storm (84 page)

            “Diablo,” he said.  “Have our fighters concentrate their efforts on the Tigron.”

            “The protective shield around Pellaz har Aralis is great,” Diablo said.  “Many will burn upon it like moths against an open flame.”

            “Nevertheless, deliver this order.  If lives are lost, it will be for the greater good.  We must prevent Pellaz from summoning reinforcements.”

            “I understand,” Diablo said.  “This will be done.”  He vanished into the otherlanes.

            “Send the Hashmallim!” Abrimel said desperately.  “Ponclast, do it.  Make them attack the Tigron.  No other will reach him.”

            “The Hashmallim do not obey orders,” Ponclast said.  “You know this.  We cannot expect them to do everything.  Our allies will appreciate us having at least some sense of initiative in this conflict.”

            Abrimel's gaze darted wildly, almost insanely, around the chamber.  “You do not know him.  He is strong.  I can feel it.  I can feel him close.  Ponclast, you don't know what you're up against.”

            “Be quiet!” Ponclast said.  “Your fear does nothing to help me.  Guard that harling and keep your gutless terror to yourself.”

            “You should have sent our son away from here.  This is madness!”

            Ponclast did not want to hear any more.  He directed an arrow of intention at Abrimel that fuddled his brain, so that he sat motionless and silent, his eyes staring blankly.

            In the stillness that followed, Ponclast became aware of gathering hostile energy.  It was more than
sedim. 
He didn't recognise it, but he could tell it possessed great power. Quickly, he sent out a mind call to Diablo to summon him back.  It occurred to him that the order he'd sent to his shadow fighters had been issued too late.  He could wait no longer.  He must confront Pellaz har Aralis now, perhaps while the Tigron was still weakened from whatever magical task he'd been involved in.  But how could he be drawn to this place?  The protections around him were great.

            “Pellaz, you coward,” Ponclast said under his breath, his eyes closed.  “Will you not have the courage to confront me, har to har?”

            For a moment, there was only silence, but for the sound of breathing, then a clear voice spoke.

            “Ponclast, you may call me many things, but coward I am not.”

            Ponclast opened his eyes and saw a shining figure standing before him.  He resisted the urge to scrabble backward.  Pellaz had come, unarmed and naked.  Was he mad, or simply too confident?  Ponclast got to his feet.  Now he was confronted with the reality of the Tigron, he felt disorientated.  Pellaz must have great power indeed to pass through the wards and cantrips that guarded this place.  He must be able to access the otherlanes as Diablo did.  But he did not appear about to launch an attack.  Ponclast noticed the Tigron glance at Abrimel, although his expression did not change in the slightest.  Ponclast raised his arm, his first gripping a ball of swiftly conjured black flame.  He meant to throw it, catch Pellaz off his guard.

            “Don't bother with that,” Pellaz said.

            Ponclast ignored this advice and threw the flame.  It burst some inches from the Tigron's body and fell down like flakes of sooty snow.

            “You see,” Pellaz said.  “You can't fight me that way.”

            “One of us must emerge victorious,” Ponclast said.  “We are not here to engage in idle conversation.”  He summoned a different form of energy, which manifested as a forked trident of white radiance.  Ponclast released it, but it merely bounced off the Tigron's aura and skidded across the floor like a spear of glass.  It shattered against the wall.

            Ponclast lowered his arm, unsure of what to do next.  The Tigron's proximity affected him greatly, dispersing his concentration.  Whatever preparations he'd made, and no matter for how long, he could never have been ready for this.  He could see it clearly now.  “I will not surrender to you,” he said.  “There will be no more Gebaddon for me or my hara.”

            “No,” Pellaz agreed.  “If you are to survive, your exile must be far from this realm, with no chance of return.”  Pellaz put his head to one side.  “Do you hear the fighting?  The dehara, our gods, crush the living essence from your allies, Ponclast.  Ironically, they are as much your gods as mine, and perhaps some creations of your own imagination fight alongside them.”

            Ponclast realised that Abrimel's fears had been justified.  The Hashmallim had lied to him or perhaps they too had underestimated Thiede's protégé.  Ponclast could tell in every fibre of his being that he could never be equal to Pellaz har Aralis.  He was like a living expression of every har's secret dream, radiant and eternal.  But, if etheric and magical weapons could have no effect, perhaps a more conventional attack was called for.  With a furious cry, Ponclast picked up the burning incense and charged at Pellaz, even though the metal bowl burned his hands greatly.  He threw the smouldering charcoal in the Tigron's face.  The coals, however, simply passed through Pellaz's body.

            “Did you really think this was my physical body?” Pellaz said.  “You can't harm me, Ponclast.  What did your allies tell you?  That they had made you strong, my equal?  Maybe they have, but you do not have any knowledge.  Your hara love you, and now they die for you, but they are only shadows, weak and hopeless.”

            “What you did to my hara was unspeakable,” Ponclast said.  The pain in his hands was almost too much to bear; he was afraid he'd lose consciousness, yet lacked the focus to direct healing energy into them.

            Pellaz smiled grimly.  “You and they should have been prepared for that.  You did unspeakable things to others.  Every action has a consequence, and you set the rules.  Did you expect our mercy?  Why should we have given it, when you gave none?  That was an unrealistic hope, Ponclast.  It still is.”

