by Alexey Pehov
The beast raised the sack to its nose, sniffed at it, snorted, and tossed it away.
Somewhere in the distance a flute played a triumphant melody—evidently the first beast had finally overtaken the man. Distracted, the h’san’kor lowered its head to one side and started listening to its comrade’s call. The triumphant trill suddenly changed to a bellow of pain, and once again the nighttime forest was filled with deafening silence.
Lamplighter was lying next to me and I could hear his heart pounding. But the question hammering through my mind was: Why had the beast bellowed so loudly? Obviously I was not the only one worried about this. The h’san’kor took several uncertain steps along the path in the direction that the bellow had come from.…
Suddenly the world flashed pink again, the prickly shivers running across my body disappeared, Miralissa and Kli-Kli’s spells vanished, and … the monster saw us. With a menacing growl the beast moved toward us, parting the bushes.
“Scatter!” shouted Miralissa, already on her feet. “Attack from all sides, all together!”
I was scared absolutely witless. The elfess was chanting a spell, the soldiers fell back, drawing the h’san’kor on, and I watched as the beast advanced on us, like death come to life. The lilac flame in the flute’s eyes was burning with a hungry glow.
Egrassa’s arrow whistled through the air and I recovered my senses.
“Shoot, Harold!” he shouted to me.
I shot on target, the bolts slammed precisely into the forest monster’s chest, and I started reloading the crossbow, but this time with ice bolts, because the ordinary ones had no effect, just like the elf’s arrows—there were already at least six stuck in the monster, but it didn’t seem to be bothered in the least.
A green wall flared up in front of the h’san’kor (just like the one that Miralissa had created at the lair of the Nameless One’s servants). The monster stopped and roared so loudly that my ears popped, and slammed its club down on the magical barrier. It was obviously some special kind of club, because the wall shuddered visibly.
“I can’t hold it for long!” the elfess shouted. “Egrassa, Harold, go for the eyes! Put out its eyes!”
By this time, the elf had stuck the h’san’kor with arrows all the way up to the top of its head. The monster took a step back and then attacked the wall again. The elfess groaned with the strain of trying to maintain the barrier. I unloaded the crossbow into the beast and the ice bolts exploded without causing our enemy the slightest harm.
“Battle magic doesn’t work on it!” cried Kli-Kli, flinging his first pair of throwing knives. “Ordinary bolts! Go for the eyes!”
“I’m out of arrows!” shouted Egrassa.
Another roar, a blow, a flash of green from the wall, and a muffled groan from Miralissa.
“Take mine!” the elfess shouted, and started desperately whispering a new spell.
Egrassa dashed across to her. Kli-Kli parted with another knife.… The h’san’kor seemed to understand human speech perfectly well. It saw me aiming at its most vulnerable spot, stopped storming the wall between us, and, at the very moment when I pressed both triggers, it put one hand over its eyes.
Smack! Smack! Both bolts stuck in its hand. The beast gave me a malicious glance that promised a thousand years of torment when it got its hands on me, and smashed its club down on the wall again. The wall moaned pitifully, but still stood firm.
Twang! Twang! The elf’s bowstring sang out again. One arrow went into the beast’s mouth, the other stuck in its head, by some miracle just missing its eye. The next arrow loosed by Egrassa burned up in the air before it even reached its target. And the same fate overtook my bolt.
So this vile monster could use magic, too?
“It’s useless!” cried the elf, baring his s’kash.
Kli-Kli howled and spun like a top, working a spell. Miralissa finished her own magic, and by the light of the moon and a small fire lit by the gnome, all the grass around rose up into the air, gathered together in the form of a huge knife blade, and struck at the flute’s chest.
It didn’t work. The knife fell and scattered into harmless tiny scraps of green. Alistan Markauz swore; the monster chuckled triumphantly and smashed its club down on the wall that was barely holding up.
Bang-bang! Two shots from a pistol fused into one, distracting Kli-Kli from his spell.
