hole in the ground, but Iardu’s weight fell horizontally instead of vertically. She leaned back on her heels and pulled his arms through into the Living World. His head came next.
“Good!” he panted. “Keep pulling, girl! Almost there!” She saw now the lacerations along his body, the dried blood. His iridescent robe was ripped in a dozen places. The marks of the death-vines lay across his flesh like black tattoos, or bruises. She pulled, and finally he fell through. They tumbled across the dais together, catching their breath. Then he stood and waved a hand before the mirror. The dark universe faded, and the opaque shimmer of obsidian replaced it once more.
She sprang up and wrapped her arms about him. “You’re alive!” she said stupidly. Her eyes welled with tears. “Thank the Gods…”
He hugged her fiercely. “Of course,” he said. He patted her back and pulled away. “He only hurled me into the Void of Vakai. Still, he might have kept me there forever if not for your assistance. He has some elemental connection to the place. I believe he has spent ages there, perhaps trapped as I was. This explains his mastery of the Vakai and his skill at drawing them into our world – to the extent that none at all are left in the void. It stands empty.”
She wiped her eyes. “Khama burned them away beforem away b he died. Yet there are more… I believe they are in Khyrei, serving Ianthe.”
As if waking from a dream, Iardu started and looked around curiously. “Where are we?” he asked.
“Elhathym’s throne room. The one he stole from Trimesqua.”
“Where is he?”
“Gone to slay D’zan,” she said. “He will return soon.”
“Does he know you are here?”
“He thinks me a helpless statue… keeps me as a toy.”
Iardu smiled. “Amazing! Thanks to you, Sharadza, we have regained the element of surprise.” His eyes darted across the carved runes circling the dais.
“What can we do?” she asked.
“Look… See these markings about the throne. This is Elhathym’s seat of power. His physical form is only a construct, a frame of congealed shadow to house his immortal essence. Here that essence must return to restore itself. This is why he can never be slain by physical means. He simply constructs a new body to wear like a suit of clothing.”
Iardu stared at the great throne now, peering at its golden arms, velvet-lined back, the jewels set along its surface. He reached a hand to pluck a single jewel from the burnished metal, like picking an olive. Then another stone, and a third. In his palm now lay three blue opals.
He breathed on the jewels and waved his free hand above them, and he sang in a low, tremulous voice. Two of the gems expanded, flowed like glistening water, and grew tall in his palm, until an opal decanter the size of a wine bottle stood there. He picked up the third opal and used it to cap the crystal flask. Now it was a sealed vessel and fine enough to carry the wine of a King.
“What is it?” she asked.
“A trap.”
He removed the opal cork and set the decanter beneath the throne, centered between its four golden legs.
Two quiet hours passed in the tomb-throne room, and Sharadza stood in her granite statue guise at the exact spot where Elhathym had left her. On her shoulder crawled a black ant that was Iardu, and he muttered precise instructions in her ear.
She felt Elhathym’s presence before she saw him. He did not enter the hall through the great doors, but manifested as an invisible presence on the velvet cushions of the throne. At first he was glimmer of emptiness in the gloom, then a man-shaped phantasm, translucent as a ghost. Over the course of several long seconds the substance of his body grew darker and more substantial. His ethereal face was an expression of bitter anger as it solidified. When his form reached the consistency of a dense smoke, it began to sink toward the floor, wafting between the legs of the throne toward the mouth of the opal decanter.
At first he did not notice this, so consuming was his rage. But then his half-solid hands grasped the arms of his seat as his legs became legs becolumns of black vapor streaming into the decanter.
Iardu leaped from her shoulder, and she took fleshly form again. As they raced toward the dais, Iardu waved a hand and the throne became a pebble of gold. It fell through the black vapor into the bottle with a tinkling sound. Now there was only Elhathym, his lower half streaming into the opal container. His arms flailed, his clawed hands grasped at the air, and he belched a deep moan like the grinding of monoliths.
Sharadza did as Iardu had told her. Standing on the right side of the dais, she stared between her fingers at Elhathym. Opposite her, on the left side of the throne, Iardu did the same. She poured every ounce of her willpower along her arms, into her fingers, and thrust it against the phantasmal sorcerer. Iardu’s will joined with her own as the Mer-Queen’s had earlier. It was like pushing against a wall of heavy stone that threatened to fall back and crush her beneath its inevitable weight.
Elhathym writhed and howled and struggled against the gravity of the opal decanter-prison that drew him inward. The lower half of his body was already trapped, nothing but black mist inside the bottle, but from waist to head he floated nearly solid. His arms reached now for his assailants. He roared and pounced like a tiger as his left claw wrapped around her throat, his right around Idaru’s. She almost fainted, so deadly cold was his touch… colder even than that void from which she had pulled Iardu.
She shivered and whimpered, but refused to lose her concentration. A trickle of blood ran from her nostril and crawled across her lips.
Iardu’s teeth were gritted above the strangling claw. “Ignore the pain,” he shouted. “Force him in! He is sorely weakened! We’ll not get another chance – force him in!”
Elhathym’s responded in the guttural howls of a beast. He slavered and ravenous sounds arose from his gaseous throat. His claws squeezed tighter about their necks. Sharadza could not breathe. A red haze clouded her vision… His talons sank into her flesh… She bled across his iron-hard fingers as the shadow-smoke of his torso swirled and drew toward the decanter mouth. The bottle shivered and rocked beneath him, drawing him into its tiny, self-contained void.
Now Elhathym laughed, and his substance reversed itself.
He began flowing out of the bottle-prison.
Sharadza wept, knowing Iardu’s ingenious trap was a failure.
Elhathym grew larger and more solid, and she felt her neck about to snap in his grip.
The chamber doors crashed open. A contingent of Yaskathan warriors marched into the dim hall, crimson cloaks billowing from their shoulders. The silver of their armor was tarnished with dried blood. At their head strode a fair-haired youth without a helmet. His black mail was purple with gore from chest to knees, and he hefted a greatsword in both hands. His skin was milk-pale and bloodless, his eyes rimmed in darkness, his mouth set with determination. The sigil of Yaskatha on his chest had been cloven in a recent battle.
He vaulted to the top of the dais and a gleam of sunlight burst from a mark on his forehead. A goldenead. A g flash rippled along his blade as he thrust it deep into Elhathym’s nearly solid breast. The sorcerer howled with fresh agony. Sharadza saw now that it was Prince D’zan who wielded the bright blade. Elhathym’s claw fell away from her throat. She sucked in stale air, coughing.
Elhathym flowed once more into the decanter now, his corporeal form lost completely. He was no more than a writhing black vapor… a fog of hate being drained from the world.
She breathed in deep gulps as she forced him down, down. Iardu laughed and squeezed his hands into fists. Elhathym gave a final screech of defiance, his hands grasping at the mouth of the bottle until they faded and were drawn inside. His shoulders and head flowed downward into the crystal prison, dripping like black blood from the blade that impaled him. D’zan raised his blade, staring at the decanter with unblinking eyes.
Iardu moved quickly, stuffing the opal cork into the top of the bottle.
“Sharadza!” he called.
Already she stood before the Glass of Eternity. She focused her will on it, ignoring the gashes on her throat, the chill of pain. The glass became a pool of utter darkness, as it had before. Iardu stepped up and hurled the sealed decanter toward the mirror. With a soundless ripple it passed into the empty dimension beyond. She watched it spinning there like a meteor of blue crystal. It grew smaller and smaller as it tumbled into that sea of
