by Chris Walley
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 nea
rly 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.
“Margrave, kill them all!” Nezhuala shouted. “Start with D’Avanos. I wanted him to see the snake as he rises triumphant, but now I don’t care.”
As though in a dream, Merral saw Lezaroth loom over him. Blood trickled from a distorted nose and deep gashes across his face. Despite his agony, Merral rejoiced that Anya had hurt the man.
Lezaroth looked at the bloodied sword he bore and let it drop to the floor. Then he knelt down and put his large fingers round Merral’s neck. Slowly he began to tighten his grip. Merral tried to move his hands but couldn’t.
Merral saw something green move into his field of view.
“The Allenix!” Nezhuala cackled. “The Allenix! She wants to join in. Go on! Increase his pain.”
Betafor, the Final Emblem gleaming on her side, picked up Lezaroth’s cast-aside sword with her long fingers.
“You can never trust intelligent machines, D’Avanos. On that, the Assembly was right.”
Merral saw Betafor bound close, the sword swiveling in her hands.
His breathing was difficult now. Lezaroth’s face was hanging over him, the dark eyes wide with remorseless fury.
On the edge of his vision, he saw the silver blade flash out and braced himself for more pain.
But it didn’t come.
Instead, a spasm of agony crossed the bloodied face above him. Lezaroth gave a terrible, coughing cry, and the hands fell away from his neck. As Merral struggled for breath, Lezaroth gave an awful moan and blood oozed from his lips. He fell away, and Merral glimpsed the blade thrust right through his chest.
“Allenix! You’ve killed my margrave!” There was shock and anger in Nezhuala’s voice. “Why?”
Merral saw Nezhuala shake the silver scepter and saw Betafor cower before him. “Why?”
She looked up at the lord-emperor. “They were . . . friends.” On her tunic the Lamb and Stars shone out.
The scepter swung down once, twice. Betafor disintegrated in a cloud of green splinters and spurts of silver liquid. The tunic collapsed over the fragments.
Merral was staring at her remains and adding guilt to his pain and misery when he became aware that Anya had crawled next to him. Her face was bloodied, and she dragged herself painfully along.
“You look terrible,” he said and realized he was delirious.
She reached out and took his hand. “You don’t look much better,” she mumbled.
Suddenly there were black boots beside Merral’s face, and he looked up to see, towering over him, the figure of the envoy.
“She’s going to die,” he said to him. And so am I.
“Only if she hurries.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Don’t worry about dying. Something far more serious is about to happen.”
“That . . . doesn’t make any sense either.”
Beneath the now transparent floor, dark shadows moved with a frenzied urgency.
The envoy stepped back as Nezhuala walked over. He bent down over Lezaroth’s body and pulled the sword out. He stared at it with disgust and threw it away. Then he shook his head and kicked the corpse. “A failure, my margrave.”
He walked to Merral and squatted down next to him. “D’Avanos, you realize you have now had the margrave killed twice? Impressive, but not really enough.” Merral recognized the look of triumph on his face. “But it’s irrelevant. The boundary is almost breached and the powers will soon seize you. You know this is happening all across the cosmos? In every world hell is appearing. Reality is changing everywhere. You weren’t really very good as the great adversary, were you?” He sniggered.
“No,” Merral whispered.
The envoy stepped forward. “Here, I ought to make a point.” Although his voice was quiet, it seemed full of an extraordinary firmness.
“You? Why don’t you go and leave us? The baziliarchs will soon enjoy playing with you for eternity.”
“There is an issue here.” Merral was struck by the strange tone. It is almost as if he is amused. “You see, there is a great adversary. And you were right to fear him. But it is not this man.”
Nezhuala started, straightened up, and looked at the envoy. “What do you mean?”
A good question.
“Merral D’Avanos is not—and never was—the great adversary. His destiny was only to distract attention from the true great adversary, your real opponent.”
Distract?
The envoy turned to Merral. “I hope you aren’t too disappointed.”
“No.” I mean that. If Anya and I weren’t mortally wounded and surrounded by the dead and dying, I’d find it quite funny.
“Then who is it?” Nezhuala asked with barely concealed panic.
