The Dragon in the Sword (30 page)

“BALARIZAAF! LORD OF ALL! COME TO US!”

All around us there was a wind whistling. Lightning began to crackle upon the brink of the crater. Again the mountain trembled and we were almost thrown off our staircase to the causeway below.

The columns of scarlet light pounded as if they were living organs. An unholy yelling began to sound, far away, and I knew it came from the pillars.

“BALARIZAAF! AID US!”

The yelling became a scream, the scream turned into chilling laughter, and then, blazing with black and orange fire, his unstable features writhing, changing shape with every second, stood a creature no taller than a man but from whose lips there now escaped a deafening voice:
“IS IT YOU, LITTLE SHARADIM, WHO CALLS BALARIZAAF FROM PLAY? IS THE TIME COME? SHALL I LEAD YOU TO THE SWORD?”

“The time is almost here, Lord Balarizaaf. Soon we shall have conquered the entire Six Realms. This whole realm shall then become one. A realm of Chaos. And my reward shall be the Sword and the Sword shall give me—”

“Infinite power. The right to be one of the Sword Rulers themselves. A Lord of Chaos! For only you or the one called the Champion may wield that blade and live! What more must I repeat, little Sharadim?”

“No more, lord.”

“Good, because it is painful for me to stay in this realm until it is truly mine. The Sword shall make it truly mine. Come to me soon, little Sharadim!”

It seemed to me that Lord Balarizaaf gave poor guarantees. But so blinded by the prospect of unchecked power were these people that they were prepared to believe anything they were told.

Balarizaaf was suddenly gone.

Below us, Sharadim’s courtiers murmured amongst themselves. There was no doubt of their complete loyalty to her now. One or two were already on their knees.

Sharadim reached towards her cowled companion, beside her on his horse, and she pushed back his cape. She revealed a face which was all too familiar to me!

It was a grey face, a lifeless face, with eyes the colour of pewter staring directly ahead of it. It was my face. I was looking at my doppelgänger.

And even as I stared at it, its dead eyes met mine. They began slowly to fill with something approximating energy. The lips moved. A hollow voice said:

“He is here, mistress. What you promised me is here. Give him to me. Give me his soul. Give me his life…”

Alisaard was howling at me. Von Bek was tugging at me. They were pulling me with them down towards the causeway. At the far end of this, by the tiers of seats, heads were beginning to turn.

We dashed over the causeway, down smooth rocks, onto the crust of the volcano itself. And then we were running towards the pillars of blood.

“Flamadin!” I heard my pseudo-sister cry.

They were howling like jackals as they came in pursuit of us. Yet they were reluctant to approach too close to the gateway, for they knew it led directly into Hell.

The three of us reached the scarlet pillars and hesitated. Sharadim and her courtiers were still behind us. I saw the puppetlike motions of her creature. “Its life is mine, mistress!”

Von Bek was panting. “My God, Herr Daker. That is the nearest thing I have ever seen to a zombie. What is it?”

“My doppelgänger,” I said. “She has revived the corpse of Flamadin with the promise of a new soul!”

Then von Bek had dragged me back into the circle of the pillars and we stood looking down into the bubbling core of the volcano.

Slowly the crust seemed to widen, revealing pulsing, violent heat, a smell at once sweet and repellent. And then we were being drawn down into it. Drawn through the gates of Hell and into a realm whose supreme ruler was Lord Balarizaaf, the creature we had just seen.

I think we were all screaming by the time we were passing through the tunnel of flame. The descent seemed to last for ever as the yellow and red fires went past us in every direction.

Then I felt firm earth beneath my feet again. I was deeply relieved to see that it looked anything but abnormal. It was ordinary turf. It did not undulate. It did not burn. It did not threaten to swallow me. And it smelled like ordinary turf.

On the other side of the columns of light, which had now turned a kind of delicate pink, I made out blue sky, the weight of a forest, and I heard birdsong.

Together with my friends I walked slowly out of the columns and into a glade whose grassy mounds were covered in daisies and buttercups. The forest consisted primarily of large-boled oaks, all of them in their prime, and a little silver river ran through the glade, adding its music to that of the exotically plumaged birds which flew across a peaceful sky or came to perch on nearby branches.

