'But you used calculation.' Milligan suddenly shook off his restraint. 'It is not right. Not by such a means should you become the archon.'
'The most trusted advisor is a position coveted by many.' Jelilac frowned in Milligan's direction. 'Do not protest too much, or I will have to select another.' He motioned to the retainers that remained, directing them to fan out and receive the spoils of their victory.
Astron saw Myra slump into a heap. She squinted at the spinner, resting clearly in the region that Camonel had predicted, and shook her head. 'Nine chances out often,' she muttered. 'It was worth the chance.' She glanced at Jelilac's smile and then turned away. 'I will offer no resistance to the removal of my charms,' she said, suddenly sounding far more ancient than she looked. 'Remember, I am but an old woman.' She waved her arm back to the central barricade. 'Come, my followers, come. Do not resist. It would be ungracious to prolong my harm.'
Astron saw Kestrel and Phoebe join the procession winding its way across the casino floor to Jelilac's canvas frame. The demon looked quickly at Byron, but the warrior had not yet lifted up his sword. Moving the pollen closer to the fire could only help, but it was not yet time to act.
'No! I cannot let it happen.' Milligan suddenly sprang away from the rest. He drew a short dagger from his belt and waved it over his head. 'It is luck that shall triumph in the end; it must be the stronger. It must. It must.'
Jelilac's frown deepened. He motioned to two of his retainers, and they drew their swords. Cautiously, they began to close in on Milligan from both sides.
A great roar of approval suddenly ripped through the stands as Milligan deftly dogged the attack. He drew his own blade and slashed at one as he passed, streaking the tunic sleeve with red. Ducking his head, he just barely missed a tumbling grenade which exploded harmlessly behind.
Short strokes of the dagger somehow darted through hastily erected guards, and two more of Jelilac's followers sagged to the ground. Jelilac's eyes widened. He quickly stepped backward and looked at the massive djinn standing by the motionless spinner.
'Help me!' he cried as he clutched at his chest. 'My talismans are many, but now that I have experienced the power of your master's predictions and been close to the flame, I no longer feel so confident that they-'
Jelilac's voice trailed off. He looked in disbelief down at his stomach and then clutched his hands over a gaping wound. His face turned ashen white. With eyes staring into nothingness, he slid to the ground.
For a moment, Milligan stood silent, staring at what he had done. Then, as the realization dawned, like the doll of a thaumaturge, he jerked back into life.
'I am the victor, the archon.' He danced back with his bloody blade. 'As our creators must have intended-luck favors the believer.'
The roar of the crowd intensified. Some started leaping up and down, shaking the tiers in violent oscillations. Milligan smiled and waved his dagger over his head with one hand while fondling the talismans about his neck with the other.
'No.' Camonel's impassive expression suddenly distorted into one of malice. His voice was heard even above the chanting spectators. 'Luck is not to be the victor. My master does not wish it so.' With a speed surprising for his size, the djinn batted at Jelilac's framework, tumbling it aside. He reached backward and extracted a burning branch of pinewood from the still smouldering fire.
'I am a weaver of matter,' he growled as he waved it menacingly in front of Milligan's face. 'Here, in a realm other than my own, it is easy.' Deep furrows etched into the djinn's forehead. He studied the dance of flame for a moment, and then the log seemed to burst asunder. Five globes of what looked like white-hot magma arched from his hand and landed in a pentagon around where Milligan stood.
'My master has calculated, and five will be enough,' the djinn boomed out so that everyone could hear. 'The heat is intense, and eventually each and every charm he carries about his neck will crack. The one you call Milligan will succumb to calculation, just as have all the rest.'
Camonel tossed back his head and laughed. 'Let the fogs of nothingness come forward,' he yelled. 'Let them come forward and dissolve all that there is. Then there will be one less. Where once there was a realm, there will be only the nothingness of the void.' He stepped back suddenly into the flame. The fire roared with a burst of yellow brightness. Then he was gone.
