Sparkling with golden filaments, his hands opened to finish the job of shattering the shield. Twin streams of plasma cut into the surface. A hairline crack appeared and began to spread out toward the center of the shield.
Then suddenly the plasma streams withered and stopped.
Miradomon cried out as if in pain and alarm. He clamped the cowl in both hands as though he would tear off his own head; in desperation he was trying to keep the robe from receding. “Damn the child,” he screamed, “damn the child!” The Kobachs had tapped into him through Tynec and begun to drain his reserves. Instead of a direct assault, they drew his energy away, trying to drag him down. In any other circumstance, their assault would have provided a brief inconvenience—he would have let loose more energy in a burst to slay them all; but here and now he couldn’t afford it. The black shield prevented him from replenishing.
As his power melted away, the wounds reappeared and spread wide. The viscous material of the robe started to slide from him, taking with it the impenetrable shadow that had concealed his features. His hands, clutching at his head, turned pale green and decayed. The gold threads dissolved.
The ring that entrapped Lyrec sputtered and faded. Elystroya and the cat came up beside him. The robe bubbled and congealed, rivulets collecting into a glowing mass around Miradomon’s feet.
Upon his arrival in Secamelan, Miradomon had extracted all the knowledge from a priest of Chagri whose misfortune it was to be in the wrong place at the wrong moment. Once the vessel lay empty, Miradomon had bled into him, a body to inhabit and discard whenever he was finished here. Now, without the energy to maintain it, the effects of his corrosive pneuma were at last revealed.
The whole of his head was gangrenous, the skin swollen and covered with dark seeping sores. The nose had caved in and the faintly glowing eyes seemed impossibly contained in almost lidless sockets.
Borregad looked away in revulsion as the whole chamber around them trembled as though from an earthquake.
The cracked and rubbery lips split into a perverted grin. Miradomon was letting his form go, releasing the energy of binding to strike a single molecular junction in the shield. If he could shatter one more point along the already formed crack, he could burst it open. He repurposed more energy. The robe drained off further, revealing a sunken, skeletal chest and torso.
A shard from the shield shattered and fell up into the air. A narrow beam of from the well-star fell across Miradomon.
“Lyrec!” shouted Elystroya.
He’d seen it and jumped onto the shield, arms raised above his head, his hands bonded now into a single silver sphere.
The robe spun back up Miradomon with amazing speed. Just a few more seconds and he could be whole again. He cried out, “Wait, Lyrec. I could give you worlds! Elystroya for your own! I could—”
The crex shot forth a beam of disruption, cutting through the air like a blade of heat. It sliced into Miradomon as if he were a mirage—through the all-too-mortal and unprotected rotting skull, through teeth and tongue, ending his final plea. Through throat and breastbone. Lyrec stared into the enormous terrified eyes. “Wait?” he said. “You told me never to hesitate.” He brought his arms down with all his might and the beam drove through the body and bit into the black shield. The lump of half-formed robe caught fire. The shield began to crack. Along the central fissure it tilted, caving in.
Independent of one another, Miradomon’s two eyes rolled in his head. Fluid spilt from the incision, pouring onto the shield, running through the opening. The two halves of his body came apart with a moist sucking sound and toppled back on either side of the widening fissure. Organs disgorged in a dark, wet mass. The greenish flesh melted. It flowed from the bones.
The two halves of the shield collapsed and the body along with Lyrec vanished into the pit.
Elystroya and Borregad ran to the edge. The floor trembled beneath them.
Coated silver once more, Lyrec floated up out of the pit. He landed beside Elystroya. They looked at one another for a moment, and then hesitantly, awkwardly, he hugged her. She didn’t move. The floor shook again.
The cat ran toward the rear of the cavern. “Hug later,” he yelled at them. “This place is coming apart. We brought Lewyn—the princess. In the throne.” He vanished among the shadows, his voice echoing after: “Wait for me!”
