“You have no regrets?”
[Can one regret one’s nature, one’s being? Can one regret the ineluctable mechanisms of existence?]
“I have no answer for you. I can only say that I regret ending the existence of any intelligent entity.”
[Why? Non-Being is implicit in Being itself.]
“Your equanimity comforts me, to some extent.”
[I am glad.]
“One thing, though. You knew you would lose in the end.”
[Of course.]
“Yet you persisted.”
[I grow weary. There must be an end, and I could not see one…. Why are you astonished?]
“It’s true, then. You are alone here.”
[Utterly. I cannot remember when I was not alone.]
“There were never others of your kind?”
[Unthinkable ages ago, perhaps. I do not remember.]
“But there must have been others.”
[So you say. As I have said, I know naught of this, and care less.]
“You speak of existence, yet you loathe it.”
[With every mote, with every granule of my being.]
“Why, then, did you not end your life?”
[With this hatred in me still burning? Impossible.]
There came something like a long sigh.
[Enough. I shall speak no more. Do what you must.]
“I need do nothing. Doom cracks even as we speak.”
[Then go.]
He averted his eyes from the thing in the pit, walked a few steps away, bent over, and vomited.
Not much came up. Swallowing bile, he walked off, wishing for a drink of water. But such a ware fetched a high price in the very pit of Hell.
The world shook as he searched for his sister. Demon carcasses littered his path, victims of the holocaust weapon’s first effects.
He found her in a laboratorylike room on one of the upper levels. What he saw staggered him, and the bile again rose in his throat.
There was no describing the monstrous device of which she was the central concern. Rods, probes, drills, blades — wicked implements of every sort bit deep into her flesh. Every accessible nerve point was tapped, every orifice violated. Little remained of her skin, and much of her body had been subject to hideous mutilations.
Her heart still beat, yet he could do nothing for her. Quickly he cast the only enchantment that would help.
Her eyes were open, for the lids were gone, torn away. But now she saw.
“Incarnadine,” she croaked, her swollen lips trying to smile. “Inky dearest.”
“Ferne. Are you still in pain?”
“No, Inky. It’s marvelous. I feel nothing now. I want to go home.”
“In a moment. Just say yes or no to my questions. You somehow got away from the guards who conducted you to your exile. You spelled them and fooled them into thinking that they had thrust you through a wild aspect. True?”
“Yes.”
“You cast about for a plan. In a moment of wildest desperation, you decided to throw in your lot with the Hosts.”
“Very bad mistake, Inky. I was … a fool.”
“Don’t talk,” he said. “Save your strength. Now, listen. You didn’t do what you did last time, unravel the spell that blocked their portal. Instead, you simply unhooked it temporarily and passed through. I don’t know how you did it, but you did it.”
She nodded.
“Again, you amaze me, sister. But then you were at the mercy of the Hosts. You tried bargaining with them, but they had the upper hand. They had you. You outlined a plan to attack the castle, taught them how to transfer power between universes. But there had to be someone on the other side to use that power. A confederate within the castle. An adept magician who could use that power selectively and wisely within castle walls.”
“Yes. J —” She struggled to utter the name. “Jamin.”
“And someone else. Something else. A warrior demon who had stayed in hiding when we chased the Hosts from the castle?”
“Yes.”
“I see. Insurance against Jamin’s possible double cross. So, the Hosts had a plan, and now the machinery for a covert operation. The plan was first to rid the castle of powerful magicians, starting with the more talented of the Guests. This tactic was high on the list, I imagine, because the Guests had proved such a thorn during the last round of hostilities.”
“Yes.”
“But there was one catch. Feeding power through the interdimensional barrier drained the Hosts of their reserves. They needed another source of power, and you knew of one. This was their way of persuading you to divulge it.”
“Yes, and I told them. I told them everything, Inky, all my tricks. But they didn’t stop, they didn’t stop….” She trailed off into a moan.
“Easy, easy.” He made motions again, then waited for her respiration to stabilize. “Are you all right now?”
“Yes, Inky.”
“Fine. You’re going to go to sleep in a moment. When you wake up, you’ll be home.”
“I’m dying, Inky. I know it.”
He was silent.
“Inky?”
“Yes, my dear?”
“Did you love me?”
“Of course, dear sister.”
“You know what I mean. We once kissed like lovers, and we weren’t exactly children. We were in our early teens. Do you remember it?”
He looked away.
“You do. You’re ashamed. You did love me, I always knew it. But we never made love. We should have. To hell with convention, Inky.”
“Ferne, my darling sister Ferne.”
“Don’t cry, Inky. I knew what I was doing. We all do what we must. We all have our —”
Sudden, violent convulsions racked her. Then the light in her eyes faded, and her chest heaved once and was still.
Extricating her body from the diabolical machine was a consummately grisly task. Parts of her came away with the blades, the screws, the drill bits; gobbets of flesh crumbled off. But at last she was free. He could not recognize the body of his sister, who had been the most beautiful woman he had known.
He materialized a casket to contain her remains, and conjured two pale figures — indistinct, squat, and homuncular — to bear her away.
They reached the roof, where the
The sky was no longer black. Streamers of pale green fire banded it, forming a circular storm system whose calm central eye was contracting rapidly as the chaos closed in. He stopped to regard this phenomenon as the pallbearers loaded the casket into the Umoi machine.
He heard a roar like thunder, turned, and watched pieces of the dark tower fall and crash to earth. The roof
