SLOWLY and with leaden steps, as if the very air had thickened to impede him, Jarles made his way toward his private apartment in the crypts. His mind was fogged by a black guilt which was all the more intolerable because he loathed and detested himself for feeling it. In every corridor he was met or overtaken by hurrying, panic-eyed priests. One stopped and tried to engage him in speech, a fat and ineffectual little priest of the Second Circle.
“I wish to congratulate you on your elevation to the
Fourth Circle,” he said swiftly, twisting his chubby hands in a nervous and apologetic way.
“Surely you remember me, your eminence. I am Brother Chulian-your old guide-“
The fellow sounded as if he were screwing up courage to ask some favor. Or, perhaps, in the general flood of insecurity and fear, he was merely trying to assure himself of as many points of support as possible.
Jarles glared unpleasantly at his former companion and pushed past him without answering. The crypts were almost deserted. The raiding parties, which had combed the entire Sanctuary in search of Fanatics, had now departed with their captives, to lock them away in the general prison of the Sanctuary-unconnected with the subsidiary prison used by Goniface for his captives before he had become World Hierarch.
As Jarles neared his apartment, his wretchedness abruptly increased, becoming stingingly acute. To his horror, the black fog of guilt oppressing his thoughts suddenly came alive, whispering into his ear-closer even than that-
“Do you hear me, Armon Jarles? Do you hear me? I am yourself. Run. Shut your ears. It will do no good. You cannot lock me out. You cannot keep from listening to me. For I am yourself. I am the Armon Jarles you have maimed and imprisoned, the Armon Jarles you have trampled and denied. Yet, in the end, I am stronger than you are.”
And-crowning horror-it was not his own voice, though much like it. He was denied even the resource-horrible enough in itself-of explaining it away as an hallucination, a projection from his own subconscious. It was too real, too individual, for that. It was like the voice of some close kin, the voice of some brother who had never been born.
As if all Hell were at his heels, he dashed into his apartment and, with hands that fumbled in their haste, reactivated the lock.
But inside it was worse.
“You cannot escape me, Armon Jarles. Where you are, there I am also. You will hear me until you die, and not even the cremator’s flame will end your hearing.”
Never had he hated anything like that sourceless voice. Never had he so desired to crush, to tear apart, utterly to destroy something. Yet never had he felt so helpless to accomplish an aim. Pictures began to form in his mind. He was stumbling through the ruins, Mother Jujy’s bony hand clasping his wrist. He wanted to cry out to the pursuers, to strangle her, to beat in her skull with her own cane. But he could not.
He was sitting at a rudely hewn table, sharing a humble dinner with his family. He had poisoned their food. Interminably he waited for them to take the first mouthful, but they were dawdling unaccountably.
He was in the laboratory of Brother Dhomas, but now everything was reversed. A man-shaped blackness sat in Brother Dhomas’ seat. Evilly grinning witches and chattering familiars manned the various instruments.
Suddenly then he was looking into a mirror, but instead of himself he saw the reanimated corpse of Asmodeus standing there. And Asmodeus was explaining something by gestures, first pointing at Jarles, then at the charred, gaping hole in his robe, over and over again. And when Jarles felt he could bear it no longer. Asmodeus stopped-but then the tiny head of a bloodstained, gaunt, and grayed familiar thrust itself out of the charred hole and began to repeat his master’s gestures. Jarles’ hatred of life, of everything, rose to a peak. It occurred to him that it would be possible for a single man, if he worked subtly enough and unswervingly, to destroy the whole human race except for himself. It could be done. There were ways.
With a tremendous effort he looked around the room. For a moment he thought it was empty. Then he saw, squatting on the gleaming desk, between the projector and the scattered spools of reading tape, a loathsome beast, a dark-furred, peering familiar, whose face was a tiny, tapering, noseless copy of his own.
