Abasi- Abi sputtered when Krek pulled free the silk rope.
" How do I get by?"
" I: I don' t know. This is the center of his power. The Kinetic Sphere feeds the defenses. Claybore isn' t here, not yet, but he will be. Only he knows fully all the defenses to be found."
" You lying piece of garbage," said Lan. " You know. You' ve got a spell to get by those images."
" No, honestly, I don' t."
" Do not desecrate this holy place, pilgrim," said Ehznoll, holding back Lan' s sword arm and preventing him from running AbasiAbi through. " The good earth will not keep us from the temple. When we are wanted, all defenses will go down. So it is written, so it is done."
" When? After sunset?"
" No. The earth rejoices in the day, abhors the night. Night is the time for the infinite sky to intrude." Lan shut out the rest of Ehznoll' s maunderings. He had no desire to be converted to the earth religion. He wanted the Kinetic Sphere inside the stone hut.
Getting past his own reflection might prove difficult. After all, how could he outmaneuver himself?
" Well?"
" Nothing," answered Abasi- Abi. " I have found no spell that works."
Lan had felt the mage attempting one spell after another to eliminate the guardian reflections. The purpose of some of the spells he failed to understand, others he sensed even as they sizzled and eventually petered out. The wards placed on this mountaintop were powerful.
" I' m going to try it again. I' ve got an idea."
" What is this, friend Lan Martak?"
" Did a wall pop up after I went past?"
" No."
" I' m going to try to make that happen. The spell is a progressive one. The more I try, the more complex it becomes. The reflection actually initiated an attack last time. This time: I fight differently."
" Hurry, fool," whispered Abasi- Abi. " He comes. He is so near!"
Lan didn' t have to ask who " he" was. Lan skated across the surface, more sure of himself this time. After falling only once, he came to the spot littered with glass shards from his prior encounter. He hurried past. The mirrored barrier sprang up in front of him. Again, he faced himself.
" Let me by."
" No."
" I mean no harm."
" No."
He tried to walk around the image. The one- to- one correspondence of movement between himself and the reflection no longer held. The image attacked. Lan found himself fighting to stay alive. And as he parried thrust after thrust, countered slash after slash, he turned.
The image turned with him. Lan smiled to himself, something not reflected. His back was now to the stone hut where the Kinetic Sphere lay. The image fought in vain now.
Lan turned and bolted for the rude door leading into the hut. Before he' d gone five feet, a new wall sprang up before him. A new warrior, identical to himself in every way, blocked his path, while the other reflection behind still charged after him.
He glanced past the image and saw a " hall of mirrors" effect. The mirror in front reflected the mirror behind in such a fashion that there appeared to be an infinite number of both mirrors and reflections. A veritable army now faced him on either side.
Lan dodged, ducked, slashed, fought. And as he moved closer to the one mirror, his image- opponents closed in on him. Their movements were not exactly identical; some independent movement was permitted by the spells. He used this to his advantage.
He swung and purposefully missed. In the same movement, Lan whirled around and engaged the reflection behind. As he fought, he brought the images closer and closer together. Both swung deadly blows at the same time; he dropped.
One image skewered the other.
Lan felt his heart leap to his throat. He' d just seen himself kill himself, the scene repeated infinitely. His brief skirmish had confused the mirror image enough. He rose and thought the path to the stone hut now clear.
The infinity of reflections supplied a new Lan Martak. A creeping sensation on the back of his neck warned him to duck. The image behind missed decapitating him by a hair' s breadth.
" Stop this!" he yelled.
" No!" roared a chorus, each component his own voice.
He fought, his sword turning powerful blows. He struck, " killed" an image, only to have it instantly replaced. Lan soon bled from a dozen minor cuts, cuts telling him the penalty for slackening his guard for even an instant. He battled- and retreated.
He couldn' t fight himself indefinitely.
Lan Martak watched the images decrease in size as he backed away from the stone hut containing the Kinetic Sphere and the means to rescue Inyx from her living hell. The hut was only fifty feet distant. It might as well have been a thousand miles.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
" I' ll bleed to death."
Not even this dire prediction brought Abasi- Abi from his trance. The sorcerer sat cross- legged on the mirrored plane, his eyes focused on infinity. His chest hardly moved to indicate life. Lan lifted one arm and found it totally limp. When he released it, the arm dropped heavily back into the mage' s lap.
" How long' s he been like this?"
" Since you left to do battle with yourself," answered Krek. " And you are not really bleeding to death, are you? This is just a human ploy?"
" Thought I' d shock him into responding."
" He has been shocked into his own world."
" Morto," said Lan, " you know him as well as anyone. Is he in any danger?"
" We all are. From Claybore."
" Are you an apprentice?" The vehement head shake told Lan the last thing in the world the man wanted was to be a sorcerer. He' d seen the glories- and the horrors- perpetrated by mages and wanted no part of them. But he did continue to serve Abasi- Abi. Lan asked, " Well, then, what are you to him?"
" His son."
" I didn' t think sorcerers had time for such things."
" I was something of an accident, before he became so powerful. I' ve always been an embarrassment to him."
" You seem little more than a servant."
" He treats me that way to always let me know how unwanted I am."
" Why not leave him?"
The man' s eyes showed the first spark of animation Lan had seen. Before, Morto had been little more than a whipped serving boy.
" His goal is vital. I must aid him. I must!"
" You want the Kinetic Sphere. I want the Kinetic Sphere. Everyone wants it."
" You babble on about the Kinetic Sphere. It' s a trinket, of no importance. My father battles Claybore to prevent recovery of more potent talismans."
" More potent?" Lan studied the plain with his magic sensing and " felt" nothing. " What is it?"
" If he hasn' t told you," Morto said, indicating his entranced father, " I cannot. This I will tell you, Claybore must never regain it."
" We' re talking at cross- purposes, but one thing we' re all agreed upon. That stone hut is our goal."
" Contains our goal," corrected Morto.
Lan turned and walked a short distance out, thinking. He had the most unlikely assortment of men imaginable for this quest. One wasn' t even a man, by the strictest anatomical definition. Krek dropped in the midst of his eight legs, one still slightly stiff, and simply sat, thinking his imponderable spiderish thoughts. Abasi- Abi floated in his trance, whether doing sorcerous battle with Claybore on some plane undetectable by Lan or simply mustering his forces, Lan couldn' t tell. Morto busied himself preparing food, more to keep his hands occupied than to feed anyone. He was a pathetic figure, caught between trying to please an antagonistic father and trying to live his own life and fulfill his own goals. And Ehznoll had discovered his paradise, had completed his holy pilgrimage. What he found on this peculiar mountaintop Lan didn' t know, but the man prayed fervently, a vision of divinity.