Bloodstone (38 page)

Kane shook his head. "Impossible. Since Bloodstone powers the ring, I can't direct it against any target the crystal refuses."

"Can't you do anything to stop it?"

"I'll try something--wait for a chance!" he promised. The fury in his eyes bore witness to his intention. The coruscating brilliance waxed more intense than ever, seared the eyes. Even the sullen stones of the walls were pulsing with molten light.

"The stars are right," groaned Kane. "It's reaching out for its brothers, seeking through the wilderness beyond the stars for its race! Can you sense the flow of incalculable energies through the gem? Bloodstone is reaching out through both time and space as it searches! Now its power warps the laws of the physical universe!

"No longer does it trouble to cloak the secret recesses of its mind. I can see them now, know the hidden thoughts of this creature's iniquitous soul. There! The cyclopean laboratory where Bloodstone and its brothers take form--are born! The weapons of a blighted alien science turn against their creators! The unthinkable destruction of their wars! There are thoughts here I cannot grasp... I dare not... !"

The intolerable radiance made ghastly the twisted mask of his face. "Quickly, Teres!" he warned. "There's too much danger in this place!" Without waiting for acquiescence, Kane clutched her shoulder and propelled her from the dome as if she were a frail child.

Something more than anger haunted his face, once they were outside. What horror has he looked upon? wondered Teres fearfully. Around them the entire city was pulsing with unnatural luminance.

"Can you die by your own hand?" she asked unsteadily.

Kane laughed, a cruel bark reminiscent of his accustomed spirit. "Probably Bloodstone would try to stay my hand. I wonder how many of my actions of late were of my own volition. I don't really know... How closely it guards its slave! But I'll not die before the crystal dies--dies with the knowledge of its defeat!"

"With you dead, then Bloodstone would be powerless," Teres said pointedly.

"For the moment, perhaps. But I don't plan to sacrifice my life, if I can help it!" He held her with his eyes. "Or do you think to slay me?"

She shivered. "I don't know that I can--even to save mankind! But if I knew that you would reconsider, willingly serve Bloodstone in return for the scraps it tosses to you..."

"I'll serve no master but myself!" spat Kane. "Mankind has given me little cause to feel loyalty toward the race, but no creature will use Kane as its pawn and live to reap the spoils of its game!"

They had neared the gate. Now the rising nimbus of light made the night as midday. Kane abruptly froze, his mind distant, listening...

...to a silent scream of terror!

Bloodstone had reached out beyond the stars. Pulsing with the flow of cosmic energy, it called to its brothers. Called to those who had shared its unnatural birth in distant millennia. To those who formed the complete network of its being. Those who had battled alongside it in the desperate wars of long ago. Who would be waiting through the centuries to share a unified existence once more. Waiting for the fulfillment of the perfect lattice...

Bloodstone searched... and found nothing! Bloodstone called out... and received no answer. Frantically, while the giant crystal grid of Arellarti pulsed and flamed, Bloodstone sought through the corridors of interdimensional space. There was nothing.

Bloodstone was alone.

Knowledge came that its brothers lay with the dust of an eons-forgotten war.

And that knowledge brought... madness!

Its alien mind was structured on the logic of symmetry, the fulfillment of geometric perfection. In the shattering realization that it stood alone, incomplete, imperfect, the inconceivable rationale of the crystal entity fell into chaos. Power suddenly surged without control through its lattice depths as Bloodstone's insane mind flung raving energies across the universe.

Even Teres sensed its demented shriek, and Kane reeled as if he had been bludgeoned. Bleats of terror echoed from the swamp beyond, and she glimpsed crashing bufanoid shapes as they burst through the morass in panic. The effulgence of the walls pulsed into a blinding torrent of mottled crimson, and all the earth seemed ablaze with scintillant flame.

"It's gone mad!" yelled Kane, clutching his head in pain. "The others of its race are dead, and Bloodstone's soul has gone amok! It lashes out in the mindless rage of a beheaded serpent-deadly still, but blind to the attack of its enemy!"

Gwellines reared against his tether, trumpeted in fear at the screaming brilliance. With savage strength Kane halted his plunging, so that the stallion knew Teres's hand, and calmed somewhat. In an instant Kane swept the startled girl through the air and slapped her onto saddle. The gate was yet open.