Instantly he sensed that this was the creature who was thinking the thoughts that were torturing him, whose telepathically transmitted words were resounding unstoppably in his skull. And instantly he determined to slay it. Not by wrath ray-his mental processes had already reached too primeval a level for that. He would strangle it with his bare hands. It did not stir as he walked toward the table. But his progress was nightmarishly slow, as if the air had become gelatinous. And as he walked, step by labored step, a final vision formed in his mind.
He was utterly alone, his ringers on the controls of a mighty war blast, at the summit of a little hill in the midst of a flat, gray wasteland. There was no life whatsoever, save his own. As far as eye could see-and it seemed he could see around the curve of the Earth-were the graves of the species he had annihilated, or perhaps the graves of all men and women, of all ages, who had suffered and fought and died seeking freedom, seeking something more than a jealous, conservative, senselessly ordered society could provide for them. And he was very much afraid, although there was nothing left to threaten him. And he kept wondering if his war blast were sufficiently powerful.
Only a few steps separated him from the desk. His hands were outstretched like talons of marble. The hateful thing was peering at him. But the vision kept coming between them. Suddenly the wasteland began to ripple and shake. Like an earthquake, except the motion was more general and less violent. As if a million moles were tunneling. Then, here and there, the gray earth cracked and parted and there rose up skeletal forms, clad in moldering flesh and tattered cerements. More and more of them until, like an army, they marshaled themselves and advanced from all sides upon the hillock, shaking gray earth from them as they came. Round and round he slewed his ravening war blast. Down they went, by scores, by hundreds, like rotten grain, collapsing into a second death. But over them, through the smoke of their burning, stepped hundreds more. And he knew that thousands of miles away still others had risen and were marching toward him up around the Earth.
One step more now and he could lean forward. His hands would close around the scrawny throat. Only one step.
Still they came, marching in perfect order, and the stench of their burning obscured the leaden sky and choked him. Now their fallen made a great ring higher than the hillock, and he had to swivel his war blast upward to cut down the figures who came lightly stepping over the crest-except when he must sweep it briefly downward to finish off a charred skeleton crawling or hitching itself toward him from the heap.
He was at the desk. His marble hands were closing in on the black caricature of himself. But on him the others were closing. Waves and waves of them. He was sweating, panting, choking. Each time he frantically slewed round his war blast, the ranks he mowed down were a little closer. And one blackened skeleton had got inside his range and was weakly clawing at his ankle with charred phalanges.
His hands closed around the throat of the furry abomination. But it was as if it wore a collar of transparent plastic. He could not quite touch the black fur. One supreme effort-
Then, even as a skeletal phalanx dissolved at the muzzle of his war blast, hands of bone seized him from behind. In a paroxysm of terror, surrender, and ultimate guilt, he screamed, “I give up! I give up!”
At that instant a shock more profound than any electrical one tortured his nerves. In his mind there was a pounding and wrenching and shaking, as of machines broken loose from their moorings. With sickening suddenness his mind spun, then came to rest with the impact of a concussion.
Consciousness darkened, but did not quite fade. Memory strands were strained to the breaking point, but held. His eyes, screwed shut at the final moment, opened. He was Jarles. He was the old Jarles. The Jarles who had defied the Hierarchy singlehanded. But that realization brought no relief. On the contrary, it was the beginning of a new agony, less endurable even than that which he had just undergone. For memory was intact. He remembered every action of the secondary personality-the betrayal of the Witchcraft, the kidnapping of Sharlson Naurya, the taunting of the Black Man, and, above all, the murder of Asmodeus. Those were his actions. He was responsible for them.
With a tortured, incredulous gasp he snatched away his hands from the familiar’s throat and slitted open his robe, preparing to turn the Finger of Wrath upon himself. But that release was denied him.
“Expiation, Armon Jarles! Expiation!” sternly resounded the inner voice. “You must first make atonement for your guilt.”
