its volume the whole mass of human voices.
Now, across the whole vast reach of the parade
ground, humans and trained beasts alike were
demonstrating spontaneously at the sight of the
Blade that waved above Vilkata’s head. The cry of
his name went up again and again, each time
louder than the last. A thousand weapons were
being brandished in salute.
Now the Dark King had reached the reviewing
stand, and now he mounted quickly. His closer fol-
lowers, Mark still with them, swarmed up onto the
platform too. Immediately the stand was over-
crowded, and people near the edges were jostled
off. A small clear space-more magic?-remained
around the person of the King. All around the base
of the platform and across its surface where they
had room, grand military potentates and dreaded
wizards were prancing and gesturing like
demented children. The aged and dignified abased
themselves like dogs at one moment, and in the
next leaped howling for the sky. And the very sky
was streaked by demons, speeding, whirling in a
pyrotechnic ecstasy of worship.
Grimly Mark held on to the small margin of self-
awareness and self-control that he had regained in
the pavilion. He thought that he would not be able
to hold onto it for very long-but perhaps for long
enough. He remembered now who he was, and
what goal he had determined to accomplish. He
still held Sightblinder’s hilt in his right hand. But
. . . to strike at Vilkata, possessor of the Mindsword
. . . how could anyone do that? Or even plan to do
it?
To strike at one who held the Mindsword might
well be more than any mere human will could man-
age. If once Mark summoned up the will to try, and
failed, he was sure that he could never try again.
Even to work his way through the press of fren-
zied bodies on the platform, to get himself close
enough to the Dark King to strike at him, was going
to be difficult. Get close to the Dark King, he
ordered himself, forget for the moment why you are
trying to get close. He almost forgotten his bow,
still slung in its accustomed place across his back.
And there were two arrows left . . . he groped with a
trembling hand, and found that there were none.
Spilled somehow in the jostling? Or had some
enthusiast’s hand snatched them away?
He was going to have to strike with Sightblinder,
then. Even had his mind been clear, entirely his
own, it would not have been easy. Most of the people
on the platform were also struggling to get closer to
the Dark King, to touch him if possible; the ring of
those who were closest, constrained to do all they
could to protect the Mindsword’s master, were
striving to hold the others back. Their task was
perhaps made easier by the fact that Vilkata was
swinging the Sword more wildly now, inspiring fear as
well as ecstasy in those near enough to stand in some
danger from the Blade. There was still a cleared
space of several meters directly around the king.
Mark elbowed room enough to let him draw
Sightblinder-no one, he thought, was able to see that
he was holding it, no magical guardians struck at him
yet.
The small crowd atop the reviewing stand surged
again, chatocially, as more people kept trying to climb
on. Inevitably at one edge, more people were pushed
off.
Mark forced himself a little closer to Vilkata, but
then was stopped, pushed back again. This is impossible,
he thought. l cannot fail simply because 1 can’t get through a
crowd. Still he dared not use the Sword to hack bodies
out of his path; surely if he did that the magical
defenses of the King would be triggered, and he
would have no chance to strike the blow that really
counted.
He had to get closer without killing. He gritted his
teeth and closed his eyes, and blindly bulled his way
ahead. His Sword, invisible to the people in his way,
he held raised awkwardly above the jostling bodies
that would otherwise have carved themselves on it.
But even as Mark scraped up new determination
and tried again, the crowd surged against him, and its
hundred legs effortlessly bore him even a little farther
away. The cause of this last surge was one of
Vilkata’s sweeps with the Mindsword. Mark exerted
one more great effort, and forced his way through, or
almost through, but was deflected in the process to a
place precariously near the platform’s edge.
Now, one more effort . . . but the Blade in the Dark
King’s hand came swinging heedlessly past, and
grazed Mark’s forehead. The Dark King was laughing
thunderously now, to see his courtiers duck and dodge
in terror, and at the same time come pressing
helplessly forward all the same.
Those next to Mark in the crush violently shoved
back. Tangled with others, he fell over the edge of the
platform, others falling with him. The distance to the
ground was no more than a man’s height, and the
ground below was soft. Mark landed with a shock, but
without further injury. By some miracle none of those
falling with him had impaled themselves on
Sightblinder, which lay on the soft earth under his
hand.
He had failed, not heroically, but as by some
demonic joke. He grabbed up his Sword and got to his
feet again. Then he understood that he was hurt more
than he had thought at first by Vikata’s accidental
stroke. He could see blood, feel it and taste it, his own
blood running down from his gashed forehead into his
left eye. A centimeter or two closer to the
Mindsword’s swing and it would have killed him.
The fall had taken him out of reach of the Dark
King; but at least it had also broken his direct eye
contact with that flashing, hypnotic Blade. Now,
with freedom roaring louder than the Mindsword in his
mind, Mark looked up to catch a glimpse of Vilkata’s
back on the high platform. The monarch was turned
away from Mark at the moment, facing out over the
excited masses of the crowd at its front edge.
He must be struck down, Mark repeated grimly to
himself, And I must do it, do it now, no matter what, and
get his Sword.
He tore himself free of a fresh tangle of frenzied
bodies on the ground. Shoving people out of his way
with one hand, holding Sightblinder uplifted in the
other, he ran along his side of the reviewing stand and
then along its front. The pain in his wounded forehead
savaged him, made him yearn to strike out at those
villainous legs of officers and sorcerers that danced
and pushed for advantage on the platform before him
at eye level. But he held back his blow, grimly certain
that he would be able to strike no more than once.
Blood bothering his eyes, pain nailing his head,
Mark looked up trying to locate Vilkata again. It
seemed hopeless. The sun was dazzling. The
Mindsword flashed in it, and flashed again. Only in
surrender to it was there hope. Mark had to look
away, bend down his neck to get away from it. He
could not let his eyes and soul be caught by it again
As he turned his gaze away from the platform,
there came into his vision the vast expanse of the
parade ground and its howling mob of people.
Sightblinder made two details stand out in rapid
succession, each so strongly that they were able to
distract him even now.
The first, astonishingly for Mark, was the prison
cage with its lone occupant, even though he could
glimpse it only intermittently now through the swirl of
ecstatic bodies. He had encountered the sentry demon
beside that cage, and he remembered, or almost
remembered, something else, something that one of
the magicians had said inside about the prisoner
And then the second distracting detail captured
Mark’s attention even from the first. He saw a small
gray cloud, rolling in a very uncloudlike way down the
steep flank of a distant mountain. Inside that cloud
Mark’s sharpened perception could pick out half a
dozen living beings, all apparently of human shape.
Already, as he watched, the cloud reached the
comparatively level land at the mountain’s foot. Now
it rolled closer rapidly, directly approaching the
encampment, moving independently of any wind. It
was traveling with deceptive speed, outracing wind,
traversing kilometers in mere moments.
Some of the people on the platform above Mark had
now become aware of the cloud as well. The uproar
immediately surrounding the Dark King had abated
somewhat. Mark cast a quick look toward Vilkata,
and saw that the King was lowering his own Sword,
giving the approaching cloud his full attention.
A shrieking in the air passed rapidly overhead. A
flight of the airborne demons, acting either on their