Pillar of Night

CHAPTER TWELVE

Claybore swiveled about on his mechanical hips as he studied the softly glowing wall. If his fleshless skull had possessed lips, he would have smiled in satisfaction. As it was, the white bone took on a higher sheen and a tiny crack began to run from one eye socket up to the crown. Claybore didn’t notice. His full attention focused on the wall and the scenes beginning to appear.

“Good,” he said to his assistant mage. “You have done well, Patriccan.”

Patriccan hobbled over and propped himself against a table littered with charts, grimoires, and other magical paraphernalia. He, too, rejoiced in all that transpired on a dozen different worlds.

“Master, your scrying improves. None sees onto another world along the Road save you. And now you are able to maintain viewing ports to a full twelve worlds. Remarkable. I salute you.” Patriccan bowed as deeply as he could. His injuries had still not healed, even though he had ordered several of his junior sorcerers to use what healing spells they knew. It had come as a shock to Patriccan to find they knew very few-their expertise, like his own, lay in the field of destruction, not healing.

Claybore strutted back and forth like a partly mechanical, partly flesh, partly decayed rooster. From the pits of his eye sockets came a directing beam of pale red. The beams struck a spot on the wall and created a picture different only in detail. Like the others, this one also showed carnage and suffering.

“You have recovered the Kinetic Sphere for me?” Claybore asked. “I see my agents with it on this world.”

“Martak failed to hide it properly, master,” said Patriccan. The mage shifted his weight and forced away the pain he experienced. If he could not take full revenge on Inyx, Ducasien and the others on that backwater world, he would at least revel in his master’s scheme to humiliate and destroy Martak.

“He did not try. It came as a surprise to him that he was able to yank it from my chest.” A hesitant hand touched the putrescence around the gaping hole in Claybore’s chest. The hand shook uncontrollably; the arm had not been properly restored. New spells were required for permanent attachment.

“Look, master,” said Patriccan. “Our legions conquer still another world. Their king bows his knee to your supreme rule.”

“Pah,” snorted Claybore. “Who cares for petty rulers? Or even if they are led by mages of some power. They are ants. So what if it is an entire world coming under my aegis? The real battle continues here and here and… here.”

He pointed to scenes from the world where Ducasien and Inyx consolidated their power, to a scene with Brinke and Lan Martak and to the darkly towering Pillar of Night.

“Master, rest assured all will be ready when the final battle trumpet is sounded.”

“Don’t be so dramatic, Patriccan. It ill becomes you. This will be a bloody fight, a good one. I relish the thought of Martak squirming, begging me for mercy.”

“He proved incapable of defending himself,” Patriccan said ingratiatingly, “because of your cunning geas.”

“I worry about that,” admitted Claybore. The death’s head craned about and faced Patriccan. “He is more powerful than I in some respects and knows how that compulsion wears down on his ability. If Kiska is somehow killed, he would be forced to mourn, but my control over him would be gone.”

“He cannot allow that.”

“And I work constantly to be sure she is not placed in jeopardy, but his friends”-Claybore tapped the glowing screen where Inyx and Ducasien toiled-“are not without their own quaint powers. They might eliminate Kiska before I can play her in the proper sequence.”

“You will let her slay Martak?” Patriccan’s surprise was real. Martak had proved Claybore’s most able rival since Terrill. To allow another, a mere soldier, to kill Martak struck the mage as sacrilege. “I will perform the task for you. I have no love of him, either. Do not let her simply drive a dagger into his back.”

“Why not? What worse fate for someone such as he? To be killed by the one you love.”

“He is being forced.”

“It won’t matter. But you are wasting precious time. Have you been successful in your experiments? I need complete outfitting before any major demands are placed on me.

“Master,” Patriccan said, bowing again, “all is in readiness. Careful research has shown me the way to pioneer new spells that will prevent the rejection of your arms.”

“Yes, yes,” Claybore said impatiently. “I know all about that. My legs. What about my legs?”

The sorcerer’s legs had been hacked apart and magically destroyed by Lan and Were forever lost. Some time prior, Claybore had set Patriccan to preparing new legs.

