CHAPTER SIX:
Stone and Clouds

For one sickening, surreal, disorienting instant, she thought she was back on the set. A number of other equally plausible alternatives presented themselves in quick succession.

She was blind.

She was dead.

She was in yet another godlost alternate universe.

Then she moved, and the sense of her body returned to her. She could feel weight on her wrists, and emptiness beneath her feet.

She was hanging in chains.

She'd been in this situation before, only then she'd been standing on a box (placed outside of camera-range, of course) so that her full weight didn't dangle from her wrists. Now there was nothing beneath her feet but air. The bracers protected her wrists from the full brunt of the shackles, but her arms were stretched wide, and all her weight was pulling her shoulders taut. She kicked back, and felt the wall at her back. Getting her feet behind her and pushing out helped a little, but not much, and she had no idea where her sword was. It had been in her hand. It wasn't now.

She felt dazed and battered, off-balance. The absence of the chaos of a moment before was as much of an assault on the senses as its presence had been. Her heart was still hammering, making it hard to breathe, and she struggled uselessly against her chains, fighting against a threat that wasn't there any more, the horrors she had seen playing themselves out inside her mind.

Dylan was dead. She'd barely registered the fact at the time, but now, in the darkness, she saw it again too clearly: the spear sticking out of his chest, the moment of shocked surprise, the awful, utter, deadness of him when he fell.

And what had she done? She'd given his gun to the woman who'd killed him. How heroic was that? She'd rewarded his killer.

She choked on a sob.

"Slayer?"

Ivradan's voice came out of the darkness. No, not darkness. Her eyes were adjusting now. Dimness. She blinked, realizing she could actually see him looking up at her.

He was alive and whole. Scared to death, but that was a sane and wholesome response to the situation. She took a deep breath, forcing herself to relax, settle down, focus.

"G'day, mate."

"I don't know what happened," Ivradan confessed, as if it were somehow a failure.

"Neither do I," Glory admitted. "Fine pair of heroes we make."

"Hero?" Ivradan sounded outraged at being given such a title. It made Glory smile, though she'd never felt more like bursting into tears.

Her feet slipped on the wall, and she fell to hang full length in her shackles again. The jolt of impact dragged her hands halfway through the cuffs, and that gave her an idea. If they were that loose . . . 

"Say, Ivro, how chipper are you feeling?"

He came over and stood at her feet, still holding the decidedly more slender Gordon. She could now see that she was hanging only a few feet off the floor, but a few inches or a few yards, it didn't make much difference to her shoulders. It did make a difference to what she wanted to try.

"'Chipper,'" he echoed warily.

"Can you lift me up a little? I think I can work loose from these cuffs if I can get a little leverage."

Ivradan stepped forward and set Gordon down carefully. He bent down and hugged her firmly around the knees. Then he straightened up.

Glory felt the release of the strain as a thousand tiny needles of fire along her shoulders and back, and the resulting cramps in her legs as she fought to balance in Ivradan's grip. But now she could hear the chains clank, and feel their weight, and she could lift her arms enough to make the manacles slide on her wrists.

But that wasn't what was going to get her out of them. She pulled down, carefully, twisting her wrist back and forth as she did and inventing new curses for the costume designers at the same time. She folded her thumb into her palm as hard as she could, and strained against the metal, and hoped . . . 

Her right hand slipped free of the shackle. And at the same time Ivradan dropped her.

She had just enough warning to point the fingers of her left hand. There was a wrenching strain as all her weight hung suspended for a moment from one wrist, and then the cuff simply slipped off. She dropped to the floor and fell sprawling, more or less on top of Ivradan.

She rolled out of the tangle, and it seemed like too much trouble to get up, so she didn't. She lay there, wishing all her problems would go away. If she hadn't killed Dylan (and she didn't feel quite guilty enough to shoulder the blame for that one, not quite), at least she hadn't saved him, and that was bad enough. He was a pratt, certainly, but he was her pratt, and he hadn't deserved killing.

Only now he was dead, no matter whose fault it was. A lot of people were dead, each of them the stars of their own lives, butchered like bad cattle—and for what? Window-dressing in the Warmother's set-piece? Was she that . . . wasteful?

