Nightworld

Yes, there was light down the tunnel. Glaeken was sure of it now. Growing steadily. And Rasalom…Rasalom was thrashing about in his amniotic sack.

What was happening up on the surface? The weapon was here, useless, encased in hardened fluid from the sack. What in the name of anything could exert such a disturbing effect on Rasalom?

Suddenly a thunderous rumble from the tunnel behind him. The support shuddered beneath Glaeken's feet. He twisted and saw the growing glow disappear as the roof of the tunnel collapsed, choking the passage with rubble. As the tunnel mouth belched a cloud of dust, Rasalom's voice returned.

"Once again you've chosen a vexing group of friends, Glaeken."

A warm glow of pride lit within him, along with a glimmer of—did he dare?—hope.

"They're a tough bunch. What have they done?"

"Nothing that will matter in the long run, but for the present they've created an annoyance, an inconvenience."

"What?"

"They've enlarged the pinhole in the night-cover made by your puny little weapon."

Glaeken steadied himself, choked down the shout of triumph that surged against his vocal cords. He maintained a calm exterior.

"How?" he said.

"How is irrelevant. Their success is irrelevant. The entire world is in darkness. A single cone of sunlight, no matter how bright, is laughably insignificant."

Glaeken sensed the weight of all that Rasalom had left unsaid.

"Sunlight, Rasalom? Since when have you been afraid of sunlight?"

"I am afraid of nothing, Glaeken. I am master of this sphere. It fears me."

"It's not sunlight, is it, Rasalom. It's another kind of light. Light from your enemy. And it comes at a time and place that's more than 'inconvenient,' doesn't it? It's shining directly above your little nest, and it has arrived at a time when you're vulnerable, before your new form has matured."

"Nonsense, Glaeken. Pure wishful thinking on your part. When my gestation is through, and that is only a matter of hours now, I shall personally plug that hole in my perfect night. Then you will see how 'vulnerable' I am."

Glaeken noticed a growing warmth at his back. He twisted again toward the rubble-strewn tunnel. Something was happening there. Something he'd never dreamed. The light was working into the rubble, determinedly worming its way through, as if it had a mind of its own.

And then he saw it. A gleaming pinpoint, a tiny bead no larger than a grain of sand, glowing amid the rubble, growing bigger, growing brighter.

"Don't allow yourself to hope, Glaeken. It cannot harm me."

Yet Glaeken did allow himself to hope, could not help but hope when he saw the bead brighten suddenly and shoot out toward the pit in a narrow beam of brilliance, like a needle-thin blue-white laser streaming toward Rasalom. But it came up short against the support under Glaeken's feet, spraying and splashing like water against a stone wall.

The beam of light persisted, though. Like a living thing with a will of its own, it split, one half sliding upward, the other down around the support. The light crept to the top just inches ahead of Glaeken's trapped feet. As soon as it crested the support it raced downward to rejoin its other half. They fused and once again shot out toward Rasalom's amniotic sack.

But the beam did not strike the sack. Instead it flashed toward the weapon, igniting the exposed pommel of the hilt. The pommel blazed with blinding fire, and dimly, through the encrustations, Glaeken could see bolts of light flashing along the length of its blade.

Rasalom howled in Glaeken's mind as he writhed and thrashed within his sack. Glaeken had a feeling that this time it was no act.

The weapon began to vibrate, the encrustations began to crack and fall away like an old skin, and suddenly the weapon was free, blazing with white light.

Another beam of radiance broke through the rubble and flashed across the cavern. It too found the weapon and added its power to it.

As Rasalom's howl rose to a shriek, Glaeken felt the tendrils wrapped around his legs begin to soften, their hold on him weaken. He bent and tore at them, straining to pull free. There was no time to lose. Rasalom's thrashings were shaking the weapon within the wound it had made. The beam of light stayed with it, moving whenever it did, but if the weapon slipped loose it would fall into the pit. And then Rasalom's victory would be assured.

With a final surge, Glaeken yanked his legs free and leapt to the central disk where the four arched supports fused. He dropped to his belly, hung precariously over the edge, and reached for the weapon.