“These may not provide the reservoir for the powers of your original limbs,” said the journeyman mage, “but, master, they will suffice until better ones can be fashioned.”

“Any of flesh and bone will be better than these mechanical atrocities.” Claybore flexed one knee joint. It whined in unoiled protest. The dancing spots of energy powering the legs frequently winked out of existence and left the mage motionless. “If you had not perfected the organic limbs, I would have considered conjuring a minor demon to provide the motive power.”

Patriccan shook his head at this. Even the most minor of demons were cantankerous and turned on both mortal and mage with-demonic-glee. To rely on one was sheer folly, even when the binding spells were as potent as the ones Claybore might conjure.

“The legs await you, master.”

Patriccan hobbled ahead of Claybore. The mage went into his laboratory and waved away his numerous assistants. Many were young and barely trained, while others were almost as experienced as Patriccan. Whether apprentice or journeyman mage, they all paid obeisance to Claybore. They knew the penalty for not doing so.

The mutilated husks of mages who had opposed Claybore littered the haunted forests surrounding the Pillar of Night. None wished to spend the rest of eternity sightless, insane, without the proper number of limbs and organs.

“Remarkably similar to my own,” said Claybore, standing at the edge of a green-tiled table. Human-appearing legs twitched feebly on the slick surface. Two mages sat on the far side of the table, eyes closed to enhance concentration, their lips moving constantly in the spells required to keep the legs alive until attached to their master.

Claybore made several passes with his hands over the juncture between machine and flesh. A hissing noise caused several of the mages to recoil. Smoke rose from the metal legs and momentarily obscured the dismembered sorcerer. As the smoke blew away all that remained was a molten puddle of metal on the floor. Claybore hovered in midair.

“This taxes me more than I thought, Patriccan. Hurry.”

“Rest on the table, master. Would you prefer a soporific spell?”

“No! I stay aware of all that happens.”

Patriccan acquiesced to the desire. It did not pay to make Claybore angry or upset. Patriccan motioned to those chanting the preservation spells. They backed off, their chants dropping in volume until they were barely audible.

Others moved closer, bringing with them special pastes and magically enhanced sections of living flesh. Patriccan personally placed the left leg into the raw hip socket. Sweat broke out on his forehead and ran into his eyes as the strain mounted. He blinked it free as he worked, not daring to take his hands away from the task. The paste smeared over the end of the leg allowed a perfect junction to be made. Rapid, complex spells bonded flesh to flesh.

“There is no feeling in the leg. It is dead,” said Claybore. His peevish tone spurred Patriccan and the others to greater effort. The leg began twitching spastically. “There,” said Claybore with some satisfaction. “I can even wiggle the toes. It is good.”

“The other leg,” muttered Patriccan. “Hurry with it. Hurry!” The other mages slid it along the green tile. Patriccan applied the pastes and chanted the spells.

Try as he would, he failed to make the proper connections. Nerve endings refused to weld and the leg began withering.

“Do not let it die,” warned Claybore. “One leg avails me little. I must have both.”

“Master, there is only one way to salvage this leg. Something has gone wrong. The flesh was not properly activated. I… I do not know what to do, other than to summon a demon.”

“Do it.” Claybore’s words were cold, unemotional. He and Patriccan both knew the penalty for failure. Claybore was immortal and could not die, but eternity spent in a burned or mutilated state was an eternity of damnation.

Two of the less brave mages slipped from the chamber, faces white and teeth chattering with fear. Patriccan found himself in little better condition, but knew what had to be done.

He made the hand gestures in the air and traced out fiery trails of incandescent green and purple. The spell wove into a complex mйlange of syllables hardly intelligible. The very air of the room began to hum and churn with the power of the conjuring. The demon puffed into existence, sending fly ash and sparks outward in a small cloud.

“Obey,” Patriccan said. His fingers forged a cage with bars of glowing colors; the demon struggled against the imprisoning bars. One taloned hand snaked between two bars that had been carelessly constructed and a long nail scratched down the side of Patriccan’s face. The sorcerer jerked back, anger flaring. He pointed, the tip of his finger turning white-hot. He started to send the demon back to the netherworld from which it had been summoned.

