Infinite Day (114 page)

“Oh, sit down, woman; I'm not going to kill him—or you—yet. The living are more fun to play with than the dead.”

Then he bent down to stare at Merral. “I'm sorry, ‘great adversary.' This must have been another disappointment. No lightning bolts; no fire from heaven. It's not your day, is it?”

Nezhuala stood up. “That's the problem with your God. He is very unreliable. He often doesn't answer at all. That's what Delastro found. Haven't you found that, D'Avanos?”

Merral stared at the deformed face leering at him from beneath the crown. “Even if he doesn't save me, I'll still follow him. Better to be dead . . .” But at that point all his losses overpowered him and he could say no more.

“Better to be dead . . . than
follow me
,” completed Nezhuala with a lifeless smile. “I will soon oblige there.” Then his eyes swept on beyond Merral to Jorgio, who was crouched on the floor, and the smile faded.

“You! The crooked, ugly, old man.” The dark lips twisted in puzzlement. “I know nothing of you. I don't know why you are here. I ought to have my margrave straighten you out with his sword.” Then he shrugged and made a spitting noise of dismissal. His gaze fell on Betafor.

“Your tame Allenix.” He gave a cruel laugh. “You served them.” Merral saw her quail. “I ought to destroy you.”

“I serve you now, Lord-Emperor and King,” she pleaded.

“Of course you do. Allenix always serve the victors.”

Nezhuala walked back to just in front of the throne and raised the scepter high. “Hear this, my first act as king: I dissolve the Assembly of Worlds. It is no more.”

The envoy spoke, his voice strong and unyielding. “So
you
say. Now, listen to me. I have two messages, and I give the first of them.”

“If you must.”

At that instant, the envoy seemed to become even taller and his presence even more massive, as if he were carved out of stone. “The Most High has let the Lord's Assembly be tested. I now announce the High King's verdict: the Assembly has passed the test.”

The loud and solemn words seemed to reverberate round the great chamber.

“
Pah!
” Nezhuala snorted.

“
Do not interrupt me!
” the envoy replied in a voice of almost physical force. Nezhuala reeled at the rebuke and took a step back. Merral saw Delastro, his face as white as flour, slip behind the throne.

The envoy spoke again. “Your master, the great serpent, was allowed to test the Assembly. He tempted them to become like you and seek to use power your way, but they refused. They did not betray their calling. The light dimmed, but it never became darkness.” A gloved hand pointed at Nezhuala. “There was a deadly peril, but
you
were never it. No. Not even your master believes in you, or in that shabby, frightened collection of worlds that you call the Dominion.”

“You lie,” Nezhuala snapped back, but Merral sensed doubt.

“
I
do not lie. Listen, while I tell you the real truth. What your master hoped was that your attack would frighten the Assembly into denying what they were called to be. His hope was not the triumph of the Dominion, but the rise of a fallen Assembly. An Assembly of hatred and malice; an Assembly of men and women like Delastro, prepared to use any means and any power to win. He sought the Dark Assembly.”

As he pronounced the last words, Merral had a brief but intense vision of an immense marching army clad in somber armor, and beyond his current sorrows he felt a terrible dread.

The envoy turned to Merral and Anya. “It was a real danger. Delastro shows how real the risk was. When good fights evil, the very worst result is not that good loses but that, in waging the war, good becomes evil.”

“So, they won the moral argument,” Nezhuala said with a contemptuous shrug. “That is irrelevant. The Assembly is ended. We have inherited all that it was.”

Merral cried out, “It will never be
your
Assembly. You cannot take away what we have been.”

“Oh, Commander, brave words, but you fail to understand. Even at the last. When, in the next hour, the realms are united, I will start to replace the past. I will rewrite history so thoroughly that no one will ever know it was otherwise. In our history, the Rebellion—as you call it—will succeed. Lucas Ringell and all the rest will be swept away. All your achievements will become ours. There will be no other version of history, no single other voice to say it was not so. There will have been no Assembly; only the Dominion—past, present, and future—worlds without end.”

