Wrath of a Mad God (43 page)

Hundreds of Deathknights rode their huge varnin through the enclosed countryside, dragging nets filled with dead and dying Tsurani behind them. The vast pit that formed the tunnel to the second realm and the Dasati world of Omadrabar stayed a fixed distance from the edge of the sphere, so the Deathknights had only the same distance to cover as before it expanded. The pit was now vast, hundreds of miles across. And Pug sensed more than saw that something was moving inside.

Nakor watched, curiously detached. It occurred to him that being dead he had little interest in anything other than the matters at hand. He wondered if he should feel regret, because he remembered being very curious when he was alive, and then he realized he had no time for thought.

The Dreadlord was using his power to drain every living thing in the vicinity. Loyal Deathpriests and Temple Deathknights above all fell lifeless, their bodies descending the tunnel from Kelewan dead long before they reached him. The Dreadlord stood motionless, his figure fluid and vague, then suddenly he resolved himself into a thing of nightmare.

He was majestic, and now he looked as Nakor imagined a Dreadlord would. His body was massive, easily thirty feet tall, and shaped like a man’s, though the legs had a decidedly animal shape, like a goat’s or horse’s, with a stifle and hock, rather than with hip and knee. The head was featureless, save for a suggestion of ears when he moved in certain directions. Around his head hovered a tiny circlet of silver light punctuated with golden flames, forming a demonic crown. His eyes were two flaming coals.

Then from his back wings of shadow sprouted, and Nakor realized these mystical pinions were designed to carry him up through the tunnel to Kelewan. As the Dreadlord prepared to launch himself upward, Nakor stepped out from his concealed position behind the throne, stepping over the dead form of Leso Varen.

The Dreadlord launched himself up the tunnel, leaving the pit suddenly silent and empty. Then came a loud concussion, as if two massive things were colliding with each other through the tunnel. Nakor understood and made ready.

From above ten thousand black-armored figures descended, touching down on the cold stone floor where only moments before there had been a roiling sea of Dasati life energy. Ten thousand Dasati gods had returned home, and as each touched down, their armor erupted in a glow of light—silver, green, gold, every color imaginable—as the powers of the trapped gods were released. At one time Nakor would have felt awed by such a sight, but now he just watched, sensing that his role was at an end.

Knowing it was likely to be the last act of his existence, Nakor held the black jewel on the flat palm of his left hand, and with his right, flicked it, as a child might flick a pebble off his palm. It flew straight and followed the Dreadlord’s flight up the tunnel. As it rose up the tunnel, the Godkiller seemed to draw the tunnel’s energy into it, effectively sealing it off behind the Dreadlord. He could never return to Omadrabar that way. The Dreadlord was finally gone from the second plane of existence. To all intents and purposes, for the Dasati the Dark One was as good as dead.

Nakor sat down and felt his mind begin to drain away. His last thought was that it had been a very interesting life.

Something was coming!

Pug stared down into the Black Mount, focusing hard. Then he realized it was the Dreadlord. He was using this passage between the planes of existence to leave Omadrabar and come to Kelewan! Whatever time-scale Pug might have thought he faced was completely wrong. He didn’t have months or weeks, or even days, to prepare for this. The monster would arrive in moments…

Pug probed with every sense he possessed, looking for a weakness in the Black Mount. He could find none. Had he days or weeks to study it, with Miranda’s help using what she had learned from her escape from the first sphere, then perhaps he might have found a means to shut down this monstrous thing. But he knew in his heart he might study it for years and never find what he sought. He had only one choice, a choice he had denied since this situation had presented itself. He steeled himself and began to manipulate the energies around him.

Pug let his mind reach out, and in the vast distance of space he found what he sought. He conjured the single most powerful spell he had ever fashioned, one he had imagined, but never thought he would ever use. Circling Kelewan was a single moon, locked in a perfect orbit by the balance of forces exerted by both the sun and the planet. Pug tipped that balance.

Millions of miles away in space a massive rift appeared before the moon, and just inside the top of the dome of the Black Mount its twin manifested. Pug lowered himself down to a po
sition by the rift that led back home, and knew he had to be quick.

He could not leave this last rift open, for to do so would doom Midkemia to the same fate about to befall Kelewan.

Millions of miles away, the moon struck the rift gate. Only part of it was forced through, but its velocity was enough to drive an impossible amount of stone, equal to the tallest mountain on Kelewan, through it in scant seconds. Pug stepped inside the rift just as the moon’s vast shard appeared inside the Black Mount and slammed down at incalculable speed into the pit. The Dreadlord had only an instant to sense that something was terribly wrong. A massive increase in air pressure around the Dark One gripped the gigantic being as if an enormous hand squeezed him. Then for the briefest instant a wall of light fell upon him.

The moon shard and the black gem shard Nakor had released struck in the same instant. The Dreadlord was no mortal being; but in that instant he was crushed.

The universe began to tear.

No one on the planet’s surface felt pain. For one moment the world had been a landscape of terror, struggle, and death, and in the next moment, everything was gone. A cloud of hot gas traveled a path around a distant yellow-green sun where minutes before a world and its moon had existed.

Pug found himself in a gray nothingness, devoid of any sensation, light, dark, cold, or heat. He had experienced this once before, and then he had reached out with his mind to find his old teacher, Kulgan.

This time he had a more compelling target for his mind: his wife and sons. He gripped tightly the staff that was twin to the one at home. He let his magic senses run through the ancient wood and could feel Miranda, Caleb, and Magnus out there, the three people he loved more than anyone else in that world. He sensed them…somewhere…there! He could feel the echo of the staff in his hand and the touch of his loved ones on it, and reached for them. Then with a tearing pain, he was standing by them, shivering as if he had been exposed to the most profound cold possible.

He said, “It is done,” then collapsed into his sons’ arms.