The Sorcerer_s Skull

Lan Martak screamed in silent agony. The world shifted and turned to soft white all around. His words rattled and fell like tiny pebbles, but he didn' t hear them, he saw them. He reached out, cut his finger on them. The dripping blood wasn' t seen as much as it was tasted. His senses were jumbled and confused.

Sight, taste, smell, hearing, touch, all changed in a bewildering kaleidoscope. Lan heard himself falling, tasted the impact against velvet, heard the dim outline of someone near.

" Lan!" came the cry. " I' m frozen solid. Help meeeee!"

" Inyx!" He fought to order the universe, failed. Lan worked toward where the woman had been and found himself wrapped in downsoft clouds of vapor. He sought her. He didn' t find her.

For an eternity he staggered, senses altering in some unknowably random fashion. He felt his brain turn to liquid fire, things crawl through it, other things change within him. The occasional times he heard with his ears, saw with his eyes, felt with his fingers, he made slow progress. But to where?

The Kinetic Sphere had opened a gateway unlike any of the natural cenotaph roads between worlds he' d taken before. He was reminded of the maze he and his companions had followed in Waldron' s dungeons, yet this limbo contained none of the obvious physical dangers. If anything, the subtle danger was greater- to spend the rest of eternity with shifting senses would drive him insane. At least, Waldron' s dungeons contained dangers he could see and fight. And his friends, the dark- haired Inyx and the gigantic, towering, talking spider Krek, had been there to aid him against the would- be conqueror' s minions.

Here, he fought a lonely battle, an ever- changing one. He tasted roughness. His eyes heard a familiar voice.

" You thought it so easy to use the Sphere?" Demoniacal laughter accompanied the taunt. Claybore appeared in the soft fog, miraculously whole of body but still sporting the fleshless skull. The eyeholes burned with ruby fury. The last time Lan had seen the decapitated sorcerer had been seconds before he, Inyx, and Krek had walked along the Road opened by the Kinetic Sphere, that wonderous device fashioned and lost to Waldron- or so he said- by Claybore. " That buffoon Waldron knew nothing. I used him. Now that I have regained the Sphere, nothing will prevent my conquering the entire universe, one world at a time."

" Claybore?" Lan called, uncertain. The spectral figure shimmering in the fog held a pinkly pulsating globe in one hand: the Kinetic Sphere.

" Who else? I am a sorcerer supreme! Now my plans can be put into full effect."

" You' re responsible for the grey- clad soldiers?"

" I used Waldron for that purpose. Many are his men. But they obey my commands! They will flood all the worlds along the Cenotaph Road and conquer at my behest. I will rule!"

" Where are we? What happened?"

" We are nowhere, in a world between worlds. The instant of transport is critical. After making certain that Waldron was properly exiled back to his own bleak prison world, I altered the chant at the last possible moment to give you this little excursion, to give you a taste of what it means to cross a master sorcerer."

Lan' s initial panic subsided. While he was far from accepting the cavalcade of sensory changes torturously twisting around him, it no longer frightened him. His mind calmed; he forged a plan. He acted.

Claybore' s scream ripped through Lan' s flesh, made his skin crawl, gave him sensations of taste unknown to him before. But his fingertips brushed the pink, soft Sphere. The globe rose up as he touched it and obeyed a gravity vastly different from anything Lan had imagined possible. The Kinetic Sphere " fell" sideways, slowly at first, then with increasing velocity. In the span of a heartbeat, it vanished through the thick walls of whiteness.

" You fool!" shrieked Claybore. " You unutterable fool! I need that!" The sorcerer turned taloned fingers toward Lan, but the brief separation from the Sphere already worked deadly changes. The mage' s skin rippled and began to drip like water from a melting icicle. Even as Lan watched- smelled- Claybore' s flesh washed away, leaving behind only a hideous skeleton.

Then the bones crumbled like chalk until only the skull floated in the billows of fog, malevolent ruby beams lancing outward to be absorbed by the cloaking white.

" Lan Martak, I shall punish you for this! I shall make you cringe, grovel, beg for death. Then, then the pain shall truly begin for you. I shall keep you alive for eternity, every instant one of excruciating pain. I shall:" Claybore' s voice faded. Thick blankets of swirling fog surrounded his skull and hid its horrible visage from sight. Lan again existed alone in the limitlessness of limbo.

" Claybore!" he called out, hands groping for the sorcerer' s skull. Even the promise of eternal damnation offered by the mage seemed better than wandering alone and lonely in this infinite fog.

Fingers caressed his arm. A voice spoke. Truly spoke.

" Lan, you are with me. I never thought you' d follow:."

" Zarella?" The shock of again hearing the voice of the woman he' d so foolishly loved sent his heart racing. She came to him from eons before- before he had been forced to flee his home world due to the pursuit of the grey- clad soldiers, before his half- sister had been raped and murdered, before he had walked the Cenotaph Road and found true friends in Krek and Inyx. " Where are you? How did you survive? Surepta killed you!"

" Yes, Surepta and his grey soldiers killed me," came the lament. " I wander this world now, waiting."

" For what?"

It was as if Zarella did not hear him.

" I am like the therra, though I can never return to my body. I meet many here, learn what happens at the Dancing Serpent. All is well there. They do not even miss me. The gambling goes on, the drinking is never- ending, even the old sheriff occasionally stops in to quiet the crowds, though there is little need of him now that the town is totally under the power of the interloper soldiers."

" Zarella, I miss you!"

" More than I' d' ve thought, dear Lan. To follow me as you' ve done shows either true love- or stupidity."

" There are others with me. Can you find them? I can' t tell where I am, nor can I believe my senses."

" That is because you still possess a body. Cut loose, a spirit or therra, there is no resistance to the fog. I can see: forever."

" Can you find a spider, a large spider? And a woman with dark hair?"

" Another woman?" came Zarella' s mocking voice. " Yes, I see another still in body. And the spider." Her voice became wistful. " A huge spider, yes. In life I feared them. Now that I' ve lost all there is to lose, I fear nothing."

" Can you help us? Please, Zarella."

" What? No protestations of love? Can it be you' ve truly learned my true nature?" Her voice carried the old tinge of sarcasm, but it was now softened by: something. Lan Martak dared hope it was love, for him, for humanity, for the mortal life he and his friends represented.

" That you can love no one but yourself? Zarella, I suppose I always knew that, but you were so beautiful. The most gorgeous woman I' ve ever known."

" Including this dark- haired woman warrior?"

" Yes."

" You touch my vanity. My spirit is indistinguishable from thousands of others I' ve encountered in this horrid nothing place. To hear a mortal again tell me of my beauty is a gift beyond compare. Turn right. Walk."

Lan felt ghostly fingers on his shoulder. Only tendrils of fog touched him. He reached out, put his hand on top of them. The tendrils became more substantial, warmer, almost human. He heard a very human sigh.

Then, " Here is one of your friends, Lan, my darling."