Pillar of Night

“They may be right.” Lan stared at the bustle in the pit mine, then asked, “Could you direct me to the cemetery? It used to be about a mile that way, but everything else has changed so.”

“Still there.” The watchman peered at Lan curiously.

“Anything wrong?”

“Nothing. Just that you reminded me of someone. But it couldn’t be.”

“I did come from here.”

“You look a lot like a fella I knew close to twenty years ago. He got involved in a multiple murder when I was only about seven.”

“I might be the one.”

“Couldn’t be. You’re not more than three years older than he was then. Don’t know what happened to him. Nice guy but he went sour and killed his lover and his sister.”

“Lan Martak,” Lan said.

“What? Yes! That’s the name. Dar-elLan-Martak. Remember how my ma carried on for weeks about it. Scared the wits outta me. How’d you know the name?”

“I’m looking for his grave,” Lan said. The vagaries of time flow between the worlds took its toll on him now. He was only a few years older while almost twenty had passed on his home. And still he was remembered as a murderer.

“Down that trail and on about a mile, as you said,” the watchman told him.

“Thanks.”

Lan started off, the smell of real forest around him revitalizing him. His tired body came alive once more and energy surged through his veins. He felt powerful enough to smash worlds again when he arrived at the perimeter of the cemetery.

The wall had been repaired and extended. He walked through the gate and immediately saw the sheriff’s grave.

“Twenty years,” Lan said, shaking his head. “You were a good man. I’m sorry you had to live to see the Claybore’s grey-clads taking over.” Lan winced at the sound of a flyer above him. Even that particular perversion had been discovered by his home world’s mages.

Lan went and sat on a new grave, a cenotaph. His feet dangled into the crypt and he watched the bugs in the stone box vainly trying to scale the marble walls and escape.

“What are you watching, Lan?” came a soft voice. Inyx put her hand on his shoulder. He covered it with his own hand.

“The insects. It’s amazing how I ignored even the simplest of things for so long. A life-and-death struggle goes on under our noses and we don’t see it.”

“There are others to take their place if they die,” Inyx said. “That’s the way it is.”

“There is always another to take your place,” said Lan.

“Do you regret it?”

He laughed, rich and full and long. The humor inside came welling up and boiled over, real and heartfelt.

“Regret it? Never. The Resident of the Pit certainly does, though.”

“Have you looked into the well? The one where you first contacted the Resident?”

“No. I have no desire to seek him out. He is a god again. I’m only a mortal.”

“A mortal I love.”

Lan and Inyx sat side by side watching the bugs tumbling and crawling, climbing and finally escaping the cenotaph. He knew the exultation they felt on attaining the rim of the cairn. It was precisely the way he felt when he realized he was a god and as such could do anything he desired.

Anything at all.

He had freed the Resident of the Pit by shattering the spells forming the Pillar of Night. The magma from the planet had burst upward and blown the black shaft far into space. The energies released were too great for any world to contain; the planet had been turned to rubble in one cataclysmic eruption.

He and the Resident had floated freely in space, no longer bound by body or planet. They belonged to the universe.

That was when Lan had refused to kill the Resident. Instead, he had meted out a punishment far worse than even that given to Claybore.

First had been a geas patterned after the one Claybore had so cu

And he could not kill himself or force the power back on Lan because of the geas.

Lan was happy to again have to walk the Cenotaph Road using the empty graves as his highway.

“One lifetime is enough,” Lan said, “if it’s done right.” He kissed Inyx, relishing the feel of a real tongue moving against hers. Claybore’s tongue had been cast away, hurled down the Road and hidden for all time. As a god he had that power. And as a god, he had the power to conjure himself a new tongue. She leaned her head on his shoulder.

He held his hand in front of his face and conjured a small spell. Some residual ability remained. Sharp, well-defined flames lanced from his fingertips. Since giving away the powers locked within him, though, Lan had concentrated on healing spells. He didn’t doubt he was vastly better than either of the chirurgeons back in the town.

“The cenotaph will open in another hour,” Inyx said. “Have you looked around enough?”

“More than enough,” Lan assured her. He craned his neck and asked, “Where is he? I told him this cenotaph opened at sunset, not at midnight.”

“He’ll be here. He’s probably out chasing after bugs.”

Lan looked down into Inyx’s blue eyes. “Do you have any regrets? About Ducasien?”

“None,” she said. “Well, perhaps a little. He is a good man.”

“He will rule well with Nowless and Juli

“There’ll be friction. Ducasien had his eye on Juli

“We can look in on them,” promised Lan. “In a year or two.”

He sighed as he thought of Brinke. So regal, so lovely. Her world destroyed, she had also become a traveler along the Road. One day their paths would cross. Lan knew it. He wished her only the best in her sojourn along the Road.

“Dammit,” he yelled, “where are you, Krek?”

A dark lump rose up nearby and shook itself. Long, coppery-furred legs gleamed in the setting sun.

“I rested, friend Lan Martak, nothing more. The journey has been arduous. And you insist on bringing me to worlds where there is nothing edible. Look at those grubs. Tiny!”

“Well, go back to your own web and your Klawn and all the rest,” Lan said in disgust. Krek sometimes got on his nerves.

“That will be u

Inyx shuddered at the mention. Too much of Krek’s ferocity had rubbed off on Lan. He had placed the eternal arm where Claybore would feel the nip of mandibles for as long as there were hatchlings to feed. The dismembered sorcerer had forever to regret all he had done. With each piece of flesh painfully snipped off, devoured and then magically renewed, he would regret it.

Lan never said where he placed the other parts. Inyx feared they were even more diabolically hidden.

“Get into the cenotaph,” Lan said. “The gateway’s opening.”

Krek lumbered forward and dropped down. He vanished almost instantly. Lan and Inyx looked at one another, smiled as they locked arms, and slipped off the edge and into the grave.

Together, they walked the Cenotaph Road again.