"Wait," Polidori hissed harshly. Gonji betrayed his surprise, for none of them had heard any of the undead tormentors speak before. "You are a man of honor, are you not?"

"Youre afraid," Gonji said evenly, flooded now with confidence. He hopped down from the embrasure, katana held in middle guard. Polidori set his blade point down in cavalier fashion.

"So what if I am?" the duellist grated, watching as Simon and the temple cat spoiled for combat, in their standoff. Both backed away cautiously to await the outcome of this exchange. "You would shun the grave, too, if you knew what lay beyond it."

"The karma of some is worse than that of others," Gonji replied.

"Let this be you and me," Polidori proposed. "I, too, am curious as to which of us would triumph in a match, whose fencing is superior. Let us cross swords, and let the victor live."

Gonji c.o.c.ked his head to indicate the nearness of the arenas implacable, crushing center. "We all die soon."

"Then why fight at all, if thats your belief?"

Gonji spat on the stone floor of the turret. "If you cant answer that, then theres no use in further discussion."

He crept forward, smooth as a stalking tiger, mayhem barely contained in the flash of his dark eyes.

But Polidoris delay had been a ploy. A bolt whickered down from above to shatter at Simons springing feet. He had glimpsed the attacker-Fernandez, and his instincts galvanized his thews to evade the shot. Simon snarled up as the second familiar cat launched down to join Polidoris against Simon.

Now all three raging beasts tore into one another in frenzied animal fury, as Fernandez, too, landed in their midst from his looming ruin.

Gonji circled Polidori and Fernandez, feeling out their attack with silver-lick parries, stringing them out to avoid landing between them in the confined s.p.a.ce. He knew the renegade Spanish troopers schooling, had seen his style countless times before. But Polidoris storied technique was a legitimate threat and would require scrutiny.

Gonji drew his ko-dachi and lashed out in a sudden burst of twin-fanged fury, feeling them out, turning away their relentless alternating lunges, inflicting several futile wounds. Neither feared death, though Polidori guarded his back carefully, where his death-blow had been delivered. And Fernandezs mode of death was still unknown.

Polidori seemed to lay back, to allow Gonji to wear himself out, as the clash wore on, fatalistically.

Angered by their confidence, knowing that Simon might succ.u.mb at any time in his battle with those phantasmagoric cats, he beat aside Polidoris blade, backed him against the merlons with a whirling, scissoring a.s.sault, and then abandoned him suddenly to tear into the weaker fencer, Fernandez. In a split instant, Gonji disarmed the Spaniard with a twisting double-bladed snare. His fanning return hacked off one hand and sliced deeply into the corpses knee.

He spun to catch Polidoris deep lunge at his back, driving the blade up over his head and slashing the a.s.sa.s.sin across the belly to no avail. Gonji could hear the snarling and raging howls of animal fury behind him, along with Fernandezs cold laughter, as the revivified, severed hand slid back to the killer in its necromantic magic, the ruined knee reconstructing itself.

But Polidori suddenly contorted in pain and jammed an elbow into his ribs. Simon had stabbed his familiar, wounding it deeply. Gonji leapt forward, swept the duellists blade wide to the left with his seppuku sword, and sliced horizontally with the Sagami, bursting both of the dead mans eyes.

An instants hesitation-Gonji looked back to Fernandez, who reacted like a jolted puppet as Simon caught up enough smoky substance to slam the killers temple cat against a crenellation-and then the samurais series of lightning circular slashes brought the blinded Polidori low, with a furious series of dismembering chops. Dead body parts landed about him, and Gonji cursed the futility of it all.

He stood back, teeth gritted in hatred, sucking in a whistling breath filled with impotent fury, unsure how to apply that rage against these undying fiends. But then he remembered- Before Polidoris parts could rea.s.semble themselves, Gonji kicked him over p.r.o.ne and drove a foot into his back. Poising the katana high overhead, the samurai poured his loathing of this abominable a.s.sa.s.sin into a parting thought.

"Take this to h.e.l.l with you, dead man: Youre the poorest excuse for a legend Ive ever encountered. Good fencing-" With both hands, he plunged the razor point of the katana through the killers back, feeling the life driven from the reanimated body by the clean edge of forthright steel.

But then he regretted his momentary indulgence of vainglory.

Fernandez and his familiar had leapt down to a safe haven on the chunk of ruin that pa.s.sed below. Gonji pounded the merlon in frustration, then went to Simons aid. The lycanthrope had reverted to humanity again, and he seemed in a bad way. He tried to rise, blood seeping from dozens of wounds. For an instant Gonji grimaced, believing one of Simons eyes had been gouged out. But only the eyelid had been sliced, for the eye was intact, though it fluttered in irritation at the blood that filled it.

