Pillar of Night

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Lan Martak heard them whispering about him as he strode forward. The awful forest silence became more and more oppressive to him and the small, half-heard words irritated him.

“Either speak your mind or stay silent,” he snapped.

“Lan?” Inyx fell into step beside him. “You’re acting as you did before. We all want to help.”

He looked into her blue eyes and saw nothing but admiration and love there. He fought to hold himself in check.

“You know how I feel? About Kiska?”

Inyx nodded.

Lan looked ahead, not wanting to meet her eyes. “I hate myself for killing her, but if any of you had done it, I couldn’t have stopped myself from exacting revenge. Claybore is a subtle monster. The geas still binds me.”

“She is dead.”

“I still love her.”

Inyx put her arm around his shoulder. When he tried to shrug it off, muscles as strong as any steel band tightened. Lan stopped fighting it and they walked on like this, not speaking. The time for words was long past between them. The communication flowed in both directions, but the power resided mostly within Lan’s mind. Inyx carried some small measure of his energy, his ability, but it was a weak reflection. She understood what he did-and why-but could not work those spells herself. Her part was to give him stability. He trod areas that had driven others insane. Inyx lent support and a firm basis from which to act, but the action itself had to well up from inside Lan Martak.

“We need the Resident,” he said.

“I know. Are you really so concerned about releasing him?”

“He was a god once, until Claybore stole his powers. I do not want the Resident wreaking vengeance on all humanity because of something Claybore alone has done.”

“He knows who is responsible.”

“But he’s a god and who can say what a god thinks?”

Inyx tightened her arm around Lan’s waist.

“No!” Lan snapped. “I am not a god. You know that. Look at me and tell me I’m not a god, also.”

“I can’t, Lan. What is within you is so much more than human it frightens me. Even knowing you as I do, I’m scared.”

“Friend Lan Martak,” called out Krek. “These odious vines are dribbling sap all over my legs. Can we not get free of this silly forest?”

“Soon, Krek. The Pillar of Night is close.”

“I know that,” the spider said testily. “I sense it just as I do the cenotaphs. The moving trees crowd in on me and there are not any good grubs or bugs to be found. I think I shall certainly starve to death unless we find some soon.”

“You wolfed down huge numbers of those grubs back on the other world, Krek. How can you be hungry again?”

Krek sniffed. “Kadekk might have been right. This whole venture is looking more foolhardy by the moment. She had a way about her, Kadekk did, even if she was only a mere spider.”

Inyx looked questioningly at Lan. “The spider he left in charge,” Lan explained to her. “Krek was Webmaster and had to delegate his authority to one of them. This Kadekk was the most capable.”

“She spun a fine web,” said Krek, “but certainly not one as fine as I. Friend Inyx, you should have seen my web treasure. A masterpiece. None like it for texture or intricacy of pattern.”

Lan stopped. Inyx’s arm tensed, then dropped away. The dark-haired woman stepped back beside Ducasien. Even she felt the radiance, the malevolence ahead.

“The Pillar of Night,” Brinke said. The regal blonde woman stopped beside Lan. Inyx wanted to go join Lan, but even the rapport she had with the mage wasn’t enough to be of any help. Only another adept might give him the keys he needed to unlock this terrible spell cast by Claybore so long ago.

“What are they doing?” asked Ducasien. “What are we supposed to do?”

“We wait. You and me and Krek. Our job is done now. Theirs has just started.”

Ducasien fingered his sword and stood on tiptoe to peer through the trees to see what Lan and Brinke already “saw.”

“That’s it? Even when we were coming to this infernal forest in the belly of that infernal machine, I saw nothing.”

“The blackness,” said Krek. “That is the Pillar of Night.”

Ducasien stayed unimpressed until Lan gestured and the trees reluctantly began moving away at the command. Then the warrior’s attention riveted to the vast black expanse rising up.

Lan hastened the trees to one side and walked forward, his mind reaching out to lightly touch the surface of the Pillar. Brinke beside him, they stopped only a few feet from the light-devouring column. Lan looked up and experienced a few seconds of vertigo. The Pillar was so tall it appeared to be leaning out, toppling over. But the moving spikes atop it helped Lan get the proper perspective. He blinked a few times and all became clear.

All.

“Resident of the Pit,” he said, “we have come to release you.”

“I see your intent, Lan Martak. Free me, yes, but let me die. I have grown too weary to continue this existence.”

“We need your aid to conquer Claybore and his armies,” Brinke said. “You cannot refuse us.”

