by Peter David
But he was starting to feel a pounding in the back of his head, and he felt as if he were losing focus. He staggered and nearly fell, and only a quick movement on Thomas’s part kept him upright. “I . . . I don’t know what’s wrong,” whispered the Hero of Will.
“I do,” said Quentin Locke. “There is only so long you can sustain this type of spell. You can attempt to maintain it, but it may well deplete you of power so thoroughly that you will have nothing left for the battle.”
“Don’t tell me what I can and cannot do,” James said heatedly.
“I know more about these matters than you,” Locke said. “But if you desire to put us in a position where we have to function without you, then I assure you that we can triumph without you. Otherwise, you need to cease producing the spell and replenish your energies.”
“I’m the Hero of Will, not you! I—”
His legs gave way completely. Thomas, who was supporting him, sank to the ground with him. With a loud, shouted profanity, James released his grip on reality around him. Within seconds the world surged back into its normal time stream, and James pounded his fist on the ground in fury. “Just a little longer,” he said. “I needed to . . .”
“It’s all right, James,” said Thomas. “You’ve accomplished what we needed. Come. Let’s finish this.”
James nodded and started to get to his feet. But he got no further than the intention to do so.
“James—?”
“I can’t,” James said, trying to keep the panic from his voice. “I have no strength . . . not enough even to stand.”
“You will,” Thomas said confidently. “You just need time to rest.”
“Time,” Locke reminded him, “that we do not have. We have to leave him.”
“Leave him?” The voice of the Hero of Strength rose. “To hell with that. I’ll carry him—”
“He’ll slow us down at a time when we cannot afford it.”
“Thomas . . . he’s right,” James managed to say. “And even if I were present . . . I would be useless in a fight. I would just lie there helpless, and you’d be busy watching out for me. Go. Go, and I’ll catch up.”
“I’m not sure that . . .” Thomas began, but Quentin Locke had already started moving.
“Go,” James said once more, even more firmly.
Thomas squeezed his arm again as a sign of solidarity, and then headed off into the forest.
The moment they were both out of sight, James took a deep breath, released it, and then got to his feet. The darkness that had been surging within him had been brought even more to the fore, and it was that darkness that had prompted him to play up his weakness because Quentin Locke’s attitude had greatly annoyed him. He dusted himself off, and then muttered, “Arrogant prig. Trying to order me about. You could have had me at your side, but no. You give me, ‘I assure you we can triumph without you.’ Fine. Let’s see you do it, then.”
“THEY’RE MOVING AGAIN!”
Kreel turned in confusion toward Shaw, who had been the one to blurt out the exclamation. “What are you talking about?”
Molly Newsome fired an angry look at Shaw, and instantly his mouth tightened. The comment had attracted Kreel’s attention, however, and he approached the altar. “My laird . . . what did you mean by that?”
Shaw said nothing but simply stared blankly at Kreel.
“My laird,” and there was an edge to Kreel’s voice. “I suggest you speak to me, or—”
“Or what?” Shaw was suddenly defiant. “Or you’ll kill me? You have no desire to do that; you want to transform me into one of your own vile kind.”
“Want to, but do not need to.” Kreel extended a finger, and a single claw extended from it. His control over his form was absolute. “Two offerings will be sufficient.” With the extended claw, he carefully sliced open the front of Shaw’s tunic, leaving him bare-chested. His torso was covered with thick, graying hair. “Pity this has to happen,” said Kreel calmly. “You’re already rather hirsute. Growing fur would not have been that much of a change for you. Ah well. Now . . . where to start? When you intend to gut someone from crotch to sternum, it’s always hard to know quite where to begin. Let’s see, let’s see.” And he moved the claw up and down repeatedly. “Crotch . . . sternum . . . crotch . . . sternum . . . yes, definitely, it will be the—”
“You weren’t moving!” Shaw blurted out. Molly Newsome rolled her eyes in annoyance, but Shaw didn’t see it, and even if he had, it would have made no difference. “I mean, you were, but incredibly slowly. If we’d been able to break free of here, we could have walked right past you, and you would never have noticed us.”