We were like wondering children as we looked around us. Alisaard had begun to smile. I contented myself with breathing in the sweetness of the blossoms and the grass.

We seated ourselves beside the little river. We smiled at one another. This was an idyll from our most innocent dreams.

Von Bek was the first to speak. “Why!” he exclaimed in delight. “This is not Hell at all, my friends. This truly is the most perfect Paradise!”

But I was already suspicious. When I looked behind me the pillars of blood had gone. I saw instead a scene which was almost exactly the same as our own. I turned and retraced my steps, looking for the gateway. It had not been there long enough, I felt. My suspicion increased. There was something strange about the atmosphere of this place, something unnatural. Instinctively, I stretched out my hand. It struck a smooth, hard wall—a wall which mirrored this paradise but which did not reflect our images!

I called out to my friends. They were laughing and talking, engrossed in their own intimate obsessions. I was impatient with them. This was not the time for my allies to become mooning lovers, I thought.

“Lady Alisaard! Von Bek! Be wary!”

At last they looked up. “What is it, man?” Von Bek was irritated by my interruption.

“This place is not merely an illusion,” I said. “I suspect it is an illusion to hide something far less pleasant. Come and see.”

Reluctantly, hand in hand, they ran towards me over the soft Arcadian grass.

Now that I was close to the wall I thought I could see behind the illusion to the other side where dim shapes moved, hideous faces beseeched or threatened, misshapen hands stretched out towards us.

“There are the true denizens of this realm,” I said.

But my friends saw nothing.

“It is your own mind showing you what you fear is there,” said von Bek. “As much an illusion as the other. I will admit this place is an unlikely one and doubtless is artificial. Nonetheless, it is very pleasing. Surely Chaos is not all terror and ugliness?”

“By no means,” I agreed. “And that is part of its attraction. Chaos is capable of marvelous beauty of all kinds. But nothing in Chaos is ever just one thing. It is ambiguity. It is illusion disguising illusion. There is no true simplicity in Chaos, only the appearance of simplicity.” I drew the Actorios from my purse. I held it up so that its strange, dark rays struck out in all directions. “See?”

I directed the Actorios towards the reflecting wall and quite suddenly the illusion cleared, displaying what had lurked behind the barrier.

Von Bek and Alisaard both stepped back involuntarily, their eyes widening, their faces pale.

Creatures neither beast nor human shambled and slouched amongst filthy huts which seemed to be made of fused flint. Some of them pressed grotesque faces to the wall in attitudes of despairing melancholy. The others merely moved about the village, performing various tasks. Not one of them did not walk without a limp or drag a distorted limb.

“What are these people called?” murmured von Bek in horror. “They are like something from medieval paintings! Who are they, Herr Daker?”

“They were once human,” said Alisaard softly. “But in giving their loyalty to Chaos, they accepted the logic of Chaos. Chaos cannot bear constancy. It is changing all the time. And what you see is the change Chaos has wrought in humankind. That is what Sharadim offers the Six Realms. Oh, indeed, some of them may come to experience enormous power for a while. But in the end this is what they always become.”

“Poor devils!” murmured von Bek.

“Poor devils,” I said to him, “is an exact enough description of them…”

“Would they attack us, if the wall did not keep them back?” von Bek asked.

“Only if they thought we were weaker than themselves. These are not the warlike creatures Sharadim commands. These merely put themselves in servitude to Chaos because they thought it would benefit them somehow.”

Alisaard turned away. She drew a deep breath and then expelled it suddenly, as if she had realised the air were tainted.

“This was folly,” she said. “This was the greatest folly. We were told to seek out the centre and there find the sword. But we are in Chaos. Since nothing is constant, we have no way of knowing in which direction we must travel.”

Von Bek comforted her. I stood back, again having to force myself to take hold of my emotions. Jealousy had come flooding back again.

“We should count ourselves fortunate,” I told them, “that Archduke Balarizaaf is as yet unaware of our presence. We should press on. We should get as far from this gateway as possible. Into those woods.”

“But if Balarizaaf rules here, he will find us as soon as he decides to look,” said Alisaard.

I shook my head. “Not necessarily. He is virtually omnipotent here, but he is not omniscient. We have a small chance of reaching our goal before he seeks us out.”