"Ride fast, Teres!" he commanded. "There is only death now in Arellarti! Ride to the forest and beyond! You and the others can escape! Bloodstone and I have not finished this game!"

"I'll not go and leave you to die! Gwellines, can carry us both!"

"There'll be no time! Bloodstone is berserk, and sorcery ravens down over Arellarti! This chaos will be my only chance to destroy the demon I've set free! I'll try to escape through the interdimensional projection--there'll be no time for anything else!"

He caught her arm. "If there is a tomorrow for us, will you come with me, Teres?"

She looked into his baleful eyes, and the words she wanted to say hung in her throat. "Kane, once we could have shared a life together. Even now I can't deny the attraction I feel toward you. But there is too much between us now--too great an abyss for love to bridge!"

Kane's lips drew back. His eyes searched her face and knew the pain there. "Words I've heard too often! Ride on, she-wolf! Tie your fate to Dribeck, if you will--or whatever whim your spirit thinks it desires. You'll not forget Kane, I think. Now ride, before doom overtakes you! For either Bloodstone or Kane must die this night!"

His hand struck Gwellines, and the stallion plunged for the open gate. Along the molten causeway he tore, bearing off his desperately clinging rider at a reckless gallop. Alien horror shambled forth from Arellarti now, and the warhorse sensed the urgency of flight.

Teres could barely rein in her mount as she burst upon Dribeck and his band, still bewildered that the Rillyti ambush which had closed upon them had broken into terrified rout, midway in the creatures' attack.

Dribeck brightened with unexpected relief to see Teres racing toward them through the blood-red stream of light. "We put the toads to flight!" he shouted, as the horse reared in a shower of sparks.

"Go back!" warned Teres, before he could speak further. "We can do nothing in Arellarti. Kane has turned upon Bloodstone, and devils wage war in the night!"

Now all his dreams had been plunged into nightmare, and the lure of adventure had become a spider web of horror. The power that had promised him mastery of the stars was a lie to chain him into soulless slavery. Madness reigned at the death of a mad dream, and the cold strength of his fury was all that reaved the shackles of insanity.

Kane entered the dome and strode heavily toward the dais. The berserk crystal knew him, sensed his intent. A crackling ball of emerald flame flared about him--the suicidal rage of a scorpion, which stings itself when entrapped by an enemy it cannot face. Kane stalked forward, heedless of the stabbing coils.

Bloodstone still fought against the forces of Shenan's magic--holding sorcery at bay despite the cosmic madness that howled through its alien mind. Dimly it was aware of Kane and marshaled its tortured energies to defend itself. But its broken power was no longer irresistible.

Kane felt its phantom voice gibber in his mind. A thousand reasons sought to turn his steps aside. A thousand promises tempted his soul. Hideous threats struck out at him, in berserk chaos coupled with the gilded pleas.

He ignored them all.

Then came the invisible pain, but no more was it of unendurable intensity. Kane staggered, bit his lips to bloody froth, unfelt against the greater agony. He did not scream. The dark force of his hatred, his rage threw a shield about his mind, burned back the gobbling tentacles of pain which sought to crush his spirit.

His lips moved, spitting curses in a score of languages, roaring defiance at the stricken monster whose demented throes strangled him, ripped at him with searing agony. Through waves of torment, like a desperate swimmer who would not drown, Kane forced his buckling legs to hold him upright, to take inching steps forward.

Streamers of energy wreathed him as he fell across the stone crescent and clutched at the projections for support. Now the pain was not psychic alone, for Bloodstone's flailing claws tore blackened welts across his skin. In its berserk dementia, the crystal struck at its own fresh. Its frantic howls threw Kane's mind into confusion, disrupted his thought as he strove to recall the task he must perform.

Kane braced himself against the relentless onslaught. His was a mind centuries wise in the psychic mysteries, his spirit indomitable from centuries of constant struggle to survive. No man could resist the might of Bloodstone, even crippled as was the crystal entity now. The wrath of Kane was more than human. He found the strength through hate.

His fist smashed down against a protruding rod. Bloodstone screamed in pain--and in sudden fear.