Hallas was wreathed in vile-smelling gunpowder smoke. Our enemy’s left eye burst and went blank, and the h’san’kor roared in pain and fury. The second ball hit a little lower, passing through the h’san’kor’s neck. Its body was already black from the blood oozing from dozens of wounds, and now the life started pulsing out of its neck in sharp spurts. Good old Hallas—he had realized that the flute’s spell might work on arrows and crossbow bolts, but balls—or bullets, as he called them—could pierce the magical barrier. And they had.
Bang!
The gnome was a skilled master of his weapon, and this time the monster’s right eye went blank. But I was astounded to see the h’san’kor still standing firmly on its feet. Blinded, and howling like a hundred sinners roasting on a skillet, it flung itself at the wall.
The wall flared up brightly for the final time, and shattered into a thousand bright green shards. I thought my head would explode from the terrible ringing sound. Three fir trees standing close to the demolished wall burst into green flame, burning from the ground right up to the top of their crowns and illuminating the forest with a green light.
Deler was howling and rolling around on the ground—his jacket had caught fire. Eel dashed over to the dwarf and started beating out the flames on his back. The fire roared as it devoured the trees. The h’san’kor shrieked piercingly and flailed blindly in front of itself with its club, hoping to catch one of us.
“Everybody back! Over here, quick!” Hallas yelled.
Eel helped Deler to his feet and they ran into the forest. Alistan and Egrassa picked up Miralissa, who was lying on the ground, and carried her away from the monster. I went running after them—this was no time to hang about, the gnome might have another surprise up his sleeve.
“Get down!” Hallas shouted, and we all dropped to the ground.
“This way, you ugly brute! Come to me!” Beside the howling h’san’kor the gnome looked like some little bug.
The beast smashed its club blindly against the ground and walked toward the voice.
“Well? Here I am! Catch me, you horned bastard!”
The h’san’kor growled something, and its weapon reduced the nearest young fir tree to a million tiny chips of wood. When the flute drew level with the little fire that Hallas had lit, the gnome tossed something into the flames and ran with all the speed his little legs could muster.
A brilliant flash lit up the forest and for a moment I was completely blinded. Then there was a deafening bang, flames went soaring right up to the sky, and I definitely felt the earth shake.
When the bright spots cleared from in front of my eyes I saw before me the scene of destruction caused by Hallas’s unknown weapon. The fir trees were still burning and there was more than enough light to make out what was happening all around us. The gnome was standing on all fours, shaking his head furiously. The victor’s face was covered in blood and his eyebrows were singed. A hole had appeared in the ground at the spot where the fire had been burning a few moments earlier. The h’san’kor was lying beside it. The blast had torn off both its legs, but the monster was still trying to reach for its club.
“That beast’s hard to kill!” exclaimed Mumr, adjusting his grip on the hilt of his sword.
“Cut its head off!” Egrassa shouted from somewhere behind him.
“Harold, you help Hallas!” Deler told me, picking up his battle-ax.
Eel, Deler, Alistan Markauz, and Lamplighter all dashed to the h’san’kor.
“Are you all right?” I asked, helping the gnome get up.
“I can’t hear a damn thing, Harold!” the gnome roared, and shook his head.
“Not a damn thing!”
Meanwhile Milord Alistan bounded up to the monster and plunged his sword into its chest with all his strength. The monster roared and swung its hand blindly. The blow caught the count on his chest plate and knocked him off his feet.
Mumr swung his sword and halted the hand that was raised to strike at Milord again. The bidenhander sliced through the h’san’kor’s wrist, leaving the hand dangling by a scrap of skin. Eel thrust his “brother” and “sister” into the beast’s other hand, pinning it to the ground, and Deler took a wide swing and buried the crescent-shaped blade of his battle-ax in the h’san’kor’s forehead.
The beast howled and shrieked, waving the stump of its arm, with blood pouring out of it. Mumr darted over to the hand that Eel had pinned to the ground, and hacked the arm off at the shoulder with three stout blows.
“Die! Die! Die, will you, you bastard!” said the dwarf, raining down blows on the h’san’kor’s head.
