'This is amusing, but your time is over. I need something you have,' Nakor said.

Leso Varen stared at him. 'What-? he began, but Nakor reached out and his hand seemed to pa.s.s into Varen's chest. Varen's eyes widened as if he were experiencing stunning pain, and he looked down as Nakor pulled his hand out.

Nakor opened his fingers and there, resting on the palm of his hand, was a tiny crystal, black and pointed at each end, looking like a multi faceted gem. Deep within the crystal a dim light burned, pulsing with a purple glow. 'We are but vessels, you and I,' said Nakor. 'The only reason we are here is to carry with us something that otherwise couldn't exist in this place. Within me I carry the tiniest spark of Ban-ath. And this,' -he held up the tiny crystal so that Varen could see it- 'is a tiny spark of the Nameless. Your master sent you here to destroy the Dark One. He may be imprisoned, insane, and countless miles from his home world, but he's still angry enough that someone else wants to take his world from him that he fashioned you. You are his weapon, Leso.'

Varen's eyes lost focus and Nakor pushed him away. 'We do not need you any longer, for now I hold the G.o.dkiller!'

The one-time master of necromancy fell into a heap, dead at last. For a long moment Nakor regarded what he held in his hand, then he looked at the Dreadlord. 'Just a few minutes more,' Nakor promised. 'Then we will be done.'

Pug rose high into the sky. He pushed aside an almost overwhelming feeling of sorrow: thousands below him were dying by the moment. He looked at that thing that was the Black Mount and his heart sank further. It now covered hundreds of miles of the Empire. He suspected that at the current rate the entire world would be overrun within another month, perhaps less.

Ignoring the sounds of horror beneath him, he kept rising until he felt the air turn cold and thin. He created a pocket of air around him, knowing that it would not last long, and kept rising until he could see the curve of the world below.

He grieved, for while it remained alien to him in so many ways, Kelewan had been his home for years. The Tsurani were a unique and proud people, embodying the best and worst of humanity. They could be cruel, murderous, and hateful, but they also could be generous and honourable, and would give their lives for what they believed. And they had a great capacity for love.

He was musing on this when something shifted within the Black Mount. Pug used his magical vision, honed by his time on the Dasati world, to peer deep into the heart of the dome. He saw there a scene of horror so profound he could scarcely contain his outrage.

Hundreds of Deathknights rode their huge varnin through the enclosed countryside, dragging nets filled with dead and dying Tsurani behind them. The vast pit that formed the tunnel to the second realm and the Dasati world of Omadrabar stayed a fixed distance from the edge of the sphere, so the Deathknights had only the same distance to cover as before it expanded. The pit was now vast, hundreds of miles across. And Pug sensed more than saw that something was moving inside.

Nakor watched, curiously detached. It occurred to him that being dead he had little interest in anything other than the matters at hand. He wondered if he should feel regret, because he remembered being very curious when he was alive, and then he realized he had no time for thought.

The Dreadlord was using his power to drain every living thing in the vicinity. Loyal Deathpriests and temple Deathknights above all fell lifeless, their bodies descending the tunnel from Kelewan dead long before they reached him. The Dreadlord stood motionless, his figure fluid and vague, then suddenly he resolved himself into a thing of nightmare.

He was majestic, and now he looked as Nakor imagined a Dreadlord would. His body was ma.s.sive, easily thirty feet tall, and shaped like a man's, though the legs had a decidedly animal shape, like a goat's or horse's, with a stifle and hock, rather than with hip and knee. The head was featureless, save for a suggestion of ears when he moved in certain directions. Around his head hovered a tiny circlet of silver light punctuated with golden flames, forming a demonic crown. His eyes were two flaming coals.

Then from his back wings of shadow sprouted, and Nakor realized these mystical pinions were designed to carry him up through the tunnel to Kelewan. As the Dreadlord prepared to launch himself upwards, Nakor stepped out from his concealed position behind the throne, stepping over the dead form of Leso Varen.

The Dreadlord launched himself up the tunnel, leaving the pit suddenly silent and empty. Then came a loud concussion, as if two ma.s.sive things were colliding with each other through the tunnel. Nakor understood and made ready.

