LITMIR.BIZ

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breath was now like a sword-cut. Dwelling in this damned place for two years had robbed him of his bodily strength as well as crippling his resolution. But he would mend if he could elude the sindona and finally take advantage of the dead woman’s second gift …

      He was in the disused part of the Dark Man’s Moon now, a silent warren of empty galleries and parlours, uninhabited bedroom suites, and abandoned workshops and libraries. It was here that the rearguard of the Vanished Ones had lived twelve times ten hundreds ago while they strove hopelessly to stem the advance of the Conquering Ice.

      Denby had willingly given him permission to explore the ghostly rooms, apparently unmindful of what might be found there. Early in his incarceration, the prisoner had come upon the chamber of the dead woman and received her first precious gift. With its help, he had collected his small trove of magical devices; but they were useless, of course, so long as he remained Denby’s captive. The Dark Man was invulnerable to ordinary magic.

      A long time later, after the prisoner had discovered the truth about himself and about the world’s imbalance, he had found the dead woman’s second gift: the means to escape this strange prison and its demented jailer. Her third and last gift, without which the other two were useless, he had found just two days earlier. There was no magic in this gift at all, and for that reason Denby had succumbed. The old man had not died, as the prisoner had hoped, but if the profound swoon only lasted a short while longer –

       Star Man, where are you going?

      Merciful Dark Powers, the sentinels had found him! Their voices rang in his brain like great brazen bells.

       What have you done to the Archimage of the Firmament? What stolen goods do you carry in that sack? Answer us. Star Man!

      At any moment they might materialize in the corridor with him. They would point their fingers in judgement – and his life would end in a puff of smoke while his naked skull bounced hollow on the floor.

       Star Man, this is your final warning. Stop and explain yourself!

      But he only continued to flee. Suddenly they appeared out of thin air, four of them, less than ten ells behind him and striding purposefully in pursuit. The sindona that were called Sentinels of the Mortal Dictum resembled living statues of ivory, taller than a man and more beautiful than any human being. They wore only crossed belts of blue and green scales and iridescent crown-helms, and they carried golden death’s-heads that symbolized their lethal duty. The pace of the sentinels was ponderous and deliberate and he kept well ahead of them, but he was nearly spent. His heart seemed about to burst and his legs were faltering and would not bear him much further.

      Where was her chamber? He should have reached it long ago! But the eerie corridor seemed endless, and the sentinels were drawing closer moment by moment. His vision reddened, then began to dim.

      I am finished, he said to himself, and pitched forward toward blackness, losing his grip upon the sack. As he fell he took hold of his medallion in a last gesture of futile appeal. The Star seemed to lend him fresh strength. Lying there, he was able to lift his head and open his eyes.

      He saw the four pale sindona, golden skulls cradled beneath their left arms, marching toward him. And he also saw that a miracle had been vouchsafed. He lay before a door, massively fashioned of solid metal, marked with a huge, tarnished likeness of the same many-rayed silvery Star he wore around his neck. The portal had neither latch nor keyhole. It was only a few paces away.

      Like a dying thing, he crawled with agonized slowness, then lifted his medallion on its chain and touched it to the door.

      No! cried the sentinels. Their right arms rose in unison to point annihilation toward him.

      The door flew open. There within was the dead woman, seeming to turn her head and smile at him, silently offering sanctuary.

      Somehow he was drawn swiftly inside and the door clanged shut behind him. He was enveloped in night – a night spangled with unblinking stars. The room was so cold that the breath was torn from his heaving lungs in a frosty cloud and the sweat coursing down his face turned to crackling ice. An involuntary moan escaped his stiffening lips. He had forgotten that one visited the dead woman only on her own terms.

      Near paralysed with pain and the intense cold, he pulled a cloak from his sack, flung it about himself, and drew up the hood, muffling his face to the eyes. Then he fumbled to pull on fur-lined gloves. Staggering to his feet, he stood with his back pressed to the locked door, fighting to reclaim control of his mind and body.

      Would the sindona be able to break in and capture him?

      The dead woman smiled serenely and seemed to say, No. Not without the explicit command of the Dark Man himself and he is still bereft of his senses.

      She sat in a thronelike chair, not really looking at him at all. One entire wall of her chamber was a gigantic window, and her glazed eyes, wide open, seemed to stare with rapt fascination at the scene outside. A shining blue-and-white sphere hung in the midst of a million untwinkling stars. The Garden Moon and the Death Moon were out of sight, tracing their course in the heavens somewhere behind the abode of the Dark Man, so there was nothing to detract from the heart-wrenching beauty of the vision. Uncounted leagues distant, the World of the Three Moons hovered like a massive clouded aquamarine.

      The imperilled world. The world that was his home, that he alone could save. The world that had certainly been her home as well, twelve thousand years ago.

      She had died with her eyes fixed longingly upon that blue orb, with one hand clasping a Star hanging on jewelled links at her breast and the other holding a curiously wrought little glass phial with a few frozen droplets remaining in it. Her body was perfectly preserved in the deep cold, dressed in rich garments of mournful black. Her hair was dark, streaked with silver. She had been middle-aged but of surpassing beauty, a captive like himself. The archives of the Dark Man had told him some of her tragic story:

      Her name was Nerenyi Darai, and she had been the founder of the mighty Star Guild. One who loved her beyond all reason and loyalty had ‘saved’ her from the fate that had befallen most of the other members of her group, only to see her voluntarily relinquish life rather than evade the Conquering Ice in his despised company. The loss of Nerenyi had driven Denby Varcour, greatest hero of the Vanished Ones and Archimage of the Firmament, out of his mind.

      The prisoner bowed deeply before her body, trying to control his shivering. He would not live long in this rigorous place. If the dead woman’s second gift proved inoperative after aeons of disuse, he would surely freeze to death before Denby awoke and ordered the sentinels to seize him.

      ‘I could not kill him after all, Star Lady,’ he confessed to her. ‘Perhaps his magic protected him. But I suspect it was my own soul that demurred, unable to take his life in such a craven manner as he lay smilingly unconscious, replete with good food and wine. Should another day come when he and I meet in honourable magical combat, man-to-man, I will not hesitate to destroy him. Will that suffice?’

      The voice that might have been hers replied, It will. Have you found the basic instruments of enchantment – those that will enable you to resume your work?

      ‘I have.’ He lifted the sack. ‘My Star eventually led me to all of them, even though it took some time. I am ready now to return to the world, regain the three pieces of the Sceptre of Power, and perform the world-saving task you have commanded.’

       The Three will do their best to prevent you.

      ‘Lady, no human being will stop me – not even the one I love. I swear it on the Star.’

      When he had first found Nerenyi Darai, some instinct bade him touch his own medallion to hers … and the ancient magic of her Guild had done its work, granting him the full potency of the Star at last. It was the dead woman’s first gift.

      The second gift was a viaduct, one of those wondrous passageways that the Dark Man and the sindona used in order to travel instantly from place to place about the hollow Moons. But this particular viaduct, invisible now, as its kind always were until an

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