[Cenotaph Road 06] - Pillar of Night

by Robert E. Vardeman - (ebook by Undead)

  Pillar of Night

  Cenotaph Road - 06

  Robert E. Vardeman

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Claybore has baited a trap and waits for you,” Kiska k’Adesina told Lan Martak. “You will die if you try to recover the legs.”

  “How do you know?” Lan demanded. The young mage tried to shake his oddly tender feelings toward the woman and failed. Claybore had laid a geas on him too potent to fight, too subtle to work around. Kiska k’Adesina was his mortal enemy, the commander of Claybore’s grey-clad soldiers, a vicious foe—and he felt protective toward her. And more.

  Sweat beaded on his forehead as he realized how much he loved—was forced to love!—the woman who had repeatedly tried to kill him.

  “It’s all part of Claybore’s master plan. He wants you incapacitated. If you rush in foolishly, without planning, without taking enough precautions, then you will be… no more.”

  “What do you care?” Lan raged, more at his own impotence in dealing with Kiska than at the woman. He fought down any thought of failure. The slightest pause, the most minute of hesitations and he would lose this coming battle.

  At the center of the conflict lay Claybore’s legs. The other sorcerer had been dismembered and his parts strewn along the infinite length of the Cenotaph Road. Over the years, through the millennia, Claybore had slowly reunited his parts. Others had attempted to stop him; they had died. Only Lan Martak stood between Claybore and domination of not a single world but myriads of them. The battle had been long and difficult, with victories for both of them. Claybore had rejoined his arms to his torso; the Kinetic Sphere, allowing him to move between worlds at will, throbbed heartlike in his chest. Lan had destroyed the sorcerer’s skin and in his own mouth Lan tasted the metallic tang of the magical tongue once used by Claybore to speak spells and world-wrecking curses.

  Lan felt increasingly inadequate as a mage. The major victories were his opponent’s. What did he really know of magics? He had been raised on a forest world and had learned only minor fire and healing spells. This arena of magical battle was alien to him still. And so much rested on his shoulders. He alone could prevent Claybore from regaining his legs. This last addition would make the dismembered sorcerer almost whole—and invincible.

  “You can’t face him. You’re not good enough,” Kiska kept saying over and over. She tugged at his sleeve and tried to hold him back. He jerked free. Lan Martak said nothing as he spun and started through the maze inside the hollowed mountain of Yerrary. The gnomes who made this their home had spent centuries chewing out corridors and had created a twisting domain that was as much a part of their heritage as the forests were his. Lan quickly forgot ordinary sight and depended more and more on a magical scrying spell to lead him through the turnings.

  At first he walked with faltering steps, then became more confident and strode with his usual ground-devouring pace. Kiska struggled to keep up with him but said nothing.

  “The chamber we seek is near,” he said after they had traversed long corridors.

  Kiska clung to him, barely noticed. Lan Martak moved on for the final confrontation. Claybore could not permit him to enter that chamber unopposed. To do so meant the disembodied sorcerer lost all.

  “Through that arch,” Lan Martak said, pointing. His hand glowed a dull purple in response to the war spell on the doorway. “Go through and die.”

  “You can take off the spell?” Kiska k’Adesina asked anxiously.

  “It is a multilayered spell,” he said, examining it carefully. “Very tricky. And very clever. One small slip and we die horribly.”

  Kiska tensed, her hands balled to strike out. Lan noticed and she relaxed and let her arms hang limply at her sides. He faced the doorway and began his chants.

  Slowly at first, then with increasing assurance he peeled away the layers of the magics. Like onion skins, the spells fell away until only the bare stone archway remained. Lan wiped his sleeve over his forehead. The unlocking had taken more from him than he’d thought possible. An instant of fear flashed through him.

  Was he as powerful as he thought? Did this multiple spell hold traps of which he was unaware? Had he committed too much of his power too soon? Gut-wrenching terror chewed at his self-confidence, but he dared not admit it. Not in front of Kiska.

