What lay on the other side of this inside-out world? Clive knew that he could travel there, given the opportunity. Had Neville been at the castle of N'wrbb Crrd'f? Was he gone now—possibly to some point opposite the castle, some land in the sky of the Dungeon?
Clive had come this close—within an hour, possibly within a corridor, of Neville. He could not give up his quest!
A squad of gnomish guards poured from the gap in the castle wall that had been carved out by the Baalbec A-9 of Annabelle Leigh. His former carnal feeling for Annie had been transformed into a kind of grandpaternal pride and concern for her welfare. No longer was she merely an attractive, if exotic, young woman whom he had encountered in this nightmarish world.
She was the flesh of his flesh, the blood of his blood. She was his child, and he would watch over her.
The gnomes attacked with pikes and axes.
Clive's forces defended themselves with whatever makeshift weapons they could find. Sticks and rocks and, when need be, their own bare hands, their teeth, their claws. Some of them possessed organs for producing and administering venom.
Shriek bounded into the air, her four long legs propelling her in one direction and then another, her four thin but powerful arms twisting the limbs and necks of the gnomes. Her mandibles, which Clive had thought merely vestigial, proved to be anything but—she administered stings that sent her enemies into paroxysms of agony and their compatriots into tremors of fright. She pulled her own spikelike hairs and threw them into the faces of attackers, sending them spinning onto the ground to writhe and scream until they died.
One gnomish attacker managed to strike at Shriek with a spike-headed mace. The impact shattered one of the spider woman's four arms. She set up a howl unlike any that Clive had heard before. With her remaining arms she picked up her attacker and hurled him bodily through the air. His own scream joined hers, cutting off with the splash of his body into the moat.
There was a thrashing, a sound of rending, a final agonized howl, and the gnome disappeared beneath the rippling water.
The gnome's mace had remained embedded in Shriek's flesh, held there by barbed spikes. The spider woman's screaming dominated the entire field of battle as she tore her own ruined limb from its socket, pulled the spike-headed mace from the discarded arm, and waded back into the battle, smashing gnomes with the mace.
The attackers were almost decimated when a cry of dismay went up among Clive's followers. Another squad of guards—no, two squads!—were approaching. They had left the castle and circled, one mass of troops moving clockwise, the other counterclockwise, to converge, pincers-fashion, on Clive's band of warriors.
Mighty Finnbogg broke away from a few remnants of the original band of gnomes that he had been harrying, and charged toward one of the new parties of attackers. Clive heard his canine snarling, a basso counterpoint to Shriek's piercing war cries. He saw Finnbogg disappear beneath the mass of gnomes.
Clive could see the vague outline of Finnbogg's figure, gnomes crawling over it like beetles over a rodent. But Finnbogg was not a passive victim. Gnomes and parts of gnomes flew from the hump that was Finnbogg. Blood spattered, gore splatted on the earth.
Annabelle and 'Nrrc'kth and Gram stood in a triangle facing outward. 'Nrrc'kth and Gram had armed themselves with weapons seized from falling gnomes. Annabelle relied solely upon her Baalbec A-9. Clive knew only a few of that device's potentialities. What it could do for Annabelle, what she could do with it, he could only guess.
Clive himself was armed with the ruby-handled ceremonial dagger he had received from N'wrbb Crrd'f. It seemed a pitiable tool to use against pikes and maces and battle-axes and broadswords, but Clive was a man inspired. He leaped and struck, dodged and twisted. He was covered with a sheen of sweat and dirt and blood, and he had no idea how much of the blood was his own, nor did he care.
This gentle, contemplative, perhaps unintentionally self-concerned man, had been turned into a machine for killing.
He sensed Sergeant Smythe at his back, heard the man's grunts of effort, shouts of triumph, cries of pain.
Clive heard Smythe shout, "Here, sah! Your hand!" The sergeant had managed to keep a few of the tiny explosive pellets that he had salvaged from the flying beast that had attacked them on the obsidian bridge. He slipped half of his supply into Clive's palm.
The pellets were hardly larger than orange pips.
Clive hurled one into the face of a howling attacker. It exploded with a roar that sent the attacker tumbling away, his face a bloody ruin. Clive hurled another of the pellets, and another. Each did its work. He heard Horace Smythe, behind him, cry out in triumph after each similar success.