The samurai steadied his breathing, forced Simon to lie back, for the first time wondering whence had come the sorcery that allowed the partial transformation into the werewolf, which should have been denied him. He decided that Simons n.o.ble spirit had somehow found the way under the pressure of their dire need.

He was watching the revolting dissipation of Polidoris dead temple cat when Orozco shouted above him, jabbering what he knew, asking their condition. On the next pa.s.s the sergeant was low enough to drop down with them.

"Bueys gone," Orozco was saying, his voice unsteady, full of emotional and physical anguish.

"We all will be soon," Gonji noted. "You-youve been a fine friend, Carlo-san. A great bushi."

They eyed each other with shared respect. Orozco nodded. "A h.e.l.luva fine friend," he said, chortling, finding inside himself a last spark of humor. "Good for a loan of silver anytime. You got away with it, you j.a.ppo devil. Look-"

Gonji peered down. He could see Fernandez, huddled with his cat under the roof of an airborne redoubt.

"Cholera-have you any powder left? My bow is-somewhere. No shafts anyway."

Then they saw the figure suddenly appear on the carven stonework of the redoubts floor.

Soiled caftan. A woman...

"Valentina!"

She heard Gonjis shout, looked up languidly and seemed to smile. But she gave no reply. The undead killer and his temple cat went into motion. Gonji slid along the embrasures to see, losing composure, his mind racing with concern, making no sense of it. Then they were out of view.

Gonji saw that his turrets next pa.s.s would take them into the center of the sorcerous battleground, to be enveloped by its mystery.

"Valentina!" He couldnt see her, as the redoubt sailed past the floating walls of a fragmented dungeon.

Gonji turned, whirled about helplessly, leaning back against a wall, an agonized sound escaping his throat. Then: "Carlos!"

It took him a moment to realize that he was alone.

She remembered him now, the memory seething with hatred. He had been one of the first to take her after shed become aware of her curse. She abided her disgust and threw back her caftan to reveal her nakedness. She forced a smile that melted into a sneer as he came toward her, his eyes briefly reflecting the revived memories of l.u.s.t.

The temple cat recognized her first, for it could sense the secret it guarded slipping from its time-suspending sorcery, eroding like sludge before a driving rain. The ghostly animal backed away, head lowered, for it could not perform its protective duty in the presence of the executioner.

Fernandez looked to his guardian cat, and realization dawned agonizingly. He began to tremble as she approached him. Her very proximity had triggered the onset of the process. He stumbled backward a pace, then another. The affliction that had laid him low overwhelmed him once again, this time at an amazingly accelerated pace. In moments he had lost control of his faculties, his entire left side falling prey to paralysis. In panic over the imminent loss of the life hed killed so many to keep, the escape from the glimpsed fate that had filled him with horror, he raised his blade to strike her.

But something prevented him. He could not strike at his executioner. He dropped the sword and staggered back, ever back, with failing control over his undead nerves and muscles.

When he reached the brink he teetered an instant, reached out to her, fending, imploring. Valentinas eyes were like icy spikes when she reached out and took his hand, caressing it with the other. And he recoiled from her touch as if struck by a battering ram.

The evil renegade lancer fell over the brink with a choked outcry, floating in death, pa.s.sing through the spheres outer barrier and swiftly reappearing on the farther side, to take his place amidst the debris that gradually drifted toward the dreadful, crushing center of the s.p.a.ce distortion. He was rigid in death, as hed been at the moment Balaerik had given him back his foul shadow-life.

Valentina watched the temple cat curl into a ball of shadow, shrinking, flitting off on the air currents, its charge and its existence summarily canceled.

She shuddered and fell to her knees, gathered the caftan about her and hugging herself. She began to sob, then to vomit convulsively. When the terrible moment pa.s.sed, her lips spouted a torrent of prayers, in thanks. Unutterable grat.i.tude that her touch alone was enough to negate the necromancy that had revived the evil Fernandez.

For Valentina knew she could not have survived, had her unspeakable fear come true.

Her fear that, in order to save her friends, she might be required to submit to the l.u.s.t of an evil, putrid corpse.

CHAPTER THIRTY.

Gonji saw the bright light that burned a hole into the air before him as the turret he rode approached the engulfing center of the mystical sphere. He was momentarily blinded by the spreading glow, and for an instant he thought he had been visited by the kami of death.

Then a hand reached through, the pale hand of a tawny-haired man, who eyed him with a trace of suspicion as he saw the samurai seize the hilt of the Sagami.

"No. There is no violence here," the man said in a placid voice.

Gonji stepped forward from a foothold on nothingness and warily took the mans hand, as it waved to enjoin speed. He felt an odd, euphoric sense of weightlessness. The sorcerous environs around him seemed to burn off, from front to rear, like the silk of the Moonspinner, torn back like a coverlet from off the firm vista he now felt and saw under and around him, a sweet green world that reminded him of the hills of his youth.

