Lyrec (37 page)

While Miradomon spoke, Lyrec took a chance, closing his eyes. He tried to probe Talenyecis, to break whatever force held her. But his probe went awry, snared by another highly charged energy nearby that was probing for him—Borregad.

He peered into the recesses of the cavern as a silver blur launched itself from out of the shadows and sailed through the air behind Miradomon. The
crex
-covered cat struck the back of the white hood. Borregad’s talons raked the spongy material. A yellow fluid sprayed out in a dozen streams. Miradomon hissed and clamped his hands over his head, but the cat had already taken flight in a great leap. He landed atop the discarded
crex.

No
, shouted Lyrec.
You can’t even pick it up!

The robe swung about, bony hands pointing, taking aim. Sizzling blue flame blasted the floor. Lyrec shouted again, but was drowned out by the explosion and by the piercing howl that cut off abruptly. A red-hot circle of melted slag bubbled where the
crex
and the cat had been. No trace of either remained.

Oh, Borregad.

“What
was
that?” screamed Miradomon. His hands sealed over the last of his wounds. “You brought help? You will need more than an army of silver vermin! You aren’t Kobach—they have no such power. Who are you?”

Lyrec’s anger built slowly. “You don’t know?” he asked haughtily. “You mean, you aren’t infallible?” He blocked the anger, shot a probe at Talenyecis, intending to shatter whatever hold Miradomon had over her. What he found stunned him. His eyes opened wide in dismay.

“I asked you who?” yelled the robe.

Talenyecis came alive again, bounding the short distance, sword coming up to strike—Miradomon’s way of forcing an answer from him. Before she could bring the blow down upon him, Lyrec stabbed into her. She crumpled at his feet. Her body trembled, then shrank rapidly into nothingness. Lyrec cursed his stupidity—if he had just thought, if he had been given a moment, he would have known she was not real. His probe had gone wide because there had been nothing there to probe. This was the way Miradomon played with those he meant to destroy.

He backed to the edge of the slab, out of Miradomon’s view, The voice rang out again: “Who?”
 

Lyrec ran across the platform and leaped above the void to the lip of the well, pitching forward off the balls of his feet, head over heels, ignoring the bruising from the rough floor. He rolled onto his feet and drove the white sword hard into Miradomon.

“I’ll tell you who I am. I’m your executioner.”

The robe stood immobile, cowl doubled over as if in shock at finding the white sword impaling its chest. One sickly green hand came out of a sleeve, took hold of the sword and withdrew it by degrees. The other hand sealed up the wound. The green skin began to darken again at the wrists, the blackness flowing toward the fingers.

“Executioner,” mocked the robe. The sword melted away in his hand. “A premature description. Once more and only once more. Who?”

“The last survivor,” he replied.

For a moment there was no reaction. Then the meaning struck Miradomon like a blow. “That’s impossible.
No one
survived.”

“As I said—you’re not infallible.”

“Perhaps,” answered the robe, “but given my powers I can afford to make mistakes, whereas you… that silver weapon was your
crex
, was it not? Ably disguised, certainly, but you should
never
have allowed me to disarm you. It was all you had. You hesitated, and now—” he pointed to the melted circle “—now you’ve lost what little chance you might ever have had. Never … but here I am wasting time teaching you lessons on life when yours is so nearly over.”

“If that’s true, then tell me first why? Why did you commit genocide?”

“Not genocide—genocide implies waste. I wasted nothing. That core of energy down there began with our world. The first hot cinders came from the destruction I caused in stepping out of our universe. It had to be so. I accepted the price.”

“Into all of these other, these … parallel ones.”

“Parallel universes? No—again you’re wrong. You’ve followed, but have not understood. Each of those worlds comprised a part of a single universe. In normal space and time they would have been unimaginably far apart, but that corridor we’ve sailed through in our separate pursuits compresses the distance. Space becomes meaningless, an illusion. Parallels, yes, but all within one unfolding universe that I will eventually refashion for myself.”

“It might take you an eternity. Despite your power, I’ve caught up with you. You’ve slowed down considerably. Glutted, perhaps?”