Cold-fire eternity beckoned below.

Glaeken fought a surge of vertigo and stretched his right arm to its limits, violently thrusting it down to force the ligaments to give him the tiny extra increment of length he needed to reach the jittering hilt. His fingertips brushed the pommel twice, and then with a final, agonizing thrust, he hooked two fingers around it. At his touch the weapon seemed to move on its own, slamming the body of the hilt against his palm. Power surged up his arm and throughout his body and once more the weapon was his.

And he was the weapon's.

He stood and looked about. The beams of light from the rubble stayed with the blade, fueling it, following wherever he moved it. He couldn't reach Rasalom or his sack, so he decided to try the next best thing.

Reversing his grip, he lifted the weapon high and drove the point down into the center of the nearest of the supporting arches. A blinding flash lit the cavern as the blade cut deep into the flinty substance. The material of the support began to bubble and smoke as the blade melted its way through it like a hot knife cutting frozen butter. The smoke was greasy, foul, reeking of seared flesh. More flashes followed as Glaeken worked the blade back and forth, widening the gash as he deepened it, strobing the cavern with bursts of light and stretching weird shadows against its walls.

"No, Glaeken!" Rasalom howled. "I command you to stop! Stop now or you'll pay dearly. And so will your friends!"

Without pausing an instant in his labors, Glaeken glanced down at the huge eye pressed furiously against the membrane.

"You've already promised that, Rasalom. What have I got to lose?"

"I won't kill you, Glaeken! I'll let you live on, just barely. I'll make you witness, see, feel everything that happens in my new world."

Glaeken said nothing. He had almost cut through the first arch. With a final thrust, the blade angled through the underside and came free.

The central portion suddenly sagged a half a foot under him. Glaeken hurried to his left, toward the next support.

"Glaeken, NO! That island I promised you—you and the woman and your friends—"

Glaeken shut his mind to Rasalom's rantings and drove the blade into the second arch. More flashes and oily smoke. He worked the blade ferociously, gasping with the stench and the exertion, and eventually it worked its way through.

The center sagged again, its free edge lurching downward almost two feet this time. The two supports he had cut wept dark fluid from their truncated ends as they remained suspended above the void like severed arms reaching for something they would never again possess.

Supported now on only one side by the two remaining arches, the center tilted at a steep angle. Glaeken's feet slipped on the smooth surface as he hurried toward the nearer remaining arch.

And again he drove the blade deep into the substance. As he worked it through, he felt an impact on his right leg. Reflexively he pulled away as searing pain flashed up to his hip. He caught a flash of movement and he rolled away from the center.

It was a huge hand, but it resembled a hand only in the vaguest sense—black as the night above, and only three fingers, each as thick around as Glaeken's waist, each terminating in a sharp yellow talon. Blood dripped from one of those talons—his own.

Rasalom—it had to be. Rasalom in his new form. Glaeken could not see the rest of him, most of which was no doubt still in the sack below. Had his new form finally matured, or was he breaking free before the process was completed in order to stop Glaeken?

It made another swipe, blindly, in his direction. Glaeken ducked under the talons. The sudden move sent a fresh surge of agony through his wounded leg. As it came for him again, he slashed at it with the weapon and felt the blade dig deep into the inky flesh.

Light exploded above him, a flash of brilliance that dwarfed all those before it. In his mind he heard Rasalom cry out in shock and pain. When his vision cleared he saw the taloned hand waving above him, one of its thick fingers swinging madly back and forth as it dangled from its smoking stump by a few remaining intact tendons.

Glaeken straightened and limped to the other support. He had been able to cut only part way through the third and it was unlikely he'd get a chance to finish the job within Rasalom's reach. He'd attack the fourth—but not near the center.

His move must have surprised Rasalom because he was half-way along the arch before the voice sounded in his brain.

"Don't run off, Glaeken. We've only begun to play."

Glaeken didn't look back. He continued his torturous trek toward the far end of the arch. Within a dozen feet of its origin he stopped and turned.

