THE TEMPTATION OF SAINT MADRAK

Madrak has one chance of living through the onslaught. He throws his staff and dives forward.

The choice is the right one.

He passes beneath the dog as it leaps, snapping at his staff.

His hand falls upon the strange fabric of the glove the creature had been worrying.

Suddenly, he is comforted by a confidence in his invincibility. This is something even the narcotic had not fully instilled him.

Quickly he determines the cause and slips the glove upon his right hand.

The dog turns as Typhon rears.

The black shadow falls between them.

Tickling, stirring, the glove reaches to Madrak’s elbow, spreads across his back, his chest.

The dog lunges and then howls, for the dark horse shadow comes upon it. One head hangs lifeless as the others snarl.

“Depart, oh Madrak, to the appointed place!” says Typhon. “I shall occupy this creature to its destruction and follow in my own way!”

The glove moves down his left arm, covers the hand, spreads across his chest, reaches down to his waist.

Madrak, who has always been mighty, suddenly reaches forth and crushes a stone within his right hand.

“I fear it not, Typhon. I’ll destroy it myself.”

“In my brother’s name, I bid thee go!”

Bowing his head, Madrak departs. Behind him, the sounds of battle rage. He moves through the lair of the minotaur. He makes his way upward through the corridors. Pale creatures with green, glowing eyes accost him. He slays them easily with his hands and proceeds.

When the next group of attackers moves upon him, he subdues them but does not slay them, having had time to think.

Instead he says:

“It might be good for you to consider the possibility of your having portions of yourselves which might withstand the destruction of your bodies, and to label these hypothetical quantities souls, for the sake of argument. Now then, beginning with the proposition that such-“

But they attack him again and he is forced to slay them all.”

“Pity,” he says, and repeats the Possibly Proper Death Litany.

Proceeding upward, he comes at last to the appointed place.

And there he stands.

At the Gateway to the Underworld…

On Waldik…

“Hell hath been harrowed,” he says. “I am half invincible. This must be the gauntlet of Set. Strange that it but half covers me. But perhaps I’m more a man than he was.” Stomach then regarded. “And perhaps not. But the power that lies in this thing… Mighty! To beat the filthy-souled into submission and effect their conversions-perhaps this is why it was rendered unto my hand. Is Thoth divine? Truly, I do not know. I wonder. If he is, then I wrong him by not delivering it. -Unless, of course, this be his secret will.” Regards hands enmeshed. “My power is now beyond measure. How shall I use it? All of Waldik might I convert with this instrument, given but time.” Then, “But he charged me with a specific task. -Yet…” Smile. (The mesh does not cover his face.) “What if he is divine? Sons who beget their fathers may well be. I recall the myth of Eden. I know this serpent-like glove may indicate the Forbidden.” Shrugs. “But the good which might be done… No! It is a trap! But I could beat the Words into their heads… I’ll do it! ‘Though Hell gape wide,’ as Vramin says.”

But as he turns he is caught up in a vortex that sucks the words from his throat and casts him down a wide, blank, cold well.

Behind him, the shadows strive, Waldik gapes wide, and then he is gone, for the Prince has called him home.

… But Wakim the Wanderer has donned the shoes, and he rises now to stand in the middle of the air, laughing. With each step that he takes, a sonic boom goes forth from the temple to mingle with the thunder. The warriors and the worshipers bow down.

Wakim runs up the wall and stands upon the ceiling.

A green door appears at Vramin’s back.

Wakim descends and steps through it

Vramin follows.

“Hail!” suggests one of the priests.

But the drug-maddened spearmen turn upon him and rend him.

One day, long after their miraculous departure, a galaxy of mighty warriors will set forth upon the Quest of the Holy Shoes.

In the meantime, the altar is empty, the evening rains come down.

WINNING THE WAND

On Marachek, in the Citadel, stand they all, there, as backward reel their minds.

“I’ve the shoes,” says Wakim. “You may have them for my name.”

“I’ve the glove,” says Madrak and turns away his face.

“… And I’ve the wand,” says Horus, and it falls from his hand.

“It did not pass through me,” says the Prince, “because it is not formed of matter, nor any other thing over which you may exercise control.” And the mind of the Prince is closed to the inner eye of Horus.

Horus steps forward, and his left leg is longer than his right leg, but he is perfectly balanced upon the now uneven floor; the window burns like a sun at the Prince’s back, and the Steel General is turned to gold and flowing; Vramin burns like a taper and Madrak becomes a fat doll bounding at the end of a rubber strand; the walls growl and pulse in and out with a regular rhythm keeping time with the music that comes from the shuffling bars of the spectrum upon the floor at the end of the tunnel that begins with the window and lies like burning honey and the tiger above the wand now grown monstrous and too fine to behold within the eternity of the tower room in the Citadel of Marachek at Midworlds’ Center where the Prince has raised his smile.

Horus advances another step, and his body is transparent to his sense, so that all things within him become immediately known and frightening.

“Oh the moon comes like a genie

from the Negro lamp of night,

and the tunnel of my seeing is her roadway.

She raises up the carpet of the days

I’ve walked upon,

and through caverns of the sky we make our

pathway,”

says a voice strangely like yet unlike Vramin’s.

And Horus raises his hand against the Prince.

But the Prince already holds his wrist in a grip that burns.

And Horus raises up his other hand against the Prince.

But the Prince already holds that wrist in a grip that freezes.

And he raises up his other hand and electrical shocks pass along it. And he raises up his other hand and it blackens and dies.

And he raises up a hundred hands more and they turn to snakes and fight among themselves and of course he whispers: “What has happened?”

“A world,” says the Prince, “to which I have transported us.”

“It is unfair to choose such a battleground,” says Horus, “a world too like the one I know-only a fraction away and so twisted,” and his words are all the colors of Blis and round and dripping.

“And it is indecent of you to want to kill me.”

“I have been charged with this thing, and it is my will also.”

“So you have failed,” says the Prince, forcing him to kneel upon the Milky Way, which becomes a transparent intestinal tract, racked by a rapid peristalsis.

The smell is overpowering.

“No!” whispers Horus.

“Yes, brother. You are defeated. You cannot destroy me. I have bested you. It is time to quit, to resign, to go home.”

“Not until I have accomplished my objective.” The stars, like ulcers, burn within his guts, and Horus pits the strength of his body against the kaleidoscope that is the Prince. The Prince drops to one knee, but with his genuflection there comes a hail of hosannas from the innumerable dog-faced flowers that bloom upon his brow like sweat and merge to a mask of glass which cracks and unleashes lightnings. Horus pushes his arms toward the nineteen moons which are being eaten by the serpents his fingers; and who calls out, oh God, but conscience his father, birdheaded on sky’s throne and weeping blood? Resign? Never! Go home? The red laughter comes as he strikes at the brother-faced thing below.