The Dark Symphony

watching him die slowly, die completely. He stared around the circle, looking from face to face. Most of them were mutants. Most of them did not look too concerned, only mildly interested. Didn't they know who he was? Didn't they know he was the father of the prophet?
    The prophet? He looked, found the boy. He could not understand the expression on the boy's face. It was not sorrow either. And yet it was more than mild interest. He tried to pry off the face of the boy and see what worked in his mind, but he could not do it. The boy's mind was too alien to him.
    Then one head became clearer than the others in the circle, came bobbling out of the dozen faces and grew sharper, larger. It was a black face, hooded in black cloth. It seemed to expand and expand until it filled the entire sky, until it stretched from horizon to horizon, the features of it as big as mountains and valleys. He knew the black face for what it was, and he cried out wildly, seeking to escape but unable to move. His legs had been cut off, of course. There was no escaping Death. But he could not be consoled by the inevitability of it He could think of but one thing to mutter hatefully in an agonized, withered voice: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"
    There wasn't any answer.
    Guil turned from the body as its screams ceased. Would the whirlwind of this night never die down? He almost laughed, then checked himself, though what he now had come to understand was ironic enough to pro-voice laughter. Why did toolmasters exist? Why did men scramble to control one another? The answer was not difficult to find. In fact, it was deceptively simple, just as the solution to the problems in the arena had been deceptively simple. Answer: they were all afraid of Death, the Erlking, and they grasped desperately at immortality. Vladislovitch had not been able to bring that; if he had, perhaps being a toolmaster would no longer be necessary. With immortality, each man could be himself and to hell with domination and submission. But without a real immortality, the only way a man could hope to live forever was through the memories he left behind in other people. If a man was a Grand Meistro, he could count on immortality of this stripe. He would never be completely forgotten. With intangible fingers, he could reach from his grave rot and stir his memory in the minds of men. A common man's immortality, on the other hand, lasted only as long as his family survived after him. Ah, but if a man could rule, could bring pain to some and joy to others, could use people to assure himself of a place in history, then he would never die. Never… Ever…
    Finally, Guil did laugh. He could hold it back no longer. He saw that he had been born too soon. He would have fit perfectly into a world of some distant future when Man had finally produced physical immortality, in a world where there was absolutely no need for toolmastering and where men would be free at last—the Ninth Rule conquered and used. Born too soon.
    "What is it?" Tisha asked.
    "It's just that," he said, wiping tears from his eyes, "what he feared the most is exactly the thing we don't fear at all. He fears Death. And Death is the only immortality, the thing he wanted all along."
    She took his hand and held it tightly. "Come on. Hurry. They're looking at you funny. The pillar."
    He turned with her to run the last few hundred feet, and they collided with Redbat. The mutant's eyes were hot, the green like strange, bubbling lava. "You aren't deserting us for the enemy, are you?" Redbat asked.
    "We—" Tisha began.
    "We aren't on anyone's side anymore, Redbat," Guil said. He felt flushed, exultant. "Strong tried to loll Tisha. He was a fanatic. You know that. We aren't deserting anyone. We're just leaving."
    "Not yet," the mutant said, scuttling back a step and fluffing its wings, then drawing them in tight again.
    Green eyes glowing…
    "What?" Guil asked.
    Redbat blew air out of his nostrils, blinked his mammoth eyes. "These men. They'll look to you as their new leader now that your father is gone."
    "They won't," Guil said. "I don't have the stigmata. I don't fit in."
    "They will. They'll look to you. I want that leadership, and I don't think you should have it after what you've done."
    "Fine," Guil said. The leadership is yours. All yours. My blessings. Come on, Tish."
    "Wait!" Redbat pushed a claw against Guil's chest "We will have a fight."
    "You're crazy!"
    "The winner of the fight is the leader. The