and keep your eyes open. klael’s coming, and I don’t want him
creeping up behind me. Is that stairway completely blocked?’
‘A mouse couldn’t get through all that rubble,’ Mirtai told
him.
‘We can forget about the guards,’ Bevier announced, removing
his ear from the guardroom door.
‘They’re still rearranging the furniture.’
‘Good.’ Sparhawk went to the door leading out to the parapet.
It opened with a shrill protest of rusty hinges. ‘Don’t start getting
brave,’ he cautioned his friends. ‘The fight’s between Bhelliom
and Klael. Spread out and keep watch.’
The eastern sky was pale with the approach of day as they
came out onto the parapet, and Cyrgon’s agonized shrieking still echoed
through the Hidden City.
‘There,’ Talen said, pointing toward the basalt escarpment
beyond the lake to the south.
A mass of figures, tiny in the distance and still dark in the
dawn-light, were streaming out of ‘the Glen of Heroes’, moving
into the basin before the gates of Cyrga.
‘Who are they?’ Ehlana cried, suddenly gripping Sparhawk’s
arm.
‘Vanion,’ Sparhawk told her, ‘along with just about everybody
else – Betuana, Kring, Ulath and the Trolls, Sephrenia -‘
‘Sephrenia?’ Ehlana exclaimed. ‘She’s dead!’
‘You didn’t really think I’d let Zalasta kill my sister, did you,
Ehlana?’ Flute said.
‘But – he said that he’d stabbed her in the heart!’
The Child Goddess shrugged. ‘He did, but Bhelliom cured it.
Vanion’s going to take steps.’
Talen came running round the parapet from the back of the
tower. ‘Bergsten’s coming in from the other side,’ he reported.
‘His knights just trampled about three regiments of Cyrgai under
foot without even slowing down.’
‘Are we going to be caught in the middle of a siege here?
Kalten asked with a worried expression.
‘Not too likely,’ Bevier replied. ‘The defenses of this place are
pitifully inadequate, and Patriarch Bergsten tends to be a very
abrupt sort of man.’
There was a sudden eruption far below, and the roof of the
pale temple exploded, hurling chunks of limestone in all directions
as the infinite darkness of klael shouldered his way up out
of the House of Cyrgon. His vast, leathery wings spread wider
and his blazing, slitted eyes looked about wildly.
‘Prithee, Anakha, hold me aloft that my brother may behold
me.’ The voice coming from Kalten’s lips was detached.
Sparhawk’s hand was shaking as he raised the Sapphire Rose
over his head.
Kalten, moving somewhat woodenly, gently put Alcan’s
clinging arms aside and stepped to the stone rail at the front of
the parapet. He spoke in a tongue no human mouth could have
produced, and his words could quite probably have been heard
in Chyrellos, half a world away.
Enormous Klael, waist-deep in the ruins of Cyrgon’s Temple,
raised his triangular face and roared his reply, his fanged mouth
dripping flame.
‘Attend closely, Anakha.’ Bhelliom’s voice in Sparhawk’s
mind was very quiet. ‘I will continue to taunt mine errant
brother, and all enraged will he come to do battle with me. Be
thou steadfast in the face of that approaching horror, for our
success or failure do hang entire upon thy courage and the
strength of thine arm.’
‘I do not take thy meaning, Blue Rose. Am I to smite Klael?’
‘Nay, Anakha. Thy task is to free me.’
The beast of darkness below savagely kicked aside the limestone
rubble and advanced on the palace with hungry arms
outstretched. When he reached the massive gates, he brushed
them from his path with a whip of lightning clutched in one
enormous fist.
Kalten continued his deafening taunts, and Klael continued to
howl his fury as he crushed his way through the lower wings
of the palace, destroying everything that lay in the path of his
relLlentless drive toward the tower.
And then he reached it, and, seizing its rough stones in his
two huge hands, he began to climb, his wings clawing at the
morning air as he mounted up and up.
‘How am I to free thee, Blue Rose?’ Sparhawk asked urgently.
‘My brother and I must be briefly recombined, my son,’
Bhelliom replied, ‘to become one again, as we once were, else
must I forever be imprisoned within this azure crystal – even as
clael must remain in his present monstrous form. In our temporary
combination will we both be freed.’
