I threw myself flat on the other side of the dark structure, using its base as a shield.
“It is likely one of us is going to die,” I called out, “since we are not pulling our punches. Either way, I won’t have a chance to ask you later. What’s your bitch? What am I to you?”
The only reply was a chuckling sound from the other side of the Fount, as the floor began to move beneath me.
From somewhere off to my right, near the foot of the undamaged stair, I heard Jurt say, “A fool in all places? What about close quarters?” and I looked up in time to see him appear before Jasra and seize hold of her.
A moment later he screamed, as Jasra lowered her head and her lips touched his forearm. She pushed him away then, and he fell down the remaining steps, landing stiffly, not moving.
I crept to the right of the Fount, over the sharp edges of the broken flooring, which jiggled and sawed at me within the matrix of Mask’s power.
“Jurt is out of it,” I commented, “and you stand alone now, Mask, against the three of us. Call it quits, and I’ll see that you go on living.”
“Three of you,” came that flat, distorted voice. “You admit that you cannot beat me without help?”
“Beat?” I said. “Perhaps you consider it a game. I do not. I will not be bound by any rules you choose to recognize. Call it quits or I’ll kill you, with or without help, any way I can.”
A dark object suddenly appeared overhead, and I rolled back away from the Fount as it came to rest in the basin. It was Jurt. Unable to move normally because of the paralytic effect of Jasra’s bite, he had trumped away from the foot of the stair and into the Fount.
“You have your friends, Lord of Chaos, and I have mine,” Mask replied, as Jurt moaned softly and began to glow.
Suddenly Mask went spinning into the air, as I heard the flooring shatter. The Fount itself died down, grew weaker, as a flaming tower twisted ceiling-ward, rising from a new opening in the floor, bearing Mask with it on the crest of its golden plume.
“And enemies,” Jasra stated, moving nearer.
Mask spread his arms and legs and wheeled slowly through the middle air, suddenly in control of his trajectory. I got to my feet and backed away from the Fount. I’m seldom at my best at centers of geological catastrophes.
A rushing, rumbling sound now came from the doubled fountain, and a high-pitched, sourceless-seeming note accompanied it. A small wind sighed among the rafters. The tower of fire atop which Mask rode continued its slow spiraling, and the spray in the lowered fountain began a similar movement. Jurt stirred, moaned, raised his right arm.
“And enemies,” Mask acknowledged, beginning a series of gestures I recognized immediately because I’d spent a lot of time figuring them out.
“Jasra!” I cried. “Watch out for Sharu!”
Jasra took three quick steps to her left and smiled. Something very much like lightning then fell from the rafters, blackening the area she had just departed.
“He always starts with a lightning stroke,” she explained. “He’s very predictable.”
She spun once and vanished redly, with a sound like breaking glass.
I looked immediately to where the old man had stood, RINALDO carved upon his right leg. He was leaning against the wall now, one hand to his forehead, the other implementing a simple but powerful shielding spell.
I was about to scream for Mandor to take the old boy out, when Mask hit me with a Klaxon spell which temporarily deafened me while bursting blood vessels in my nose.
Dripping, I dove and rolled, interposing the now-rising Jurt between myself and the sorcerer in the air. Jurt actually appeared to be throwing off the effects of Jasra’s bite. So I drove my fist into his stomach as I rose and turned him into an even better position to serve as my shield. A mistake. I received a jolt from his body, not unlike a nasty electrical shock, and he even managed a brief laugh as I fell.
“He’s all yours,” I heard him gasp then.
