"We have to --" he began again, taking her head in his hands.
"I know," she muttered. "Do it now, Maxel!"
Serge and Doyle had sprung to their feet. They didn"t know the specifics of what was happening, but they reacted instinctively to Maximilian"s obvious fear and urgency by unsheathing their swords.
"Shetzah!" Doyle cried, turning in a tight circle.
They had walked far from that ring of disintegrating bodies around Hairekeep, but now, as Serge and Doyle watched in horror, those dismembered bits of bodies -- in a state of ghastly putrefaction -- began bursting from the earth all about them. The body parts writhed on the surface of the ground for several heartbeats then, to the guardsmen"s horror, the bodies began to rea.s.semble themselves.
Already the lower half of a man"s torso was staggering toward Maximilian"s camp, its arms, shoulders and chest scrabbling furiously after it before they caught up and the arms began hauling the chest and shoulders up their companion legs.
Behind it, thousands of bodies were, in fits and starts, sorting themselves out for an attack on Maximilian.
A black mist rose over the entire field of the rea.s.sembling dead.
The One"s power.
Doyle glanced at Ishbel and Maximilian.
They were standing close, holding each other"s heads in their hands and apparently unaware of the rising death about them.
Eleanon was sitting on a stool in the middle of the Lealfast camp, shaving his chin, when he felt the influence and power of the One surge into the land.
His hand halted, then dropped the razor as Eleanon rose, looking frantically about.
By the stars, what was happening! Was he under attack from the One?
All he could feel was death rising in a great tidal surge about him.
Eleanon began to panic.
They took a long moment to reorientate and concentrate, to shut out what was happening about them, to forget, as much as they were able, the sense that the One"s power roared toward them.
They had to forget, somehow, that they were within moments of death and concentrate only on each other.
"Do you feel?" Maximilian murmured.
"Yes," Ishbel whispered, and then they slid fingers of power into each other"s mind, and gently twisted.
"I don"t like these odds," Serge muttered, standing shoulder to shoulder with Doyle, facing the advancing horde of half-reconst.i.tuted bodies lurching toward them. They were within fifteen or sixteen paces and both men could hear the peculiar squelchy sound of the bodies" movements.
Very few of them had found their heads.
"You don"t say," Doyle said, squaring his legs as he adjusted his balance.
To one side, the rat scrambled over to where Ishbel had left the Book of the Soulenai, and tucked its front paws inside the front cover of the book.
The first of the bodies reached the campsite, and Serge and Doyle stepped forward, fighting with the skills of former a.s.sa.s.sins and current Emerald Guardsmen.
Their swords flashed in the firelight, slicing through bodies on both forward and backward swings.
Bodies, dismembered, fell to the ground and began once more to rea.s.semble themselves, their movements frantic.
More and more of the dead lurched into the camp, and Serge and Doyle began to sweat, then, horrifically, Doyle slipped in a pool of rotten blood and fell over, one shoulder and arm slamming into the fire and sending up a shower of sparks and flames.
Now, Maximilian said, and something simultaneously clicked in both of their minds.
Emptiness, where once had rested the knowledge to walk the paths to the Twisted Tower.
For the first time in thousands of years, there was no Persimius left alive who could remember the pathways to the Twisted Tower.
For the first time in thousands of years, there was no connection left between the Twisted Tower and this world.
All the bodies shambling toward the camp suddenly stopped, then fell apart.
Serge stared for one single heartbeat, then he spun around and helped Doyle roll away from the fire, and to beat back the flames that licked at his jerkin.
No! the One screamed as he realised what had just happened, what they had done. He still stood at the open doorway of the Twisted Tower, staring down the path.
But now, instead of looking at Maximilian and Ishbel"s camp, he looked into a featureless void.
No.
Untethered, the Twisted Tower gently spun away into eternity.
Eleanon had just been about to scream for the Lealfast to rise into the air and to escape, escape the One"s wrath, when he froze on the spot, his mind trying to grasp what had just happened. First, the One"s full power surging into this world from the Twisted Tower, raging at . . . someone.
Then, nothing. It stopped, like a gushing faucet dammed in an instant.
There was no sense of the One.
Eleanon"s mouth opened, then closed, his mind churning. How . . . what . . . had Maximilian somehow cut off the Twisted Tower? It was the only thing that made sense.
Eleanon stood there, all his senses scrying.
The One was gone.
Truly gone. Not relocated, not dismembered, not hiding.
Gone.
Completely.
But . . . and again his senses scried forth . . . Eleanon"s ability to touch Infinity had not been affected. It still throbbed through him, nowhere near the same power as that the One had commanded, but still there.
Coming through the Dark Spire.
There was no one to stop him now.
Exultation filled Eleanon, and he sprang into the air. He went up and up and up, high into the sky, almost vertically, his powerful wings driving him upward at an extraordinary speed.
Then, when he was a mere speck in the sky, Eleanon flipped over and plunged for the earth, wings left limp to stream behind him, rippling in the force of the downward plunge, feathers ripping out now and again, leaving a haze of soft white to drift down in the wake of his crazy plunge.
He pulled himself up just before he hit the ground, landing breathless before the Lealfast elder, Falayal.
"The One is gone!" Eleanon hissed, his face jubilant. "Nothing stands in our way now!"
Falayal gaped, trying to find something to say.