“Give me my wish and I shall do whatever I can to help.”

Lan did not speak. His mind worked over complex relations, spells, laws both mundane and arcane. The unlocking would be easier than he had thought. He had accumulated knowledge from so many sorcerers. Abasi-Abi on Mount Tartanius. Some of the gnome sorcerer Lirory Tefize’s grimoires. All the spells locked within Terrill’s mind. Even spells accompanying Claybore’s tongue. Lan swallowed and tasted the bitter metal in his mouth. It sickened him even as it fed him power, knowledge, confidence. Coupled with the lore gained from those sources, Lan’s own experimentations had built up an arsenal of magic unparalleled since the time of the Resident.

It was still not enough to defeat Claybore unaided. He needed the Resident of the Pit.

“Lan,” said Brinke, her voice husky with fear. “Claybore’s legions. They mass on the plains.” She pointed. Lan looked over his shoulder and tried not to panic.

Never had he seen such an array of fighting men and machines. The forest had been silently sliding open to leave an unimpeded path for the mage’s army. Ten miles distant stood rank upon rank of armored might.

“The huge rolling fortresses are demon-powered fighting machines,” he said. “I feel the resentment of the demons spell-trapped within.”

“They spit fire,” cried Ducasien. “How can we fight those?”

Lan and Brinke turned to face the army advancing upon them. Long tongues of flame erupted from the blunted snouts of the machines. The demons spewed forth their wrath at being penned within the bellies of the machines and the mages guiding the machines opened vents to release the fire. Trees five miles distant from the leading machine exploded in a fireball.

“They kill at such a distance,” Inyx said. “Lan?”

“We can fight them. These are sent only to unnerve us.”

“The fire,” came Krek’s quaking voice. “My furry legs will go up just like tinder. Oh, friend Lan Martak, if Claybore means to frighten me, he has succeeded!”

Lan glanced at Krek and flashed him a reassuring smile. The giant arachnid refused to be consoled. Lan took a deep breath and settled his mind. The spells rose at his command, like bubbles in a pond. As they burst, he cast them forth to do their worst.

The machine in the lead shook as if caught by a huge, invisible fist. Armor plates and metallic components exploded in all directions as Lan released the demon within.

“The others come faster. I feel the fire on my legs already. Oh, why did I leave my safe web? Kadekk was not such a bad sort but I would have done a much better job as Webmaster. She will only taint my webbing, I am sure of it. Oh, woe!”

Inyx soothed Krek but when she reached out to Ducasien, he pulled away. The man’s face had turned pale but he stood squarely facing the oncoming hordes of men and magics.

Another of the mechanical juggernauts blew apart. And another and another. By the time the leading components of Claybore’s army reached the edge of the magic-haunted forest, only two of the machines still operated. Lan closed his eyes and sent the light mote familiar deep into one of the demon-powered devices. He began tormenting the already angered demon with the mote, sending it needles of pain, sheets of driving rain, blinding dust. Trapped in the narrow cavity of the fighting machine, the demon lashed out and caused the mage controlling it to veer. It rolled over hundreds of foot soldiers using its bulk for protection. Lan ignored the cries audible even at this distance and continued turning the machine back into Claybore’s grey-clad legions.

“They do not break and run. They still advance,” said Brinke.

“Claybore has not only trained them well, they fear him more than anything we can do to them.” Lan smiled grimly, feeling no humor in what he was about to do.

Lan blasted the sorcerers in control of the remaining death machines and let the demons run free. They turned on those around them, snorting fire and crushing humans beneath the machines’ bulk. Above dived flyers powered by fire elementals, intent on destroying the renegade machines. Huge gouts of flame lanced from the tail to propel the metal cylinders. The mages controlling these started into a shallow dive, then opened vents to the front. The flames lashed downward.

Lan staggered back as wave after wave of heat struck around him. His clothes began smouldering and his hair singed. He heard Krek moaning in pain and Inyx cursing. Of Brinke he saw and heard nothing. He reached out for her, both physically and magically, but the blonde woman was not there. Then he understood why.

She had been protecting him from hammer-rapid blows sent by thousands of mages assembled by Claybore for this express purpose. Brinke had tired too quickly and now some of those magical stabs and prods came through her protection.

Lan gasped with strain when he carried more of the burden himself. He dared not relax for an instant; too many attacks came at him from too many directions. The aerial assaults continued and required him to protect all on the ground from the fire elementals’ wrath. The juggernauts rumbling around in death-dealing circles on the ground still allowed many troops past, grey-clad soldiers who would soon close on him. Worst of all was the hail of pinpricks from the assembled sorcerers. No one individual mage contributed more than a tiny sting of magic, but their aggregate wore on him increasingly.