“This is true optimism!” Von Bek slapped me on the back and laughed, his eyes avoiding the dimming vision of the village. Soon, as we moved away, the reflection had returned.

“I’ve a mind to be wary of those woods now,” said von Bek to me. “But I suppose we have no choice. It’s thick, eh? Like one of those old forests from German legend. I suppose if we’re lucky we’ll find a woodcutter who will direct us on our way and perhaps allow us three wishes, too.”

Alisaard smiled, her spirits rising. She linked arms with him. “You speak so strangely, Count von Bek. But there’s a kind of music to your nonsense which I like.”

For my part, I found his whimsy merely facile.

The oak wood had an atmosphere of permanence, as if it had stood here for a thousand years or more. In the cool, green shadows, we saw rabbits and squirrels and there was an air of tranquility about the place which was thoroughly enchanting. But even without recourse to my Actorios, I knew that it was bound to be something other than it seemed. That, after all, was one of the few rules in Chaos.

We had only gone a yard or two into the wood when we saw, standing behind a beam of dusty sunlight, a tall, armoured figure. It was clad entirely in metal of black and yellow.

At first I was relieved to see Sepiriz here. And then it came to me that this, too, might be an illusion. I stopped. My friends also came to a halt beside me.

“Is that you, Sir Knight in Black and Yellow?” I asked him, folding my hand over the Actorios. “How came you to Chaos? Or do you, too, serve Chaos now?”

The armoured man advanced into the light. His bright livery seemed to glow with its own radiance. He lifted his helm and I saw the impressive ebony features which could only belong to Sepiriz, the servant of the Balance. He was amused by my suspicion but not dismissive of it.

“You are right to question everything in this realm,” he said. He yawned and stretched himself in his metal. “Forgive me, I have been asleep. I slept while I awaited you. I am glad you found the entrance. I am glad you had the courage to come. But now you must call on even greater courage than before. Here in the Nightmare Realm you may find horrible torment or salvation for the Six Realms—and more! But Chaos has many weapons in her arsenal and not all of them are obvious. Even now Sharadim prepares her creature to accept your soul, Champion. Do you understand the implications of that?”

He could see that I did not.

He hesitated and then continued: “The corpse she has animated will be able to take the Dragon Sword—if it possesses your lifestuff, John Daker. Sharadim controls this quasi-Flamadin and so it will be her cat’s-paw. She risks far less than if she were to take hold of the sword herself.”

“Then she seeks to deceive her ally, Archduke Balarizaaf, who believes that she will handle the sword for him?”

“He cares not which of you eventually lays claim to the blade—so long as you use it for his purposes. He would therefore prefer you as an ally rather than as an enemy, Champion. That is worth remembering. And remember this, also—death is not what one must fear in the Nightmare Realm. Death as such hardly exists here, but to be immortal in this world is the worst fate of all! And you must also remember that you have allies here. A hare will lead you to a cup. The cup will show you the way to a horned horse. The horned horse will take you to a wall. And in the wall you will find the sword.”

“How can such allies exist in a world dominated by the tyranny of Chaos?” Lady Alisaard asked him.

Sepiriz looked down at her and his smile was gentle. “Even in Chaos there are some whose purity and integrity are so complete they are untouched by anything which surrounds them. It is in the very heart of Chaos that those most able to resist her often choose to dwell. This is a paradox enjoyed by the Lords of Chaos themselves. It is an irony which even the grave Lords of Law take pleasure in.”

“And is it because you possess this purity that you are able to come and go in the Nightmare Marches, Lord Sepiriz?” asked von Bek.

“You are right to question me, Count von Bek. No, my time in this realm is limited. If it were not, why I should doubtless seek the Dragon Sword myself!” He smiled again. “As an emissary of the Balance I am allowed more freedom of movement than most creatures. But it is by no means unchecked, that freedom. The time comes for me to leave. I would not attract Balarizaaf to you. Not yet.”

“Will Sharadim find a way of telling the Chaos Lord that we are in his domain?” I asked.

“She does not communicate with her ally at will,” Sepiriz said. “But she could choose to enter the Nightmare Marches herself. And then you would find yourselves in the greatest danger.”