Pillar of Night

EPILOGUE

Lan Martak walked along the paved street, hardly recognizing the buildings. The Dancing Serpent had been razed, some ten years earlier, one old-timer sitting rocked back in a chair had told him. Hardly anyone else remembered the place and even the old man didn’t remember Zarella. She had been just a bit before his time, or so he said. From the twinkle in his eye, though, Lan thought the old man remembered the stunning woman. Perhaps he had even visited her a time or two and was now reluctant to admit to such youthful indiscretions.

Lan looked at the new building gleaming in the sunlight. Some architect had gone wild with glass and gilt edging. The wood beams over the porch had been intricately carved and a sign dangled down proudly proclaiming two chirurgeons and a solicitor specializing in demonic law had offices inside.

“Outta my way, you blithering fool!” came the loud cry. Lan turned and looked down the street. Two drivers hunched over the steering sticks on their demon-powered cars. Huge puffs of white steam rose from one; the other’s smokestack spewed forth heavy, oily black. The two raced by, nearly running over a pedestrian who wasn’t as fleet of foot as he ought to have been.

Lan had to laugh. He remembered how the old sheriff had hated those Maxwell-demon-powered contraptions. Then the man sobered. The sheriff had died less than a month after Lan had walked the Cenotaph Road for the first time. The grey-clads had murdered him, or so Lan had been told. Kyn-alLyk-Surepta had vanished soon after, leaving still another, even worse, garrison commander. In only a year the soldiers had supplanted the weak deputy who had taken the old man’s place.

Lan’s sister’s rapist and murderer had come to justice on another world. His fist tightened around the dagger hanging at his belt as he remembered the brief pleasure he had taken killing Surepta-and then the hollowness following the bloody act. There had been no sense of revenge, just as the Resident of the Pit had predicted. Lan’s sister was still dead, the sheriff had not been properly avenged, and Surepta’s death had set off the long chain of events leading to Kiska k’Adesina trying to murder him.

“The time flows get confusing,” Lan said softly, thinking about Kiska and Surepta. They had been married by the time Lan killed the man, yet Surepta had left this world after Lan.

“Either pay rent or move,” came a cold voice. Lan looked over his shoulder and saw a uniformed officer behind him. “We don’t hold with drifters coming through town.” The officer cocked his head to one side and asked, “You be leaving soon?”

“This is-was-my home,” Lan said. “A long time ago. I’m just looking around. A lot has changed.”

“One thing’s still the same,” said the law officer. “We don’t want trouble.”

Lan sensed the magics at the officer’s control. He smiled. The man probably conjured small sparks from his fingers. There’d be a paralysis spell in case anyone got too rowdy. Even the reduction spell for execution. To be reduced to a smoldering puddle of lard. Lan shook his head.

He had ruined worlds with the wave of his hand. And once he had feared the old sheriff’s reduction spell.

“You got anybody to vouch for you?”

“What? Oh, no, no one. Not now. I just wanted to see the homesite once more, before I left.”

The law officer nodded curtly. The expression on his face told Lan that he expected this unwanted loiterer out of town as soon as possible. Otherwise, Lan might spend the night in jail. The idea amused Lan.

He strolled the streets, then turned toward the outskirts of town. They were farther away than he remembered. There were more people than he remembered, too. And all were strangers.

He came to a simple house sadly in need of repairs. Lan knelt down by the foundations and saw the sword cuts in the wood beams where he had tried to get out of the locked cellar in time to save his sister. Surepta had killed her while Lan struggled.

The house was unoccupied, long since deserted.

He didn’t bother entering. Lan turned into the woods and noted the lumbering activity. He wandered old game trails and saw no spoor. The animals had fled the encroaching civilization and without a doubt moved higher into the el-Liot Mountains. A grey-green haze from numerous factories cloaked the horizon and prevented Lan from seeing those majestic peaks.

The path widened unexpectedly and he found himself poised on the edge of a rock quarry. Dozens of men worked heavy equipment below. Demons screeched out their curses at being forced to use talons to cut through the rock, but the mine superintendent was a competent mage; he kept the demons at work quarrying while the men lugged the stone to conveyors and hoisted it from the pit.

“What you want, stranger?”

“Just looking,” said Lan. “I’ll be moving on soon enough. I used to live around here, but the quarry is new.”

“New,” snorted the man. “Been here well nigh fifteen years.”

“They use the demons well,” Lan said.

“Damn nuisance, if you ask me, but then nobody does. I’m just a watchman.”

“You make sure no one steals a block of stone?”

The man laughed. “By all the Lower Places, I wish that were it. Damn kids come in and get into trouble here. I make sure no one’s hurt. A demon worked his way free of his binding spell a year back. Damn-fool kid cornered the poor frightened bugger and made it do his schoolwork before releasing it. The demon came back in tears, begging to go onto the cutters again.” The watchman shook his head.

“This is all so strange to me,” Lan admitted. “I’m not used to it.”

“Seeing more and more of the demons and sprites,” the man said, mistaking what Lan meant. “Better get used to them. They’re the future, or so the mages say.”

“They may be right.” Lan stared at the bustle in the pit mine, then asked, “Could you direct me to the cemetery? It used to be about a mile that way, but everything else has changed so.”

“Still there.” The watchman peered at Lan curiously.

“Anything wrong?”

“Nothing. Just that you reminded me of someone. But it couldn’t be.”

“I did come from here.”

“You look a lot like a fella I knew close to twenty years ago. He got involved in a multiple murder when I was only about seven.”

“I might be the one.”

“Couldn’t be. You’re not more than three years older than he was then. Don’t know what happened to him. Nice guy but he went sour and killed his lover and his sister.”

“Lan Martak,” Lan said.

