[Cenotaph Road 05] - Fire and Fog

by Robert E. Vardeman - (ebook by Undead)

  “We are immortal, you and I. Survive this petty difference of opinion? Of course we will. Both of us. The real question you ought to ask is the loser’s condition.”

  “If I have to, I’ll scatter your body back along the Road. Terrill did it once. I can do it, also.”

  Laughter. And pain.

  Lan doubled over as his insides ripped apart. For a moment he forgot this was a duel of magics. Ruled only by the physical, he sensed his life force slipping away, his body being torn asunder. He reached once more for the depths of his power and came away empty. This attack, as simple as it was, had defeated him.

  Lan Martak felt life draining from him.

  And then the flow stopped. Seizing the opportunity, he summoned forth his light mote. The light familiar entered and suffused through his body, leaving him weak but in control once more. The memory of pain and the need to avoid further anguish allowed him to fend off Claybore’s renewed attack. The other mage sensed his spells failing and hurled more and more potent, less and less subtle ones at Lan.

  They failed. And Lan found conjurings of his own that he hadn’t realized he knew to cast against Claybore.

  “Pressure,” he muttered. “Pressure unlike anything you have ever felt!”

  Claybore let out a scream that almost deafened Lan. The spell compressed the sides of Claybore’s skull, producing more and deeper cracks. The jaw came unhinged and clattered to the floor.

  “And more,” said Lan, the power his once again. He didn’t understand why the sudden change had occurred within him. He accepted and used it. To defeat Claybore now meant freedom all along the Cenotaph Road, for him and for Inyx and Krek and everyone else. The conquering grey legions Claybore commanded would soon fall into disarray without their mage-general.

  The spell crushed down on Claybore’s body, compressing the torso and breaking the reattached arms. Lan almost cried aloud in triumph when he saw the Kinetic Sphere—Claybore’s heart—slowly being squeezed from the chest cavity. Victory was within his grasp. And still the power flowed to him.

  “This can’t be,” moaned Claybore. “It won’t be!”

  Lan staggered as his spells rebounded and found… nothingness. Claybore had vanished from between the anvils of his magic.

  “Where did you go?” he cried out. “Let’s finish this now, once and for all!”

  Only deathly silence greeted him. He had been close, so very, very close and now victory had been stolen from him. Claybore had eluded him at the last possible instant. Lan sent his dancing light mote forth to seek out Claybore. Long minutes passed and the mote reported no trace of the other sorcerer. Disheartened, Lan propped himself against a table and wondered how he might find Claybore, who had obviously fled this world and traveled the Road.

  As he worked out this problem, a new one occurred to him. He sensed another powerful presence on this world, in Yerrary.

  “Lirory’s dead,” he said aloud.

  “Lan, you look so drawn. What’s happened?” Kiska k’Adesina’s concern struck him as hollow and a lie. She cared nothing for him. But even as he thought this, other emotions surfaced and his view toward her softened.

  “Claybore has left Yerrary—even this world. I can’t track him down. I’ll have to follow him to other places, but there’s a power emanating from down below I had not felt before. Or rather, I have felt it before.”

  “You’re not making sense.”

  Lan realized the woman was right. His confusion centered on the familiarity of that power center and the impossibility of it. The other time when he had flagged in battle with Lirory and Claybore, this source had opened to him with the same feeling of elusive recognition. What it was stayed just beyond his grasp, yet he knew it.

  “Stay here,” he said to the woman. “I’ve got to explore and see if I can’t get some answers.”

  “I’m coming with you,” Kiska declared.

  Lan started to protest but didn’t find it within him to tell her no. He motioned and she hurried along, matching his long strides as he found all the right corridors and down ramps to take him into the newer parts of Yerrary still being dug out from the living bedrock of the planet. The excavations were abandoned and he had to step over piles of rock and go around large boulders, but his stride was sure and his destination plain in his mind. The place he sought glowed with a dark power and drew him like a magnet pulls iron.

  “Where are we going?” Kiska asked him.

