Furthermore, he did not know if he could maintain that balance forever. In fact, he realized that he definitely could not, unless Bheleu, like The God Whose Name Is Not Spoken, bestowed immortality upon his chosen agent.
That was a possibility, as the god did seem to make Garth invincible and invulnerable, but it was not really an appealing prospect. Surely, the longer he held the sword, the greater Bheleu's control would become. The god was insidious.
Garth stared at the blade before him and understood that he was doomed. He could see no way out of his predicament, and if the theology of the humans was correct, insofar as he understood it, then there was no way out, no possible solution. His end, and the end of the world, were foreordained and could be no more than delayed-and then only for as long as he was willing to wield the Sword of Bheleu. Even a miracle would not change the terrible circumstances, for miracles were sent by the gods, and the most powerful of the gods were those who had trapped him. Ever since he had first consulted the Wise Women of Ordunin in his quest for eternal fame, he had been guided toward this hopeless situation; and furthermore, he realized, the Wise Women had known it. He recalled the reluctance Ao had displayed so long ago, when first she told him of the Forgotten King. Surely that had been because she had known what would, in the end, result.
He had not thought this through before, had not considered the long-term consequences of the events that surrounded and involved him. Now that he did, anger flared up within him.
He made a brief, desultory attempt to suppress it, knowing that it was as much Bheleu's doing as his own, but without success. He found himself furious, eager to lash out at something. The gods had brought him to this-Bheleu, Aghad, the Final God, and the other Lords of Dыs-but there was no way he could strike directly at any of them. The Forgotten King, too, had worked to enmesh him in the workings of destiny, to drive him and the world to destruction. He lifted the sword high and strode toward the old man, his anger mounting.
The King stood his ground as the overman approached, and even through the cloud of rage, Garth remembered his previous attempt to kill the old man with the Sword of Bheleu. He had been totally unable to harm him.
Still, as his fury grew, he found it impossible to believe that a weapon that could reduce so vast a monster to ash, and bone could not kill a scrawny human. He slashed out viciously, aiming for the old man's throat.
The blade left a trail of sparks. Despite Garth's efforts to keep it on course, it sheered wildly upward, skimming over the Forgotten King's head.
Frustrated, Garth spun it back and struck again, this time slanting downward. Again the sword refused to cooperate, curving down and to the side, veering away from the old man without touching him.
Garth growled.
"Stop it, Garth," the old man said. "I am not so easily destroyed as Dhazh. You cannot do it like that."
The overman fell silent and lowered the sword, his red eyes flat and dead with rage. He could not kill the King any more than he could strike at the gods.
Perhaps he could strike at one god, though; not directly, of course, but through his followers. He struggled to think, but his mind seemed hazy and slow. He had already slaughtered the cult of Bheleu, when first he took the sword, and The God Whose Name Is Not Spoken had no servants except the King and one or two decrepit priests. But the cult of Aghad still flourished, and more than any other had driven him into his current predicament. He had sworn vengeance upon that god's worshippers, sworn to destroy them. Somewhere in Ur-Dormulk was a temple dedicated to Aghad, he remembered; he looked out across the battered city.
"Where is it?" he muttered, half to himself.
"What?" The Forgotten King's question was calm and indifferent.
"Where is the temple of Aghad?"
"The center of the cult is in Dыsarra."
"They have a temple here, in Ur-Dormulk. Where is it?"
"It is unimportant."
"Where is it?" Garth's tone was flat and dangerous. The King scarcely needed to beware of the overman's anger, but he chose not to argue further.
"I will show you," he replied. He turned and walked down the street.
Garth followed him through the ruins, through sections where buildings stood relatively undamaged, past smoking pits that had once been cellars or crypts, until the pair arrived in front of a low stone structure tucked up against one of the great outcroppings of rock that studded the city.
The King stopped and gestured at the nondescript building.
"This is it?" Garth asked. The temple was nothing like the one he had robbed in Dыsarra. There was no metal gate, no courtyard with poisoned fountain, no names etched in the stone walls, but a simple single story of weathered granite, with a few narrow windows that peered out, black and empty, upon the deserted streets. The windows flanked a heavy wooden door.
The King said nothing, but nodded once.
Reassured, his anger driving away any lingering doubts, Garth marched up to the entrance and swung the sword against it.
The heavy wooden door burst outward in a shower of splinters and dust, with a sound like sudden thunder.