"But I can still feel the power of Infinity," he said finally.
"It is still here. We can still touch Infinity through the Dark Spire. Maximilian must have cut the One off. Ha! The Lord of Elcho Falling may have thought to have done himself a favour, but he has done us an even bigger act of kindness! The pathways to the power of Infinity remain open, yet the One himself has been isolated. Nothing can prevent us taking what we want now, Falayal."
Falayal looked at Eleanon, then finally, slowly, he smiled.
Maximilian and Ishbel let go of each other"s heads, then fell into a tight embrace.
"Thank the G.o.ds," Ishbel murmured, hugging her husband to her as hard as she dared.
He laughed, kissing her forehead and cheek and mouth. "What can stop us now?" he said. "It is home to Elcho Falling for you and me, my darling."
To one side, Doyle -- his garments a little singed -- and Serge sheathed their swords, grinning at the couple. Then Doyle looked to the left of Maximilian and Ishbel, and frowned.
"The rat and the Book of the Soulenai have vanished," he said.
The One could not believe it. He was utterly stunned in disbelief.
Tricked.
By something so simple a child should have thought of it.
He stood at the open doorway of the Twisted Tower, one hand resting on the doorframe, staring down what had once been a path but which was now black, empty nothingness. All the One"s rage had gone. Emptiness had replaced that, too.
Think. He had to think.
Maximilian and Ishbel had cut the ties from their world to the Twisted Tower. They had destroyed their knowledge of how to tread the path between their world and this tower, and thus cast it adrift.
Where was he? Where was he?
Anxiety now replacing his initial disbelief, the One looked about, sensing empty wilderness. Had his connection to Maximilian"s world been lost, too?
Nothing . . . there was nothing?
Now the One had to fight down panic. Surely there must be something . . . some connection remaining?
Nothing. He could sense nothing.
Suddenly the One moved. He took a single step back inside the Twisted Tower, slammed shut the door, and with huge, hungry strides raced up the stairs toward the top chamber.
Chapter 8.
The Central Outlands.
The Skraelings had not actually left the site where they had camped just outside Isaiah"s encampment.
They had just slewed slightly through reality. Just as they vanished from the sight of Isaiah and Axis and all who accompanied them, so also Isaiah and his companions and army vanished from the Skraelings" sight. The entire Isembaardian army could have marched through the Skraeling ma.s.s and felt nothing more than the brush of air against their legs, while the Skraelings themselves would not have been aware of them.
They had sequestered themselves from reality in order to debate their future.
The Skraelings were consumed by a welter of emotions. Foremost was anger -- aimed, initially, entirely at Isaiah. Isaiah had turned them from their enchanted, powerful form into these repulsive creatures who had no beauty and no dignity and no power. He had then forgotten them, leaving them to drift for aeons as creatures hated by all other races. Then, having suddenly remembered his oversight, Isaiah had returned to the Skraelings the power to choose their own destiny, the power to return to their form of River Angels, but only via the medium of water, of drowning.
That was, for the Skraelings, the ultimate cruelty. The ultimate spitefulness. Isaiah knew they hated and feared water. He knew it, yet he"d made it a precondition that they embrace this terror if they wanted once again to be River Angels.
And who really knew if this wasn"t simply some plan to just slaughter them? Tell them some fabulous tale about long lost mystery forms, convince them that all they had to do to regain this form and mystery was to drown themselves.
Maybe Axis had planned the entire thing.
This stank of the StarMan.
Probably backed up by Inardle. She was a Lealfast. She hated them as much as Axis did.
From their anger at Isaiah the Skraelings morphed seamlessly into hatred of Axis. He was the BattleAxe, the StarMan, he the one who had slaughtered so many of their cousins in Tencendor. He was their implacable enemy.
Why had they not killed him when they had the chance? When he sat among them? Why had they not also killed Isaiah and Inardle when they, too, sat among -- "Stop," Ozll said into the maelstrom of rising, black emotion. "Stop. Isn"t this what condemned us in the first instance? Isn"t this what we want to discard and leave forever behind us? Or is this what we want to remain, forever? Brothers and sisters, cousins and friends, look at us. Look at us. Then remember what Isaiah showed us. That was not a lie. It was memory. Truth. It was from whence our memories of Veldmr came. Stop. Think. We"ve allowed our emotions to overcome our intellect."
He paused, looking at the doubt in all the faces surrounding him. "Yes," Ozll said, "we do have intellect, and we could have pride in ourselves again. But we need to discuss this rationally and we need to come to a decision about what to do from a place of calmness. Not from a state of fear or anger or suspicion. Now, who will speak?"
The ma.s.s was quiet a long time. The Skraelings found it difficult to damp into quiescence their habitual suspicion and fear and anger. All three states were by now so natural to them it was difficult to let go of them.
Finally, a young female Skraeling by the name of Graq spoke. "What are we now?" she said. "Do we want to stay this way?"
That was rare straight speaking, and the Skraeling ma.s.s responded by moaning, their bodies weaving to and fro in distress.
"We are hateful," one among them hissed.
"Ugly," said another.
"Far uglier now than before," another said. "We grow uglier with each day. And more hateful."
"But don"t we like being ugly and hateful?" someone asked. "All run in fear of us. Don"t we like that? Don"t we feed from their terror?"