If she was (as she claimed to be) War Incarnate, the answer to that was a resounding "Yes," and the real question became, why in Heaven's name didn't everybody run screaming the moment they heard of her instead of sticking about?

But people were funny that way, even blue people, or gold scaly people, or people in any of the other odd shapes and designs she'd seen today. People were funny in general, when you came right down to it: Glory'd even heard there were such things as Satanists, and if you wanted to talk about unprepossessing targets for fealty . . . 

The Amazons didn't seem to fit in with the rest of the Warmother's crew, somehow, though—maybe they'd manage to get shut of Charane while her back was turned, or something, though why they'd followed her to Erchanen in the first place . . . 

Glory sighed, realizing she'd really better pay attention to the problem at hand instead of letting her mind wander off down pathways that were more interesting simply because they weren't related to the matter at hand. Item: one dungeon, constructed for the reception of neither Australian nor Allimir, to judge from the size of the shackles.

If there could be cement here (and she didn't actually know there couldn't be), she'd say this place was made of cement. It was damp and cold. There were several sets of rusty shackles set into the wall above her head; she watched the set she'd recently vacated swing slowly to a stop, bouncing back and forth along the wall with a dull clanking and scraping. The ceiling itself was too far away to see. Set into the wall at her feet, maybe fifteen or twenty feet up, was a line of narrow windows, horizontal slits really, that let in the remains of a pallid, wan, grey, overcast entirely unprepossessing day. The air, like the dungeon, smelled wet and cold. It was probably raining somewhere.

She sat up with a groan, then stood (reluctantly), looking around. She spied her sword over in a corner, under a bench, and went to fetch it, inspecting it carefully. It seemed unharmed and untampered with. Was it so irrelevant and harmless that Charane didn't think it worth bothering with, or so powerful that she couldn't touch it?

I wish I knew—that among other things. She slipped it back into its scabbard.

"Let's get out of here," she said aloud.

"How?" Ivradan asked simply.

And Glory took another look—a really good look this time—at their prison. All of their prison.

It had windows and manacles and chains and benches, high smooth walls and a distant vaulting ceiling. All the things you'd expect to find in a high-class dungeon.

But it had no door at all.

Half an hour later she knew more than she had before, none of it encouraging.

Even if Glory could lift Ivradan up far enough to reach the window-slits—and she couldn't—they were too narrow for him to get through.

The Sword of Cinnas, fine magical item though it was, could not chop through the walls, or even dent them.

The benches could not be removed from the walls.

There was no way out.

It bothered Glory, and she wasn't exactly sure why. It seemed that the two of them were going to have plenty of time to think about it, though.

"It just doesn't work," she said, pacing the cell. It was nice that there was plenty of cell to pace in: the floor of the cell was at least twenty feet by forty, and Glory was using every foot. Back and forth, and all she could come up with was the conviction that this would make a lousy episode of The Incredibly True Adventures of Vixen the Slayer. Meanwhile, the light from outside slowly dimmed. Eventually, it would be entirely dark.

Bummer.

"She likes to play. Helevrin said that about her, Ivradan. Cat and mouse. Never too much all at once," Glory said. Thinking out loud—or at least trying to. She wasn't having much luck so far.

"That is so," Ivradan admitted, watching Glory warily. The Allimir horsemaster lay full-length on one of the stone benches, looking utterly spent. But Glory was too keyed-up to rest.

"But why this? It's like she's quit. Where's the fun for her in just locking us up somewhere in a magic dungeon to starve to death?"

"Perhaps," Ivradan said in a peculiar voice, "in that we could get out if we would."

Glory stopped pacing and stared at him.

"Slayer, I have been thinking," Ivradan said, still looking as if he'd suddenly swallowed a live carp. "About the horses."

"Yes," Glory said quietly. If she startled him now, she'd never hear what he had to say, and it might well be important.

"You remember the mist on the trail, and how they walked into it without changing their gait? And how, when they reached the summit, even though there was green grass all around, they would not graze?"

"I remember," Glory said.

"That is not how horses behave, and it has puzzled me, but now I think I have found an answer. I do not believe they saw either the mist or the grass, though we did, and felt them, too. Could it be that they were not there at all? And if such things could be illusion, could not this prison be illusion as well?"

"Oh, sure," Glory said flippantly, and then thought about it. Hard.