But soon the supply of explosives was exhausted, and still the attackers kept coming.
Clive found himself face to face with a tall, slim figure in white and green. It was not the lovely 'Nrcc'kth, but her cruel would-be consort, N'wrbb Crrd'f.
The two men locked eyes. Clive wished for just one more of the minuscule, deadly pellets. Just one! But he had none. He had only the tiny, ruby- decorated dagger.
N'wrbb, armed with a longsword, swung his blade downward. Its trajectory was such that the heavy blade and polished edge would chop Clive from shoulder to sternum, should the blow land as intended.
Folliot did not jump back or try to dodge the stroke. Instead he leaped forward, dagger held chest- high, and plunged the blade at N'wrbb's heart. The blade dug into the pallid Figure and blood the color of emerald sprayed out around it.
Clive pulled back the dagger, expecting N'wrbb to fall dead, but Folliot had assumed that the internal organs of these slim creatures were arranged as were his own. It was a mistake on Folliot's part—a mistake that saved N'wrbb's life and very nearly cost Folliot his own.
The taller man shouted with anger and pain. Reversing his weapon, he lifted his longsword point uppermost, and brought it down heavily on Clive Folliot's head. The massive hilt pounded against Clive's unprotected skull like a war club.
Clive heard the impact rather than felt it. He fell away from N'wrbb, collapsing helplessly onto his knees, then toppling onto his side. He saw N'wrbb clutch at his chest. Green ichor was spreading over the previously immaculate white garment.
N'wrbb spun and stumbled away from Clive.
Folliot dragged himself painfully back to his feet. Around him the battle still raged. Gnomish guards and escaped prisoners slashed and pounded at one another. Bodies of the dead and dying littered the ground, and at one point Clive saw a horrid tentacle emerge from the moat and drag a form, still bleeding and struggling, into the black water.
Somewhere in the fray were Annabelle and Gram, 'Nrcc'kth and Shriek, faithful Finnbogg and sturdy Horace Hamilton Smythe. Some of them might be wounded, some dead. Still the battle raged.
Staggering and stumbling with every step, yet regaining strength with every movement, Clive pounded across the bloodstained earth, pursuing N'wrbb Crrd'f.
The taller man had fled back into the dungeon, and Clive pursued him there, unable to overtake the other's longer strides, yet grittily determined not to let him escape.
Down corridors, across echoing chambers, up flights of cold stone stairs they pounded. There seemed not a soul in the castle. Every soldier had been dispatched to the battle raging outside. The sounds of desperation, of triumph, and of death floated through the air, furnishing a cacophonous counterpoint to the thudding footsteps and panting breaths of the two men.
N'wrbb ran down a long corridor. Clive pursued him relentlessly. Behind him could be heard the sounds of other pursuers.
Clive permitted himself the momentary diversion of glancing over his shoulder. Behind him he could see a band of his companions and allies. Annie, 'Nrrc'kth, Gram, Tomàs, Smythe—and their inhuman or semihuman associates Finnbogg, Shriek, and Chang Guafe—followed in pursuit. They were like a polyglot army—but Clive did not stop to wait for them.
Suddenly N'wrbb disappeared. Clive reached the point at which he had last seen his
enemy. An alcove had been cut into the smooth black rock. A rich tapestry depicting a scene of shocking lasciviousness covered the entry way.
Clive pushed cautiously at the tapestry, expecting to find N'wrbb hiding behind it, readying a treacherous sword stroke. But the pallid man was not there. He cowered instead at the end of a short corridor, his back against a massive wooden door. N'wrbb faced Clive, but with the hilt of his longsword he was pounding at the door, pleading to be admitted.
Clive started forward. Only the furtive flickering of N'wrbb's dark green eyes stopped him at the edge of a black flagstone that appeared no different from the others around it. Clive braced himself against the wall, extended one foot cautiously, and laid it lightly on the stone.
With a roar a huge cube of blackness fell from above. Clive had not looked up; he had concentrated too fully on the man who faced him. The cube was another stone, one that must have weighed easily five hundred pounds. It crashed onto the floor, shattering into a thousand pieces. Flying fragments stung Clive s face and body. He had managed to draw back his foot in time, or it would have been turned to jelly. If he had stepped fully onto the stone, he would have been killed outright by the falling cube.