The heavy weapon pulped flesh and crushed bone. The flute twitched … but it was still alive. Breathy gasps and incomprehensible fragments of phrases came out of the monster’s mouth. I suspected it was about to treat us to another spell. And I wasn’t the only one who thought so.
“Cut its damn head off at last, will you!” Kli-Kli shrieked.
“Harold, where’s my mattock?” asked Hallas, pressing his left hand to his split eyebrow and trying to push me away with his right.
“Calm down, they’ll manage!”
“Oh, sure they will. Get its head off, you idiots!”
“Deler, you go right!” Mumr barked, swinging the bidenhander back above his head. “Eel, milord! Cut off its stump, so that it can’t jerk about! Here we go! Hey-yah!”
The bidenhander smashed down on the monster’s neck. Then the battle-ax. Then the two-handed sword again. The dwarf and the man started hacking away like lumberjacks. When Deler brought down his battle-ax for the third time, the h’san’kor fell silent. This time, forever.
Deler swore in the gnomic language and wiped the sweat off his forehead with his sleeve. “That was hot work! Hallas, how are you?”
“What? Alive! And how’s your back?”
“My jacket’s ruined,” the dwarf said, making a wry face, and set his battle-ax on his shoulder.
The fir trees were still burning, but the magical green flames had already given way to ordinary ones.
“Tell me, my friend Hallas, what was that you threw into the fire?” Kli-Kli asked the gnome thoughtfully as he studied the hole blasted into the ground.
“Speak louder!”
“What did you fling in the fire?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know!” the gnome snapped. “The powder horn, that’s what! Thanks to that brute all I’ve got left is one loaded pistol! But never mind.… Damn the pistol, the important thing is that everyone’s still alive. When I tell the lads back in the Giant I felled a h’san’kor, they’ll never believe me!”
“You felled it? If Lamplighter and me hadn’t lopped its head off, you’d have more to worry about than a singed beard!” Deler didn’t intend to miss out on the credit for a heroic feat like this.
“Have you not forgotten about the first monster, milord?” I asked Alistan Markauz. “Somewhere up ahead there’s another one just like this, only that one’s alive!”
“I don’t think we need worry about that flute, Harold,” Egrassa said in a quiet voice. “If the h’san’kor were alive, all the noise we made would have brought it here.”
“Could that man really have killed it?” Hallas simply couldn’t believe the idea.
“Apparently so.”
“Then he’s even more dangerous than a flute,” Eel declared. “How is Lady Miralissa?”
The Garrakian’s question hung in the air and everyone looked at the dark elf, who had stayed with the elfess all this time.
“She’s all right now,” Egrassa replied, hanging his s’kash behind his shoulder.
3
AT THE GATES
It took us an hour to build the funeral pyre. There were plenty of trees all around; Deler’s battle-ax worked away without a pause, and all the others kept up well with the dwarf. The pile of timber on which we set Miralissa rivaled the size of the pyre we had built when Ell died. The elfess’s s’kash and bow lay beside her and Egrassa kept only the quiver.
When the elf first led us to Miralissa, no one could believe that she was dead. She seemed to be sleeping or resting with her eyes closed. There were no wounds, and her bluish chain mail was undamaged. Only when we picked the young elfess up to carry her to the fire, a single drop of blood flowed out of her right ear.
Miralissa had been killed by her own shamanism. At the moment when the magical wall burst and shattered under the furious pressure of the h’san’kor’s attack, the thread of the elfess’s life had also snapped. The princess of the House of the Black Moon had put all her strength into the magic and she had no chance of surviving the powerful backlash from her own spell.
When the magical flame of the pyre was transformed into a wild roaring dragon that threatened to consume the moon and the stars, and Miralissa had disappeared forever behind the red tongues of flame, Egrassa sang the funeral song.
The flames roared furiously as they accepted Miralissa’s soul and escorted it to the light, but the elf’s voice could be heard even above their roar. The bright glow of the fire flickered on the faces of the warriors silently observing the raging flames.