If Ivradan said the horses didn't react to the mist and the grass because they were illusions, he probably had the right of it. And if the two of them were stuck in a dungeon that wasn't really here, that would be enough of a giggle to keep Charane amused, wouldn't it? Watching them commit suicide in a prison that wasn't one?

"If it is an illusion, how do we make it go away?" she asked.

Ivradan sat up and looked at her hopefully. Glory sighed. He was right. It was the sidekick's job to come up with the fool notion, and the hero's job to make it work. Division of labor. Only she hadn't the faintest idea of how that was to be accomplished. The dungeon certainly looked—and felt—real.

As real as the grass—and the mist—had.

Not much to go on, that. 

She walked over to the wall and leaned her forehead against it, concentrating on its not being there. The wall remained stubbornly solid.

"Slayer—" Ivradan said in an awed whisper.

She opened her eyes. Bright violet light illuminated the wall, casting her image upon it in sharp black shadow. The Sword of Cinnas had woken up, glowing as brightly as it had back in the Temple.

"Oh, silly me," Glory said weakly. "I've been using the wrong end of the sword."

She stepped back from the wall and—feeling just a bit as if she were playing Joan of Arc—drew the sword and grasped it below the crosspiece, where the blade was dull. The violet crystals set in the hilt glowed as though lit from within, almost too bright to look at directly.

"Ivradan—come here."

She could wield the sword, she could play the hero, but she couldn't believe in this as much as the Allimir could. And what they needed right now was belief. Whole cartloads of it.

Reluctantly, Ivradan approached, still clutching Gordon. The bullet had blown the back of the stuffed elephant open, and most of its stuffing had escaped, so Gordon was now a rather saggy baggy elephant, but that didn't matter. If they got out of here, Glory promised herself she'd get him the best new innards money could buy.

"This is the Sword of Cinnas, with which he chained the Warmother back in the Time of Legend. It is full of Erchane's magic, and it is strong enough to destroy this illusion. Put your hand over mine," she said in Vixen's ringing tones.

She felt Ivradan's hand tremble as he placed it over hers. And then, slowly, keeping her mind studiously blank, she moved the glowing crosspiece of the sword toward the wall, trying not to expect failure.

As the power crystals neared the wall, she felt resistance, the kind you'd get if you tried to push two magnets together the wrong way. Glory became enormously heartened by this, suddenly believing it all herself. This was an illusion. The sword would get them out. She wasn't thinking beyond that, to actually getting away.

It became harder to push the sword forward, and she felt a pang of alarm—suppose it was destroyed the way the bear-wolf's talisman had been when she brought it into the Oracle-cave? But even with all the jewels dark, the sword would still be a sword, its blade still sharp, and they had to get out of here.

They had to get out of here.

The hilt clattered against the wall, and Glory felt a sharp pang of cheated disappointment. It hadn't worked. The wall was still there.

But wasn't the sound of the sword's impact a little wrong, the feel of it hitting the wall not quite right? She forced herself to notice those subtle things, to believe them, to keep pushing as if there were someplace for the sword to go, because the wall mustn't be there, the dungeon couldn't hold them. It was all false, unreal, a thing of illusion, and an illusion that had just been routed by superior firepower, at that. She told herself that fervently, demanding that it be true, because she needed it to be true. For Ivradan's sake, and Belegir's, and because she wasn't dead yet, and she'd promised to destroy the Warmother. . . .

And suddenly she realized that the wall wasn't a wall at all. It was mist, and wet cardboard, and old mop-strings. Glory could see nothing, and instinctively closed her eyes. She reached across herself with her free hand and grabbed Ivradan's wrist fiercely, making sure he held fast to the sword, and pushed forward.

Suddenly they were in the middle of a storm. Wind and rain tore at her, knocking her down, pulling Ivradan away from her. She had an instant to choose between holding onto him or the sword, and with a pang of grief, she chose the sword. The wind knocked her sprawling; she fell and rolled, clinging to the hilt and trying to force her eyes open against the freezing, soaking gusts of rain-heavy wind.

Then, as if the storm had only been another wall to pass through, it, too, was gone. She shook the water out of her eyes and stood. Her braid hung down her back like a wet snake, heavy and clinging.

"Ivradan!"

