Pillar of Night читать онлайн

t decry his skills, but Lan knew deep within how he had grown as a mage. Claybore was not only wrong, he was defeated and didn’t know it. Lan Martak felt the power on him. He could not lose. He faced his destiny.“This after you’ve told me it’s possible to destroy your parts? Kiska was wrong. The parts are not immortal. The whole might be, but not the parts.”“Immortality rests with all the parts, but that doesn’t mean the segments cannot be destroyed,” said Claybore. “Left alone, they will survive for all eternity.”“Consummate magics will destroy them,” said Lan, almost gloating now.“Terrill tried and failed. He paid the penalty for dismembering me.”“I’m better than Terrill.”The chalk white skull tipped sideways, the eye sockets taking on a blackness darker than space. The area around the nose hole became riddled with cracks as magical forces mounted. Claybore’s skull disintegrated a bit more under each attack. Lan felt confident that he would turn the skull into dust before the day was out.“You think so?” mocked Claybore.“I feel it.”“You’re a fool. You’re a fool I have manipulated for my own ends for some time. You cannot win. You don’t even understand what stakes we play for.”“Conquest. Power.”“Yes, that,” said Claybore, stopping beside the copper coffin cradling his left leg. “And more. Power is worthless useless it is used. After you’ve conquered a few thousand worlds, what then? With immortality, mere power is not enough.”“What else can there be?” asked Lan, wondering if this were a trick to gull him into vulnerability.“Godhood! Not only power but the worship of all living beings. Their birth, their death, every instant in between ruled totally-by me! For millennia there has been no true god because I imprisoned the