Hallas and Deler looked like brothers now—both silent, with gloomy faces. Alistan Markauz gritted his teeth and clenched his fists. Eel was as impassive as ever; there was not a trace of emotion in his face, only weariness dancing in his eyes the color of steel. Lamplighter leaned on his bidenhander with his eyes narrowed, peering into the fire. Kli-Kli was crying his eyes out and wiping the streaming tears off his face. And I …
How was I?
I suppose … desolated … and very tired. I felt that now there was absolutely nothing that I wanted.
“Kli-Kli, stop crying,” Egrassa said when he finished the song.
“I’m not crying,” the goblin whined miserably.
“Do you think I’m blind?”
“If I say I’m not crying, then I’m not crying!”
“She knew what she was doing. Take comfort in the fact that if my cousin had not maintained the wall for so long, we would all be dead.”
“But…”
“She was a true daughter of the House of the Black Moon—she did it so that we could finish what we came here to do. We elves have a completely different attitude toward death. She did not die in vain, and there is nothing more to say.”
The goblin nodded hastily and blew his nose into a huge handkerchief.
We moved on when there was nothing left of the pyre but a heap of glowing embers.
* * *
There was no more than two hours left until dawn and Egrassa led us on without making any allowances for our tiredness.
I still couldn’t believe we had lost Miralissa. Anyone else, but not her. Somehow I’d been sure that she would be with us right to the very end. But as they say, man proposes and the gods dispose. The elfess with the ash-gray hair and mysterious yellow eyes, and that polite half smile constantly playing on her blue-black lips, had left us now, disappeared into the fire.
Now as we made our way through the forest, we were completely dependent on the elf’s knowledge, and, to a lesser degree, the goblin’s. If they hadn’t been with us, the group would have lost its way in the trees and never found the burial chambers, even if they were only a hundred yards away from us.
Miralissa’s death was an irreplaceable loss in another way, too—we had effectively been left without any magical defenses. Yes, Egrassa knew how to do a few things, but they were limited to the superficial knowledge possessed by every member of the ruling family of a house of dark elves. The elfess wasn’t a fully fledged shaman, either, but her knowledge was far deeper than Egrassa’s.
> Of course, there was still Kli-Kli—the one-time student of his shaman grandfather—but you couldn’t afford to trust him in serious business like this, or you might end up getting the soles of your feet roasted at the most inconvenient moment. There had been precedents already, when the goblin’s knowledge of magic had almost dispatched our group to a meeting with the gods. I personally didn’t feel like taking any more risks.
As we prepared to leave the site of the funeral pyre, the goblin pulled his throwing knives out of the h’san’kor’s dismembered body and gave the severed head a final kick of farewell. I picked up the sack the monster had dropped.
Kli-Kli was still sniffing as he trudged along in front of me.
“How are you?” I asked the goblin sympathetically.
“Fine,” he said through his nose, furtively wiping away his tears. “Absolutely fine.”
“I’m sorry she was killed, too.”
“Why do things like that happen, Harold?”
“I don’t know, my friend. I don’t make a very good comforter. Everything is decided by the will of the gods.”
“The gods? That gang of bandits only exists because some Dancer allowed them to move in when he created this world!” He sighed. “All right, let’s not talk about that.”
A Dancer …
That’s my curse. According to the goblin, I’m a Dancer in the Shadows, too. At least, that’s what the goblin shamans’ famous Book of Prophecies says. I don’t know how Kli-Kli figured out that I’m a Dancer (the first one for ten thousand years), but if a goblin says you’re a sheep, proving to him that you’re not is about as easy as making the sun run backward—one thing is as impossible as the other. So sometimes the jester called me Dancer in the Shadows. I tried for two weeks to shake out of him exactly who this Dancer was and what he was supposed to do, and eventually the infernal little blackguard gave way and fed me his half-witted tribe’s old campfire yarn.
Apparently there used to be a world of Chaos, the first and only world in the Universe, and people lived there. Some of these people possessed the strange power of being able to create new worlds. And to do this they required any shadow from the world of Chaos.
