The Dragon in the Sword (37 page)

Sharadim glared and urged her horse on. Von Bek smiled at Alisaard. Plainly she had struck a good blow. He said nothing, merely ignoring the two riders as best he could. Sharadim snorted and rode towards me.

“Greetings, Sir Champion,” she said. “What a world of deception it is! But then you would know that best of all, since you posed as my brother Flamadin. Do you know they already have a legend in the Six Realms, amongst those few who remain unkilled or uncaptured. They think Flamadin, the old Flamadin of the stories, will return to help them against me. But Flamadin is now at last at one with his sister. We are married. Had you heard? And we rule as equals.” She smiled. It was a dreadful and it was an evil smile.

Like von Bek I chose to ignore her.

She rode up to the crystal wall and she peered into the rock. She licked her lips. “That sword shall soon be ours,” she said. “Are you looking forward to holding it in your two hands, brother?”

“My two hands,” said Flamadin. His eyes were empty. He was staring upwards at nothing. “My two hands.”

“He is hungry,” Sharadim said in pseudo-apology. “He is deeply hungry, you see. He lacks his soul.” And she looked with vicious, smiling cruelty directly into my eyes. I felt as if knives had been driven into my sockets. Yet I forced myself to stare back at her. I thought:
“I am John Daker. I was born in London in 1941 during an air raid. My mother’s name was Helen. My father’s name was Paul. I had no brothers. No sisters. I went to school…
” But I could not remember where I went to school first. I tried to think. I had an image of a white, suburban road. We had moved after the Blitz, to South London, as I recalled. To Norwood, was it? But the school? What was the school’s name?

Sharadim was puzzled. Perhaps she could tell that my mind was elsewhere. Perhaps she was afraid I had some hidden power, some means of escape.

She said: “I suppose we need waste no more time, Lord Balarizaaf.”

“Your creature,” he said, “it must contain the Champion’s essence, if only for a short time. Failing that, Sharadim, you must keep your word to me, and take the Sword yourself. That was your bargain.”

“And your bargain, my lord, should I be successful?” For a little while, at least, she had some kind of power over this god.

“Why, that you should be elevated into the pantheon of Chaos. To become one of the great Sword Rulers, replacing one who has been banished.”

Balarizaaf looked at me, as if he regretted my failure to accept his offer. It was obvious he would prefer me to do what was needed. “You are a powerful enemy,” he said reminiscently, “in any guise. Do you remember, Lord Corum, how you fought my brothers and my sisters? Do you remember your great War against the Gods?”

I was not Corum. I was John Daker. I refused all other identities.

“You have forgotten my name, I believe, my lord,” I said. “I am John Daker.”

He shrugged. “Does it matter what name you choose, Sir Champion? You could have ruled a universe by any of your many, many names.”

“I have only one,” I said.

This forced him to hesitate. Sharadim, too, had become curious as to my meaning. Thanks to my recent experiences and the help of my friends I was able to speak with authority. I was determined to consider myself a single individual and an ordinary mortal. I felt it was the key to my own salvation and that of those I loved. I looked into Balarizaaf’s eyes and I peered into the abyss. I turned my gaze from him to Sharadim and saw in her face the same emptiness which possessed the Lord of Chaos. Flamadin’s poor, blank stare was as nothing compared to what I beheld in their faces.

“You will not deny, I hope, that you are the Eternal Champion,” said Sharadim sardonically. “For we know that you are.”

“I am only John Daker,” I said.

“He is John Daker,” said von Bek. “From London. That is a city in England. I do not know what part of the multiverse, I fear. Perhaps you would be able to discover that, Lady Sharadim?” He was reinforcing me and I was grateful to him.

“This is a nonsensical pastime,” Sharadim said, dismounting from her horse. “Flamadin must feed. Then he must take the Sword. Then he can strike the blow which will set Chaos free upon the Six Realms!”

“Should you not wait, my lady,” said von Bek coolly, “so that your retainers should witness this. You promised them a spectacle, as I recall…”

“Those cattle!” She was dismissive. She grinned as she directed her remarks at Alisaard. “They proved themselves useless here. I have thrown them against Adelstane. There they are happy, running at the walls. Soon those who survive will be having their way with your kinswomen! Now, Flamadin, dear, dead brother. You will dismount. You remember what you must do?”

“I remember.”