Garth stepped through into a small, bare anteroom and looked about in the unlit gloom. Three other doors led further into the depths of the building; he chose one at random and smashed it down with the sword, sending shards rattling against the walls on all sides.
Beyond lay a small room hung in dark red and richly carpeted in soft gray; near the far wall stood a metal altar, and upon the altar lay a woman's corpse, partially disemboweled. Garth stepped closer.
A curtain plummeted down before him; with a growl, Garth hacked it apart in time to see the altar sink into the floor, taking the corpse with it.
This sort of mechanical trickery was similar, indeed almost identical, to what he had encountered in Dыsarra. Any further doubts he might have had were dispelled by his final glimpse of the dead body.
Runes had been carved into the woman's chest, four runes, spelling out AGHAD.
Satisfied that he had found the right place, Garth lashed out with the sword and blasted apart the sliding stone that moved into place to hide the sunken altar and its grisly burden. Without bothering to consider that the victim might deserve better, he then sent a burst of white flame that utterly consumed the corpse, leaving a thin layer of ash. That done, he set about serious destruction, shattering the ceiling and the roof beyond and working his way down the walls.
When at last he was satisfied that the job was done, he stood at the bottom of a great pit, amid a heap of rubble, where no stone larger than a man's body remained and no stone stood intact upon another. He had found and destroyed hundreds of concealed machines and mechanisms, a dozen or so hidden bodies, a handful of dangerous beasts, and a vast armory equipped with everything from siege engines to endless shelves of varied poisons. The single floor aboveground had stood atop three levels of cellars and dungeons that extended out beneath the buildings on both sides and across the street into the house opposite.
Half a dozen doors led from the cellars into the crypts, but he did not bother to investigate those after blowing the doors themselves apart. He knew, even in his rage, that there was no point in destroying the entire system of crypts, and that to do so would mean destroying the entire city he had slain Dhazh to save. He drew the line at the point where the architecture and the texture of the stone changed, revealing the difference between the ancient buried tunnels and the far newer temple built to take advantage of them.
Nowhere in the entire structure were there any living humans.
In Dыsarra, Haggat watched, worried, as the temple in Ur-Dormulk crumbled. He was unable to focus his scrying glass on the overman or the sword and could not watch the destruction directly as a result, but he was able to see the remains. It distressed him to see so powerful an outpost of the cult, second only to its heart in Dыsarra, reduced so quickly to worthless rubble, but he knew he could do nothing to stop the demolition.
He could, however, save the cultists who had used the shrine. The overman's next step, obviously, would be to pick the Aghadites out of the crowd that waited outside the city gates and kill them; Haggat did not want that to happen. He abandoned the scrying glass for the moment, to order his disciples to send a message of warning.
When Garth climbed out of the hole he had made, he found the Forgotten King waiting, motionless, in the street.
"Are there any Aghadites in the city?" the overman demanded.
"No," the old man replied.
Garth was glad of that; he had not relished the thought of hunting them down in their hiding places, one by one. Far easier and more satisfying to blast the lot of them at once! He would divide them out from the crowd as the citizens were readmitted to the city, standing at the gate and stopping them as they passed. He did not consider how he would recognize them; he was sure he would manage it. The old man was apparently in a cooperative mood, having led him to the temple and now having answered his question directly; perhaps he would be willing to point them out.
There would be time for that later. His next step was to return to the gate and arrange with the authorities for permission to dispose of the Aghadites. It seemed a very minor demand to make in exchange for slaying the monster that had done so much damage to their city.
The sun was down, and Garth lighted the way back to the gate with the glow from the Sword of Bheleu. Fires still flickered in the distance, but in a city so largely built of stone, most were rapidly dying out.
Frima and Koros still waited atop the stairs at the gate, just as Garth had left them, save that Koros was now asleep and Frima awake. As a result of her rest, awkward as it had been to sleep in the saddle, she was alert and eager to pursue her vengeance against the worshippers of Aghad.
She had awakened feeling ill shortly before; after she had vomited, she had felt somewhat better and had noticed that Garth was missing. She had not been seriously concerned by his absence; she knew he would return for Koros, if for nothing else, and she had correctly concluded that he had gone in search of their common foe.
"Are there Aghadites in this city?" she asked as Garth and the Forgotten King climbed the last few steps.
"No," the overman replied. "But there are many, I am sure, in the crowd outside the gates. I have just destroyed their temple here; now we must search them out from the other humans."
"No," the old man said unexpectedly. "They have fled."