A Dragon at Worlds' End (48 page)

A thrown spear missed his throat by a fraction, and another grazed his shoulder, but Ecator on the backstroke cut into the men jammed up in the mouth of the gate and left six dead in a moment. At the explosion of blood and viscera, the others checked. Bazil swung again and smashed another line of guards. Then the Ardu sprang forward and rejoined the initiative and Bazil stepped back to avoid further spears.

The guards wobbled there, then Norwul crushed the man in the center with his war club and Yord cut down the one next to him and the phalanx lost all remaining cohesion in the center and began to collapse backward. The Ardu were emboldened and they swung their weapons with renewed fervor and two more guards were slain and the rest tumbled back out of the gate once more and retreated to the edge of the steps.

Arrows covered their retreat and forced the Ardu back into the darkness. Their cries of jubilation echoed around the pyramid. They had won again!

But now there were only fourteen Ardu standing, able to fight. They huddled back along the wall with eyes fierce and lungs laboring.

"The dragon says it is better to die fighting than lying sick in one's hut," said Lumbee, who had come to take her place with the men for the final battle.

"Forest god is right," seconded Norwul. "If we die, we die here!"

The others cheered hoarsely.

Their cheers were cut off by another sound, the unmistakable scrape of metal on stone. The portcullis gate was rising.

Bazil looked up with somber eyes. An all-too-familiar shape was visible behind the rising grid of steel.

"So," he hissed to himself. Another of the battle beasts had been hatched somewhere by these fell elves.

Wearily, he stepped forward to meet the deliverer of death.

Relkin contemplated time with a hawk's-eye view above its flowing river. Time always flowed in a single direction, an inevitable processing of moments of now—each one following the last in its momentary stand on the stage before surrendering to the claim of oblivion that rendered it part of the past.

And yet, this was different. This particle of now was not the same.

Now! Something had changed, some line had been crossed. Time had ceased to be a series of anonymous moments, following one another into the infinity of the past. The fullness had swollen into the now. This moment had come, pregnant with awesome possibility, and from here on all would be different.

Relkin stirred. His eyes opened and he took in the lacquered walls, the shining floor of this room that spoke so well of the glory of the Overlook of the Arkelauds. Beside him knelt the elf lady, waving a fan over him and softly singing some ancient lay of her people. Her silver curls were hidden beneath a scarf of black silk.

Now was come. He shifted on the divan and sat up. His face still ached from the beating his nose had taken, but the former agony of his arms had abated. He raised his arms to test it, and found the discomfort bearable.

"Thank you, Lady. Your healing magic has taken away the pain."

She looked up and he was startled to see that large golden stars had swollen in her eyes.

"Go," she hissed. "You must destroy our world."

He stood up, swayed a moment, and then recovered his balance. He could scarcely bend his arms, they were so heavily bandaged, but for what he had to do, his arms were unnecessary.

"I don't need a sword, anyway," he mumbled. His nose simultaneously itched and ached, an oddly unpleasant combination.

But he could walk and the moment, this weighted
now
, was calling him. He could not delay any longer, although something in him wanted to. He understood, of course. There was a part of him that didn't want to die.

He turned away from the accusing golden stars and walked to the door. He stepped out into a warm wind. The door banged behind him.

Across the lake the statue of Zizma Bos beckoned. The pyramid's marble facings shone brilliantly away to his right at the eastern end. Below lay the glittering city of the golden elves. He stepped to the railing and raised his arms. The sun warmed his palms and he cried out in an ecstasy of love for the world even as he summoned the strength of the mind mass. In an instant he was gone and the wind blew alone on the terrace.

Lady Tschinn bowed her head and waited there for the end of the world.

In iambic nothingness he bounced in rhythm for a moment and then he was in the world once more, appearing a foot above the surface of the great board in the Game hall of the Pyramid. He landed clumsily and fell on the board, knocking over a set of Leapers that clattered as they rolled across the hallowed squares. Instantly heads came up and voices were raised in anger.