Lyrec called after him but got no reply. Stumbling on the uneven floor, he ran to the throne and found a naked girl sitting there, staring blankly ahead. He picked her up, and turned back to Elystroya. “Take my hand.” She came to him. Where they had been standing a moment before, a section of ceiling crashed down through the floor. Elystroya touched him. Silver spun up her arm and over her body. Lewyn, too, gleamed under the polished surface of his crex.
One wall shook and began to collapse.
Elystroya asked, “Why is this happening?”
“His force, his will, whatever it was, was all that kept this locus together. He’d dispensed with his crex, turned it into a vast container. He used it as the boundary of this parasitic world of his. It probably started to shrink before he was dead. Without him, it’s collapsing. That star down there—we have to—”
The floor opened up beneath them and they tumbled out of sight. A thin string of plasma shot up through the ceiling, then splashed down, melting through more of the floor.
Borregad reappeared out of the fluctuating rear wall. He ran clumsily on his hind legs. “All right, let’s … He saw that the floor was gone and scrambled wildly onto the throne. “Lyrec? You better not have fallen in! The least you could have done was wait for me!” Above him, half the ceiling broke loose. “Lyrec!” he shrieked.
A silver hand materialized in the darkness behind him. It reached out, grabbed his tail, and he was pulled, howling, into nothingness.
The throne shattered and the last of the floor gave way. The walls rippled and exploded. In the pit the white star collapsed in an instant into a ball no bigger than Lyrec’s crex.
Then it blossomed.
*****
Talenyecis, half out of her wits and standing at the ready, almost killed the nearest of the two silver figures when they popped into the room.
Lyrec eyed her and blinked at the blade that vibrated a hand’s width from his head. Beyond her, a single torch burned in a wall bracket, and the fine edge of the sword gleamed with its light. “Would you mind?” asked Lyrec. Talenyecis lowered the sword and replaced it in her scabbard. “Hold her,” he said and handed Lewyn to her. A coating of silver spread from the princess to cover Talenyecis.
“What are you doing to me?” she asked irately.
“In a minute.” He tilted his head, eyes closed as if listening to something. Talenyecis heard nothing. He reached out, and his hand vanished into nothingness. After a second, he tugged sharply back and his hand re-emerged, holding a howling mad silver beast by the tail. Upside down, the cat bleated, “I could have died! You left me there, I could have died!”
“Why did you run off?”
Borregad showed him the black globe. “This is why.”
“What is it?”
Elystroya said, “One of his prisons.”
“Specifically Lewyn. All you’ve got is her body,” added the cat. “And let go of my tail.”
The castle shuddered. Talenyecis’s eyes widened. “What?” was all she could ask.
Lyrec took Borregad in his arms, said, “Stand close,” and then closed his eyes.
The last thing Talenyecis saw was a huge crack forming down the outside wall. The room tilted, fluttered, and shrank from view.
Chapter 27.
The tavern looked as if a great battle had been fought in it. The same bodies as before now lay flung across various parts of the room. Chairs and tables lay overturned or shattered. The Kobachs had siphoned off what they could of Miradomon’s power through Tynec, but they couldn’t absorb such adverse energy, and it had spun off them like a whirling storm front. Confined, rebounding through the buildin
g, it had wreaked demonic vengeance on everything beyond the Kobach circle.
Now, though the Kobachs still defensively maintained their circle, Grohd sat beside his hearth, where he had started a fire after crawling away from them. His pants were soaked with grynne that had poured across the floor when his stored kegs ruptured in the tumult. Bozadon Reket remained seated beside the others. Both he and Grohd had been persuaded by Ronnæm to volunteer. They had linked up with the Kobachs most reluctantly, but were now giving thanks to the gods that they had done so, as it had surely saved their lives.
Reket was utterly drained after the experience, but he tingled with a strange light-headed vigor that no previous experience in his life had ever generated. It reminded him a little of the pinnacle moment in sex except that, now it had passed, he didn’t feel like going to sleep. Being a Kobach might offer some advantages, but he was going to reserve judgment until he had the opportunity to try this again; and he had no intention of ever doing that.
