He seemed to be caught in a maze of twisting rooms and corridors, of doors that opened to nowhere, and of traps in the wails and floor. Once nuuwa attacked him in a room that had seemed empty—purposefully, controlled by another mind, as the nuuwa had fought in the battle. He cut at them with sword and fire, wedging himself into a niche in the wall. As he split skulls and burned the dirty hair and rotted flesh, he felt again that eerie little whisper at the back of his consciousness.
You can control them yourself. You only have to give a little pan of your mind to that cold, black fire, and you can control them ... and other things as well.
Turn away, and what can you offer this woman you want except a battered and poverty-stricken wanderer? Do you really think Art will give up the troop to you?
He remembered the sightless blaze burning in the rotted remains of Altiokis’ failing brains and fought grimly, humanly, bloodily, exhaustedly. He killed two of the nuuwa, and the rest of them drew back, retreating into the stone mazes away from his torchlight, dodging through the stone walls like bats.
Altiokis, he reflected, must be running out of nuuwa if he’s started conserving them.
Grimly, he pursued.
There was a trap of some kind in one guardroom. His hypersensitive sense of direction let him pick out a way around it, seeking the source of the fat man’s wheezing breath. He saw Altiokis then, fleeing up a dark corridor. The torchlight bounced crazily over the rough stone of the walls as the Wolf ran. It glittered on the blood that smeared his arms and on the far-off glint of the jewels on the Wizard King’s doublet. He heard the gasping of Altiokis and the stumbling, clumsy footsteps. Ahead, he saw a narrow door, bound and bolted with steel. A darkness, a last illusion, confused his sight, but he heard the door open and shut.
He flung himself at it, tore it open, and plunged through, holding the torch aloft to see. As he passed through the door, he realized that the wall in which it was set was the same as the wall of that tiny, windowed chamber—the rough stone wall of the original hut that Altiokis had built in a night.
And he knew that Altiokis had never come through that door.
It crashed shut behind him, and he heard the bolts slam home. He turned, gasping, his lungs stifling with terror. Black and empty, the Hole of darkness lay before him, absorbing and drowning the light of the flames. On the far side of the Hole, he could make out the window to the observation room and the narrow door beside it—the door, as he recalled, that Altiokis had not bolted when he’d ordered Sun Wolf out of the room.
But the width of the room lay between it and the Wolf, and the ugly, evil, screaming depths of that silent blackness lay between. The sword dropped from his nerveless fingers at the thought of having to walk past it; he could see the light of the torch wavering over the shadowy walls with the shaking of his hand. He stood paralyzed, conscious of the Entity that he would have to pass and of the mindless intelligence of fire and cold trapped these hundreds of years between this universe and whatever arcane depths of unreason it called its home.
Something bright nickered in the comer of his vision, like a spark floating on the air. Too late, he remembered the other danger, the horror that even the Entity that wanted his mind could not prevent. As he wrenched his face away, fire exploded in his left eye, a numbing, searing blast followed by the horrible wash of pain. From his eye, it seemed to be spreading throughout every muscle of his body. He could hear himself screaming, and his knees were buckling with agony. With a curiously clear sliver of the remains of rational thought, he knew exactly how many seconds of consciousness he had left, and the single thing that he must do.
21
The door of the windowed observation room was pushed carefully open. Altiokis, Wizard King of the greatest empire since the last rulers of Gwenth had retired in a huff to their respective monasteries, peeked cautiously around the door-jamb.
The big mercenary lay face-down on the floor a few feet away. He must, Altiokis thought, have gotten through the door somehow—a glance showed that it wasn’t bolted—in his final agony. A trickle of blood ran out from beneath his head.
Altiokis relaxed and smiled with relief. His earlier panic had been absurd. Drink is making me foolish, he thought with a self-indulgent sigh. I really should take less. He had always suspected that the Entity in the Hole had no real control over the gaums, and it was for that reason that he had never gone near it unprotected. But there was always the risk that some other wizard would know the secret of destroying them—if there was a secret.
He frowned. There was so much that his own master—whatever the old puff-guts’ name had been—had never told him. And so much that he had been told had not made sense.
He padded into the little room, two nuuwa shuffling at his heels. Really, it had only been sheerest luck that he hadn’t become a nuuwa himself, he thought, looking down at that huge, tawny body at his feet. All those years ago. How many had it been? There seemed to be so many periods of time that he couldn’t quite recall. It was only by sheerest chance that the men he’d been out with that night—the old Thane’s men, silly old bastard!—had their eyes burned out and their brains destroyed, while he hid in the brush and watched. Oh, he’d heard of the Holes, but he’d never thought to see one. And he’d never realized that Something lived in them.
Something, that is, other than gaums.
That was another thing old—old-whatever his name was—had never bothered to tell him.
Altiokis bent down. A wizard! After all these years, he’d hardly expected that any dared to oppose him still. But there were those he hadn’t accounted for, over the years, and perhaps they’d had students. That was the big advantage, he’d found about living forever, as the Entity in the Hole had promised him he might do.
Well, not promised; exactly. He couldn’t recall. Nevertheless, he had won again, and he gave a delighted little giggle at the thought as he bent down to examine his newest recruit to the ranks of the mindless.
A hand closed around his throat like a vise of iron. With bulging eyes, Altiokis found himself staring down into a face that was scarcely human; the one eye socket was empty and charred with fire, but the other eye was alive, sane, and filled with livid pain and berserker rage.
The fat wizard let out one gasping squeak of terror. Then Sun Wolf found himself holding, not a man, but a leopard by the throat.
Claws raked his back. His hands dug through the soft, loose flesh of the white-ruffed throat. Even shape changed, Altiokis was a fat, old animal. The Wolf rolled to his feet, dragging the twisting, snarling thing toward the narrow door of the room where the Hole waited. Peripherally, his single eye caught the bright movement of more of the fire-flecks beyond the glass, and the smoldering yellow glow of the torch where it lay, burning itself out on the stone floor. The leopard must have known, too; for its struggles redoubled, then suddenly changed, and Sun Wolf found himself with nine feet of cobra between his hands.
It was only for a moment. The tail lashed at his legs, but the poisonous head was prisoned helplessly in his grip.
The next thing was horrible, something he had never seen before, bloated and chitinous, with clawed legs and tentacles raking at him like whips. He yanked open the door.
The nuuwa stirred uneasily, held still by the tangle of forces in the room. The Wolf could feel Altiokis’ mind drawing and blocked it with his own. With the door open, the whispering in the thoughts was overwhelming. Past the shrieking mouths and flailing antennae of that horrible head between his hands, he could see the movement in the darkness, surrounded by the mindlessly devouring motes of flame. The thing in his hands twisted and lashed, and the blood ran fresh from his clawed shoulders and from the ruined socket of his eye. The monster was hideously strong; he felt the muscle and sinew of his arm cracking under the weight of it, but he refused to release his strangling grip.