Besides, the temple might not exist; it might never have existed. All he had were vague legends about a place of power, the abode of the god of a thousand universes. There was nothing much else in the way of hard information.
He heard something off in the shadows. The scrape of sandal leather against stone. He searched the darkness.
A man came out from behind a column. Dressed in a tattered cloth cap and threadbare caftan, he also wore a crooked smile. His teeth were black and broken.
“Greetings, Honorable.”
Incarnadine heard more footsteps behind him. He turned his head far enough to see two more men emerge from the shadows. They approached, daggers in hand.
“Are you Basrim’s buddies?” he asked.
The man held out his hand. “It would be easier for us all if you handed over your gold right away. If we have to kill you, here in the temple we must do it in the ancient way. Very slowly, bleeding you like a butchered animal. You would not like it, and it would be work for us.”
Incarnadine was motioning up a spell but the nearest man lunged, and he had to make do with natural defenses; he kicked the dagger away, then spun and landed a high kick alongside his assailant’s head. The man went sprawling on the flagstone.
“Ah, you chose the hard way,” the first thug said, drawing a curved short sword.
“Your heart,” Incarnadine said, extending a hand and making a clawing motion.
“Eh?” The speaker was nonplussed. The third thug had edged closer but now stopped, dagger low and poised for an upward slash.
“I think your heart has stopped beating.”
The snaggle-toothed one guffawed. Suddenly his smile faded.
“Yes, you’re feeling strange. It’s your heart.”
The man put a finger on his pulse. A look of dismay sprang to his face.
“My heart!”
“I told you. Your blood has stopped flowing. You feel faint. The darkness gathers, and soon the long night will come.”
“No, I …”
The man collapsed, sword clattering on the stone.
The third man looked at his fallen accomplice, then at the stranger.
“A sorcerer!”
“Yes. And a pretty nasty one at that. Have you ever heard of the creeping phlox?”
“The what?”
“The creeping phlox. It starts on the toes — little red boils that turn to pustules. Then it works its way up the body. The pustules turn to oozing sores, the sores to masses of corruption. Every extremity of the body falls off, starting with the soft kind that hangs. Then the rot really sets in.… Well, not to put too fine a point on it, you got it, babe.”
Terror-stricken, the man fled out the back of the temple.
Incarnadine went behind a column and waited.
Presently Basrim came creeping into the shadows. He knelt over the one who had spoken first, then looked around fearfully.
Incarnadine stepped out from behind the pillar.
“Honorable One! You are safe. Thank the heavens, I thought you had met your end at the hands of these —”
“Your friends, Basrim?”
“My fr —? Oh, never, Honorable One! I have never laid eyes on them!”
“Now, why do I think you’re lying, just like you lied about this temple?”
“But … Honorable One, please! Let me explain!”
“Be quiet. Do the local legends say that this is the Temple of the Universes?”
“Yes, they do.
“Basrim, I’m warning you.…”
“No! I made it up! Forgive me, Honorable One! An eternity of pardon!”
“Get up, get up. God, I hate it when they grovel.”
“An eternity of pardon, Honorable One! Forgive your humble servant and I will do anything, I will serve you always, faithfully, I will clean any part of your body with my tongue —!”
“Get your lips off the floor. Now, look. All I want from you is the truth. Do you know where that temple is or don’t you? If you don’t, do you know anyone who does know? Answer me!”
Desolated, Basrim slowly shook his head.
“I thought so. Tourists really get taken to the cleaners around here, don’t they? Well, I should have known better. Okay, Basrim. That’s all.”
Basrim got up slowly. “I … I may go?”
“Yes.”
Basrim began to slink away.
“Oh, by the way, your first wife, the one with the lip sore?”
Basrim stopped dead. “My first … you mean Altma?”
“Yes, Altma, the one with the chancre and the hairy mole on the left breast. She’ll be paying you a visit soon, with her solicitor and the vizier’s deputy. They’ll be taking all your goats and most of the grain. How in the world you’ll get through the winter is beyond me.”
“No!”
“Yes! She bribed the magistrate. Actually, if I were you I wouldn’t go back to town at all.”
The miserable Basrim departed.
He toured the temple, puzzling over the glyphs and the stylized art: the king crushing enemies beneath his heel, the king propitiating the gods, the king presiding over the bountiful harvest, the king … and so forth.
He left the temple and went back to his mount. Now he had the choice of hiring another probably unreliable and potentially treacherous guide, or going it alone. He thought the latter would be the better course. He might stumble around and get lost, but at least he wouldn’t have to worry about wasting time on wild-goose chases and deliberate deceptions, to say nothing of being waylaid by enterprising locals. Alone, he probably wouldn’t be spotted. He would keep low and to himself. The superstitious natives rarely mucked about in the ruins. They had reason to be superstitious, because the indigenous magic was both real and dangerous.