Not pausing, Kane struck out with bleeding knuckles, thrust an entire row of metal rods deep into the stone crescent. His other hand pawed against the crystal projections and slashed fingers on the slowly turning ceramic knobs.

Intolerable lancination shuddered through him, and he clung to the projections of the dais to keep from slumping to the floor. The bloodstone ring burned into his flesh, as if his entire hand had been plunged into molten iron. Grimly he fought back unconsciousness, knowing its relief would only mean death. With pain-fogged movements he reset the rods and projections of the blazing crescent. He forced himself to lock in the controls, to overload the monolithic circuitry.

Now the brilliance of Bloodstone was a hungry glare that seared his blurring vision. Agony throbbed through him in cadence with the burning waves of pulsing incandescence. The heat was not an illusion. Beneath his touch the stones were blistering his flesh. The entire power web of Arellarti was blazing with uncontrolled energy, rising like the molten cone of a volcano from the steaming swampland.

Kane had jammed the external controls, which governed the colossal energies that Bloodstone sucked from the cosmos. The nightmarish creation of elder science was trapped in the full torrent of the power it fed upon. Like an unbraked millwheel caught in an inconceivable flood, Bloodstone was snared in a vortex of energy that raced out of control, pent up with no outlet, raging power that would tear it to atoms.

The stones trembled beneath his smoking boots. Kane could hear a distant roar, a rumble beneath the whining howl of Arellarti, as if some unimaginable storm were bursting through the darkness beyond the blazing city.

Fool! Your betrayal will destroy us together!

That was the last coherent thought Kane was to sense from Bloodstone. Desperately he worked over the dials and protrusions which controlled the powers of interdimensional projection. Regardless of its amok insanity, Bloodstone would have to respond to the settings of its instruments--for all its malevolent soul, it had been designed as a machine by its creators. Or would it respond? Could it, even, with the damage Kane had inflicted?

The crushing roar of doom rushed closer, and Kane knew this slim chance was all that remained. Would there even be time for a vengeful Bloodstone to transport him to a nearby locus? Though he might die in the crystal's disintegrating embrace--or wander disembodied through the, interdimensional gulfs--Kane made the gamble.

Once more the coils of coruscant energy wrapped about him. Kane was borne through the crystal gateway to the abyss beyond natural space and time...

Abruptly released from the immoveable barrier that had so thoroughly repelled its sorcerous tides, the waters of the Western Sea plunged inland--as if through a sundered dam of vast height.

On their knoll the daughters of Shenan wailed in sudden fear, for the force of their most dangerous spells had broken loose at the collapse of Bloodstone's resisting power. Bursting past the vanished obstruction, their sorcerous might recoiled with pent-up potency far beyond their calculations.

Not a phantom tide, to steal upon the stronghold of their enemy, obeyed their compelling summons. A tidal wave more than a hundred yards high smashed through the great fault at Serpent's Tail and drove across the rotting land like the fist of the avenging gods!

Those in the forest fled in terror for the higher ground, fled to escape the witch-tide that ravaged through its ancient shores.

With irresistible might, the mountain of water ripped across the trembling marshlands. Envenomed creatures, stunted trees, choking lianas, bottomless quicksand--all the blighted dwellers of Kranor-Rill were devoured by the ravening wave.

When it struck the superheated stones of Arellarti, there was a mountainous concussion which seemed to tear the earth apart. In the forest beyond, trees shook, leaned, turned broken roots to the staffs. Those who ran were thrown to the earth by the enormous shock and threw back frighted gaze to witness the shrieking nova.

Within its almost molten dome, Bloodstone shattered into a billion splinters of glowing energy.

The crested wave broke past this knob of pulverized stone, and the night was once more robed in star-flecked darkness. Like a stinging wash of antiseptic, the sea reached in, then drew back again, leaving behind a scoured land, purged of the evil that had rotted there.

It was spring of another year, and Teres awoke before dawn, knowing a strange restlessness. Old dreams return; ghosts will not lie. Sleep does not come when memories will not fade.

Silently, so not to wake those who slept, she stole from her chamber. Gwellines was restless, too, and nickered a friendly greeting as she saddled him. Past dawnlit gates of Selonari, his hooves trotted south.