From the corner of my eye, I saw where Jasra and Sharu Garrul stood, each of them seemingly holding one end of a great long piece of macrame work woven of cables. The lines were pulsing and changing colors, and I knew they represented forces rather than material objects, visible only by virtue of the Logrus Sight, under which I continued to operate. The pulse increased in tempo, and both sank slowly to their knees, arms still extended, faces glistening. A quick word, a gesture, and I could break that balance. Unfortunately, I had problems of my own just then. Mask was swooping toward me like some huge insect—expressionless, shimmering, deadly. A succession of brittle snapping sounds occurred within the front wall of the Keep, where a series of jagged cracks raced downward like black lightning. I was aware of falling dust beyond the spiraling lights, of the growling and the whining sounds—faint now within my ringing ears—of the continuing vibration of the floor beneath my half-numbed legs. But that was all right. I raised my left hand as my right slid within my cloak.
A fiery blade appeared in Mask’s right hand. I did not stir, but waited a second longer before speaking the guide words to my Fantasia-for-Six-Acetylene-Torches spell as I snapped my forearm back to cover my eyes and rolled to the side.
The stroke missed me, passing through broken stone. Mask’s left arm fell across my chest, however, elbow connecting with my lower ribs. I did not stop to assess damages, though, as I heard the sword of fire crackle and come free of the stone. And so, turning, I struck with my own more mundane dagger of steel, driving its full length up into Mask’s left kidney.
There followed a scream as the sorcerer stiffened and slumped beside me. Almost immediately thereafter I was kicked with considerable force behind my right hip. I twisted away and another blow landed upon my right shoulder. I am sure it was aimed for my head. As I covered my neck and temples and rolled away, I heard Jurt’s voice, cursing.
Drawing my longer blade, I rose to my feet, and my gaze met Jurt’s. He was rising at the same time, and he held Mask cradled in his arms.
“Later,” he said to me, and he vanished, bearing the body away with him. The blue mask remained on the floor, near to a long smear of blood.
Jasra and Sharu were still facing each other from kneeling positions, panting, bodies completely drenched, their life forces twisting about each other like mating serpents.
Then, like a surfacing fish, Jurt appeared within the tower of forces beyond the Fount. Even as Mandor hurled two of his spheres—which seemed to grow in size as they fled down the chamber, to crash into the Fount and reduce it to rubble—I saw what I believed I would never see again.
As the reverberation of the Fount’s collapse spread and the groaning and grinding within the walls was replaced by a snapping and swaying, and dust, gravel and timbers fell about me, I was moving forward, skirting the wreckage, sidestepping new geysers and rivulets of glowing forces, cloak raised to protect my face, black extended.
Jurt cursed me roundly as I came on. Then, “Pleased, brother? Pleased?” he said. “May death be the only peace between us.”
But I ignored the predictable sentiment, for I had to get a better look at what I thought I had seen moments before. I leaped over a piece of broken masonry and beheld the fallen sorcerer’s face within the flames, head cradled against his shoulder.
“Julia!” I cried.
But they vanished even as I moved forward, and I knew it was time for me to do the same.
Knight of Shadows
The Second Amber Pentology - Merlin’s Story: Book 4
Chapter 1
Her name was Julia, and I’d been damn certain she was dead back on April 30 when it all began. My finding her grisly remains and destroying the doglike creature which I’d thought had killed her were pretty much the way it started. And we had been lovers, which I suppose was how things had really commenced. Long before.
Perhaps I could have trusted her more. Perhaps I should never have taken her on that shadow-walk which led to denials that took her away from me, down dark ways and into th
e studio of Victor Melman, a nasty occultist I later had to kill—the same Victor Melman who was himself the dupe of Luke and Jasra. But now, perhaps—just barely—I might have been in a position to forgive myself for what I’d thought I’d done, for it seemed that I hadn’t really done it after all. Almost.
That is to say, I learned that I hadn’t been responsible for it while I was in the act of doing it. It was when I drove my knife into the side of the mysterious sorcerer Mask, who had been on my case for some time, that I discovered that Mask was really Julia. My half brother Jurt, who’s been trying to kill me longer than anyone else in the business, snatched her away, and they vanished then, immediately following his transformation into a kind of living Trump.