At the same moment there scrambled lightly up from behind the desk a second familiar. Coppery fur and a distorted facial resemblance proclaimed him the Black Man’s. Even his voice was a squeaky echo of the Black Man’s. “I am Dickon, Armon Jarles. It is I who have spoken to you through the mind of your little brother, just as my big brother instructed me. But my words were shaped in your little brother’s brain to a resemblance of your own. All three of us have touched minds.
“There is no time to lose. You must rescue my big brother. You must release him from his cell.”
A third familiar sprang up from behind the desk. Jarles’ dumbfoundment was complete. The inky creature bore an unmistakable, eerily hideous resemblance to the World Hierarch Goniface. For a moment he felt that by some incredible sorcery every human being in the whole world had been transformed into a chattering puppet, and that he, the only man left, was their prisoner and slave, a giant constrained to do their bidding.
“Haste! Haste!” cried Dickon, tugging at his robe.
Jarles obeyed. Soon he was striding hurriedly through the gloomy gray corridors of the crypts. The superstitious of an earlier age might have believed him to be a zombie, so white was his face, so set was his expression, so stiff and mechanical his strides. Through the ponderous metallic doorway of the subsidiary prison, the turnkey viewed him, satisfying himself that this was one of Goniface’s principal agents. The doorway slid aside, then swiftly closed behind Jarles. He turned toward the booth. The turnkey started to question him about his business. Jarles’ hand came up and he directed at the turnkey and his assistant a paralysis beam.
Then he reached forward and withdrew the activator of the locks from the little square box at the turnkey’s waist.
Like a figure of wax the turnkey stood there, his open lips forming a question that was never uttered. While behind him sat his assistant, one eyebrow raised in an unchanging expression of casual curiosity.
Down the prison corridor Jarles strode to the single cell in view of the booth. The two deacons guarding it had noticed, but had misinterpreted, the action which had taken place at the booth. They recognized the Fourth Circle priest who was approaching. More than once he had come here to conduct ironic and rather unpleasant conversations with their prisoner. So with looks of obsequious and respectful recognition on their faces, they were frozen by the paralysis beam. Then the electrical emanations from the activator in Jarles’ hand played on the lock. Slowly the cell door slid aside. At first only a hand could be seen-a hand that groped unsteadily at the wall of the cell, as if its owner were steeling himself to face and endure a terrible disappointment. Then the entire figure came into view.
Physical injury and psychological strain had taken their toll of the Black Man. He appeared pale and dwarfed in his gray prison tunic.
And his thoughts were dwarfed and pale. Jarles, he decided, had only come to taunt him once more. The cold, wooden look in Jarles’ eyes seemed to confirm this. Besides, the guards were sitting there as if nothing had happened.
“I have murdered Asmodeus,” he heard Jarles say, and it was to the Black Man a final confirmation of his worst fears. Despairingly, he gathered himself for a lunge into the corridor. Knock down Jarles-try to seize a wrath rod.
Then-rush of a coppery shadow, and before he knew how it had happened, Dickon was clinging to the breast of his tunic and plucking gently at his face.
“Brother, oh brother,” the tiny voice piped. “Dickon has done what you commanded. Dickon’s brother is free, free!”
And even as he sought to grasp the simple meaning of those words, he heard Jarles repeat, in the same formal tone as if he were making a statement before a Hierarchic court of law, “I have murdered Asmodeus-“
The Black Man could not understand. For a moment he wondered crazily if this were some stratagem of Brother Dhomas to unseat his reason. Then Jarles added-“who, as you know, was the Fanatic archpriest Sercival.”
As if at some stupid, pointless, yet unbearably ludicrous joke, the Black Man began to laugh. Then suddenly he clapped his hand to his mouth, hardly realizing that Dickon’s had already been laid there, warning him to be silent. Incredulously, he stared at Jarles.
“The other captive witches-“ he asked.
“-are still imprisoned here,” Jarles answered.