So much for any chance of surprise.

The shouting around him became general.

Then he heard other sounds, including one that was all too familiar to a dragonboy in the legions of Argonath, the mighty clang of huge swords wielded in combat.

What in all the names of hell? It came again, the huge sound of heavy steel in contact. Dragonsword? Did that mean that a certain wyvern dragon was in the vicinity?

He looked around himself. The board stretched away in all directions, dotted here and there with clumps of two-and three-foot-high pieces engaged in their own slow-motion, dumb panoply of war.

There were more shouts, men were running toward him across the board with drawn weapons. There was no doubt of their intentions.

It was time to be done with it. He dug into himself and called on the mind mass to hear him and awaken.

Nothing happened.

"Kill him!" screamed someone not too far distant.

He balled his hands into fists and called once more on the ten thousand who lay below powering the great gestalt.

"Awake!" he cried to the vast whale that turned slowly in ever-warm waters swimming up to the light. "Awake. Ye build and yet have no hearth. Ye make and yet have no bread. Awake!"

"Kill him!"

Still there was no response.

"Awake!" he screamed in sudden desperation, fearing for the first time that he might fail and the elf lords would slay him and prevent the Iudo Faex from completing the prophecy of Zizma Bos.

And then abruptly he realized that he had to "point" his call, to use his mind in a way he had never known before. He shaped and bent the thought and then drove his message into the vast entity like a rocket into a cloud and it burst within and touched something in the dark, something that stirred as enigma gave way to certainty.

There was an odd moment of complete stasis. Everything was still, as if the river of time itself had ceased to flow. Relkin was looking at a man with a drawn sword who was just a couple of yards away, preparing to hack him down. Relkin's death was written on that steel which seemed to float forward as slowly as the sun setting. A single second seemed to last a minute.

"Awake!" he sobbed.

And green lightning erupted from the board at his feet, soared up around him, and struck the ceiling, while a thunderclap detonated in the hall and deafened every ear. The scorched wretch with the sword was tossed twenty feet into the air. Those who were still ten yards away threw themselves flat or were knocked over.

The green flash vanished. Relkin was virtually blinded, but not scorched.

The swordsman was a smoking, charred heap among fallen Leapers.

The gestalt had awoken at last.

Screams of horror echoed all around the Game board. Too late. Too late. A line of termination had crossed from one aeon into another. They could never go back. The Iudo Faex had fulfilled the prophecy.

The gestalt awoke and looked about itself with a million eyes and saw the world in a million ways. And it looked beyond the one world and saw the other worlds and the worlds beyond those and beyond those and beyond those. And it looked close and saw the Game board of the elf lords and the scattered pieces and the faces turned up to it with horror writ large on their perfect features, and it understood. And then many things happened at once.

In thousands of magical worlds the light went out, the suns dimmed, the moons imploded, atmospheres blew away into nothingness, and fabulous foliage faded to black. Gaping elf lords were deposited back on the Game board with a sudden, brutal transition over which they had no control. The number on the board increased quite substantially. Others, perhaps less fortunate, vanished with their worlds.

In the atrium where the Golgomba beast was remorselessly pressing Bazil back to the wall, the green lightning roared. To Bazil's astonishment, the beast slumped, collapsed, and turned to a glittering gray dust that poured out upon the floor to form a mound barely knee high. The sword clanged to the ground, and the buckler made a tinny sound as it rolled away.

With a screech of metal on stone, the portcullis rose again. Nothing stood in the passage beyond this time. Bazil received the summons. He knew not from where, but the image it gave him was unmistakable.

"They kill my boy!"

He could not run, but he could stagger, and he passed under the portcullis and entered the Game hall with a curious gait, almost falling each time he put his weight on his right leg. But the fire in his eyes was beyond pain and the sword in his hand was a promise of death.

In the gatehouse, the long keys suddenly pulled themselves out of the mechanisms and flew across the room while the gates whirred shut on their own and closed with a clang.

The Ardu spun around and followed the dragon, their swords and spears in hand.

