Realizing this, Kalia’s rage subsided and she began to think out her moves a bit. Manya was visible when she moved, but she was damned fast for a little lump. The trick was to figure out which way Manya would move next and how far and launch an attack. The trouble was, Manya could also read her mind. When Kalia finally launched herself at where she thought the Gnoll had stopped, Manya had stopped short, and as Kalia approached, the Mizlaplanian swung a clenched fist and caught the Mycohlian right in the stomach. The force of the blow was amazing; Kalia’s face suddenly took on a horrible visage of shock and she actually fell back several meters, almost as if shot, and landed on her back.
Manya wasted no time in capitalizing on the blow, leaping forward and onto the fallen woman, flailing away with her fists. Kalia took the blows, then brought her legs up and did an impossible-looking turn and spin, knocking Manya off and sending the Gnoll onto the floor.
Kalia, though, was in no position to capitalize on her briefly disoriented foe; she was hurt and hurt bad, and knew it. Her eyes darted around, then she ran up the stone steps leading to the altar in front of that hideous goat-god. As Manya got to her feet and started after the wounded Mycohlian, Kalia reached up and took hold of one of the braziers on either side of the altar and pulled. The whole thing came free and suddenly Kalia had a weapon: a long, hard pole with the rounded brazier at the end. She swung it at Manya as the Gnoll reached the top of the stairs, and a tremendous amount of ash and soot flew out and landed all over the floor in front of the altar. The initial swing missed, and as Kalia lifted it and swung again, Manya winked out for a moment, then grabbed the bowl-like end as it approached her head.
Kalia’s reflexes stood her in good stead. Expecting the move, she pushed forward with all her strength and Manya stumbled backward, then over the edge of the stairs, then tumbling down them. Screaming triumph, her pain momentarily blocked by the elation of the success of the move, Kalia raced down, and as Manya was trying to get to her feet the Mycohlian brought the bowl end down on the Gnoll’s head as hard as she could, then again.
The others all watched in amazement, and the demons, perhaps amused, were silent as well, but Molly suddenly got up and, before anyone could stop her, cried out, “No!” and ran for the pair.
Kalia, almost in reaction rather than realizing who was coming toward them and for what purpose, suddenly whirled away from Manya and struck Molly a blow to the head with the brazier, sending the syn backward and knocking her down. She then returned to her victim.
Jimmy McCray was up in a moment and heading toward the fallen Molly. Krisha, angry and frustrated, had to be restrained by the captain from going to Manya’s aid. “There’s nothing you can do but wind up like that poor creature!” he told her sharply.
Molly seemed groggy and shook her head, then got to her knees and reached up and felt her scalp where she’d been hit. Her hand came away with blood on it.
Jimmy got to her. “Molly! Are you all right?”
“I—dunno, Jimmy …” she managed, seeming totally dazed, but she pushed him away and tried to get up on her own by pushing off with her hands. The moment the hand with the blood on it touched the pentagonal tile, the tile seemed to come alive and take on a dull, pale white glow.
Gun Roh Chin saw it from many meters away, although Jimmy hadn’t noticed. “McCray!” the captain shouted. “Don’t let her stand up completely in that tile! Get her off there! Get her off quick! ”
Jimmy was momentarily confused. “Huh? What?” If he could have read the null’s mind, he would have understood and acted instantly, but, as it was, he didn’t see it until Molly had gotten completely to her feet.
The border of the tile suddenly glowed crimson, and a wave of visible energy shot from it and enveloped the syn.
“What the hell . . . ?” Jimmy McCray said, startled.
Somewhere he heard a demon say, <Take the Mizlaplanian to the altar. The altar. Finish her on the altar. >
Manya was battered and bloodied, and certainly unconscious, but still alive. Kalia paused, frowned, then made a sudden decision, put down her weapon, and tried to pick Manya up. It was like trying to lift the giant statue. Manya seemed made of lead.
