" I love him, I truly do!" Velika cast a tearful glance down at Waldron, then pulled with greater urgency on Lan' s sword arm. " I beg you to spare him." Tears flowed freely. Lan pulled away from her, the sight of those tears making him uneasy. Velika was obviously torn between them, the freebooter and the warlord, and had made her choice, no matter how painful it had been for her. Or Lan.
Lan' s sword rose. He felt the acid tingle of her tears as they dropped onto his hand. He actually cringed away, his resolve to kill Waldron gone.
" Spare him," came Inyx' s advice. " He does seem to have the best for his own people at heart, even if his methods are extreme."
Inyx came and stood beside Lan, her sword dripping the blood of the fallen grey- clad soldiers.
" Even after he enslaved you, you beg for his life?" Lan asked, astonished.
" Would you have done so differently in his place?"
" Of course!"
" Remember the grinding poverty on his home world. And there are no cenotaphs off. He needed the Kinetic Sphere."
" I, too, vote to spare his life. Without his knowledge of the operation of the Kinetic Sphere," said Krek, " we might never ascertain the proper ways of activating it." Krek' s advice was sound.
" Your life," said Lan Martak, " is still in my hands. Tell us how to use the Kinetic Sphere, or I will kill you."
" No," said Waldron adamantly. " That is the sole possession of any value on my bleak world. There is no other way off that grey, spinning ball of sludge. I hold a heritage that must be preserved, even if it means my death."
" Then die!"
" Lan, please! I' ll tell you how to operate it." Velika' s frenzied tone convinced Lan that the woman knew and wasn' t merely using this as a ploy to add a few extra seconds to Waldron' s life. " I' ll show you all you need to know!"
" Velika, you can' t!"
" Waldron, I must. If it means your life, I will do anything!"
Lan laughed harshly. " Your spell binding her to you is fading, Waldron. Velika returns to her old self. She' d do anything to help me- and prevent me from further bloodying my hands."
Inyx snorted disdainfully, and Krek said, " I will bind him, friend Lan Martak." A gurgling noise followed by a hiss, and sticky strand after strand of silken web stuff cocooned Waldron. The more he struggled, the more he entangled himself.
" You can' t take the Sphere. You can' t!" he yelled, furious at Velika. " I love you, but if I were free, I' d gladly strangle you to prevent this theft. My world needs it! Millions will starve without it!"
" Come along," said Lan, nudging Velika toward the corridor leading to the chamber holding the Kinetic Sphere. " The sooner we' re gone, the better I' ll like it." As Lan sheathed the ensorcelled weapon at his side, he heard a thin, reedy voice cry out.
" Take me, too! Take me along with you! I can show you wonders undreamed of in your feeble fantasies."
" Lan," said Inyx softly, her hand on his arm. " The box spoke!"
" Leave it!" snapped Waldron. " It means your death to touch it."
" You' d love to see me dead," said Lan. " The box means something more."
" I created the Kinetic Sphere. He imprisoned me in here. Take me with you!"
Lan hefted the box containing the sorcerer' s skull. Gingerly, he opened the lid, making sure the empty eyesockets were pointed at a distant section of the room. The twin ruby beacons did not shine forth. Instead, the jaw hinge of the skull twitched slightly.
But the words Lan heard were as plain as if spoken by flesh and blood lips.
" I am Claybore. He stole my Kinetic Sphere. I conjured it; he saw and coveted it as I passed through his dismal world. He stole my creation!"
Lan glanced quickly at Waldron, still struggling in his silk coffin. He believed Waldron capable of any deed, including one as perfidious as this. The fallen Saviour- king would have killed off entire worlds to feed his own. The death of a single sorcerer meant nothing to him.
" Claybore, eh? I' ve heard the name. But you' re not from Waldron' s world?"
" No! I am from: a great distance away, even when reckoned by the Sphere. Take me with you and I shall explain the workings of it."
" He lies. His treachery forced me to-"
" Silence!" shouted Lan. He didn' t doubt Waldron was capable of any treachery, but the sight of the virtually fleshless skull unnerved him. He remembered the beams of destruction leaping from those hollowed eyesockets and wondered at the truth.
" We' ll take you along, Claybore," said Lan, snapping the lid closed on the box. " And we' ll talk later."
He heard the words of thanks, although he knew that the throat of the long- dead sorcerer was separated from the skull by an infinity of worlds.
" Tell us about the Kinetic Sphere, Velika," he demanded. " Quickly. The grey- clad soldiers hammer at the doors again." Already, outside the doors barred by Inyx and Krek, more of the grey- clad soldiers hammered to gain entry.
" This way," she said, her voice strained and her eyes downcast. " It is another way into the chamber holding the Sphere. It' s Waldron' s private passage." They raced along a corridor opening into the throne room and soon entered the chamber containing the Kinetic Sphere. It lay like a pink, pulsating pearl in a bed of black velvet. World after world spun by in a never- ending parade inside the crystalline depths, and Lan had to force his attentions back to Velika and this world. It would be difficult abandoning the Road, but for Velika he' d make the sacrifice.
Yet so much lurked just an arm' s length away:.
" Y- you need only allow the worlds to pass in review. When you see one you want, simply say," and she chanted a complex rhyme, mnemonics for the key words needed to freeze the gateway on the desired world. Lan had her repeat the rhyme several times until he was sure he had learned it, then asked of Krek and Inyx, " Sufficient?"
" I can remember," said Inyx simply.
" A child' s verse in its simplicity," Krek assured him. " Why, we spiders carry our entire heritage in vastly more complex word patterns, not being able to write, you see. I can recite-"
" Thanks, Krek, later." Then Lan remembered that there wouldn' t be a later time with the spider. And they' d been through so much together. But he' d not signed any document stating life would be full of simple decisions. Velika, as soon as Waldron' s hold on her diminished, would prove a far more loving companion than the egotistical, weakness- proclaiming spider.
" How is the shimmering curtain of the Road itself summoned?" asked Inyx, eyeing the world chosen in the globe.
" I do not know," said Velika.
" It is merely another chant," came the strong, baritone resonance of Claybore' s voice. " This one."
" And the cancellation?" asked Inyx.
The rhyme Claybore chanted burned in Lan' s mind, and he saw in it a palindrome. The symmetry of the spell fascinated him, gave him clues to the innermost workings of the universe itself. To have the knowledge to construct such a device drew him. And it was all Claybore' s. And Claybore' s head rested in the box under Lan' s arm.
" Carry the Sphere with you through the curtain simply by reciting the spell on the far side. It: it slips through," said the decapitated sorcerer.
" Lan," cried Velika, clutching again at his arm.
" He- it- has shown you all you need to know. Now give me my freedom as you promised."
" What?" he said, stunned by the request. " I said I' d spare Waldron' s life. Don' t you want to stay with me?"