“No,” said Claybore. “Proceed. Use this one.”

“A sorry wreck you are,” observed the demon. “Not even I can piece you back together, even if I wanted. And I don’t.” The demon sat cross-legged within the cage and licked Patriccan’s blood from its talon. It made a face and spat. The gobbet struck one bar and sizzled.

Only with extreme effort did Patriccan control himself. Claybore desired a quick end to this. To conjure another demon might take more time and energy than he had. Patriccan moved the bars closer together to prevent another attempt at injuring him.

“Animate the leg. Give it the essence that burns within your veins. Give it life!” Patriccan clapped his hands and pointed. The cage edged toward Claybore’s leg. The demon tried to appear nonchalant but the spells holding it were strong. Reluctantly, the fierce green demon reached out and lightly touched Claybore’s leg.

The shriek of agony filling the chamber had not been formed by human lips. New and deeper cracks appeared in Claybore’s skull as the sorcerer endured the full anguish being meted out to him by the vindictive demon. Two of the braver mages near the back of the chamber whispered between themselves and then fell silent. Another wordless cry of pain lanced into their minds.

“He tortures me needlessly,” shrieked Claybore. “I will send him to the lowest of the Lowest Places for this. Oh, the pain, the pain! It must cease!”

Claybore thrashed about on the tiled table, hands gripping the edges for support. One arm began detaching at the shoulder; the mage found no strength within to perform the proper spell to keep it in place. Too many eons had passed since he had walked as a whole being. The parts had taken on auras of their own, grown in ways different from the torso. Claybore would have to force the arms back into place-later.

Now the mage had all he could contend with as the demon drew still another ideogram on his flesh and visited him with agony surpassing that ever borne by a living being.

“Mend the leg,” ordered Patriccan. “Do it. Do it!”

“Oh, very well. There. It is done. Poor material I had to work with, though. Damn poor.”

“I am a god,” came Claybore’s cold words. “You will rue the day you insulted me.”

“They’re all gods, to hear them talk,” muttered the demon. He crossed his legs in the other direction and polished the long talons gleaming darkly.

“Your leg, master. Is it all right?” Patriccan asked anxiously.

“It is crooked.” Claybore awkwardly slid off the table and stood on his legs. The one attached by the demon was inches shorter and bowed outward.

“Shoddy material, as I said,” spoke up the demon.

“Shoddy workmanship,” said Claybore. He placed his hands against the blazing bars of the cage and began squeezing. At first the demon only leered. Then it began to show more agitation as the bars closed in on it. Claybore continued to squeeze and the cage became ever smaller.

“Wait, stop. Don’t!” the demon pleaded. “Perhaps I erred. Your legs are the finest I have ever seen.”

Claybore’s anger was not to be contained. He continued squeezing. The cage collapsed until the demon was held in a space less than an inch across. The keenings of outrage and fear filling the room now came solely from the demon.

“You thought I jested when I said I was a god. Know this, lowborn one. I am Claybore. I rule every world along the Road. And I rule you. You!”

“Y-yes, master,” squawked the demon. “I see that now. Oh, the bars. They cut into me so cruelly! I hurt!”

“You’ll hurt for a thousand years.” Claybore conjured the world-shifting spell and exiled the demon to a distant place far from any civilized life.

“Is it cold there, master?” asked Patriccan.

“Very cold. The demon’s punishment will be extreme.”

Patriccan bowed low, smiling.

“And the punishment of the two who spoke, saying I deserved such torture…” Claybore hobbled about and directly faced the two miscreants. They dropped to their knees, pleading. From deep within Claybore’s eye sockets boiled the ruby death beams. Both mages died in fierce convulsions, their bones breaking and their inner organs rupturing in the process.

“The Kinetic Sphere?” asked Claybore. “I want it now. With it I shall again be whole.”

The parody of a human hobbled to where Patriccan opened a small cabinet. Inside lay the pinkly pulsing Kinetic Sphere, the sorcerer’s heart. His shaky hands reached out and lifted it to the yawning cavity in his chest. Claybore thrust it into his body.

