The Return of Kavin (28 page)

“No weapon would protect you against that,” Kavin said. “Wait. Thuramon knows.”

The smoky thing was indeed growing larger. Now it moved, slow-seeming because of its size, yet with terrifying speed; it passed through the groveling crowd, toward the marble steps that swept down to the water. For a moment, it paused among the crowd; and where it stopped, the figures of those nearest seemed to fall, like empty bundles of clothing, to the pavement. But it moved again, and swept out across the lake, seeming to walk on the water. As it went, it grew larger again; and though it seemed not to touch the water, the lake’s surface seemed to be stained in some sickly slime where it had passed.

There was a sudden dim glimmer of light where Thuramon had stood; and Hugon heard the old man groan, a sound of agony as if he had been stabbed. He stared into the dark, and saw a queer glow that seemed to hover above the ground for a distance of a few paces; and in the dim light, Thuramon’s body, stretched out.

Hugon ran toward the old man and knelt; he felt the chest, under the gray robe. There was no beat; Thuramon’s eyes were closed, and he did not seem to be breathing.

“He’s dead,” Hugon muttered. His eyes burned, but he stood up, and his mouth hardened.

“Dead?”
Gwynna said, at his elbow. “Then we’re lost, all of us.” She stared down at the body. “And Armadoc, lost for me… though I didn’t think he could keep such a promise.” Her voice shook.

“Dead, then,” Zamor said. “But we still live.”

“Not for long, if we’re caught,” Hugon said.

“Not at all,” Kavin said in a harsh voice. “If that demon is free for long, no man will live.”

Against the red sky, the smoke-shape stood, tall as a tower now. It moved from the west toward the east, across the city, as though it stalked across the tops of the houses.

“It was sent to kill, and it’s killing, now,” Kavin said. “It will walk, on and on, circling outward and slaying as it goes… I don’t know how long.
But long enough.
Long enough to slay every rebel, and his own men as well… he does not care. Long enough to walk out into the lands of men, even across that sea…” The Prince stood looking down at Thuramon’s body. “He tried a mighty magic to thrust it back. And it killed him.”

THIRTEEN

Zamor bent down and lifted the body in his arms.

“We’d better get off this filthy island,” he said, “and no friend of mine lies on this demon’s soil. That other demon, yonder, moves outward, you say? Then, like a forest fire, it’s safest to follow him.” The big man strode down to the boat and stepped in, laying Thuramon’s body carefully on the floor.

The overloaded boat moved, cautiously, into the lake, keeping to the shadows as they rowed.

The brightly lighted front of the King’s house was dimmer now, as torches burned out; and they saw that the Emperor was gone, and many others as well. There were still a few who wandered there, apparently too terrified to follow their lord to his black temple; but most of them had gone with him. From the temple itself, the gongs were booming again, with a heavy, insistent clangor.

“I think none will see us,” Zamor said. “They look as mazed as a kicked anthill over there.
Row, man.”

The boat came closer to a landing step, bumped gently.

Then, in a strange voice, Kavin cried out, “Look!”

In the sky, two towering, smoky shapes stood facing each other; swiftly, they seemed to move toward each other. They met, and swirled together in a monstrous embrace.

There were flashes of that sourceless light again, and now, in the darkness, another sound… and Hugon’s hair lifted, listening. It was that woman’s voice that he had heard before… and it wailed in sorrow. Kavin heard it too; he stood up in the boat, and his arms stretched out in a strange gesture.

“I’m here!” Kavin called, in a low, almost pleading voice.
“Return!
I call you to return…”

Then, suddenly, the wail ceased, and there was an eerie, high laughter, a sound of almost unbearable joy. At the same moment, the towering shapes in the sky seemed to burn with a glare of scarlet fire, brighter and brighter. Then, there was a shriek of pain, but a shriek of monstrous volume; a sound that tore across the sky itself, and seemed to break the sense of hearing.

“By the Great Snake’s Nine Thousand Children,” Zamor shouted, “it’s gone!”

Both towering smoke demons were gone; the sky was clear of any sign of them. Then, at their feet, Thuramon sneezed.

“You’re alive!” Hugon said, staring down at him.

