registering so much at once. I felt oddly weak and found myself, for no clear reason, longing to be united with my Raven Sword. I felt that if only I could grasp the hilt, I would be able to draw strength from the black blade. But the sword was still in my chambers and I could not bear to leave the presence of that extraordinary vessel. The bowl, this Grail, grew larger. Everywhere the tall, conical hoods of the Off-Moo waved and nodded, as if this sight was unusual, even to them. Angular shadows were softened by the rounded rock over which they fell.
The Off-Moo's voices began a single low note which became a chant, a word, a mantra threatening to set the entire world vibrating. Light and dark were shaken together and mingled. The bowl then re-formed, rolling into itself until it was a golden, jeweled staff, rotating slowly in the air above the obsidian disk. The Off-Moo chant changed and the staff expanded, grew. Just for an instant it became the shape of a small child with a round, beatific face. Then the staff returned and slowly changed shape again until it was a single arrow. The sign of Law. Then it became a sheaf of arrows, fanning out and upwards above the glassy circle. Eight golden, jeweled arrows, spinning slowly overhead. Chaos.
The Off-Moo were concentrating on the field of glistening obsidian. Very quickly a three-dimensional picture began to form there. Riders seemed to be emerging from the rock and galloping towards us. The illusion was not unlike a very realistic cinema experience. But it was also a terrifying reality. Gaynor, in his bizarre armor, rode a great white stallion whose blind eyes stared upwards, yet whose footing was unconsciously sure. Behind him, also on pale, blind horses, still in their black and silver uniforms, came the majority of his SS followers, Klosterheim at their head. All were cloaked and armed with miscellaneous antique weaponry.
Behind these was as bizarre a collection of monsters and grotesques as ever came shuffling and hopping out of a picture by Bosch. Perhaps, after all, the painter had been drawing from experience rather than imagination? They were long-limbed, longheaded, with huge myopic eyes. They had snuffling, exaggerated snouts, showing that they used scent more than sight. These loose-limbed travesties were much larger than the men who rode ahead of them, like toy soldiers modeled to two different scales. They were clearly savages, armed with maces and axes. Archers were in their ranks, and swordsmen. A mob rather than a disciplined army. But there were thousands of them, 'Troogs, ' said Oona.
I could see why the Off-Moo had known they had little to fear from these denizens of the borderlands. The giants had neither the intelligence nor the ambition to attack Mu Ooria on their own accord.
One of the Off-Moo murmured something and Oona nodded. 'All the panthers have disappeared, ' she told me. 'They no longer control the troogs. We don't know if the cats are dead, charmed or have simply vanished.'
'How could they vanish?'
'The workings of a powerful spell.'
'Spell?' I was thoroughly skeptical. 'Spell, Fraulein? Are we so desperate we rely on sorcery?'
She showed some impatience with me. 'Call it what you like, Count von Bek, but that is the best description. They sense a Summoning. A being far more powerful than the kind which usually walks these caverns. Perhaps a Lord of the Higher Planes. Which means that Gaynor has somehow brought the Lords of the Balance out of their own realm and has given his allegiance. If they are able to bring all their power with them, they will be almost impossible to defeat. But some need the medium of a human creature like Gaynor and his army.'
'Those troogs are huge.'
'Only here, ' she said. 'In certain configurations of the branches, they are tiny. They're just the creatures who inhabit the borderland between Mu Ooria and the Grey Fees. They are not of the Higher Planes but exactly what you know them to be, creatures of the lower depths. They're Gaynor's cannon fodder. If Gaynor's sorcery is successful against us, they will do the routine slaughtering.'
'You seem to have experienced such an invasion before, ' I said.
'Oh, more than once, ' she said. 'This struggle is constant, believe me. You cannot imagine what is beginning to happen in your own world.'
Increasingly, I was feeling the need to have the Raven Sword at my side. While Oona continued to confer with the Off-Moo, I told them I would return soon.
I ran through serpentine streets, through the shifting light, finding my way as much by the muted colors as by the shape of the buildings, until I reached my quarters. I went to where I had left the sword. To my enormous relief it was still in the alcove near my bed. I unwrapped it, just to make sure it was my own beloved blade, and the dark, vibrating steel murmured to me in recognition.