Thunder shook the floor beneath them. A cold wind swirled and danced in the middle of the room, buffeting everyone. Grohd whined, “Oh, no, it’s come for us!” and crawled into hiding behind the bar again.
In the center of the Kobach circle, three silver beings appeared—one of them carrying a cat and another bearing an unconscious young woman. The wind dissipated. the members of the circle stood up.
Lyrec touched each individual of his group, and the protective crex retreated until he held it in his hand again, the strange, blunt silver sword. Talenyecis barely noticed as the silver coating withdrew from her; her eyes remained glazed with the dazzle of a memory of travel between time and space. Nor did she notice as Lyrec gently lifted Lewyn’s body out of her arms.
Ronnæm stared in wonder at his granddaughter. One of his group handed a cloak to him. He took it and draped it over her naked form. Then Lyrec handed her to him. Ronnæm pressed her against him in joy. Lyrec whispered to Borregad, “Would you care to do the honors?”
The cat, still annoyed at being abandoned, muttered beneath his breath as he strode over to Ronnæm and held up the black sphere. When the old king did nothing, he snarled, “I’m not on stilts, you know.” Ronnæm’s mouth dropped open. Bozadon Reket gasped. Then Borregad saw the tears in Ronnæm’s eyes and his tone softened. “I-I have to touch her head, you see. Could you lower her down just the smallest bit?”
In something of a daze, the old king obeyed. The cat stood on his hind legs and reached up with both paws to place the globe against Lewyn’s forehead. It sank from sight. Lyrec said, “Concentrate, Borregad.” The cat silenced him with a smoldering glance, then did as he instructed. The globe soon bobbed into view again above her eyes. The cat retrieved it, but held it away from him. Relieved of its contents and no longer bonded by Miradomon’s powers, the globe crumbled to dust.
Borregad dropped to all fours. “She’ll sleep awhile,” he said, “When she wakes, she’ll know her father’s dead because I’ve told her about it, so it won’t be such a shock. But the rest of recent history is far too tangled for me to implant—I don’t know how you all intend to sort it out, but you’ll have to teach her.” When no one moved, he added, “You might prefer to let her sleep in a bed. Your arms are going to get tired.”
Malchavik, clutching his own daughter to him, said, “The glomengue is right. There are two buildings outside. I’ll show you, old friend, come.” He and Pavra led the way, but Ronnæm paused and bowed his head humbly to the cat before leaving.
Borregad turned to Lyrec. “Did you see that? He honored me. I could get to like this. Are cats allowed to be kings?”
“This is preposterous,” declared Reket.
“You wait,” warned the cat, “when I’m the king I’ll have you executed for that. I never forget anything.”
Reket’s mouth worked but no sound came out. Lyrec moved in between him and Borregad. “Excuse me. This is Talenyecis, she’s a swordsman who helped us eliminate Ladomirus. The circumstances, however, have left her a little unhinged, as you can see. I thought perhaps you might be able to—”
“Yes, thank you, of course,” said Reket, seeing a chance to escape the cat’s sharp tongue. He grabbed her wrist and drew Talenyecis sharply away before Lyrec could warn him of her potentially lethal habits.
“You say Ladomirus is gone?” one of the Kobachs asked. “What of the war?”
“I doubt there’ll be a war. Your young king should have his own mind back now that Miradomon’s not here to suppress it. I’m sure he’ll order it stopped. If I understand your system of governance, he’s technically no longer king anyway. It falls to his sister to initiate such an event. In the meantime, I find it difficult to imagine that any loose band of unguided mercenaries will bother risking their necks over a castle that is probably sinking into the ground as we speak. They’re experiencing an earthquake. I’m sure the ones who survive will surrender to the superior forces of Secamelan. Even they have that much sense.”
“Then we have time for the dead now,” the Kobach replied.
Lyrec took Elystroya’s hand and said to Borregad, “We’re going off for awhile. Why don’t you get Grohd out from behind the bar and have him give you that grynne he promised you. After which you can regale these unfortunates with tales of your brave deeds today.”
“Lyrec, there’s something you should—”
“It’s all right, I know already. But thank you, old friend.”