As I fled the burning, crumbling Keep there at the Citadel of the Four Worlds, a falling timber caused me to dodge to my right, trapping me in a cul-de-sac of crushed masonry and burning beams. A dark metal ball flashed past me then, seeming to grow as it moved. It struck the wall and passed through it, leaving a hole one could dive through—a hint I was not slow in taking. Outside I jumped the moat, using my Logrus extensions to knock aside a section of fence and a score of troops, before I turned back and shouted, “Mandor!”
“Right here,” came his soft voice from behind my left shoulder.
I turned in time to see him catch a metal ball, which bounced once before us and dropped into his extended hand.
He brushed ashes from his black vest and ran a hand through his hair. Then he smiled and turned back toward the burning Keep.
“You’ve kept your promise to the Queen,” he remarked, “and I don’t believe there’s anything more for you here. Shall we go now?”
“Jasra’s still inside,” I answered, “having it out with Sharu.”
“I thought you were done with her.”
I shook my head.
“She still knows a lot of things I don’t. Things I’ll be needing.”
A tower of flame began to rear itself above the Keep, halted and hovered a moment, heaved itself higher.
“I didn’t realize,” he said. “She does seem to want control of that fountain fairly badly. If we were to snatch her away now, that fellow Sharu will claim it. Does that matter?”
“If we don’t snatch her away, he may kill her.” Mandor shrugged.
“I’ve a feeling she’ll take him. Would you care to place a small wager?”
“Could be you’re right,” I said, watching the fountain continue its climb skyward, following another pause. I gestured toward it. “Thing looks like an oil gusher. I hope the winner knows how to cap it—if there is a winner. Neither one of them may last much longer, the way the place is coming apart.”
He chuckled.
“You underestimate the forces they’ve generated to protect themselves,” he said. “And you know it isn’t all that easy for one sorcerer to do in another by sorcerous means. However, you’ve a point there when it comes to the inertia of the mundane. With your permission . . . ?”
I nodded.
With a quick underhand toss he cast the metal ball across the ditch toward the burning building. It struck the ground and with each bounce thereafrer it seemed to increase in size. It produced a cymballike crash each time it hit, entirely out of proportion with its apparent mass and velocity, and this sound increased in volume on each successive bounce. It passed then into the burning, tottering ruin that was the near end of the Keep and for several moments was gone from sight.
I was about to ask him what was going on when I saw the shadow of a large ball pass before the opening through which I had fled. The flames—save for the central tower from the broken Fount—began to subside, and a deep rumbling sound came from within. Moments later an even larger circular shadow passed, and I began to feel the rumbling through the soles of my boots.
A wall tumbled. Shortly thereafter part of another wall fell. I could see inside fairly clearly. Through the dust and smoke the image of the giant ball passed again. The flames were snuffed. My Logrus vision still granted me glimpses of the shifting lines of power which flowed between Jasra and Sharu.
Mandor extended a hand. A minute or so later a small metal ball came bouncing our way, and he caught it. “Let’s head back,” he said. “It would be a shame to miss the end.”
We passed through one of the many gaps in the fence, and sufficient rubble filled the ditch at one point for us to walk across on it. I spent a barrier spell then, to keep the re-forming troops off the premises and out of our way for a time.
Entering through the broken wall, I saw that Jasra stood with her back to the tower of fire, her arms upraised. Streaks of sweat lined her face zebra through a mask of soot, and I could feel the pulsing of the forces which passed through her body. About ten feet above her, face purple and head twisted to one side as if his neck were broken, Sharu hung in the middle of the air. To the untutored he might have seemed magically levitated. My Logrus sight gave me view of the line of force from which he hung suspended, however, victim of what might, I suppose, be termed a magical lynching.
“Bravo,” Mandor stated, clapping his hands slowly and softly together. “You see, Merlin? I’d have won that bet.”
“You always were a better judge of talent than I was,” I acknowledged.
“ . . . and swear to serve me,” I overheard Jasra saying. Sharu’s lips moved.