Miradomon laughed contemptuously at the small jibe. “Yes, I did slow down, but out of wisdom. At first, you see, I was impulsive, too eager, and in my haste I wasted much energy of the life forms on those living worlds by going directly for the energy
within
the world itself. There is enormous energy to be distilled from the populations. I tried killing them myself but found that their death at my hands blocked my ability to absorb their life energies. It trickled away, escaped. Even now I have no idea why.

“I learned to make them kill one another, and that involved deception and intrigue. These parallel worlds as you deem them, they are all in a similar development pattern and time frame—all young, impressionable, and ignorant. They create deities and then worship them as the answer to everything. Their faith is fanatical, and fanatics are easily manipulated. I simply use their thoughtless devotion against them, as their own leaders have done for centuries. For instance, look at the Kobachs—scorned and hated for offending the gods. Well, I mean, who dreamt up that ridiculous tale? There are no gods, so no formidable being ever appeared and announced his displeasure to anyone. No, some person in a position of relative power hated the Kobachs and used his influence to make others hate them, too. He might have been jealous of their magic, or maybe he wanted the land where they dwelled. These races are all like that—stupid and violent. Insane really. I find it amusing to pare them away by degrees. They make it all so easy.”
 

He floated over to the pit and eliminated the hovering platforms. “I must say, I am enjoying this. I’ve never had an opportunity of explaining it all to anyone who hasn’t been forced to listen. But
you
have to hope I will go on talking forever. Unfortunately for you, there remains little else to say. I severed all contact with my own
crex
. I no longer need it. Now it’s another utensil, a tool like the boy king. A means to an end. Chaos protects me now, far better than the
crex
ever could. Look at all that energy down there. You see how ludicrous it was for you to try and slay me with a paltry sword?” The robe turned to him again. “Tell me, now—how did you survive?”

“In the simplest way: I was gone,” explained Lyrec. “Distant by three or four stars. I saw the destruction—watched our homestar torn apart by the rift you created. Unnatural gravities unbalanced the lattice harmonies, shattered its structure. When it exploded, it wiped out everything. And even unsettled the next nearest star, which by now will have detonated, too. Of course, the distance being what it was, I knew that everything had happened even before I saw it. Still, I raced back with the vain hope of finding survivors. The rip you’d opened had attained equilibrium by then. No one, nothing was left. Unit cells turned to cosmic dust, scattering, falling away from the blast. I searched for the cause and for my … the word here would be ‘lover.’ I couldn’t be certain that she’d perished unless I entered the hole. I didn’t know what had created it, or where it led. But I had to see the other side. And there I found one survivor, crippled, barely alive. I saved him.”

“He didn’t die, either?”

“Another error on your part. You should have made sure he was dead—then I never would have known to come looking for you.” He glanced at the blasted circle on the floor. “Maybe that no longer matters. But he told me everything that had happened: He’d been in the company of another of our race when they came upon you. This other one, she was on her way to meet me upon my return. And there you were, tearing apart the world as if it was a dispensable curiosity. You either destroyed or imprisoned her. I’ve come this far to find out which.”

Miradomon began to laugh helplessly. “That’s why you’ve pursued me? That’s the reason? Well, you must be rewarded for your trouble. I destroyed her. There, now you know—was it worth the journey?”

Lyrec could not reply. To hear it said at last left him devastated.
I destroyed her
—flat, emotionless. Eliminating one of his own kind meant nothing to Miradomon. Lyrec had expected it, but hearing the words—finally confronting and knowing it as fact—was far more chilling than supposition.

“The crippled one you helped—he was the thing that attacked me? The silver creature I destroyed there?”

Lyrec nodded.

“Then it only remains for me to dispose of you and get about my business. All this talk has made me anxious to finish what I’ve begun. It must be truly devastating for you, to come so far for nothing. She’s dead, you’re dead. Well, you probably
want
to be dead now. What are you called here?”

“Lyrec.”

“Then, Lyrec, this is—” He had leveled his hand, palm upward, but hesitated. “What is that around you? Let me see it.” As if on command, a thin veil of rose-colored energy appeared over Lyrec. “Ah,” said Miradomon. “The Kobachs are with you. Have you united their dwindling corps against me, Lyrec?” He chuckled. “First, then, we must remove the final barrier.” The rosy veil began to sparkle. Lyrec could hear the echoes of a dozen souls in agony.

