Perhaps his ancient enemy could not divide that force easily, so that he was not able to fend us both off at the same time. Thus we were winning by small lengths. The throat veil of mail of my helm swung loose, I was breathing heavily, concentrating on my battle along the wall.
Uruk fared better—his steps grew longer. Under the threatening dragon of his helm crest his eyes were set, glowing.
Thus, through a time which seemed endless, we worked our way along that passage. And the pressure against us seemed never to relax. I was panting, and the beating of my own heart pounded in my ears. On—On—!
Then, even as quickly as the mist had gone, so did this vanish, I went to one knee, overbalanced by that withdrawal which came between one breath and the next. I saw Uruk stagger, but not more than a step.
Holding the ax still before him, he broke into a jogging run, one I was quick to try and match.
We emerged into a place filled with that green-gray radiance I had long known marked a strong center of the Dark Forces. There were no stalagmites here, rather pillars worked into shapes of horror, each a monster or a man, the latter seemingly locked in some unbelievable torment from which not even the end of time might deliver him.
Down the wide center aisle between those pillars, which, after a first glance, I would not look upon—for even seeing them stirred in me a fear I feared I could not suppress—Uruk went directly to the center core of this place.
It was perhaps a temple. But what god or force had been worshiped here, that had been none born from the adoration of my species. Here the pillars formed a circle, and in the center of that was set, on a half-pillar of rusty red, a crystal skull.
At the foot of the pillar lay, in a lank tangle, the man I had seen on the battlefield—Targi. His eyes were wide, staring unseeingly overhead, and his body was flaccid, that of the newly dead.
But in the brain pan of the skull—!
I could not force my gaze away from that swirl of raw colors, colors which hurt one to look upon. They surged, interwove in patterns, and—they had meaning. I need only look so for a little longer and that meaning would be made clear to me. It was the greatest thing I had ever done—I would be privileged beyond any of my kind—I would rule—rule!
I saw Uruk step over the body, raise his ax. Uruk—he would destroy—he—it was he who was the enemy in this place! Kill—Kill—!
Only the fact that my injured wrist would not obey my will made my blow a feeble one. Ice Tongue grated against the mail covering his shoulder. But that was enough to deflect the fall of the ax. It clanged instead against the pillar.
The skull rocked on its perch, as the colors caught within it moved in an even madder interweaving. I had kept grip on my sword, but only barely. That ill-aimed blow had nearly taken it from my hold.
Uruk—he was danger! As long as he lived—as long as he lived—
He had turned those blazing eyes on me.
"Let me in, comrade—" In my mind a powerful voice cried like a burst of pain. "We can finish him— together—"
Uruk's ax swung aloft again. I was no match for him even with Ice Tongue—
"Thrust low!" that other in my mind urged. "There is a weak spot beneath his arm—thrust for his heart! And then—"
"Yonan!"
I tottered, raising my hand to my head, crying out with the pain which was a torment there. The sword hung heavy in my hold, its point toward the blocks of rock under our feet.
"Yonan!" came that call again.
"Thrust—now!" bade that other commanding presence pouring into my mind. Weakly I knew or guessed what was happening—
I raised the sword and I brought that blade down, largely by the weight of it alone, since there was very little strength left in me. Ice Tongue fell square upon the dome of the skull.
There followed such a torment within my head that I hurled the sword from me, fell to my knees, clasping my head on either side and moaning.
I did not see Uruk raise the ax again. But I heard the clack when one of its edges met the skull, cleaving it, shattering it, as if it were indeed ancient bone. There was a wild clamor in my mind—I would go mad—that thing which had tried to possess me would see to that. Babbling I sank forward, face down on the pavement, while eye-aching light swirled about me, closing me in.
But there had been a small part of Yonan unconquered, a fraction which had retreated into hiding. And now (how long I was under pressure of Targi's will I shall never know), that scrap of the one I had once been came out of hiding, in desperation, I think. I was stiff, cold, yet I was still alive and Targi no longer held me in his bonds. I centered what remained of my own will on moving my hand—to prove mainly that this I could do. Then, aching in every muscle, I struggled up.
Around me was a very gray light, forbidding, though only a faint shadow of the threat I had conceived had earlier hung there. Within reaching distance lay Uruk, while beyond him, where we had seen the discarded body of Targi—
Had those fragments of brittle bone, those ashes, once really been a man or the semblance of one? Of the crystal skull which had dominated this hall, strove to master us, there was not even a broken shard remaining. But there was something else—there lay the hilt of a sword, a bladeless weapon now as dingy gray as the light around.
I crawled to Uruk. His ax had not suffered the same change; no, it lay intact under his hand. I felt for a pulse at the side of his throat. He still lived. Now I fumbled my water bottle loose from my belt, raised his head to rest against my shoulder, and dribbled the liquid between his teeth. At last he swallowed, coughed, and his eyes opened.
For a moment he stared at me as if I were a stranger to him. Then—
"Tolar—?" but he hesitated over that name.
I shook my head. Putting aside the water bottle, I reached for the sword hilt, to hold it into his line of vision.
"I am Yonan—even as you summoned me."
His lips curved very slightly. "And return you did, to our salvation. Targi, great in sorcery as he was, could not control the yet unborn. So Ice Tongue has left you—for good or ill this time, I wonder?"
Somewhere in me laughter bubbled. "For good, so shall I believe. I am done with ill-omened weapons and ancient battles, either lost or won. The future is what I shall make it!"
Then I remembered—were we still in the past? I had only the evidence of what remained of Targi to bolster my hope that we were free of time change.
Uruk must have followed the glance I gave to those nearly vanished remains; his mind caught my thought. "I think it is your time now, Yonan-who-was-more. Targi, at least, is very dead. And the shattering of his power could well have swept us onward once again. If that is true, Escore still has some use for us. Shall we endeavor to prove that?"
The hilt of Ice Tongue was dead. I sensed that never again would it play any part in the schemes and ploys of men. I laid it down on the wide step which supported the pillar on which the skull had been. Targi had striven to use me; he had failed. It was that intangible trophy which I would bear from this struggle; no man save myself would ever see it. I was not Tolar, yet something of him would always remain within me, honing what I was now into a better self, even as a careful warrior hones his blades. I could not deny that—I did not want to. But I was Yonan—and somehow I did not want either to deny that or forget it.
Perhaps time had indeed swept us forward as the sea tide will sweep that which it carries. If so, there would be other swords, other battles, and for me a new life into which I must fit myself carefully and with more self-knowledge than many men are given to understand.