Dark Crusade (25 page)

It was so hard to think... Concentrate through the burning agony of his mutilated face, the dull pain of his wounds, the sapping lethargy of despair...

Lie here, Kane. It is hopeless. Lie here and let them come for you...

Yslsl!

The pain--it was real, too real. How could one feel pain if this were only illusion? And the nightmarish sequences he had lived before awakening in chains--there had been pain. Dreams, too? Delirium? Jarvo had said he had lain delirious.

Illusion! It was illusion. It is illusion! The corridor...

"Yslsl!" Kane screamed. His voice echoed eerily. "Yslsl!" Outside the cell he heard his guards stirring anxiously.

No! There is no cell! There are no chains! Yslsl, I entered your lair!

Fool--you fell senseless on the tower floor. In a moment your captors will lead you to your death.

Then rage burned through the cobwebby fetters of despair. Kane reeled to his feet, forcing his mind to clarity.

"Yslsl! Where are you!"

He must will himself from this illusion--must believe this was illusion--or he would die within the illusion, and Yslsl would feed upon the shrieking disintegration of his soul.

"Yslsl!"

Kane lurched forward, headlong for the iron-bound door. Now. Now he must break the illusion! There was no cell, no chains, no door... He flung himself for the door--looming huge, substantial, immovable...

He was in a corridor, his footsteps carrying him onward as in a dream, and behind him the corridor vanished into an abyss. No chains, no wounds. Illusion. It had been illusion...

Kane sensed baffled rage--and for an instant, awe. Then gloating--and hunger. Ravenous, gluttonous hunger.

"Yslsl!"

Laughter, deep laughter.

A shape moved toward him. A girl. Dancing nakedly toward him, long hair like starlight swirling about her supple form. Her face--beautiful, cruel as a goddess.

"Poor Kane," she sang like a child. "Poor Kane, he's quite insane."

"Who are you!" Kane demanded.

"Who are you?" she mocked. "Don't you know? Don't you know?"

"Yslsl?"

"Poor Kane. Poor mad Kane. Yslsl? Do you want Yslsl?"

"Are you Yslsl!" "Perhaps I am. Perhaps you are. Do you want Yslsl?"

"Yes, damn you! Where is Yslsl!"

She laughed and pirouetted. Her starlight hair was a spinning nova. "Poor Kane, poor Kane. He's quite insane. Yslsl's in his brain. He feeds on your pain. And now you're insane. Poor Kane. Why don't you die!"

Kane grabbed for her. She darted away, but he caught her wrist. She spun against him, sinking her teeth into his hand.

Unendurable pain stabbed through him. Kane gasped and released her. The girl vanished in a snowfall of laughter-light.

Kane clutched his bitten band, expecting to see blood. There was only a purple-green bruise, a swelling that grew as he watched. He shook with pain, as the swelling ballooned like an evil fungus--then burst.

And from the putrid abcess erupted not blood. Spiders. Tiny, black-green spiders crawled out of his flesh. Spiders bright and glittering as bits of glass. He felt their needle-point mandibles chewing free from his flesh. They crawled up his arm in a vein of bright-black chitin.

Kane screamed, tried to fling them off from his arm. The spiders hung on tenaciously, biting his clawing fingers. Lancinations of fire seethed through his envenomed flesh. The spiders were biting him as they crawled. Each bite burned into a purple-green swelling, a swelling that expanded and burst. And erupted with more spiders. To climb and bite... crawling for his face now...

Take a step back, Kane...

No! Behind him yawned the abyss. This is illusion!

The spiders were gone. His hand and arm were whole. Kane shuddered and plunged forward.

Laughter. Demonic laughter.

Goat-horned, toad-faced, the demon squatted in the mist ahead. A bloated dragon-toad, its scaled bulk utterly blocked the passageway. Its laughter roared deafeningly down the passage, and its mouth gaped ever wider--impossibly wider. An incredible length of sticky tongue snaked out toward Kane. In loathing Kane recoiled.

No! I can't step back!

Heels at the edge of the abyss, Kane forced himself to stand rigid, as the demon's tongue licked toward him. Now the creature's gaping toad-maw filled the entire passageway. Yellowed vomerine fangs stabbed from ceiling to floor like rotted stalactites and stalagmites. Foetid breath gushed forth from its gullet to sicken him. Kane swayed.

