Cold and evil seemed to flow forth from the black slot of the opening. With curious, instantaneous clarity, he saw the round stone walls of Altiokis’ original hut, the weeds that lay dead and tangled about the edges, and the scuffed, fouled dirt within. But all that was peripheral to the awareness of that black pit at the center, a boundary less, anomalous, and utterly hideous vortex of absolute darkness that seemed to open in the air of the room’s center. It was a Hole, a gap of nothingness that led into a universe beyond the ken of humankind. Through it flowed the power that filled the Citadel, filled the nuuwa, and filled Altiokis’ corrupted, deathless flesh and rotting brain.
But worse than the awareness of the power was the knowledge of the mind of the Entity that lived within the Hole, of the Thing that was trapped there, its thoughts reaching out to him, as shocking as ice water flowing over his naked brain.
Not human, nor demon ... demons were of this world, and quite ordinary and comforting compared with that ice-cold, streaming black fire. Yet it was alive, and it reached to fill him.
Hands thrust him, unresisting, forward to the threshold of that tiny room. Unaware that he spoke aloud, he said, “It’s alive...” And in the last second, as the guards shoved him in, he turned his head, meeting Altiokis’ startled, dilating eyes with a sudden knowledge of where he had seen that Thing before. He said, “It gave you your power.”
The Wizard King was on his feet, shrieking. “Bring him out of there! Shut the door!” His voice was frenzied, almost in panic.
The guards wavered, uncertain whether they had heard aright. The Dark Eagle grabbed Sun Wolf by the arm and pulled him backward, slamming the door to with a kick; Sun Wolf staggered, as if he had been released from a chain that held him upright, and found there was no strength left in him. He clutched the door bolts for support.
Altiokis was screaming, “Get him out of here! Get him away from here! He sees it! He’s a wizard! Get him away!”
“Him?” the Eagle said, rather unwisely. “He’s no wizard, my lord...”
Altiokis strode forward, swinging his staff to knock Sun Wolf’s hands from the door bolts, as if he feared the Wolf would throw the door open and fling himself inside. Ignoring his captain of mercenaries, Altiokis clutched with his fat, jeweled hands at the grubby rags of what remained of Sun Wolf’s tunic, his face white with hatred and fear.
“Did you see it?” he demanded in a stinking blast of liquor and rich food.
Exhausted, leaning against the stone wall at his back for support, Sun Wolf whispered, “Yes, I did. I see it now, in your eyes.”
“It might choose to call another wizard,” the fat man gasped hoarsely, as if he had not heard. “It could give him its power, if he were lucky, as I was lucky...”
“I wouldn’t touch that power!” the Wolf cried, the thought more sickening to him than the horror of that flake of fire boring steadily through his eye.
Again the Wizard King appeared not to have heard him. “It could even give him immortality.” The black, lifeless eyes stared at Sun Wolf, desperate with jealousy and terror. Then Altiokis whirled back to his guards, screaming, “Get him out of here! Throw him to the nuuwa Get him out!”
Like the tug of a fine wire embedded in his flesh. Sun Wolf felt the touch of that black Entity in the Hole, whispering to his brain.
Furiously, he thrust it aside, more frightened of it than of anything he had yet seen, in the Citadel of Altiokis or out of it. He fought like a tiger as they half dragged, half carried him along the maze of corridors to where a shallow flight of steps led downward to a broad double door. Altiokis strode at their heels, screaming incoherently, reviling the Eagle for bringing this upon him, and cursing his own means of divination that had not shown him this new threat. One of the guards ran ahead to peer through the judas in the door, and the faint yellow bar of light from the westering sun picked out the scars on his face as he looked. He called, “There are few of them out there now, me lord. They’re mostly gone in their dens.”
“Open their dens, then!” the Wizard King shrieked in a paroxysm of rage. “And do it quickly, before I throw you out to keep him company!”
The man darted off, his footfalls ringing on the stone of the passageway. Sun Wolf twisted against the hands that gripped him, but far too many men were holding him to give him purchase to fight. The doors at the bottom of the steps were flung open, and sunlight struck him as the Dark Eagle shouted a command. He was flung bodily down the steps, the harsh granite of them tearing at and bruising his flesh as he rolled.
The filthy reek of the nuuwa was all around him. As he heard the doors clang shut above him, the shrill howls began to echo from all sides. He saw that he was in the long ditch between the inner and outer walls. From various points in the shade of the looming wall, a dozen nuuwa and two or three of the apelike uglie-beasts were lolloping toward him, heads lolling, dripping mouths gaping to slash.
Sun Wolf knew already that there was no further hope of escape. The walls of the ditch were too steep to climb. It was only a matter of time before he would be overpowered, torn apart, and eaten alive. He flung himself back up the few steps to where the embrasure of the door made a kind of hollow in the bald face of the wall, taking advantage of the only cover in sight. He put his back to the massive, brass-bound wood, gathered the five feet of chain that joined his manacled hands, and swung at the first of the things that hurled itself upon him. Brains and blood splattered from the burst skull. He swung again, slashing, the heavy chain whining through the screaming, stinking air. Anything to buy time—minutes, seconds even.
The chain, close to thirty pounds of swinging iron, connected again, flinging the creature that it hit back against two of its fellows. He brained one of them while they were fighting each other; the remaining monstrosities named on him, spitting mouthfuls of rotted flesh, and he slashed, swinging desperately, keeping them off him as long as he could, praying to his ancestors to do something, anything...
You can control them, that black slip of fire whispered in his brain. Turn them aside. Make them do your bidding.
Chain connected with flesh. His wrists were scraped raw from the iron, and the smell of the blood was driving the nuuwa to madness. He could feel himself tiring, instant by instant, and knew to within a moment how long his strength would last. All the while, the thought of the Entity he had seen, that black intelligence glimpsed in the Hole and in the Wizard King’s possessed eyes, whispered to him the promise of the life that it could give him.
The world had narrowed, containing nothing but blood-mouthed, eyeless faces, ripping hands, pain and sweat and the foul reek of the air, screaming cries and that terrible, nagging whisper of uncertainty in his brain. He was aware of other sounds somewhere, distant noises in the Outer Citadel, a far-off howling like the din of a faraway battle.
An explosion jarred the ground. Then another, heavier, louder, nearer, and he thought he heard, through the shrieking of the mindless things all around him, the triumphal yells of men and the higher, wilder keening of women.
He was aware that no new attackers were running toward him. He swung grimly at those that remained, half conscious of things happening elsewhere in the long ditch—of fighting somewhere—on the causeway—of fire...
Teeth slashed at his leg and he stomped, breaking the neck of the uglie that had crawled up below the arc of the swinging chain. Whatever else was happening was only a distraction, a break in his concentration that could cost him his life.
Another explosion sounded, this time very near, and it took all his will not to look. The chain crushed a final skull, the last nuuwa fell, wriggling and snapping at its own flesh, and he stood gasping in the doorway, looking up to see the causeway drawbridge fall in flames.