A Dragon at Worlds' End (46 page)

The true horror was the speed with which the surrounding population ate the pulp and occupied the ground thus vacated.

The vast beast, like a short-necked shmunga, yet far greater than any shmunga that had ever lived, went past and bore the elf lord's castle away.

The Iudo Faex moved on.

Later he found his first war world, a horror of endless warfare between empires built and run by hundreds of millions of slaves. Guiding the warfare and directing the campaigns were the elf lords, for whom it was all part of the Game.

Vast, elegant battles were fought, and mounds of skulls were raised up to mark them. In time, the skulls would wither in the rain and sun and turn to dust, and still more mounds of skulls would rise in their place.

Here the elf lords could test military theories, run complex war games, and play at being generals. They were popular worlds, very draining on the mind mass, and so they were usually the work of a power clique, such as the Tendency.

And then there were the more peculiar ones, such as the strange world inhabited by creatures with the heads of toothed birds, where great populations of people were kept as food animals. They were penned in tiny stalls, fattened on sludge, and then hung up, their throats slit, and left to bleed to death.

As raw meat they were fed to dog-headed things six feet tall that were kept as pets. Cooked, they were eaten by the rulers, the bird people.

The artistic point in this was not perceptible to him. Why had the golden elves of Gelderen descended to this degraded passion for the perversely cruel? What had driven them to this smallness of heart, this closed-in haughty disdain for all sense of decency?

He was sickened, standing on a hill watching two huge armies locked in combat on a muddy slope some five miles long. Shield walls clashed and men died by the hundreds, then the thousands as the attack was pressed on and on, past the endurance of the men until they simply collapsed. It was war by generals with no thought for the men involved. They were ciphers, things to be used and disposed of with no thought for consequence.

And here he felt the deepest contact with the wrongness of the entire, hideous enterprise of the Great Game, for he knew too well what was involved in such battle.

He moved on.

It was time to rest and collect himself. He would need all his strength for the next step. He knew the elves' trick for the use of the power of the mind mass now. He had learned it without knowing how he'd learned it; it had simply come to him. Then he had learned a deeper principle, directly from the mind mass. He could move through the worlds at will.

He sought solace on a pleasant world where purple clouds drifted through a yellow canyonland. The sun was square and dim. But the artificiality disturbed him and he moved again. He rediscovered Mot Pulk's hidden world. With his new powers he could pierce the skein of illusion that hid it from the other lords. He stood once more in the pergola and recalled the happiness he had enjoyed there with Ferla. He contemplated the grotto and his heart grew heavy and tears came to his eyes.

The time was approaching. He had to prepare himself. Flushed with emotion, feeling hate for Mot Pulk and all the elf lords, he used a new power, one they had never learned. He left the Game worlds instantly and made direct transition to a spot well outside the Game board. Where they would have spent hours slowly forging such a transition, he accomplished it in an instant.

He stood alone on the promenade of the Overlook of the Arkelauds as dawn broke over the mountains in the east. The palace loomed behind him. A fountain played in the ornamental pond. Tables and chairs were set along the promenade and the city, laid out below, sparkled in the first light. Across the lake the statue of Zizma Bos gleamed. Smoke rose in the southwest, where the City of Slaves was still burning. The smell was quite strong, overwhelming the jasmine of the gardens. The lake was a breathtakingly beautiful blue; the hills and mountains formed a complete bowl around it. Relkin could appreciate why Zizma Bos had decided to build here. Such natural beauty was rare.

For a moment his vision blurred and he felt faint. He steadied himself on the rail, then sat on the nearest bench. The burns still hurt horribly, but somehow he'd adjusted to it. He needed to rest. Recuperate. He knew what he had to do and knew it would take everything he had left.

The gestalt was there, but it was asleep. All that it did, it did with dreaming minds, harnessed to the fell sorcery of the elf lords. To wake it would be as if a pea wished to awaken an elephant. All that was in his favor was that he knew how to siphon off the energy of that selfsame elephant.

