He left a legacy. With his final breath he mounted a final, violent incantation. His body became a standing bolt of lightning. Jade melted beneath his feet. The blinding fire of him dissipated, becoming a foul, oily cloud. Something burst from its deeps.
It was a tentacular clump of nightmare a dozen feet tall. It had legs like a man. There the resemblance to humanity ended.
It leapt on Elgar. A mouth Gathrid could not see ripped bloody gobbets from the Emperor. The youth muttered, "Wrong one, idiot!" He kicked a passage through the darts mounded around him. Nieroda- Mulenex responded uncertainly.
Tracka-monster realized its error. It whipped off Elgar and threw itself at the Red Brother.
Nieroda barely evaded it. She seemed puzzled.
Wailing daggers hurtled out of nowhere. They pounded the Shield and Tracka's demon. The latter squealed and leapt at Nieroda again. Gathrid leaned into the storm of blades. He wanted to reach her before she eliminated the distraction.
Slithering like a snake, Rogala removed himself from danger. Though blind, he seemed to know exactly what was happening.
The jade opened between Gathrid and Nieroda. All Faron shifted, shaking like a dog coming out of water. Screams sounded throughout the palace. The hill groaned as whole wings collapsed.
Gathrid looked inside himself, hunting the spells Ah-lert had used to bring in fill from afar. He could not find them. The Mindak had become as elusive as his sister and Loida. He sprinted along the abyss in search of a place narrow enough to jump.
Smoke ghosts drifted in through high, vaulted windows. Their frames were taking on an orange tinge.
Nieroda lacked confidence. She was trying to avoid a one-on-one. Gathrid grinned wickedly.
She was not retreating. Why?
At the moment she was preoccupied with the gift Tracka had left her. It froze. A struggle took place within it. It swayed, made a surprisingly kittenish sound. And turned on Gathrid.
The youth seized the Staff from where Tracka had dropped it. He used it as an old man uses a cane to discipline a belligerent dog.
The demon darted hither and thither, trying to get past the youth's guard. Gathrid kept poking till, with a howl, it fled the palace.
"Now you've unleashed a Prince of Darkness on an innocent people."
Startled, Gathrid whirled. This was the first Nieroda had spoken. That sarcasm could not have come from Gerdes Mulenex. . '
"Better he than Hell's Queen." He prowled the edge of the abyss. It was pointless trying to anger her into doing something stupid. She did not act on emotion. He wondered if she had any feelings at all.
He had none at the moment.
Suddenly, surprising him, the Mindak was with him. "The Staff," whispered the voice from within.
The feel was little different from what it had been with Aarant. "Speak the words I give you."
"All right." Gathrid locked gazes with Nieroda. Her Mulenex face settled into permanent bewilderment. Gathrid parroted the words Ahlert gave him, hurled the Staff at the abyss.
Thunder and smoke. For a moment there was a bridge. He danced over before Nieroda reacted. He went wondering if it were too easy. Shey always had something up her sleeve before.
Could she be running short, growing resigned in the face of repeated failure?
Facing an apparently unarmed enemy across jade stained by the blood of Karkainen, searching for the trap, he demanded, "Why?" A single thread connected all her actions: destruction. In success or failure, she destroyed. "What do you want from the world? Do you have to flog it like a teamster flogs a dying horse?"
A specter of longing tainted her Mulenex face.
She was ancient. She'd had time to brand her immortality upon the face of the world. Yet less was known of her than of Theis Rogala and Tureck Aarant. The records had been destroyed, probably with her connivance. Only names remained: Sommerlath, Spillenkothen, Wistma Povich. And speculations about a forgotten Swordbearer, and Dreibrant and Grellner. Elusive, Gathrid thought. He wondered if Rogala remembered.
"Is it death?" he asked. "Will you lash the world till, in a rage, it ends you? Are you trying to escape your immortality?''
While he spoke he moved his head back and forth, trying to capture her gaze with the Diadem. She withdrew toward the alabaster throne, step-pause-step.
Going to her next move?
"What are Bachesta and the others? Why do they toy with our lives?" He could almost hear Rogala growling, Kill when you have to. Don't talk.
Intuition told him she had to be permitted the next move. She would turn any initiative against him.
She seemed as willing to wait as was he.
He suggested, "Suppose we just sit down and let the world get on with it? Let them seal us in and forget us. The Great Old Ones won't start anything new while they're waiting for us to finish."
Talk, talk, talk, he thought. When would she respond? Anything would give him an insight into her thinking. Why that one moment of sarcasm, then nothing?
He glanced out a window. Dense smoke masked the sun. Fires bloodied the billows. The temblors continued. The Queen City was dying. Contessa Cuneo's patrimony would consist of rubble and ash.
Nieroda changed during his moment of inattention. "It must yield," she declared. "It's stubborn.
So stubborn. There's always one more barrier... . Someday it has to give in."
"What do you mean?"
Ahlert made a guess. Terrible and powerful as she was, Nieroda was a failure. The short-term tasks she set herself, even when they appeared to work out, invariably culminated in disaster.
She's immortal, Gathrid countered.
That, too, will end, Ahlert replied.
"Death," the youth said aloud. "I bring you death, Dark Lady."
She had won the war of waiting. He would make the first move. Suchara was impatient. He pushed through a dozen defenses the like of the darts and daggers. Nieroda backed away.
When first he spied the smoke he thought it just an especially thick arm drifting in from the burning city. Then it coalesced in his path. One end took the semblance of a cobra's head. More sorcery. He called on Ahlert.
The Mindak could not help him. This was beyond his knowledge.
It was a serpent. It became a smoke creature fifty yards long and as thick as a man's chest. It coiled round Nieroda, shielding her. Gathrid probed with the Sword.
Nothing happened. Daubendiek denied the thing's existence.
Red eyes glared into Gathrid's own. He saw a malevolent humor there. He backed away to consider.
It struck. Neither Sword nor Shield reacted. The youth survived solely on his own quick response.
Immune to the Sword. Able to penetrate the Shield. What was this thing? Nervously, he backed a few more steps away. One foot encountered the Staff, twisted beneath him treacherously. He regained his balance, dodged another strike.
The Staff, too, proved useless. So did the blade he had captured.at Kacalief. He felt a growing uneasiness. He'd had an advantage. It was quicksilver in his fingers. She had gotten round the might of the great weapons'.
"Death," said Nieroda. A wicked smile captured her fat Mulenex lips. "I bring you death, Swordbearer."
Gathrid saw it in those wicked red eyes as the serpent rocked to and fro, considering its next strike. He moved Daubendiek in time to the serpent's sway. Its gaze locked on the weapon, watching for his move.
Slowly, slowly, he drew the serpent's gaze upward, into contact with the jewel in the Ordrope Diadem.
Nothing. His mind opened on an emptiness so complete it could exist only as some philosopher's fantasy. He nearly fell in.
"Beware!" Ahlert snapped from the back of his mind. "It's another trap."
Gathrid surfaced. Nieroda was charging. Her serpent had vanished. She had acquired a weapon.
Its blade was wholly invisible. Daubendiek turned its first thrust uncertainly. The Shield absorbed a glancing blow. Nieroda danced away, moving lightly despite the gross Mulenex body.
She tossed, or pretended to toss, her weapon from hand to hand till Gathrid was no longer sure which wielded it.