The gates of the spikard were opened, and I struck the creature with a raw force from somewhere in Shadow. Again, the thing seemed frozen as the air about me grew chill. I tore myself away from it, bleeding from dozens of small wounds. I rolled away and rose to my feet, still lashing it with the spikard, holding it cold. I tried using the blade to dismember it, but all it did was eat the attack and remain a statue of pink ice.
Reaching out through Shadow, I found myself another blade. With its tip, I traced a rectangle in the air, a bright circle at its center. I reached into it with my will and desire. After a moment, I felt contact.
“Dad! I feel you but I can’t see you!”
“Ghostwheel,” I said, “I am fighting for my life, and doubtless those of many others. Come to me if you can.”
“I am trying. But you have found your way into a strange space. I seem to be barred from entering there.”
“Damn!”
“I agree. I have faced this problem before in my travels. It does not lend itself to ready resolution.”
The guisel began to move again. I tried to maintain the Trump contact but it was fading. “Father!” Ghostwheel cried as I lost hold. “Try–” Then he was gone. I backed away. I glanced at Rhanda. Dozens of other shroudlings now stood with her, all of them wearing black, white, or red garments. They began to sing a strange, dirgelike song, as if a dark soundtrack were required for our struggle. It did seem to slow the guisel, and it reminded me of something from long ago.
I threw back my head and gave voice to that ululant cry I had heard once in a dream and never forgotten.
My friend came.
Kergma–the living equation–came sliding in from many angles at once. I watched and waited as he/she/it–I had never been certain–assembled itself. Kergma had been a childhood playmate, along with Glait and Gryll.
Rhanda must have remembered the being who could go anywhere, for I heard her gasp. Kergma passed around and around her body in greeting, then came to me and did the same.
_”My friends! It has been so long since you called me to play! I have missed you!”_
The guisel dragged itself forward against the song of the shroudlings as if beginning to overcome its power. “This is not a game,” I answered. “That beast will destroy us all unless we nail it first,” I said.
_”Then I must solve it for us. Everything that lives is an equation, a complex quantum study. I told you that long ago.”_
“Yes. Try. Please.”
I feared blasting the thing again with the spikard while Kergma worked on it, lest it interfere with his calculations. I kept my blade and spikard at ready as I continued to back away. The shroudlings retreated with me, slowly.
_”A deadly balance,”_ Kergma said at last. _”It has a wonderful life equation. Use your toy to stop it now.”_
I froze it again with the spikard. The shroudling’s song went on.
At length Kergma said, _”There is a weapon that can destroy it under the right circumstances. You must reach for it, however. It is a twisted blade you have wielded before. It hangs on the wall of a bar where once you drank with Luke.”_
“The Vorpal Sword?” I said. “It can kill it?”
_”A piece at a time, under the proper circumstances.”_
“You know these circumstances?”
_”I have solved for them.”_
I clutched my weapon and struck the guisel again with a force from the spikard. It squeaked and grew still. Then I discarded the blade I held and reached–far, far out through Shadow. I was a long time in finding what I sought and I had a resistance to overcome, so I added the force of the spikard to my own and it came to me. Once again, I held the shining, twisted Vorpal Sword in my hands.
I moved to strike at the guisel with it, but Kergma stopped me. So I hit it again with a lash of force from the spikard.
_”Not the way. Not the way.”_