I wanted to hoot derision at myself. Instead, I dragged my battered torso toward the cave entrance. During the journey, I discovered that my left eye had indeed burned out. I refused to touch my face after that and learn the full extent of the burns. My forearms looked hideous enough.
The cave threatened to collapse each time a comet hit. Erasmo must have weakened it when he’d sent all the sand on me. Finally, however, I emerged into the moonlight. If it had been day, I knew I’d have been dead.
Unfortunately, this world’s moon lacked the same recuperative powers of mine. Had there ever been a Moon Lady on this Earth? Still, there must have been something. I gained a perceptible amount of strength and greater clarity of thought.
I used a boulder and dragged myself to my feet. I felt like a reed in a storm, and I began to lurch, dragging my gamey leg, the one shot in the thigh by a crossbow bolt.
The climb upslope was an epic struggle. The salty desert with Erasmo’s outline tracks caused me to sink to my knees. I shuffled forward like that, tried to climb to my feet and found myself sprawled on my belly. I crawled and comets blazed overhead. Hot air shrieked and made my burns relive their agony. It was then I realized this was Hell. Erasmo had lied. Lorelei had lied. Others Earths-they’d thought me a fool. Everyone has sought to use me. I roared curses. I raved and slammed my fists in the sand. The ground trembled, and it was only by degrees that I realized a comet had done that. As hot air shrieked its mockery, I fought to my feet. I swayed, and before I fell, I lurched in the direction of the tracks.
Time blurred and the comets seemed like demons howling at my stupidity. Somehow, I would get even.
I stopped and blinked gritty eyeballs. The tracks had disappeared. There was just shifting sand. It was time to hurl my coin as faraway as I could. Maybe my soul would find its way back. But for me-
A last rational part wondered if I’d passed the door. With agonizing slowness, I turned and shuffled back, following my tracks. I examined the ground like a lover memorizing a maiden’s face. The ground trembled. I swayed, and then I saw it: a faint paw print.
Oh, you clever schemer. Erasmo must have removed the spell from his father’s corpse.
I looked around, saw nothing new but refused to panic. I needed wits, strength and the luck of the damned, whatever that was. I pitched down my pouch of throwing stones. Then I shuffled around it in a widening circle. After the third circuit, I noticed a hump of sand. I thumped to my knees and dug, and I found Erasmo’s father.
I waited until a comet blazed and I saw the haze of the door. I laughed. It was a crazed thing. Maybe Erasmo had set a trap in our Earth. Maybe he had locked the door. I crawled on my knees to the hazy image. What would happen if he’d locked it? Did it matter? I struggled to my feet, staggered and hurled myself through.
— 21-
There was an awful moment of stretching, as if a judge had chained my ankles and wrists to separate teams of horses, and the horses stained to tear me in two. I writhed in agony. Then my head struck wood. That deflected me. I struck something else, staggered and pitched onto my face in dreadful blackness.
I groaned. Erasmo had laid a trap. He was a sorcerer, a tricky card player. Here is the king of diamonds. Now it’s the queen of hearts. Here is the door to Earth. Now it’s the door to a dark prison. He had outthought me at every turn. He-
I heard something stir. With my charred fingers, I groped for my deathblade. It was almost pathetic how hard I clung to life. Was a beast in my cell here with me?
Hellish red light appeared. I snarled and tried to lift myself off the floor.
“Darkling!”
I blinked my good eye, confused. Images blurred before me.
“By the moon, you’re burned.”
Behind the hellish light, I spied elfin features. They eloquently spoke of horror and pity.
I tried to speak.
Lorelei knelt beside me, and her hand dipped toward my face, hesitated, dipped closer and then hovered. She clutched her shining ruby in her other hand.
“You’re too big for me,” she said. “You’ll have to crawl.”
A whispering laugh was all I could manage. I was too ghastly to touch. She was too dainty to dirty her fingers on the likes of me. I couldn’t fathom her presence here.
I began to slither, using my burnt elbows to propel myself an inch at a time. The passage through the door had stolen most of my remaining strength. I despised my groans. I lost the ability to sense my surroundings. I crawled because it was my only meaning. I crawled because Erasmo had lured me to a swamp and there had stabbed me in the guts. He’d left me for dead and others had sought to use that. I crawled because instead of burning me, he had buried me because he had once seen tears in my eyes. Erasmo had beaten me too many times. If I stopped, he won everything.
But I didn’t stop. I crawled past barrels in a cellar. I crawled up stairs, through corridors.
“That way, Gian,” someone shouted. “No. Left, left, your other left.”
I crawled blindly and spilled down steps, and I felt cooling rays upon my face. I lay as one dead and soaked the rays. It gave me peace. It eased my hurts.
“Darkling, you must crawl back into the shop. If you draw upon too much of the Moon Lady’s power at once, she’ll be able to trap your will.”
I struggled up, leaning against the Alchemist Shop. Moonbeams still bathed me. I had no idea how long I’d been lying here.
Lorelei crouched nearby, with concern upon her face. “You must heal by degrees,” she said, “just like you did in the swamp.”
I nodded, thinking I understood. So I arose stiffly, with pain, and shuffled back into the hated building.
***
Healing by degrees meant healing a little each night.
“I counsel you to wait until you have all your strength, all your abilities, before you meet Orlando Furioso again.”
Lorelei and I sat in the dungeon of my former palace. Rusty chains adored the walls. A rat-nest was a rack’s lone tenant. Lorelei told me she’d escaped out of the castle that grew after she’d learned the priestess of the Moon had departed. She’d then raced to Perugia.
“By my arts, I realized the Lord of the Night had departed this place,” Lorelei said. “In his pain, Erasmo failed to cover his trail and I found the Alchemist Shop, the stairs, the cellar and the tunnel to the door. It’s been difficult, but I’ve kept it open these past weeks on the assumption-on the hope-that you were too stubborn too die.”
Apparently, I owed her my life.
One portion of the tale troubled me-this long passage of time. The evidence supported Lorelei, but it was still very strange. I’d entered the ruins of Perugia at the beginning of spring. Now it was summer. Yet I’d only been on the doomed Earth less than a day.
Lorelei tried to explain. “How long does a journey take moving from this Earth to the doomed one? By your reckoning, it was a moment of time. But the actual journey took much longer. There is also the possibility that time moves differently on that Earth than ours.”
I shook my head.
“Maybe a minute there is half a day here,” she said.
“That seems contrary to reason,” I said.
“What it means,” Lorelei said, with growing enthusiasm, “is that the Lord of Night has been gone for months. During those months, his grip upon his minions weakened.”
“They must have believed he died,” I said.
“Exactly,” Lorelei said. “And that began a subtle positioning for power. It’s as if the king had died and the sons began jockeying for nobles or hiring mercenaries. What it also meant was a weakening of Erasmo’s grip over his subjected cities. The priestess of the Moon discovered that, and she decided to strike. I think she believed you’d failed. She thus left to exhort the subjected princes to form a league and storm the Tower of the East.”