It wasn't a passageway at all. He was standing on the demon's foul tongue, gazing into its gigantic obscene maw. The passageway beyond was the creature's throat. He was walking into the leviathan's slobbering jaws... Horror and revulsion staggered him.

Run! Go back! No! Yslsl, this is another illusion!

Go back! You'll be eaten!

Illusion!

Kane lurched forward from the advancing edge of the abyss. Down the slimy tongue, into the dripping jaws, into the yawning throat, where eyeless vermin crawled over his bare feet. The jaws began to close. Kane felt himself propelled downward into the demon's gullet.

"Illusion!" Kane roared. He charged blindly ahead, past the filth that swarmed over him.

He was in a passageway, and at his heels the edge of nothingness remorselessly followed.

"Of course this is illusion, Kane. You're insane."

Orted Ak-Ceddi grinned at him. "You're insane, Kane--can't you understand? Completely mad mad mad. This is all illusion--and so are you."

Kane lunged for him. The Prophet waited with a supercilious smile. Kane's powerful hands locked about Orted's thick neck.

It wasn't Orted. It was a girl, face contorted in fear. He knew her--Lyuba, whom he had loved. Lyuba, dead and dust for centuries... by his hand...

"Kane! Stop it!" Lyuba gasped, writhing in his grip.

But his hands would not let go. They closed of their own will, relentlessly. Kane tried to tear his hands away, but still his strangling grip tightened. Lyuba's beautiful face purpled hideously. Her eyes burst from pressure. Her tongue protruded longer, longer...

It was a serpent's tongue. Kane held a serpent by its scaly throat. With a sudden twist, the scarlet serpent writhed free of his grasp, sank its fangs into his chest.

Kane yelled in pain, tore the fanged head from his chest. The serpent exploded into coruscant light, blinding him. Kane reeled backward...

No!

"Who is he?" The voices were suddenly all around. "What's the matter with him? Is he all right?"

The ballroom was filled with people, laughing and disporting themselves in swirls of jewels and costly robes over the obsidian floor. A number of faces were turned his way. Their expressions showed alarm.

"Are you all right?" asked a girt in a gown of strung pearls.

"Is something the matter?" her escort demanded. He wore an owl's mask.

"I... don't know," Kane heard himself say. Where was he? Did he know these people? What had he just done?

A pair of dancers blundered into him. "Watch it, old fellow," laughed one of them. "Had too much, have you?"

"What are you doing here, may I ask?" queried the consort of the pearl-dancer. "Are you one of the guests?"

Kane frowned. Was he? "I'm all right now."

"I think there's something wrong with him," someone suggested in a worried tone. "Who is he? Does anyone here know who he is?"

Who was he? Panic welled within him. Who was he? How had he gotten here? Kane couldn't remember anything beyond the last minute. He stared wildly about, seeking to escape. The dancers were calling for help.

Wait, some shred of memory. Yslsl...

"Stop it!" Kane screamed. The dancers halted and stared. "Stop it!" The ballroom shimmered.

It wasn't a ballroom. It was a dolmen. He lay on his back on a massive stone slab. Kane tried to move. He couldn't. His flesh was cold, rigid. His head was propped upon something; his eyes were open and be could see his recumbent body.

His flesh was shrivelled, gnawed with age. Rusted mail and rotted furs enswathed his mouldering body. He had no breath to scream.

Figures were filing into the dolmen, gazing down at him. Dead things, whose decayed features he could recognize--enemies who had died at his hand in years past. Liches like himself. They filed around him, staring down, their rotted faces alight with secret mirth. They chanted a dirge.

"Poor Kane. He's quite insane."

"Poor Kane. He died in pain."

"Poor Kane. There's maggots in his brain."

Not maggots--something fouler... Yslsl.

Kane's frayed lips croaked a snarl; "Yslsl!"

Then there was nothingness. Kane, naked and alone, floated in the nothingness. Coldness, pain, nothingness.

His thoughts drifted, and his thoughts were pain. "Am I insane? Am I insane? Shouldn't I know something? Shouldn't I be somewhere? And where is here--and is it anywhere? And who am I--and am I anyone?

And cosmic horror wrenched at his soul--horror surpassing all that had haunted him. He did not know.