“What? Yes! That’s the name. Dar-elLan-Martak. Remember how my ma carried on for weeks about it. Scared the wits outta me. How’d you know the name?”

“I’m looking for his grave,” Lan said. The vagaries of time flow between the worlds took its toll on him now. He was only a few years older while almost twenty had passed on his home. And still he was remembered as a murderer.

“Down that trail and on about a mile, as you said,” the watchman told him.

“Thanks.”

Lan started off, the smell of real forest around him revitalizing him. His tired body came alive once more and energy surged through his veins. He felt powerful enough to smash worlds again when he arrived at the perimeter of the cemetery.

The wall had been repaired and extended. He walked through the gate and immediately saw the sheriff’s grave.

“Twenty years,” Lan said, shaking his head. “You were a good man. I’m sorry you had to live to see the Claybore’s grey-clads taking over.” Lan winced at the sound of a flyer above him. Even that particular perversion had been discovered by his home world’s mages.

Lan went and sat on a new grave, a cenotaph. His feet dangled into the crypt and he watched the bugs in the stone box vainly trying to scale the marble walls and escape.

“What are you watching, Lan?” came a soft voice. Inyx put her hand on his shoulder. He covered it with his own hand.

“The insects. It’s amazing how I ignored even the simplest of things for so long. A life-and-death struggle goes on under our noses and we don’t see it.”

“There are others to take their place if they die,” Inyx said. “That’s the way it is.”

“There is always another to take your place,” said Lan.

“Do you regret it?”

He laughed, rich and full and long. The humor inside came welling up and boiled over, real and heartfelt.

“Regret it? Never. The Resident of the Pit certainly does, though.”

“Have you looked into the well? The one where you first contacted the Resident?”

“No. I have no desire to seek him out. He is a god again. I’m only a mortal.”

“A mortal I love.”

Lan and Inyx sat side by side watching the bugs tumbling and crawling, climbing and finally escaping the cenotaph. He knew the exultation they felt on attaining the rim of the cairn. It was precisely the way he felt when he realized he was a god and as such could do anything he desired.

Anything at all.

He had freed the Resident of the Pit by shattering the spells forming the Pillar of Night. The magma from the planet had burst upward and blown the black shaft far into space. The energies released were too great for any world to contain; the planet had been turned to rubble in one cataclysmic eruption.

He and the Resident had floated freely in space, no longer bound by body or planet. They belonged to the universe.

That was when Lan had refused to kill the Resident. Instead, he had meted out a punishment far worse than even that given to Claybore.

First had been a geas patterned after the one Claybore had so cunningly used on him. Lan applied it to the Resident, then he had relinquished all his power by transferring it to the Resident. Again the being became a god. Again the Resident of the Pit had to endure the worship of petty humans. Again the Resident became more than a pitiful, trapped creature.

And he could not kill himself or force the power back on Lan because of the geas.

Lan was happy to again have to walk the Cenotaph Road using the empty graves as his highway.

“One lifetime is enough,” Lan said, “if it’s done right.” He kissed Inyx, relishing the feel of a real tongue moving against hers. Claybore’s tongue had been cast away, hurled down the Road and hidden for all time. As a god he had that power. And as a god, he had the power to conjure himself a new tongue. She leaned her head on his shoulder.

He held his hand in front of his face and conjured a small spell. Some residual ability remained. Sharp, well-defined flames lanced from his fingertips. Since giving away the powers locked within him, though, Lan had concentrated on healing spells. He didn’t doubt he was vastly better than either of the chirurgeons back in the town.

“The cenotaph will open in another hour,” Inyx said. “Have you looked around enough?”

“More than enough,” Lan assured her. He craned his neck and asked, “Where is he? I told him this cenotaph opened at sunset, not at midnight.”

“He’ll be here. He’s probably out chasing after bugs.”

Lan looked down into Inyx’s blue eyes. “Do you have any regrets? About Ducasien?”

“None,” she said. “Well, perhaps a little. He is a good man.”

“He will rule well with Nowless and Julinne,” said Lan.

“There’ll be friction. Ducasien had his eye on Julinne. I don’t think Nowless likes it.”

“We can look in on them,” promised Lan. “In a year or two.”

He sighed as he thought of Brinke. So regal, so lovely. Her world destroyed, she had also become a traveler along the Road. One day their paths would cross. Lan knew it. He wished her only the best in her sojourn along the Road.

“Dammit,” he yelled, “where are you, Krek?”

A dark lump rose up nearby and shook itself. Long, coppery-furred legs gleamed in the setting sun.

“I rested, friend Lan Martak, nothing more. The journey has been arduous. And you insist on bringing me to worlds where there is nothing edible. Look at those grubs. Tiny!”

“Well, go back to your own web and your Klawn and all the rest,” Lan said in disgust. Krek sometimes got on his nerves.

“That will be unnecessary, at least for the time being,” said Krek. “It was so generous of you to offer Klawn one of Claybore’s arms. As the hatchlings eat it, the flesh regenerates. There will never again be starvation in my web. But I do so worry about how tainted their tastes might become.”

Inyx shuddered at the mention. Too much of Krek’s ferocity had rubbed off on Lan. He had placed the eternal arm where Claybore would feel the nip of mandibles for as long as there were hatchlings to feed. The dismembered sorcerer had forever to regret all he had done. With each piece of flesh painfully snipped off, devoured and then magically renewed, he would regret it.

Lan never said where he placed the other parts. Inyx feared they were even more diabolically hidden.

“Get into the cenotaph,” Lan said. “The gateway’s opening.”

Krek lumbered forward and dropped down. He vanished almost instantly. Lan and Inyx looked at one another, smiled as they locked arms, and slipped off the edge and into the grave.

Together, they walked the Cenotaph Road again.