Rasalom's amniotic sack still hung from its lopsided platform like a gargantuan punching bag, but now a sinewed arm with a wounded hand protruded from the rent made by the weapon. It raked the air above it with its two remaining talons. And the eye…that malevolent eye was still pressed against the membrane, glaring at him.

"I'm not running far," Glaeken said.

With another burst of light and bloom of oily smoke, he drove the weapon deep into the arch beneath him and began to work it back and forth. The support was thicker here near its base, but he could afford the extra time it would take because he was out of Rasalom's reach.

"Glaeken," Rasalom said to his mind, "you'll never learn. You are forcing me to…"

Ahead, over the center of the pit, another arm clawed free of the membrane, then ripped a talon down the surface of the sack, opening it like a zipper. Tons of black fluid poured from the rent, spilling into the bottomless glow of the depths below. The rent parted, widened, and then…

Something emerged from the sack.

Glaeken knew who it was, but could not be certain what it was. It had arms, that he knew. And a huge eye at its upper end. But in the dim glow leaking up from the pit below he could be sure of little else as it crawled from the sack and hoisted itself up onto the sagging central platform. Legs…now he could see legs, very much like the two arms, but the rest of it was encased in an oozing gelatinous mass that dripped off the platform in amorphous globs and tumbled into infinity. There was a larger shape within the mass, something with a head and a torso, but Glaeken could make out no details. And now a pair of thick tentacles wriggled free of the gelatin below the arms to twist and coil in the air.

It began moving his way, crawling upward toward him along the fourth arch.

Glaeken redoubled his efforts with the weapon, widening, deepening the cut in its upper surface, thrusting the blade through to the underside. Rasalom's incomplete new form was cumbersome, his progress slow, but he was sliding steadily closer. He soon would have Glaeken within reach of those talons.

Suddenly an explosive crack echoed through the cavern as the fourth arch shook beneath Glaeken's feet and broke part way through like a green sapling. Its distal segment sagged. Glaeken paused and watched Rasalom claw frantically for purchase as he slipped back along the decline toward the central disk. He gave the monstrous form no time to recover, however; immediately he renewed his hacking assault at the remaining splinters holding the arch together.

"Give it up, Glaeken! This is an exercise in futility! You cannot win!"

Rasalom's voice was no longer in his mind. His new form was speaking in a startlingly powerful voice. Even muffled by the gelatinous coating, it was still loud enough to shake the walls of the cavern.

Glaeken ignored it and forced his wearying arms to maintain the assault on the arch. The reflexes were still there, the arms knew what to do, but the unconditioned muscles were sagging with fatigue. Yet he couldn't rest, couldn't even slow his pace. He closed his eyes to blot out all distractions and kept hacking.

"GLAEKEN!"

The stark terror in the voice and the ripping sound that accompanied it jolted Glaeken. He looked up.

Rasalom was near, clinging to the arch, his outstretched talons only a few feet from Glaeken's face, yet he was receding, falling away. And then Glaeken saw why. He'd cut through the remnant of the fourth support and now Rasalom was dangling over the pit, clutching frantically with arms, legs, and tentacles to the swiftly tilting remnant.

The entire structure—the new Rasalom, the central disk, and the remnant of his sack-like chrysalis—was now supported entirely by the third arch. And Glaeken had already damaged that near its union with the disk.

After all these ages, Rasalom's end was at hand.

Or was it?

Rasalom was suspended head down over the pit, but he was scrabbling backwards along the remnant of the arch, up toward the disk.

"You cannot win, Glaeken! Not this time! It cannot happen! I won't allow it! I'm too close!"

His movements were shaking the entire structure, exerting enormous pressure on the lone arch. It began to bob like a fishing pole that had hooked an enormous Great White. As Glaeken hobbled back to the rim of the cavern and made his way toward the final arch, he heard it begin to crack where he had started a cut near its distal end.

Rasalom must have realized it too, because even in this dim light Glaeken could discern a frantic desperation in his movements. But it was too late. The end of the arch was splitting, angling down at its wounded tip. Breaking…

A cannonshot crack signaled the end. The disk lurched downward suddenly to a vertical angle, twisted crazily. Rasalom was there, clutching the disk's upper edge with his taloned fingers. Other appendages, spiny, rickety arms with clawed tips had broken free of the gel along his flank and were blindly questing for purchase while his tentacles stretched toward the end of the arch, reaching.