N'wrbb cried again to whoever was on the other side of the door—or whoever he thought was there. There was no response.
Clive leaped over the shattered stone. He stood barely a yard from N'wrbb. Armed only with his ruby-hilted dagger, he would have been easy prey for N'wrbb, but his opponent had no fight left in him.
"Let me go," the pallid man pleaded. "Just let me by you." He pointed down the short corridor they had both traversed. "Let me by you and I'll go away, I'll leave you alone, you can do anything you want."
"Too late," Folliot answered. "Fight for your life, Q'oornan monster!"
"I'm no Q'oornan! Don't you see, they made me prisoner, too! I'm on your side, Clive Folliot!"
"It's no good," Clive started to say.
But N'wrbb threw his sword at Clive's feet and collapsed, weeping and pleading. Clive Folliot could kill in a flaming rage, but he could not kill in cold blood.
Behind N'wrbb there was a stir. Clive saw that his band of allies had reached the corridor. They stood on the other side of the fallen, shattered block of stone. None of them moved or spoke. They stood witnessing the confrontation between their leader and his enemy.
Clive reached a hand toward N'wrbb. The pale man lashed upward, a heavy chunk of black rock in his fist. The fragment connected with Clive, striking him on the cheek and sending him hurtling against the wall. In an instant N'wrbb had bounded over Clive's form and clambered up the pile of shattered fragments. He reached into the blackness that yawned where the rock had previously hung. With a grunt and a sneering chuckle he disappeared.
Clive pulled himself upright. He made a move, started once again in pursuit of N'wrbb, determined that this time he would not fall prey to any trick. But something stopped him. It was the feel of a hand on his shoulder.
He turned and found himself facing the tall, beautiful 'Nrrc'kth. Her emerald-green eyes were level with his own. Her warm mouth and tempting lips were inches from his.
"Spare him, Clive." She took his hands in hers.
"But he wanted to—"
"I know," 'Nrrc'kth said softly.
"You said—"
"Yes, Clive Folliot. But now I plead for him. A villain, a monster—but a man of Djajj nonetheless. Of our entire planet, only the three—N'wrbb, and old Gram, and I—survive in the Dungeon. If he should die . . ." She shook her head slowly. "Besides, Clive Folliot, you have mastered him. You do not know what it means to a man of Djajj to be beaten and humiliated as you have beaten and humiliated N'wrbb."
"Then—what would you have me do?"
She still held his hands. Now she dropped one, and by the other led him back through the castle. Followed by the others—by Annie and Horace Smythe, Finnbogg and Shriek and Chang Guafe—they made their way to the great hall where Clive had first seen the two figures of pale white and brilliant green— the diamond and emerald, he realized with a shock, of which his brother's journal had spoken.
'Nrrc'kth led him to the great carved chair that had belonged to N'wrbb. She stood before him. Annabelle Leigh—User Annie—stood beside her and slightly to her rear. The others, including even the bizarre Chang Guafe, stood behind the two women, all of them facing Clive.
"Clive Folliot," 'Nrrc'kth said, "by right of courage, by right of combat, and by right of conquest, you have won the title of Lord of the Castle. Now a final test remains. A final test which you must pass or . . ."
She did not complete the sentence. Instead she turned to Annabelle Leigh. The young woman of Earth's future looked pallid, drained of her energies by the incredible demands of using her Baalbec A-9 to power the Nakajima flying machine and then melting the wall of the dungeon. And yet she had never looked more beautiful.
Annabelle raised her hands. Her fingers disappeared into her flowing hair. She removed something, something that was almost invisible, but that Clive could see shimmering and glinting like polished glass when he looked at it from the corner of his eye.
He remembered, suddenly, another moment when Annie had raised her hands to her head. Another moment when her facial expression had seemed strange, when Clive had wondered, fleetingly, at the reasons, only to be distracted by more pressing considerations.
Somehow, during her stay in New Kwajalein, during the time when User Annie had become, for the Sixteenth Marine Detachment, a creature of myth— she had received from the Japanese castaways the crown of the Lord of the Castle. And when that crown was worn by the True Lord of the Castle, Clive remembered, it was to glow.