I kept my eyes upon him as he got off his horse and began to shamble towards me. I saw Alisaard hand something to von Bek, who was closest to me. Sharadim had not noticed. Her whole attention was on the resurrected corpse of the brother she had murdered. As he drew closer I detected the stink of corruption about him. Was this the body my soul was expected to inhabit?

Von Bek’s hand touched mine. I opened my palm and accepted what he gave me. It was the pulsing warmth of the Actorios stone. It was the only shield we had against sorcery in this realm.

Flamadin’s dead fingers reached my face. I threw up my arms to defend myself, still unable to pull free of the solid rock encasing my lower legs. There was a peculiar, meaningless grin on Flamadin’s lips, more like a rictus of death than an expression of humour. The breath from his mouth was foul.

“Give me your soul, Champion. I must eat it and then I shall be whole again…”

Unthinkingly I brought up the Actorios and smashed it against that half-rotten forehead. It seemed to sear into the flesh. There was a stink of burning. Flamadin merely stood where he was, making a kind of gulping noise. There was a blazing mark in his head where the stone had struck him.

“What’s this? What’s this?” shrieked Balarizaaf in a voice of frustrated malevolence. “There is no time for delays. Not now! Hurry. Do what you must do!”

Again Flamadin reached out for me. I prepared myself to strike a second blow, but then it occurred to me to try something else. With the writhing Actorios I drew a circle around myself in the red crystal.

“No!” cried Sharadim. “Ah, the Actorios. He has an Actorios! I did not know!”

The rock around me began to bubble and heave, giving off a pinkish vapour. I pulled myself free and stood upon the solid crystal. I threw the Actorios to von Bek, telling him to imitate what I had done, and I began to run towards the crimson wall. Behind me lumbered Flamadin while Sharadim screamed: “Lord Balarizaaf! Stop him! He will reach the Sword!”

Balarizaaf said reasonably: “It matters not to me which one of you reaches it, so long as it is used for my purposes.”

This gave me pause. Was I inadvertently falling into a trap set by the Lord of Chaos? I turned. My friends were running towards me, but Flamadin was ahead of them. His fingers again reached for my face. “I must feed,” he told me. “I must have your soul. No other will do.”

This time I did not have the Actorios. I pushed at his cold body, trying to keep him away. But with every touch I felt something of myself ebbing out, being drained by him. I tried to move back, but I had reached the crystal wall.

“Champion,” said Flamadin greedily. His eyes had begun to take on a semblance of life. “Champion. Hero. I shall be a hero again… I shall have what is my right…”

Even as I fought with him my energy was being sucked from me. My friends reached us. They tried to pull him back, but he was stuck to me like a leech. I heard Sharadim laughing. Then Alisaard pressed the Actorios against Flamadin’s throat. He gave a great choking roar and tried to throw her off him. Fire seemed to burn my own neck. I was horrified by the degree of symbiosis I now experienced. I was sobbing as I still struggled to free myself from him.

Flamadin’s ruined flesh was glowing with my life. I felt my vision dimming. There was a flickering sight of myself from Flamadin’s viewpoint.

“I am John Daker!” I cried. “I am John Daker!”

I managed to restore something of myself by this reminder. But wherever, in her panic, Alisaard applied the Actorios, I still burned.

At last I fell to the ground, completely weakened. My friends tried to drag me further away from the Chaos creatures, but I begged them to stop Flamadin. Even now he was flattening himself against the crystal near where the sword was embedded. I could see that inch by inch he was himself being absorbed by the rock. Then he had gone completely into it. I felt that I, too, was wading through the crimson crystal. I saw my own hand reaching out for the hilt of that great black-and-green sword with its runecarved blade, its flickering yellow flame.

Meanwhile, through John Daker’s eyes, I saw Balarizaaf smiling. He was content with what was happening and made no move to interfere.

Only Sharadim was uncertain. She could not tell how much of my substance had been sucked into the doppelgänger. My own point of view shifted back and forth. Part of the time I was Flamadin, reaching still for the great blade. Part of the time I was John Daker being helped up by my friends who looked wildly about them for some means of escape, or at least a weapon of defence. We had the Actorios. It occurred to me that neither Balarizaaf nor Sharadim was overeager to move against us while we had that stone.

