Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 04 (51 page)

 
          
Colin
did not answer. It was the greatest effort of his existence to simply stand
there and not throttle the life out of Toller Hasloch where he sat, helpless
and bound.

 
          
"Ah,
well, I was nearly done with them anyway," Hasloch continued easily.
"I'd learned as much as they had to teach me, and what I've learned, I intend
to put to good use."

 
          
"No,"
Colin said sadly. "You won't." He cut a short strip of tape and used
it to gag Hasloch; he didn't want him shouting out and attracting unwanted
attention when he realized what was to come.

 
          
Staring
down into the face of the bound man before him, Colin saw the moment when fear
entered Hasloch's eyes; the moment at which the boy
—
and even at thirty, Colin
could not refrain from thinking of the younger man as a boy
—
realized that his attacker
was insane, or serious, or both. That harm could actually befall him here in
his own apartment, on this day dedicated to the celebration of the birth of the
Prince of Peace.

 
          
Hasloch
began to struggle wildly, but Colin had chosen a heavy chair and used most of
the roll of tape to secure his prisoner. All Hasloch could do was fling his
head from side to side, making frantic grunting noises through the gag. He
began to sweat, his hair darkening as it dampened, spraying fine droplets of
salt into the air as he thrashed.

 
          
Colin
stepped behind him as he struggled, and stopped his head between both hands.
Hasloch's skin seemed to burn his palms, and all at once Colin could feel
Hasloch's fear and anger, more sharp and intimate than imagination could paint
them. He could feel the metallic taste of the other man's terror in his own
mouth, and his own heart beat panickily fast with the sickening horror of a
nightmare come true. But he would not allow even pity to deter him from what he
meant to do here today.

 
          
The
Astral Body was the part of his Self that each Adept sent into the Overworld to
do his bidding, transferring his consciousness into it as he did so. Hasloch
was proficient enough to have experience of sending his Astral Body forth
—
Colin knew this because he
was able to detach it from his physical Self with ease, and pull Hasloch's
Astral Double with him into the Over-world.

 
          
Separating
the physical body and its Double
—
sometimes called the
Dop-pelganger
—
was something comparatively
easy for the trained Adept to master, but only the most advanced Adept could
separate Soul and Double in the same manner that his less-advanced brethren
could sunder the Astral and Physical forms. And Colin was betting that Hasloch
wasn't as advanced as that.

 
          
This
close to the Prime Plane, their surroundings were shadows of the real world,
weirdly radiant and stripped of color. This was the place where duration and
cause were nullified; the realm to which ordinary people ascended, in
ignorance, in their dreams. This was the place from which psychics drew their
clairvoyant images of places far removed in space and time.

 
          
Hasloch
staggered back out of Colin's grasp, and then realized that he was free. His
body had been bound to the chair in the world below, but Colin had not yet
bound his Double.

 
          
Because
he was a magician
—
no matter how tainted
—
in this place Hasloch wore
the robes which were the outer manifestation of his magickal self. His robes
were much as Colin had seen them years before, only here the Rune was graven
upon a silver disc over his heart, and it writhed and shifted oddly. Upon his
forehead was bound the fylfot cross incised into a gold disk, and swept back
along his temples were branching antlers carved of ivory and gold. And instead
of a dagger at his belt, Hasloch carried the red-hiked Sword of Sacrifice,
whose blade seemed to be metal and Darkness and the coiling Dragon which was
the flaw that lived at the heart of Creation all at once.

 
         
Colin
wore the robes and breastplate of his Order. Upon his brow was bound the ancient
phylactery that sealed him to the Eternal Law and upon his finger was the ring
that symbolized his knowledge. Here on the Astral he and Hasloch were equals,
though Colin had perhaps a slight edge, through his longer training and
experience.

           
It took Hasloch a moment to realize
that he was free and armed; in that same instant, Colin reached toward him with
the Sword that he had expected to find in his own hands, and found himself
weaponless. He recovered quickly, snatching barehanded at the Runesword's quillons,
but by that time Hasloch had recouped slightly, wrenching the blade away and
stumbling backward. The Sword of Sacrifice hissed as it moved, cutting through
the congruent objects of the Lower Astral as though they were a tissue-paper
backdrop.

 
          
He
would not win his battle here; Colin retreated deeper into the Astral, to the
place that occultists called the Realm of Intention
—
where thoughts and
expectations took physical form, and the Will became a physical weapon.
Permanent structures could be created here: the thought forms that most Lodges
used to build their Astral Temples were fixed things in this place, objectively
perceptible to any well-schooled traveler in these realms.

 
          
Likewise,
the ruins of such
Temples
existed, crumbling away to
nothingness when their acolytes no longer reinforced them with meditation and
magick. How long these holy places endured once they were no longer tended depended
on how much energy had been put into their original construction
—
and of course, some were
revitalized by new Adepts who stumbled upon the wellspring of this tradition or
that and traced it back to its primal source.