“The power again flows within me,” he said. “I shall take a short rest to examine the additional powers that again having legs gives. Then,” the mage said, fleshless skull catching the light and reflecting it whitely, “then Martak shall perish.”

“Hail, master,” cried Patriccan.

Claybore almost fell as he spun about, his bandy leg betraying him. With as much haughtiness as he could muster, the re-formed sorcerer strode from the room. Only when he reached the hall did he tend to his left arm, which had again fallen from his shoulder.

He was not as powerful as he had been before Terrill had dismembered him with the help of the Resident of the Pit, but Claybore knew he was strong enough. For Inyx and Krek and Brinke and even Lan Martak.

“What is he doing?” Lan Martak worried at the lack of contact. “We cannot make the scrying spell work. He must be maneuvering into a position of power.”

“My couriers report at least four worlds along the Road where his grey-clad legions have made their final bids for power-and have succeeded.” Brinke stared at Lan, worry etched onto her fine face. “Physical power means little. He must seek other items, other powers, on those worlds.”

Lan rubbed his tongue against dry lips. The metallic tang of that tongue reminded him of the energy and driving spells locked in each of Claybore’s parts.

“He must have been prodigiously powerful when he met Terrill,” Lan said. Fear began gnawing away at his confidence. He had been so certain that he and only he could defeat Claybore. Now he doubted himself. Had he the training, the power? What of experience? Claybore had tens of thousands of years of cunning to draw upon. Lan had succeeded this far only because the sorcerer had still been disassembled and strewn along the Road.

No longer was that an advantage. Lan tried to be realistic about Claybore’s enhanced abilities-he assumed the sorcerer had regained the Kinetic Sphere. Lan had hardly known what he did when he ripped it from Claybore’s chest. Even less did he know where he cast it. There had been no planning such as that Terrill employed when originally scattering Claybore’s parts.

“The Pillar,” said Lan. “The secret is there. If I only had some inkling as to what it was.”

“No, Lan my darling,” said Kiska, grabbing his arm and tugging hard. “You cannot return there. The spell holds Claybore’s soul. He will become invincible if you meddle.”

The woman’s words started a different chain of thought. Lan said, “You argue for Claybore. He doesn’t want me going to the Pillar because of what I might find.”

“I have only your welfare at heart, Lan,” Kiska said.

Brinke laughed derisively but Lan almost believed. He loved her, even as he saw the lies she told him. The geas chewed away at him and made him less than a man. He feared now, as much for Kiska’s safety as his own. This robbed him of decisiveness.

Hands shaking and face pale with strain, he said, “I go back to the Pillar of Night. I must, if I am to discover the truth.” He expected the Resident of the Pit to quietly concur. No phantom voice sounded within his head. He had made the decision. Now he had to act upon it.

“I’ll go with you, Lan,” said Brinke. “We… we make a good team.” She flushed and smiled almost shyly.

“Bitch,” snarled Kiska. “You lead him astray. Claybore will strip the flesh from his bones and fry him throughout all eternity for this. I love him!”

Lan prevented Brinke from using her silver dagger on Kiska. The blonde relented and said, “We must hurry, Lan. Claybore uses his time well. We know that from our inability to use the scrying spell. Before he is ready to attack, you must launch yours.”

Lan nodded. He thought about the long journey using the demon-powered flyer. That had hidden any slight uses of magic he had performed, but the luxuries of time and seclusion were no longer his.

“We go. Now.”

His dancing light mote swung in crazy orbits about his head. With a few simple spells, he elongated the dot of light until it once more encapsulated him and Brinke.

“Lan, you can’t leave me!” pleaded Kiska, trapped outside the sphere of magic. “I need you!”

“She is a dagger at your throat, Lan. Leave her,” urged Brinke.

“I…” Lan made an impatient gesture and breached the bubble so that Kiska could join them. She shot Brinke a look of pure venom as she rubbed seductively against Lan. The mage tried to ignore her and failed.

Magical bubble again intact, he used his transport spell to whisk them half a world away to the edge of the forest.

The bubble popped audibly and sent the trio tumbling to the ground.