  He didn’t answer. He pushed aside rock, jumped back as the poorly buttressed roof sent down a shower of small stones and dust, and kept on until he came to the chamber Claybore had visited. Traces of the other mage lingered; Lan sensed the magical residues indicating physical presence. Whatever lay within this room was important enough to demand that Claybore actually be here.

  “What’s this cistern?” asked Kiska, going up to the low rock wall and cautiously peering down into the blackness. She shivered and looked away. “I don’t like it, whatever it’s for.”

  “I’ve seen it before. On my home world.” Lan experienced a dizziness as sensations rushed in on him.

  “It’s only a well.”

  “It’s more,” he said. Lan looked around the room and saw no sign of life. For a crazy instant he considered shoving Kiska into the pit to satisfy the blood urges of the entity living at its bottom—if the pit had a true physical bottom. “Wait here. I’ll return in a few minutes,” he said.

  Kiska started to follow, but a minor spell rooted her to the spot, her muscles frozen. Lan Martak walked like one still asleep as he traced his way through the diggings and came to a chamber with pipes and vats. His mind had slipped into a curious fugue state, not fully rational and yet knowing what to do. None dared stand in his way now, even if his movements appeared mechanical, alien.

  He hardly glanced around the huge room, even though he had never seen it before. Streams of burning water poured down the stone walls all around as pipes leaked and vats were decanted. The troughs spiraling down from above were filled to their rims with the acid water that continually poured from the outer sky.

  Hopping out to see who invaded his domain came the toadlike Eckalt.

  “What is it?” the creature demanded. “My time is precious. You interrupt important work. There’s water to be… aieee!”

  Lan made a quick pass with his hand and stifled the toad-being’s words. Still as if he walked in a daze, Lan returned to the chamber containing the cistern. Eckalt half-hopped, half was dragged by the spell Lan had cast. Without allowing the being another word, Lan physically picked up Eckalt and dropped him into the pit.

  Amid the curtains of blackness came a stirring.

  The Resident of the Pit spoke.

  “Lan Martak, we meet once again. It has been a considerable time for you and only a fraction of a second for me.”

  “Resident of the Pit,” he said unsteadily, “did you aid me in my duel with Claybore?”

  “The questions most important are those least asked. For the true question, look into your own soul and study what you find. But perhaps those answers are the hardest to accept.”

  “You did help me?”

  “I gave you nothing but the vision of what powers you truly commanded.”

  “What is this?” asked Kiska. “There’re things moving down inside the well, but I can’t make them out. Is this a ghost?”

  Lan ignored her, as did the Resident.

  “If you only revealed what was already inside of me, why can’t I defeat Claybore? Can I?”

  “Claybore is a cunning mage and a powerful one. He has claimed to be immortal.”

  “He said I was immortal, also.”

  “Lan Martak, many make the claim. Few actually are. And those select few are the damned.”

  Lan went cold inside.

  “Explain, Resident of the Pit. What do you mean by that?”

  “Your destiny lies not on this world but on another.”

  “Where Claybore retreated?”

  T
he Resident didn’t answer directly. The obliqueness troubled Lan more than prediction of complete failure would have.

  “Decisions are never easy. The past must be laid to rest before the future can be born.”

  “What are you telling me? Will I defeat Claybore? If he’s immortal, I can’t kill him.”

  “You, too, are immortal.”

  Lan’s mind raced. The wording answered the question. Claybore hadn’t lied about this. Lan looked down at his body as if seeing something new. Immortal? The idea was hard to accept.

  “I can’t die?”

  “Physical death is not your primary concern,” said the Resident of the Pit.

  “Claybore is,” said Lan. “I need to find him. Give me the powers I need to find and defeat him.”

  “Give you the powers?” came the answer after a long pause, as if this astounded the entity within the well. Lan couldn’t tell if it was scorn or amusement locked within this answer.

  “He’s still more powerful than I am. Give me what I need to destroy him.”

  “Claybore imprisoned me. I cannot give you power to destroy him. That is one condition of my servitude.”