“And swear to serve you,” he gasped.
She lowered her arms slowly, and the line of force which held him began to lengthen. As he descended toward the Keep’s cracked floor; her left hand executed a gesture similar to one I had once seen an orchestra conductor employ in encouraging the woodwinds, and a great gout of fire came loose from the Fountain, fell upon him, washed over him, and passed on down into the ground. Flashy, though I didn’t quite see the point . . .
His slow descent continued, as if someone in the sky were trolling for crocodiles. I discovered myself holding my breath as his feet neared the ground, in sympathetic anticipation of the eased pressure on his neck. This, however, did not come to pass. When his feet reached the ground, they passed on into it, and his descent continued, as if he were an occulted hologram. He sank past his ankles and up to his knees and kept going. I could no longer tell whether he was breathing. A soft litany of commands rolled from Jasra’s lips, and sheets of flame periodically separated themselves from the Fountain and splashed over him. He sank past his waist and up to his shoulders and slightly beyond. When only his head remained visible, eyes open but unfocused, she executed another hand move, went, and his journey into the earth was halted.
“You are now the guardian of the Fount,” she stated, “answerable only to me. Do you acknowledge this?”
The darkened lips writhed.
“Yes,” came a whispered reply.
“Go now and bank the fires,” she ordered. “Commence your tenure.”
The head seemed to nod at the same time it began sinking again. After a moment only a cottony tuft of hair remained, and an instant later the ground swallowed this, too. The line of force vanished.
I cleared my throat. At the sound Jasra let her arms fall and turned toward me. She was smiling faintly.
“Is he alive or dead?” I asked, and then added, “Academic curiosity.”
“I’m not really certain,” she responded. “But a little of both, I think. Like the rest of us.”
“`Guardian of the Fount’,” I reflected. “Interesting existence.”
“Beats being a coat-rack,” she observed.
“I daresay.”
“I suppose you feel I owe you some gratitude now, for—my restoration,” she stated.
I shrugged.
“To tell you the truth, I’ve other things to think about,” I said.
“You wanted an end to the feud,” she said, “and I wanted this place back. I still have no kind thoughts toward Amber, but I am willing to say we’re even.”
“I’ll settle for that,” I told her. “And there is a small loyalty I may share with yo
u.”
She studied me through narrowed eyes for a moment, then smiled.
“Don’t worry about Luke,” she said.
“But I must. That son of a bitch Dalt—”
She continued to smile.
“Do you know something I don’t?” I asked.
“Many things,” she replied.
“Anything you’d care to share?”
“Knowledge is a marketable commodity,” she observed, as the ground shook slightly and the fiery tower swayed.
“I’m offering to help your son and you’re offering to sell me the information on how to go about it?” I inquired.
She laughed.
“If I thought Rinaldo needed help,” she said, “I’d be at his side this moment. I suppose it makes it easier to hate me if you feel I lack even maternal virtues.”
“Hey, I thought we were calling things even,” I said.
“That doesn’t preclude hating each other,” she replied.
“Come on, lady! Outside of the fact that you tried to kill me year after year, I’ve got nothing against you. You happen to be the mother of someone I like and respect. If he’s in trouble, I want to help him, and I’d as soon be on good terms with you.”
Mandor cleared his throat as the flames dropped ten feet, shuddered, dropped again.
“I’ve some fine culinary spells,” he remarked, “should recent exertions have roused some appetites.”
Jasra smiled almost coquettishly, and I’d swear she batted her eyelashes at him. While he makes a striking appearance with that shock of white hair, I don’t know that you’d exactly call Mandor handsome. I’ve never understood why women are as attracted to him as they usually seem to be. I’ve even checked him out for spells on that particular count, but he doesn’t wear one. It must be some different order of magic entirely.
“A fine idea,” she responded. “I’ll provide the setting if you’ll take care of the rest.”
The Chronicles of Amber Page 147