KNIGHT OF SHADOWS by Roger Zelazny

anything I couldn’t handle.   Our empathy is too strong, though.   Sorry I woke you.
    I stretched.
    How long was I asleep?
    Several hours, I’d judge.
    I feel kind of sorry about this, I said.   That scrap heap isn’t worth somebody’s life,
    It is now, Frakir answered.
    True.   Now that someone’s died for the stuff have you gotten the word as to what we do next?
    Things are a little clearer, but not enough to act on.   We must remain until morning for me to be certain.
    Does the information you have include anything on whether there’s food or drink available in the neighborhood?
    Yes.   There’s supposed to be a jug of water behind the altar.   Also a loaf of bread.   But that’s for morning.   You’re supposed to be fasting throughout the night.
    That’s only if I take this whole business seriously, I said, turning toward the altar.
    I took two steps, and the world started to come apart.   The floor of the chapel trembled, and I heard my first sounds since my arrival; a deep growling, grating noise came from somewhere far beneath me.   A horde of colors flashed through the air of this colorless place, half blinding me with their intensity. Then the colors fled, and the room divided itself.   The whiteness grew intense in the vicinity of the archway by which I had entered.   I had to raise my hand to shield my eyes against it.   Across from this, a profound darkness occurred, masking the three doorways in that wall.
    What…is it? I asked.
    Something terrible, Frakir replied, beyond my ability to access.
    I clasped the hilt of the blade I wore and reviewed the spells I still had hanging.   Before I could do any more than that, an awful sense of presence pervaded the place.   So potent did it seem that I did not feel that drawing my blade or reciting a spell was the most politic action I might take.
    Ordinarily I’d have summoned the Sign of the Logrus by then, but that way was barred to me also.   I tried clearing my throat, but no sound came forth.   Then there came a movement at the heart of the light, a coalescing....
    The shape of a Unicorn, like Blake’s Tyger, burning bright, took form, so painful to behold that I had to look away
    I shifted my gaze to the deep, cool blackness, but there was no rest for my eyes in that place either.   Something stirred within the darkness, and there came another sound-a grating, as of metal being scraped on stone.   This was followed by a powerful hissing.   The ground trembled again.   Curved lines flowed forward.   Even before the brightness of the Unicorn etched its lineaments within that mighty gloom, I realized it was the head of a one-eyed serpent which had come partway into the chapel.   I shifted my gaze to a point between them, catching each within my peripheral vision.   Far better than any attempt to behold either directly I felt their gazes upon me, the Unicorn of Order and the Serpent of Chaos.   It was not a pleasant feeling, and I retreated until the altar was at my back.
    Both came slightly farther into the chapel.   The Unicorn’s head was lowered, horn pointed directly at me.   The Serpent’s tongue darted in my direction.
    “Uh, if either of you want this armor and stuff,” I ventured, “I certainly have no object-‘
    The Serpent hissed and the Unicorn raised a hoof and let it fall, cracking the floor of the chapel, the fracture line racing toward me like a streak of black lightning and halting just at my feet.
    “On the other hand,” I observed, “no insult is intended by the offer, Your Eminences-“
    Wrong thing to say-again, Frakir interjected, weakly.
    Tell me what’s right, I said, trying for a mental sotto voce.
    I don’t- Oh!
    The Unicorn reared; the Serpent drew itself upward.   I dropped to my knees and looked away, their gazes having somehow become physically painful.
    I was trembling, and all of my muscles had begun to ache.
    It is suggested, Frakir recited, that you play the game the way it is set