He was on an idyllic, rolling greensward, the gra.s.ses soft and lush beneath his feet. His chest swelled with air formed of pure, welcoming scents, his eyes luxuriating in its beauty. On an impulse he removed his boots and tabi to walk barefoot on the graceful pasture-land.

He was beyond elation to see the other survivors, and he bowed to them without speaking, then knelt and offered a prayer of thanks to all merciful kami.

A b.l.o.o.d.y and begrimed Sergeant Orozco hobbled up and clapped him on the shoulder. "This b.u.g.g.e.r says hes got something that will help Bueys wounds-si, hes alive! Brought here before us. Hes...hes not too sure about Simon, though."

Still bedazzled by the wonder of it all, Gonji slowly acclimated himself. The he moved to help comfort the badly injured Simon and Buey. Ahmed and Luigi greeted him in quiet, shared amazement as they attended the pairs wounds. These two seemed in less than perfect health themselves, numerous cuts and bruises marking them. Yet all appeared grateful to be alive and a bit apprehensive as to what this place might be. Lola, too, was with them, though she seemed in shock, seated on the gra.s.s with her knees drawn up close.

Then he saw what she was staring at: The bodies of their allies Herrmann, Gonzaga, Patel, and Cardenas lay in a decorous row a short distance away.

And then Valentina came through the doorway into nothingness, Shem conducting her, smiling at her. The erstwhile wh.o.r.e now appeared as a conquering queen, framed as she was in the waxing and waning vision of the spherical arena, which finally vanished from their sight for the last time. Gonji strained for a final memory-branding glimpse of the great tilting ground.

Valentina met all their eyes evenly. "No," she said quietly, "its not what you think, thank G.o.d." She forced a shaky smile. Tacit understanding permeated the group. All knew her meaning, though it had never been discussed.

"Well," Orozco began, summoning his facile humor, "thats one h.e.l.luva tribute to how popular you used to be!"

"Thats not funny in the least, Carlos," she said, though not too reproachfully.

The sergeant persisted. "Well, I meant no disrespect. We all do battle in our own way. Were all just happy that you didnt have to-I mean, being that they were the dead and all-"

"Shut up, Carlos," Gonji said, straightening the sergeants impish smile. The samurai watched Valentina walk past them, strangely changed, transcendent, as if occupying some new plane of existence beyond even this realm to which theyd been drawn.

"All this carnage-blood," Shem was intoning gravely, "upsetting the serenity of the Architect-G.o.ds favorite meadow. This is all quite unsettling to me. You can thank Valentina for your survival. I would have been unaware of your peril-and frankly indifferent to it, of necessity-had it not been for her concern over you. We will speak later."

He walked off, his step heavy, as if burdened. Gonji watched him stroll with a jaundiced scowl, having already taken a disliking to this reluctant savior.

Shem returned the sentiment later, when Gonji insisted they bury the four dead warriors at a spot he chose near the broken arch. Valentina attempted to mediate the disagreement, but Gonji struck up an icy, adamant resolve, and there was no dissuading him. The grave markers were placed un.o.btrusively, and the samurai showed a tight-lipped Shem that no angle of view was marred.

Their wounds were treated with the healing blossoms, though Shem himself would not approach Simon, explaining that his empathy with the accursed mans contentious spirit was a terrifying experience in emotional violence. And it was further discovered that the blossoms had no effect on Simons wounds, though his bodys superhuman resiliency did at once begin to manifest their own healing effects.

Buey, however, miraculously responded to the medicinal blossoms efficacy, and the big warrior was in cheerful spirits before the azure, cloud-studded sky was thrice dimmed by placid twilight shadows.

"Have you ever strewn these blossoms on some battlefield you peeked into?" Gonji asked Shem as he handled one of them that day.

"I dont peek into battlefields," Shem replied indignantly. "Most wounds could be avoided by applying understanding at their source-the aggressive spirit. And these curatives are not plentiful. They were created with the hope that they would rarely need to be used."

Gonji seemed dissatisfied with what sounded to him like a specious hypothesis.

They were conducted to a hot springs, where they laved themselves in the cleansing, therapeutic waters, which exerted a magical effect on both body and spirit. At nightfall, under starry heavens and bright scudding clouds that sped past a silver gibbous moon, they would slake their thirst on a golden nectar and gorge themselves with a variety of fruits and vegetables, both familiar and strange. And Shem would discuss with them his knowledge of the system of cosmic spheres; parallel, concentric worlds, of which their earth was but one.

"Once Arcadia was freely accessible to all. Everything Paradise contained was free. But rapacious powers sought to control its resources, to lord over their fellows, to enslave them and be G.o.ds. That was their greatest sin, you know, their aspiration to G.o.dhood. And they made chaos of Paradise. Now there is no unifying element, no law for all the spheres. There is a ruling body on the central world that seeks to restore order, but only under their control. So even their efforts represent a compromise that was never intended. One day it will all be reclaimed, but not soon. I fear your idealistic Knights Templars will be disappointed. All men share a destiny that is unknowable in the present state."