Kreel retracted the claw, his thoughts racing. “For how long?”
Shaw was staring down at his exposed chest, still clearly terrified at the prospect of being vivisected. As a result, Kreel’s question didn’t register on him at first. Then Kreel got his attention through the simple expedient of wrapping his long fingers around Shaw’s throat. “For how long?”
“I don’t know!” Shaw cried out. “I lost track . . .”
“How could you have lost track? How?”
Shaw was trembling, so terrified that he could not get out a word.
The dean could stand it no longer. In his best academic manner, he said, “It is impossible to be certain of the passing of time under such circumstances.”
Molly Newsome looked poisonously at him. “Men!”
“Shaw should not have a painful death inflicted upon him simply because he is an ignorant coward.”
“As opposed to you, a knowledgeable coward?”
“While there is life, there is hope.”
Kreel clamped a hand over the lady’s mouth. “Your words are serving no use. You”—and he turned to Carter—“scholar. Speak to me. What transpired here?”
Carter did not hesitate. One would have thought, from the way he was talking, that he was back at the dinner table discussing matters of myth and legend. “The concept is called Time Control. It is something that only a Hero schooled in the use of Will would be able to implement. Except there are no longer any such—”
“Damnation!” The people on the altar forgotten, he turned, and shouted, “Lugaru! Quickly!”
Lugaru immediately came upon being called although it was clear from his expression that he did not appreciate being summoned in that manner. “What is the problem, Kreel? With the midnight hour nigh—”
“They’ve obtained the icons.”
Lugaru’s shock was palpable. “What?”
“Someone used an act of will to stop time. It is the only answer. And if one of the icons has been attained, we have to assume that all of them have.”
Lugaru did not hesitate. Instead, he pivoted on his heel and strode quickly across the vast chamber. With each step he left more of his human body behind until he had reached the full height of his balverine form. At the far side, there was a bust of a balverine mounted on the wall, with its mouth wide open. Lugaru leaned forward, opened his own mouth, and then tilted his head back and let out a howl. The sound was carried up, up a stone shaft, and a second later the eerie sound was carrying to the farthest regions of the Elderwoods.
And then, after a few moments, the returning howls were heard.
Lugaru turned to Kreel and, in his deep growl of a voice, said, “The brethren are coming. All of them. More than enough to handle even three Heroes. And when midnight comes within the hour”—and he turned to the prisoners—“there will be three more to aid us in our endeavors.”
THE HEROES OF SKILL AND STRENGTH WERE sprinting through the woods when the uncanny howling drifted to their ears. They stopped dead for a moment, listening to it and the responding howls as well.
“They’re summoning additional forces,” said Locke. “They know we’re coming.”
“Let them,” said Thomas, gripping his sword firmly. “Let them know. Let them think they have a chance of stopping us. They’ll find out how wrong they are.”
“We need a plan.”
“I have a plan. I’m going to kill anything that stands between me and the bastard that killed my brother. And then I’m going to kill him.”
“Thomas, wait—!”
But there was no waiting. The Hero of Strength was going to depend upon his strength alone, for the blade, Quicksilver, was whispering to him that his sword arm was all that was going to be required to get the job done, and Thomas was in no mood to dispute it. Into the woods he ran, vengeance singing in his head and drowning out everything else, from common sense to the words of his fellow Hero.
The Hero of Skill, realizing that his ally wasn’t listening, did the only thing he could: He took off after him as quickly as possible.
JAMES WAS WALKING BACK TOWARD THE horses, but was doing so very slowly. Locke’s words still stung him, and he felt that the Hero of Skill had been nothing but an ingrate. Nevertheless, he had a mental image of Thomas going up against potentially overwhelming odds and felt as if he was betraying his old friend by turning his back on him.
Something warned him.
He didn’t know what it was: A slight breaking of a branch, or a heavy breath, or a deep snarl that the creature had been unable to restrain. Whatever it was, it was sufficient to warn the Hero of Will, and James brought his hands up in pure reflex as a snarling balverine leaped at him from the darkness.