  “Let’s not tarry. Our destiny lies in wait beyond.”

  With more confidence than he felt, he walked forward. Lan’s eyes blinked as he passed under the stone archway. A slight electric tingle of spell had not been driven off, but it was a minor annoyance. He flicked it away as if it were nothing more than a buzzing insect.

  He entered the chamber containing Claybore’s legs.

  “There they are!” cried Kiska. “Claybore’s lost limbs.”

  Lan restrained her. She tried to bolt forward and seize the beaten copper coffins holding those legs.

  “The exterior protective spells are gone. Others remain. How else could those legs stay preserved?”

  “Claybore is immortal. His parts are, too.”

  Lan reeled at the notion. For whatever reason, this had never occurred to him. He studied the twin coffins and saw the spells woven through the fabric of the metal and flesh within and knew that Kiska was right. The spells the mage Lirory had placed on the legs bound them to this time and place; preservation was accomplished on a more fundamental level, one fraught with magics that even Lan did not pretend to understand.

  “They can be destroyed,” he said, more to maintain the fiction of his superiority than anything else. Showing ignorance in front of Kiska bothered him more than he cared to admit.

  “Of course they can be destroyed,” came a voice all too familiar from previous encounters. The words did not sound against air as others’ words might, but echoed from within the head. Claybore spoke directly from mind to mind. “You ought to know that my parts are not invincible. After all, you left my skin in a puddle of protoplasm from your spells.”

  “I wondered when you would come,” said Lan, turning to face Claybore. The sorcerer stood under the archway so recently swept clean of its guardian spells. His human torso and arms were carried on a magically powered mechanical contrivance of metal struts and spinning cogwheels that now showed the ravages of continual battle. The inhuman fleshless skull, however, betrayed Lan Martak’s successes the most clearly. Cracks had appeared and the lower jaw was missing. For all the damage wrought to the bone, the dark pits still glowed with the red, manic fury of Claybore’s death beams.

  “I waited for you to tire yourself, to do the work for me.”

  “I am not tired, Claybore.”

  “You kid yourself, then,” said Claybore, laughing. His mocking gestures angered Lan, who watched as the sorcerer came into the chamber. The arms took up a defensive pose, ready to subvert any spell Lan might cast.

  Lan savored this moment. Claybore might decry his skills, but Lan knew deep within how he had grown as a mage. Claybore was not only wrong, he was defeated and didn’t know it. Lan Martak felt the power on him. He could not lose. He faced his destiny.

  “This after you’ve told me it’s possible to destroy your parts? Kiska was wrong. The parts are not immortal. The whole might be, but not the parts.”

  “Immortality rests with all the parts, but that doesn’t mean the segments cannot be destroyed,” said Claybore. “Left alone, they will survive for all eternity.”

  “Consummate magics will destroy them,” said Lan, almost gloating now.

  “Terrill tried and failed. He paid the penalty for dismembering me.”

  “I’m better than Terrill.”

  The chalk white skull tipped sideways
, the eye sockets taking on a blackness darker than space. The area around the nose hole became riddled with cracks as magical forces mounted. Claybore’s skull disintegrated a bit more under each attack. Lan felt confident that he would turn the skull into dust before the day was out.

  “You think so?” mocked Claybore.

  “I feel it.”

  “You’re a fool. You’re a fool I have manipulated for my own ends for some time. You cannot win. You don’t even understand what stakes we play for.”

  “Conquest. Power.”

  “Yes, that,” said Claybore, stopping beside the copper coffin cradling his left leg. “And more. Power is worthless useless it is used. After you’ve conquered a few thousand worlds, what then? With immortality, mere power is not enough.”

  “What else can there be?” asked Lan, wondering if this were a trick to gull him into vulnerability.

  “Godhood! Not only power but the worship of all living beings. Their birth, their death, every instant in between ruled totally—by me! For millennia there has been no true god because I imprisoned the Resident of the Pit.”