She was back where they'd started—the top of Grey Arlinn. But nothing else was the same. It was twilight; that meant a couple of hours of light left at this altitude. Stone-colored thunderheads were piled among the mountains, and the setting sun shone between them; a spectacular view, not that she cared. Her leather was soaked through—still flexible, but she was shivering with cold. She looked around quickly.

The fairy-princess castle, the lawn, all the silly-bugger trappings, were gone.

Except for one.

In the center of the flat open space stood a huge cantilevered slab of smooth black stone. Manacles were set into it, and Ivradan was locked into them, spread-eagled as though he were waiting for a vulture to come and tear out his liver. He'd dropped Gordon, and the little elephant was a blot of bright color at the foot of the stone, like an offering of flowers to a sacrificial prince.

Glory ran across the mountaintop toward the stone. The whole set-up looked remarkably like one of the concept-sketches from TITAoVtS's "For Whom the Belle Trolls" episode they'd been supposed to shoot next season. In her hand, the Sword of Cinnas was vibrating madly, as though somebody had flicked a switch inside it.

"No worries, mate," she said breathlessly. "I reckon I can get you out of there, and—" As she reached out to touch the stone, Ivradan's face went . . . strange.

::Have you come to chain me once more, little mortal?:: a voice said inside Glory's head.

She froze, not turning, part of her mind waiting for someone to call out and tell her they had the shot, fine, cut for lunch. The twilight faded from the sky as someone had shut off the lights, and then it went right on getting darker. At the same time, cold rolled toward her as if someone had opened a freezer.

Ivradan gazed at her hopelessly for a moment, and then closed his eyes in surrender.

Glory turned, slowly, telling herself desperately that it didn't matter what she saw, she wouldn't scream, she wouldn't. 

The sound she made instead emerged as a desolate moan.

Charane had gotten tired of playing. This was her true form at last, it must be—and it looked like every nightmare Ridley Scott'd had for the past twenty years.

The monster towered over Glory in the greenish dusk, a few meters away, but close enough that it only had to bend down to bite off her head. Its hide was a crusty glistening tarnished black, and there was something horribly serpentlike about its movements. Dragon—dragon—dragon— her mind babbled idiotically.

Glory's stunned gaze stumbled over its unfamiliar contours, unable to figure out what she was seeing. A dragon. A monster. A nightmare. Something that could not possibly exist. She took a step backward and bumped into the stone, and Ivradan's body. She could feel the rough homespun of his trousers, the warmth of his body, through the bare flesh of the top of her thighs. He was still alive.

Meant to be. All this. A set-up. The last act. Her thoughts were a disjointed commentary that even she wasn't listening to. She desperately wanted to run, to be anywhere that wasn't here, looking at that. If she threw down the sword and ran, the dragon would let her go. She knew that—or at least it was worth a try. Better that— Better that—

The sword was blazing in her hands, as hot as the rest of her was cold, vibrating so hard she was afraid she'd drop it. She could see it wobble, its movement only partly because her hands were shaking so hard. If she took a single step, her knees would buckle and she'd fall. She couldn't remember a single thing Bruce had ever told her about fighting, and even if she could remember, it would do her no good against something like this.

But she would not run. She was too terrified to think clearly, but Ross, her gymnastics coach, had spent hours and days and years training her to go beyond thought. Her mind blank with an emotion too profound to be called fear, Glory wrapped both hands around the hilt and raised her sword.

The Warmother . . . recoiled.

And suddenly Glory knew. 

"Father?"

"Only a little farther, Charane."

"Where are we going?"

"Only to the top of the mountain. . . ."

"Charane was his daughter," Glory said hoarsely, stunned. Cinnas had brought her here, chained her just as Ivradan was chained now, and enchanted the spirit of War into her body, trapping the Warmother for a thousand years.

The spell had killed her.

He'd killed his own daughter.

And now Glory could do the same thing. Kill Ivradan, and chain the Warmother again. Because Cinnas had left the spells behind. The sword-blade wasn't the true weapon. It was the gems in the hilt, the spell-gems that were the magic of Erchane in solid form, just as Belegir had been telling her all along.

::Well?:: the Warmother said. The dragon opened its mouth. Black teeth glistened with venom. It spread membranous wings, blotting out the light.

