Robert Vardeman - Pillar of Night

“They all attack!” cried Kiska.

“Die!” Lan commanded, using the Voice.

Fourteen of the grey-clads stopped, stiffened, then dropped their weapons. For the span of three heartbeats not a single soldier moved. Then they slumped to the ground like rows of wheat being harvested.

“Such power,” Kiska said softly, looking at Lan. “Claybore’s tongue is mightier than all their swords.”

Lan tried forming the spell again, this time directed at Kiska. He failed, as he had known he would.

“Claybore now knows I have come after him,” said Lan. “I had hoped for more time to study this world.”

“You can see the Pillar of Night?” asked the woman. She shoved the sword into the soft dirt and wiped it free of blood. Kiska searched through the ranks of the fallen soldiers until she found a sword-belt that fit her. She draped it around her waist, the sword tugging down and swinging at her left side.

“What do you know of it?” asked Lan.

“Nothing,” she said blithely, enjoying the torment it caused Lan. “Claybore mentioned it once or twice. That’s all.”

He knew Kiska lied. She knew more than a casual mention by the dismembered sorcerer. But what?

Lan closed his eyes and “looked” around him. A pale glow pulsed from a spot a few hours’ walk away. The light warmed Lan, made him smile in fond recollection. Here was an ally. Perhaps not one overly dependable, but an ally nonetheless. Without a word to his companion, Lan started through the forest toward the green beacon of magic.

“Here,” said Kiska with some distaste. She held out the kicking, clawing badger for Lan to take.

“Do it,” he said, pointing. “Toss the beast into the well.” Kiska obeyed. The badger twisted and tried to savage her hand, but it was too late. Falling, the creature dwindled to a point of brown and then vanished into inky darkness. For some time nothing happened. Then the absolute blackness within the well began to churn and move, to take form, to rise.

“What have you conjured?” Kiska said, backing away from the lip of the well.

“I should have tossed you into the pit,” Lan said.

Inchoate space pulsed with life now and a somber voice said, “Welcome, Lan Martak. You have arrived, as I knew you would.”

“Where is Claybore?” asked Lan.

“On this world,” came the Resident of the Pit’s sly answer.

“How do I fight him?”

“With all your skills.”

Lan pondered. The Resident always answered questions honestly, but obliquely.

“How has Claybore imprisoned you?” Lan asked.

“There is no answer for this, Lan Martak,” came the baleful answer. “If I knew the exact spells, I might free myself of them.”

“You are, after all, a god,” said Lan.

“A deposed one,” said the Resident of the Pit, “and one willing to die. Eternity is too long for me. I have been trapped within this pit for thousands of years.”

“The pit?” asked Kiska. “It opens onto other worlds? I saw one such as this back in Yerrary.”

“I,” said the Resident, “am everywhere and nowhere. On every world there are wells similar to this one, but none worships me now. Claybore has thwarted me.”

Kiska laughed. “I know you now. Terrill was your pawn, wasn’t he? He tried to free you from the Pillar of Night and failed.”

“True,” said the Resident.

Lan frowned. He walked in circles around the mouth of the pit, occasionally looking into the writhing mass of insubstantial blackness trapped within.

“Am I also your pawn?” asked Lan.

“I aid you in whatever manner I can,” said the Resident. “I will tell you this, and nothing more because of the spells binding me: the Pillar of Night is both Claybore’s strength and his weakness.”

“I must destroy it?”

The whirlpool of blackness spun, then slackened in speed, dipped back into the pit and vanished, shadow melting into shadow.

Lan’s frustration rose. It always proved thus with the Resident of the Pit. Vague hints, nothing definite, warnings too general to be meaningful.

“Now that you’ve enjoyed my fair world,” came Claybore’s taunting words, “it is time for you to leave. Goodbye, Martak!”

The attack came from all directions at once. Lan fell to his knees under the onslaught of magics. Spells of mind-numbing complexity worked to burn away his flesh. His eyes expanded within his skull and threatened to explode. His genitals itched. Sounds shrill and deafening assaulted his ears even as bass vibrations shook his internal organs, churning one against the other. He clapped hands over his ears and screwed shut his eyes to protect himself.

And the attack grew.

“Stop!” he commanded, the Voice ringing from his lips. The magical tongue burned in his mouth and tasted foul with its metallic tang. But the single word caused the slightest of cracks in the battering ram of spells Claybore used against him.

That small crack widened as Lan regained his senses. He twisted magically and stood in relative calm.

Both mages surrounded themselves with protective bubbles of intricate, ever-changing magics.

“You have progressed,” said Claybore. “Even in the brief months since we parted company, you have learned much.”

Lan said nothing. To Claybore it might have been months. For him it was mere hours. Time flowed differently between the worlds-and Lan realized for the first time that Claybore’s Kinetic Sphere gave the other mage instant translation between worlds. Lan’s self-taught spells were of a different nature and might have produced the time delay.

He studied Claybore and saw that the sorcerer’s arms produced new and different patterns of glowing air before him. Reds flowed into greens only to burst into brilliant white pinwheels that sent sparks in all directions! Lan wished he had prevented Claybore from recovering his arms; the added power in Claybore’s conjurations was instantly apparent.

“You have repaired your legs,” Lan said.

Claybore did not glance down. The fleshless skull atop his shoulder lacked eyes. In the deep sockets ruby light swirled about, waiting to form death beams. The skull’s lower jaw had been destroyed, but the cracks Lan had caused in the white bone had been patched.

“A master mechanician labored for weeks to rebuild my legs. They are better than ever.” Claybore flexed one of the metal wonders. Lan saw the bright points of magic powering the legs. He snuffed out one of the spots and Claybore almost fell.

“Damn you!” snarled the sorcerer. The power point returned and Claybore straightened.

“Let’s go on a trip, shall we?” asked Lan, his voice deceptively mild. “Now!” This time he put all the prodigious power of the Voice into his spell.

The pair of them tumbled through the air, spinning and turning about as magics carried them aloft.

Lan’s view of the world widened and what he saw he liked. It struck him as a crime that one such as Claybore could befoul such a bucolic place with his presence. Claybore would not rule this world-or any other! He kept the other sorcerer off balance by shifting the force of gravity, slackening in places and augmenting in others.

“A trick, Martak, but not good enough.” Claybore’s fingers wiggled and new patterns of burning light shone forth. The tumbling ceased and they rocketed around the world, moving faster and faster until Lan fought for breath. The rushing air burned at his clothes, made his tunic smoulder, set the leather grips of his sword ablaze.

“Cool!” he commanded, the Voice again producing the desired results. The friction-fed fires died as light breezes wafted past him. Lan Martak breathed normally now and began building an assault against Claybore that combined every deadly spell he knew into one vicious, icepick-slender thrust.