Silence reigned. Merral tried to move but found that from his waist downward his muscles remained immobile.

“I have listened to you too long,” Nezhuala said and raised the scepter again. “Ape, begin the machinery. Now, the rest of you, watch as I summon the night.”

He waved the scepter, and Merral looked upward to see that the roof of the chamber had become transparent, and above them hung not the vaulted stone ceiling but the evening sky.

Even in his wounded state, what Merral saw made him gasp. To the west, the sun was setting as a vast, fiery red ball; and cutting down through it from top to bottom, like a knife stroke, was a long black line.

He knew what it was in an instant, but he could not speak. It was Anya, crouched beside him, who spoke; and her words were trembling.

“The Blade of Night.”

As he watched, utterly appalled, Merral saw a darkness spread out like ink from the Blade and begin to stain the sun.

Nezhuala was speaking. “It wasn't in the dust cloud. I wasn't going to be caught twice by a polyvalent fusion bomb. It had been in Below-Space for days. It is now here as a sign of the ending of the Assembly. And as the key to unlock the new universe.”

Behind him, Ape had opened up the wheeled box, and inside, a series of lights were flashing. He pulled two small cylinders out and, with a fussy precision, put them vertically on the ground five or six meters apart on each side of the throne.

Merral saw Delastro, evidently terrified, trying to sneak away to the side door, but Lezaroth noticed and gestured him over with a peremptory motion of his sword.

Nezhuala, swinging the scepter like a toy, spoke again. “Let me explain, so that your misery is complete. The time for uniting the realms has begun. Ever since I was
remade
 . . . I have plotted the utter destruction of the Assembly. My advisors pointed out to me that the Gate system could be used. Only recently have I understood how.”

Ape had returned to the box now and was pressing buttons. Nezhuala turned to him.

“Ape, are enough Gates online?” The answer was a nod. “Do you have access to them all?” Another nod. “Then continue.”

The high bare wall at the end of the chamber lit up to show two horizontal bands of color. The lower was a somber red, the upper pale green, and the sharp boundary between them bobbed up and down slightly.

Nezhuala swung back to face Merral. “Your Gate network is vast, and you were right: I did want it. I wanted it so much that I threw away an entire army to fool you that you had won so you might open it for me to take freely. And now I have it. Ape is reprogramming it through the Blade as I speak.”

Nezhuala stroked the scepter. “But I don't want it for communication or transport. It has another use: the Gate system covers an immense volume of space. Calculations show that if we link all the Gates to the Blade and open all of them at once, we can—with some programming—create an anomaly over the entire extent of Assembly space. An anomaly so big that it will deform the fabric of space itself.” His tone now was confiding. “Rather like pushing a finger into a rubber sheet, Ape tells me. Not well, incidentally; we had to remove his tongue to put in some ancillary circuits. Anyway, if we sustain the pressure long enough—stick the finger in further if you like—we will rupture the boundary between the Nether-Realms and Normal-Space. The sheet will burst. Ape, show the simulation.”

Ape bowed, and on the wall the dark red began to bulge upward into the pale green and push it aside. Then it burst and the pale green vanished entirely.

“The red is the Nether-Realms; the green, of course, your Normal-Space. And at the rupture, the fabric of the entire universe will be changed.” He gave a leer. “Did you hear me? The fabric of the
entire
universe will be changed.” Nezhuala looked at Merral. “Impressive, eh? The dimensions will be merged and the realms united. And all those beings that exist in the Nether-Realms will be set free.
Liberated.
”

Merral, struggling with a raging sea of dark emotions, sensed a horrifying logic in the words.

“Is this true, Envoy?” he asked.

“Indeed.”

“Then it must be stopped.”

“That is why the Most High has summoned you all.”

The display on the wall returned to being the simple double band of color.

Ape began pressing more buttons now. Just above the floor between the two cylinders, a line of glowing and upright red symbols appeared. The man-creature went over, stooped down, and touched them, and Merral realized that they were somehow solid.

He heard a grunt of astonishment behind him.