The old man sat up, and his eyes opened; he stared at the others bending over him, with a look of enormous weariness.

“I… am… alive,” he said, very slowly. “Kavin…”

Kavin came close.

“You… know where my… tools are kept,” Thuramon whispered, in a voice that seemed an effort with each word. “I require… the leaves.
Hurry.”
His head dropped again, but he still breathed.

Kavin glanced up, desperately. “Gwynna, where are we? His things, in the cart we brought with us… I need them, swiftly.”

“Not far,” Gwynna said. “Come… the cart was in a carriage yard, behind the palace there.” She sprang ashore, and Kavin followed, pausing only to speak a word to Hugon and Zamor.

“Guard him!”

Then he was gone, into the darkness.

“The old man seems to breathe, at any rate,” Zamor said, as he touched him.

“But he seemed dead, there,” Hugon said, puzzled. He laid his own cloak around Thuramon. “He seems very cold, too.”

They waited, and at last, Gwynna and Kavin returned, Kavin carrying something and running swiftly. Arriving at the boat, he knelt beside Thuramon, and held a vial to his lips.

After a moment, the old man opened his eyes again, and coughed.

“He’ll be well enough in a while,” Kavin said. “But we must try to gain the outer walls. The cart is ready.”

Zamor gathered Thuramon up, and carried him as they went.

“Thuramon… left his body,” Kavin said as they came to the cart. The horses stamped and whinnied; they seemed as terrified as the humans had been. Zamor lifted Thuramon in, and the party moved toward the inner wall.

“Left his body?” Hugon asked, as they walked beside the cart. “Then he was truly dead?”

“In one sense,” Kavin said. “He had to do it. Though it cost him more than you yet know, Hugon.
A fearful price… that second smoky thing in the sky.
That was Thuramon, himself.”

“They’ll all die,” the Emperor said, capering. His laughter rang out again in the stone corridors, wildly. “All of them, all of them! Where’s Paravaz?” He stopped, and stared at the glittering crowd around him.
“Paravaz?”

“Alas, Majesty, the Lord Paravaz did not return from the walls of the city,” someone said. “He must have been slain.”

“But I don’t need a Chancellor any more, do I?” Sharamash said, and giggled. “No, not any more. It’s a new world, now, all new.”

He embraced the cloth-wrapped object in his arms with a sly grin. “Here… the key to a thousand worlds beyond, the jewel above all jewels… the Egg of Fire!” He stared down at the cloth and caressed it.
“To the Temple of the Lord of Night, and the Gates!”

The procession moved down through the palace and out into the night, toward the open doors of the Temple. It had become a crazy, hysterically excited rout, almost a mob. Guardsmen at the lower gates and in the halls watched as the nobility of Mazain poured past them, shouting and wailing; a few of the men at arms remained still at their posts, though many had already slipped away.

But the maddened throng was swept up in belief now; the advent of the Lord of Night was all that there was left for them to believe in. As they passed through the gardens, they could see the ancient and lovely palaces that lined the lakeshore, the homes of their great clans; and fire leaped from the windows of one and then another of those palaces. There was a gleam of armor and spears there, and shouting.

Unless the Lord of Night came to Sharamash’s call… unless the Dark Gate opened, and the power was released… they were all doomed. They had to believe. But not all of them did, even now. At the water gate, a dozen men stood, swords in hand; their women and slaves about them, waiting for death. These watched the boats that were putting out from the shore, and spoke to one another gravely, bidding goodbye.

In the temple, Sharamash advanced with slow steps toward the enormous silver construction; in his outstretched hands, he bore the cloth-covered ovoid. Light nickered, blue and lambent, over the twisted columns and through the crystal globes; the altar lived, with a new and dreadful life.

Before him a cavity in the structure waited, shaped to receive the Egg; he knelt, and laid the glowing crystal in its place.

Rising, he spread his arms, and cried out as silence fell.

“Lord of Night, Lord of Darkness! Now is your Gate opened, come forth! Come forth and rule us, even I, thy servant!”

The Silver Gate glared as the glow about it grew brighter; a high, humming sound came, rising in pitch, and those who knelt before it moaned in awe. Sharamash fell to his knees, and bowed low.