“Brinke,” he pleaded. “Give me some aid. Please!”

Through a red fog he saw the blonde lying on the ground in a heap. She was unconscious.

“Resident!” he called. “They are too many for me. Help me now.”

“The Pillar of Night still holds me immobile, Lan Martak. I can do nothing but suggest, to tell you that nothing is impossible for one such as yourself.”

Lan stopped trying to counter on all fronts. The grey-clad soldiers presented the least immediate danger. He concentrated on the flyers. Conjuring a water elemental in midair and inside a moving flyer proved a trick almost beyond his levels of skill. Almost.

The hindmost of the flyers simply vanished in an incandescent cloud of molten metal as water and fire elementals locked together within the bowels of the machine. Slowly at first, then with greater confidence and control, he sent forth the water elementals to extinguish the power sources on the flyers.

It almost destroyed him and the others.

The hundreds-thousands?-of mages battering away at him intensified their attack. And still he did not sense Claybore’s presence. The mage used all these tactics to wear Lan Martak down. Lan let out a tiny sob of frustration when he saw how well it worked.

The flyers were gone and the land-gripping juggernauts had passed the time of usefulness, but he weakened with every passing instant. The sheer force of the opposition made his knees tremble and his vision blur. He reached out and touched the Pillar of Night.

“No, not yet. You cannot,” warned the Resident. Lan discovered the trap in trying to tap the Resident for help in this way. The spell forming the huge black cylinder sucked away at his vital forces and left him even more enervated. He tried to pull back and could not. As if stuck in tar, his hand refused to budge.

“Do you know fear, Martak?” came Claybore’s booming voice. “When you touched the Pillar, you summoned me. I knew then that you were defeated.”

“No, no!” sobbed Lan, struggling to pull free. Everything worked against him. The pressure from the phalanxes of sorcerers increased. The grey-clad legions trooped ever closer. And Claybore began his assault.

The other attacks on Lan’s mind and body paled in comparison. Claybore’s skill, his cunning, his eons of experience all went into defeating Lan.

“You are only a country bumpkin who stumbled onto a few spells. A chant to make a campfire, a minor healing potion, those are your domain, Martak. This is mine.”

If any one of the other mage’s attacks had been a pinprick, Claybore’s was a battering ram. Somehow, Lan reached inside and held. But strength fled rapidly.

“You lost your ally,” gloated Claybore. “The Lady Brinke is no mage. She furnished you with false hope and nothing more.”

Lan sank further into defeat. Depression mounted. His cleverest spells availed him nothing. Claybore hid behind the combined might of all his mages and only waited for his grey-clads to arrive-and they would. Soon.

“The Resident found out how strong I was ten thousand years ago. He and Terrill, like you, Martak, underestimated my ability.”

Lan struggled up and fought like a cornered rat. He felt the curtains of magic part and individual mages became apparent to him. One or two he recognized personally from past encounters, but most he did not. At the forefront of this assemblage, though, Lan picked out Patriccan.

“Yes, he remembers you,” said Claybore. “He hates you for all you’ve done. Patriccan even begs me to let him be the one who destroys you, but I have yet to decide on your fate. Would you like to roam my little forest for all of time, as Terrill does?”

“Resist,” came the Resident of the Pit’s single suggestion. Lan already did that and slipped by slow inches into oblivion.

“I am sure we can find other appropriate measures to take, if we think long enough on them. You have a curious resiliency when it comes to winning free of the space between worlds. I do not think it wise to maroon you there again. Some other fitting punishment for all the trouble you have caused me must be found.”

Lan sagged to his knees, hand still frozen to the Pillar of Night.

Strong hands picked him up, locked under his arms and held him. A bristly limb the thickness of his thigh smashed down upon his hand, knocking it free of the Pillar. Lan coughed and wiped away dirt and sweat. Dimly he saw Inyx supporting him with Krek nearby.

“We’re not abandoning you,” said Inyx.

“Not after that hideous Claybore singed my lovely legs,” added Krek.

Lan Martak had been wrong. He had thought Brinke, being a mage, would give him more support. The mental link with Inyx did more than the blonde sorceress ever had to shore up his defenses, to lend him strength. And curiously, he found himself also linked with Krek.

