Bifalt heard rifle-fire from somewhere above the pavilion. Slow shots, carefully spaced. For no apparent reason, the clamor of killing diminished. He forgot it.

The lower plateau was not as far away as it seemed. He feared that he would never reach it until his friends half carried him onto level stone.

The Great God stood at the front of his ruined pavilion. He radiated heat and power like the ruddy core of a forge. The trestle-table near him was burning. The pavilion’s roof of oilcloth had drifted away in flames. A puddle of molten stone lay under his feet. His staff was ashes.

In gold and fury, he was too intense to regard directly. By will alone, he forced a number of his priests to shelter him with their shimmering. A wasted effort. The rifle-fire had ceased.

Brandishing his fists, he screamed up at the broken Repository.

“No, you whoresons!” His staff had been nothing more than a tool. He did not need it. “You craven pedants, no!” Ignoring his compulsion, some of his priests had scattered. None of the infantrymen came to his defense. “I will tear out your guts with my own hands and feed!”

“No,” muttered Bifalt through his teeth. “You will not.”

Limping, he and his friends crossed the outer rim of the plateau until they stood unsteadily behind their enemy.

He was too weak for this. But it was for Estie. I love you. And for all of the bloodshed that Rile had caused.

Somehow, the King shook off his friends. In his good hand, he raised Klamath’s saber like a spike, not a sword. Leaning until he almost fell, he lurched into a run.

He could not look at the Great God. Instead, he watched his feet until the heat scorching his face told him that he was close. Then he hammered his blade into Rile’s back.

The eruption of power from the wound tossed him away like a handful of flung gravel. If Elgart and Klamath had not caught him, he would have pitched over the rim of the plateau. But he did not feel them grab him.

His war was done.

EPILOGUE

THE LAST CHALLENGE

King Bifalt did not feel the passage of time. His absence seemed brief. In fact, he was gone for several days. The Repository’s herbs and drugs kept him sleeping.

While he slept in a clean bed, the open wound in his side was stitched and bound to protect his damaged ribs. His broken hand was set in splints. Poultices and powders were smeared over the fierce burns of Rile’s fury. When the physicians and shamans had done what they could, Estie spent hours every day at his bedside, mopping the sweat of occasional fevers from his face, replacing his blood-sodden bandages, lifting his head and stroking his throat to help him swallow healing elixirs. At intervals, she murmured encouragement.