Oskin Yahlei stretched out his arm, pointing at Shaa with a middle finger that bore a gold ring alive with tiny lights and dark vortices of force, the full emotive power that had first hit Shaa across the room again building. “Shaa!” he thundered. “My patience ebbs! I will grant you a choice! You know this choice! You will join me, or face a terrible doom!”
So it’s a quick ally he’s looking for, eh? Shaa thought weakly under the renewed onslaught. “Whether I’ve got friends around at the moment or not,” he said aloud, his voice less rickety than the rest of him felt, and loaded in fact with his most ominous air of serious menace, “if I get hit with that terrible a doom they’ll come after you. For every one you inflict on me, you will receive back ten. A terrible doom for me will yield you a ruin of such appalling devastation as to pale the sane imagination.” How’s that, buster? he thought.
Their eyes were locked, Shaa’s two with Oskin Yahlei’s crushing one. Oskin Yahlei moved his outstretched arm around to the side, aiming it now at the man who burned down buildings, who was still quivering on the floor. “See the merest hint of your doom,” Oskin Yahlei said.
The man on the floor froze in mid-quiver; it was as if he had been set upon by a taxidermist between one breath and the next. A black gauze seemed to flow over his body. Then -
From the gate in the wall outside came a sudden pounding, a hollow rolling boom. Oskin Yahlei, an expression of extreme irritation on his face, looked down at his prostrate chamberlain. The chamberlain sprang to his feet and dashed across the auditorium to the outside door. Shaa noted with dim satisfaction that the man was holding his side and running with a lurch, rather than a steady stride. He disappeared through the door, then quickly returned, now wringing his hands.
“Oh, master,” he said in a low mumble, barely audible to Shaa, “a man outside, with a staff. He demands to see you.”
“Someone from Kaar?” said Oskin Yahlei.
“No, he, ah, he says his name is Gasha-something, Gashalarahra, Gashana -”
“Gashanatantra.”
“Yes, master, that was it.”
Oskin Yahlei lowered his arm, his mouth pursed, his eyebrow raised, lost for a moment in rumination. “So he has come. I will see him,” he said thoughtfully. The chamberlain took off again toward the door. Oskin Yahlei started to stride after him, then paused, sparing a glance over his shoulder, first at Shaa and then at the Guard sergeant. “Fasten them to the wall,” he said to the sergeant. “I will be back.” He stalked through the double doors at the side of the hall and vanished from sight. The door to the vestibule swung open again and the chamberlain reappeared, leading a new man, dark-haired and of medium height, several inches shorter than Shaa, wearing a dark-gray leather outfit that looked considerably the worse for recent wear. The man was also hefting a polished hardwood walking stick. The chamberlain indicated the double door, the man sauntered in, and the guards at either side swung the doors closed.
Shaa let the soldiers drag him back against the wall and rattle the chains. He was thinking earnestly. Could that man be Gashanatantra? The Gashanatantra? Not Gashanatantra the Devious, surely not the mad plotter himself? But indeed, how many Gashanatantras could there be? And certainly no one in their right mind would knowingly impersonate Gashanatantra, Gashanatantra, of all possible entities. If I was looking for yet another doom, Shaa thought, that one would assuredly be quite low on my list. Gods, fah! - this was really much more up Max’s line. If he were around he would surely understand what was going on.
They were taking their time in there. Shaa cast his eyes around the room. Above the double doors at the far side of the temple, cantilevered out over the aisle and supported at the free edge by three small pillars, was another room with three large open windows overlooking the auditorium space. As Shaa glanced up at it, a shape flickered in back of one of the windows, just at the corner, as if someone had taken a quick peek out at the temple below. A new complicating factor? - well, at this point it probably couldn’t hurt.
The temple held no other features of immediate interest. Under the circumstances, escape was looking like a good idea, but with all the guards around and the manacles on his hands now holding him to the wall, simple escape would be difficult. He did have an ace-in-the-hole. Unfortunately, the ace was booby-trapped, courtesy of his ever-popular curse, and with the treatment he’d already received it was liable to leave him in much worse shape than if he merely tried to roll with events. Shaa looked around again, hoping for new inspiration.
“- What’s that?” one of the Guardsmen said suddenly. A faint shriek - a clatter - a rapid sparking, snapping ts’k-ts’k-ts’k sound - a blinding flash of white light from the windows of the mezzanine room!
“My eyes!” wailed somebody close by. Afterimages began to fade, images returning to their normal colors after the sudden white-for-black and black-for-white, but then from the upper windows came more lights, multicolored lights, expanding spheres like bursting bubbles of orange and blue, another stark lightning-flash! The building rattled. A giant groaning sound built, rising out of the very ground, mounting to a roar like an avalanche, like mountains being ripped from the earth. A plane of arctic cold settled down through the room, leaving behind it on the walls sheets of condensing ice. As though surging ponderously into sight from a great depth, something began to take shape in the room on the next floor, the force of its vexation slicing through the building like a flayed nerve. The mezzanine windows pulsed red and the wall around them flew apart, the pillars buckled, the roof of the aisle cracked along its length and began to drop toward the floor, and several men around the room were thrown tumbling by fragments of smashed wall propelled like hurled cudgels by the force of the superheated gas.
Shaa squinted, trying to protect his eyes; all around the auditorium the guards and troops were crouching, covering their heads, glancing frantically around. Ripped beams and fragments of flaming floor dropped in a sudden rain. From beneath the crack in his screwed eyelids, Shaa unexpectedly caught sight of the shape of a man in the middle of the falling wreckage, cascading with the beams and fiery brands, and not just any man, but a strangely familiar figure. The figure twisted in mid-air and landed on one knee in a crouch, shaking its head. Another massive roar came from the floor above, from behind the remains of the mezzanine windows, amplified by the fact that most of the wall that had muffled it before was no longer there. The figure had dropped to the floor right next to a cluster of Oskin Yahlei’s troops; they started toward him, drawing their swords and trying to shield their heads at the same time. Shaa was still surrounded by the soldiers of the Guard, several of them now motionless or squirming on the floor, the others trying desperately to spot a way out. None of them were paying any attention to him. He lashed out with a leg; the nearest man ran into it, folding his knee backward, and lost his grip on his sword; and guard and sword fell to the floor. Shaa shoved the guard away. got his foot under the sword, took aim, and kicked up. The sword arched through the air. “Max!” he yelled over the din.
The dazed figure had disappeared from sight behind the five remaining guards and their twirling swords, although the guards seemed to be having some trouble actually reaching the spot where he had been. As the sword flew overhead, an arm suddenly stuck up from the pile, neatly grabbed the hilt, and converted the sword’s tumbling flight into a smoothly churning downward spiral. Arm and sword disappeared behind the guards, Shaa heard the high-pitched “whoo-whoo-whoo” of rapidly spinning metal within the rest of the din, the guards paused in their motions, and then, one-two-three-four-five, all of the soldiers seemed to fling and jumble themselves to the floor.