The light followed, filling the tunnel behind him, stretching his shadow far ahead, sending dark things scuttling and slithering and fluttering out of the way.
He pushed on, not running, but moving swiftly with quick, long strides. The sense of urgency was still at his back, propelling him forward. He swung the blade back and forth, splashing the air ahead of him with bright arcs of light, then waded through them.
But as he progressed deeper and further along the tunnel, he noticed a dimming of the light. He turned and looked back along his path. The light seemed as thick and bright as before back there, but down here it was attenuated, diluted, tainted…
It could only mean he was nearing his goal, the heart of the darkness.
Not much further on, the light loosened its embrace and pulled free of him; it hung back, deserting him, abandoning him to penetrate the beckoning blackness of the tunnel ahead alone.
Glaeken kept moving, slower now, stepping more carefully. Only the blade was glowing now, and that faintly, struggling against the thickening blackness that devoured its light. Soon its light failed too. Glaeken stood in a featureless black limbo, cold, silent, expectant. The darkness was complete. Victorious.
And then, as he knew it would, came the voice, the hated voice, speaking into his mind.
"Welcome, Glaeken. Welcome to a place where your light cannot go. My place. A place of no light. Remind you of anyplace from the past?"
Glaeken refused to reply.
"Keep walking, Glaeken. I won't stop you. There's light of sorts ahead. A different light, a kind I choose to allow here. No tricks, I promise. I want you here. I've been waiting for you. The Change is almost complete. I want you to marvel at my new form. I want you to be the first to see me. I want to be the very last thing you see."
Glaeken felt his palms dampen. He was in Rasalom's country now, where he made all the rules. Tightening his grip on the hilt, he stepped forward into the black.
WNEW-FM:
JO: Okay. We've had somebody CB us from right inside the beam of light over on Central Park West and they say it's the real thing. Bright, warm, and the bugs won't go near it. Nobody knows how long it'll last, but it's there now and these folks think it might be there to stay.
FREDDY: So look, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna make this loop and set it going, then we're outta here. We're heading there ourselves. We'll have a message on the tape, then we'll follow it with a Travelin' Wilburys song, and the whole deal will play over and over.
JO: And here's the message: Get to the light. Get over to Central Park West any way you can and get into the light. Get moving and good luck. And while you're gettin' there, here's some appropriate traveling music. See you there, man.
Cue: "Heading for the Light"
Dim light ahead, oozing around the next bend in the passage.
Unhealthy light. A sickly, wan, greasy glow, purulent green, clinging to the tunnel walls like grime, casting no shadows. There was no hope to be found in that light, no succor from the night, merely a confirmation of the dark's superiority.
As Glaeken moved toward the feeble glow, the air grew colder; a bitter, acrid odor stung his nostrils. He rounded the bend and stopped.
In the center of a huge granite cavern, a hundred feet across, Rasalom's new form hung suspended over a softly glowing abyss. Four gleaming ebon pillars reached from the corners of the chamber, arching across the chasm of the abyss to fuse over its center. A huge sack, bulging, pendulous, nearly the size of a small warehouse, hung suspended from that central fusion. Glaeken could make out no details of the shape that floated within the inky amnion of the sack. He didn't need to see Rasalom to know that it was he, undergoing the final stage of his transformation.
"Welcome to my uterus, Glaeken."
Glaeken did not reply. Instead, he leapt upon the nearest support where it sprang from the wall and strode along its upper surface toward the center where Rasalom hung in his amniotic sack.
"Glaeken, wait! Stop!" Rasalom's voice took on a panicky edge in his head. "What are you doing?"
Glaeken kept moving toward the center, the weapon raised before him.
"There's no need for this, Glaeken! I'm so close! You'll ruin everything!"
Glaeken had progressed to within a dozen feet of the sack when the surface of the support suddenly softened and erupted in hundreds of fine tendrils that wrapped around his ankles, snaring them, encasing them in a squirming mass, then recrystallized to rock-like hardness. He pulled and strained at them but his feet were locked down to the support. He chopped at them with the blade but he remained trapped like a fly on a pest strip.
He stared down at the sack hanging within spitting distance below him. A huge eye rolled against the inner surface of the membrane and stopped to stare back at him.
"That is quite far enough," Rasalom said.
"Perhaps you're right," Glaeken said.
He shifted his grip on the hilt and raised the weapon over his shoulder like a spear, its point directed at the eye. Rasalom's voice screamed in his brain.
"No! Glaeken, wait! I can help you!"
"No deals, Rasalom."
He reared back to hurl the weapon.
"I can make her whole again!'
Glaeken hesitated. He couldn't help it.
"Whole again? Who?"
"Your woman. That Hungarian Jewess who stole your heart. I can give her back her mind—and make her young again."
"No. You can't. Not even the Dat-tay-vao—"
"I'm far more powerful than that puny elemental. This is my world now, Glaeken. When I complete the change I can do whatever I wish. I will be making the rules here, Glaeken. All the rules. And if I say the woman called Magda shall be thirty again and sound of mind and body forever—forever—then so it shall be"
Magda…alert, young, healthy, sane …the vision of the two of them together as they used to be…
He shook it off.
"No. Not in this world."
"It doesn't have to be this world. You can have your own corner of the globe, your own island, your own archipelago. All to yourselves. You can even take some of your friends. The sun will shine there forever. You can live on in idyllic splendor."
"While the rest of the world…?"
"Is mine. All you have to do is acknowledge me as master of this sphere and drop your weapon into the abyss. After that I shall see to all your comforts."
For a heartbeat he actually considered it. The realization rocked Glaeken. Did he want Magda back that much? And Magda—she'd never forgive him. He'd have to live on with her abhorrence, her loathing of him.
He tightened his grip on the weapon.
"No deals."
Putting all his arm and as much of his foot-locked body as he could behind it, Glaeken hurled the weapon at the sack. The huge eye ducked away as Rasalom's voice screamed in his mind.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
The point of the blade pierced the membrane of the sack, penetrated about a foot, then stopped, quivering. Rasalom's voice became a howl of pain as inky fluid spurted out around the blade, coating it, congealing around it, sealing the wound and encasing the weapon until the entire blade and all but the pommel of the hilt were mired in a hardening tarry mass.
And then Rasalom's howl of pain segued into a peal of laughter. The single huge eye once again pressed against the inner surface of the membrane and regarded him coldly.
"Ah, Glaeken. Noble to the end. Just as well, I suppose. You probably knew you'd never see the tropical idyll I promised you. But did you truly think you could hurt me? Here in the heart of my domain, in the seat of my power? Your arrogance is insufferable at times. It is too late to harm me, Glaeken. It has been too late for a long time."