‘Now art thou truly Anakha, my son!.’ Bhelliom exulted. ‘Thy will is now my
will. All things are now possible for thee. It was thy will which
vanquished Azash. I was but thine instrument. In this occasion, however,
shalt thou be mine. Bend thine invin- cible will to the task. Seize it in
thine hands and mold it. Forge weapons with thy mind and confront Cyrgon.
If thine heart be true, he cannot prevail against thee. Now go. Cyrgon
awaits thee.’ Sparhawk drew in a deep breath and looked down at the
rubble-littered square far below. The flame which had emerged from the
ruins had coalesced into a blazing man-shape standing before the wreck of
the temple. ‘Come, Anakha!’ it roared. ‘Our meeting hath been foretold
since before time began.This is thy destiny! Thou art honored above all
others to fall by my hand.’ Sparhawk deliberately pushed aside the windy
pomposity of archaic expression. ‘Don’t start celebrating until after
you’ve won, Cyrgon!’ he shouted his reply. ‘Don’t go away! I’ll be right
down!’ Then he set one hand atop the battlement and lightly vaulted over
it. He stopped, hanging in mid-air. ‘Let go, Aphrael,’ he said.
‘What are
you doing?’ she exclaimed. “Just do as you’re told. Let me go.’
‘You’ll fall.’
‘No, actually I won’t. I can handle this. Don’t interfere.
Cyrgon’s waiting for me, so please let go.’ It was not actually flying,
although Sparhawk was certain that he could fly if he needed to. He felt a
peculiar lightness as he drifted down toward the ruins of the House of
Cyrgon. It was not that he had no weight, it was more that his weight had
no meaning. His will was somehow stronger than gravity. Sword in hand, he
settled down and down like a drifting feather. Cyrgon waited below. The
burning figure of the ancient God drew his fire about him, congealing the
incandescent flame into the antique armor customarily worn by those who
worshipped him – a burnished steel cuirass, a crested helmet, a large round
shield and a sword in his fist. A peculiar insight came to Sparhawk as he
slid down through the dawn-cool air. Cyrgon was not so much stupid as he
was conservative. It was change that he hated, change that he feared.
he had frozen his Cyrgai eternally in time and had erased any potential for
change or innovation from their minds. The Cyrgai, unmoved by the winds of
time, would remain forever as they had been when their God had first
conceived of them.He had wrought an ideal and fenced it all nbout with law
and custom and an innate hatred of change, and frozen thus, they were
doomed – and had been since the first of them had placed one sandaled foot
on the face of the ever-changing world. Sparhawk smiled faintly. Cyrgon, it
appeared, needed instruction in the benefits of change, and his first
lesson would be in the advantages of modern equipment, weaponry, and
tactics. Sparhawk thought, ‘Armor’, and he was immediately encased in
black-enameled steel. he almost casually discarded his plain working sword
and filled his hand with his heavier and longer ceremonial blade. Now he
was a fully-armed Pandion Knight, a soldier of God – of several Gods, he
rather ruefully amended that thought – and he was, almost by default, the
champion not only of his Queen, his Church and his God – but also, if he
read Bhelliom’s thought correctly, of his fair and sometimes vain Sister,
the world. He drifted down and settled to earth amidst the wreck of the
destroyed temple. ‘Well-met, Cyrgon,’ he said with profoundest formality.
‘Well-met, Anakha,’ the God replied. ‘I had misjudged thee. Thou art
suitable now. I had despaired of thee, fearing that thou wouldst never have
realized thy true significance. Thine apprenticeship hath been long and
methinks, hindered by thine inappropriate affiliation with Aphrael.’
‘We’re wasting time, Cyrgon,’ Sparhawk cut through the flowery courtesies.
‘Let’s get at this. I’m already late for breakfast. ‘
‘So be it, Anakha!’
Cyrgon’s classic features were set in an expression of approval.
‘Defend thyself.”‘
and he swung a huge sword stroke at Sparhawk’s head. But Sparhawk had
already begun his stroke, and so their swords clashed harmlessly in the air
between them. It was good to be fighting again. There was no politics here,
no confusion of dissembling words or false promises, just the clean, sharp
ring of steel on steel and the smooth flow of muscle and sinew over bone.
