A Shadow of All Night Falling

NINETEEN: A March of a Domain of Shadows

"Varthlokkur?" Nepanthe reached for his hand. She peered dazedly about the room. Yo Hsi stood stiffly silent a dozen feet away. The chamber was quiet. Nothing moved but the symbols in Varthlokkur's device. "What happened?"

There was a sound. Yo Hsi turned. In the door stood a shadowy someone who might have been the easterner's twin. "Nu Li Hsi." The shadow was his twin. Long ago, they had murdered their father, Tuan Hoa, for his throne, and had brought the Dread Empire to its present schizophrenic state.

The newcomer bowed slightly. "You've slain them all?" Varthlokkur stirred, groggily sat up beside Nepanthe. He didn't say anything.

"As you can see," said Yo Hsi. "We still have a draw."

"Even my Ethrian?" Nu Li Hsi, who was called the

Dragon Prince, took a step into the room, peered about warily. "There's something strange here. Something not quite right."

"The Old Man must've closed the cage for me," Varthlokkur grunted.

"You probably sense that." Yo Hsi indicated Varthlokkur's Winterstorm construct. "It's something new."

"Ah. No doubt." Nu Li Hsi regarded the Winterstorm with an, obvious professional admiration. He stepped closer.

"He doesn't know." Varthlokkur crowed. "Yo Hsi just might lure him in."

Yo Hsi stiffened momentarily. Varthlokkur could almost read his thoughts. Could something organic pass from outside the cage in? He couldn't let Shinsan go to his brother by default. He struck an exaggeratedly relaxed pose.

And Nu Li Hsi entered the cage, pausing only momentarily to bat the air before his face, as if brushing off a gnat.

"And I prayed that I could trap just one of them," Varthlokkur said. His face became beatific. "Haifa world liberated in minutes." He snapped his fingers. "That simply."

The wizard was kidding himself. He knew better. The Princes Thaumaturge would be replaced. The Dread Empire would endure. Impatient heirs already awaited the intercession of Fate.

Mad laughter assaulted the air. "It's the end, brother. You're doomed." Less maniacally, "We're doomed. It agonized me to think that I had to leave the Empire in your filthy hands."

"What the hell are you raving about? I'd heard rumors that you were losing your mind."

"It's a trap. Our pupil has undone his teachers. We can't leave." He laughed crazily again. "He's turned the tables on us, dear brqther."

Frowning, Nu Li Hsi tried going to the Winterstorm.

Something barred his way.

Nervously, he retreated toward the door.

Again, something stopped him.

Panicking, Nu Li Hsi made a thunderous trial of the cage's walls. Without effect.

Like animals, the brother-princes hurtled at one another, each shrieking out half a millennium's frustration. They fought with sorcery, blades of bronze, hands, feet, and teeth. All to no conclusion. Each retained his unbreachable defenses, his superb reflexes and combat skills.

They might enjoy one another's company forever.

Varthlokkur rose, approached the trap.

"Don't get too close," Nepanthe warned. "They'd love it if they could get you in there with them."

"Don't worry. I'll look out. Though they couldn't hurt me now. They'd have to be able to see and touch me first. Look there." He pointed.

She looked. And screamed.

"That's us? We're dead?" Nepanthe and Varthlokkur corpses lay in bloody, tumbled, sweat-wet furs. "I don't want to die!" Hysteria effervesced from the edges of her voice.

Varthlokkur pulled her toward him, tried to comfort her. But he was frightened, too, and she sensed it. She wanted to run, run, run, as badly as she had on that next-to-last night on the Candareen. But from this there was no escape. The swordstroke had fallen already.

How had she come to this? What evil Fate?... She stared at her corpse, morbidly fascinated. Her death-wound was scarcely visible, tricking the tiniest line of scarlet across one breast.

"What happens now?" She wasn't religious, and had never truly believed that death was something that could happen to her.

"We wait. Don't worry. Everything will be all right." But his quavering voice betrayed his lack of confidence.

"You're all right after all?" The Old Man had risen, was coming toward them. He sounded puzzled. His ashen face was frozen in startled ecstasy. That expression quickly transmogrified into confusion.

"All right?" Nepanthe responded to her panic. Feeling foolish, yet unable to stop herself, she snapped, "Wonderful. For a corpse."

