Tomas struck outward with his sword, and the blade passed through the creature without apparent harm. Tomas retreated as the creature advanced.
“Puny thing,” came a whispering voice, a distant echo caught upon mocking breezes. “Did you think that which opposes you did not prepare fully for your destruction?”
Tomas crouched, sword at the ready. Narrowed eyes under the golden helm regarded the thing as he said, “What manner of creature are you?”
The whispering voice said, “I, warrior? I am a child of the void, brother to the wraith and spectre. I am a Master of the dread.” With startling quickness, it reached out and seized Tomas’s shield, crushing it with a single twist and ripping it away from him. Tomas swung in answer, but it reached up and gripped his sword arm at the wrist. Tomas howled in pain. “I am summoned here to end your existence,” said the shadowy thing. Then with ease it yanked and tore Tomas’s arm from his shoulder. With a shower of blood, Tomas fell to the stones, screaming in agony.
The thing said, “I am disappointed. I was warned you were to be feared. But you are as nothing.”
Tomas’s face was white and drenched in perspiration, his eyes wide with pain and terror. “Who . . .” he gasped. “Who warned you?”
“Those who know your nature, man-thing.” The dread stood holding Tomas’s arm and sword. “They even understood how you would come here, rather than seek the sorcerer’s true prison.”
“Where is he?” gasped Tomas, seeming on the verge of fainting.
With a whisper of evil the thing said, “You have failed.”
Evidently near collapse, Tomas forced himself alert, almost snarling when he spoke. “Then you don’t know. For all your posturing you are nothing but a servant. You know nothing but what the Enemy tells you.” With contempt, he spat, “Slave.”
With a muted howl of glee, the dread spoke. “I stand high. I know where the sorcerous one is hidden. He abides where you should have expected: at that place most unlikely to be a prison, therefore the most likely place. He lives in the Garden.”
Suddenly Tomas jumped to his feet, grinning. The thing faltered, for the arm it was holding faded into insubstantiality as it reappeared upon Tomas’s body, while the shield untwisted itself with metallic complaint and sped across the room to rest again upon his left arm. The thing moved toward Tomas, but the warrior in white slashed out with his sword with blinding quickness and this time the blade bit with fury, exploding on contact with a spray of golden sparks and a loud hiss. Bitter smoke came from the contact, and the creature shrieked its muted cry of pain. “It seems I am not the only one given to arrogant presumption,” said Tomas as he drove the thing back with a fury of blows. “Nor are your masters the only ones capable of casting illusions. Foolish thing, don’t you know that it was I along with my brethren who cast you and yours from this universe? Do you think that I, Tomas called Ashen-Shugar, fear such as you? I, who once vanquished the Dreadlords?”
The thing cowered in terror and anger, its cries distant echoes. Then, with a musical tinkling, glowing clear crystalline gems erupted in the air about the creature. Each elongated rapidly, forming a latticework of transparent bars around the creature. Tomas grinned as Pug finished the mystic cage about the night black being. The dread lashed out and sounded a muted howl of agony as it touched the transparent bars. Pug got up from where he had feigned unconsciousness and came to stand next to the creature, which attempted to reach between the glass-like bars, but recoiled instantly it touched one. It shrieked and howled, its alien voice an odd raucous whispering. “What is this thing?” asked Pug.
“A Dreadmaster, one of the Unliving. A thing whose nature is alien even to the essence of our being. It comes from a strange universe at the farthest reaches of time and space, one that only a few beings can breach and survive. It eats the very substance of life, as do all its kind when they enter this universe. It will wither grass should it step upon it. It is a creature of animated destruction, second in power only to the Dreadlords, who are beings even the Valheru are cautious of. That this thing was even brought to the City Forever shows that the Enemy and Murmandamus have callous regard for the potential destruction they might unleash.” He paused, a look of concern on his face. “It also makes me wonder what more is involved with this Enemy than we have understood so far.” He looked at Pug. “How are you?”
Pug stretched and said, “I think I broke a rib.”
Tomas nodded. “It was lucky that was all you broke. Sorry, but I expected to keep it busy.”
Pug shrugged and winced. “What do we do with it?” He indicated the softly howling creature.
“We could drive it back to its own universe, but that would be time consuming. How long will that cage stand?”
Pug said, “Normally, centuries. Here, perhaps forever.”