The envoy turned to him. “Patience. I’ll tell you in a moment.” Then he stooped down and put his hand under Merral’s back. “Let me help you both sit up.” The envoy lifted Merral into a seated position. He was aware that his knee was a bloodied mess and his left shoulder cracked and grated, yet he felt no pain. Then the envoy did the same with Anya.
“Who is it?” Alarm showed on Nezhuala’s face.
“A man who, by his prayers, has won battles; and who now, by his own blood, deals you a deadly blow.”
Nezhuala stared at him with a fearful suspicion. “Who?”
The envoy gave a strange smile and then looked toward where Jorgio was lying barely a handbreadth away from the figures sliding past. As Merral watched, he saw Jorgio’s bloodied forefinger stretch out onto the leisurely scrolling figures and make a single slow flick downward so that one of the symbols dripped blood. As the formula slid on toward the right-hand cylinder, he realized that what had been a minus sign had now become a plus. The hand fell still.
“Him? That old cripple?” Nezhuala’s voice was agitated.
“Yes.”
Ape suddenly jumped up and pointed, making a squealing noise.
“And I’m afraid,” the envoy said in an almost apologetic tone, “he’s just undone everything.”
“Stop it, Ape!” cried Nezhuala. “Stop the process!”
Merral watched the altered symbol slide away into the cylinder. Ape’s despairing gestures told their own story. It is too late.
“He’s stopped it,” Anya gasped. “Jorgio stopped it.”
“Oh, no,” said the envoy. “He has done far more than just stopped it. Things are going to get interesting. But I have one task first.”
The envoy ran silently across the glassy floor to where Delastro stood, looking this way and that, his green eyes wide with fear.
Merral saw the envoy stand before him and extend an open hand. Something was said between them, but to Merral the words were inaudible. Delastro stared at the offered hand, shook his head, and stepped back.
Without warning, the floor behind him melted, and a leathery hand with long, spidery black fingers emerged and grabbed his heel. The envoy reached out his hand again, but now Delastro, screaming, slid backward into the growing hole.
The sound faded away as the hole in the floor closed. The envoy walked back to Merral and shook his head. “He was offered a way of escape, but he failed to take it.” There was sorrow in his words.
In front of them, Nezhuala and Ape were desperately struggling with the cont
rols of the wheeled box.
The stone floor shook, as if an earthquake had struck. Rustling and rattling came from the baziliarchs high up above the windows. Was it nervousness?
“Look!” Merral exclaimed. On the far wall behind the throne, the dark red color was sinking back down and the green was flowing back over it.
Nezhuala and Ape saw it too and panicked.
“Envoy, what is happening?” Merral asked.
“Nezhuala is right; the realms are being united. But not as he, or his master, foresaw.”
Now the darkness in the room lifted, and on the wall behind the throne, the diagram changed without warning. The red area was still sinking fast, but at the top, a zone of bright gold had appeared and, in the center, seemed to be funneling downward.
“The gold?” Merral inquired.
“Can you guess?”
“No.”
The envoy smiled. “It’s always puzzled me how little attention you people have paid to the possibility of there being a third realm. It’s clearly mentioned in the Word.”
“Above-Space?” Merral felt a sense of anticipation growing in him. “I’ve heard the speculation. They said . . . it might be a way of describing heaven.”
“What they said was right. Now watch.”
Nezhuala was looking upward with a look of horror. High above them in the darkened sky, a point of light had appeared.
There was a new shrieking and rattling from the walls as if someone had disturbed the nest of some monstrous birds. Merral saw that the floor beneath him was now opaque again.
“The sun! Look at the sun!” Anya cried, and her excitement was almost childlike.
Merral stared at the dulled disk of the sun to see that the line that had bisected it was breaking up. In seconds, the Blade of Night buckled in the middle. The fractured central segments flew outward, and for the briefest of moments, its wreckage made an unmistakable cross against the darkened sun. Then the blade collapsed entirely into a cloud of debris and vanished.
“Now I have another duty,” the envoy said and seemed to stand up on tiptoe. Then he shouted, but there was no hoarseness in the shout, only a rich, triumphant, musical beauty.