Cyrgon was quick, as quick as Martel had been in his youth,
intricate moves of wrist and arm and shoulder that marked the master
swordsman seemed to come unbidden, almost in spite of himself, to the
ancient God. ‘invigorating, isn’t it?’ Sparhawk panted through a wolf-like
grin, lashing a stinging cut at the God’s shoulder. ‘Open your mind, Cyrgon.
Nothing is set in stone – not even something as simple as this.’ And he
lashed out with his sword again, flicking another cut onto Cyrgon’s
sword-arm. The immortal rushed at him, forcing the oversized round shield
against him, trying with will and main strength to over- come his
better-trained opponent. Sparhawk looked into that flawless face and saw
regret and desperation there. He bunched his shoulder, as Kurik had taught
him, and locked his shield-arm, forming an impenetrable barrier against the
ineffectual flailinS of his opponent. He parried only with his lightly held
sword.
‘Yield, Cyrgon,’ he said, ‘and live. Yield, and Klael will be
banished. We are of this world, Cyrgon. Let Klael and Bhelliom contend for
other worlds. Take thy life and thy people and go. I would not slay even
thee.’ ‘I spurn thine insulting offer, Anakha!’ Cyrgon half-shrieked. ‘I
guess that satisfies the demands of knightly honor,’ Spar- hawk muttered to
himself with a certain amount of relief. ‘God knows what I’d have done if
he’d accepted.’ He raised his sword again. ‘So be it then, brother,’ he
said. ‘We weren’t meant to live in the same world together anyway.’ His
body and will seemed to swell inside his armor. ‘Watch, brother,’ he grated
through clenched teeth. ‘Watch and learn.’
And then he unleashed five
hundred years of training, coupled with his towering anger, at this poor,
impotent godling, who had ripped asunder the peace of the world, a peace
toward which Sparhawk had yearned since his return from exile in Render. He
ripped Cyrgon’s thigh with the classic ‘Pas-four’. He slashed that perfect
face with Martel’s innovative ‘parry-pas- nine’. He cut away the upper half
of Cyrgon’s oversized round shield with Vanion’s ‘Third feint-and-slash’.
Of all the Church Knights, the Pandions were the most skilled swordsmen,
and of all the Pandions, Sparhawk stood supreme. Bhelliom had called him
the equal of a God, but Sparhawk fought as a man superbly trained, a little
out of condition and really too old for this kind of thing – but with an
absolute confidence that if the fate of the world rested in his hands,
he was good for at least one more fight. His sword blurred in the light of
the new-risen sun, flickering, weaving, darting. Baffled, the ancient
Cyrgon tried to respond. The opportunity presented itself, and Sparhawk
felt the perfect symmetry of it. Cyrgon, untaught, had provided the black-
armored Pandion precisely the same opening Martel had given him in the
temple of Azash. Martel had fully understood the significance of the
series of strokes. Cyrgon, however, did not. And so it was that the
thrust which pierced him through came as an absolute surprise. The God
stiffened and his sword fell from his nerveless fingers as he lurched back
from that fatal thrust. Sparhawk recovered from the thrust and swept his
bloody sword up in front of his face in salute.
‘An innovation, Cyrgon,’ he said in a detached sort of voice. ‘You’re
really very good, you know, but you ought to try to stay abreast of
things.’
Cyrgon sagged to the flagstoned court, his immortal life spilling
out through the gash in his breastplate. ‘And wilt thou take the world
now, Anakha?’ he gasped. Sparhawk dropped to his haunches beside the
stricken God.
‘No, Cyrgon,’ he replied wearily. ‘I don’t want the world just
a quiet little corner of it.’
‘Then why camest thou against me?’
‘I didn’t want you to have it either, because if you had, my little
part wouldn’t have been safe.’ He reached out and took the pallid hand.
‘You
fought well, Cyrgon. I have respect for you. Hail and farewell.’ Cyrgon’s
voice was only a whisper as he replied, ‘Hail and farewell, Anakha.’ There
was a great despairing howl of frustration and rage. Sparhawk looked up and
saw a man-shape of sooty red streaking upward into the dawn sky as
Klael resumed his endless journey toward and beyond the farthest star.
CHAPTER 33
There was fighting somewhere – the ring of steel on steel and
shouts and cries – but Ehlana scarcely heard the sounds as she