Lan blinked in surprise when all the magical attacks against him suddenly ceased. His tongue still burned, but that was the product of his own conjuring.
“Giving up so easily, Claybore?” he croaked out. Then Lan saw what the sorcerer did. The attack hadn’t lessened, it had shifted.
Kiska k’Adesina writhed on the floor, face blue from the spells cutting off her air. Her body arched violently as if her back would snap, then she flopped onto her belly and fingers cut into stone as she tried to escape Claybore’s vicious magical punishment.
“Stop it!” cried Lan.
Without thinking, he directed his full power to shielding the woman from Claybore. The instant his attack on Claybore stopped, the disembodied sorcerer countered.
“You can’t let her come to harm, can you, Martak?” chided Claybore. “You love her. You must protect her. You have to. She means more than your own life, doesn’t she?”
“No,” said Lan. The weakness of his reply told him everything. He did love Kiska k’Adesina, his sworn enemy, the woman who hated him with an obsession bordering on insanity; he loved her.
The geas controlled him.
“I see it in your face. Defend her. Keep her from harm.”
Claybore’s spells trapped the woman on the floor like a bug with a pin through it. She gasped for breath, twisted about as joints snapped and limbs turned in ways never intended. Lan watched in rapt horror as Claybore broke her physically with his powerful spells.
But if he protected Kiska adequately, he left himself open to attack. One or the other of them he might defend, but not both of them.
“She dies, Martak. Your lover dies.”
The desolation welling up within Lan couldn’t be expressed. He had no true love for Kiska. She had tried to kill him on more occasions than he could count, yet he did love her. Irrationally, without any regard for common sense, Lan loved Kiska.
“Look at her pain, Martak. I really don’t want to do this to one who has been such a loyal follower, but it gives me some practice. When I become a true god I think I shall do this every day.”
Lan gambled everything on forming one last spell to hurl every spark of energy he had directly at Claybore. Stun Claybore, stop the torture Kiska felt.
The bolt lashed forth with such intensity the rock walls turned viscid and flowed in sluggish, molten streams. The dancing light mote guided the tip of this energy blast directly for Claybore’s skull. The sorcerer staggered back, his metallic legs beginning to melt under the onslaught. But the reaction was not that which Lan expected. Claybore was being driven to the wall and yet an aura of triumph surrounded him.
Lan jerked about, trying to discover the reason. He saw his friends entering. The giant spider Krek lumbered forward, his eight legs ungainly in the confines of the tunnel and chamber. Large brown eyes took in all that happened. Behind Krek came dark-haired Inyx, sword drawn and an expression of bloodlust etched on her handsome face. She and Lan had been through much together as they walked the Road, and his current attitudes about Kiska and the single-minded drive he displayed for stopping Claybore weren’t going to deter her from helping him in his moment of need. Just behind the fierce warrior woman stood Ducasien, the man from Inyx’s home world, the one to whom she had turned when Lan was unable to comfort her.
“Stop her!” came Krek’s voice. Lan ventured a quick glance to one side and saw Kiska k’Adesina rising up, dagger in hand. The dagger was aimed straight for his back.
As long as he maintained the spell against Claybore, Lan couldn’t move, couldn’t defend himself against physical attack. Even worse was the sight of the woman he loved trying to kill him, as if she still plotted with Claybore for his downfall.
Inyx rushed forward, her quick, strong hand gripping Kiska’s wrist and twisting at the last possible instant. Lan felt hot steel rake over his back. Thick streams of blood gushed forth, but the wound was messier than it was dangerous.
But the shock of seeing the woman he was magically forced to love attempt to kill him broke the continuity of his spell. Claybore began worming free of the attack.
“Come,” the sorcerer beckoned. “Come to me!”
The leg twitched and kicked and bobbed until it again hopped across the chamber. Lan’s power waned; he was unable to cope with Inyx and Kiska fighting, the spell he launched against Claybore and the countering spell the sorcerer returned, and the sight of the leg hopping to rejoin the body.
“Krek,” he moaned. “The leg. Stop it!”
Krek’s huge front limb reached out and batted away the leg, sending it into the far wall. Flesh hissed slightly as it touched rock already turned molten from other spells.
“The heat. Oh, my precious fur is smouldering,” cried the spider.
“Never mind that. Stop the leg from reaching Claybore.”
Lan’s words needed more conviction to get the spider to move. The way the man’s tongue burned within his mouth told him that his own enervating spell had been turned against him. Claybore’s cunning played on his every weakness, his every mistake.
But if Krek was unable to move, the gnome’s leader Broit Heresler and his few surviving clansmen did act. The gnomes, who called this hollowed mountain their home, rushed into the chamber, spades and picks cutting and hacking at the leg. The limb tried valiantly to defend itself against the tiny chunks being taken out of it, but there were too many gnomes attacking.
Claybore cursed, tried to magically destroy them, and found himself overextended. He dared not relent in his attack on Lan; to do so meant his own demise. But he needed his leg and the gnomes prevented it from rejoining him.
“Bring out the water,” Broit called. Others of the gravedigger clan rolled huge barrels into the room.
“You can’t do that!” shrieked Claybore.
They threw acid water onto the leg. Flesh smouldered and turned putrescent. Soon, only the bare leg bones remained, and they were easily hammered into dust by the gnomes.
“You’ve lost, Claybore,” said Lan. “Stop your drive for power now. We can work out some sort of truce.”
“Truce? You fool! You don’t understand. I’ve tasted ultimate power. I can’t turn away from it. I can’t share it.”
The sorcerer lay in a heap on the ground, his metallic legs destroyed and his own legs unreachable now. Lan Martak had magically blasted the one leg and the other was little more than bonemeal in a paste of acid water on the floor.
Claybore reached up and touched the spot on his chest where the Kinetic Sphere pinkly pulsed.
“You will find this victory fleeting, Martak,” promised Claybore. The sorcerer’s entire body blinked out of existence. The sorcerer walked the Road.
“You killed him!” cried Broit Heresler, jumping up and down, his bandy legs quivering with excitement.
“He shifted worlds,” said Lan in a tired voice. “We stopped him from regaining either of his legs, but he still walks the Road, plotting and planning.”
A strangled sound came to the mage’s ears. Lan spun and saw Inyx with her fingers firmly wrapped around Kiska’s throat. The dark-haired woman slowly choked the life from her victim.
“Inyx, no!” he cried. Ducasien placed a hand on Lan’s shoulder to restrain him. Lan cast a minor spell that hurled Ducasien across the room. A second spell sent Inyx after him, leaving Kiska alone and gasping for air on the floor. He went to her and knelt, cradling her head in his lap.
Emotions boiled within Lan. He hated her for all she had done. She was insane, a cold-blooded murderer. And he loved her. He had to protect her at all costs.
“Lan Martak,” came Krek’s voice, “she attempted to stab you in the back. You saw. You know of her treachery.”
“I love her,” he choked out. His heart leaped with joy when he saw her muddy brown eyes flicker open and focus on him. Lan read only hatred blazing up at him and it didn’t matter. He loved her.
He had to. That was the curse laid upon him.
“Good riddance,” snarled Kiska k’Adesina. She stood close beside Lan Martak on the mountaintop. The circle of energy surrounding them held the acid rain at bay and gave them a clear view of the tiny procession wending its way across the barren plain to the graveyard. Lan watched and felt a coldness inside grow until he wanted to scream. Inyx gone. Krek gone. His friends had abandoned him because he was unable to break free of Claybore’s spell binding him so tightly-so cunningly!-to Kiska. He didn’t want them to leave, yet his actions had driven them off.