When he reached the bottom of this tower and opened that door, nothing was going to save Maximilian.
Not this time.
Maximilian could sense the One flying down the stairwell, feel him coming closer and closer with every heartbeat.
“ Move, you sod!” he hissed at the stone, thinking that if he couldn’t get it in the next moment or so he would give up and flee.
But he’d never have another chance. The One wouldn’t allow him near the Twisted Tower again.
Now he could hear the One roaring, screaming out what he intended to do to Maximilian once he flung open that door . . . and the stone moved under Maximilian’s fingers. He thought for an instant that his fingers, now wet with sweat, had slipped on the stone, but, no, it had moved.
He scrabbled even more frantically, trying to get his fingers under the stone, and then, suddenly, appallingly, the One flung open the door of the Twisted Tower and rage and power seethed down the path toward Maximilian.
Chapter 7
Isembaard
Ishbel had been pacing back and forth just beyond the warmth of the fire, her eyes constantly on Maximilian’s form where it reclined to one side.
Serge and Doyle sat by the fire, their eyes tracking Ishbel.
“Ishbel —” Serge began, unable to bear the tension any longer, when Maximilian twitched, his eyes flew open and he rolled to one side before scrabbling to his feet.
“Ishbel!” he cried. “We have to —”
She knew, instantly. Before Maximilian had finished speaking, she was with him, grabbing his head in her hands.
“We have to —” he began again, taking her head in his hands.
“I know,” she muttered. “Do it now, Maxel!”
Serge and Doyle had sprung to their feet. They didn’t know the specifics of what was happening, but they reacted instinctively to Maximilian’s obvious fear and urgency by unsheathing their swords.
“Shetzah!” Doyle cried, turning in a tight circle.
They had walked far from that ring of disintegrating bodies around Hairekeep, but now, as Serge and Doyle watched in horror, those dismembered bits of bodies — in a state of ghastly putrefaction — began bursting from the earth all about them. The body parts writhed on the surface of the ground for several heartbeats then, to the guardsmen’s horror, the bodies began to reassemble themselves.
Already the lower half of a man’s torso was staggering toward Maximilian’s camp, its arms, shoulders and chest scrabbling furiously after it before they caught up and the arms began hauling the chest and shoulders up their companion legs.
Behind it, thousands of bodies were, in fits and starts, sorting themselves out for an attack on Maximilian.
A black mist rose over the entire field of the reassembling dead.
The One’s power.
Doyle glanced at Ishbel and Maximilian.
They were standing close, holding each other’s heads in their hands and apparently unaware of the rising death about them.
Eleanon was sitting on a stool in the middle of the Lealfast camp, shaving his chin, when he felt the influence and power of the One surge into the land.
His hand halted, then dropped the razor as Eleanon rose, looking frantically about.
By the stars, what was happening! Was he under attack from the One?
All he could feel was death rising in a great tidal surge about him.
Eleanon began to panic.
They took a long moment to reorientate and concentrate, to shut out what was happening about them, to forget, as much as they were able, the sense that the One’s power roared toward them.
They had to forget, somehow, that they were within moments of death and concentrate only on each other.
“Do you feel?” Maximilian murmured.
“Yes,” Ishbel whispered, and then they slid fingers of power into each other’s mind, and gently twisted.
“I don’t like these odds,” Serge muttered, standing shoulder to shoulder with Doyle, facing the advancing horde of half-reconstituted bodies lurching toward them. They were within fifteen or sixteen paces and both men could hear the peculiar squelchy sound of the bodies’ movements.
Very few of them had found their heads.
“You don’t say,” Doyle said, squaring his legs as he adjusted his balance.
To one side, the rat scrambled over to where Ishbel had left the Book of the Soulenai, and tucked its front paws inside the front cover of the book.
The first of the bodies reached the campsite, and Serge and Doyle stepped forward, fighting with the skills of former assassins and current Emerald Guardsmen.
Their swords flashed in the firelight, slicing through bodies on both forward and backward swings.
Bodies, dismembered, fell to the ground and began once more to reassemble themselves, their movements frantic.
More and more of the dead lurched into the camp, and Serge and Doyle began to sweat, then, horrifically, Doyle slipped in a pool of rotten blood and fell over, one shoulder and arm slamming into the fire and sending up a shower of sparks and flames.
Now, Maximilian said, and something simultaneously clicked in both of their minds.
Emptiness, where once had rested the knowledge to walk the paths to the Twisted Tower.
For the first time in thousands of years, there was no Persimius left alive who could remember the pathways to the Twisted Tower.
For the first time in thousands of years, there was no connection left between the Twisted Tower and this world.
All the bodies shambling toward the camp suddenly stopped, then fell apart.
Serge stared for one single heartbeat, then he spun around and helped Doyle roll away from the fire, and to beat back the flames that licked at his jerkin.
No! the One screamed as he realised what had just happened, what they had done. He still stood at the open doorway of the Twisted Tower, staring down the path.
But now, instead of looking at Maximilian and Ishbel’s camp, he looked into a featureless void.
No.
Untethered, the Twisted Tower gently spun away into eternity.
Eleanon had just been about to scream for the Lealfast to rise into the air and to escape, escape the One’s wrath, when he froze on the spot, his mind trying to grasp what had just happened. First, the One’s full power surging into this world from the Twisted Tower, raging at . . . someone.
Then, nothing. It stopped, like a gushing faucet dammed in an instant.
There was no sense of the One.
Eleanon’s mouth opened, then closed, his mind churning. How . . . what . . . had Maximilian somehow cut off the Twisted Tower? It was the only thing that made sense.
Eleanon stood there, all his senses scrying.
The One was gone.
Truly gone. Not relocated, not dismembered, not hiding.
Gone.
Completely.
But . . . and again his senses scried forth . . . Eleanon’s ability to touch Infinity had not been affected. It still throbbed through him, nowhere near the same power as that the One had commanded, but still there.
Coming through the Dark Spire.
There was no one to stop him now.
Exultation filled Eleanon, and he sprang into the air. He went up and up and up, high into the sky, almost vertically, his powerful wings driving him upward at an extraordinary speed.
Then, when he was a mere speck in the sky, Eleanon flipped over and plunged for the earth, wings left limp to stream behind him, rippling in the force of the downward plunge, feathers ripping out now and again, leaving a haze of soft white to drift down in the wake of his crazy plunge.
He pulled himself up just before he hit the ground, landing breathless before the Lealfast elder, Falayal.
“The One is gone!” Eleanon hissed, his face jubilant. “Nothing stands in our way now!”
Falayal gaped, trying to find something to say.
“But I can still feel the power of Infinity,” he said finally.
“It is still here. We can still touch Infinity through the Dark Spire. Maximilian must have cut the One off. Ha! The Lord of Elcho Falling may have thought to have done himself a favour, but he has done us an even bigger act of kindness! The pathways to the power of Infinity remain open, yet the One himself has been isolated. Nothing can prevent us taking what we want now, Falayal.”
Falayal looked at Eleanon, then finally, slowly, he smiled.
Maximilian and Ishbel let go of each other’s heads, then fell into a tight embrace.
“Thank the gods,” Ishbel murmured, hugging her husband to her as hard as she dared.
He laughed, kissing her forehead and cheek and mouth. “What can stop us now?” he said. “It is home to Elcho Falling for you and me, my darling.”
To one side, Doyle — his garments a little singed — and Serge sheathed their swords, grinning at the couple. Then Doyle looked to the left of Maximilian and Ishbel, and frowned.
“The rat and the Book of the Soulenai have vanished,” he said.