Annie stood at Clive's one side, 'Nrrc'kth at the other.
Each holding the nearly invisible crown with her fingertips, the two beautiful women lowered it carefully upon Clive's head.
The glow that the crown emitted filled the room, and in the moment that it did, a cheer rose from
Clive's assembled friends, and from the multitude of freed prisoners who had followed them.
Annabelle Leigh put her arms around Clive and kissed him warmly on the face. Her breath was sweet, and he felt a single, hot tear fall from her eye onto his cheek. Then she released him, and the Lady 'Nrrc'kth was miraculously in his arms, her mouth pressed to his, her hands pressing him to her. He hesitated for only an instant, then responded to her with ardor equal to her own.
From somewhere behind Clive there was the swish of heavy velvet curtains. He pushed the Lady 'Nrrc'kth away and spun on his heel, the crown of the Lord of the Castle forgotten, his friends forgotten, everything forgotten.
He dashed to the swinging tapestry, pulled it aside, and pursued the fleeing N'wrbb Crrd'f. Back through corridors thick with dust the two men fled. Back to the alcove where they had faced each other. Back to the place where a pile of shattered stone marked Clive's narrow escape from death.
Beyond the pile of stone Clive saw a glint of metal, a plaque of polished brass beside the heavy wooden door upon which N'wrbb had so fruitlessly pounded. Suddenly Clive realized that a secret was about to be unraveled, a secret far more important to him than the pursuit of the craven N'wrbb Crrd'f.
Eight words were engraved in neat, military script upon the gleaming brass. Clive read the words, mouthing each syllable softly to himself.
Brigadier Sir Neville Folliot
Royal Somerset Grenadier Guards
Clive rapped on the metal plate, using the hilt of his dagger as a knocker. There was no more response to his rapping than there had been to N'wrbb's pounding and pleading. "Neville," Clive shouted, "open up! Open up! It is I, your brother Clive!"
Still no response. Perhaps there was no one in the room beyond the heavy door. Or perhaps Neville was there, unable to respond—injured—even dead.
Clive's band of faithful followers were nowhere to be seen. For all he knew they still stood surrounding 'Nrrc'kth and Annie, shocked by Clive's abrupt exit. He knew that
they would follow him, that they would appear at any moment. But he did not wait to ask their advice or their support.
This one thing he must do; this much he knew. If the others stayed with him, he would be strengthened and heartened. But if they did not, his course would remain unaltered.
He bent and picked up the heavy fragment of black stone with which N'wrbb had earlier struck him. He smashed it against the lock. The door shuddered. He pounded the rock against the mechanism again and again.
Finally the door swung slowly open.
The room inside was a perfect nineteenth-century gentleman's study. Heavy wooden furniture and a horsehair sofa stood neatly in their places. Rows of uniformly bound volumes filled tall cases, lining the walls. Where the bookcases did not cover the dark wooden paneling, portraits in gilt frames loomed portentously.
Soft gaslight illuminated the chamber.
In the center of the room, facing the doorway, stood a huge, ornately carved desk. A distinguished figure, garbed in beautifully tailored, proper gentleman's costume of the most modern civilian cut, sat industriously, engrossed in his task.
The work before him was a large journal bound in black leather. The man held a steel-tipped pen. From time to time he paused in his writing to dip his pen into an inkwell, then shake the surplus ink from the pen's nib and return to his task.
How long the tableau held, Clive could not guess. He knew only that his chest was tight, his breathing shallow. He could sense his band of allies waiting silently a half-dozen paces away. He could feel his heart pounding in his bosom, the blood rushing past his eardrums.
Neville!
Neville, at last!
The well-tailored man finished his page. He returned his pen carefully to its holder, lifted a square of blotting paper, and dried the sheet before him. He opened a drawer in the pedestal of his desk and drew something from it.
All of this—all of this—without raising his head from his work.
What was Neville's place in the Dungeon? What was his alliance with the Q'oornans? Which of the players in Annie's fabled n-dimensional chess game moved the piece called Neville Folliot—and for what purpose?
The Black Tower Page 31