From above ten thousand black-armoured figures descended, touching down on the cold stone floor where only moments before there had been a roiling sea of Dasati life energy. Ten thousand Dasati G.o.ds had returned home, and as each touched down, their armour erupted in a glow of light silver, green, gold, every colour imaginable as the power of the trapped G.o.ds were released. At one time Nakor would have felt awed by such a sight, but now he just watched, sensing that his role was at an end.

Knowing it was likely to be the last act of his existence, Nakor held the black jewel on the flat palm of his left hand, and with his right, flicked it, as a child might flick a pebble off his palm. It flew straight and followed the Dreadlord's flight up the tunnel. As it rose up the tunnel, the G.o.dkiller seemed to draw the tunnel's energy into it, effectively sealing it off behind the Dreadlord. He could never return to Omadrabar that way. The Dreadlord was finally gone from the second plane of existence. To all intents and purposes, for the Dasati the Dark One was as good as dead.

Nakor sat down and felt his mind begin to drain away. His last thought was that it had been a very interesting life.

Something was coming!

Pug stared down into the Black Mount, focusing hard. Then he realized it was the Dreadlord. He was using this pa.s.sage between the planes of existence to leave Omadrabar and come to Kelewan! Whatever time-scale Pug might have thought he faced was completely wrong. He didn't have months or weeks, or even days, to prepare for this. The monster would arrive in moments...

Pug probed with every sense he possessed, looking for a weakness in the Black Mount. He could find none. Had he days or weeks to study it, with Miranda's help using what she had learned from her escape from the first sphere, then perhaps he might have found a means to shut down this monstrous thing. But he knew in his heart he might study it for years and never find what he sought. He had only one choice, a choice he had denied since this situation had presented itself. He steeled himself and began to manipulate the energies around him.

Pug let his mind reach out, and in the vast distance of s.p.a.ce he found what he sought. He conjured the single most powerful spell he had ever fashioned, one he had imagined, but never thought he would ever use. Circling Kelewan was a single moon, locked in a perfect orbit by the balance of forces exerted by both the sun and the planet. Pug tipped that balance.

Millions of miles away in s.p.a.ce a ma.s.sive rift appeared before the moon, and just inside the top of the dome of the Black Mount its twin manifested. Pug lowered himself down to a position by the rift that led back home, and knew he had to be quick.

He could not leave this last rift open, for to do so would doom Midkemia to the same fate about to befall Kelewan.

Millions of miles away, the moon struck the rift gate. Only part of it was forced through, but its velocity was enough to drive an impossible amount of stone, equal to the tallest mountain on Kelewan, through it in scant seconds. Pug stepped inside the rift just as the moon's vast shard appeared inside the Black Mount and slammed down at incalculable speed into the pit. The Dreadlord had only an instant to sense that something was terribly wrong. A ma.s.sive increase in air pressure around the Dark One gripped the gigantic being as if an enormous hand squeezed him. Then for the briefest instant a wall of light fell upon him.

The moon shard and the black gem shard Nakor had released struck in the same instant. The Dreadlord was no mortal being; but in that instant he was crushed.

The universe began to tear.

No one on the planet's surface felt pain. For one moment the world had been a landscape of terror, struggle and death, and in the next moment, everything was gone. A cloud of hot gas travelled a path around a distant yellow-green sun where minutes before a world and its moon had existed.

Pug found himself in a grey nothingness, devoid of any sensation, light, dark, cold or heat. He had experienced this once before, and then he had reached out with his mind to find his old teacher, Kulgan.

This time he had a more compelling target for his mind: his wife and sons. He gripped tightly the staff that was twin to the one at home. He let his magic senses run through the ancient wood and could feel Miranda, Caleb and Magnus out there, the three people he loved more than anyone else in that world.

He sensed them... somewhere... there! He could feel the echo of the staff in his hand and the touch of his loved ones on it, and reached for them. Then with a tearing pain, he was standing by them, shivering as if he had been exposed to the most profound cold possible.

He said, 'It is done,' then collapsed into his son's arms.

EPILOGUE.

