There was no running from this, nor would I, I believe, even if I could force my weary body to the effort. The axes resembled those used by Sulcar borderers, which could be used either as a hand weapon, or to be thrown from a distance, with fatal results if the axman was expert.
Whether these toadmen were, I did not know. But in such cases it is always best to give high credit to your foe’s fighting prowess rather than underrate him.
I had the sword and for that to be effective I must wait until they were closer. If they were going to throw those axes, I did not believe it was possible for them to do so while they pushed through the mud. If I retreated no farther from the rim, I could dispute their landing, giving me one small advantage.
But I was so slow of body, so worn from my push through that fetid hole, that I could not move fast. I might not even leave the support of the rock against which I had set my back. When I brought up my sword in a swing meant to suggest defense, my arm answered my will so reluctantly that I felt this was indeed a fight already decided in favor of the enemy.
“Sytry!” I tried to raise the hilt to the level of my lips, the point thrusting at whatever sky this space owned. “Steel, I hold by that Name, battle I do, in that Name. Whatever favor cometh from powers I know not, yet are of the White and not the Shadow, let it rest upon me now! For I have that to do which has not been done, and there is yet a road before me—” A jumble of thoughts, ill chosen, but in that moment the most I could muster to express a plea of which I was not sure anyone, or anything, would heed.
If I could have taken only two steps forward, thrust while they were still scrambling up out of the mud, then I would have had a small advantage. But I knew that effort was not in me. Take those two steps and I would not meet them on my feet, but groveling before them, my neck bent and ready for the fall of their axes.
They must have believed me easy prey, or else they were so slow of wit that they knew only one method of attack and that a forward run, weapons aloft, yammering out what might have been war cries. I tried to swing the sword as I would have done had I had my normal body.
Its hilt loosened in my hold, spun out of my grasp, and hurled on through the air. Once more it no longer appeared a sword, but rather a flash of golden light. So swift was its passage that my eyes could not follow it, to see what it wrought in my defense. What I afterwards witnessed were wounds gaping beneath the lower jaws of the toad-men, pumping forth purplish liquid; saw them stumble and sprawl forward, sliding across the stone, their axes, falling from paws suddenly lax, striking ringingly, while I cowered back against my support, gaping foolishly.
There was another ring, louder than the axes had made, almost bell-like in tone. The sword lay there, no longer a flashing fury of destruction. I pushed away from my support, tottered to it. But the effort of stooping to pick it up made me topple and fall in turn. For a moment or two I lay there, the steel of the blade under my body. From its touch against my noisome skin spread, first a kind of warmth and then, following that, a renewal of strength. So heartened I braced myself up on my forepaws.
Where the bodies of the toadmen had lain puffed a shimmering fog of blackish motes, as soot might rise from the disturbance of a place where many fires had burned and then been quenched. And, as soot, the particles settled again to the surface of the rock, ringing—
Not the toad bodies I had seen fall to the strokes of the sword, but two lighter frames, so close to skeletons that one could see the bones plainly through the too tightly stretched skin. These, in spite of the extreme emaciation, were those of normal human kind!
The strength which had come out of the blade was in me, so I got to my feet, shuffled through the black dust to the nearest of those skeleton-men. His features were very sharp in his skull face. Looking upon him I thought that once he must have been of the Old Race or kindred blood. Death had broken some ensorcelment and returned him to his true self. Death? I glanced down at my own paws, the warty skin on my arms. Was death the only way of return?
The skeleton was changing again, falling into dust, as had the weeping, female thing on the other side of the gem wall. The other followed it into nothingness.
I turned my back on them as quickly as I could, faced in the other direction, to see as I expected that I would, the rise of a tower upon a mound, waiting for me even as its twin had before.
This one loomed very black and harsh, with more of a distinct outline and clarity of bulk than anything else I had seen in this eerie other world. The mound on which it was based was also dark.
Once more I walked the road into which my paw feet sank, and which was a river, but not of water. When I came to the foot of the mound there was no need to work any spell to open a door, for there it gaped, very black, already waiting. I thought “Kaththea!” to see it wing in before me, quickly vanishing in the gloom.
With the sword hilt grasped in both paws, I lumbered unsteadily on, past the portal of the mound, to enter this Dark Tower. Would it also have a staircase and doorways into more distorted worlds?
The black-dark which had seemed so thick when looking in from outside was here enlightened by a glimmer of yellowish-gray. I realized that was shed by my own body. By it I caught glimpses of floor and walls, all of huge blocks of black stone, close set. Again the walls ran without doors, to bring me into a circular room from which a stair climbed. But this was not shrouded in any spell, nor were there any other doors about that room.
My paw feet were not made for use on stairways. Once more I had to grip the sword between my teeth, go on all fours, aware that any side slip would send me crashing down upon the hard pavement below. So I went very slowly.
Then my head emerged into a lighter place, no hint of which had reached below that opening. It was as if I came into a place of ghosts. But they were not of things which had once lived and breathed. The thin, cloudy, half pictures I saw were of furnishings. There were chairs, a table which supported many jars, flasks, and tubing I did not understand. Against the walls were chests and cabinets with closed doors. All as insubstantial as river mist, yet plain to trace against the stone.
I put one paw to the edge of the table. It touched no surface, but passed easily through in a sweep which met no resistance.
There was another stairway leading aloft. This was not in the center of the room, but curled up against the wall. However it was stone and solid, not like the ghost furnishings. I shuffled to it. Since the incline here was not so steep, I managed to take it step by step, still standing, slipping my body painfully along the wall as far from the unguarded outer edge as I could get.
No sound; the tower was wrapped in silence. I tried not to make any noise, but in that I was not too successful. Even my heavy breathing stirred the air loudly enough, I feared, to alert any who walked sentry here.
There was another room above, and once more the dim, misty furnishings ringed me around. Here was a table with two chairs drawn up to it, and it was set as if for a meal. Mist goblets and plates at each place.
I swallowed. Since I had left Orsya—centuries ago—I had not eaten. Until I saw that table I had not thought of food. But now, in an instant, hunger was a pain in me. Where would I find food? What food did this toad body need for nourishment? Unwillingly I remembered those skeleton bodies. Had they gone famishing until their deaths?
There was some pretension in the furnishing of this chamber. Cobweb tapestry cloaked the walls. So thin was it, I could not detect any pattern. There were chests with the suggestion of carving on their fronts, the kind of work one might see in a manor house.