Jean Lorrah - Wulfston's odyssey

Barak had gone out to observe the battle, and Kamas was still in healing sleep. So it was Lenardo, Ashuru, Tadisha, and Wulfston who went to the tower room where Chulaika slept, her body containing Z’Nelia’s presence as well as her own.

Not allowing the woman’s body to waken, they reached out to the two minds.

“Chaiku!” Chulaika demanded. “Where is my son?”

“Well cared for,” Ashuru told her. “Do not worry; you will soon hold him in your arms again.”

“Never again!” Z’Nelia raged. Ill will hold him! I will raise him, teach him my ways. Leave me, Chulaika.

You have lost this battle.”

“No, Z’Nelia,” Lenardo told her, “this time you have lost. You have no right to Chulaika’s body. Accept your death, and go in peace to the plane of the dead.”

“You think you can kill me again?” Z’Nelia demanded. “I will kill you all!”

Without warning, they were no longer in the tower room of the castle in Djahat, but on the lip of the crater on Mount Manjuro!

Heat pulled the sweat through their pores. The ground beneath their feet trembled as the lava heaved.

The sky was black with ash and smoke. The only light was the lurid red-orange glare of the lava, reflecting off two figures locked in mortal struggle: Z’Nelia and Chulaika, each trying to thrust the other into the bubbling lava.

But as they fought, glancing down into the heaving pit, inside the crater was no longer lava, but a seething maelstrom of malice, anger, rage, lust, jealousy, guilt-

Wulfston slowly regained self-awareness, and realized that it was Lenardo interpreting the imagery, letting them all understand what the magma represented to Z’Nelia and Chulaika. And something else. He could sense the Master Reader trying to identify some sensation that remained frustratingly just out of reach.

The moment Wulfston found himself, the other Seers were “there,” standing on the brink of the lake of chaos, watching the twin forms struggling on the opposite side.

Lenardo staggered, and Wulfston grasped his arm to keep him from falling. “What-?”

But there was no need to speak. The moment he thought of the question, he knew the answer: Z’Nelia had created this mind-world, and so it operated by the rules she had laid down for it. She had decided that the physical strength of each person within this world would depend on the strength of that person’s talents at the moment he entered it. And Lenardo’s talents had been weakened by her mistreatment.

“She fears you,” Wulfston told Lenardo, willingly supporting the Master Reader.

“And from her fear of me,” Lenardo observed, “she has created her own destruction.”

For, it seemed, her death trauma had weakened Z’Nelia’s own talents so that she had no more power than Chulaika. It was an evenly matched battle!

Tadisha, though, was fully recovered. Young and strong, she began to run lightly along the rim of the volcano.

“Tadisha, no!” Wulfston called.

“Go with her!” said Lenardo, sinking cross-legged to the ground. “I am safe here.”

“Go with Tadisha,” agreed Ashuru, starting around the lip of the volcano in the opposite direction.

Not quite sure what they would do when they reached the battling twins-tear them apart? throw Z’Nelia into the volcano? — Wulfston and Tadisha nonetheless fought their way across the treacherous ground, against a rising wind. On the other side, Ashuru’s figure grew dim as the crater spewed up drifts of chaos, threatening to overflow and engulf them all.

The forms of Z’Nelia and Chulaika became clearer as they approached. What should they do?

Suddenly, behind the battling women a new figure appeared!

It was a man, young and strong, slender and muscular, brandishing a diamond-tipped spear.

Norgu!

Norgu not as he was, but his ideal image of himself as a grown man, which-by Z’Nelia’s own rules-he could maintain here because he was in full possession of his powers!

Norgu strode toward the struggling women, spear at the ready.

Wulfston and Tadisha ran against the wind which tore the words from their mouths and tossed them away as they shouted at him to stop-

— too late!

With the point of his spear, he caught Z’Nelia in the small of the back as she strove to push Chulaika into the pit.

The spear shoved Z’Nelia against Chulaika, and both women tumbled into the maelstrom, locked together, screaming with one voice as Norgu howled with triumphant laughter!

Wulfston leaped toward him. Norgu spun, aiming the spear at him. “You die, too, Beast Lord!”

Ashuru arrived behind him. “Stop, Norgu!”

Norgu turned to her. “Ah, the Queen of the Karili. How convenient. I shall rid myself of all my enemies at once, and rule Africa uncontested!”

Norgu drew back the spear as if to thrust it into Ashuru. Tadisha cried, “Mother!” and tried to grasp Norgu’s arm.

He sidestepped her, swinging the spear toward Tadisha now, its diamond tip about to gut her.

Wulfston dived for the shaft, hauling the tip down short of its mark. He rolled, wrenching the spear from Norgu’s hands, unable to stop as his momentum carried him toward the lip of the crater!

Chaos rushed up at him, delirium and madness reaching out to envelop him-

With every vestige of strength he could command, he flung the spear ahead of him, the momentum shoving him backwards at the very edge so that he stopped with his hands on the lip of the crater, his head hanging over, peering into the pit as it erupted!

The volcano of greed, guilt, jealousy, and power-hunger belched out its core of madness.

Tadisha on one side and Ashuru on the other grasped Wulfston’s arms, hauling him to his feet. As they started back toward where they had left Lenardo, Ashuru shouted, “Norgu! Come with us!”

But as they rounded the rim to where they could see him without having to turn around, they found that Norgu hadn’t followed.

The fountain of chaos tossed the diamond-headed spear tantalizingly out of Norgu’s reach. The boy tried to grasp it.

“Let it go!” shouted Wulfston, but Norgu paid no heed.

The fiery plume shifted. The spear fell down into the chasm. Magma erupted; Norgu was engulfed where he stood, his screams drowned in the roar.

The soil beneath them heaved.

They stumbled on toward Lenardo.

Smoke blinded them. Heat blistered their skin.

A wave of chaos washed over them, tearing them apart!

“Lenardo!” Wulfston shouted, lost in a storm of fury. Only the Master Reader could get them home. But where was he? “Lenardo! Lenarrrdddooo!”

He tried to Read, couldn’t, remembered that he was Reading this whole scene-

Wulfston hurt. He was aware of aching in every muscle and bone before he felt the finger pressed firmly to his forehead between the eyes, and heard Lenardo’s voice saying calmly, “Wulfston, wake up. It’s all over. Wake up now.”

He did, with a moan.

He was slumped on his side, cheek against the cold stone floor, legs twisted painfully. He had iallen sideways from the cross-legged position he had assumed to Read with the others. The more awake he became, the more agony assaulted his nerves. Nothing that happened in Adept battle had ever hurt this much!

Light stabbed his eyes when he opened them to find a blurry Lenardo bending over him. “I know it hurts,” the Master Reader said, “but you’ll be all right. You weren’t prepared to go out of body.”

“Is that what I did?” he managed to get out. Even his tongue hurt.

“Yes. Don’t try to move. Can you start healing yourself?”

He found that he could. Relief and warmth spread through his cold, cramped limbs. Lenardo gently straightened his body, massaging the abused muscles. “What happened?” Wulfston asked. “I shouldn’t have fallen.”