Suddenly Molly emerged from the glow radiating upward from the pentagram block and walked slowly, hesitantly, toward the end of the altar where Kalia was still attempting to lift the unconscious Gnoll. Jimmy tried to shout and go after her, but something seemed suddenly to have hold of him, freezing him, shutting him out not only from action but even from telepathic contact. Some of the others made moves toward the altar as well and found themselves equally bound, helpless onlookers at the strange spectacle, not knowing what was coming next but unable to act in any way to influence it.
<You are no longer players in this game, > a demon voice came to them, seeming somehow calm and unnervingly in control.
Molly seemed awkward, unsure of herself, and nearly stumbled more than once, her actions jerky, almost reminding Jimmy of the cymol Tris Lankur after his human veneer had been shorted out. Now, however, the syn made it to Kalia, who let go of Manya and turned, looking puzzled, at the blue girl with the cloven hooves, but, unlike the first time, the Mycohlian made no move to strike Molly or keep her away, somehow sensing the difference inside the syn this time.
Molly bent down and grabbed Manya’s legs. Kalia immediately saw that help was being offered and got under the Gnoll’s shoulders and lifted. Slowly, carefully, and with a lot of effort in spite of the help, they carried Manya up the stairs and got the limp form onto the altar stone itself.
Somehow, all the onlookers sensed that everything up to this point had been preliminary; now, at this moment, all of the trials and travails, all the deaths and all the manipulations by the demons and the other teams, had come down to Kalia. Whoever or whatever had possessed Molly would do the demon princes’ bidding; the others were locked out. Kalia alone now had free will.
Kalia, too, seemed aware of it, drained almost totally of her rage at this point, trying to figure out just what the hell was going on here.
She knew what she was supposed to do; at least, she knew what the demon princes wanted her to do. Almost as if in a dream she walked back down and picked up the pole with the brazier atop, her killer weapon, and came back up the stairs with it.
<There is a soft spot behind the mammary, approximately three centimeters down from the center of the neck,> a demon prince told her, in that same calm, measured voice.
Kalia reached down, felt beneath the massive single breast of the Gnoll, and found it with no trouble. It was a remarkable weak point in a body otherwise covered by an incredibly thick, tough skin and a lot of interior bony plates, but it wasn’t something she was going to penetrate and really do harm with using just her fingers. She looked at the pole supporting the brazier bowl, took it, and with all her strength brought the pole down on the edge of the altar. It snapped, and when she pulled the two sections apart, there was a sufficiently jagged point to do the job on the pole end. She discarded the brazier itself, which landed with a clang and rolled to within a meter of the frozen Jimmy McCray before stopping.
Manya moaned and stirred; it was an eerie break in the near deathly silence of the temple, and put additional pressure on Kalia. If the Gnoll came to, the fight would start all over again, and, this time, who knew if she’d be so lucky? Now was the time. Now or never. She pulled back the huge, flattened breast, found the spot, then raised the jury-rigged spear as if to bring it down . . . and stopped.
“This’ll spring you, won’t it?” she shouted, her voice echoing around the hall.
<It is the first and necessary step in a process, > the demons admitted. <Do it now, and when we are free you shall become our high priestess, above all others; a goddess with power such as you never dreamed. Do it now, for she is coming around, and if she comes around it will be too late and you will die. Make no mistake—we always keep our word. Do it now and become homo superior, the great, immortal, powerful one. Do it now, or, no matter what happens after, you will die.>
She raised the spear again, but again she hesitated. “Yeah? I saw them bodies back in that first place, and I felt the agony of them whatevers in the hot place, and I heard the screams and moans. I only got your word you keep your promises. The only thing I know for sure is if you’re still locked up you can’t eat me!”
“That is true,” responded a new, deep, inhuman voice that sent chills through them all. “But if you do not do it, then / will ensure that your torment is eternal and sufficiently ugly to make it the stuff of legends!”
She looked up, shocked as much by the voice itself as by the fact that it was speaking in her own native tongue and dialect.
The demon looked far more impressive, more powerful, even regal, when not imprisoned in hard transparent material. Its bearing, its sense of life made it seem awesome.