The Old Man retreated before her intensity.

"Calm down," Varthlokkur pleaded. "Varth..." At that moment, when most people would have needed someone to hold and comfort them, all she wanted was to be left alone. She tried to explain. "It's just the way I am. It's the same when I'm sick, or have a headache."

"Nepanthe, we've got to face this together." He couldn't say / need you. "Picture waiting alone."

"Waiting?" the Old Man asked. He was more perplexed than ever. "Waiting for what? What's happening?"

"You don't remember?" The wizard pointed. The Old Man turned. He stared at his corpse. His eyes widened as the truth gradually dawned.

"Son of a bitch. After so long." He went to his clay, carefully avoiding the cage, and stared into his own dead face. Gently, he touched his body's cheek, ran fingertips over its ecstatic smile. "She came lovingly... Those two... Who's the other one? Are they trapped? Alive?" "Yes. Both of the Dread Empire's tyrants, caged in one fell passage of the shuttle across the loom of the Fates." The Old Man's expression called the price too dear. But when he spoke, he said, "This may cause more rejoicing than your destruction of Ilkazar. Maybe there'll be a holiday in our memory." That he said sourly. Transitory facial expressions reflected the war going on within him, the struggle which had driven him both to seek immortality and to long for the peace of death.

Nepanthe started crying. Everything had happened too quickly, unexpectedly, shockingly, for her to understand. And she still bore her gigantic burden of guilt. She looked at Mocker, who hadn't yet stirred. There lay the father of her son. ..The child who, now, would never be born. How could she explain? How could she make him understand that she had tried to buy his life?

How could she obtain his forgiveness? That she had to have, or her shame would be unbearable.

Varthlokkur drew her to him again, offering comfort. This time she entered his arms, drawing support from his embrace.

"So. Even death does not end high treachery."

Nepanthe and Varthlokkur jerked apart. Mocker faced them, hands on hips, lips snarled back over clenched teeth. His dark face had grown darker with rage. He had arisen suddenly, had assessed his situation, and apparently had accepted his own destruction.

Nepanthe forgot her death-terror as shame, and fear of and for her husband engulfed her.

"What is trouble?" Mocker asked. "Would simpleton self, being noted fool, easily manipulated by adultress wife, harm single hair on head of same? Woe! Am stricken to depth of depthless cretinic soul by very thought."

His remarks only made Nepanthe feel all the more the harlot.

"Who did the killing?" Varthlokkur demanded. "It was a matter of destiny," he tried to explain.

Mocker wouldn't listen. Nepanthe suspected that, though intellectually aware, he hadn't yet made an emotional accommodation to the despair of his situation, that the full, absolute truth hadn't yet dawned on him.

Humming, an elderly man, bent as if by the burden of millennia, entered the room. He skirted the invisible cage deftly, deposited a heavy bundle atop the table.

An absolute silence descended upon the room.

The easterners watched him hungrily, their eyes burning with the passion of wolves' when catching sudden sight of unexpected, especially delicious prey. Both quickly babbled pleas for aid.

The elderly visitor squinted, chuckled, glanced at the four corpses, nodded to himself, returned to his bundle.

"The Star Rider," Varthlokkur murmured. He was awed and surprised. "Of all people, why did he turn up here?"

His question had occurred to everyone else. The easterners, having recognized the interloper, had fallen into a tense silence.

The Old Man muttered, "There is, after all, someone older and more cunning than I am." There was something in his tone that made Varthlokkur glance his way suspiciously.

The elderly gentleman spoke to his Horn. A flash blinded everyone watching. When sight returned, two tall, steely suits of baroque armor flanked the Star Rider. "His living statues," Varthlokkur said softly. There was a place of mystery east of the Mountains of M'Hand, near the Seydar Sea, called The Place of A Thousand Iron Statues. It was believed to have been created by the Star Rider as a place of refuge, a place where his secrets would remain inviolate. No sorcerer yet had been able to fathom the magic animating the living statues guarding The Place's secret heart.

"The bodies," said the Star Rider. "Lay them out here." He indicated the floor immediately before him. Working swiftly, the dark things moved the corpses. Then they moved back against a wall, becoming as motionless as dead metal.

"What's he doing?" Nepanthe asked. The Old Man and Mocker moved closer to her and Varthlokkur. They eyed one another warily.

