Glen Cook - A Path to Coldness of Heart

Despair. His consciousness was out here. But his body was…

A blinding point moved across the night. He was moving faster. He was not a material entity. He and the point were converging. What would one of those things do to the Karkha Tower? What would it do to the people inside, of whom he was the one who truly mattered?

Slam! Like hitting a wal at ful gal op he reentered his flesh.

And was stil trying to harness it when the world went white.

...

Lein She was first to burst into the transfer chamber in his home base. He had insisted he be the man once Lord Yuan made sure of the connection. The Karkha Tower was his responsibility. If need be he would go down first in the effort to reclaim it.

He stepped into heat that stunned him, though it was fading. It dried his eyes. He kept blinking, having trouble seeing. He spotted a shape scuttling with one arm across its eyes, making mewling sounds. None of his men, nor any of Tang Shan’s, had survived the earlier attack. He thrust his blade into the whimperer’s back.

Tang Shan arrived, then—as the world surged and shifted and icy darkness flooded the chamber. Lein She felt a presence so sudden and vast and abiding that he lost control of his bowels.

The demon was not interested in him. It had work to do.

It was gone when the next man arrived to find Lein She and Tang Shan leaning on one another, gaping at surroundings notable for the absence of a little old whimperer.

The new arrival observed, “Damn! Everything is al runny melted like candle wax!”

...

Varthlokkur stepped out of the Winterstorm and col apsed, though he remained conscious. “We won. Sort of. And without having to spend much of our own capital.” Mist said, “He got away. Again.”

“He’l be no threat again in our lifetimes. Or in many lifetimes to come. And him surviving may not be an al bad thing.”

“You’l have to work hard to sel me that.”

“We’l talk about it later.”

“Al right. Meantime, I do know where to look if I want to keep after him. El Murid was good for that much.” Varthlokkur fel asleep before he could ask where, thinking that that old devil always had one more trick. But today they had played a few of their own and had gotten several steps ahead.

Glen Cook is the author of dozens of novels of fantasy and science fiction, including The Black Company, The Garret Files, Instrumentalities of the Night, and the Dread Empire series. Cook was born in 1944 in New York City.

He attended the Clarion Writers’ Workshop in 1970, where he met his wife, Carol. “Unlike most writers, I have not had strange jobs like chicken plucking and swamping out health bars. Only ful -time employer I’ve ever had is General Motors.” He currently makes his home in St. Louis, Missouri.