“Yeah? Where the hell did you come from? And why can’t you do it yourself?” she shot back, not nearly as confident as her tone indicated. And, almost as soon as she’d asked the questions, she knew the answers. This was one of the original demons freed by the Exchange, and who had most likely been shadowing them all along. As to the other question—she was Mycohl, the Gnoll was Mizlaplanian, and the syn was of the Exchange. Another three-way lock, to be opened only by common consent, but not by mere touching.
By blood.
That was one hell of a lock! she thought, amazed at the picture it implied.
Manya stirred, and her eyes seemed to flutter. Her face was a bloody mess, but it “was regaining animation, and it would be mere moments now before, Kalia knew, the Gnoll
would be awake and uncontrollable. She might well take on the Mizzle again, but with that damned demon standing right there in the doorway there was no way she would take the two of them.
Manya’s eyes opened, and then suddenly grew wide with terror as, for her last sight, she saw the jagged edge of the pole come down and felt it penetrate. She screamed horribly, in the most intense pain, and jerked up so violently that for a moment Kalia was afraid she was going to get up and pull out the stake, but then dark, brown blood erupted from her mouth and she gasped, stiffened, and fell back, limp.
There was a sudden, hollow rumbling beneath them, almost like an earthquake far below, or, more ominously, the sound of something impossibly large stirring in some subterranean chamber, awakening to new life.
Molly suddenly reached out and grabbed Kalia’s right wrist, then, with a sharp fingernail, she cut a small slit on the wrist that drew blood. Molly’s own head wound had clotted long before, so she let go of Kalia and drew the same cut on her own left wrist. Then Molly placed her wrist atop the gaping wound in the dead Manya, so that some of her blood mixed with the brownish goo not yet congealed on the body. Kalia took a deep breath and did the same.
At the instant the last of the blood was mixed, Jimmy McCray and the others felt themselves freed from- constraint. Jimmy ran and picked up a handful of ashes that had spilled from the brazier in the fight and ran back to the others, totally ignoring the altar and the freed demon.
“Everybody! Gather in to me! Now!” he shouted aloud, and began as soon as they grouped behind him to use the ash to draw a crude border around them all, praying as he did so that there was enough to make it all the way. Tobrush alone took up as much room as all the rest of them, but he could hardly leave the Julki out. As for the others, they understood immediately what he was doing and made no effort to stop him.
The pentagram was crude, and barely a dark smudge at its last-drawn connecting point, but it was the best he could do.
The noise and rumblings beneath them started anew, and the great hollow rumbling and banging seemed to take on a rhythmic tone, growing louder and louder as time passed. It sounded almost like . . . footsteps! The steps of some impossibly huge, alien beast rising from some dark and dank prison below.
<Don’t look at the altar!> Jimmy warned telepathically, the noise too great for shouting even with this close company. <Whatever you hear, whatever you feel, look away from the altar and keep your eyes closed! If I am correct, what comes is a Power far too great for any mere mortal to withstand!>
One by one, along the four walls of the inner temple, bright shields of the six-pointed Seal of Solomon flashed like beacons, then seemed to melt away; large rectangular panels cracked like sharply struck glass, then crumbled into dust, and from behind and inside stepped the four demon princes.
In the center of the room, behind them, they felt a Presence at the altar unlike anything any of them had felt before. It was neither good nor evil; it was beyond good and evil, beyond anything at all in their experiences. It was Power; Power coupled with a cold, dispassionate, alien intellect as beyond any of them as they were beyond the most elementary one-celled creatures of the universe. So incredibly overwhelming was its presence that Krisha, Modra, Jimmy, and even Tobrush felt their consciousness slipping from them; all their minds were blank, numbed by the pulsing on all bands, and they were frozen now not by force of another’s will but out of their own brains’ inability to cope.
The Presence still ascended, up, beyond the altar, upward to the topmost point of the pyramid, then out into the city beyond. They could still feel it, knew it was outside, waiting, growing even more in power every second, drawing energy from that mass outside, but it was no longer right there, no longer directly in their presence, and consciousness returned. Not a one of them was not shaking uncontrollably, however, from the awe and fear that thing represented.
Jimmy McCray still couldn’t stop his trembling, but he cautiously opened one eye, then the other, and turned to see what had happened.