The Darrell Schweitzer MEGAPACK ®. Darrell Schweitzer

is a magician. It’s not true, but they are so numerous that there is no work for many. That is why I wander, you see, to practice my art.”

      And again I wondered if he were mocking me, but I made no sign. An idea came to me. Another magician could help me against my enemy. At the very least, it would complicate Etash Wesa’s plans. So words poured out of me in a torrent. I was well into my story before I realized what I was doing. Then there was nothing to do but finish. I told him all.

      “I know of Emdo Wesa,” he said when I had finished. “I can take you to him. Then the whole unpleasant business will be over and you’ll be free.”

      “Wait! What business? What am I supposed to do? Who are you? How do you know—?”

      Before I could do anything he stood over me. He had opened his robe. Beneath he wore some sort of armor. The scales glittered blue and black, close against his skin. I had a sudden fear that it wasn’t armor at all, that he was some kind of reptile—

      The cloak closed over me, covering my head as he knelt to embrace me, hugging me to his chest.

      His flesh was cold and hard as iron. I couldn’t feel any heart beating.

      “Help! Wait! Where is my wife? What have you done—?”

      “You didn’t tell me you had a wife,” he said as he pushed me over backwards and tumbled onto me.

      The ground did not catch us. We were falling off a precipice, tumbling over and over in the air, the wind roaring by us, for a long time. I screamed and struggled, and then all the strength went out of me and I hung limp. He straightened out from our hunched position and stopped somersaulting. I could see nothing but darkness beneath his cloak, but somehow I had the impression that he bore me in his arms like a bird of prey carrying off a fish.

      The fish, from out of the crag, wandering into the wide ocean, bursting into the air, snatched away by a sea hawk—

      —falling among faint lights, false images behind my eyelids, but then stars, as pure and clear as any seen by night over the open plain, as if Kabor Asha had all the universe inside him.

      We stopped falling without any impact or even a cessation of motion. My vertigo simply faded slowly away, and after a time I felt solid ground beneath my feet.

      He took his robe off me, and I saw that we stood on a little hill before a vast city which rose up tier upon tier, like something carven out of a mountain. Every stone, every wall, every rooftop of it was of dull black stone, and it stood silent and empty against a steel grey sky. As far as I could see the ground was bare and dusty grey. Every color, every trace of life seemed drained out of this place.

      “Behold the holy city of Ai Hanlo,” said my guide and captor, “where lie the bones of the Goddess. But this is not the Ai Hanlo to which pilgrims flock, where the Guardian rules over half a million citizens. No, this is one of the shadows of the city, in a world of shadows. Where the bones of the Goddess lie all magic intersects, all powers are centered. All shadows come together here, branching out into separate worlds. Thus, in a sense, all practitioners of deepest magic, not that petty and shallow stuff you yourself use, the sort you can see on any street corner in Zabortash, but the deepest, most secret magic, which partakes of the inner nature of things; all who know this and immerse themselves into it—all these dwell in Ai Hanlo, alone, in some shadow or other, where ordinary men cannot follow. In this particular shadow Emdo Wesa dwells. You must go to him.”

      I looked up at the city in dread. It was no city, but some monster, waiting to devour me in the labyrinths of its mouth, to dissolve me utterly.

      Dadar though I was, if I had any will, I would resist.

      I ran down the hill, away from the city, away from the one who called himself Kabor Asha.

      “Stop! Fool!”

      The spider in my chest scurried to my heart and squeezed and sank its fangs deep. I screamed once, but the sound broke into gurgling, and the pain filled me.

      The next thing I knew the Zaborman was helping me to my feet. I was numb and weak. I could not fight him.

      “Don’t try to run away,” he said. “Listen to me. I can still help you. I can be your friend.”

      “Who are you really? You didn’t find me just by chance.”

      “No, I did not. Let me merely say that I am one who wants to see you complete your mission and go free. I want to help you do what Etash Wesa has sent you to do, and get it over with.”

      “You seem to know what I must do.”

      “Yes, I do. It is quite simple. You will find Emdo sleeping. Reach beneath his pillow and take out the jeweled dagger you find there. With it, cut his throat from ear to ear.”

      “Why should I murder a man I do not know, with whom I have no quarrel?”

      “Because you were created for that very reason. Be comforted. You have no more guilt in this than does the dagger.”

      “That’s very comforting,” I said bitterly. “What happens to me afterwards?”

      “In all honesty, I do not know. You could go on for a while, the way ripples do in a pool, even after the stone that made them comes to rest on the bottom. If so, take that as reward for services rendered.”

      So, filled with helpless dread, like a victim led to slaughter, even though I was supposed to do the slaughtering, I let him guide me through the dark gate of this shadow Ai Hanlo, through the wide squares, up streets so steep that steps were cut in them, below gaping empty windows, to that gate beyond which, in the real city, no common man was allowed to go. But no guards stopped us, and we entered the inner city, the vast complex containing the palace of the Guardian and—in all the shadows too?—the bones of the Goddess resting in holy splendor. All the while the air was still and dry, not warm, not cold, giving no sensation at all. There was an overwhelming odor of must, like that of a tomb which had not been opened for a dozen centuries. We came to the topmost part of the palace, the very summit of the mountain, to a great chamber beneath a black dome. In the true city the dome was golden, and was said to glow with the sunset hours after the rest of the world was dark.

      In that vast, empty room, by the faint light of the grey sky coming in through a skylight, I could make out two mosaics on the floor, one of a lady dressed in black, with stars in her hair, and another, of the lady’s twin, in flowing white, with a tree in one hand and the blazing sun in the other. The Goddess, in her bright and dark aspects, as she was before she fell from the heavens and shattered into a million pieces, which we know as the Powers.

      Where the feet of the two images came together, there was a dais, and on it a throne. A man sat there asleep, his head on an armrest. I had expected him in a bed, the pillow beneath his head. But, no, he was sitting on it.

      We crept closer, climbing the few steps until we stood by the throne. We stood over the sleeping man. He was very thin. I could not make out his features.

      “Take the dagger, and do what you must,” said Kabor Asha, and as he spoke he stepped down from the dais. “Do it!” he whispered to me. “Hurry! Fear not; it is a magic weapon, the only one which can pierce him. Now carefully draw it out.”

      The hilt was sticking out from beneath the pillow. Delicately, I took hold of it and inched it away. The task was easier than I had expected. The thing slid out of a scabbard, which remained beneath the pillow. Once I froze in abject terror as my victim’s eyelids fluttered, but he did not wake.

      “Do what you must!”

      I felt as if I were about to slay myself, as if the first prick of the blade would burst me like a bubble. But then I told myself, well, I had been created for this. What years I had lived, I had lived. What man can avoid his appointed doom? My life is done, I thought. There are more painful ways to die than merely winking out of existence.

      I took the sleeping man firmly by the hair, and quickly, savagely, before he could react, I slashed his throat so deeply that I felt the blade touch his neck bone.