Feeling desolate and cold, he looked out across the lake to the ceremonial sites on the north bank. The loss of Ferla, the torture… Relkin was about wrung out. The world was on the other side of an invisible barrier and he could see it, but he could no longer feel it. His dragon was lost somewhere in the interior of the savage continent. Lumbee was lost. Eilsa? She was on the far side of the world and the way things were going, he would not survive to see her again.

If this was what it was that made you the Iudo Faex, he decided he didn't care for it much. He'd rather do something else. Dully, he wondered if he was going to lose his arms. They looked terrible. The burns had gone terribly deep.

Biroik had hurt his nose again, too. He found that blood had crusted inside the battered thing and was making it hard to breathe. There was blood in his mouth, which he spat out. He sighed softly. He was quite a mess. He'd never pass an inspection.

Incredibly, his head dropped and he dozed, exhaustion and shock combining at last to overwhelm the pain. When he awoke, he was no longer alone. An elf lady was sitting there watching him.

"Ah, there you are. Welcome," she said. The big eyes were completely blue.

He stared at her. It was Lady Tschinn, the one who'd started the madness when she'd named him the Iudo Faex.

"Come inside. We must tend to your wounds."

"You know what I am."

"Yes, child. I know."

"How can the Iudo Faex trust you?"

She went down on her knees and pressed her forehead to the ground at his feet. "I am your servant. I foretold your fate; now let me serve you."

She raised her head, sat back on her haunches. "You see, I understand that the Game must end. It has grown fell and evil. Our lords were not always as you see them now. Once they were the equals of great Althis."

"You know Althis?"

She gave him a strange glance. "Of course, we are the same people. Only we have descended. When we left Gelderen, when we were cast out of Gelderen, then began our fall from our true place in the world. Here we built our secret enclave, and here we have rotted."

The eyes were completely blue, milk and meek.

"It is a weirdness that has possessed our lords, something fell and foreign to their true nature. I think that it is the Game that has done this to them."

The lady sagged, as if by saying the words she had finally accepted the inevitable. Then she looked up at him.

"And yet not all of us have gone the way of the Game lords. Some of us still hold to the truth in our hearts. We earn nothing but scorn from them. And we do not play the Game. They offer us only the passions of spectators." She sighed.

"We remember Gelderen and the great life. We would keep our promise to the High. We will accept our fate. Thus we must serve you. You are the chosen instrument."

That sounded downright ominous.

"I need a drink," said Relkin.

"Come inside. I will bring you water or whatever you desire."

Still feeling dizzy, Relkin got to his feet and lurched across the promenade. The pain from the burns was fairly constant now. Moving didn't seem to make as much difference. She held the door for him and he shuffled inside to a large reception room set with plush furniture and thick rugs. The walls were a pale green.

He lay down on a golden divan. Three Ardu slave girls appeared at the tinkle of a little silver bell. They brought water and healing materials and set to work with Lady Tschinn to clean and dress his wounds. While the slave girls bandaged him, the lady performed healing magic. She burned bitter herbs on a small stone, sucked in the smoke, and then blew it over Relkin while she recited the words of the spell. Relkin accepted it as part of the healing. He had experienced too much magic in his short life to be surprised by such things.

The girls rebandaged his nose and cleaned the gouges and cuts on his back, where Biroik had ground him into the ground at one point. They dealt with the burns. Indeed, when they had finished, he was swathed in well-set bandages. He could scarcely move.

The girls left. Lady Tschinn sat beside him, singing softly while she did needlework. He tried not to think too much about what lay ahead. Eventually he spoke.

"They will kill me."

She paused, looked up, and nodded. "Yes. You are the Iudo Faex."

"It is hard when you feel so completely forsaken. Where are the gods now that I need their help?"

Old Caymo had thrown broken dice, bad dice, terrible dice. His last living worshiper was in desperate need of a change of luck. But Relkin felt certain that his gods did not rule in this dread place.

"Who knows what the gods do or don't do? I no longer believe in gods. Not since we were cast out of Gelderen."

And Relkin's fortunes were now entwined with the great gestalt entity that slept beneath the pyramid and that entity knew nothing of gods.

