The Gedemondan read their apprehension. “No. Just three. They appear to be to our right. It is very odd. They seem to be inside the solid rock wall, coming toward us fairly fast.”
Mavra’s head jerked up. “It’s the Dahbi!” she warned. “They can do that.”
“That’s twice I’ve underestimated that bastard,” Brazil grumbled. “While Serge’s people hold his army, Sangh goes around them in a way only he can. The force at the pass told him what he needed to know— we were here and on our way. At least he can’t take any weapons on that route.”
“He doesn’t need them,” she shot back. “Those forelegs are like swords and the mandibles are like a vise. And we don’t have any weapons, either.” She looked around. “Or anywhere to go.”
“Except in,” he sighed. “But we can’t count on that.”
The Gedemondan turned and stared at a rock wall not fifteen meters from where they stood. Slowly there was a brightening of the rock in three places. They watched in horrified fascination as three ghostly creatures oozed out of the solid rock, seemed to solidfy, and stood there, a huge one in front, two slightly smaller in back, like ghastly sheets with two black ovals cut in them for eyes.
Brazil stared at them, fascinated. So those are Dahbi, he thought to himself. He remembered them now, vaguely. More legends and ancestral memory. And the big one in the middle had to be—
“Nathan Brazil, I am Gunit Sangh,” said the leader. “I have come to take you back.”
Brazil started to move forward to make connection with the Gedemondan so he could reply, but the Gedemondan ignored him and walked to only a few meters from the Dahbi leader.
“You’ve lost, Sangh,” said the Gedemondan in almost perfect imitation of Brazil’s accent and mannerisms. “Even if we went back with you now, our own forces are behind yours at the pass.
“I won’t have to,” Sangh replied confidently. “We shall go back with you as hostage and we shall walk right through that pass to my own forces, which, by that time, will have it secured. Then
Both Mavra’s and Brazil’s heads came up at this. They had still been holding the pass!
“I stand here in front of the Well,” the Gedemondan responded threateningly. “You know the rules, Sangh. I cannot be killed, and I do not wish to be taken.”
“I weary of this,” Gunit Sangh sighed irritably. “Take him!”
The two smaller Daahbi unfolded, showing their full, grim insectival forms. The effect was startling, particularly on Brazil, who had never seen it before.
The two moved on the Gedemondan, who stood firmly facing them. Sticky forelegs dripping some gruesome liquid reached out for the great white creature, and all along the legs flashed the natural sabers of the Dahbi. The foreleg of the one to the Gedemondan’s left touched the creature, who reached over and grabbed it, unexpectedly, in his left hand. There was a brilliant flash of blue-white fire that seemed to envelop the Dahbi, a supernova that flared into momentary monumental brightness, then was gone.
Taking advantage of the stunned shock of the other, the Gedemondan already was turning, his right hand reaching out and taking hold of the other’s foreleg before it could withdraw. Again the flare, again, when it suddenly faded, there was no sign of the Dahbi.
Gunit Sangh hadn’t lived this long or gotten this far without guts and quick thinking. In a display of courage that rivaled his ferocity, his own foreleg lashed out and took the Gedemondan’s head off with one swing.
The headless body spouted blood from the severed neck, which dyed the beautiful white fur, and it lurched forward as if with a will of its own as Sangh, moving with a speed that seemed impossible, retreated back out of the way of the decapitated thing.
The Gedemondan’s arms reached out and it took one or two steps forward, then shuddered and toppled to the ground, where it twitched for a few moments, then lay still. Abruptly the stored energy in the body flared up, another brilliant nova, and then it was over. There was nothing left, nothing but the blood and the severed head, staring glassily from the Avenue floor.
Gunit Sangh was shaken, obviously, and a number of different ideas came rapidly through his mind at one and the same time. It was Brazil, but it was now dead, and Brazil couldn’t die so it couldn’t have been Brazil but if it wasn’t, then who
He looked again at the Equatorial Barrier. Just two of the flying horses like the Agitar flew. What…? And why two?
It struck him almost like a physical blow. Mavra Chang’s catatonia, Brazil’s comatose body, all the powers and magicians’ tricks they had pulled.
And then Gunit Sangh laughed, laughed so loud it echoed up and down the canyon. Finally, he looked at the two flying horses and said, “Well, well. The
Behind the two of them a light clicked on.
Sangh saw it and roared with sudden rage. He moved on them, and, almost reflexively, they edged back into the Equatorial Barrier; edged into it and passed through it, inside the Well of Souls before they even realized what happened.
“Not yet!” screamed Gunit Sangh. “Oh, no! Not yet!” and he started for the still-lighted barrier.
Suddenly there was the sound of hoofprints, like a horse charging up the canyon towards the Barrier. Sangh, started, stopped momentarily and turned his massive head to see what it was. He froze.
Glowing slightly like some ghostly, supernatural thing, a Dillian was bearing down on him, a Dillian holding a large, ornate sword in his right hand.
Sangh lashed out with his deadly forelegs but the sword penetrated, slicing through the giant Dahbi like a knife through butter. Sangh screamed in pain and fell, where it started to change, grow more opaque, as it sought its only natural avenue of escape.
The huge centaur laughed horribly, waved its sword, and instead of the weapon there was now a bucket in his hand, a bucket that sloshed with liquid. Sangh’s head went up and he screamed, “No!” and then the contents were poured onto the Dahbi, half-sinking in the rock. Where the water struck, the form solidified once more into the brilliant off-white, and the Dahbi leader gave a choking gasp and fell victim to a vicious kick from the forelegs of the centaur that literally severed the Dahbi’s body in two at the point where it was half in the rock, half out. It quivered a moment, then went still.
Without a pause, the centaur laughed in triumph and threw the bucket against the far wall, where it hit with a clanging sound, then dropped to the floor of the Avenue. With that, the apparition whirled and galloped back off down the chasm, back into the darkness, and was quickly gone.
Inside the Equatorial Barrier, Mavra stared back at the scene she had just witnessed.
“Speak now, if you wish,” came Brazil’s voice behind her, definitely his yet somehow oddly changed and magnified. “I can hear your directed thoughts.”
“That—that was Asam!” she breathed. “But he’s dead! He was killed in the battle… They said…” She turned to face Brazil and stopped, gazing in horrid fascination. Brazil was no longer there.
In his place was a great, pulpy mass two and a half meters tall, looking like nothing so much as a great human heart palpitating with almost hypnotic regularity, a combination of blotched pink-and-purple tissue, with countless veins and arteries visible throughout its barren skin both reddish and blue in color. At the irregular top was a ring of cilia, colored an off-white, waving about—thousands of them, like tiny snakes, each about fifty centimeters long. From the midsection of the pulpy, undulating mass came six evenly spaced tentacles, each broad and powerful-looking, covered with thousands of tiny suckers. The tentacles were a sickly blue, the suckers a grainy yellow in color. An ichor seemed to ooze from pores in the central mass, thick and foul-smelling, which did not drip but, rather, formed an irregular filmy coating over the whole body with the excess reabsorbed by the skin.
“No, it wasn’t Asam,” Nathan Brazil told her, his voice seeming to emanate from somewhere inside that terrible shape. “It was simply justice. The Borgo Pass has held, and that freed an old friend of ours to look in on us from time to time.”