And then the final threads of the final arch gave way and the disk, the sack, and Rasalom plunged into the abyss.

No—not Rasalom.

Glaeken groaned as he realized that Rasalom was still there. The rest had fallen away but he was clinging to the final support by one of his tentacles—and pulling himself up!

Glaeken forced his wounded leg to move, to half run, half stagger to the base of the third arch, climb upon it, and hobble along its wavering length. He didn't have time to cut through this one. He had to meet Rasalom at its terminus and stop him there before he regained his footing.

"This is what it's always come down to, hasn't it, Rasalom. You and me. Just you and me."

Rasalom's reply was to snake his other tentacle upward and loop it around the shaft of the arch next to the first. He used them to hoist himself higher until his taloned hands could grip the arch. That done, new tentacles began to spring from the great gelatinous mass of his body to join the others in coils around the shaft.

He's going to make it!

Glaeken clenched his teeth against the pain in his leg and increased his speed. He didn't hesitate when he reached the first tentacles—he slashed at them with the weapon. Blinding flashes, greasy smoke, and thick, dark fluid spurting from the amputated ends. The world narrowed to Glaeken, Rasalom, the arch, and the weapon. Closing his eyes against the flashes, choking on the smoke, he slipped into a fugue of pain and motion, moving in a fog, operating on reflexes as he severed coil after coil and kicked their writhing remnants aside, then moved on the next group.

From below him came a thunderous roar as Rasalom kicked and thrashed in inarticulate pain and rage.

Spiny, spidery, pincer-tipped arms rose on both sides and snapped at him. Glaeken lashed out left and right, scything them down as he kept pushing forward.

Until finally he was at the end of the arch and Rasalom swung below him, suspended only by his yellow-taloned hands, one of them already missing a finger.

"Glaeken…no…please!"

And in the instant of that plea Rasalom yanked his body upward and lashed at Glaeken with the three fingers of his good hand. Glaeken ducked as the talons raked the air inches above his head. He swung the weapon upward, over his head. The impact with Rasalom's wrist and the simultaneous detonation of brilliance as the blade sliced through skin and muscle and tendon and bone nearly knocked Glaeken off the arch. He threw himself flat and hung on as Rasalom thrashed and howled and waved his partially severed, black-spurting wrist in the air.

Up ahead, near the shattered tip of the arch, Glaeken saw that Rasalom's only remaining hold on it was the two surviving fingers on his damaged hand. He crawled quickly forward and slashed at the nearest with the weapon, severing it with another flash of light. The talon of the last digit scraped along the surface of the arch, scratching a deep furrow as it slipped slowly toward eternity. Then it caught in a small pit near the edge.

"Glaeken!" came the muffled, agonized voice from below. "You can't! This can't be happening! Don't!"

Glaeken was about to raise the weapon and sever that last digit but thought better of it. Instead he rolled over and swiveled his body around; he flexed his good leg all the way to his abdomen.

His foot shot out and knocked the talon over the edge.

No final farewell to Rasalom, no verbal send off. Nothing more than a contemptuous kick.

Rasalom's scream was loud, almost painfully so. It echoed up from the glowing depths long after his tumbling, mutilated form had been swallowed by the mists.

But Glaeken did not wait and watch and listen as he dearly would have loved. Instead, as soon as the arch slowed its bobbing from the release of Rasalom's enormous weight, he began crawling back toward the cavern rim as fast as his limbs would allow

Rasalom was falling into eternity. When he passed the point where his presence no longer influenced this sphere, the old laws would begin to reassert themselves. Nature would awaken from the coma Rasalom had induced and begin its recovery, regain its control.

And this cavern had no place in nature.

As he reached the end of the arch, the walls began to shake. The rubble choking the side tunnel began to tumble free, revealing the opening. If he could reach that granite passage, he might survive.

He was almost there when the roof caved in.