"How?" Gonji asked. "How will it all be restored?"

"Someday there will be unity of purpose," Shem answered simply.

"And where and when will that all start?" Orozco piped in, taking up the thread of Gonjis argument.

"Not with me, friend warrior, if that is your implication. I have a responsibility to remain detached, to exert no additional force to complicate the already complex disorder. My function is to observe and record, to tender my considered advice to my superiors in the High Order of Ianitori Probers."

"Like your colleague the giant?" Gonji said. "He spoke as you do, yet he interfered in the affairs of us lesser beings."

"There are even Probers who violate their responsibility," Shem argued.

"Yet all must make a clear moral choice," Simon cut in, his arresting voice commanding their attention from where he propped himself up on an elbow. He was heavily bandaged again and in considerable pain, but he showed an unaccustomed interest in the discussion.

Shem averted his eyes from the lycanthrope. "My moral choice must be made on a sublime level you could not hope to appreciate."

Gonji clucked his tongue. "Listen, friend, we deal with the manifestations of evil on our-pathetically submerged level-and you, on yours. But I see you doing little to aid in the battle."

"You have a disquieting way of interpreting existence in military terms."

"So I do," Gonji agreed, "and its not without validity. You can open and close doorways at will, can you not?"

Shem shrugged. "I do have such localized power. I cannot prevent pa.s.sage, however, to those who have stumbled onto the secret. And there are many of those, representing all parts of an absolute moral spectrum. At best I can obscure the positions of gateways to the keys within my immediate influence. That way I may help to...confuse and limit their illicit usage."

"You could have prevented the evil forces from taking control of the diamond configuration of gateways Domingo Negro discovered. You could search among your keys to learn whether the evil of Akryllon still exists among us. You-"

Shem was shaking his head as if admonishing a child. "Believe me, you cannot know what you ask. From what you have told me, I gather that your witch was right about one thing. Her primitive spells-and there are spheres where such magic has been refined to science-they did reveal to her that the system of spheres is concentric. There is a core-world-this is part of it. And your fatuous mathematician-forgive me, I realize he lies dead, yonder-at least he realized that there was a link between what one world calls sorcery and another, science. But there was no 'configuration of Evil. Your diamond was merely a random figure, granted importance by way of the unenlightened minds awe at the a.s.sumed simple perfection of symmetry. As for Akryllon...it exists, to be sure. It exists as a stain on the cosmic structure. More power-mongers. They move to and fro through the keys as if they knew Arcadias meaning. Arrogant fools."

"That is why the witch sent us Pablo Cardenas," Ahmed Il-Mohar was reasoning aloud, his gaze fixed on a distant star. "She knew that his knowledge and hers were connected in some larger framework."

But Gonji was listening only to his own angry thoughts. "One should not speak so disparagingly of the dead," he told Shem with barely disguised hostility. "They may have fought in ignorance, but what matters in the end is that they fought." He rose and strode off into the surrounding hills, to reestablish control of his center.

Ahmed found him where he slept the next morning, at the edge of a sylvan valley of unparalleled beauty. A warm sun evaporated the dew, whose sparkle returned to the glory of a majestic sky of a most lively blue.

"Our strange friend seems to think he can locate Genoa by means of his hand manipulations," Ahmed said with a trace of amus.e.m.e.nt. "Very handy fellow. Perhaps he will even deign to conduct you there."

Gonji peered at him closely. "Youre not going?"

Ahmed stroked his bearded chin. "As I once said, I would I only face more hostility in Austria. The Turks command the Barbary States, and my adopted faith will render me an unwelcome guest in my own homeland. Shem has told me of a place very much like Algiers, where artisans are needed and strangers are welcomed. It is all quite intoxicating, you know? His presumptuous posturing is a bit infectious. I may even presume to do some proselytizing of my own. He says many beliefs are tolerated there, unlike so many spheres. I can be a Knight of Wonder after all, without the violent opposition you face." Ahmed smiled, then he spoke with the lights of unknown sh.o.r.es reflected from his eyes. "Shem says he has heard that in other places they also believe that the Architect-G.o.ds Son came among men-as a carpenter. That seems to make a curious logical sense in the context, does it not? Fascinating, is it not? Speaking with him does lend one a broader perspective." He returned to their surroundings once more, as if from a reverie. "Oh, and-Lola will accompany me."

"Lola?" Gonji was perplexed. "Challenging the unknown?"

The Morisco shook his head. "Running from the known. A small gift of divine symmetry, I do not wonder: I seek a new start. She seeks forgetfulness. Together we shall help each other adjust. Then-?" The Morisco shrugged.