He led her outside.
*****
They stood in the yard near the stable, under a night sky sprinkled with stars. One star in particular seemed far brighter and larger than the rest—nearly as bright as the moon. It hadn’t been there on any previous night. Lyrec wondered if he had seen it before. The cold he found refreshing.
“What did Borregad mean?” Elystroya asked.
“He meant that you remain unfinished. You’re not human yet. When he put you in Yadani’s body, he had no time to give you more than the barest knowledge of what we are. Pure facts, but no emotions. Poor Yadani—she might as well not have been there.”
“What are these emotions?”
“The chemical instincts that these beings operate with. They have individual names such as hate, greed, yearning. Another, called love. When I embraced you in the cavern, you didn’t respond with anything at all. You lack any experience with these instincts. You might feel toward me as you always did—at least I hope so.”
“I do, of course I do. How could I ever lose that?”
“Yes, but what we shared in our world, in our original selves, I’ve learned, has to evolve into its equivalent here, and it will be contaminated by all these human emotions. It isn’t pure. Yadani was for all purposes a blank emotionally. For whatever reason she had been robbed of memory or thought, so you can’t draw upon her experience to aid your own.”
She became contemplative. She asked, “Is it better? In this form?”
“Better?” he said. “No, not better. I’m not sure we can make the analogy. They are unalike. These creatures experience overwhelming waves of emotion, sometimes so intense that they’re blinded to everything. I’ve gone from unplumbed depths of despair to unmatchable ecstasy.”
“Once,” she began slowly, “when Miradomon wanted to speak with me, he placed me in Lewyn’s body. She was still in the grip of terror from his capturing her. I didn’t really understand it then. It was all bound up in her chemistry—it’s all physical and not abstract. The emotional state her body occupied drove me into a corner—I could hardly tolerate existing and I retreated. It was torment, I drowned in what she felt.” She sought his eyes in the darkness. “How is it you survived all this so well?”
“Oh, not well. But the scars are internal, unlike Miradomon’s nature. What he was bled outward. That body he occupied wasn’t designed for the energy burning in him. There are bound to be scars for you, too. Unavoidably. I have to live with some things that are abhorrent to me. Things I did, had to do.”
“Why?”
/> “Shh. Listen, please. Miradomon used these emotions as his chief weapons. He boiled the blood of race upon race until they frothed with hate at the sight of one another. He very nearly won it all. That’s how strong these emotions are. They’re elementary to every one of these beings. And while they can be harnessed the way he did, used as weapons against oneself, to live here you need them. To reject emotion is to deny the potential of life here; to be cold is to be nothing.”
“We could go elsewhere.”
“Maybe. But our realm is gone—and you no longer have a crex. Even if we found another world like ours to inhabit, you couldn’t survive there. You have this form now and no means to change it. If Miradomon spoke the truth, then all the inhabited worlds here are similar to this one anyway. We might search forever and never find one like ours, and I won’t go anywhere without you. I searched for you, convinced that you were lost to me. To find you after experiencing the depth of that loss—you can’t imagine what that feels like. All that chemistry is in play in me.” He looked into her eyes. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“No. I don’t. But how can I yet? Right now, finish what Borregad began.”
He took her hands in his, he told her to close her eyes. Then, closing his own, he gave her the gift that was also a curse.
Delicately he touched her mind, slowly let the range of emotions he had known fill her. So much of it was rage, the heat of anger that the soldiers had ignited in him. He wished then that Nydien had been available to tap into, remembering her gentleness, remembering their coupling—his pleasant memory passed into Elystroya as a commingling of joy, pleasure, and finally ecstasy. Even as she absorbed that, Lyrec was realizing in shock and sorrow that Nydien had not been among the Kobach survivors standing in the tavern. His grief and loss was imparted, too, before he could withdraw contact.
Opening his eyes, he found Elystroya weeping. She experienced his misery, magnified in that moment by his fondness for Nydien. Now she embraced him, and they mourned, held each other in shared silence, and finally, swept along, arrived at a moment of private reunion as humans.
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