Isle Of The Dead   ::   Zelazny Roger

He was built like a wide, gray pillar, was covered with scales. He'd a snout like a crocodile, and his eyes were fiery. His three pairs of arms assumed various attitudes as we spoke. Otherwise he, also, did not move from where he stood.

_Old enemy, old comrade_ ... he addressed me.

_Yes, Belion. I am here_.

... _Your cycle has ended. Save yourself the ignominy of ruin at my hands. Withdraw new, Shimbo, and preserve a world you made_.

_I doubt the world shall be lost, Belion_.

Silence.

Then, _Then there must be a confrontation_.

... _Unless you yourself choose to withdraw_.

_I will not_.

_Then there will be a confrontation_.

He sighed a flame.

_So be it_.

And he was gone.

... And I stood atop the small hill and lowered my arms slowly, for the power had gone out of me.

It was a strange experience, unlike anything I had known before. A waking dream, if you would. A fantasy born of tension and anger, if you wouldn't.

The rain was still descending, though not with its previous force. The winds had lost something of their intensity. The lightnings had ceased, as had the trembling of the ground. The fiery activity had diminished, shrinking the orange nest atop the cone, stopping the wound in its side.

I stared at all this, feeling once again the wetness and. the coldness and the firmness of the ground beneath my feet. Our long-distance battle had been cut short, our powers canceled. This was fine with me, though; the waters looked cooler and the slick, gray isle less forbidding.

Ha!

In fact, as I watched, the sun broke through the clouds for a moment and a rainbow unrolled itself amidst sparkling droplets, arcing through the air now clean and framing Acheron, the isle, the smoldering cone like a picture within a gleaming paperweight, miniature, contained and more than slightly unreal.

I departed the hillock and returned to the place I had left. There was a raft that needed building.



VII

As I lamented my missing cowardice--it had been such a lifesaving virtue in the past--it responded by rushing back and leaving me scared as hell once again.

I'd lived far too long, and with every day that passed the odds kept growing against my lasting much longer. Although they didn't put it quite that way when giving the sales pitch, my insurance company's attitude is reflected in the size of the premiums involved. Their computer classified me along with terminal xenopath cases, according to their rates and my spies. Comforting. Probably right, too.