It was a quiet afternoon lunch. Pug had slept the entire night and next day through, and deep into the morning before arising. He felt numb, and knew that the full weight of what had happened would not fall upon him for a few more days, or even weeks. He was old enough to understand that the mind and heart healed in their own good time and that when they were ready to deal with what he had done, they would.

Caleb, his wife Marie, and the boys, Jommy, Tad, and Zane, along with Magnus and Miranda, were quiet, lost in the gentle conversation of a family just pleased to be with one another. It was an overcast day outside, but sombre weather seemed appropriate to Pug.

At last, he asked Miranda, 'How many Great Ones got through in the end?'

Miranda stopped chewing for a moment, then swallowed. 'I believe forty-one got through the rift to the Academy, and perhaps another hundred or so through the rift to the new world.'

Jommy said, 'They're going to have to come up with a name for the place. They can't just keep calling it the "new world", now, can they?'

Pug smiled. He was very pleased that his three foster grandsons had survived.

'How about others?' he asked.

Miranda said, 'We've no official tally. Maybe ten thousand Tsurani got through the rifts to here and that other one up in LaMut. Most of them want to go to the new world, to the King's relief, I'm sure, though a few want to stay in LaMut. A lot of those who were with Kaspar are staying with him down in Novindus. He's going to have quite an army when he arrives to take service with the Maharaja of Muboya.'

Magnus said, 'Will we ever know, Father, how many... ?'

Pug just shook his head briefly. 'Died? No, we never will.'

The best estimate was that just over two million Tsurani had made it through to the new world, but that meant for each one who was saved, five had died at the hands of the Dasati or when the planet was vaporized. He looked at Miranda. 'And the Thuril?'

Miranda forced a smile. 'Apparently they're a little more practical about things than we gave them credit for. Seems the majority of them got through in time. Given their culture, they'll probably adapt to their new highlands faster than the Tsurani will to the rest of their continent.'

'What about the Thn?'

'No one knows. We'll have to send someone down there to see.'

Pug didn't ask about the Cho-ja, for he already knew the answer. It saddened him greatly that such a majestic alien race had chosen to die with their world. He stared off through a rain-spattered window for a long time, then took a slow drink of wine and said, 'I'm going to miss that little cheat.'

Caleb laughed. 'Not when we're playing cards, you're not.'

'Or throwing dice,' said Jommy.

Pug sighed. 'I know I lived almost fifty years before meeting him,' said Pug, 'but it feels like he has always been around.'

Miranda reached out and squeezed her husband's hand. 'He still is, in a way.'

Pug lifted his mug. 'To Nakor.'

'Nakor!' they all toasted.

Jommy said, 'We lost two good friends that day.'

Pug said, 'Nakor was Erik's oldest surviving friend, did you know that?'

'No,' said Jommy. 'I bet there were some stories about those two.'

'One or two,' said Pug, rising. 'I have a couple of things I would like to take care of in my study, and then I think I'll rest.' As others started to stand up, he motioned for them to stay where they were. 'I'm tired, not injured. Finish your meal.'

He went up to his study and opened the door. Behind the desk, in his chair, sat a brown hair man.

'Ban-ath!'

'Yes,' said the G.o.d of Thieves. 'I felt you deserved to know one thing. The Dark One is destroyed, or at least as destroyed as a Dreadlord can be. He's been cast back into the void, so for all intent and purposes, he is gone.'

'How? Certainly not-'

'Your little trick with the flaming planet? Very unexpected, and I will confess I was impressed. I thought you'd try to open a fissure in the earth, having the Holy City fall into the molten core of the planet and take the Dreadlord with it, or drown it at the bottom of the sea, but turning the entire world into dust, that was... remarkable.'

'So we are at last safe?' asked Pug.

Ban-ath laughed. 'Never,' he said, then vanished.

Pug stood there wishing he had the means to understand if what the G.o.d of Liars had said was true or not. Then he saw the box. He crossed to it, hesitated for a moment, then opened it. Inside was a scroll. Feeling a sinking sensation in his stomach, he took it out and unrolled it.

In his familiar handwriting was a message.

'So maybe you deserve to know two things,' it read. 'You didn't write these notes and send them back through time. I did.'

It was signed, 'Kalkin.'

Pug sat down and tried not to laugh.