Ape pressed a digit, and Merral saw it change.

Very slowly, the numbers and symbols began to scroll from left to right. And as they did, Ape stared at them, his finger poised over them as they slid past. Every so often he reached out to touch them, and the figures changed.
He adjusts them.

Merral could make nothing of the figures; they seemed incomprehensible.
Yet they
remind me of something. But what?

Jorgio's voice sounded in his ear. “Mister Merral, it's the numbers.” Fear resounded in the words. “That's what I was brought here for.”
The formulae he was given but we didn't understand!

The formulae continued to inch their way rightward now, every symbol carefully checked by Ape. Merral saw that the boundary line across the display was being distorted and bulging upward as the dark red began to rise.

The crowned figure gave a cackle of delight. “See, it works!”

A glowing gloom began to descend. Beyond the chamber the ink-stained sun, now bloodred, seemed to dim. Above, the sky darkened and the stars appeared.

Bending down, the envoy spoke. “Merral and Anya, listen.
They
cannot hear us. You all have tasks. Jorgio's is the most important. But you must protect him by distracting the others. So, Merral, I will free you: you will attack Nezhuala. Anya, you are to attack Lezaroth. Can you do it?”

“Yes . . . I will.” Merral heard determination win over fear. He looked at Lezaroth with his brooding, silent menace. “We can't win,” Merral said.

“Did I say anything about you
winning
?”

“No.”

The envoy reached out a gloved hand and touched Merral's knee. He felt life and sensation flow back into his body. “Alas, I can give you no other help than this. Here, at this last, it must be humans that fight. Now, wait for Jorgio's command.”

Ahead, before the throne, more incomprehensible equations slipped past Ape's scrutiny. Merral looked at Jorgio's face to see him squinting at the symbols and muttering. “Not that. Like that but no!
Tut!
Not
that
.”

Merral squeezed Anya's hand hard.

He saw that beneath them the floor was starting to become transparent, as if the stone were turning to ice. On the end wall, the light green space was being pushed away as the red bubbled up.
It better be soon.
There can be only minutes left
.

Jorgio gave a sharp grunt of warning. “
Maybe
.” Merral slipped into a crouch.

Beneath him, through the increasingly transparent floor, he was aware of terrible shapes moving, and he remembered the horror of the Blade of Night.

“
This is it!
” Jorgio said and in a ponderous, twisted way, began lurching toward the symbols.

Merral bounded to his feet and ran at Nezhuala, who was gazing at the scarred sun. Caught by surprise, he turned, raised the scepter, and swung it. Merral ducked—he heard it whistle past his head—and struck him hard on the chest. Intending to throw Nezhuala to the ground, he grabbed the man's shoulder with one hand, put an arm under his chin, and began to push him down. The crown flew off and rolled away on the ground. They went face-to-face. As Merral took in every detail of the terrible scarring, he sensed his opponent had an awesome and unnatural strength. The smaller man should have toppled over, but he didn't.

Then the heavy scepter swung back and crashed with a terrible force against Merral's back and shoulder. He heard something crack, pain surged through him, and his grip slackened.

Nezhuala pushed him harshly away, and Merral collapsed on the ground in renewed agony.

“You! The great adversary!” Scorn and hatred flashed in the eyes. The scepter was lifted up and smashed down on Merral's right knee with a terrible crunching sound, felt as much as heard, and for a second, he nearly passed out. Everything became a red blur of pain.

Out of the corner of his eye, Merral could see Anya clawing and punching at Lezaroth's face. Then she was thrown down to the ground, out of his view, and he saw a booted foot swinging hard at her.

He heard a high-pitched scream.

Beyond his pain, he heard a new sound: a strange, frantic, gasping; and he knew it was Ape.

“What are you trying to do, you distorted, disgusting old man?” Nezhuala was shouting.
At Jorgio.
“You crippled
wreckage
of a man.” The words were spat out. “I loathe you!”

He heard something hard smashing down into a softer something that yielded. There was a great wheezing yell of pain, and then came a second blow and a duller whimper of agony.