Nightworld

Dim light ahead, oozing around the next bend in the passage.

Unhealthy light. A sickly, wan, greasy glow, purulent green, clinging to the tunnel walls like grime, casting no shadows. There was no hope to be found in that light, no succor from the night, merely a confirmation of the dark's superiority.

As Glaeken moved toward the feeble glow, the air grew colder; a bitter, acrid odor stung his nostrils. He rounded the bend and stopped.

In the center of a huge granite cavern, a hundred feet across, Rasalom's new form hung suspended over a softly glowing abyss. Four gleaming ebon pillars reached from the corners of the chamber, arching across the chasm of the abyss to fuse over its center. A huge sack, bulging, pendulous, nearly the size of a small warehouse, hung suspended from that central fusion. Glaeken could make out no details of the shape that floated within the inky amnion of the sack. He didn't need to see Rasalom to know that it was he, undergoing the final stage of his transformation.

"Welcome to my uterus, Glaeken."

Glaeken did not reply. Instead, he leapt upon the nearest support where it sprang from the wall and strode along its upper surface toward the center where Rasalom hung in his amniotic sack.

"Glaeken, wait! Stop!" Rasalom's voice took on a panicky edge in his head. "What are you doing?"

Glaeken kept moving toward the center, the weapon raised before him.

"There's no need for this, Glaeken! I'm so close! You'll ruin everything!"

Glaeken had progressed to within a dozen feet of the sack when the surface of the support suddenly softened and erupted in hundreds of fine tendrils that wrapped around his ankles, snaring them, encasing them in a squirming mass, then recrystallized to rock-like hardness. He pulled and strained at them but his feet were locked down to the support. He chopped at them with the blade but he remained trapped like a fly on a pest strip.

He stared down at the sack hanging within spitting distance below him. A huge eye rolled against the inner surface of the membrane and stopped to stare back at him.

"That is quite far enough," Rasalom said.

"Perhaps you're right," Glaeken said.

He shifted his grip on the hilt and raised the weapon over his shoulder like a spear, its point directed at the eye. Rasalom's voice screamed in his brain.

"No! Glaeken, wait! I can help you!"

"No deals, Rasalom."

He reared back to hurl the weapon.

"I can make her whole again!'

Glaeken hesitated. He couldn't help it.

"Whole again? Who?"

"Your woman. That Hungarian Jewess who stole your heart. I can give her back her mind—and make her young again."

"No. You can't. Not even the Dat-tay-vao—"

"I'm far more powerful than that puny elemental. This is my world now, Glaeken. When I complete the change I can do whatever I wish. I will be making the rules here, Glaeken. All the rules. And if I say the woman called Magda shall be thirty again and sound of mind and body forever—forever—then so it shall be"

Magda…alert, young, healthy, sane …the vision of the two of them together as they used to be…

He shook it off.

"No. Not in this world."

"It doesn't have to be this world. You can have your own corner of the globe, your own island, your own archipelago. All to yourselves. You can even take some of your friends. The sun will shine there forever. You can live on in idyllic splendor."

"While the rest of the world…?"

"Is mine. All you have to do is acknowledge me as master of this sphere and drop your weapon into the abyss. After that I shall see to all your comforts."

For a heartbeat he actually considered it. The realization rocked Glaeken. Did he want Magda back that much? And Magda—she'd never forgive him. He'd have to live on with her abhorrence, her loathing of him.

He tightened his grip on the weapon.

"No deals."

Putting all his arm and as much of his foot-locked body as he could behind it, Glaeken hurled the weapon at the sack. The huge eye ducked away as Rasalom's voice screamed in his mind.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

The point of the blade pierced the membrane of the sack, penetrated about a foot, then stopped, quivering. Rasalom's voice became a howl of pain as inky fluid spurted out around the blade, coating it, congealing around it, sealing the wound and encasing the weapon until the entire blade and all but the pommel of the hilt were mired in a hardening tarry mass.

And then Rasalom's howl of pain segued into a peal of laughter. The single huge eye once again pressed against the inner surface of the membrane and regarded him coldly.

"Ah, Glaeken. Noble to the end. Just as well, I suppose. You probably knew you'd never see the tropical idyll I promised you. But did you truly think you could hurt me? Here in the heart of my domain, in the seat of my power? Your arrogance is insufferable at times. It is too late to harm me, Glaeken. It has been too late for a long time."

Glaeken tried once more to pull his feet free but they would not budge. He took a deep breath and stood quietly, waiting, listening to the hated voice in his mind.

"You knew it was too late, Glaeken. You must have known all along. Yet knowing it was useless, still you took up the weapon and came to me instead of waiting for me to come to you. I don't understand that. Can you explain your madness, your arrogance? We have some time. Speak."

"If the answer is not apparent to you," Glaeken said, "no amount of talking will make you understand. Where do we go from here?"

"We wait. I'm almost ready. At the undawn I will be complete. When I emerge from my chrysalis I shall leave you here and move to the surface where I shall deal with your little circle of allies. And as I gut them I shall let you see it all through my eyes. And as for your wife, I shall keep my promise to you: I will restore her youth and her mind before she dies—after all, we wouldn't want her to die without knowing exactly what is happening. And when all that is done, I'll return for you. And then the fun shall truly begin."

Glaeken said nothing. There was no use in asking for mercy for himself or the others—there was no mercy to be had. So he closed his eyes and willed his insides to stone to inure them from the sick fear coiling through him.

"And while we wait, I believe I'll close that tiny wound in my perfect night. Too many people are taking undue pleasure in it. Imagine their fear when it starts to fade and they realize that they are naked prey to all the night things encircling them. Yes, I like that idea. I should have thought of the pinhole myself. Allow a little cone of light through here and there about the world, let the locals run to it like moths to a flame, let it shine long enough to lift hopes, and then douse it. Thank you, Glaeken. You've given me a new game."