Inch by inch Flamadin waded through the crystal. I was in intense pain. I murmured over and over again that I was John Daker and only John Daker. Yet my decrepit fingers reached for a sword and proved that I was also Flamadin. I groaned. I wanted to vomit. There was a kind of whispering echo in my head which I came to believe was Flamadin’s mind struggling for life, recalling some argument which perhaps his sister had tried to instil in him before she resorted to murder.

The Sword can cure the evil at source… The Sword can bring harmony… The Sword is an honourable weapon… But not in the wrong hands… The Sword used in defence is actively good…

“No!” I cried, addressing whatever vestiges of the original Flamadin remained. “It is a deception. The Sword is still a sword. The Sword, Flamadin, is still a sword! Touch that blade, Prince Flamadin of the Valadek, and you are condemned for ever to limbo…”

I heard Sharadim urging him on. With John Daker’s eyes I saw her take a step further towards the crystal cliff. Flamadin’s hands were almost upon the Sword’s hilt now.

Within that ghastly body I struggled to hold back the hand. But there was a desperate will at work. What had been Flamadin was greedy for life, greedy for the rewards it had been promised.

All around me the red light glowed. All around me were shards, fragments, reflections. I thought I could see a thousand versions of myself.

I was weakening.

“I am John Daker,” I moaned. “I am only John Daker…”

Flamadin touched the Sword. The blade moaned a little, as if in recognition. He clasped the hilt. It did not resist him. It did not give him pain to touch it. Now I was almost entirely Flamadin, exulting in this power, this strange version of life I had achieved.

I drew the Sword up. I displayed it to those who peered through the crystal, watching me.

As John Daker I was slowly dying as the last of my soul began to merge with Flamadin’s.

I wrenched myself from that mind. I was whimpering and crying as I reached out for the Actorios which Alisaard still held. “I am John Daker. This is my reality.” The same hand which enfolded the Dragon Sword now also enfolded the Actorios. I heard screaming. It was myself. It was Flamadin. It was John Daker. I was both of them. I was being torn into two.

Now John Daker made one huge effort to pull his soul free from the body of Flamadin. I recalled my childhood, my first job, my holidays. We had rented a thatched cottage in Somerset, not far from the sea. Which year had that been?

Flamadin was weakening a little. His viewpoint became hazy while John Daker’s grew stronger. In recalling my common Humanity, by rejecting the rôle of hero, I had the chance to free myself from the burden which had fallen upon me. And in freeing myself, I might possibly help others.

I was sure that John Daker was winning the struggle, but now Sharadim was joining in the fight, and Balarizaaf, too. I heard them urging Flamadin to use the Sword, to do what he had sworn to do.

I fought against him. But his arm swung back. I tried to stop him, even then. His arm came forward, the Dragon Sword slicing into the stuff of the crystal wall. He was carving a gateway for Chaos!

I moaned in my weakness as John Daker. Having dragged my soul back from Flamadin, now I sought to return, so that I could put a halt to what he did.

The Dragon Sword rose again. It struck the crystal wall again. Rosy light flared. Rays burst in all directions. And through the rent made by the Sword I saw darkness. And in the darkness was another world. A world in which I glimpsed white towers gleaming. A familiar world.

They had planned this exactly! The gateway into Chaos would be the gateway into the vast Adelstane cave, where Sharadim’s army laid siege to the last defenders of the Six Realms!

I shouted out my horror. I heard Sharadim’s laughter. I turned, as John Daker, and saw Balarizaaf seem to swell to twice his height, an expression of sublime satisfaction on his features.

“He is cutting an entrance into Adelstane!” I told my friends. “We must stop him.”

Whatever now animated Flamadin was not my soul. I had reclaimed it all. But even as my strength returned I saw the red crystal flow and dissipate, filling the sky again, turning to liquid again. And that unholy radiance was pouring through into the gigantic cavern.

Without thinking, I ran after Flamadin, still seeking to stop him. But he had passed through the narrow gateway he had carved. I saw him striding to where, on the floor of the cave, Sharadim’s armies were camped. There were stone huts now and tents, and here and there were the massive Maaschanheemer hulls, pressed into service against Adelstane.

Alisaard and von Bek were with me as we clambered down rocks to the cave. Flamadin was shouting something to the warriors, many of whom had plainly been touched by Chaos already. They had the warped, bestial features I had seen on Armiad and the others.