 
          
Distance
was mutable here; Colin's arrival bought him close to the outer precincts of
the
Temple
of the Sun. Around it, the
city of the
Temple
spread its ghostly
facsimile. Though it was thousands of years dead, a few Adepts of the
Temple
had survived the drowning
of their City, and in their longing for their lost homeland, those exiled
Adepts had created a simulacrum of the City of the
Temple
that had endured to this
day in the Realm of Intention.

 
          
Within
that severe and beautiful space Colin could see the faint shapes of his
brethren at their work and see their disturbance as they sensed his presence,
unannounced and unhallowed.

 
          
Then
Hasloch followed him, bringing with him his bond to his own unholy places.
Colin caught a confused glimpse of a black cathedral whose pillars were pure
Darkness, and for an instant, just as if he were any innocent ephemeral entity,
his soul was swept by a pang of fervent and absolute terror.

 
          
It
was the terror of the rational man faced with the madman; the bottomless
horror of the victim when he realizes the scope of the evil which has marked
him as its prey. It was hopelessness and despair and unreasoning panic, all the
dark emotions distilled into one searing whiplash of agony that coursed across
Colin's nerves as if they had suddenly been laid bare.

 
          
Then
the two Places, Light and Shadow, flew apart through the emblematic laws of
the Astral, and Colin and Hasloch stood in a place equidistant from both and
prepared for battle.

 
          
Today
Colin acted without the Order's sanction, and the Order's weapons were denied
to him
—
but
even so, there were some weapons which Colin wielded in his own right. From the
storehouse of memory he drew forth a shining golden chain, and flung it up,
stretched between his two hands, to counter Hasloch's first blow.

           
Hasloch did not speak
—
either unable to do so in
this aspect or fearing the distraction it would bring. He attacked tirelessly,
wielding the Sword of Sacrifice with fatal skill. If he struck Colin with that
blade . . .

 
          
He
would do to Colin what Colin intended to do to him, only for Colin, there would
someday be another life, another incarnation.

 
          
And
it was not Colin's intention that Hasloch should ever live again.

 
          
At
last the weighted chain in Colin's hands did as he had intended it it tangled
in the guards of the Runesword and jerked the weapon from Hasloch's hands.
Colin flung them both away
—
Sword and Chain together, Will and Discipline, and they
disappeared into the misty Overlight.

 
          
Hasloch
was weaker now
—
in stripping him of the Sword, Colin had divided him from
much of his Will. Now Colin struck Hasloch about the head until the Black
Adept's knees buckled, and Colin threw him to the ground, placing his foot on
the back of Hasloch's neck to keep him from rising to his feet again. From his
will he summoned fetters with which to bind Hasloch. Though the chains he
invoked would not last beyond his departure from the Overlight, they would hold
Hasloch for as long as required.

 
          
Victory.
But a temporary thing, over one individual alone. Only Colin's Will now kept
their Astral Bodies here on the Astral Plane; and when they fell back into the
Plane of Manifestation, Hasloch
—
with all his temporal power and inventive ability to harm
—
would be untouched, until
that unknown day when the Lords of Karma should choose to act.

 
          
The
battle had tired him; he could not remain much longer in the Overlight. Colin
uttered a heartfelt prayer that he could somehow be spared what he was about to
do. He could still walk away, leave Hasloch's harmful potential unchecked,
though if he did, he did not think he could live with himself any longer. But
there was no mercy to be found anywhere in the vast Intention that surrounded
them both.

 
          
So
be it.
Into Thy hands . . .
Colin appealed again, and took the next step
in his crime.

 
          
Hasloch
was very weak
—
that, or he had simply stopped resisting, depending upon
the fundamental charity of the Light to preserve him from extinction. In his
dimished state, the silver cord that bound his wandering Double to its earthly
host was obvious, leading away from his body and dis- i appearing into the
mists.

 
          
Sever
it, and Hasloch would not be able to reunite the two parts of himself: Body
and Double. Each would dwindle and die, cloven from the other
—
and if Colin also bound
Hasloch's Spirit here in the Overlight, it would never be reborn again on
earth.

 
          
He
took the cord of Hasloch's life in his two hands.

 
          
Here
Colin held all that Toller Hasloch was and all that he had been, life after
life, back to the beginning of Time when the Wheel of their fates ha< first
been set in motion. Held thus, his past lives should be visible to Colin like a
string of pearls. . . but there was nothing there.

 
          
There
was no sheaf of lives lying side by side like the pages of a book, waiting for
any who had the understanding to read them out. There was only
—

 
          
A
darkness and a howling. He was borne upon a shadowy wind, drawn through Space
and Time by the rite being worked here tonight
—
a ritual that would compel
formless spirit into corporeal flesh, would give the incorporeality of the
Dream a physical body.

 
          
Like
a restless spirit Colin was drawn down through the Astral, to the edge of the
Material Plane, but the sight he saw in the World of Form was one that had not
been real for many years. In this moment of crisis, of inattention, he had been
drawn back through Time to an oddly familiar place and moment: to the moment when
the sorcerers of the
Thule Gesellschaft
worked to incarnate the spirit
of the Reich itself, to fashion the leader who would follow Hitler and
consolidate the Nazi victory. . . .