“We are on the wrong side,” said Brinke. “The Pillar is on the far side.” She canted her head upward, trying to catch sight of the towering column of black.

“There is something about the forest that prevents you from seeing the Pillar,” said Lan. “A few miles away, out on the plains, it is visible, immense, awesome. Move closer to the periphery of the forest and it vanishes.”

“We walk?” asked Kiska. “I do not like this. Let’s return to her castle, Lan. You can prepare for any battle there.”

Lan did not answer. Swallowing the words of agreement, he walked briskly into the dead forest. Again he was struck by the deathly silence, the lack of bugs, the sterile odor, the sight of stalking plants and trees intent on encircling and killing.

The journey was rapid and without mishap. Before, Lan had hesitated to use his spells for fear of alerting Claybore. Now he felt time more precious than secrecy. The climactic battle neared with appalling rapidity, and Lan had to be armed with all the knowledge possible concerning the Pillar.

“You’ve returned, young man. How good of you to come see me,” said the white-haired mage emerging from a clump of bushes. “But you were naughty. You ran off before we had our celebration. Rook hunted high and low for you and-but you have friends. How nice. You brought them for our party. Welcome,” sad Terrill.

“His eyes,” whispered Brinke. “Look at them.”

“Life burns but no intelligence shines with it,” agreed Lan. “This might be Claybore’s ultimate torture.”

“Keep this fool away from me,” said Kiska.

“Terrill,” said Lan, putting an arm around the ancient mage’s shoulder and leading him away. “A word with you.”

The man smiled at being taken into Lan’s confidence.

“We are here in all secrecy-to visit the Pillar of Night. Can you aid us on this mission? Claybore must never know.”

“Claybore?” he asked, voice quavering. “He sees all that happens within this forest. I invited him to one of our celebrations, but he never came. Rook felt very bad. So did Mela and Pekulline. They sulked for days.”

“The Pillar,” Lan pressed. “I would see it again. How do I get close?”

“He failed with it, Claybore did,” said Terrill. “He only pinioned and did not skewer. Join us for our banquet this evening? We have many fine courses prepared.” Terrill clutched another dirty tuber in his hands. Lan knew what the entree would be and sadly shook his head.

“No? Perhaps again, some other time.” Terrill left without another word.

Lan rejoined Brinke and Kiska. The women were ready to come to blows when he stepped between them.

“Whatever the Pillar is, Terrill does not think it is Claybore’s supreme achievement. Claybore failed with it.”

“You would believe a demented old man?” Kiska crossed her arms and glared at both Lan and Brinke.

“We must hurry, Lan. I sense movement nearby.” The lovely blonde gestured toward trees already sneaking up on them.

“Claybore must not stop me now. I must get closer to the Pillar.” They started off at a trot, Kiska complaining with every step and Brinke struggling to keep up. When the magical pressures again shoved against Lan, he stopped.

“The Pillar of Night,” he said.

“I see it. Through the trees. Just a bit,” said Brinke, almost in awe. “It feels so… cold.”

Lan closed his eyes and allowed his inner sense to guide him. The force against him mounted but he countered it. Closer he went to the intense black shaft. But he felt himself weakening. The powers locked within this tower of light-sucking darkness far transcended his own. He could not even conceive of the spell, the energy, the ability required to conjure such a permanent, potent monument.

A permanent, potent tombstone.

“I will aid you, Lan Martak,” came a soft voice.

“Resident!”

“Closer. Come closer. I will it.”

Lan took one hesitant step after another. The line of trees marking the ring of forest passed behind him. Only level, gravelly plain stretched up to the Pillar of Night. A hundred yards. Less. Fifty. He felt himself melting inside, merging with the Resident of the Pit. Twenty. Heat. He ignored it. Ten. Polar cold so intense his eyebrows froze. Five.

He reached out and placed his trembling hand against the Pillar of Night.

And Lan Martak knew. He knew the plight of the Resident of the Pit. He knew the mistakes Claybore had made fashioning the Pillar. Worst of all, he knew that, by himself, he would never be able to counter the spell holding the Pillar of Night in place.