Glory threw herself sideways out of sheer expectation, and a moment later a fine mist of venom sprayed the ground where she'd been standing, just missing Ivradan. Glory brandished the sword threateningly, gripping the hilt tightly.

::No warrior born of woman, no weapon forged in the world, can unmake my form, for I am made of all warriors and all weapons. Prepare to die, Vixen the Slayer!:: the Warmother cried gloatingly.

The gems blazed, leaking light in a thousand directions. Its demand to be used was so insistent it nearly distracted Glory from the creature that was trying to kill her. She could feel the ghost of Cinnas in the purple light, trying to take over her body and make her do as he had done before.

The Warmother must think she didn't know what to do with the sword, but she did. She could see it all so clearly in her mind. The day had been fair and bright. There had been a young girl in a blue dress, crowned with flowers. Blue flowers. She'd loved her father. She'd trusted him.

Use the sword, came the voice inside her mind. The sword's voice. A voice she thought she knew.

"Silly me. I've been using the wrong end of the sword." 

Sacrifice an innocent. For an ideal.

No! 

Slowly, she backed away from the dragon, moving slowly, as if that would keep it from striking at her. Its eyes glowed blue, blue as Charane's magic. Blue as the flowers in a child's hair.

Was Dylan Her last try at tricking the spell? Or someone's? Chain Dylan there instead of Ivradan? But it would have made no difference to Glory. Dylan or Ivradan, either one would have been an innocent victim. Neither could be sacrificed.

Who comes UP with these ideas? 

The Warmother reared back, and its body seemed to stretch, its contours crawling and changing until it resembled an insect rather than a reptile: a mantis. It was the size of a city bus, its body the color of tarnished copper, its giant faceted eyes a glowing glittering blue. Glory stared in amazement, her terror dissolving in the face of this fresh impossibility. Then the monstrous head dipped toward her, mandibles flexing, and she scrambled back out of the way. No matter what shape the creature took on, the Warmother was still trying to kill her.

She ran backwards, dragging the balky sword with her, pulling the fight away from the rock where Ivradan was chained. The Warmother was fast, but Glory had plenty of room to move, and adrenaline to keep her faster. And she thought the Warmother was still a little afraid of the sword, which was all to the good. In fact, Glory was getting to be afraid of it, too. If it could take her over— If it could make her do what it wanted—

If she threw the sword over the edge of the cliff she'd break Cinnas' attempts to bespell her. And the Warmother would kill her and Ivradan both, and then everyone else. One life for the many, the sword whispered, is that such a bad trade? 

No! 

Heroes did not kill the innocent.

She could hear the little girl Charane had been inside her head. Charane was screaming, the high disbelieving screams of an abandoned child.

He'd chained her to the rock. . . . 

This is no way to persuade me!

The mantis-thing scuttled forward and she slashed at it. The blade struck the creature across the top of its skull and bounced, as if Glory had struck stone. The mantis reared back and pounced, but Glory wasn't there. You could cover a lot of ground with a series of standing back-layouts, and she did. The mantis-thing sprang after her, but Glory had room to manoeuvre and plenty of incentive.

The wind was picking up again. It was getting harder to see, but there wasn't much up here to trip over. And the sword provided plenty of light. It was magic, after all—magic that had trapped her, tricked her, lied to her. Kept her from asking any of the right questions, until it was too late.

But she could still be a hero. She could still win.

All she had to do was let go. . . .  

Let the magic take over.

Believe.

And hit the Warmother with the other end of the sword.

Chain her again.

And kill Ivradan to do it.

He could have died anyway, right? Any time this past five years. Any time today, in fact.

She could be a hero. . . . 

No! 

The sword twisted in her hands, desperate now to fulfill its purpose. She could feel sharp pieces of metal working their way loose in the hilt, cutting her hands until they bled. She gripped it tighter, ignoring the pain. She'd been an Olympic-class gymnast. Pain was an old friend.

There has to be another way! 

The mantis looked fragile. Cut its head off, and maybe it would go away, at least for a while. If she could get back to Belegir—tell him what she knew—get his advice—

Then the monster darted forward—much faster than it had moved until now—and plucked the sword, blade first, from her hands, flaying her palms raw as it tore the hilt from her grip. Even over the sound of the rising storm, Glory could hear the faint pinging as the Warmother crumpled the blade in its mandibles. The hilt, with its cargo of magic, went spinning off out of reach across the stone. It burned like a beacon. Easy to spot. Impossible to reach.

