Robert E. Vardeman

Pillar of Night

CHAPTER ONE

“Claybore has baited a trap and waits for you,” Kiska k’Adesina told Lan Martak. “You will die if you try to recover the legs.”

“How do you know?” Lan demanded. The young mage tried to shake his oddly tender feelings toward the woman and failed. Claybore had laid a geas on him too potent to fight, too subtle to work around. Kiska k’Adesina was his mortal enemy, the commander of Claybore’s grey-clad soldiers, a vicious foe-and he felt protective toward her. And more.

Sweat beaded on his forehead as he realized how much he loved-was forced to love!-the woman who had repeatedly tried to kill him.

“It’s all part of Claybore’s master plan. He wants you incapacitated. If you rush in foolishly, without planning, without taking enough precautions, then you will be… no more.”

“What do you care?” Lan raged, more at his own impotence in dealing with Kiska than at the woman. He fought down any thought of failure. The slightest pause, the most minute of hesitations and he would lose this coming battle.

At the center of the conflict lay Claybore’s legs. The other sorcerer had been dismembered and his parts strewn along the infinite length of the Cenotaph Road. Over the years, through the millennia, Claybore had slowly reunited his parts. Others had attempted to stop him; they had died. Only Lan Martak stood between Claybore and domination of not a single world but myriads of them. The battle had been long and difficult, with victories for both of them. Claybore had rejoined his arms to his torso; the Kinetic Sphere, allowing him to move between worlds at will, throbbed heartlike in his chest. Lan had destroyed the sorcerer’s skin and in his own mouth Lan tasted the metallic tang of the magical tongue once used by Claybore to speak spells and world-wrecking curses.

Lan felt increasingly inadequate as a mage. The major victories were his opponent’s. What did he really know of magics? He had been raised on a forest world and had learned only minor fire and healing spells. This arena of magical battle was alien to him still. And so much rested on his shoulders. He alone could prevent Claybore from regaining his legs. This last addition would make the dismembered sorcerer almost whole-and invincible.

“You can’t face him. You’re not good enough,” Kiska kept saying over and over. She tugged at his sleeve and tried to hold him back. He jerked free. Lan Martak said nothing as he spun and started through the maze inside the hollowed mountain of Yerrary. The gnomes who made this their home had spent centuries chewing out corridors and had created a twisting domain that was as much a part of their heritage as the forests were his. Lan quickly forgot ordinary sight and depended more and more on a magical scrying spell to lead him through the turnings.

At first he walked with faltering steps, then became more confident and strode with his usual ground-devouring pace. Kiska struggled to keep up with him but said nothing.

“The chamber we seek is near,” he said after they had traversed long corridors.

Kiska clung to him, barely noticed. Lan Martak moved on for the final confrontation. Claybore could not permit him to enter that chamber unopposed. To do so meant the disembodied sorcerer lost all.

“Through that arch,” Lan Martak said, pointing. His hand glowed a dull purple in response to the war spell on the doorway. “Go through and die.”

“You can take off the spell?” Kiska k’Adesina asked anxiously.

“It is a multilayered spell,” he said, examining it carefully. “Very tricky. And very clever. One small slip and we die horribly.”

Kiska tensed, her hands balled to strike out. Lan noticed and she relaxed and let her arms hang limply at her sides. He faced the doorway and began his chants.

Slowly at first, then with increasing assurance he peeled away the layers of the magics. Like onion skins, the spells fell away until only the bare stone archway remained. Lan wiped his sleeve over his forehead. The unlocking had taken more from him than he’d thought possible. An instant of fear flashed through him.

Was he as powerful as he thought? Did this multiple spell hold traps of which he was unaware? Had he committed too much of his power too soon? Gut-wrenching terror chewed at his self-confidence, but he dared not admit it. Not in front of Kiska.

“Let’s not tarry. Our destiny lies in wait beyond.”

With more confidence than he felt, he walked forward. Lan’s eyes blinked as he passed under the stone archway. A slight electric tingle of spell had not been driven off, but it was a minor annoyance. He flicked it away as if it were nothing more than a buzzing insect.

He entered the chamber containing Claybore’s legs.

“There they are!” cried Kiska. “Claybore’s lost limbs.”

Lan restrained her. She tried to bolt forward and seize the beaten copper coffins holding those legs.

“The exterior protective spells are gone. Others remain. How else could those legs stay preserved?”

“Claybore is immortal. His parts are, too.”

Lan reeled at the notion. For whatever reason, this had never occurred to him. He studied the twin coffins and saw the spells woven through the fabric of the metal and flesh within and knew that Kiska was right. The spells the mage Lirory had placed on the legs bound them to this time and place; preservation was accomplished on a more fundamental level, one fraught with magics that even Lan did not pretend to understand.

“They can be destroyed,” he said, more to maintain the fiction of his superiority than anything else. Showing ignorance in front of Kiska bothered him more than he cared to admit.

“Of course they can be destroyed,” came a voice all too familiar from previous encounters. The words did not sound against air as others’ words might, but echoed from within the head. Claybore spoke directly from mind to mind. “You ought to know that my parts are not invincible. After all, you left my skin in a puddle of protoplasm from your spells.”

“I wondered when you would come,” said Lan, turning to face Claybore. The sorcerer stood under the archway so recently swept clean of its guardian spells. His human torso and arms were carried on a magically powered mechanical contrivance of metal struts and spinning cogwheels that now showed the ravages of continual battle. The inhuman fleshless skull, however, betrayed Lan Martak’s successes the most clearly. Cracks had appeared and the lower jaw was missing. For all the damage wrought to the bone, the dark pits still glowed with the red, manic fury of Claybore’s death beams.

“I waited for you to tire yourself, to do the work for me.”

“I am not tired, Claybore.”

“You kid yourself, then,” said Claybore, laughing. His mocking gestures angered Lan, who watched as the sorcerer came into the chamber. The arms took up a defensive pose, ready to subvert any spell Lan might cast.

Lan savored this moment. Claybore might decry his skills, but Lan knew deep within how he had grown as a mage. Claybore was not only wrong, he was defeated and didn’t know it. Lan Martak felt the power on him. He could not lose. He faced his destiny.

“This after you’ve told me it’s possible to destroy your parts? Kiska was wrong. The parts are not immortal. The whole might be, but not the parts.”

“Immortality rests with all the parts, but that doesn’t mean the segments cannot be destroyed,” said Claybore. “Left alone, they will survive for all eternity.”

“Consummate magics will destroy them,” said Lan, almost gloating now.

“Terrill tried and failed. He paid the penalty for dismembering me.”

“I’m better than Terrill.”

The chalk white skull tipped sideways, the eye sockets taking on a blackness darker than space. The area around the nose hole became riddled with cracks as magical forces mounted. Claybore’s skull disintegrated a bit more under each attack. Lan felt confident that he would turn the skull into dust before the day was out.