The smith’s hammer that was his heritage, from which he now drew inner strength, that stood for all that was normal and right in the world he knew and the rod that was a part of this—those were his weapons. No, rather his tools, for he did not altogether look upon what faced them as a battle, but rather a need to deal with something that was badly flawed.
“This is your free will?” Fanyi looked now as might a chief about to bind someone by blood oath.
“My will,” Sander agreed.
She turned from him to the animals. The fishers came to her and she rested a hand on each head. They stood so for a moment, then they rose to lick at her cheeks. Rhin had watched them. Now the koyot also moved, but he came to Sander, nudging the smith’s shoulder with his nose—their old signal that it was well they move on.
“Their will also,” Fanyi said.
As Sander had suggested, she took the lead. He allowed her and the fishers perhaps the length of an aisle, then he and Rhin followed. Fanyi once more clasped her pendant in her hands. She had not retraced her path to the doorway through which they had come. She went to the right, down another short way between the stumps of the installations Sander had smashed.
Within moments she fronted what looked like a blank stone wall. But, reaching up, she held the pendant between her flattened palm and one block of that barrier. A section pivoted to give them a door.
The way was narrow. Rhin could barely scrape through. And there were no lights. The door shut with an intimidating snap when they were all inside. Sander could only trace those ahead by the faint sounds of their passing.
There were curves and corners, some of which he struck with bruising force as he moved blindly. But there was only one passage and no choice of side ways, so he advanced with what confidence he could maintain, sure that Fanyi was ahead.
Finally, there came a burst of light, and he believed she had opened a second door. He hurried forward, lest that close and leave him and Rhin caught in the dark. The room they came into was unlike any he had seen elsewhere.
Fronting him was a wall with a glassy surface, much like that on the oval in the floor, the one Maxim said had shown the outlines of the world—the Before World and theirs. But here was only one chair and that was placed with its back directly to the slick surface. Fanyi sat in that chair, the fishers crouched before her, growling.
Her hands rested on the arms of the chair, but there were no buttons to be touched. As Sander came to face her, she raised one hand and pulled the loop of chain supporting the pendant from about her neck, throwing it from her as if she so removed all that might keep her from the domination of the thing holding rule here.
Sander caught it in the air by the chain. He could not wear the device himself, but there was a hope that it somehow might still provide a weapon. Now the girl drew the rod from her belt and tossed that away as well. In the chair she sat defenseless and alone. And then—it was not Fanyi who sat there.
Her features seemed to writhe, to grimace, twist, to partly assume the countenance of someone else.
“Come to me!”
There was nothing enticing in that command, for it was a command, baldly uttered, with the arrogance of one who expected no refusal. And such was the power of that order that Sander took one stride toward Fanyi-who-was-no-longer-Fanyi.
Rhin was beside him in an instant, the koyot’s mouth closed upon the man’s shoulder with force enough to awaken pain. That pain in turn broke the spell.
Fanyi smiled, but the smile was none that Sander had ever seen on any human face.
“Barbarian—” Now she laughed. “Your straggle of people—you—” Now her tone changed, became cold and remote. “You pollute the earth. You are nothing, unfit to walk where true men once walked.”
Sander heard the words, let the thing that had possessed Fanyi talk without dispute. The clue to its hiding place must be here somewhere—he needed that. But would he be able to gain it in time?
“Give me your weapons, barbarian,” Fanyi said with icy contempt. “Do you think any such can be used against me? Fool, I have the means to blast you into nothingness a thousand times over. I let you live only because you can be of some small service to me—for a while. Even as this female serves me—”
Rhin swung a little before Sander, edging him away from Fanyi. But the koyot’s head was pointed toward the wall behind the chair. The smith saw that slight prick of ear. Though Rhin appeared to be facing Fanyi, herding Sander away from the girl, the animal’s attention was rather on the wall behind the chair.
Sander gripped the haft of the hammer more tightly.
“You are mine, barbarian—”
There was a timbre in that voice which rang in Sander’s ears. Was a mist curling up about the chair on which Fanyi was seated, or were his own eyes in some manner failing him? The metal on his forehead was heating, too. He found it hard to breathe.
He was no one’s property! He was himself. By cold iron, which only a smith could fashion—he was himself!
“Barbarian, I can suck the life from you by will alone. Thus—”
Sander fought for breath. This was the time he must move—he had no longer any choice.
Cold iron. He fought against the pressure the other had set upon him, seeking to batter him to the ground, to make him crawl as no man should ever humble himself.
“Cold iron,” he cried aloud.
There was a slight change in the pressure, as if the thing he confronted was surprised.
Sander moved—not toward Fanyi, where the thing that ruled here had meant him to grovel, but rather to the wall. Exerting all his strength, with an effort even mightier than that which he had used against Maxim, he brought the hammer crashing against the smooth surface.
There was a splintering, a radiation of cracks running out from where the hammer head had met the wall.
In his mind, gathering about him—such a force, a pressure meant to crush him.
No! He denied that will bent now to stop him. His body swayed. Rhin and the fishers, he could feel them close, supporting him. For the second time he struck, and the blow fell true on the same spot.
There was a crackling, a tinkling as of falling glass. A hole slightly smaller than his fist opened. In return Sander was slammed nearly to his knees by a wave of force that he could never afterwards describe.
But he crawled closer, fighting that pressure with all his will, with his belief that if he surrendered, all that made him what he was would be lost, he reached the wall.
He inched his hand up and up, having dropped the hammer. Now he hooked fingers into the hole, though the jagged edges cut into his flesh. When he was sure his hold was complete, he swung the weight of his whole body on that hand.
For a moment of agony and fear, he was afraid his effort was not enough. Then the glass, or what was like glass, broke, to shower his head and shoulders with splinters. A gust of air blew over him that had the same taint as had been in the lower reaches when he had shattered the cabinet holding Fanyi.
Sander groped for the hammer. His right hand was slippery with his own blood. He was afraid that he could not keep his grip upon the tool. But with his left hand—yes!
He brought up his hand, holding the hammer awkwardly and ill-balanced. Even so a blow fell again, to break the edge farther. This was the door to the thing, even though he could pass through it only on his hands and knees, near crushed with the pressure.
Sander pulled himself over the high threshold formed by the frame. He fell forward into another chamber. There was no one here. He blinked in dull surprise. Though Fanyi had referred to the ruler of these ways as “it” or “the thing” or “that,” he had somehow pictured it with at least some kind of a body—maybe like the metal traveler with the claws. But what he saw were only tall cases, rows of them. On the faces of some, lights flashed or rippled.
There was one relief. As he had fallen through the aperture beyond the feeling of pressure had vanished. If this was the lair of Fanyi’s enemy, then here its defenses were singularly lacking—maybe it never expected to be found.