Yuen grimaced, his one eye glittering. The buzzing burning grew greater, and Larz convulsed like a man in an electric chair. “The death must be slow, slow! You dare above your station, to handle the sacred Named weapon of the Extet Clan!”

Then Soorm let out a loud blatt of flatulence.

Yuen looked up, more shocked than angry at the crudeness of the noise. Soorm had regained his feet, and was holding one paw before his muzzle, and was biting on his thumb—a gesture whose meaning Yuen did not know.

“’Scuze me!” Burped Soorm. “Must have been someone I ate. Say, Yuen! But isn’t killing that Donor pointlessly cruel? Not to mention a waste of good organ stock if you kill ’em with shocks. You want the heart to be reusable. Judge of Ages! Tell him what I just said.”

In gasps of pain, Menelaus repeated it.

Yuen measured the distance between himself and Soorm. Soorm was just out of whip range, and it was too far for Soorm, even with his powerful legs, to leap. Behind Soorm, Menelaus, on his knees, and using only one hand, was crawling up the dais toward the throne, where Rada Lwa sat, pale face still dead and dull; but now the rest of the body was strangely motionless, as if the albino saw and heard nothing.

Yuen saw no threat. The painful one-handed crawl was glacially slow. Yuen could throw Arroglint as a javelin into Menelaus, or merely walk over and kick him to death. Soorm could not move fast enough to prevent Yuen from dancing around him and killing Menelaus.

He turned the matter over in his mind. There was no reason not to linger over the death of Kine Larz, and slay Menelaus at his leisure. He returned to his entertainment of sending electric shocks into the face and groin of Larz, and kicking the broken legs to break them in more places, and grind the bone ends together.

Yuen said, “Anubis, or Judge of Ages, or whatever your name is, tell this freakish abomination I will deal with him soon enough! I need no words from him.”

Menelaus, coughing in agony, did not translate the comment. The tone of voice was clear.

Soorm sidled closer, head hunkered down, shark-toothed mouth grinning, scorpion tail lashing. Yuen pouted, because now he had to leave aside Larz and see to this slow beast.

Yuen put one foot on the neck of Larz and readied his weapon, shifting it to a formation called hook-and-ball, where the midsection was pliant, but the grip curled into a heavy knot of metal, and the foible sharpened itself into a cruel hooked sickle. Yuen assumed the traditional first stance for this form, hook before him and ball whirling as a circle of steel above his head. Such was the splendor and terror of his face and form, so graceful was he, and so dreadful in his war-fury, that he could have been the idol of a young war god sprung to life.

Soorm stopped, took a step back, stretched, yawned, and then slouched. He sat on the ground. While Yuen looked on in puzzled disbelief, Soorm picked his nostril with a clawed pinky, and then he burped so loudly (opening his fanged mouth wide enough that both tongues could be seen, and a web of saliva hanging between then) that even from several feet away, Yuen smelled it. Soorm then flicked the snotty drip from his nose so it landed on Yuen’s hand. Yuen dared not release his grip to wipe the offensive fleck away, but he said, “For that insult, you shall die!”

Soorm spoke in an easy, conversational tone, “Alpha Yuen, I am wowed. An army of men like you, armed with weapons like that—no wonder you took over the world! You are a really good fighter. Quick on your feet and everything. Good design on your biotechnology. Except for your microscopic pore defenses against neurotoxins. Do you have anything to block your skin and mucus membrane receptors? You know, little teeny tiny machines that mate to molecules based on their shape, and prevent really tiny deadly biological materials from entering your system, and sending false signals to your brain, heart, other organs, telling them to shut down? No, I guess not. That would be something that is, what, maybe two thousand years more advanced than anything you culls with your stabby weapons you have to hold in your hands could dream of? Weapons you can see with your brother-loving naked eye? Hah! What’s the matter? Do you feel a little faint?”

Yuen, prone on the floor, was dead, and did not answer.

3. Dead Eyes

Soorm looked over his shoulder at Menelaus. “There started a huge burst of signal traffic when he died. Like an alarm, or a download process. Loud enough to reach the moon. It is still going on.”

Menelaus said, “Quick! Pick up his head, point it at me, and pull that eyepatch off his eye. Yikes! I meant lift the head up, not yank it off the neck! Well, no matter. It should still work. Five minutes of oxygen left in the brain. Do you see signals between Yuen’s head and Rada Lwa’s body?”

Soorm was standing with the severed, dripping head of Yuen in one claw, holding it by the hair like a lantern. The upper section of Yuen’s still-warm spine was in Soorm’s teeth. Yuen’s expression was still one of anger. Both eyes were now uncovered. One was human and one was the all-black eye of a Melusine, able to see higher and lower bands on the spectrum than what humans called visible light.

The dead eyes fell upon Menelaus. The wand Menelaus was clutching started to flicker and light up. “Scabs and boils! This is taking too long…,” Menelaus muttered in English.

Soorm said in Iatric, “What the brother-love is going on, Judge of Ages?”

Menelaus, on the floor and clutching the shining wand with both hands, said, “It is kind of delicate. I’ll explain if it works. Right now, see if you can rouse Oenoe and Mickey, and have them tend Larz. Don’t let that brave man die.”

Soorm said, “Rada Lwa is not moving. We don’t need him any more, do we?”

Looming over the pale figure on the throne, Soorm drove the longer of his two tongues into the eyesocket of the albino and into the brain beyond.

The tongue stiffened and surged as venom was ejaculated into the skull, and black froth came suddenly out of the mouth of Rada Lwa, both nostrils, and both ears, while his arms and legs twitched and stiffened and never moved again.

“Pox you!” shouted Montrose. “Don’t just go killing people like that! I wanted to give him a chance to speak his piece in his own defense! I might have wanted to question him!”

“Or keep him frozen another four thousand years and give him yet another chance to kill you? Isn’t this the very man who dropped an orbital laser platform on your head? I’ve heard the story.”

“You crazy hell-damned monster!”

“A monster who is still alive after surviving the most dangerous and deadly period of history the mind of man or posthuman could conceive. Hell-bound I surely am—which is why I mean to stay alive on Earth as long as possible, and that means not leaving enemies alive at my back.”

“Gah! At least don’t lick up the brains.”

“Complex neural tissue. Why let it go to waste?”

Soorm went over and gently helped Oenoe to rise and stand, supporting her weight with an arm around her naked shoulder, and stroking her hair, and patting her hand, asking her quietly if she were hurt; and he then gave Mickey a friendly kick in the rump to encourage him back on his feet.

The Nymph took up the medical case Mickey had brought down, and she nimbly set to work on Larz. “I have some knowledge of neural medicine,” she said in Natural.

Soorm hunkered down next to her, speaking the same language, which he knew from his youth. “I have considerably more—centuries more.”

Menelaus said in Virginian, “Mickey, volunteer some of your fatty tissue. Maybe Oenoe can give you a painkiller while Soorm takes a slice out of your belly.”

Mickey said, “Puh-leese. Am I not an adept of the Twelfth Echelon? I can work my dark arts without behaviors so grotesque and uncomely! I carry a large mass of undigested totipotent fat cells in my stomach, and can bring it up by vomiting.”