Escape
, he shouted to them.
I’ve failed—don’t die for nothing, too!

The sparkling web covered him. The Kobachs retreated, and the veil faded out. Miradomon ended his attack. “Their numbers have decreased again. My, what a sorry lot they are. Nobody likes them. Now, as I was saying—good-bye, Lyrec.”

An invisible hand clutched Lyrec and lifted him out above the pit again. He looked down at the white seething star and at Miradomon.

The hand released him and, with no
crex
to protect him this time, he fell.

Chapter 26.

They found the first body in the yard outside the tavern.

Charred and smoldering, the person lay pointed in the direction of the road. He had apparently met his end while trying to escape the source of his torment—inside the tavern. Near the door lay a second corpse, similarly blackened.

In terror, Pavra jumped from her horse and bolted for the door. It rested on one corner, slightly ajar, and she slid through the opening. The people there raised their heads. Their leader could not believe his eyes. He shot to his feet. Pavra saw him in the same moment that she heard her name. She ran to him, crying, “Papa!” and he swept her up and crushed her to him, kissing her face and her tears and saying, “My flower, my flower,” his voice cracking in combined joy and grief.

The door creaked open. Standing in the doorway, Ronnæm recognized Malchavik and the others. They sat in a circle, and the former king understood what had occurred. They all looked equally grim, terribly weary. Four more bodies lay on the floor. On the rear wall, the outline of one victim had been scorched into the stones.

Over the serving bar one very intimidated tavern keeper raised his head to see the new arrivals.

Malchavik set his daughter aside and stood up to embrace Ronnæm. “Sire,” he said, for he would always think of Ronnæm in this way, “we’ve failed in defending the avatar Lyrec from the evil one. We were discovered. The evil one attacked and Lyrec ordered us to abandon him. What else could we do? We were dying. Even so, we weren’t fast enough.”

Bozadon Reket had only the barest inkling of what all this talk meant. He withdrew behind the bar with Grohd. The tavern keeper eyed him distrustfully at first, but sensing that here was someone similarly confounded, moved over and let him sit.

Pavra said, “You mustn’t attack him directly—he’s almost all-seeing. You must attack through his weaknesses.”

Her father tried not to sound conciliatory as he replied, “No one knows if he has any, or what they might be, my child. By now it hardly matters, in any case. The avatar is surely dead.”

Grohd muttered, “That’s torn it. We’re doomed for certain now.”
 

Reket nodded. “I should have stayed home,” he said.

Pavra pulled away from her father. “What if you’re wrong?” She turned to Ronnæm. “And if he is right. Do we just let the horrible robe win and go to our slaughter willingly? What about Tynec? His sister?”

Ronnæm stared hard into her eyes. At one other time in his life, he’d looked into such eyes, and he’d given in to that Kobach female, too—his daughter-in-law. Now her mother was dead and so was his son. The old king missed his family; Tynec and Lewyn, if she still lived, were all he had left. “Yes, child, you’re right,” he answered. “I swore to avenge my son and I intend to carry that out if it means we
all
burn. We’ll all burn anyway if this monster triumphs. You’re tired of this fight—so many have died and you want to take time for your grief. So do I. But if we can’t take their bodies home in peace, if in mourning we’re to be consumed, then I say let’s die beside them, not crawling away in fear.”

Malchavik solemnly asked his daughter, “What is the weak spot you know of?”

“The way to attack,” she said, “is through Tynec.” She saw all of her people look up at Ronnæm. To add weight to her argument, she added, “The avatar will die while we argue.”

Ronnæm said grimly, “Do what we must.”

Two heads peeked over the bar. “I would fight in combat against any warrior,” Reket whispered to Grohd, “but this battle isn’t for my kind. Or yours.”

“Except they say we’ll all die if they lose,” replied Grohd.

Reket looked from the tavern keeper to the group of people linking hands. He stared down into his own hands, wondering what secret powers they might have. “This has been the worst week,” he said.

*****

Darkness enshrouded the cavern.