Having retied his bundle, he turned around. A gray-bearded old man was standing by the fallen obelisk, watching. He wore a white cap, and his blue-striped caftan was clean. Carrying a cane, he stood slightly stooped.
“Yes?”
“An eternity of pardon, Honorable. I did not mean to spy.”
“Anything you want?”
“Nothing, Honorable. But perhaps you want something of me.”
“What have you got, old man?” He strapped on his sword, then his dagger. “Excuse me, I’m not myself. Just had a spot of trouble with some of your compatriots.”
The old man nodded. “I heard them conspiring in the village. If I had warned you, they would have cut off an ear, perhaps more.”
“I understand. You said you had something I might want.”
“My knowledge,” the man said.
“Of?”
“Of places, of things, of gods and their abodes.”
“Indeed. I have a feeling you know what I’m looking for.”
“I do.”
“Can you help me?”
“I can,” the man said.
“Will you?”
“Yes.”
“Good. What payment do you require?”
“None, if you mean gold.”
“What do you want, then?”
“Only to see the face of Mordek again.”
“Mordek?”
“The god of a thousand universes. I am his humble servant.”
“I thought no one was left who worshipped the old gods.”
“There are some,” the old man said.
“What’s your name, by the way?”
“Jonath.”
“You say you want to see the face of your god. Why do you need me to do it?”
“You are a magician, and a great warrior.”
“Nice of you to say. I won’t ask you how you know this, but what can a great mage and warrior do for you?”
“You can get past the trip spells and mantraps that guard the temple.”
“Why are these things in place?”
“Because Mordek is angry. No one comes to worship, so he shuts himself in and broods.”
“But you are left, and you implied there w
ere others.”
“The few are not enough. In the great days, multitudes would come to Mordek’s temple to seek favor. Those days are dust, and Mordek sits in his abode, a moody, frustrated god.”
“Doesn’t sound inviting, this place of yours. Was it known as the Temple of the Universes?”
“Yes, that is the name of the dwelling place of Mordek.”
“Then I would like to go to it.”
Jonath said, “I will take you.”
“Where is it?”
Jonath pointed to the hills. “In the high desert.”
“Far?”
“Half a day’s walk.”
Incarnadine took a deep breath. “Lead on, then.”
Twenty-two
Snowclaw’s World
It had been a strange battle so far. An army of Snowclaws had poured through the portal and swept the invading anti-Guardsmen back. The latter regrouped, however, and, with their numbers magically increased, fought back. The original Guard force was dispersed, fled through various aspects, and these men gradually began to trickle back and join the Snowclaw legions when the anti-Guardsmen retreated. The resulting melee was a confusion of endless furry warriors and differing versions of Guardsmen trying to distinguish friend from foe. As the battle progressed, it was hard to tell who was winning.
Meanwhile, back in the strange lunar aspect, the black tornado was still generating Snowclaws and showed no sign of letting up.
Linda sat at a picnic table (which she had conjured) eating a lunch of potato salad, tuna salad, and chicken salad on a bed of lettuce. There was iced Pepsi to drink. She ate calmly under a beach umbrella, which warded off the harsh ultraviolet of the aspect’s hot, tiny sun.
Arranged around her were eight other picnic tables, umbrellas, and salad lunches. She had not quite learned how to fine-tune her spells, though she knew enough to avoid the mistake she had made with Snowclaw.
Sir Gene came walking up from the portal, which now was a bottleneck. New detachments of white-furred soldiers were rushing through to reinforce the invasion troops.
“Enjoying your repast, I hope,” Sir Gene said.
“Sure. How’s it going back at the castle?”
“It’s bedlam.”
“Well, what did you expect?”
“I don’t quite know. For one side to win, I suppose. Simplistic of me.”
“You ought to know that the castle’s not a simple place.”
“I’m learning. There’s no telling what Incarnadine may come up with next.”
“You should have known that, too. Don’t you think he can conjure demons or monsters, or anything else that could take Snowy in a fight? Snowy’s a hell of a guy, but he’s only hu … I mean, he’s only Snowy.”
“We have an endless supply of him.”
Linda looked at the enigmatic black cloud, which still rotated in the distance. “Yeah, I suppose we do. That’s a problem in itself. What are we going to do with all of him?”
“Can’t you wave them away once we’re done with them?”
“Wave them away. That’s great. You know what it takes to make something, even the most insignificant thing, disappear?”
“I’m afraid I don’t,” Sir Gene said dryly.
“Well, it takes a lot. It takes a subtle counterspell to undo a spell. And here, where the problem is, I can’t even do a spell right in the first place.” She took in all the picnic tables with a sweep of her arm.
“I see your point. But why don’t we worry about that later? First we have to win the battle.”
“Yeah, right. But that’s your department, Generalissimo. By the way, shouldn’t you be at the front?”
“There is no front per se.” Sir Gene went to another table and fetched its plate, sat down, and began eating. “I’m hungry.”
