Part 21 (1/2)

”He betrayed me! Didn't you see it? A cross! A gold, Christian cross! He dared!”

”You can't destroy him for that, or a thousand of your own people, just for listening to him.”

”My own people? No longer. They have become Christians. Traitors. I'll not have them in my kingdom.”

”Then you'd better crush me first. Where do you think he got that cross? How did he know to abandon his useless hammer, a forgotten symbol, and pick up the emblem of Christianity today? I gave him that cross.”

”Then you've sealed their fate yourself. They will all die.”

”Why? Must everyone wors.h.i.+p you? You're not a G.o.d.”

His expression turned sly and mean. How had she ever thought him otherwise? ”I will be,” he said.

”What do you mean?” He was so confident. Pierrette felt sick with terror.

”You interrupted me. You were supposed to stay away another day. I would have been finished, then.

But I forgive you. Now you can watch as I sever the last ties that bind my kingdom to the world. We'll drift alone in a universe of my own.” He laughed harshly. ”Already I have the powers of a G.o.d. Life?

Death? Mine, to decide. In a universe where there are no kingdoms but mine, no rulers but me-I will indeed be not just a G.o.d, but G.o.d. And I will have no son. The Hermit and his foolish followers will have none other to wors.h.i.+p.”

”You're mad! Don't you understand that you've already unbalanced everything? You banished age, death, and pain from your realm, and gave the Eater of G.o.ds a pretext to exist, and gave him anundefeatable advantage in the world outside. You can't just sail away, now, and leave everything else to him! You must return to the world, to set things right.”

”I'll hardly do that. When I and my kingdom are gone, what will I care what happens there? It won't happen inmy universe.”

”No! You can't do that!”

”Will you stop me? Here. I'll show you . . .” Again, his hands reached within the sphere. Again, they attenuated, and stretched, reaching for . . . for a thread. The roof of the miniature palace was as immaterial as vapor, no barrier to sight or to Minho's hands. With a twist of distorted wrists, the sorcerer-king broke the tendril that linked a tiny harpist to his origins. Then he reached for another, a small figure still standing in the gloomy hallway where Pierrette had left her. Neheresta.

Why her? Why had Minho chosen her? She was a servant, unimportant, insignificant. Hatiphas hadn't even known her name. At that precise moment, Pierrette's last doubt fell away. Minho chose Neheresta because he knew. He had been there, a parasite in her old, jaded mind, using her-and using Pierrette.

”No!” Pierrette gasped. Minho's shoulders stiffened, and he turned. His handsome face was ugly now, twisted with the selfish destruction he had wrought upon those who trusted him, who were doomed to follow him, to serve him and his egotism forever. This was no longer the dark, charming king who had wooed her with sweet words and smiles. Anger twisted his features.

Someone gasped. The king turned toward the sound. His hands withdrew from the water-sphere, and Neheresta was safe, for the moment. There stood Hatiphas. Pierrette recognized him by his clothing, but little else was the same, except his knife-sharp nose. His face sagged and wrinkled as if he were truly ancient, as old as all the years he had lived. His skin hung in folds on his skeletal frame, raddled with angry red sores, mottled yellow, white, and brown. His hands were bony claws, his fingernails yellow, and almost as long as his fingers, like the nails of a corpse, that had continued to grow after death, in its sepulcher.

”You did this to me,” he croaked. ”You made me like this!”

”I did? No, you fool. You did it yourself, by choosing to live, when you could have died. I did not do that to you. Time did it.”

”You're lying! I was not . . . like this . . . until now. It's your fault-what you're doing here.”

”You dare blame me? Better you get on your knees and thank me for the two thousand years I've labored, and struggled, to maintain your illusion of youth and vitality, while in truth you aged and shriveled, and wasted away. Now you see what you truly are-and have been all along. You blame me for that?”

”It's true? This is . . . me?” Hatiphas held one hideously clawed, contorted hand in front of his face.

”Then he was right! I argued with him, because I didn't want to believe him, but he was right. He was telling the truth.”

”Who is this that you're babbling about?” snarled Minho.

Hatiphas's rheumy, ancient eyes became evasive and cunning. His claw reached to his neck, and lifted a thong over his head. On the thin leather dangled . . . ”My egg!” Pierrette gasped. Her own hand crept to her pouch, squeezing it, and something shattered within it. Her hand came away wet and slippery with oil, and the reek of distilled flowers filled her nostrils. It was not a crystal serpent's egg that had shattered.

”This is who,” grated Hatiphas, as he swung the glowing serpent's egg by its thong and threw it against the stone wall. It shattered noisily, as if it had been much larger than it seemed, and made of brittle gla.s.s.

