Totentanz

Book 3 Chapter IV: Die Würfel Sind Gefallen

DIE WÜRFEL SIND GEFALLEN
German, "the die is cast"

The word "good" has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man. -- G. K. Chesterton

The realm was complete. Its only entry was anchored to the palace gates. If the skrýszel went through those gates they would end up in the realm, and then Diarnlan and Karandren would collapse it on top of them.

The only problem was making sure they went through the gates.

"We'll have to lure them in ourselves," Karandren said. "Remember the one that chased us to the forest? We could hurt them but not kill them and then they'll chase us anywhere we lead them."

"If only we could force the Veil to open right in front of the gates," Diarnlan said, more to herself than to him.

Karandren answered anyway. "Give me a few days and I'll manage it."

"Here we go again. How? We might as well wish for the sky to fall and crush the skrýszel!"

He shrugged. "I'll think of a way. And if there isn't one, I'll make one."

Diarnlan pursed her lips. His words raked up her old bitterness and enmity towards him. A thought from lifetimes ago came back to her. There's nothing you can teach this boy. He's a better magician than you can ever hope to be.

The old Diarnlan had known only one thing to do when unhappy: make everyone around her equally unhappy. The new Diarnlan automatically went back to that method. A biting comment was on the tip of her tongue. But she stopped.

She took a deep breath and reminded herself that they had to work together.

"I'm sure you can," she said, and actually meant it. If anyone could force open a hole in the Veil, it would be the dark magician and former conqueror who was only half-human.

Karandren gave her a stunned look. Diarnlan knew he would have been much less shocked if she had said something nasty.

~~~~

Karandren knew the High Priest's palace better than he knew his own childhood home. He had spent well over a hundred years here over his various lifetimes. The uneven steps leading up to the tower, the faded paint in the main dining room, even the cracks in the garden's paving stones; he knew them all.

In the evening he walked around the whole palace. Gradually it dawned on him that one way or another, he would never see this place again. Either he would die permanently or the time-loop would reset one last time, and the first one looked by far the most likely.

Even if the loop reset and he kept his memories, he honestly couldn't say he wanted to conquer Miavain again. He was probably the only warlord in history who had gotten tired of conquering countries.

He wandered aimlessly around the gardens. Eventually his route took him back to the main gates before the palace.

Karandren stopped and looked out. From here the entrance to their realm was invisible. Diarnlan had designed the entrance so it would only open for them or for something very large, like a skrýszel. And it would only open from the other side.

A second set of gates on the other side of the entrance yard kept out the ordinary people. The High Priests who had built and added to this place over the years hadn't wanted the common riff-raff to be able to get too close to them.

Their arrogance was probably all that would save the people from becoming collateral damage when the skrýszel arrived in the entrance yard.

Karandren smiled grimly up at the head of a priest stuck on a pike. This one wasn't still alive -- in one of his earliest lifetimes he had imprisoned the High Priest's soul in his disembodied head and carried him around so he could see Karandren killing his subordinates -- but he hoped its owner still had some knowledge of what was happening in the world.