The Swordbearer

"Is it death?" he asked. "Will you lash the world till, in a rage, it ends you? Are you trying to escape your immortality?''

While he spoke he moved his head back and forth, trying to capture her gaze with the Diadem. She withdrew toward the alabaster throne, step-pause-step.

Going to her next move?

"What are Bachesta and the others? Why do they toy with our lives?" He could almost hear Rogala growling, Kill when you have to. Don't talk.

Intuition told him she had to be permitted the next move. She would turn any initiative against him.

She seemed as willing to wait as was he.

He suggested, "Suppose we just sit down and let the world get on with it? Let them seal us in and forget us. The Great Old Ones won't start anything new while they're waiting for us to finish."

Talk, talk, talk, he thought. When would she respond? Anything would give him an insight into her thinking. Why that one moment of sarcasm, then nothing?

He glanced out a window. Dense smoke masked the sun. Fires bloodied the billows. The temblors continued. The Queen City was dying. Contessa Cuneo's patrimony would consist of rubble and ash.

Nieroda changed during his moment of inattention. "It must yield," she declared. "It's stubborn.

So stubborn. There's always one more barrier... . Someday it has to give in."

"What do you mean?"

Ahlert made a guess. Terrible and powerful as she was, Nieroda was a failure. The short-term tasks she set herself, even when they appeared to work out, invariably culminated in disaster.

She's immortal, Gathrid countered.

That, too, will end, Ahlert replied.

"Death," the youth said aloud. "I bring you death, Dark Lady."

She had won the war of waiting. He would make the first move. Suchara was impatient. He pushed through a dozen defenses the like of the darts and daggers. Nieroda backed away.

When first he spied the smoke he thought it just an especially thick arm drifting in from the burning city. Then it coalesced in his path. One end took the semblance of a cobra's head. More sorcery. He called on Ahlert.

The Mindak could not help him. This was beyond his knowledge.

It was a serpent. It became a smoke creature fifty yards long and as thick as a man's chest. It coiled round Nieroda, shielding her. Gathrid probed with the Sword.

Nothing happened. Daubendiek denied the thing's existence.

Red eyes glared into Gathrid's own. He saw a malevolent humor there. He backed away to consider.

It struck. Neither Sword nor Shield reacted. The youth survived solely on his own quick response.

Immune to the Sword. Able to penetrate the Shield. What was this thing? Nervously, he backed a few more steps away. One foot encountered the Staff, twisted beneath him treacherously. He regained his balance, dodged another strike.

The Staff, too, proved useless. So did the blade he had captured.at Kacalief. He felt a growing uneasiness. He'd had an advantage. It was quicksilver in his fingers. She had gotten round the might of the great weapons'.

"Death," said Nieroda. A wicked smile captured her fat Mulenex lips. "I bring you death, Swordbearer."

Gathrid saw it in those wicked red eyes as the serpent rocked to and fro, considering its next strike. He moved Daubendiek in time to the serpent's sway. Its gaze locked on the weapon, watching for his move.

Slowly, slowly, he drew the serpent's gaze upward, into contact with the jewel in the Ordrope Diadem.

Nothing. His mind opened on an emptiness so complete it could exist only as some philosopher's fantasy. He nearly fell in.

"Beware!" Ahlert snapped from the back of his mind. "It's another trap."

Gathrid surfaced. Nieroda was charging. Her serpent had vanished. She had acquired a weapon.

Its blade was wholly invisible. Daubendiek turned its first thrust uncertainly. The Shield absorbed a glancing blow. Nieroda danced away, moving lightly despite the gross Mulenex body.

She tossed, or pretended to toss, her weapon from hand to hand till Gathrid was no longer sure which wielded it.

Levels and levels, deceits and deceits, he thought. Was there no limit to her cu

She refused the bait. She dodged instead of blocking with her weapon. The Staff's passage across the jade produced an endless drumroll sound. It toppled into the abyss.

The gap closed instantly.

One point to the Dark Champion, Gathrid thought. He had lost a resource.

He struggled to retain his balance. The floor heaved and rolled like a strong sea. Trying to outwit the woman was going to scramble his brain.

He moved in, Sword and Shield high, ready to block a stroke from either hand. He ignored that part of the Shield's protection not backed by its physical embodiment. He had to push her, to deny her time for tricks. He edged closer, till he was inside her reach.

She could not resist.

He blocked with Daubendiek, locked blades and in the same instant hurled the Shield away. It danced a fiery tarantella across the jade. He seized Nieroda's hair, pulled her closer. He forced Daubendiek toward her throat... .

The high sorcery ceased to have meaning. The moment became a contest of strength. He was wi

She could dispel a thousand mysteries.

Gerdes Mulenex had been a lazy wastrel. There was no strength in him at all.

Darkness.

Gathrid and his antagonist were in another place, another palace. They were locked in one another's arms upon another vast floor. Topless walls resembling human faces surrounded them.

Three stirred memories for the youth. That snoring silver one he had seen looming over Anyeck's shoulders. The crimson, which wore an expression resembling that of a disappointed old man just nodding off, had floated behind the Mindak during their confrontation in the tu

The black and an aquamarine face were very much awake. Each projected fear, excitement and hope.

Each betrayed a vast displeasure with its Chosen.

Gathrid foresaw a struggle like those with the Toal on the endless plain. And he suspected that, for the vanquished, defeat would be final and forever.

He broke away from Nieroda. He and she, bereft of weapons, material trappings and stolen body, glared at one another.

Gathrid backed away. He now faced a woman, rather attractive and disarmingly unclothed.

He tried to cull his stolen memories, nearly panicked when there was no response. They were gone.

He was Gathrid of Kacalief once more, with all that boy-child's frailties. His eye drooped. His leg hurt. He had no resources but himself to support him. A bitter year's growth and experience were all that separated him from the terrified boy who had fled Kacalief's ruins.

She, then, would again be Wistma Povich of Spillen-kothen in Sommerlath, perhaps as she had been before becoming Sommerlath's Queen.

"Toys!" he spat. "That's all we are."

"That's all we ever were."

"Would that they were vulnerable."

"Yes." Her face looked haunted. "To be able to destroy them, as they've destroyed me by forcing me to destroy. ..." Her hatred became palpable. It surged around her. The air crackled.

"Can there be games when the gladiators won't fight?" It was a silly thing to say. The wa

Their eyes locked. She relaxed slowly. He did so himself, carefully, ever watchful for the Nieroda trap. Cautiously, he examined his surroundings more thoroughly.

It was a new subjective reality. It was both like and unlike the plane-plain where the Toal had died.

Could these Great Old Ones die? Could they be slain?