Tracker met him halfway. ’He set the son of the tree aside, grabbed hold of his man, started a wrestling match of epic scale. He and the Dominator shrieked like souls in torment.

I wanted to rush down and tend to Elmo and the Lieutenant, but the Lady gestured for me to stay. Her gaze roved everywhere. She expected something more.

A great shriek shook the earth. A ball of oily fire rolled skyward. The dragon flopped like an injured worm, screaming. Bomanz had disappeared.

To be seen was the Limper. Somehow he had dragged himself to within a dozen feet of me without my noticing. My fear was so great I nearly voided my bowels. His mask was gone. The devasted wasteland of his bare face glowered with malice. In a moment, he was thinking, he would even all scores with me. My legs turned to jelly.

He pointed a small crossbow, grinned. Then his aim drifted aside. I saw that his quarrel was close cousin to the arrow across my bow.

That electrified me, finally. I drew to the head.

He squealed, “Credence, the rite is complete. I name your name!” And then he let fly.

I loosed at the same instant. I could get the shaft off no faster, damn me. My arrow slammed into his black heart, knocked him over. But too late. Too late.

The Lady cried out.

Terror turned into unreasoning rage. I flung myself at the Limper, abandoning my bow for my sword. He did not turn to face my assault. He just held himself up on one elbow and gaped at the Lady.

I really went crazy. I guess we all can, in the right circumstances. But I had been a soldier for ages. I’d long ago learned you don’t do that sort of thing and stay alive long.

The Limper was inside the null. Which meant he was barely clinging to life, barely able to sustain himself, wholly unable to defend himself. I made him pay for all the years of fear.

My first stroke half severed his neck. I kept hacking till I finished the job. Then I scattered a few limbs about, blunting my steel and madness on ancient bone. Sanity began to return. I whirled to see what had become of the Lady.

She was down on one knee, the weight of her body resting upon the other. She was trying to draw Limper’s bolt. I charged over, pulled her hand away. “No. Let me. Later.” This time I was less startled that the naming had not worked. This time convinced me that nothing could disarm her. She should have been gone, damn it! I gave myself up to a long fit of the shakes. The Taken pounding on the forest people were having an effect. Some of the savages had begun fleeing. Toadkiller Dog was enveloped by painful sorceries. “Hang on,” I told the Lady. “We’re over the hump. We’re going to do it.” I don’t know that I believed that, but it was what she needed to hear.

Tracker and the Dominator continued to roll around, grunting and cursing. Silent pranced around them with a broad-bladed spear. When chance presented itself, he cut our great enemy. Nothing could survive that forever. Darling watched, stayed close, stayed out of the Dominator’s way.

I scooted back to the wreck of the Limper and dug out the shaft I’d put into his chest. He glared at me. There was life in his brain still. I booted his head into the trench left by the dragon’s rising.

That beast had ceased thrashing. Still no sign of Bomanz. Never any sign of Bomanz. He found the fate he feared, second try. He slew the monster from within.

Do not think Bomanz peripheral because he kept his head down. I believe the Dominator expected the dragon to preoccupy Darling and the Lady those few moments he needed to get shut of the null. Bomanz took that away. With the same determination and distinction as the Lady facing her inescapable fate.

I returned to the Lady. My hands had attained their battlefield steadiness. I wished for my kit. My knife would have to do. I laid her back, started digging. That quarrel would chew on her till I got it out. For all the pain, she managed a grateful smile.

A dozen men surrounded Tracker and the Dominator now, every one stabbing. Some did not seem particular as to whom they hit. , The sands were about gone for the old evil. I packed and bound the Lady’s wound with material from her own clothing. “We’ll change this as soon as we can.”

The tribesmen were whipped. Toadkiller Dog was dragging himself toward the high country. That old mutt had as much staying power as his boss. Guards freed of the fighting hurried our way. They carried wood for the old doom’s funeral Pyre-

Fifty-Eight

End of the game

Then I spotted Raven.

“The damned fool.”

He was leaning on Case, hobbling. He carried a bare sword. His face was set.

Trouble for sure. His step was not quite as feeble as he pretended.

It took no genius to guess what he had in mind. In his simple way of seeing things, he was going to make everything right with Darling by finishing off her big enemy.

The shakes came back, but this time not from fear. If somebody did not do something, I was going to be right in the middle. Right where I would have to make a choice, to act, and nothing I did would make anyone happy.

I tried distracting myself by testing the Lady’s dressing.

Shadows fell upon us. I looked up into Silent’s cold eyes, into Darling’s more compassionate face. Silent cast a subtle glance Raven’s way. He was in the middle, too.

The Lady clawed at my arm. “Lift me,” she said.

I did. She was as weak as water. I had to support her.

“Not yet,” she told Darling, as though Darling could hear. “He is not yet finished.”

They had gotten a leg and an arm off the Dominator. Those they threw into the woodpile. Tracker hung on so they could carve on the Dominator’s neck. Goblin and One-Eye stood by, waiting for the head, ready to run like hell. Some Guards planted the son of the tree. Windwhales and manias hovered overhead. Others, with the Taken, were harassing Toadkiller Dog and the savages through the forest.

Raven was getting closer. And I was no closer to knowing where I stood.

That son-of-a-bitching Dominator was tough. He killed a dozen men before they finished carving him up. Even then he was not dead. Like Limper’s, his head lived on.

Time for Goblin and One-Eye. Goblin grabbed the still-living head, sat down, held it tightly between his knees. One-Eye hammered a six-inch silver spike through its forehead, into its brain. The Dominator’s lips kept forming curses.

The nail would capture his blighted soul. The head would go into the fire. When that burned out, the spike would be recovered and driven into the trunk of the son of the tree. Meaning one dark spirit would be bound for a million years. Guards brought Limper parts to the fire, too. They did not find his head, though. The sodden walls of the trench whence the dragon had risen had collapsed upon it. Goblin and One-Eye torched the woodpile. The fire leapt up as if eager to fulfill its mission. The Limper’s bolt had struck the Lady four inches from the heart, midway between her left breast and collarbone. I confess to a certain pride in having drawn it under such terrible circumstances without killing her. I should have incapacitated her left arm, though.

She now lifted that arm, reached out to Darling. Silent and I were puzzled. But only for a moment.

The Lady pulled Darling to her. She had no strength, so it must be that, in a way, Darling allowed herself to be pulled. Then she whispered, “The rite is complete. I name your true name, Tonie Fisk.”

Darling screamed soundlessly. The null began to fray.

Silent’s face blackened. For what seemed an eternity he stood there in obvious torment, torn between a vow, a love, a hatred, perhaps the concept of an obligation to a higher duty. Tears began coursing down his cheeks. I got an old wish, and was ready to cry myself when I did.