Guardians of the Gate

by Louis Trimble

  152

  He felt her strength flow into him and he lifted his head and focused his eyes, on the towering mass of ice and snow and rock that hung over the Vale, the mass Korox planned to bring crashing down to choke the Tube and so free Udrig.

  Teron lifted his spellstaff setting it to full power. Then he pressed the stud. The thin line of light was lost momentarily in the glow from the Tube, but he saw it climb higher and higher, reaching the exact spot he’d seen in the vision. Eldra stood with her eyes closed, her body sagging.

  He ceased to be aware of the Vale, of Korox, of everything but the thin line of power his spellstaff poured upward to the great mountain. The staff trembled in his hand and grew warm.

  And then he saw it happen. The power of his spellstaff cut into the rock and the high-piled white rain. The mass trembled and then oozed forward with great sound. Only to stop and tremble as though it was a living, thinking creature in terror of the great fall ahead. Teron kept his hand on the control though now it burned his flesh. Rock melted to crimson and dripped down the mountainside. The earth itself seemed to scream out in agony. And then the mountain fell.

  He drew on the last strength that was not his but theirs, the strength of his union with Eldra. He cried out to Eliff and to the spearhead of liffi streaking down toward the drig.

  Then he turned off the staff and just managed to catch Eldra as she sagged against him. He threw her over his shoulder and ran, stumbling over the broken, shaking ground. Behind him the terrible rumbling grew until its sound filled every crevice, battered against the air and drowned all thought.

  Gasping with effort, Teron staggered to Davok and Inge, Sovag and Skoog. Their faces were paralyzed with awe at the spectacle before them.

  Teron faced the Sacred Vale. He heard a scream of

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  anguish and saw1 Korox, robes held high, running toward them. Ahead of him was Roosk. He stumbled and Korox thrust out an arm, pushing him aside. Roosk tried to rise and fell back. “Korox, my leg!”

  Korox ran on, not looking back. Teron saw the inhuman hatred on the wizard’s face. “You have won! But there will come another time!” he screamed.

  “Not for you. Not for Roosk. Not for Udrig,” Teron thundered strong in his vision, sure in his faith.

  Eldra stirred and he set her down, bracing her against tiie shivering stone walls of the gap.

  Davok cried out as one betrayed, “Spellmaker! What have you done! You will set Udrig free!”

  “I told you!” Skoog shouted. “Sovag, I told you!”

  “Wait!” and in Teron’s voice was that which held them all silent.

  The falling mountain crashed into the Vale, white rain and black rock, mixing and spewing, leaping on impact and settling back to pile higher and higher. The steam vents ceased their hissing, disappearing under the growing mass. Then stench of the mud pools vanished under the tide of stone and ice. And then the mountain gave a last scream and covered the Tube. The pink light died. There was no longer any gate.

  Not twenty yards- from where Teron stood Korox made a last, desperate leap forward. A great black rock sought him out as though he had called its name. He fell forward, his arms reaching, his hands clawing the ground, and the rock buried him.

  Then there was only silence and darkness.

  Until the liffi came. Their glow filled the darkness curving upward and darting down to the valley of ice. Their glow seemed to come into the Vale itself and then rise again, climbing upward, upward, making tantalizing, alluring waves of light rising into the heavens.

  From the valley beyond the Vale, from Udrig’s prison, came a cold such as no swarm of drig had ever generated. Teron felt it in his bones and in his being.

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  He could not move; he could only watch as the glowing arrow of light rose higher and higher. A portion of that liffi light disappeared, engulfed by the amorphous darkness that rose after it, leaving a killing cold behind.

  Teron’s mind joined that of Eldra, and they spoke together: “Eliff! It is time, Eliffl”

  And still the arrow of golden light climbed upward, the dark, greedy, cold desolation that followed it nibbling at its shaft. In the Vale the death-dealing chill faded and the six living human beings stood and watched the light grow fainter with distance.

  The clouds broke apart and the stars shone through. Then they were blotted out by the great dark of Udrig as he reached up and up after the golden warmth of the liffi.

  And still those on Zarza waited, silent, motionless.

  The golden light was gone. Stars shone again, but only around the edges of the great darkness rising into the sky. Then, suddenly, there was light. Blinding as though a dozen suns had crashed together. It came and as swiftly it went. The watchers shut their eyes and turned their heads aside.

  When Teron could see again, the sky was filled with stars. There was no black shadow of emptiness in the middle of the sky nor was there any golden light In the Sacred Vale, a faint pinkish glow fought free of the mass of rock and ice and once again spread itself across the valley that was no longer Udrig’s prison.

  Davok said hoarsely, “The gate is back—but too late.”

  “There is no longer need for the Gate,” the strange voice said through Eldra’s lips. “Udrig is no more.”

  They rode through the first rays of sun toward the sleeping city of Noreth.

  “How did you know?” Inge wondered. “How did you dare play Korox’s game—and so defeat him?”

  Eldra reached over and touched Teron with her hand and with her mind briefly. “You tell them. I’m too tired. Besides it was your vision.”

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  “Truly it was the vision of Rocan, the Old One," his mind spoke unto Eldra’s.

  To the four who rode beside him and turned listening faces toward him he spoke out loud. “I had a vision, through Rocan, the Old One, or from him. I know not which. I saw the futility of forcing retreat upon Korox. Udrig would remain, waiting another Korox, another time. But if Eliff destroyed Udrig on Zarza—and since the Seventh and I are joined that was possible—our world would die in the battle as surely as the capital of Fenn perished during that battle between the drig and the liffi. It was Rocan’s judgment that Udrig must journey far beyond Zarza, far beyond any living sun, and then Eliff would deal with him. And so it was that I freed Udrig, and together Eldra and I summoned the liffi and they came numberless and beautiful. Such a feast of life and light as Udrig had never dreamed of in all the days of his imprisonment. His plot to consume Zarza dimmed to insignificance. He rose after the liffi, higher and higher, touching their edges no more than once or twice, for they were always beyond his reach until Udrig was in the wastes of space—and Eliff struck. There he destroyed Udrig.”

  At his side, Sovag grumbled, “It was a terrible risk, spellmaker. If the liffi had failed to tempt Udrig ...”

  “Udrig was blinded by his own hunger. How long he had waited to eat. And there, within reach, was the meal for all eternity.”

  Behind him Eldra held herself erect by force of will. “I could eat a little myself,” she said in a small voice.

  “And sleep,” Terron added.

  From the small spot they occupied together in the enormous bed, Eldra said, “Teron, are you still awake?”

  “For the moment.”

  “Did you mean what you said in the Vale?”

  “About loving you. I meant it,” he said. “Why need you ask? You know my mind as well as your own.”

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  “Sometimes,” she said. “Now we are together, truly joined, but you lie quietly.”

  His voice was fuzzy, drifting to sleep. “There’s a lifetime ahead, Eldra. But not tonight”

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