As she stood, dumbfounded at this sudden disaster, the Warmother lashed at her with one barbed foreleg, and Glory flung herself out of the way, automatically catching herself on her hands. But they were slick now with her own blood, and instead of going into a forward rollout, she slipped and fell heavily onto her right shoulder, knocking herself breathless.

She'd lost.

I guess I wasn't the right sort of hero after all, she thought bitterly. I'm sorry.

Nothing happened. She raised her head. The Warmother was waiting, still chewing on the blade as if it were a stalk of grass. Waiting for her to get up, so it could chase her some more.

Slowly, Glory got to her feet, but she didn't run. There was no point. She was damned if she was going to exert herself just to amuse that thing. She straightened up and stood waiting, wiping her bloody palms down over her bedraggled velvet panniers. Nice to know they were finally good for something. Fresh blood welled up almost immediately from a thousand tiny cuts.

::I don't need this form to destroy you:: the Warmother sneered. It began to melt away, dwindling until it had taken the form of a naked woman, impossibly old. Her mottled skin hung in folds on her emaciated body and only a few wisps of white hair clung to her waxy scalp. Her face was fallen in, her cheeks were slack and hollow over toothless gums. She drooled. Only her eyes were alive, black pits of malignant fire.

::This is what you fear most.:: 

Age. Death. Incapacity.

"Everybody dies," Glory said flatly. And everybody got too old to be what they wanted to be. It was the prevailing fear of an actor, but Glory had already faced it as a gymnast. And in comparison to what had just happened, it seemed like such a petty thing to be afraid of.

You've won. And it's not enough for you. You still want to play around. The resignation of a moment before vanished, replaced by cold fury and a desire to at least piss the Warmother off before she died. Think, stupid! What would Vixen do? She's lost her sword before. Lots of times. 

And the sword wasn't Vixen's only weapon. . . . 

Moving as slowly as she dared, Glory let her hands drop to her sides as the hag walked slowly toward her. She groped along the side of her boot for one of the row of stakes—Genuine English Rowan (not)—sheathed there. I guess I'm not through fighting after all. While her sword had been some kind of magic wizard metal, these stakes weren't even wood. They were cast plastic. They wouldn't do any better than the sword had, but at least she'd go down fighting. Her fingers closed painfully over one of the stakes and eased it gently from its sheath.

The Warmother reached for her, a gloating smile on its hideous crone's face.

::But you will die NOW, Vixen the Slayer.:: 

Its flesh was colder than snow where it touched her, even through her costume, and Glory felt her heartbeat slow as she was gathered into the hag's embrace. She gritted her teeth, and raised her arms to embrace the Warmother in return, filling herself up with all her anger, all her hatred of petty bullies and pointless cruelty.

"Up yours, Granny," Glory whispered in helpless defiance, gripping the stake.

And thrust inward as hard as she could.

She felt a crunch. The stake had gone in. But it wasn't supposed to do that, was it? It was supposed to just bounce off, the way the sword had.

There was a yelp of astonished pain right in her ear, and something hot and thick and nasty spurted over the back of Glory's hand. It burned caustically where it touched her open wounds, and she hissed with the bright pain of it. The cold reptilian embrace slackened, and Glory recoiled, jerking free and staring at the thick black blood on her hand, wondering if she were poisoned.

::No warrior born of woman, no weapon forged in the world can unmake my form!:: the Warmother said in disbelief. The hag took a staggering step backward, still staring at Glory in shock.

Glory kicked her in the face. The impact sent the hag sprawling onto the prop-stake in her back, driving the point through her ribs in front, but Glory wasn't willing to settle for that. She'd already pulled a second stake from its boot-sheath, and dropped to her knees beside the hag's squirming body. With a practiced gesture, she hammered it down through the sternum, driving it home with the heel of her hand. Black goo, thick as watery gruel, pushed up out of the hag's mouth and ran down the sides of her face. Glory reached for a third stake, ignoring the burning in her hands, talking as she hammered it home beside the other.

"I'm a Phys Ed teacher, mate, not a warrior. And that's a prop, not a weapon. Didn't anybody think to tell you?" Cast, not forged, and in another world than this. Tailor-made for the circumventing of prophecies, as a matter of fact.