Linda pushed her food aside. “We have no end of problems. We still don’t know what happened to Dalton and Thaxton, and there are probably a lot of Guests who got caught in the fight. And of course, there’s the problem of what happened to Gene. The real one.”
“I’m as real as they come, milady.”
“I wish you weren’t, milord. The only hope is that Gene got through to Earth before the portal went flooey. Which would mean that he’s just cut off, not in danger.”
“Wherever he is, he’s probably safer outside the castle.”
“Thank God Sheila and Trent are out on a cruise. With any luck they’ll miss it all. Who I’m really worried about is Jeremy and Osmirik. God knows what’s going on up in that lab.”
“I can’t get any good intelligence about who holds what inside the castle,” Sir Gene said.
“We really ought to make an attempt to get to the lab,” Linda said. “If the day is going to be saved, Jeremy will do it.”
“You say he’s about to cast a spell that will cure the cosmic disturbance. How close is he to casting it?”
“That’s what I’d like to find out.”
“Well,” Sir Gene said. “I’m game.”
Linda gave him a cold stare. “What is your game?”
“What do you mean?”
“What’s your stake in all of this? This isn’t your castle. You belong somewhere else. In fact, you belong in the anti-castle.”
“Where I’m persona non grata, keep in mind.”
“Okay, so you have a grudge against the phony Incarnadine. Why did you try to fool us into believing you were our Gene?”
“It seemed the thing to do at the time.”
“I’ll bet. You said it yourself, we have no reason to trust you. So, I’m asking you again, what are you up to?”
One end of Sir Gene’s mouth curled upward. “I almost never have a plan. I improvise, play by ear. It’s fun to watch the wheels go spinning around madly. I love a plot.”
“Hope you’re having fun. Meanwhile, assuming just for the hell of it that our interests are in line, let’s talk about what we’re going to do.”
“Let’s,” he said. “I think you’re right about getting to the laboratory. We should at least give it a try.”
“To use your phrase, I’m game. You going to be long eating?”
Sir Gene sent his plate, most of the food still on it, spinning into the rocks. “Done. You could at least conjure something palatable.”
“Excuse me. I happen to like tuna salad.”
“Let’s be off.”
These halls were quiet. They had skirted a half dozen battles after coming through the portal, and had worked their way to a relatively peaceful area of the keep.
Linda stood before a section of blank wall and raised her hands as if in supplication. An elevator door materialized in the stone, a little arrow-shaped green light above it pointing up. The door rolled open.
“Ah, castle magic,” Linda sighed. “Now, this stuff I can work with.”
They stepped aboard and the door slid shut.
“Laboratory floor,” Linda said to no one in particular.
“Interesting to contemplate,” Sir Gene commented. “Is the elevator conscious, do you think?”
“Who knows? It just does what I tell it to do. I could never do elevators that worked until Lord Incarnadine showed me how to make them less mechanical and more magical.”
“You’re a very talented castle magician. My apologies for the remark about the food.”
“My castle food gets all kinds of compliments.” Linda stared off a moment, then said, “What am I like in the other castle? I mean, what’s my counterpart like?”
Sir Gene mulled over his answer. “Difficult.”
“Is she good with magic?”
“Um, in a way. She doesn’t do elevators, that I’ll tell you.”
“No? What kinds of things … oh, never mind. The whole notion is creepy.”
“Yes, the less said about it, the better.”
The elevator door opened. Standing just outside was a huge creature which resembled Snowclaw except for having yellow fur. There were other differences: it was bigger, had eve
n more teeth, and the broadax it wielded was, if possible, more fearsome than the original.
The beast growled, raised the ax, and lunged. Sir Gene had reacted even before the door was all the way open, leaping to jab the CLOSE DOOR button and drawing his sword. The sliding panels sprang back out of their slots and caught the anti-Snowclaw between them. Sir Gene hacked at the beast’s face. Snarling, the thing retreated a step, and the doors closed, shutting it out.
Linda started breathing again. She gasped, “What was that?”
“Another of Incarnadine’s tactics. Fight fire, if possible, with a bigger fire.”
“My God, it was horrible.”
“I can’t see that it was any more horrible than its progenitor.”
“Snowy’scute. That thing was … never mind. Getting to the lab is out.”
“I suppose there isn’t another way?”
“Not that I know of. Where do we go now?”
Sir Gene sheathed his sword. “There’s nothing left to do but go back to the world of the black cloud and wait.”
“There’s nothing for me to do there,” Linda said. “I’m going to try to make it to Sheila’s world. She might be back from her trip. If so, she can help out.”
“That’s as good an idea as any, I suppose,” Sir Gene said.
“Shouldn’t you be directing the battle?”
“I’ve no control over what’s happening. If I had a hundred duplicates of myself —”
“We’re not going to try that again, even in the castle.”
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