From Inyx he received strength and drive. From Krek came a spider’s viciousness, which would have driven any human insane.

His spells, Inyx’s drive, Krek’s ferocity. He bound them all together and hid them inside his light mote familiar, waiting for the proper instant. As Claybore built his assault, the moment came.

Patriccan paused for the briefest of times; Lan struck there.

The journeyman mage let forth a bloodcurdling shriek as Lan formed a fire elemental in the man’s stomach. The instant Lan released the elemental, Patriccan died. The other mages assembled in the room also perished, alleviating some of the pressure Lan felt. He quickly sought and destroyed those sorcerers not in Claybore’s headquarters.

“The troops still approach,” Lan heard Ducasien calling. The young mage had no time for mere soldiers. Claybore presented the gravest danger.

“What?” came the startled cry as Claybore realized Lan not only fought back again but had eliminated all the other mages. “You… you can’t do that. No one can!”

Lan lashed out at Claybore, striving to dismember him as Terrill had done so many years earlier. One arm fell off, but the mage’s power remained unscathed. Recovering, Claybore visited upon Lan nightmares come to life. Lan faced his own weaknesses, his fears, his regrets. Inyx’s support helped but it was Krek’s single-minded ferocity that carried Lan past the obscene thoughts from his own mind.

“You cannot stop me,” shouted Claybore. “You are not powerful enough alone, and you can never free the Resident of the Pit. I will see to that!”

“Resist him,” came the soft voice of the Resident. “You must!”

“The Resident has used you, Martak. You were only a pawn from the beginning. He thought you could give freedom. Nothing you’ve done has been because you wanted it. The Resident drove you.”

Lan looked at Inyx, her dark hair fluttering in the hot wind blowing from the plains. Her brilliant blue eyes shone. Behind her towered Krek. Chocolate-colored eyes betrayed none of the unswerving ferocity lodged in that arachnid nature.

“You are wrong, Claybore. The Resident of the Pit might have thought I was a pawn, but I have become more.” And with Inyx and Krek, he was more.

Much more.

Claybore’s peculiarly assembled body appeared in front of the advancing soldiers. On misshapen legs the sorcerer came forth, body limned with a ruby aura. The white skull had cracked and one-quarter of the top was missing. Claybore carried the one arm with the other and the necrotic section around the Kinetic Sphere visibly decayed.

Lan trembled at the realization that this was his enemy.

“Both you and the Resident were wrong, Claybore. I don’t need his help to defeat you. All the aid I need is with me, outside the spells forming the Pillar of Night.”

Lan waved his arm out in a fanning motion. The thousands of grey-clad soldiers perished, not even knowing death visited them.

Inyx and Krek crowded closer. Lan countered another of Claybore’s spells and returned it a thousandfold. Inyx’s arm around him almost cut off his wind and Krek’s clacking mandibles threatened to sever head from torso, but Lan needed their support, their strength, their love.

Claybore gave out a wordless scream as Lan’s light mote familiar split into tiny shards and sliced through shoulders, hips, chest, neck. Claybore’s parts crashed to the forest floor and twitched; trying to reassemble. Lan muttered spells of immense power, power that caused the ground to quake and the sky to froth over with lightning-wracked clouds.

“You cut him apart, just as Terrill did.” The awe in Inyx’s voice brought Lan around.

“I can do more than Terrill,” said Lan. “I can destroy him totally. Not even a fragment of flesh will remain if I utter one spell.” He touched the tip of the iron tongue within his mouth. This, too, would be rent apart, but it was a small price to pay for Claybore’s destruction.

“Do it,” urged Inyx. “It is all we’ve fought for.”

“No,” Lan said. “I destroyed his legs but I will not destroy the rest of him.”

“But why not?”

Lan smiled savagely. “Thank Krek for that. I have learned too well from him.”

“Doubtful,” muttered the spider, “but who can say what form your current delusion takes?”

“Each of Claybore’s parts retains awareness. Rudimentary, but it is there. He knows all that has happened to him and he feels the pain constantly.”

“For all eternity?” asked Inyx. “That’s awful.”

“That’s the punishment I decree for him. His parts are immortal and shall live minimal existence. Not a moment will go by when Claybore doesn’t realize the full impact of his defeat.”

“What’s to keep him from rejoining himself, like he did this time?” asked Ducasien.

“Terrill wasn’t efficient in the way he scattered the pieces. He allowed Claybore to grow in power as each new piece was attached. Seeing Claybore’s problems gave me the idea. Never again can one piece be attached to another. He will always be as you see him now.”