  “Then tell me where I can find him. You’re a deity. You can do that much. You once said your being spread across all space and time. You have to be able to find him.”

  “For millennia I have been trapped and virtually powerless. All I could do was keep shifting Claybore’s parts about to keep him from recovering them, but he has grown far too strong for that ploy now. Other weapons must be used.”

  “Tell me!” cried Lan, frustrated.

  “Use your own instincts. Consider Claybore and his immediate goal. Would he abandon his legs?” The voice of the Resident faded and the stirrings in the shadowy depths of the well began to subside.

  But Lan hardly noticed. He came out of his inner fog and smiled when the answer came to him.

  “Claybore’s legs are still here. They’re locked in a chamber over there.” He pointed at a solid rock wall.

  “Where?” asked Kiska eagerly.

  “Some miles off through solid rock, but there, still there. No, Claybore wouldn’t abandon them. He needs those legs. And he didn’t flee when I began to triumph over him. He only hid. He’s around somewhere. He’s got to be!”

  Lan again sent out his light mote and again it returned without discovering Claybore’s hiding place. Frustrated, he sat on the rim of the well and thought even harder, his mind once more beginning to really function. Nothing was wrong with his logic. Claybore had simply outsmarted him, made better use of the magics at his command.

  Lan’s fingers traced out a simple triangle in the air in front of him. He began the chant to produce a scrying spell he’d found in Lirory’s grimoire. At first the air remained calm and only the three-sided frame burned with activity. Then Lan found the right combinations of minor spells and a picture formed within the perimeter.

  “He is still within Yerrary!” he said. The familiar skull loomed starkly and then winked out. But Claybore’s defeating the magic didn’t matter. He had found out the sorcerer hid. That information alone made the effort worthwhile.

  “You have become his equal,” said Kiska.

  The woman sat beside him on the rim, her leg brushing against his. Her hand reached out hesitantly, lightly brushed his, then moved upward to undo the fastenings on his tunic. Lan watched in silence, his heart feeling as if it would leap from his breast.

  “I want you,” Kiska said softly. Her words came out choked with emotion.

  Lan started to brush her off, to push on and complete what he saw as his mission—to destroy Claybore’s legs. But welling up from deep within came emotions Lan couldn’t control.

  “And I want you,” he said in a weak voice. Their lips met, crushed together passionately. Then their bodies pressed tightly and they slipped to the cold rock floor. Neither noticed, neither minded as they slowly twined and untwined, each movement carrying them closer to their mutual goal.

  Lan looked down into Kiska’s desire-wracked face and felt the dizzy confusion of emotions vying for supremacy. She was his most hated enemy, the woman sworn to kill him, and now he made love to her. He saw the same contradictions mirrored in her face even as he moved above her, his hips swinging and hers lifting upward.

  Faster and faster they moved together until the world burst around them.

  Lan sank forward, his arms circling Kiska’s thin body. The woman’s brown eyes blazed with unholy glee as she gazed past his shoulder and at the silent Inyx standing in the entryway, her face pale and her hands shaking. Inyx had witnessed it all and Kiska took sadistic pleasure in knowing it.

  Without a word, Inyx turned and walked off. Her once confident stride now faltered and she stumbled twice within Kiska k’Adesina’s sight.

  Kiska immediately turned her attention back to Lan Martak, began doing small things, intimate things, and soon enough they were again passionately engaged.

  Kiska k’Adesina’s revenge had been fed but not sated. That would come. Claybore had promised her that it would come. Soon.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “The spells. They are incredible. Since speaking with the Resident of the Pit, I’m able to see what Lirory meant rather than what he wrote.” Lan Martak hunched over the table creaking under the weight of Lirory’s grimoires. The pages now burned with runic writings. The man’s eyes scanned the arcane words with practiced ease.

  “Did this Resident creature give you this extra ability?” asked Kiska k’Adesina.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so, but simply being near such power as he commands might have released reservoirs inside me I hadn’t known existed.”