"I think he's going to try to recall us," the Old Man replied. Hope had exploded into his voice. He eyed them uncertainly. "But why?"

Yo Hsi and Nu Li Hsi reached the same conclusion. "Forget the dead!" they demanded. "Take care of the living."

"Free us," Nu Lu Hsi concluded. The Star Rider mumured to his Horn, setting spells on each of the corpses before paying the slightest heed to the brothers. Finally, squinting, he faced them. "You know who I am? What I am? What you are to me? And you still want my help?" To his Horn, "They're greed and wickedness."

Greed and wickedness. Modern legend said that for twice the age of the Old Man this strange being had walked the earth, appearing randomly. No one knew the why of his name, nor his purpose, but it was certain that each of his appearances omened a startling shift in the course of history. Another of his names was Old Meddler. Who was he? Where had he sprung from? And why did he tamper?

The theory currently favored by the scholars of Hellin Daimiel was that he was a tool of Right, or Justice. The known historical indicators pointed that way.

He chose that role now, teasing the two dread easterners, whose crimes had been old when llkazar was young, into asking for justice. He taunted, questioned, played their fears, maneuvered them into making the plea.

"Justice?" he cackled gleefully. "Then justice I'll give you!"

His hand twitched. The suits of armor stepped forward. He tapped one, pointed. It strode into the trap, seized a startled Yo Hsi. In a workmanlike manner, despite the hideous defenses and sorceries at the Demon Prince's command, the living statue slowly strangled its victim. An unstirring Yo Hsi appeared on the level of reality in which Mocker, Nepanthe, Varthlokkur, and the Old Man already existed. He soon recovered from his death-shock and tried his prison again. Again he had no success.

Meanwhile, the metal thing turned on Nu Li Hsi. The Dragon Prince fled round the trap like a rat caught in a box with a terrier.

No escape did he find. Nor did his command of the Power avail him. The metal monster shrugged off his attacks, caught him, strangled him, contemptuously tossed him aside.

Nepanthe watched unhappily, but wasn't greatly distressed. All emotion paled in this shadowland palatinate to final death.

Flash.

The iron men were no more.

"It left the cage!" said Varthlokkur. "Nothing can do that."

"No? Something can," the Old Man countered. "Things without life. Things immune to sorcery." He eyed the Star Rider, wearing an expression suggesting that he and the interloper shared secrets.

The Star Rider looked back. "I'll have to hurry. There's not much time." He turned to his Horn, murmured.

Mysterious devices appeared. These he quickly attached to the corpses over the vital organs. In a rush, then, he summoned an object resembling a massive, ornate coffin.

"I see what he's up to," the Old Man said excitedly. "Nobody's done it in ages. Full resurrection. A lost art. Only he and I, today, could manage, and I never had the tools. It's the box that's important. Everything else is gimcrackery meant to preserve the vitals." H is excitement collapsed into gloom. "But he won't have time to revive all of us. Even he can't do much to slow brain deterioration."

"Quiet!" Mocker rumbled.

Nepanthe whirled. "Don't you talk..." Her rebuke died. The Old Man wasn't his target. He glared at the shades of the easterners. They had begun carping at one another again.

Her gaze traveled on, to her corpse, and she became aware of its nudity. "Cover me, please."

Varthlokkur, chuckling, said, "He can't hear you. Not that it would make any difference." He indicated her ghost-being, and those of the others. Each was mother-naked.

"But he looked at me. Or I could do it myself." She felt foolish, worrying about modesty now.

"A guess, facing our way. He knows we're here, but not where we are. Nor can you move material things. Best get used to being naked."

"Fitting," Mocker grumbled. "Shame of whore-wife made evident to all eyes."

"Be careful," Varthlokkur said angrily.

"Time," the Old Man interjected. "He's working too slow. He can't possibly save us all." A touch of hysteric hope rode his voice as he added, "He'll get me, though. He owes me. I saved his life once."

"Smug millenarian!" Mocker snapped. His situation had begun to disturb him at last.

His testiness, further upset Nepanthe. "It's silly for us to fight now. So stop."

"Silence, shame of imbecilic believer in anythings!" His self-righteousness was thick enough to cut.