            “The Gelaming are liars, warmongers who ride behind a banner of peace!” Ponclast cried.  “I know the truth of it.  You have no moral high ground, Pellaz.  The essence of this conflict is one will to power against another.”

            “I don't disagree,” Pellaz said.  “Whatever propaganda Thiede used to put about means little to me.  But I like to think our way is more acceptable to the majority than yours.  Your indulgences in this citadel all those years ago did not make you greatly popular among the common hara.  You despised your own kind, too caught up in the bitterness of the early years, when Wraeththu fought amongst themselves and with humanity.  You didn't move on.  We did.  There is no place for your ideology in this world now.”

            Ponclast knew that all he possessed to defend himself was his conviction, his belief in himself and his hara.  It had to be enough.  “I have no wish to debate this,” he said.  “Do what you think you can, Tigron, and let us see once and for all whose way is best.”

            Pellaz laughed.  “That is brave talk.  Look at your hands.  You cannot fight me, in any sense.”

            “I am prepared to die trying.”

            Pellaz said nothing to those words.  Instead, he threw back his head, closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath.  He looked so vulnerable, yet Ponclast knew now that he was far from that.  Pellaz exhaled slowly, and opened his eyes once more.  “I would like you to meet a friend of mine,” he said.

            There was a shimmer of emerald light in the corner of the room, which presently expanded into a luminous oval.  It was clearly some kind of otherlane portal, because a figure emerged from it.  This was a young har, who to Ponclast's eyes seemed greatly biased towards soume in his being.  The har was dressed simply, in clothes of close-fitting brushed leather.  His honey-coloured hair hung loose over his breast.  He did not resemble a fighter, nor did he emanate any great sense of magical power, but there was something not quite right about him.

            “This is Lileem,” Pellaz said.  “She wishes to share breath with you.”

            “She?” Ponclast asked.  Since when had hara, even the ones Varrs had conditioned to be predominantly soume, refer to themselves as she?

            “Lileem is Kamagrian,” Pellaz said.  “You do not know of them, of course.  Share breath with her.  You will be surprised at the results of combining her essence with yours.”

            Lileem approached Ponclast, her gaze fixed on his.  Ponclast wasn't sure what he saw in her eyes, but for the first time a sense of true fear passed through him.  This creature was not Wraeththu, but something else.  She was a weapon of the Tigron's.

            Ponclast tried to back away from the approaching figure, but somehow he had moved so far across the chamber, his back was pressed against the wall.  Lileem opened her mouth and a sparkling vapour curled from her lips.  She leapt forward and gripped Ponclast's face between her hands.  Her breath was a vortex.  Losing consciousness, Ponclast could feel himself being torn from earthly reality, his soul ripped from his flesh.

            As if from a long distance away, he heard the Tigron's voice.  “Lileem will take you to a place of great interest.  You might learn something there.  Thiede believed Gebaddon would educate you and indeed it did, but this will be something different.”

            Ponclast was like nothing more than a scrap of cloth dangling from the strange har's essence.  He was helpless.  The flight from Gebaddon, the brief time in Fulminir, the attempt to resurrect it, all meant nothing.  His allies did nothing to save him.  They let him go into darkness.  He was an experiment that had failed.

For some moments, Pellaz stood motionless in the underground vault.  The harling held in Abrimel's arms was whimpering.  Abrimel himself looked mindless. 
Am I so heartless,
Pellaz thought,
that I can feel nothing for my own flesh and blood?

           
He prepared himself to leave, and it took enormous effort to focus on that simple act.  Despite appearances, his confrontation with Ponclast had depleted him greatly.  He gazed for some moments at his son, who clearly could not see him.  In the aftermath of the conflict, hara could come down here to take Abrimel into custody.  There was nothing else to be done here.  Above ground, the dehara fought with the Hashmallim.  Pellaz could perceive now what a strange battle it was, because neither side could actually destroy the other.  The dehara were made of thought and emotion, so they could not be unmade, and the Hashmallim were etheric projections whose physical selves resided far from this realm.  All the two sides could do was fight for dominance, so that the weaker could slink away.  Pellaz perceived that both sides were enjoying the combat.  It posed no real risk to them, after all.  It was the play of tiger cubs, yet somewhere else the tigers crouched unseen.  That was a different matter.

            It had all been satisfactorily easy.  Lileem had take Ponclast with her to the realm of the Black Library, which was extremely difficult to escape.  Pellaz had no desire to kill his enemy, mainly because ultimately he was not a foe to be feared.  If he should somehow rise up, with greater force, and pose a threat in the future, it was because it was meant to be: a further test. 
If I am not worthy of facing that,
Pellaz thought,
then I am not worthy of being Tigron. 
He knew that beyond this world there were far worse threats than Ponclast.  Now, it was simply a case of clearing up.  It was time to return to his body and begin that work.

            But even as he formed this thought, a ball of black energy manifested in the room.  Pellaz observed it, puzzled, for only an instant before it threw itself against him.  He was hurled backwards.  His etheric body slammed through the thick stone wall and landed in a dank corridor outside.  He was smothered in a crawling sticky essence that forced its way inside him.