Minho's eyes strayed to the wall, where greasy black smoke now arose, shot through with an evil reddish light. Something even darker than the smoke loomed up, inflating like a pig's-bladder football, taking form-human form. Cunotar the Druid stepped forth. He wore the branching antlers and fur-covered deerskins of Cernunnos, the horned G.o.d, and he held his long, bloodied Gallic sword in his hand. His eyes met Pierrette's. ”Now it's up to you,” he said. ”Only you can free my soul to wander.” He clutched his side. Blood trickled between his fingers.

”Me? What must I do? What can I do?” Behind Cunotar, Pierrette saw something move-something dove-brown and white, with large ears. But it was only Gustave, who had followed her down the long, dark stairs.

”You've done enough!” spat Minho. ”Did you bringhim too? Who-and what-is he?”

”He is the druid Cunotar,” she said with a tremor in her voice.

Minho's eyes now filled with panicky brightness. ”Have you gone mad? Or were you sent here to destroy me? How did you know, to do that?”

”To do what?” Pierrette asked, feigning innocence.

”A sorcerer! You brought another sorcerer here! There can be but one of us. And that Christian cross!

Do you mean to destroy my spell?”

”Can I do that? What else must I do to bring that about? Tell me, and I will do it.”

His eyes gleamed with mad and angry light. ”Your G.o.ddess sent you, didn't she? But she failed to tell you everything you must know-that a foreign sorcerer alone is not enough.”

”She did not need to tell me. I kept the druid Cunotar entrapped in my jewel because I had no other way to confine him, and I dared not let him loose upon the world, or leave him where some innocent might accidentally free him from his prison. But I don't believe in coincidence: something greater than G.o.ds, G.o.ddesses, or sorcerer-kings made it inevitable that I would carry Cunotar here . . .”

”Something greater? I think not, because it is not enough. I will destroy him.”

Cunotar grinned broadly and raised his sword. ”Then let's have at it, king. I've blood enough in me to last a while.” His gaze fell on Pierrette. ”Now's the time, little masc. Do what you must.”

”I don't know what to do!” she cried out. Did everyone know but her?

”You had three things in your pouch, with your flints and coins,” said Cunotar. ”Three. I spent enough time in there with the other two.” ”Three things?” What was he talking about? Why wouldn't he say? Of course-he didn't want Minho to know, because . . . because he could still stop her? Then she knew what it was. There were three things Minho had forbidden: other sorcerers, anything Christian, and . . . and iron. She groped in her oily pouch among the shards of the broken vial, and felt the heaviness of her mother's ring. Now what was she to do with it?

Hatiphas had edged away from Cunotar, and now stood near Pierrette. ”Give it to me,” he whispered. ”I know what to do.” Could she trust him? His sense of betrayal by Minho seemed genuine enough. She had little choice. She un.o.btrusively slipped the ring into his clawed hand. He edged away, and toward . . . of course! The well. The entrance to a realm more ancient than this one, where beat the fiery heart of a deity Minho had not yet banished-a female deity, indeed, whose volcanic shrine this had been, long before the sorcerer-king had usurped it. Despite his crippled and hunched condition, Hatiphas made good time, and from the lip of the well he cast her a smile-in fact, an ugly grimace, marred by gaps between his eroded yellow teeth.

Minho had not seen the exchange, but he sensed something, and now lunged toward Hatiphas. The vizier's smile encompa.s.sed his erstwhile master now, and he held the ring over the well, tauntingly. Then, just as Minho would reach him, and knock him aside, he dropped the ring. Even over the sounds of the scuffle, Pierrette heard the clink and tinkle as it tumbled downward, bouncing off the hard, ancient lava of the well shaft.

Then several things happened all at once, and Pierrette had no clear image of any of them. Cunotar was coming for Minho, Hatiphas was scuttling away from him, and Gustave, panicked by all the sudden action, lashed out with his hooves, catching the king in the thigh. Minho staggered aside, and fell against the pedestal holding his water-sphere. The orb teetered, then fell sideways toward the floor. The entire cavern shook! Stone fell from the ceiling's darkness above with resounding crashes. The lamp flickered and went out, but a new glow illuminated everything: the fiery light of hot lava bubbling up from the well, and oozing over its edge. The cavern floor tilted, and Pierrette fell sideways, which had become down.

Scrolls poured from the shelves as the wall that held them became a ceiling. The enormous bronze axe, thelabrys , tumbled through the air. Minho s.n.a.t.c.hed it up.

”You!” he snarled, raising it high. Pierrette tried desperately to scramble away. ”You did this!”

A shadow interposed itself between her and the king: Cunotar. The druid warrior's sword caught the axe haft and hung there. ”Now let's fight, king!” he bellowed, laughing. ”Let's trade a few blows before my soul flees this body and the opportunity's lost. Who knows whether I'll be a warrior in my next life?”