The yells of aleators in the stands stopped just as suddenly as they had begun. The low murmur of unrest and disbelief from before instantly returned. Like a pendulum gathering energy with each swing, their emotions rocked back and forth, each time more violently than before.
Milligan tried to dance between two of the glowing globes of fire on the ground, but backed up and hesitated when the outermost of his talismans began to blister. Astron saw beads of sweat pop out on his forehead above eyes starting to fill with helpless panic. He bent forward and blew tentatively on the fiercely glowing globes of light, then shook his head when he saw that they were perturbed not at all. He raised his hands expectantly, as if calling for the intervention of unseen gods. For a long moment, he did not move. Then, in an almost perfect imitation of Myra, he slumped into the center of the pentagon that surrounded him. One by one he began removing his talismans and tossing them at the flames.
'Then the newcomer,' Astron heard someone in the stands nearby shout. 'The one on the sidelines yet to be heard. He is the chance, the final chance that luck will triumph after all.'
Somehow the spectators all heard and understood. Again they stopped their keening. As one, they held their breaths.
'Luck has nothing to do with my presence here,' Byron called back. 'It is the decree of preordained fate. I carry no talismans, and I do not need their aid in my fight.'
Shrieks of despair exploded from the crowd. Their emotions swung back to despair far deeper than before. Whole blocks of spectators suddenly rose from where they sat. With eyes suddenly brimming with tears, they began to embrace those next to them with heart-wracking sobs. Astron felt the ground tremble as it had done in the realm of the reticulates and felt the caress of a chilling wind across his cheek. It was as if a dam had finally broken. There was no hope left that would stem the outrushing tide.
'It is just as I was foretold such a long time ago,' Centuron called out behind Astron in flushed excitement. 'And by the fates, Byron is not even needed. The self-doubt has started even before he appeared. I have survived long enough, long enough to see it happen. Even if he does not triumph, the end will be the same.'
The keening of the crowd rose to an ear-piercing crescendo. Moans of anguish became more frequent, and loud sobbing mingled with the rest. Astron wrinkled his nose. The ground under his feet definitely felt less firm than when he had first entered. The pillars and arches that held aloft the roof of the casino were somehow less distinct than before. Only a deep black painted the high window where the sun had been.
A growing uneasiness coursed up Astron's legs and into his chest. The phenomena were intereseting, but he could not force himself to consider dispassionately exactly what was taking place. He felt his stembrain writhe within the confines of his control with far greater power, straining to be free. He looked about the casino floor. All of the aleators there had fallen to their knees. With eyes focusing on nothing, they rocked back and forth and keened with the rest. Only Kestrel and Phoebe were still alert, looking apprehensively all about. Astron had waited long enough. Now was the time.
Astron looked at the beckoning anvilwood and then turned back to Centuron. 'The mines of which you spoke as we entered,' he said. 'What is their danger? Quickly, I must know.'
Centuron squinted at Astron and then threw back his head. The laughter tumbled from his lips in gasping wheezes. For several moments, he shook in spasms, unable to regain control. Astron clenched his fist in frustration, eyeing again the distance to the anvilwood, Camonel's smouldering fire, and Kestrel and the pollen, unable to decide which was to be the first objective.
'Byron and the others.' Centuron ignored the question when he finally could speak. 'They are all one and the same, driving down the one path to mutual destruction. Each in his own way has surrendered his free will to the ether and has given up any stake in determining events by his own volition. And with each such submission, on a level far below their conscious thought, the self-doubt has increased and the reason for existence has become less firm. We indeed are the mere puppets of some other creator, a bubble of life breathed into being by gods that have walked away.'
'Demon,' Nimbia said suddenly. 'I do not like what I see. The fey can create realms out of their thoughts, but that is not what sustains them, once they are born. Only so long as the occupants believe in their own existence does what they inhabit continue to resist the pressures that push against them from the outside. All the aleators here-look at them. They slump and-'