The slave girls brought him wine and bread and chicken broth. They soaked the bread in the broth until it was soft enough to swallow without chewing and fed him by hand as if he were some sort of precious animal. He had to force himself not to gulp the wine down and call for more.

He lay back and concentrated on breathing. Slowly he began to feel a little stronger. The food was a help. And there was something else, something deep within him that had turned around now. It was a distinct sensation that he had stopped retreating. Now he was moving the other way. Of course there was a long way to go.

He dozed off again.

Lady Tschinn cradled his head in her lap and sang elfin lullabies over him.

He was a brave young man, caught up in something far beyond his understanding. He had been sent, of that she was sure. Sent from the outside to bring an end to everything. He would destroy her, she knew, yet it had to be.

It all had to end. Her brothers, her father, her uncles, they had surrendered to the weird and the perverse. They had become cruel, disgusting caricatures of themselves. She knew that the moment was coming. The threads of the universe were approaching realignment.

She guessed that more was at stake here than even she could imagine. This youth had known of Althis. That could only mean that he was marked before he ever came to Mirchaz. What did this portend?

She knew. There was a ripeness in the moment. She sensed the fullness, the awesome fullness.

In the pyramid, two giant gladiators circled, swords extended. Bazil's bad leg gave a twinge with every step. Sweat ran down his back, dripped from his chin, and soaked the remains of his joboquin. His sword arm was numb and the little jerry-built shield was disintegrating.

So were his hopes. Again and again he had beaten this eerie opponent and gone through to stab home, and still the thing kept fighting. Ecator had hacked deep into its shoulders, into the top of its tubular, headless torso, into legs and arms, and it took almost no notice. He had knocked it down, three times so far, and driven the blade deep into the region above the ring of eyes. Now it was coming back yet again, climbing off the floor for the third time. Its buckler was completely gone now, but its sword was still effective, though notched.

At least in that regard, the dragon could feel pride. Ecator was unmarked, still a ribbon of white steel imbued with a fell spirit that longed to feed on the lives of all enemies of the light.

The enemy thing had a limited repertoire of moves, and while it was not clumsy, it lacked grace. It never surprised him, but it always struck hard and accurately, so that to miss a parry was to risk a terrible wound.

Again they came together. He moved inside for a change, and used his bulk to stop it dead. Its arm flailed at him ineffectively since he was inside its reach and its sword was useless behind him. Now he reached up and stabbed down with Ecator, both hands on the handle, and drove the fell blade deep into the thing.

Ecator went in all the way, piercing it from headless shoulders to unsexed crotch. The thing thrashed for a moment, Bazil's heart leaped—at last a reaction! It quivered, shook itself, and moved away from him. He stepped forward in lockstep and tried to get Ecator out. The sword was stuck. He tugged. It stabbed at him with its own blade and he hugged it and felt the steel slice his hide along his ribs. Ecator still would not come free. Bazil hauled on it until the veins stood out all over the upper part of his body; still the blade was firmly held. He heaved and the beast came right off its feet for a moment, but Ecator remained trapped, skewering the brute.

It had shortened its arc of arm motion and was about to drive that ugly sword home into Bazil's belly. The wyvern was forced to step away and release his grip on Ecator. It was a desolate feeling, as if part of him had been lost.

There were shouts from above. He glanced upward and saw rows of elf lords gesticulating, on the galleries of the upper part of the atrium. They were applauding the creature they had made.

He stepped back, and back some more. The damned beast stood there, Ecator's hilt and handle sticking out of its topside, the blade rammed down into it like a new spine made of steel, and still it was coming at him. It moved deliberately, a step at a time. The useless buckler was proffered first to guard itself. Bazil snorted. By the fiery breath! It hadn't changed its battle plan at all; it still fought with the same stupid, ugly tactics. As if he were still armed.

It aggrieved Bazil to think he might die at the hands of such a clumsy opponent. Why, the Purple Green, bless his huge, cantankerous heart, was better with a sword than this insane, carrot-shaped thing. Still it swung its blade and he moved out of range smartly. He gave thanks to the gods that this place was big enough to give him a little room to maneuver. But in time his bad leg would make it impossible for him to keep that vital step ahead and then it would cut him down.