She reached for a fourth—Vixen carried six—but the Warmother had stopped moving.

As Glory stared, the ancient hag withered away to a skeletal mummyish bundle, then began to melt like a chunk of dry ice, a thick mist rising skyward from her huddled form.

The Lucite stakes were dissolving along with the body, leaving only melted stubs and ends behind. Seeing that, Glory tore the cloth panniers loose from her costume and scrubbed her hands furiously with them, tearing the shredded flesh further, until there was nothing left on her skin but her own blood.

It began to rain. Thick, fat, cold drops of honest water, hitting her on the back of the head, on her raw back and her bare sunburned shoulders, trickling down into the lining of her leather corset. Glory had never been so grateful to be cold and wet in her entire life.

::You'll live to regret this, Vixen the Slayer!:: came a faint disembodied whisper, fading even as the words were uttered.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Glory muttered, not paying very much attention. I guess bad villain-dialogue is the same everywhere.

She was jittery and exhausted at the same time, giddy with relief, watching as the creature dissolved. I won? How could I have won? It can't be that easy. . . .  

"Slayer!" came an irritable shout.

Ivradan.

Irritable? 

Wearily, Glory got to her feet and walked carefully over to the altar rock. It was raining in good earnest now, and the smooth granite mountaintop was as slippery as polished marble. Puddles were gathering in places where the surface wasn't quite as even. Soon it would be completely dark.

But the Warmother was dead.

They'd won.

Ivradan was struggling against his shackles. "Get me out of here!" he demanded.

"Um . . . sure, mate," Glory said, surprised. Look here, she wanted to say, I've just put paid to your chief villain for you, and all you can think to do is yell at me? How about the thanks of a grateful nation, and all that, hey? "Any ideas?"

She wanted to sleep. Right here, right now. In the rain. On the rock. Her hands hurt. She leaned against the slab, wincing. She thought she'd done something not very nice to her shoulder in that last fall. Not that anybody around here seemed to care. Her eyes prickled hotly. In another moment she was going to start bawling out of sheer self-pity.

"Use the sword. Or what's left of it."

Ivradan sounded downright pettish. She supposed he might have a right, since he'd been the one about to be the dragon's lunch and all, but it didn't really seem fair, somehow. . . . 

And suddenly the penny dropped.

Belegir: "A terrible power has been unleashed in the land of Erchanen. Long was it prisoned upon the peaks of Grey Arlinn. . . ."

Charane: "No warrior born of woman, no weapon forged in the world can unmake my form." 

Long was it prisoned . . .  

No weapon can unmake . . .  

Not "kill." Unmake. 

"Uh-oh," she whispered guiltily. Cinnas might have been called the Warkiller, but he hadn't killed the Warmother. You couldn't kill War. Cinnas had bound her into corporeal form, removing the threat of war from Erchanen by removing War Herself. And then he'd chained her up.

And what had Glory done?

Only a hero can chain her once more, Belegir had said, but that wasn't what Glory had done. Glory had unmade Cinnas' binding, forcing the Warmother to return to her original form from eons before, the form out of which she'd been summoned by the Mage Cinnas so that she could be chained.

"Well, bugger all," Glory said inadequately. And began to laugh.

"What are you laughing at?" Ivradan demanded.

"I've violated the bloody Prime Directive! Hoo!" Glory told him gleefully, giggling harder. James T. Kirk, where are you when we really need you? The giggles turned to guffaws, then great roaring whoops of laughter that made her sides ache. She'd solved one problem, and set up a thousand new ones. The peaceful pastoral Allimir were now the old warlike Allimir again. She'd been out to do a good deed, and it looked like all she'd done was re-introduce the concept of not-very-original-sin into a world that had managed to get rid of it.

Of course, alternatively, they could all be dead.

She found the notion insanely funny. It was raining, they were stuck on top of a mountain, Ivradan was shouting at her in a red-faced fury—thanks to her—and every time she looked at him it set her off again, until Glory was lying helplessly on the ground at his feet, clutching Gordon to her and whimpering helplessly because her ribs hurt from laughing so hard.

"Don't you see, Ivro?" she finally managed to get out. "War's back. She's back in all of you, just like before."