As he entered the hall, Bazil roared his challenge to the elf lords and they whirled, hands frozen, hearts stopped in terror. He looked past them with anxious eyes. Was he too late? As he had feared from the beginning?

There was a figure, swathed in bandages, swaying in the center of a ring of elf lords who had just gotten back on their feet. Many were singed. There was smoke coming from Red Elk's curls and he beat on his head with his hand to put it out.

The bandaged figure turned toward the dragon and raised an arm in greeting and Bazil felt his heart leap.

"Boy lives!" roared the dragon. He crashed across the board, smashing aside Strengths, Leapers, and all the rest. Ecator hummed through the air and an elf lord who had dared to plant himself in the way with drawn sword was sent to eternity.

The others either ran for their lives or also readied themselves with swords in hand. Ecator scythed through the air with a howling viciousness that Bazil could feel through the handle. The sword was exercised as it had only ever been when they cut off Heruta's arm and sent his soul to hell. A half dozen elven princes were annihilated.

The rest of the elf lords fled, their resolve collapsing in the face of the fate of their fellows.

Then boy and dragon were reunited. Huge arms enfolded the bandaged figure and hugged it.

"Careful," said Relkin.

"Yes, be very careful with fool boy. How you come to be taken here?"

"If we live through this, I'll be glad to tell you the whole story." Bazil set him down with exaggerated care. The wyvern had to agree that their chances of getting out of this were slim. They were still surrounded, cut off inside the pyramid, with a large force of guards outside.

"I knew this dragon would find you." Bazil sounded absurdly happy with himself.

"You know something? That joboquin is just totally ruined!"

"Ha! That is very good. Boy is nothing but a big bandage."

"Wonderful timing, Baz. Got here just in the nick."

"I not have much choice."

But then Relkin waved a hand, suddenly consumed with a new thought.

"No, I'm serious. Really! I just realized what I can do. It's going to be all right, Baz. I haven't finished. There's still work to do. I'm going to leave now and finish the job I began here. Don't worry about me. You'll see some magic—at least I think so. I'll see you in a while."

Bazil was too happy to have found his boy to think much about these words. He waved at the elf lords. "Should I kill them all?"

"No. That isn't for us to do. If they are to die, let it be by the hand of those they have oppressed so long."

They fell silent. Relkin gathered himself and then raised his arms again and called on the mind mass.

It was still there, but now it had eyes that looked into his soul. Great burning eyes that it turned this way and that, seeing all. He made no attempt to hide from it. To this being, so new, like a newborn baby in some ways, he had no need to hide a thing.

In a moment he felt the response. It understood what was needed. And Relkin "moved" once more, vanishing from the Game board and reappearing in front of the city's main gate. Behind him stood the mob, drawn by the call they had all heard in their heads. The time had come. Mirchaz would fall.

Relkin reached up to the gates, pressing his palms to them, and the gates broke asunder in coruscations of green lightning, and the way to the city was open.

The slaves lifted their voices in a great shout and advanced past him where he stood, shaking a little, feeling emptied by that green flash of violence that had coursed through his body. For a moment he had been the conduit of the mind mass. That sensation would never leave him.

Like fragments falling away from an explosion, the effects of the awakening of the gestalt being struck near and far, right across the world, and beyond.

In the city of Andiquant, thousands of miles to the east, an unconscious body, lovingly cared for by old Gert, shook in sudden spasm and then awoke with a strange, keening cry.

Gert ran in from the kitchen, her eyes widening. The lady's body was thrashing on the sheets. She sat down on the bed and reached to try and comfort her mistress, but at her touch the lady suddenly sat up and grasped her shoulders in hands that felt like steel claws.

"Gert!" cried the witch, eyes glowing as if she had seen the goddess in the face. "The giant sleeps no more. And I who was dead am still alive."

Ribela's eyes brimmed with tears. Gert swallowed, astonished.

"It is sweet to be alive. I have just rediscovered this fact. Very sweet."