And this time Marmorth had won!
But had he?
Even as he let the thought After, the chained aliens were dragged between the massed nobles and cast on their triple-jointed knees before Marmorth’s dais. “Here are the loathsome beings!” cried Krane, flinging his arms high and apart.
It had been a grandstand gesture, and the frog-faced, many-footed beings on the Star Chamber’s floor realized it.
Suddenly, almost as though they were made of paper, the chains that had joined the aliens snapped, and they leaped on the nobles.
Marmorth caught the smile on Krane’s lips. He had been behind this; probably had the chains weakened in the corridor outside by his loyal personal guard.
Hardly with thought, Marmorth was off his throne and down the stepped dais, his sword free from its scabbard, and arcing viciously.
A hideously warted alien face rose before him and he thrust with all his might! The blade pierced between the double-lidded eyes, and thick ochre blood spurted across his tunic. He yanked the blade free, kicking the dead but still quivering alien from its length. He leaped into the horde, howling a battlecry from his youth.
Even as he leaped, he saw Krane’s slash-mouthed smile, and the Lord’s sword swinging toward him!
So it hadn’t been his illusion! It had been Krane’s! He hadn’t chosen the proper course. Krane’s belief at the moment was stronger than his own.
He fended off a double-handed smash from the black-bearded noble and fell back. They parried and countered, thrust and slashed all around the dais. The other nobles were too deeply involved fighting off the screaming aliens to witness this battle between their King and his Lord.
Krane beat Marmorth back, back!
Why did I choose as I did? Marmorth wailed mentally, berating himself.
Suddenly he slipped, toppling backward onto the steps. The sword flew from his hand as it cracked against the edge of a step. He saw Krane bearing down on him, the sword double-fisted as his opponent raised it like a stake above his head.
In desperation, Marmorth summed up all his belief. “It was the right decision!” screamed Marmorth with the conviction of a man about to die. He saw the sword plunge toward his breast as…
…he gathered the light about him, sweeping his hands through the dripping colors, making them shift and flow for him. He saw the figure of Krane, standing haughtily in the bank of yellow, and he gathered the blue to himself in a coruscating ball.
Fearsomely he bellowed his challenge, “This is my illusion, Krane, and watch as I kill you!” He balled the blue in his hand and sent it flying, dripping spark and color as it shot toward the black- bearded man.
They both stood tall and spraddle-legged in the immensity of they knew-not-where. The colors dripped from the air, making weird patterns as they mixed and ran.
The blue ball struck in front of Krane and exploded, cascading a rich flood of chromatic brilliance into the air. Krane laughed at the failure.
He gathered the black to him, wadding it in strong and supple fingers. He wound up, almost as though it was a sport, and flung the wadded black at Marmorth.
The older man knew he had not enough belief yet built to withstand this onslaught. Marmorth knew if the black enfolded him he would die in the never-ending limbo of nothingness.
He thrust hands up before his face to stop the onrush of the black, but it struck him and he fell, clutching feebly at a washy stringer of white.
He fell into the black as it surrounded him, and in a moment knew he was in the limbo.
This was not his illusion! It could not be, for he was vanquished! Yet he was not dead, as he had felt sure he would be. He lay there, thinking.
He remembered all the effort he had put in on the Political Theorem. The Theorem he had proposed in the Council. It had represented years of work—the culmination of all his adult thought and effort; and, he had to admit it, the Theorem was soundly based on his own view of the Universe.
Then the presumptuous Krane had offended him by restating the Theorem. Before the very faces of the Council!
Krane had, of course, twisted it to his own evil and malicious ends—basing it anew on his conception of the All.
Oh, there had been a verbal battle. There had been the accusations, the clanging of the electric gavel, the remonstrances of the Compjudge, the shocked expressions of the other Councilors! Till finally Marmorth had been goaded by the younger man into the Duel. Then into the Silver Corridor.
From which only one of them would emerge. The one who did would force his Theorem on the Council. To be accepted, of course. The Theorem was so basic, the view would be recognized and accepted. It all revolved, then, around whose view of the Universe, whose Theorem, was the right one. It could be either Krane’s or Marmorth’s.
Marmorth struck out at the black! Mine, mine, mine! He shouted soundlessly. He lashed into the nothingness. My Theorem is the proper one! I believe it! I do!
Then he saw the stringer of white in his hand. So this was Krane in the ascendant, was it! Now came the moment of retaliation.
He whipped the stringer around his invisible head, swaying as he was, there in the depthless black. The stringer thickened. He cupped it to him, washing it with his hands, strengthening it, shaping and molding it. In a moment it had grown. In a moment more the white had burst forth like a ripe blossom and flooded all. Revealing Krane standing there, in his breechclout, massaging the plae pink between his fingers.
“Mine, Krane, mine!” he screamed, flinging the orange-green!
Krane blanched and tried to duck. The orange-green came on like a sliver of Forever, streaking and burning as it rode currents that did not exist. Then the light shattered, and fired, and spat. As Marmorth realized they had nullified each other again, that the illusion was dissolving around them, he heard Krane bellow, even as loud as he had, “Mine, Marmorth, mine!”
Then the colors ran. They flowed, they merged, they sucked at his body, while he…
…shrank up against the glass wall next to Krane. They both stared in fascinated horror as the huge, ichor- dripping spider-thing advanced on them, mandibles clicking.
“My God in Heaven!” Marmorth heard Krane bellow. “What is it?” Krane scrabbled at the glass wall behind them, trying to get out. They were trapped.
The glass walls circled them, wide; just the spider-thing and each other, trapped in the tiny tomb!
Marmorth was petrified. He could neither move nor speak —he could hardly sense anything but terror.
Spiders were his personal fear. He found his legs were quivering at the knees, though he had not sensed it a moment before. The very sight of the hairy beasts had always sent shudders through him. Now he knew this was his illusion.
He was in the ascendant!
But how hideously in the ascendant.
The spider-thing advanced on them, the soft plush pads of its hundred feet leaving dampness where it stopped.
Krane fell to his knees, moaning and scratching at the glass floor. “Out, out, out, out..,” he mumbled, froth dripping from his lips.
Marmorth knew this was his chance. This fear was a product of his own mind; he had lived with it all his life. He knew it more familiarly than Krane—he could not cancel it, certainly, but he could utilize it more easily than the other.
Here was where he killed Krane. He pulled himself tightly to the wall, sweating palms flat to the glass, the valley of his backbone against the cool surface. “I’m right! The Theorem as I stated it i-is c-correct!” He said it triumphantly, though the note of terror quavered undisguised in his voice.
The spider-thing paused in its march, swung its clicking, ghastly head about as though confused, and altered direction by an inch. Away from Marmorth. It descended on Krane.
The black-bearded man looked up, saw it coming toward him, heard Marmorth’s words. Even on the floor, half-sunk in shock, he shouted, pounding his fists against the floor of glass, “Wrong, wrong, wrong! You’re wrong! I can prove my Theorem is correct! The basic formation of the Judiciary should be planned in an ever-decreasing system of—”
Marmorth didn’t even listen. He knew it was drivel! He knew the man was wrong! But the spider-thing had stopped once more. Now it paused between the two of them, its bulk shivering as though caught in a draft. Krane saw the hesitation on the monster’s part, and rose, the old confidence and impudence regained. He wiped his balled fists across his eyes, clearing them of tears. He continued speaking, steadily, and to Marmorth’s ears, in the voice of a fanatic. The man just could not recognize that he was wrong.