  Lan’s agile mind worked over the details and filled in gaps. It all fit a pattern. Whether or not what was being said was true he didn’t know, but it could well be. Terrill had been the Resident’s pawn in the battle against Claybore, but what was the nature of that conflict?

  It had to be for the godhood Claybore mentioned. The sorcerer had dueled the reigning deity—the Resident of the Pit—and had somehow gained the upper hand. But the Resident fought back with Terrill as his principal weapon. Lacking full power, the Resident had not destroyed Claybore, but Terrill had succeeded in scattering the bodily parts along the Road.

  “You get a glimmering of the truth,” said Claybore. “I failed to destroy the Resident and ended up dismembered. But the Resident was unable to regain godhood because I hold him imprisoned. A stalemate lasting centuries.”

  “One which is drawing to a close,” said Lan. “Regaining your legs will give you the power to finally destroy the Resident. After all this time, you will be able to kill a deity.”

  “Yes,” came the sibilant acknowledgment, “And in the universe ruled by the god Claybore, there will be no further use for fools such as you. Prepare to die, Lan Martak.”

  The spell Claybore cast exploded like the heart of a sun, blinding him, leaving him cut free of all his senses and floating through empty infinity.

  Spinning through space blinded and deaf, totally without senses, had startled him—but fear wasn’t his response. He fought and found within himself the right ways of countering Claybore’s attack.

  He whirled back, still facing Claybore. No time had elapsed. The wild flight had been entirely illusory—but ever so real while he was caught up in the spell.

  “A petty trick,” he said, knowing how Claybore had done it. “Goodbye.”

  The spell he cast contained elements of the most powerful spells he was capable of controlling. The invisible web caught at Claybore and further cracked the skull, a piece falling to the stone floor. Lan tightened and the magics spilled over from the edge of his control and eroded away the coffin immediately in front of Claybore.

  That almost proved his undoing.

  The left leg, freed of its magical bindings, kicked out of the copper coffin and balanced in a mockery of life on the floor. The sight of the dismembered leg moving of its own volition startled Lan into relaxing his attack.

  Claybore’s riposte came in an unexpected fashion. The leg hopped forward and kicked straight for Lan’s groin. The physical pain meant little to Lan; the shock of seeing the leg attack allowed cracks to develop in his own defenses.

  Claybore entered that breach easily. The spells used by the mage beat at Lan’s every vulnerable point. He was forced backward, driven to the wall. The inner core on which he relied came to his aid, giving him the respite to reform his defenses.

  All the while, the ghastly leg continued to hop forward and kick at him.

  “See, Martak? All of me wants to see you die,” said Claybore. “And you will—you will die as only an immortal can. You will live forever and be in complete pain for all eternity. Nothing will save you. You will cry in the dark for surcease and never find it. You will die, not in body but in mind. Die, Martak, die!”

  Lan couldn’t stop the surging attack, but he deflected it enough to keep from succumbing. Knowing his strength was nowhere near adequate to destroy Claybore as he’d thought, cunning took over. Lan Martak turned aside the assault and redirected it to the hopping, kicking leg.

  “No!” came the shriek as Claybore realized what was happening.

  His leg vanished in a sizzling cloud of greasy black smoke, lost forever.

  “Your skin is gone. I have your tongue. Now your left leg is destroyed. Who is losing, Claybore?”

  Lan twisted away as heat destroyed the other copper coffin. Droplets of molten metal seared his skin, raised blisters, burned like a million ants devouring his flesh. The other leg bounded free of its vaporized coffin and went hopping toward Claybore.

  Lan tried to stop the right leg and found the other sorcerer’s spells prevented it. Leg and torso would soon be reunited. What power would this give Claybore? Lan didn’t want to find out.

  “You can’t stop me, Martak,” gloated Claybore. “You had your chance. You’ve failed.”

  “Aren’t you the one failing, Claybore? Where’s your left leg? It’s gone. Completely destroyed. The other soon will be.”

  “Never!”