There was a moment of silence.

"Back? But you killed her, Slayer. I saw it." He sounded halfway between impatient and worried.

Wearily, Glory pushed herself to her feet again. She realized she was stiff with cold and soaking wet and if they didn't get down off this mountaintop, there'd be nobody to bring the good news about this day's work to the home folks.

"You can't kill War," Glory said, figuring it out as she spoke. "Cinnas reasoned that out back in the day. He bound her into corporeal form. She got loose of her chains, but she was still in one piece and one place, as it were. What the sword was supposed to do was chain her up again." She thought she'd leave out the part about Ivradan getting killed in the process. Belegir could have the whole story. Let him decide how much the rest of the Allimir needed to know about what their great hero had really been like, and what he'd done to gain them their thousand years of peace.

"But you didn't do that," Ivradan said.

"Nope. I reckon I unmade her, back the way she was before old Cinnas did all his spells to make you lot into pacifists. So I guess you've got a lot to re-learn."

And fast, if any of Charane's imported frighteners were still wandering around loose.

"I . . . see," said Ivradan, who obviously didn't. "Now will you unchain me? I'm cold."

"Cut. Print. Save it for the day, kiddies, we'll go again tomorrow," Glory said to nobody in particular. She looked around for the sword—or what (as Ivradan had so kindly reminded her) was left of it. It was still glowing, making it easy to spot. She could wrap her hands up in the pannier-cloth so she wouldn't have to actually touch it. She walked over to the glowing sword hilt, wrapping the cloth around her hands.

It wasn't glowing as brightly now—and was it her imagination, or did it look just the least bit pissed off?

"Sorry, mate," she said to it. "But where I come from, we don't do things like what you did. Heroes don't, any how."

Captain Kirk would have made a fine speech about how cultures needed to change and grow and overcome their warlike natures naturally the way Earthlings had, but Glory was tired and she didn't have a scriptwriter handy anyway. She bent over—stiffly, everything hurt—and picked up the sword by what was left of the blade. Her hands hurt, and every finger-twitch seemed to start fresh bleeding.

What if this didn't work? What if the sword wouldn't open the shackles? Neither she nor Ivradan would survive a night spent here on top of this mountain. She wasn't even sure they could get down it in the dark.

But they had to give it a try.

She carried the sword back to the slab, moving with a slow shuffle an arthritic tortoise could have bettered. The gems in the hilt glowed faintly, as if they were slowly going out.

Hurry up, damn you! she told herself.

She reached the slab, and as she did, her foot skidded in a puddle of wet. She fell forward, catching herself automatically on her hands, slamming the sword-hilt into the stone and falling full-length against Ivradan. He grunted as the breath whooshed out of him.

There was a sort of a crackling sound, as though someone were crumpling cellophane next to her ear.

"Get off me," Ivradan said, pushing her away.

Pushing her away.

"Hey," Glory said, pleased, surprised, and irritated all at once. She rolled away, looking and then feeling for the sword-hilt. "I liked you the other way better," she muttered under her breath.

It was gone. Metal hilt, jewels, everything. Gone. "Returned to Erchane's embrace," I reckon, just like the one in the staff. And good riddance, if you ask me. Where the iron shackles had been, there was nothing more than rusty stubs set into the rock.

Ivradan slid down the rock and stood, hugging himself against the chill and the wet. "Now what do we—"

"Why ask me?" Glory snapped. "Seems to me you're the bossy-boots with all the ideas around here! 'Slayer, get me off this rock!' 'Slayer, you broke the magic sword!' 'Slayer, go find the rest of the magic sword and undo my shackles!' 'Slayer, I'm wet,' 'Slayer, I'm cold,' Well, I'm the one who just slew the damned dragon, and does anybody think about how I'm feeling? Oh, no, it's all Me—Me—Me. Well, you can just—"

Ivradan put a hand on her arm.

"Slayer, I'm sorry. I was afraid," he said humbly.

Glory smiled, feeling chagrined at her burst of temper. "Fine pair of heroes we make."

It was too dark to see, but she thought he smiled back. "We are heroes, aren't we?"

"Damn right," Glory grumbled, obscurely mollified. "Think we can make it down off this rock in the dark?"

"We can try," Ivradan answered.