A few moments more and Jarles was again striding down the prison corridor. Beside him walked a figure draped in a deacon’s robe, face shadowed by black hood, hands gripping a wrath rod. The corridor made a right-angled turn. Before them stretched a block of cells, two deacons stationed at each door. Down that corridor they paced, and the almost inaudible hissing of a paralysis beam accompanied them. The last three pairs sensed danger, but too late. They were frozen in the act of reaching for their wrath rods, stacked against the wall. The last pair were actually lifting theirs to take aim, but in that position they remained. The Black Man threw back his hood.
A door across the corridor opened and through it stepped Cousin Deth. With a swiftness almost incredible for a man he directed his wrath rod at the Black Man and Jarles. But a familiar’s reactions are swifter than a man’s. In a blur of movement Dickon scuttled at him across the floor.
Deth’s sallow face was contorted suddenly with a fear that had only been there once before-when he fled panic-stricken from the haunted house.
“The thing in the hole!” he cried hollowly. “The spider!”
A moment more and he had realized his misapprehension, and the violet needle of his wrath ray was swinging down at Dickon.
But the Black Man had gained time to act. His own wrath ray lashed out, swished into that of Cousin Deth’s. Since the two rays were mutually impenetrable, unable to cut through each other, Deth’s was fended off from Dickon.
Like two ancient swordsmen, then, the warlock and the deacon dueled together. Their weapons were two endless blades of violet incandescence, but their tactics were those of sabers-feint, cut, parry, swift riposte. Ceiling, walls, and floor were traced with redly glowing curlicues. Paralyzed deacons, seeming like spectators frozen in amazement, were burned down where they stood or stooped or sat.
The end came swiftly. On a whirling disengagement, Deth’s blade ripped burningly through the slack of the Black Man’s robe, under his arm. But he parried in time. Instantly he feinted one riposte, made another, and the sallow face and swollen forehead of Cousin Deth ceased to exist. Fending off the beam of the wrath rod that slipped from Deth’s fingers, the Black Man hurried forward and switched off both weapons.
Then he turned to Jarles, who had stood motionless against the wall all through the fight, inviting destruction. He ordered Jarles to activate the locks. But he wasted not a word on his captive fellow witches, as they emerged wonderingly from their cells, like ghosts summoned from the Underworld. Even Drick he turned away with a quick headshake. His every effort was concentrated on drawing from the seemingly hypnotized Jarles a terse account of the recent events which had shaken Megatheopolis. Jarles was activating the last lock. The Black Man noted that the hitherto set expression on the face of the twice-renegade priest was beginning to cloud a little, like a man recovering from the actions of a narcotic drug.
Haltingly, with the effortfulness of a man who begins to realize what enormous crimes he must make amends for, Jarles said, “I can take you to where the Fanatic priests are imprisoned. We can attempt to release them and to seize the Sanctuary.”
Almost, the Black Man was tempted. His duel with Deth had put him in the mood for such a venture.
But wrath rods were not witches’ weapons, he reminded himself. Asmodeus had wagered everything on fear. And, so, it was by fear alone that the wager could be won. Again Jarles spoke. He seemed to the Black Man to be groping for the solution of some profound inward problem. “If you desire it,” he said, “I will attempt to assassinate the World Hierarch Goniface.”
“By no means!” the Black Man answered, hardly certain yet whether or not he should treat Jarles as a sane man.
“Operations of a very different sort are intended against
Goniface. If only I knew what has happened to Sharlson
Naurya-“
“She lies in my apartment,” said Jarles dully, “under the influence of a paralysis beam.”
The Black Man stared at him. He was only now beginning to realize what an utterly incredible accomplice he had in Jarles. Then he laughed, the brief laugh of a man who suddenly understands that the incredible and the inevitable are sometimes the same thing. He had to trust Jarles, for tonight Jarles was blind destiny personified.
“Return to your apartment,” he ordered Jarles. “Rouse Sharlson Naurya. Tell her we proceed with the operations against Goniface as planned. Aid her in reaching the vicinity of his apartment without being detected. Take with you Goniface’s familiar and your own.”
Then he turned and motioned to his witches and warlocks to follow him.