Settling Ravenbrand in its makeshift scabbard, I left the room with it over my shoulder and once again made my way through the winding streets, recognizing how a shaft of silvery light fell here, how the shadows moved there, how the colors changed in a particular stretch of wall, what was contained in those weird gardens.
I crossed the central plaza again and was approaching the streets on the other side when I heard a mocking sound from behind me. Turning, I stared into the triumphant eyes of my cousin Gaynor. He was aiming an arrow directly at me. It hadn't occurred to me that he would have the audacity to follow us all the way into the heart of Mu Ooria. I was still not used to seeing two versions of the same person-one leading a hideous army against a great city and the other already in the city.
Gaynor had a happy cruelty about him. 'Surprised, I see, cousin. I have an alter ego taking care of one front, while I'm free to attack on another. Every general's greatest desire, eh?' He was salivating and his eyes kept moving towards the sword. He was fascinated-almost enraptured-by it.
Without thinking, I shifted my grip on the hilt and held it with the point down, against the counterweight of the pommel, so that it could come up rapidly, almost without any effort on my part, and send Gaynor's bow flying from his grasp. I only had to bring him in a little closer.
But he was wary. He stayed some distance off, the arrow still nocked against the string. He was clearly new to the art of archery but seemed to have mastered it well enough.
There was nothing else for it. I would have to close with him. I began to move, very gradually, talking as I attempted to shorten the distance between us. But Gaynor was grinning and shaking his head from side to side. 'Why on Earth would you think I had any reason to keep you alive now, cousin. You have what I need. All I have to do is kill you and take it from you.'
'You could have shot me in the back to do that, ' I said, just as he loosed an arrow which caught me high in my left arm. I was surprised that I felt no pain, then I realized my sturdy Norfolk jacket's tweed had taken the arrow. I was untouched. Before he could fit another shaft to his bowstring, I took a few swift steps towards him and held the sword's needle-sharp point to his throat. 'Drop your weapon, cousin, ' I demanded.
I felt a sharp pain in my side, looked down and saw the blade of a Nazi dagger pressed against my rib cage. Looking up I stared into the lifeless eyes of the gaunt Klosterheim.
'So, you also have a twin.' I shuddered.
'We are all the same, ' murmured Klosterheim. 'All of us. Millions of us.' He seemed feverish, abstracted. Even nervous.
We were now in a stalemate, with my blade at Gaynor's throat and Klosterheim's at my ribs.
'Lower your sword, sir, ' he said. 'And place it on the ground before you.' I laughed in his face. 'I'm sworn to die before I give up Ravenbrand.'
Gaynor was impatient. 'Your father, too, was sworn to die to protect your family's inheritance. And die he did, sir. Ulric. Dear cousin. Give me the Black Sword and I guarantee that you will be allowed to live on at Bek, with all your villagers, your castle and everything back the way you're used to. No one will bother you. Believe me, cousin, there are those of us, quite as idealistic as you, who are prepared to get their hands dirty in order to plant the seeds of paradise. If you choose to keep clean hands, that is your decision. But I do not make that choice. I'm ready to accept the necessity, to establish order throughout the multiverse. Do you understand?'
'I understand that you're mad, ' I said.
He laughed aloud at this. 'Mad? We're all that, cousin. The multiverse is mad. But we shall make it sane again. We shall make it whatever we wish it to be. Can't you feel yourself changing? It is the only way you'll survive. It's how I've survived. But no human brain can accept so much intellectual and sensory overload without radically adapting. Do you really believe you're the same person who so recently fled a concentration camp?'
He spoke the truth. I could never be the same man. Yet he was still trying to confuse me.
'Herr Klosterheim will have to kill me, ' I said, 'because I am not going to volunteer you my services or my sword.'
We had reached a rough-and-ready stalemate. I looked past Gaynor. Over his shoulder a familiar figure raced towards me across the smooth floor of the plaza. It wore ornate black armor, a complicated helm. Its red eyes
