Instinctively, Harry’s metaphysical mind began to conjure Möbius maths. Invisible to all other men, the shimmering frame of a door commenced to form in the eye of his mind. Except, of course, it was warped and highly volatile. Only let it develop fully and all of this would be over: so close to the Gate Harry would probably be shredded and his atoms diffused through the myriad universes of light. Maybe that was the answer, the way to go. At least he would be spared the agony of the fire. But what of the agony of others? What of the future agony of the entire world which lay beyond the Gate?
Too late to worry about that: Earth was already doomed. Or was it? For Harry knew that miracles can happen, and also that they occasionally happen when all seems lost. But in any case, he could always conjure another door – a bigger, more powerful door – when things became unbearable.
But: No! said Harry Wolfson in the Necroscope’s inner mind, even as he thought to collapse what he’d made. Hold it there, Father. Just for a moment. And Harry felt his son looking at the Möbius equations where they mutated in his mind, and at the flickering, warping configuration of the part-formed door. Looking, trying hard to understand . . . and finally remembering!
In another moment the great wolf conjured equations which even Harry in the fullness of his powers could never have identified, symbols revenant of a time when the Necroscope’s son had been far more powerful than his father. For a few seconds certain of Harry Wolfson’s lost talents were recalled, and with the effortless skill of all but forgotten times he used one of them to diffuse through his father’s ill-formed door a picture of their here and now, and a warning of possible tomorrows. It sped out from him at the instantaneous speed of thought, into all the innumerable universes of light.
The Necroscope cancelled his own numbers and let go of the now highly dangerous door, which drifted away from him towards the magnet of the Gate. But his son’s message – and his warning – had been transmitted. Harry Wolfson had completed the mental part of his self-imposed mission; all that remained now was the physical. But where the first had been merely improbable, the rest was impossible. That made no difference, not to the great grey wolf, who remembered now that he had been a man. As well, then, to die like a man.
In through the encircling thralls he loped, like a wraith appearing from the smoke of Harry’s fire. And snarling he made for Shaithis where the vampire Lord kneeled beside Karen. But he didn’t make it; lieutenants got in his way; one of them hurled a spear and brought him down. Slavering and snarling, with the spear transfixing his breast and emerging bloody through his hackles, still his slender human hands reached spastically for Lord Shaithis – until a sword flashed silver and took his head.
From his cross, through billowing smoke (though the flames had not yet reached him), Harry had seen it all. ‘No!’ he cried out loud. And in his mind cried out again: No … no . . . no!!! And something of his agony, not merely of the flesh but of the soul, went out through the disintegrating Möbius door, which on the instant imploded into the Gate. Then –
– A single, brilliant, prolonged flash of lightning illuminating the peaks, followed by a long, low, ominous drum roll of thunder, and finally a silence broken only by the crackle of the bonfire and the sputtering of fresh raindrops striking the flames.
Until, for the third time, Shaitan came forward.
‘You cannot feel it, can you?’ He stood over his descendant, glared at him a while, then lifted his head to sniff like some great hound. ‘The Necroscope has released something into the air, and into his secret places. But you feel only your own lust. You’ve neither thought nor vision for the future, only for what you can take today. And so I warn you one last time: beware, son of my sons, lest you lose us a world!’