Nepanthe's spirit, the fire her brothers had wanted quenched, flared. She advanced on Mocker like a stalking medusa. He retreated, retreated till, suddenly, he found himself cornered.

Forcing his attention, with a white-hot intensity, she told him everything that had occurred during their separation. "Listen!" she snarled, whenever he tried to interrupt, and, "Look at me!" when his gaze wandered. She finished with, "And that's the absolute truth."

He remained dubious, but found himself inclined to withdraw judgment. "Time will demonstrate verity of same. Or no." Then, startling her with a sudden change of tack, "Is sorcerer truly father of self?"

"He seems convinced."

"Truth told, wife of self is with child? Child of self?"

"Yes. Your baby." She turned to watch the Star Rider, as much to mask her emotions as to watch him struggle to hoist a corpse into his life-giving coffin.

She suffered a surge of panic. What about the baby?

She had to live. So the child could be saved. She rushed round the cage so she could see who had been chosen.

Varthlokkur.

For a moment she hated him with a depth that astounded the rational part of her. She should go first. For the child's sake.

Her own mind mocked her. She wasn't worried about the baby. She just didn't want to die.

Varthlokkur's body flopped into the coffin. The Star Rider slammed its lid, growled at his Horn. As always, he did so in a language nobody understood. The Horn whistled. The coffin began humming.

Nepanthe ran at the Star Rider, shrieked, "Me first, you idiot! Me!" She pounded at him with the heels of her fists. He waved a hand before his face as if to brush away spiderwebs.

Mocker laughed. "More cosmic justice. Wicked woman forgotten. Likewise, self-important old geezer. Am much pleased. Am ecstatical, Star Rider."

"Shut up!" Nepanthe screamed. "Somebody make him shut up. Our son..."

"But is hilarious, Dear Heart, Diamond Eyes. On Candareen, after big wedding, new wife promised to follow fog-headed husband to gates of Hell. Might do same now, maybeso."

Even before he finished he was sorry that vindictive-ness had mastered his tongue again. He realized, intellectually, that his fear was taking creeping control of his emotions, his responses.

He couldn't push it back.

Varthlokkur wandered dazedly. His body was calling him back. Struggling to keep control, he paused by Nepanthe long enough to whisper, "Remember your promises once we've been returned to life."

Nepanthe nodded. How much pain would loving two men bring? Boundless, she feared.

It had seemed so elementary before Mocker's arrival.

Varthlokkur rambled toward the coffin, and there mumbled a childhood prayer.

The Star Rider was a slow old man no longer. He knelt among the corpses, swiftly manipulating the devices meant to preserve.

Mocker, yielding to his fear completely, harassed Varthlokkur mercilessly. "Old Devil, Death of llkazar, show decency for once. Do right instead of evil..."

The Old Man, too, succumbed to emotion, though he directed his bitterness at the Star Rider. "Ingrate," he said softly. "Have you forgotten Nawami? Who kept you from the tortures of the Odite?"

This Shadowland, Nepanthe reflected, though cooling the gentler emotions, certainly nurtured selfishness. Being dead, with time to anticipate a deeper death ahead, unleashed the black hounds of the soul.

A sudden thought startled Nepanthe. Maybe this was a trial period and otie's behavior during the waiting determined a final reward.

She was redeemed from terrifying speculations by a sudden stillness.

Varthlokkur had vanished.

The Star Rider opened the coffin.

The wizard was breathing shallowly. A rosiness had returned to his skin, which twitched and jerked. No blood leaked from his wound.

The Star Rider spoke, using a spell of healing which the Old Man recognized. Then he packed the area of damage with a malodorous unguent and applied bandages.

Nepanthe warily studied her companions-in-shadow from beside the coffin. Identical thoughts haunted their minds.

Who would be next?

The way the Old Man talked, one of them wouldn't make it. Maybe two. The next selected could well be the last to return with a whole mind.

Briefly, Nepanthe hated both men for infringing on her chances. Then she concluded that she would have to be chosen next. Even the Star Rider couldn't be so unchivalrous as to ignore a woman's plight. Could he?

"I saved his life, you know," the Old Man said again. "We were partners. During the Nawami Crusade. The Director slipped up. Nahaman, the Odite, became suspicious..." He shut up, realizing at last that he needed to keep some things behind his teeth even here.