Lan Martak began the complex array of spells. For over an hour he conjured and chanted. One by one, the pieces of Claybore’s body vanished until only the battered, fractured skull remained.

“Claybore, you understand what I have done?”

“It will take millennia, Martak, but I will have my revenge!”

“It will be untold millennia and you will still be unable to do anything,” promised Lan.

Tiny red sparks sputtered deep in the eye sockets. Nothing else happened. Claybore’s power had been stolen away permanently.

Lan opened up the whiteness between worlds and cast Claybore’s skull into it.

“You defeated him without my aid,” said the Resident of the Pit. “I have created more than I guessed.”

“You created nothing,” snapped Lan. “I ought to leave you under the Pillar of Night. Not once did you tell me what you planned. You used me.”

“And I would have discarded you had the weapon proved unsatisfactory against Claybore,” the Resident finished. “I harbor no shame on that score. You know full well that horror of an eternity without power. Otherwise you would not have doomed Claybore in the fashion you did.

“Free me. Free me and give me death. That was your promise.”

“Lan, are you going to?” asked Inyx. “If the Resident has been so treacherous up till now, how can you trust him after you free him?”

Lan laughed. The Resident said, “Even though you are in rapport with him, you do not understand, do you? Lan Martak transcended all I had anticipated. He is a god, immortal and invulnerable. There is nothing I can do, even after being freed, to endanger him.”

“Immortal?” asked Krek. “That means…”

“I will outlive you and Inyx,” said Lan, his voice low. “I understand that. But I will also have the power of life and death.”

“You can grant a former god death. You will free me and then do what Claybore originally intended. You will destroy me. Only you can slay a god.”

The expression on Inyx’s face defied description. She shook her head and backed away from Lan.

“I don’t believe this. You… you can’t be immortal. Not really. And a god? I know you, Lan. You’re not a god. You’re not perfect.”

“Not even a god is perfect,” said Lan. “I am proof of that. My weaknesses remain under the veneer of power.”

“But it is awesome power,” said the Resident of the Pit. “Free me and give me surcease from my centuries of impotence.”

“I promise you that, Resident.”

Lan found the spells hidden in the dim recesses of his mind. Whether left by Terrill or Claybore or some other mage, he had no idea. They might even have been his own creation. Lan set the Pillar of Night spinning, faster and faster. The spikes atop it began to elongate.

He heard someone gasp when lightning bolts arced from each spike and split apart the heavens. Clouds formed above and pelted down rain in a torrential fury. Lan built the power required to a higher level, then to another and another. The ground shook beneath his feet and began to disintegrate.

“You will reign forever, Lan Martak,” cried the Resident of the Pit. “Your powers are infinitely greater than mine ever were. Free me. Free me!”

Wind of hurricane force whipped about them. In the distance came impenetrable black clouds trailing tornados. These magical storms ringed the Pillar of Night. The spells holding the Resident of the Pit began to yield to the onslaught of Lan’s power. Elementals of all forms whistled and whispered, sizzled and sprayed against the light-sucking blackness of the column.

“It comes,” moaned the Resident. “The pressure on me lightens.”

“Foul weather,” grumbled Krek. “Rain is matting my fur, and the lightning. I never liked it. Set my web afire once back in the Egrii Mountains.” The giant spider gusted a deep sigh. “How I miss my lovely Klawn.”

“Lan,” Inyx shouted over the gale-force winds whipping about them. “I can’t reach you anymore. What’s happening?”

“The core of the planet is rising beneath us,” said Lan. “You, Krek, and Ducasien must walk the Road. Do it now. Hurry.”

“We won’t leave you.”

“Nothing will harm me. I promise that. Now go.”

“But we don’t know where a cenotaph is.”

“There,” Lan Martak said, pointing. “There’s one I just created. Use it! Now!”

Winds pulled Inyx away from him. She tried to fight the gusts and failed. Driven into the cenotaph, she, Krek and Ducasien, holding a lifeless Brinke, stared at Lan. Alone he stood next to the ebony Pillar of Night.

But the color changed. No longer did the column retain all energy. It glowed internally and rose upward, ripping apart the sky with the rotating spikes.

The last thing Inyx saw before the cenotaph opened and carried them to another world was the orange fire inside the Pillar, a signal that Lan had cracked the planet’s crust and released the immense energies of a molten core.

The Pillar of Night ceased to exist and, along with it, the entire planet. Storms of magic raged until only dust spun through the cosmos. And then even this vanished.