He fell slowly, his sanity returning, his eyes turning accusingly toward Nepanthe. So long, so far, for this. Briefly, he wondered if Varthlokkur were truly his father, and if he had judged Nepanthe wrongly. Then darkness closed in.
The Old Man, during Mocker's flailing at Yo Hsi, saw the opportunity he had been awaiting. He strode briskly across the chamber, seized Varthlokkur's wand, stepped into the heart of his friend's creation. Before the sham battle reached its inevitable climax, he had completed Varthlokkur's work.
"Come along," said Yo Hsi, when finished. "You have things to tell me. Dawn-time things. Secrets known only to yourself and the Star Rider."
"I have nothing to tell you save this: you're doomed. As he promised."
Laughter. "You're presumptuous. That'll change. My torturers have a way with wills."
"But they'll never see me. You won't leave this room. Varthlokkur told you that he had prepared for you. He was right when he said that you'd lost."
"He had no magic. Great he was, yes, but distracted. My Tervola and I have leeched his power for months. Tonight he couldn't control the weakest ghost. Come."
"Take me."
Irritated, Yo Hsi started toward the Old Man. After three steps, however, he encountered an impassable barrier.
"Varthlokkur may have lost his ability to fight you, but his researches gave him a means to contain you. This thing surrounding me draws on new sources of Power. No agency, no man alive, can free you now. Not even he whom you call my master. You can sustain yourself by your arts, but to the world you're dead. Your powers have been jailed. You'll never leave that cage alive, nor will your magicks. I only wish that Varthlokkur hadn't been distracted by the woman. He might have lived to see his greatest moment, the fall of the evil that made him. That would've finally soothed his torment."
Yo H si tried his cage with physical strength and magic. Intolerable fires burned therein. Shadows fought. But nothing yielded. So he tried bargaining.
"You're old, Yo Hsi, and cunning," the Old Man retorted after hearing mighty promises. "But I'm older. Only the Director could sway me now. So let it be. Go gracefully, silently. Or else..." He stroked a symbol in the plane of a pentagram, suspiciously liverish in shape. Yo Hsi groaned, clutched himself. "I have my tortures too, and my magic can pass the cage's walls."
"Go gracefully? No! I'll have something." Yo Hsi's good hand flashed out like the strike of a snake. Taking advantage of the cage's only weakness, that of passing inorganic matter, a dart, poisoned, shot from an apparatus attached to his wrist.
The Old Man dodged, but not quickly enough. He gasped, held his wound, presently staggered, fell slowly to his knees. He smiled once, mockingly, at Yo Hsi, then again, happily, at something invisible. "So long you've waited, Dark Lady." He toppled onto his face, half in, half out of Varthlokkur's magical structure.
Yo Hsi raged from wall to wall of his cage once more, blasting it with the most potent eastern magic, but there were, as he already knew, no exits.
NINETEEN: A March of a Domain of Shadows
"Varthlokkur?" Nepanthe reached for his hand. She peered dazedly about the room. Yo Hsi stood stiffly silent a dozen feet away. The chamber was quiet. Nothing moved but the symbols in Varthlokkur's device. "What happened?"
There was a sound. Yo Hsi turned. In the door stood a shadowy someone who might have been the easterner's twin. "Nu Li Hsi." The shadow was his twin. Long ago, they had murdered their father, Tuan Hoa, for his throne, and had brought the Dread Empire to its present schizophrenic state.
The newcomer bowed slightly. "You've slain them all?" Varthlokkur stirred, groggily sat up beside Nepanthe. He didn't say anything.
"As you can see," said Yo Hsi. "We still have a draw."
"Even my Ethrian?" Nu Li Hsi, who was called the
Dragon Prince, took a step into the room, peered about warily. "There's something strange here. Something not quite right."
"The Old Man must've closed the cage for me," Varthlokkur grunted.
"You probably sense that." Yo Hsi indicated Varthlokkur's Winterstorm construct. "It's something new."
"Ah. No doubt." Nu Li Hsi regarded the Winterstorm with an, obvious professional admiration. He stepped closer.
"He doesn't know." Varthlokkur crowed. "Yo Hsi just might lure him in."
Yo Hsi stiffened momentarily. Varthlokkur could almost read his thoughts. Could something organic pass from outside the cage in? He couldn't let Shinsan go to his brother by default. He struck an exaggeratedly relaxed pose.
And Nu Li Hsi entered the cage, pausing only momentarily to bat the air before his face, as if brushing off a gnat.
"And I prayed that I could trap just one of them," Varthlokkur said. His face became beatific. "Haifa world liberated in minutes." He snapped his fingers. "That simply."
The wizard was kidding himself. He knew better. The Princes Thaumaturge would be replaced. The Dread Empire would endure. Impatient heirs already awaited the intercession of Fate.
Mad laughter assaulted the air. "It's the end, brother. You're doomed." Less maniacally, "We're doomed. It agonized me to think that I had to leave the Empire in your filthy hands."
"What the hell are you raving about? I'd heard rumors that you were losing your mind."
"It's a trap. Our pupil has undone his teachers. We can't leave." He laughed crazily again. "He's turned the tables on us, dear brqther."
Frowning, Nu Li Hsi tried going to the Winterstorm.
Something barred his way.
Nervously, he retreated toward the door.
Again, something stopped him.
Panicking, Nu Li Hsi made a thunderous trial of the cage's walls. Without effect.
Like animals, the brother-princes hurtled at one another, each shrieking out half a millennium's frustration. They fought with sorcery, blades of bronze, hands, feet, and teeth. All to no conclusion. Each retained his unbreachable defenses, his superb reflexes and combat skills.
They might enjoy one another's company forever.
Varthlokkur rose, approached the trap.
"Don't get too close," Nepanthe warned. "They'd love it if they could get you in there with them."
"Don't worry. I'll look out. Though they couldn't hurt me now. They'd have to be able to see and touch me first. Look there." He pointed.
She looked. And screamed.
"That's us? We're dead?" Nepanthe and Varthlokkur corpses lay in bloody, tumbled, sweat-wet furs. "I don't want to die!" Hysteria effervesced from the edges of her voice.
Varthlokkur pulled her toward him, tried to comfort her. But he was frightened, too, and she sensed it. She wanted to run, run, run, as badly as she had on that next-to-last night on the Candareen. But from this there was no escape. The swordstroke had fallen already.
How had she come to this? What evil Fate?... She stared at her corpse, morbidly fascinated. Her death-wound was scarcely visible, tricking the tiniest line of scarlet across one breast.
"What happens now?" She wasn't religious, and had never truly believed that death was something that could happen to her.
"We wait. Don't worry. Everything will be all right." But his quavering voice betrayed his lack of confidence.
"You're all right after all?" The Old Man had risen, was coming toward them. He sounded puzzled. His ashen face was frozen in startled ecstasy. That expression quickly transmogrified into confusion.
"All right?" Nepanthe responded to her panic. Feeling foolish, yet unable to stop herself, she snapped, "Wonderful. For a corpse."
The Old Man retreated before her intensity.
"Calm down," Varthlokkur pleaded. "Varth..." At that moment, when most people would have needed someone to hold and comfort them, all she wanted was to be left alone. She tried to explain. "It's just the way I am. It's the same when I'm sick, or have a headache."