He did not know. Where. How. Why. When. Who. If. Ever. Who. "Insane insane (Yslsl's eaten his brain) insane insane"

And fury burned bright in his crumbling soul.

"I am Kane!" he roared at nothingness. "I am Kane"

And he was walking down a passageway. And at every faltering step the passageway vanished behind him.

"No. I am Kane."

Before him crouched a bulking, red-bearded man. His brutal face was twisted in anger, and the flames of death danced in his cold blue eyes. Kane thought he saw his own reflection--then saw the other figure move of his own accord.

"I am Kane," said Kane to Kane.

Kane's lips drew back in a snarl. "Yslsl!" And it was almost a prayer.

Kane lunged for Kane's throat. Kane sidestepped his rush--but Kane's lunge was a feint. Twisting as he attacked, Kane slashed his open hand at Kane's neck. Kane partially evaded the killing blow, at the same instant knocking Kane from his feet with a sudden twist of his leg.

Kane fought for balance, grappling with Kane as each struggled for hold. An elbow caught Kane in the face, smashing his nose and blinding him with pain. He swung his hip at the last instant, as Kane sought to follow his advantage--making Kane miss a second blow with his open fist.

Breath gusted from their throats in jarring sobs. Skin ripped from their bodies as steel-strong fingers clawed for grip. Each sudden feint, each covert hold was known to them both. Strength, speed were identical--the same as was the killing rage that hurled Kane against Kane in desperate hatred.

At the feet of the embattled twins awaited the abyss, inexorably following each struggling step of one combatant...

Slinging blood from his eyes, Kane broke Kane's strangling fingers from his throat with a crushing jab to the other's larynx. Coughing in agony, the other recoiled, his guard an instant too slow to deflect Kane's kick to his solar plexus. He slumped backward into the passage, scrambling to elude Kane's pressing attack. Kane bore into him, hammering a blow to his heart, to his face.

He staggered drunkenly on nerveless legs. Implacably Kane seized his throat, flung him around. The other butted his head into him with frantic strength, and Kane felt the edge of the abyss at his heels. Desperately Kane lunged sidewise and into the passage, suddenly flinging his opponent past him. Already plunging forward, the other could not check himself as the precipice glided closer. Arms flailing, he plummeted over the edge.

For an instant Kane saw something obscenely man-like, its face a mass of writhing translucent tendrils, clutching its taloned hands for the edge of the precipice. It clutched only nothingness, and into nothingness it fell--a spinning, slowly diminishing mote among other motes that Kane saw were not really stars...

The passageway screamed with soundless horror; its outlines wavered. Fighting to keep his feet, Kane saw just ahead--what seemed to be an opening in its infinite length. Not daring to imagine where it might lead, Kane plunged through...

And in battle-flamed Ceddi, an ancient tower door splintered under the last blow of the ram; and vengeful Jarvo leaped past its wreckage--to stare in uncomprehending fury at an empty chamber of dust and echoes...

And half a world away, a ragged girl suddenly gasped and clutched her father's arm. "Father! There! At the top of the stairs! There's a man lying there!"

"What!" Her father followed her pointing finger in alarm. When the storm had forced them to seek shelter for the night in this ancient pile of stone, he had looked around the tower uneasily--for there were legends--and seen nothing untoward. Still, the wavering light of their fire was uncertain, and that last burst of lightning had been near enough to seem to set the tower aflame.

He called out, received no answer. Taking a brand from the fire, he climbed the spiral stairs cautiously, hand on the worn sword that was all that remained of his old estate. His daughter followed, more curious than fearful.

"Is he alive?"

"Yes, though badly wounded. A knight, by his gear. He's been in a desperate fight--robbers, perhaps. We'll bind his wounds as best we can."

Kane opened his eyes, looked at them, fell back into stupor.

"Will he live?"

"By the look in his eyes, he will--to the ruin of whoever brought him to this."

The girl hugged her scrawny ribs. "I saw madness in his eyes."

Her father grunted. "I'll try to drag him down to our fire. Can you lift a little? He's a giant."

"What's on his hands?" She shuddered.

"Let me see." He lifted a bloody hand and swore wondering at the crumbling fragments that clung to fingers and nails.

"Whatever he fought, it must have been dead a long time."