  “You’re the greatest mage to ever walk the Road,” she cooed.

  Lan smiled broadly at the praise. He felt nothing hollow in it at all. The spell had progressed too far for that. Lan saw only love and adoration—and felt only love and adoration for Kiska.

  “This book is a record of Lirory’s travels along the Road seeking out Claybore’s parts. He used a spell to locate the arms and draw them back to the tunnel where he placed them in special boxes. When he had them safely in place, he collapsed the tunnel and left them there for almost forty Yerrary years.”

  “What is this spell? Can you use it?”

  “I know the spell now as well as Lirory, but there’s no need for it. The arms are once more connected to Claybore’s torso.”

  “But the legs?” Kiska pressed.

  “I can sense their location without Lirory’s spell.” Lan turned and perched on the edge of the table, one leg idly swinging, his mind lost in the intricacy of the gnome’s ancient lore. “Lirory had a reason for collecting the parts.”

  “He wanted to blackmail Claybore.”

  “That wasn’t it. He had a use for them. I know it. Lirory had pretensions of being ruler of everything along the Road himself. There was some spell, some conjuration, requiring those parts that would give him the power he sought.”

  “He had control of Yerrary. What more could a gnome want?”

  “You underestimate him. These grimoires show he was a powerful mage. And my duel with him proved that. He had the ability to rule—certainly as beneficently as Claybore,” Lan added with a hint of sarcasm. “But how did he plan to use the legs? Those seem to be the key to Lirory’s entire plan. The arms were important, but the legs are the cornerstone of his conquest.”

  Lan felt the answer dancing at the edges of his mind, just as his light mote bobbed to and fro. He smiled a bit and let the mote come closer. The mage saw the surface of his familiar ripple with pride at the attention he gave it. Before he had conjured this fine companion, it had been nothing—nothingness. Now it lived and took on an existence finer than anything else in the universe.

  Lan basked in its admiration, its need to please him. And why shouldn’t it try to give him his every desire? He was more than human now. He was an immortal!

  “Lan?” came the cautious, questioning vo
ice. “You look… different.”

  “Different?” he said. “Yes, I am. Ever since I spoke with the Resident, I have been stronger.”

  Lan Martak felt the power growing within. What power that was he couldn’t put into words, nor did he desire to try. But he was filled with an energy that ran without limit. Never again would he become drained over the simplest of spells.

  He let fire dance from finger to finger and smirked. Once this had been the only spell he knew. Now it was the most trivial of thousands. He could send forth lightning blasts that tore apart mountains. All of Yerrary might split asunder, should he ever feel the whim. The entire world could be sent spinning crazily into its sun if he summoned the proper elementals.

  Nothing was beyond his power now. Even Claybore acknowledged that. And Claybore would soon be defeated. Even if the disembodied sorcerer couldn’t be killed, he could be strewn once more along the Road. And he’d soon enough suffer that fate. Lan Martak would do what Terrill had failed to do, too. Stopping Claybore so that he never again menaced a single solitary soul burned as Lan’s only goal.

  “You look odd,” said Kiska.

  “Odd?” Anger flared irrationally. “I am not odd. Never say such a thing.”

  Kiska cringed at his wrath. And this was as it should be. He was more than a mere human now. Not only was he immortal, he held the reins of the universe in his hand. A single flick of those reins and empires fell. Lan Martak. Invincible!

  “I meant nothing by it, Master.”

  “Master?” he said, anger gone and replaced with confusion. He hardly knew what to do or say anymore. He flew into rages with no good reason. And Kiska k’Adesina spoke the title in both fear and veneration. He wanted neither.

  Or did he? The taste of power was sweet. Almost too sweet.

  Kiska dropped to her knees and lowered her gaze to the floor.

  “Get up,” he said irritably. “Don’t worship me. I’m no god. I’m not even a king and don’t want to be.” Lan spoke the words, but feelings quivered within that told him he wasn’t being totally truthful. Success had rammed its barb in his psyche and wouldn’t easily dislodge.