«Go, Blade. I have explained. You have one chance. You will triumph or perish.»
In the gloom of the little cavern her body shimmered like heat lightning. Blade gave her a long look, took a deep breath, and went headfirst into the pool.
He made his way down through black ice. His eyes were open to no avail-the darkness was total. This was a place that had never known light. It was narrow, little more than a well, and at times he brushed the sides of cold stone.
Blade went down and down and down. There was no bottom. The first faint pains began in his lungs. The pressure was a dark hand crushing him. Down-downdown-
No bottom ever. He was diving into eternity.
Pain growing now. Flame in his lungs. Soon it would be unbearable. Still he swam downward. And down-and down-
Bottom.
His fluttering hands encountered them immediately. The sword and the pearl. Just as Izmia had said they would be-waiting for him all the aeons long.
The pearl was the size of a billiard ball and filled his hand with chill convexity. The sword was long and cumbersome and immensely heavy. Blade grasped them and kicked his way upward. Straight into the slimy coils. lzmia had not warned him of this thing, whatever it was, that held him now. Serpent, 'monstrous worm, water dragon, whatever it was, it had him in a firm grip and the coils were multiplying and tightening all the while. The more Blade fought, the harder he struggled, the deeper he became enmeshed. His lungs, already screaming for air, began to collapse under the terrible squeeze the creature exerted.
For a moment Blade panicked: Fear screamed and shivered through him. Not so much fear of death, or pain, as of the unknown terror of the moment-this loathsome beast that he could not see, this great leechlike nightmare attached and sucking and squeezing at his body. His arms were bound tight into the coils and he could not draw the sword and pain was raving in his brain.
One of the thick coils slipped across his mouth. Blade, without thought, knowing only that this was his one chance, fastened his strong teeth in the- rubbery flesh and bit with all his might. He bit and chewed and ravaged like a wolf feeding. The flesh in his mouth was foul and bitter, noisome and stinking, and yet he felt the thing shudder and the coils relax a bit. Blade, near to being a mindless thing himself now, ravened.on. He savaged the flesh of the thing.
The coils fell away. Blade shot toward the surface, still clutching the sword and the pearl.
Izmia was not there. Blade had known she would not be. She had explained it all to him. He dragged himself out of the pool and lay gasping for a few minutes, then donned his armor and his sword and belt. There was no cause for hurry now. Izmia would wait.
When he had dressed and fully recovered he examined the sword and the pearl. The sword was broad and long, handsomely sheathed in a scabbard that glistened with jewels, and when he drew the steel it glimmered and glistened as though it were from the forge. Blade put the point on the floor and held the sword away from him. The hilt came to the level of his chin.
The pearl was as black as the pool from which it had come. It glowed with dark fire. Blade stroked it with his fingers and it seemed to throb and come alive, to take warmth from his body, to glisten and respond and almost breathe. He hefted it again and again in his hand and regretted the eventual use to which he must put it. It was, on closer inspection, larger than a billiard ball and he knew he'would never see its like again in any dimension. For a moment he regarded both pearl and sword intently, then sighed anti went back to the larger cavern where Izmia awaited him on her catafalque.
She slept. Blade stood by the catafalque, gazing down at the naked beauty of her, dreading what he must do. But he bad vowed and it must be done. He put the sword on the catafalque beside her and placed the great black pearl in the cabinet with the chalice and the wine. He came back and picked up the sword.
Her flesh was all shimmering flame, the marvelous breasts rising and falling with her slow breath. Her features, in repose, appeared to have shrunken, to have pinched together, and the facial flesh had taken on such a translucence that Blade could have sworn he saw the skull. Slowly Blade raised the sword.
The drug was strong in him, enforcing his will rather than sapping it, giving him a slow and blurred determination. He must do everything exactly right, exactly as he had been instructed. There was no tremor of his hand as he lifted her left breast to place the point of the sword exactly. Her flesh was cold, yet seared his hand, and it was all he could do to keep from snatching it way. He positioned the sword point, then leaped onto the~catafalque and stood astride her.
At that moment the golden eyes flickered open and stared up at him and Blade stared down into a volcano where amber sparks swirled. He grasped the sword hilt firmly in both hands and bore down with all his strength.
Izmia arched and screamed once. Her body writhed, embracing the sword as though it were a steel phallus and she smitten with death desire. Blade, made impassive by the drug, drove the sword through her and into the catafalque beneath. His face contorted and sweat streamed from him and he was unknowing of this. He bent to his task. His massive biceps bulged and quivered as he forced the sword lower and lower, driving it deeper into the catafalque, until the hilt rested on her breast.
His face was close to hers and he saw the beginning of it. Her eyes closed and he saw peace, calmness and tranquility, invade her features like a conquering angel. Her lips fell away from her teeth in a rietus that was more smile than grin and then a kind of ecdysis began and her flesh ceased to shimmer and turned a dull gray. Blade tugged out the sword and leaped from the catafalque to stand beside her. He was only dimly aware of his own sobbing breath.
He watched, bound fast by the web of drug, as Izmia's flesh aged before his eyes. She had been-so she had whispered-an old, old woman and now her flesh, freed from whatever necromancy had held it in thrall, spoke the truth at last. It did not take long.
When the body that had been Izmia became a eronething, a bag of wrinkles and bones, Blade picked it up and left the cavern. He found a door she had said would be there and followed the path laid out for him. He stalked along, not hurrying nor lagging, clutching the thing to his breast, and in a few minutes came out on the stone platform overlooking the maw of the volcano. Had it been light he could have seen the tower room where he and Edyrn had plotted their battle, and from which he had first spied this very platform. He approached the edge and stared down into the reeking mouth. A thin sulfuric mist drifted up to choke and half blind him. In the far depths a tongue of flame leaped up and outward from the walls, as though in signal, then retreated.
Blade lifted the body, as light as a feather pillow now, and hurled it out and down. Again flame licked and smoke roiled and Blade raised his hand in farewell. He stalked back,the way he had come. As he left the Cavern of Music ais head began to clear, the drug faded, and though he had perfect recall of everything he felt no pain, nor regret, but rather the sense of a thing well and rightly done.
He went to his own cavern and threw himself on the bed and slept like a babe. When Nob woke him, half an hour short of dawn; Blade felt refreshed and confident and ready for whatever the day might bring. He sat on the edge of the bed, rubbing sleep from his eyes, and grinned at the one-eyed rascal.
Nob handed him a cup of steaming broth and reported that the counter-raid had gone well.