“You cut him apart, just as Terrill did.” The awe in Inyx’s voice brought Lan around.
“I can do more than Terrill,” said Lan. “I can destroy him totally. Not even a fragment of flesh will remain if I utter one spell.” He touched the tip of the iron tongue within his mouth. This, too, would be rent apart, but it was a small price to pay for Claybore’s destruction.
“Do it,” urged Inyx. “It is all we’ve fought for.”
“No,” Lan said. “I destroyed his legs but I will not destroy the rest of him.”
“But why not?”
Lan smiled savagely. “Thank Krek for that. I have learned too well from him.”
“Doubtful,” muttered the spider, “but who can say what form your current delusion takes?”
“Each of Claybore’s parts retains awareness. Rudimentary, but it is there. He knows all that has happened to him and he feels the pain constantly.”
“For all eternity?” asked Inyx. “That’s awful.”
“That’s the punishment I decree for him. His parts are immortal and shall live minimal existence. Not a moment will go by when Claybore doesn’t realize the full impact of his defeat.”
“What’s to keep him from rejoining himself, like he did this time?” asked Ducasien.
“Terrill wasn’t efficient in the way he scattered the pieces. He allowed Claybore to grow in power as each new piece was attached. Seeing Claybore’s problems gave me the idea. Never again can one piece be attached to another. He will always be as you see him now.”
Lan Martak began the complex array of spells. For over an hour he conjured and chanted. One by one, the pieces of Claybore’s body vanished until only the battered, fractured skull remained.
“Claybore, you understand what I have done?”
“It will take millennia, Martak, but I will have my revenge!”
“It will be untold millennia and you will still be unable to do anything,” promised Lan.
Tiny red sparks sputtered deep in the eye sockets. Nothing else happened. Claybore’s power had been stolen away permanently.
Lan opened up the whiteness between worlds and cast Claybore’s skull into it.
“You defeated him without my aid,” said the Resident of the Pit. “I have created more than I guessed.”
“You created nothing,” snapped Lan. “I ought to leave you under the Pillar of Night. Not once did you tell me what you planned. You used me.”
“And I would have discarded you had the weapon proved unsatisfactory against Claybore,” the Resident finished. “I harbor no shame on that score. You know full well that horror of an eternity without power. Otherwise you would not have doomed Claybore in the fashion you did.
“Free me. Free me and give me death. That was your promise.”
“Lan, are you going to?” asked Inyx. “If the Resident has been so treacherous up till now, how can you trust him after you free him?”
Lan laughed. The Resident said, “Even though you are in rapport with him, you do not understand, do you? Lan Martak transcended all I had anticipated. He is a god, immortal and invulnerable. There is nothing I can do, even after being freed, to endanger him.”
“Immortal?” asked Krek. “That means…”
“I will outlive you and Inyx,” said Lan, his voice low. “I understand that. But I will also have the power of life and death.”
“You can grant a former god death. You will free me and then do what Claybore originally intended. You will destroy me. Only you can slay a god.”
The expression on Inyx’s face defied description. She shook her head and backed away from Lan.
“I don’t believe this. You… you can’t be immortal. Not really. And a god? I know you, Lan. You’re not a god. You’re not perfect.”
“Not even a god is perfect,” said Lan. “I am proof of that. My weaknesses remain under the veneer of power.”
“But it is awesome power,” said the Resident of the Pit. “Free me and give me surcease from my centuries of impotence.”
“I promise you that, Resident.”
Lan found the spells hidden in the dim recesses of his mind. Whether left by Terrill or Claybore or some other mage, he had no idea. They might even have been his own creation. Lan set the Pillar of Night spinning, faster and faster. The spikes atop it began to elongate.
He heard someone gasp when lightning bolts arced from each spike and split apart the heavens. Clouds formed above and pelted down rain in a torrential fury. Lan built the power required to a higher level, then to another and another. The ground shook beneath his feet and began to disintegrate.
“You will reign forever, Lan Martak,” cried the Resident of the Pit. “Your powers are infinitely greater than mine ever were. Free me. Free me!”
Wind of hurricane force whipped about them. In the distance came impenetrable black clouds trailing tornados. These magical storms ringed the Pillar of Night. The spells holding the Resident of the Pit began to yield to the onslaught of Lan’s power. Elementals of all forms whistled and whispered, sizzled and sprayed against the light-sucking blackness of the column.
“It comes,” moaned the Resident. “The pressure on me lightens.”
“Foul weather,” grumbled Krek. “Rain is matting my fur, and the lightning. I never liked it. Set my web afire once back in the Egrii Mountains.” The giant spider gusted a deep sigh. “How I miss my lovely Klawn.”
“Lan,” Inyx shouted over the gale-force winds whipping about them. “I can’t reach you anymore. What’s happening?”
“The core of the planet is rising beneath us,” said Lan. “You, Krek, and Ducasien must walk the Road. Do it now. Hurry.”
“We won’t leave you.”
“Nothing will harm me. I promise that. Now go.”
“But we don’t know where a cenotaph is.”
“There,” Lan Martak said, pointing. “There’s one I just created. Use it! Now!”
Winds pulled Inyx away from him. She tried to fight the gusts and failed. Driven into the cenotaph, she, Krek and Ducasien, holding a lifeless Brinke, stared at Lan. Alone he stood next to the ebony Pillar of Night.
But the color changed. No longer did the column retain all energy. It glowed internally and rose upward, ripping apart the sky with the rotating spikes.
The last thing Inyx saw before the cenotaph opened and carried them to another world was the orange fire inside the Pillar, a signal that Lan had cracked the planet’s crust and released the immense energies of a molten core.
The Pillar of Night ceased to exist and, along with it, the entire planet. Storms of magic raged until only dust spun through the cosmos. And then even this vanished.
EPILOGUE
Lan Martak walked along the paved street, hardly recognizing the buildings. The Dancing Serpent had been razed, some ten years earlier, one old-timer sitting rocked back in a chair had told him. Hardly anyone else remembered the place and even the old man didn’t remember Zarella. She had been just a bit before his time, or so he said. From the twinkle in his eye, though, Lan thought the old man remembered the stunning woman. Perhaps he had even visited her a time or two and was now reluctant to admit to such youthful indiscretions.
Lan looked at the new building gleaming in the sunlight. Some architect had gone wild with glass and gilt edging. The wood beams over the porch had been intricately carved and a sign dangled down proudly proclaiming two chirurgeons and a solicitor specializing in demonic law had offices inside.
“Outta my way, you blithering fool!” came the loud cry. Lan turned and looked down the street. Two drivers hunched over the steering sticks on their demon-powered cars. Huge puffs of white steam rose from one; the other’s smokestack spewed forth heavy, oily black. The two raced by, nearly running over a pedestrian who wasn’t