  Lan sent out tangling spells to numb the nerves in the leg. They failed. The leg did not live in the same way other animate creatures did. He hurled fireballs and sent elementals and opened pits and still he failed to prevent the inexorable movement of the leg as it hopped toward Claybore.

  Every spell he wove sapped him of that much more strength. Lan realized with a sick feeling that Claybore was growing stronger. When the leg rejoined, his power would be supreme.

  “All the universe will be mine to rule,” came Claybore’s mocking words, so soft and sibilant that they were almost a whisper. “More than ruling, all the peoples of those worlds will worship me. I shall reign forever!”

  “Won’t that pall on you?” gasped out Lan. He countered a nerve-numbing spell, started a chant of his own to renew his attack. Power slipped from him like a dropped cloak. Grabbing at it only caused it to slide away faster.

  “Ask me in a million years.”

  “You’ll ruin worlds.”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t care. You owe it to the people you’ll rule not to harm them.”

  “Why?” Then Claybore’s laughter echoed in Lan’s skull. “Your tone has changed, Martak. Now you’re trying to invest me with a conscience. You’re admitting I have won. It is apparent, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Lan grated out—but he had one last spell to try. Lan had not dared use it for fear of releasing energies beyond his control.

  Lan began the magical summoning motions with his fingers. The air twisted into improbable shapes before him. The arcane words he chanted formed colored threads in the midst of the writhing mass. But one element of the spell was missing. He reached forth, summoned the dancing mote of light that had become his familiar, and sent it directly into the vortex to supply power.

  Power!

  The virtually uncontrolled spell burst forth with more vehemence than Lan had anticipated—or Claybore expected.

  The sorcerer screamed as his leg froze in midhop and fell lifeless to the stone floor. His rejoined arms began twitching spastically, and Lan watched in fascination as the Kinetic Sphere, Claybore’s very heart, began pushing outward from his chest. But the potent spell was not without effect on Lan. His mouth turned metallic, and his tongue began to glow hotter and hotter. This spell affected all of Claybore’s bodily parts and that included the tongue ripped from the other mage’s mouth.

  “You can’t do this!” shrieked Claybore. The ghastly apparition of the sorcer
er leaped and cavorted about, dodging unseen menace. The cracks in the skull deepened until Lan wondered how it held together. With the jaw bone already gone, Claybore’s visage turned even more gruesome with every passing moment.

  Lan found himself unable to speak, but the sensation of victory assuaged that. Claybore was becoming wrapped in the spell and would soon lie as numbed on the floor as his left leg. No longer even kicking, the leg presented no menace at all. Its magics were contained. And Claybore would be soon, also.

  Lan blinked in surprise when all the magical attacks against him suddenly ceased. His tongue still burned, but that was the product of his own conjuring.

  “Giving up so easily, Claybore?” he croaked out. Then Lan saw what the sorcerer did. The attack hadn’t lessened, it had shifted.

  Kiska k’Adesina writhed on the floor, face blue from the spells cutting off her air. Her body arched violently as if her back would snap, then she flopped onto her belly and fingers cut into stone as she tried to escape Claybore’s vicious magical punishment.

  “Stop it!” cried Lan.

  Without thinking, he directed his full power to shielding the woman from Claybore. The instant his attack on Claybore stopped, the disembodied sorcerer countered.

  “You can’t let her come to harm, can you, Martak?” chided Claybore. “You love her. You must protect her. You have to. She means more than your own life, doesn’t she?”

  “No,” said Lan. The weakness of his reply told him everything. He did love Kiska k’Adesina, his sworn enemy, the woman who hated him with an obsession bordering on insanity; he loved her.

  The geas controlled him.

  “I see it in your face. Defend her. Keep her from harm.”

  Claybore’s spells trapped the woman on the floor like a bug with a pin through it. She gasped for breath, twisted about as joints snapped and limbs turned in ways never intended. Lan watched in rapt horror as Claybore broke her physically with his powerful spells.

  But if he protected Kiska adequately, he left himself open to attack. One or the other of them he might defend, but not both of them.