Then the glow became intolerably brighter, till the whole Temple was lit up as if by the light of day. The silver columns and twisting rods glowed brighter and brighter, with an intense heat that radiated out into the Temple; crystal tubes suddenly cracked, with loud explosions. And the Egg of Fire itself glowed scarlet for a moment; and then disintegrated into a heap of smoking fragments with a tremendous sound.

As the false Egg collapsed, the altar itself began to sag strangely; droplets of hot metal fell from the work, and a smoke of burning rose. A spatter of the hot silver flew across the wide area of the Temple, and worshippers screamed in pain; and one drop struck Sharamash himself on the arm. He leaped up, with a maddened yell, and stood, staring at the melting ruin before him.

And beyond, in
his own
place, Ess knew that the defeat of this tool was accomplished. He was not angry; he was not capable of anger. He sensed the mind of the biped called Sharamash; it had become a ruin itself, as that Gate he had built had been ruined when the intolerable power had flowed into it… without the true crystal to control that flow.

The biped Sharamash is no longer controllable, Ess thought.

He must be abandoned. There is the other, however; the one called Gann. He remains.

The power source, the crystal; it will be taken to another Gate, that old Gate which was used at another time. The biped Gann may take control of that situation, then. He may be able to destroy these other creatures; and he possesses the skill to open that Gate for me. He himself is curiously without the…

Here Ess imaged a
Something
. The
Something
was a factor which he perceived in those bipeds he touched, but which he did not in the least understand. It was, to him, something like a color, or a quality. Whatever it was, Gann, alone of all bipeds that Ess had touched, did not have it.

He does not have the Thing, Ess thought. This is strange. In another time, he had it. But now that he does not have it, he wishes to destroy his double,
who
does have it.

The matter was of no concern. Ess turned his attention to other matters.

Sharamash lay, writhing and shrieking, on the floor before the altar; his voice came, babbling words that no longer had meaning or connection, as he clawed at the stone. And behind him, swords rang, as armed men thrust their way into the Temple, hacking and slashing as they came.

Among those who came through the doors were men who had been high in the Empire.
Nobles and lords, and others who were of no high birth, fought shoulder to shoulder.
Within the Temple, there was little resistance left; steel-clad men herded the mob within against a wall, while others hacked down those few who fought back.

A tall man in chain mail, with mad eyes, splashed with blood from his helm to his boots, thrust through, and stopped to stare at the writhing figure that lay there before the altar. Behind him, another man, gray-bearded and cloaked, came.

“He is there,” Fazakk said, staring down at the Emperor. “Look at him.” The Admiral began to laugh horribly, a choking, coughing laugh; he thrust out an arm to halt those who came behind him, and he turned his mad eyes toward the gray man.

“D’ye
see
him, Paravaz, there?
The Thrice Glorious Lord of Lords, King of Kings, Emperor of Mazain!”
Fazakk glared madly.
“Mazain!
Mazain, a sty for swine to wallow in… and he, there… killer of babies.
Look, how he soils himself in fear, like a beast!”

“I had a wife, too, lord Admiral,” a man at his elbow said, in a voice colder than ice. He lifted his sword. “Let me make an end.”

“Was yours dearer than mine, then?” Fazakk grated. He laughed again, and the laughter echoed in the high roof of the temple, like the sound of shields crashed together.

“No,” Fazakk said, grimly. “He shall not die. I wish to place this beast in a cage… a silver cage.” He stared at the Emperor. “I shall lift him up above the market square by the harbor, where I may see him daily in his cage. He shall live long, long… as long as my hate shall live!”

Paravaz glanced at Fazakk with a strange look. The Chancellor was a wise man; he had changed sides only barely in time, with all the troops he could bring over. Now, plainly, he could see his decision had been wise.
And yet…

“Your pardon, lord admiral,” Paravaz murmured, and stepped forward to kneel beside the pitiful creature that had been an Emperor. His hand rose and fell, with the flash of steel in the torchlight; and he came to his feet again, to face Fazakk.

“At the last,” Paravaz said, “I remembered that I had sworn service to him.” He stared at Fazakk’s lifted blade, and saw that death was there before him. “But it was the last service I could do him. I would that I had done it sooner.”