‘Combine? How?’
‘When he doth reach this not inconsiderable height and doth
exult with resounding bellow of victory, must thou hurl me
straightway into his gaping maw.’
‘Do what?’
‘He would with all his soul devour me. Make it so. In the
moment of our recombination shall Klael and I both be freed of
our present forms, and then shall our contest begin. Fail not,
my son, for this is thy purpose and the destiny for which I made
thee.’
Sparhawk drew in a deep breath. ‘I will not fail thee, Father,
he pledged with all his heart.
Still raging and with his leathery wings clawing at the air, klael
mounted higher and higher up the front of the palace tower.
Sparhawk felt a sense of odd, undismayed detachment come
over him. He looked full into the face of the King of Hell and
felt no fear. His task was simplicity in itself. He had only to hurl
the Sapphire Rose into that gaping maw, and, should a suitable
opportunity for that not present itself, to hurl himself – with
Bhelliom in his outstretched fist instead. He felt no regret nor
even sadness as the unalterable resolve settled over him. Better
this than to die in a meaningless, unremembered skirmish on
some disputed frontier as so many of his friends had. This had
significance, and for a soldier, that was the best one could hope
for.
And still klael came, climbing higher and higher, reaching
hungrily for his hated brother. No more than a few yards below
now, his slitted eyes blazed in cruel triumph and his jagged
fangs dripped fire as he roared his challenge. And then Sparhawk leapt atop
the ancient battlement to stand
poised with Bhelliom aloft in his fist. ‘For God and my Queen!’
He bellowed his defiance.
Klael reached up with one awesome hand.
Then, like the sudden uncoiling of some tightly-wound
spring, Sparhawk struck. His arm snapped down like a whip.
‘Go!’ he shouted, as he released the blazing jewel.
As true as an arrow the Sapphire Rose flew from his hand
even as klael’s mouth gaped wider. Straight it went to vanish
in the flaming maw.
The tower trembled as a shudder ran through the glossy blackness
of the enormity clinging to its side, and Sparhawk struggled
to keep his balance on his precarious perch. klael’s wings stiffened to their fullest extent, quivering with
awful tension. The great beast swelled, growing even more enormous.
Then he contracted, shriveling.
And then he exploded.
The detonation shook the very earth, and Sparhawk was
hurled back from the battlement to fall heavily on the parapet.
he rolled quickly, came to his feet, and rushed back to the
battlements.
Two beings of light, one a glowing blue, the other sooty red,
grappled with each other on insubstantial air not ten feet away.
Their struggle was elemental, a savage contesting of will and
strength. They were featureless beings, and their shapes
were only vaguely human. Heaving back and forth, they clung
to each other like wrestlers in some rude village square, each
bending all his will ‘ and force to subdue his perfectly-matched
opponent.
Sparhawk and his friends lined the battlements, frozen, awed,
,able only to watch that primeval struggle.
And then the two broke free of each other and stood, backs
bowed and arms half-extended, each facing his immortal brother
In some inconceivable communion.
‘It falls to thee, Anakha,’ Bhelliom’s voice in Sparhawk’s mind
was calm. ‘Should klael and I continue, this world shall surely
be destroyed, as hath oft-time come to pass before. Thou art of
this world and must therefore be my champion. Constraints are
upon thee which do not limit me. klael’s champion is also of
this world and is similarly constrained.’
‘It shall be even as thou has said, my father,’ Sparhawk
replied. ‘I will serve as thy champion if it must needs be. With
whom must I contend?’
A great roar of rage came from far below, and a living flame
surged up out of the shattered ruins of the chalk-white temple.
There is thine opponent, my son,’ the azure spirit replied.
“Klael hath called him forth to do battle with thee.’
‘Cyrgon?’
“een so.’
“but he is a God!’
‘And art thou not?’
Sparhawk’s mind reeled.
Look within thyself, Anakha. Thou art my son, and I made
thee to be the receptacle of my will. I now release that will to
‘thee that thou mayest be the champion of this world. Feel its
“.power infuse thee.’
It was like the opening of a door that had always been closed.
Sparhawk felt his mind and will expanding infinitely as the
barrier went down, and with that expanding there came an unutterable calm.