Nepanthe and Mocker exchanged blank glances.

They could be pardoned. Even the wisest of the historians at Hellin Daimiel's Rebsamen University were ignorant of the Nawami Crusades. Those had taken place long ago and far away, and had been so bitter that almost no one had survived to pass along their tale.

"Shut up!" Nepanthe snarled in sudden hatred. She was afraid he was telling the truth, that he did have some extraordinary claim on the Star Rider's mercy. "Do your bragging after he puts me in. I won't have to listen to it then."

Mocker remained unnaturally quiet, his lips forming soundless words. Nepanthe laughed a laugh attared with wormwood. The man who believed in nothing, who mocked everything, who was so soaked in cynicism that he reeked of it, was appealing to false gods.

Where had he learned to pray?

The Star Rider dragged Varthlokkur from the coffin, stretched him out for continued care. Already the wizard appeared healthier.

Nepanthe's potential savior bent over her corpse. She shriek-laughed victoriously.

But he merely moved a leg so he could get to Mocker.

Nepanthe shrieked again, though with less feeling. Resignation began to creep up on her.

The Old Man cursed. "You devil! You ungrateful fiend! I hope they roast your black soul..."

The easterners laughed. Having lost interest in bedeviling one another, they had begun baiting their captors.

"Murderer!" Nepanthe snarled, whirling on her husband. "Me. The child. Our blood's on your soul. Unless you make him stop." She started stalking him again, insane in her fear/ rage.

The Old Man, stricken by his betrayal, plopped into a chair. He retreated into his memories, which were far clearer now than while he had been alive.

The Director had brought him here, and had used him pitilessly throughout the ages. He was being used mercilessly now. The man would know no remorse at his loss. He was just another tool in the shaper's hands, caught in a situation where a choice of tools to be salvaged had to be made.

What epic of doom was he shaping now, that Varthlokkur and a fat criminal would be more valuable than he?

The Star Rider was an enigma even to he who knew him best, who knew how he had been condemned to this world and why, and with what mission. The man's plans were shadowed mysteries, though of one thing the Old Man was sure. This night's events had been engineered very carefully, perhaps beginning at some point decades in the past.

And the Old Man had a suspicion, growing toward conviction with the ages, that the Star Rider was, subtly, trying to evade the sentence imposed upon him. The desolation of Nawami, of Ilkazar... Neither had been needful. They were irrational excesses-unless they were part of some impenetrable plan.

Nepanthe stalked. Mocker retreated completely round the room before she reached the point where she could no longer sustain her anger. It soon faded into a diluted terror. He then took her into his arms and whispered the same comforting nothings and little jokes that had revived her spirit during bin Yousif's raid on Iwa Skolovda. In the minutes that followed they made their peace, revived their love, forgave one another.

After a misty-voiced, "Doe's Eyes, Dove's Breast, will be better after second birth. Promise," he faded from her company.

The Star Rider worked over the remaining corpses, his hands darting feverishly. Occasionally he made a quick check on Varthlokkur. The Old Man sat in silence, remembering, waiting. The easterners turned on one another again, but with flagging devotion.

Nepanthe's feelings grew ever more pallid. She had little desire to do anything but wait. She seated herself beside the Old Man, took his hand.

The whistle and hum of the coffin stopped. The Old Man's grasp tightened. "He can manage one more. For sure." He said it with little force. He, as did she, wanted to live, but was drifting farther and farther from the shores of life. Before long, Nepanthe suspected, she wouldn't care at all, might not heed the call to resurrection.

Which one?, she wondered as the Star Rider tumbled Mocker onto the floor. Hope flared, but couldn't ignite any will to survive. She turned to the Old Man. He had closed his eyes. Maybe it should be better that way, not knowing... Squeezing his hand, she closed her eyes too.

The waiting went on forever.

A feeling of presence came toward the tower, lightly, as if some dread dark hunter of souls were snuffling an uncertain track.

Time awakened. Its plodding pace rapidly turned into a headlong plunge toward Hell. Faintly, Nepanthe heard the terror of the easterners. Maybe it wasn't imagination. Maybe something was coming...

She was fading. She could sense it. Her grasp on the fabric of her existence was weakening, weakening...

A pity that her son would never live...

Blackness.

Happiness, because she was no longer afraid.