Levels and levels, deceits and deceits, he thought. Was there no limit to her cunning? He maneuvered to where the Staff lay, kicked it at her.
She refused the bait. She dodged instead of blocking with her weapon. The Staff's passage across the jade produced an endless drumroll sound. It toppled into the abyss.
The gap closed instantly.
One point to the Dark Champion, Gathrid thought. He had lost a resource.
He struggled to retain his balance. The floor heaved and rolled like a strong sea. Trying to outwit the woman was going to scramble his brain.
He moved in, Sword and Shield high, ready to block a stroke from either hand. He ignored that part of the Shield's protection not backed by its physical embodiment. He had to push her, to deny her time for tricks. He edged closer, till he was inside her reach.
She could not resist.
He blocked with Daubendiek, locked blades and in the same instant hurled the Shield away. It danced a fiery tarantella across the jade. He seized Nieroda's hair, pulled her closer. He forced Daubendiek toward her throat... .
The high sorcery ceased to have meaning. The moment became a contest of strength. He was winning, forcing her to lean backward, dragging her gaze toward the Ordrope Diadem.
She could dispel a thousand mysteries.
Gerdes Mulenex had been a lazy wastrel. There was no strength in him at all.
Darkness.
Gathrid and his antagonist were in another place, another palace. They were locked in one another's arms upon another vast floor. Topless walls resembling human faces surrounded them.
Three stirred memories for the youth. That snoring silver one he had seen looming over Anyeck's shoulders. The crimson, which wore an expression resembling that of a disappointed old man just nodding off, had floated behind the Mindak during their confrontation in the tunnel through the Maurath. The black face he had seen many times, supporting Nevenka Nieroda.
The black and an aquamarine face were very much awake. Each projected fear, excitement and hope.
Each betrayed a vast displeasure with its Chosen.
Gathrid foresaw a struggle like those with the Toal on the endless plain. And he suspected that, for the vanquished, defeat would be final and forever.
He broke away from Nieroda. He and she, bereft of weapons, material trappings and stolen body, glared at one another.
Gathrid backed away. He now faced a woman, rather attractive and disarmingly unclothed.
He tried to cull his stolen memories, nearly panicked when there was no response. They were gone.
He was Gathrid of Kacalief once more, with all that boy-child's frailties. His eye drooped. His leg hurt. He had no resources but himself to support him. A bitter year's growth and experience were all that separated him from the terrified boy who had fled Kacalief's ruins.
She, then, would again be Wistma Povich of Spillen-kothen in Sommerlath, perhaps as she had been before becoming Sommerlath's Queen.
"Toys!" he spat. "That's all we are."
"That's all we ever were."
"Would that they were vulnerable."
"Yes." Her face looked haunted. "To be able to destroy them, as they've destroyed me by forcing me to destroy. ..." Her hatred became palpable. It surged around her. The air crackled.
"Can there be games when the gladiators won't fight?" It was a silly thing to say. The wannest of hopes. Too much blood and pain knotted them into this death-dance.
Their eyes locked. She relaxed slowly. He did so himself, carefully, ever watchful for the Nieroda trap. Cautiously, he examined his surroundings more thoroughly.
It was a new subjective reality. It was both like and unlike the plane-plain where the Toal had died.
Could these Great Old Ones die? Could they be slain?
Mead entered his thoughts. It had been she who had put that name into his head. Where was she now?
Had she heard from Belfiglio?
Suchara's eyes burned like the flames of Hell. Her face was an ever-changing landscape of emotion.
Every expression was evil.
Gathrid was the focus. He had shared soul with Tureck Aarant. Together they had conspired to deny her her will. The ties were under strain. Yet, he suspected, he and she could never sever them entirely. Nor could Nieroda separate herself from Bachesta.
The effort, ultimately, underlay all the frenzy and irrationality of her earthly activities. Not lust for power. Not love of destruction. Not even hunger for death. Just a simple desire for freedom. She was engaged in a secret war, the battles of which she sometimes lost and sometimes won.
Suchara's will beat upon him like storm breakers upon a rocky headland, insisting that he slaughter the woman before him.
The harder Suchara pushed, the more stubbornly defiant Gathrid became.
He stared into the eyes of Wistma-Nevenka. She had left the initiative in his hands. She would follow his lead. She would resume fighting if he yielded to Suchara.
Impulse.
He pulled her toward him, kissed her ancient lips.
Suchara and Bachesta gave vent to furies of deific magnitude.
Nieroda glanced at her mistress. Her eyes were merry. She seized Gathrid and kissed him back. She took his hand, faced the demigod walls.
This weak, scarcely genuine gesture of love between foes was arsenic to those connoisseurs of hatred and evil. Love was the one human attribute they could neither comprehend, nor control, nor often bend to their advantage. They loathed and feared it.
In that context, Gathrid reflected, their Games almost made sense. Human love could take ten thousand forms. These devils shattered every sort when allowed to run their course. In their grinding mills the Chosen of the Great Old Ones destroyed what men loved, leaving them only things to hate.
How much hating had he done himself, as the Instrument of Suchara? Too much. Far too much.
And Nieroda? She was, he suspected, herself the thing she hated most.
He reached down inside for memories of the Mindak. Ahlert had not been directly possessed by hatred. His demon had been a warped, obsessive love that had generated hatred wherever it touched.
Anyeck had been possessed of a towering hatred for things-as-they-are.
And Rogala? What of Theis? The dwarf remained a mystery. The puzzle box of eternity. Gathrid now doubted the dwarf was human. Since Ansorge he had suspected that Theis might be the last of the Night People.
He doubted that Rogala would ever be solved.
He whispered, "I think we've found a way to fight back." He laughed. The sound caught in his throat. He remained unsure. A kiss seemed so little in the face of cruel, implacable powers like these.
"What we've found is damnation," Nieroda replied. "Willingly or unwillingly, we're in their web.
They won't let us escape. I've been trying for ages." She despaired, but kept holding his hand. He drew a strange, almost motherly support from her.
"Once more," he whispered. "For their apoplexy."
She did not resist. Strange, he thought as he drew away. Nevenka Nieroda was as old as the hinges of time, yet was as unskilled as he.
As the thunders tramped and darkness marched like iron legions unleashed, he remembered Loida Huthsing. Sometimes it was not hard to hate.
Chapter Nineteen
Endgame Gathrid reassumed physical reality. The Great Old Ones had spit him out like a sour plum. He found himself back in the remains of the Imperial Palace. The blood of Kar-kainen surrounded his soles.
Daubendiek hung loosely in his right hand. Gerdes Mulenex sagged against his left arm. He staggered, went down.
Night had engulfed smoke-shrouded Sartain. It had brought no darkness, no relief for the eye. The great fires burned on.
He did not see a sign of Nieroda. She had not returned. Had he erred? Would she rise somewhere else now, and be lashed into another frenzy of destruction? He hoped not. He hoped she had seen the glimmer of hope, too.
But the Game was rigged. Of course. Even in defeat, the Great Old Ones had their way.