his own core tap and either destroy it or use it against him.
There was no way that I could accomplish anything in this one night. I took a horse from the Mongols’ makeshift corral and rode toward the northeast and Set’s fortress. I only hoped that I could reach it before the devil launched an annihilating attack upon Subotai.
The sun rose dim and hazy, a weak pale phantom of its usual glory. Set’s shield was incredibly strong, I realized. Pterosaurs were already crisscrossing the watery gray sky. They could not miss seeing me riding alone across the wide plain of grass.
I wondered what Subotai was thinking of me. Probably he was not alarmed yet, thinking that I had returned to Muscovy and was making preparations for bringing the rest of his army to him. I hated to think that he would believe I had betrayed him. I did not fear his anger or punishment, but I felt miserable at the thought that he might feel I had broken his trust.
Despite the wan appearance of the sun, the day became quite hot. Set’s shield was selective, allowing the longer wavelengths of sunlight to reach the ground and heat it. I knew that if I had the proper instruments with me, they would show that none of the higher-energy wavelengths were penetrating the shield. Nor were any energetic cosmic particles getting through, I was certain.
Late in the afternoon a trio of Shaydanians mounted on fighting dragons appeared out of the shimmering heat haze, heading directly for me. The pterosaurs had done their job. I was to be killed or captured and brought before Set once again.
For the first time since I had known them, these Shaydanians bore weapons. They each carried oddly convoluted lengths of bright metal strapped across their backs. Once they spotted me they unslung the devices and, clutching them in both hands like rifles, urged their two-legged carnosaurs into a trotting pace.
I slid off my mount and shooed it away from me. I had already sacrificed one pony to the carnosaurs. That was enough. Idly I thought that I must be acquiring some of the Mongols’ reverence for horses.
As the carnosaur-mounted devils approached me I focused my consciousness on the nearest of the three, reaching into his mind for a brief moment. The rifles, with their bulbous metallic blisters and needle-slim muzzles, projected streams of fire, like a small flamethrower. Set realized that he could no longer rely on fangs and claws to deal with the Mongols; he needed weapons. What more terrifying weapon than a flamethrower, especially coming from a reptilian that already had the Mongols worried that they were facing supernatural demons?
I saw something else in the Shaydanian’s mind during that fleeting instant: they were not under orders to take me alive. Set had no intention of taking further chances with me. These three clones of his were going to kill me, here and now.
My senses shifted into hyperdrive immediately and the scene slowed as if time were stretching like a piece of warm taffy. The three Shaydanians lifted their rifles to their shoulders, aiming at me through diamond-shaped crystal sights. I saw their taloned fingers tightening on the curved triggers.
As they aimed at me their attention was shifted momentarily from guiding their mounts. The fierce two-legged carnosaurs, directed mentally by their riders, continued to trot toward me. But their tiny brains were not under the firm control of the Shaydanians, for one fleeting moment.
Desperately I sent a lance of red-hot mental energy into those three dinosaurs’ brains. They screeched and reared to their full height, throwing two of the Shaydanians to the ground and forcing the third to drop his rifle and clutch at his mount’s hide with both clawed hands.
All this I saw in slow motion. Even as the two thrown Shaydanians were falling toward the ground, I ran and dove full-length for the rifle that was spiraling through midair. I grabbed it before it touched the grass. As my fingers tightened around it I heard the thumps of the two riders hitting the ground hard.
The dinosaurs were still hissing, the two freed of their riders galloping off away from us. The third, though, was under his rider’s control once again and heading straight for me.
I rolled away from a stamping clawed foot that would have crushed me under the carnosaur’s weight and fired from the hip at its rider. The stream of flame sliced him in two across midtorso. As his severed body slipped bloodily from the dinosaur’s back, the beast wheeled and came at me, massive head bent low, cavernous mouth gaping, lined with saw-edged teeth the size of my scimitar.
I pulled the rifle’s trigger as hard as I could while dodging sideways. The stream poured flame down its gullet and slashed down the length of its thick neck. It hit the ground with a tremendous thud, literally shaking the earth, bellowing like a runaway steam locomotive to the very last.
I looked up. The two other Shaydanians were scrambling for the rifles they had dropped. I fired at the nearer of them and he toppled over dead. But when I turned to the third of them, my rifle did not respond. It was empty, its fuel depleted.
The Shaydanian had reached his own rifle and was picking it up from the grass. I threw my useless weapon at him and charged after it, drawing my scimitar from its scabbard. The rifle hit him like a club, knocking him down again on his rump. Before he could train his own rifle on me I was close enough to kick it out of his hands.
He glowered at me through his red slitted reptilian eyes and scrambled to his feet. Hissing, he advanced on me, clawed hands reaching out. I slashed at him with the scimitar once. He raised an arm to block the blow, but I swung the blade under and then lunged at him. The point penetrated the scales of his chest and went completely through him. With a final hiss of death agony he collapsed and, sliding off my blade, fell to the bloodstained ground.
Immediately I projected a mental image at Set. I sent him a scene that showed two of his clones lying dead on the bloody grass but the third standing over my own burned corpse. With every ounce of cunning in me, I presented myself mentally as one of Set’s clones, and the body at my feet as my own.
“You have done well, my son,” came Set’s mental voice. “Return now with the corpse so that I may examine it.”
I mentally called one of the carnosaurs back to me and mounted it for the trip back to the fortress by the Nile. Had Set truly believed the false message I had sent him? Or was he merely drawing me to his fortress so he could dispose of me more easily?
There was only one way to find out. I headed the dinosaur toward the fortress, concentrating every moment on my phony image so that even the pterosaurs scouting high overhead would “see” what I wanted them to, and report it back to Set.
It was nightfall by the time I reached the garden by the Nile. The fortress was a short ride away. I would reach it in darkness, which suited me well. I knew there was no chance of my keeping up my deception once inside Set’s walls—if Set had been deceived at all.