A ball of fire leaped into existence in James’s outstretched palm and straight at the balverine. It struck the creature with full force, and the balverine staggered, its fur going up in flame. Within seconds, James had hurled three more balls of fire, and the creature threw itself to the ground, rolling, trying to extinguish them.
“Fine,” said the Hero of Will, “so be it,” and with more time to focus, he summoned lightning that blasted from his hands and encompassed the struggling balverine. The creature let out a high shriek and stopped thrashing. Instead, it lay there, unmoving, as the remains of the fire eagerly consumed its body.
Even as the last of its life fled its body, the Hero of Will had already dashed past it. It would have been uplifting to say that he was doing so because he had put aside his own anger and was determined to back up his good and dear friend, Thomas, now the Hero of Strength.
But the fact was that James had simply enjoyed killing the balverine with a wave of his hand, and he was particularly keen to do it again. Even more specifically, he wanted to throw flames and lightning bolts and anything else he could at Kreel, because Kreel was the bastard who had killed his dog, and there had to be justice for that.
Chapter 17
THE HERO OF STRENGTH STOPPED IN his tracks, alerted by a low, warning growl. He had already unsheathed his sword, ready for any attack, so he did not even have to withdraw it from its scabbard. Thomas could feel power flowing from it into his sword arm, although for additional strength he was now holding the sizable blade with both hands. It was as if he were inside his head, looking out—which was usual enough—but also standing outside of himself, looking down at the assemblage of balverines who were converging upon him.
They stopped several feet away from him, forming a ring around him. There were at least a dozen of them, varying colors of fur, their claws extended, their evil eyes fixed upon him. They snarled their defiance.
But none advanced. Instead, Thomas noted with quiet amusement, they were now casting sidelong glances at each other, and he realized what was happening: Each of them was waiting for another to make the first move. Their ferocity was tempered with caution.
“You’re right to be cautious,” said the Hero of Strength, with a grin on his face that was as wolfish as any of the creatures facing him. “For years—for years—your kind haunted my dreams. Not anymore. For now I will haunt yours. Not that you will survive this night, but the slaughter your kind will experience will be so monumental, so traumatic, that it will sear itself into the collective memory of your entire race. Balverines will jump at shadows because they will think I am in them. And in this instance, they will be right. So . . . come on, then. Come on and die.” When still they hesitated, he bellowed, “Come on!”
Triggered by the shout, they did as he bade them. They converged on him from all sides, thinking that they could take him down through overwhelming force.
The silver blade whipped through the air like a windmill. Several of them froze in their tracks, ducked back, but most of the balverines continued their charge.
They never got near him. Instead, the blade sliced through their necks without slowing. Two of them endeavored to duck beneath the blade and the result was to have the upper part of their heads sent flying.
The power of the Hero of Strength surged through Thomas as he completed his spin and came to a set position, awaiting the next charge. One cycle of the blade and, just like that, eight balverines were lying dead on the forest floor beneath him.
The remaining four spread out, more cautious this time, no longer being able to assume that overwhelming force would carry the day, and cautiously circled him. Thomas countered their moves, and no matter which way they tried to come at him, his blade was always a barrier, as if it were in several places at once.
Suddenly, there was a quick noise from overhead, a rustling of air, nothing more, but that was all the warning Thomas needed to bring his sword swinging up and around. The balverine that had tried to drop down upon him wound up bisected at the hip, falling in two separate pieces.
But the necessary change in Thomas’s angle of attack left, for just a moment, his back exposed. That was all that was required for one of the balverines to land on Thomas’s back, knocking him to the ground, the full weight of the balverine pressing him down. The balverine let out a triumphant cry and was about to rip Thomas’s spine from his back and dangle it in front of his eyes.
Then there was a thunderous explosion, and the balverine was blasted backwards with such force that it flipped over. The remaining balverines tried to scatter, but a second explosion, like a thunderclap on the ground, took down a second one. It fell, clawing at its chest, and then it ceased all movement and simply lay there.
The remaining two balverines melted into the woods and, seconds later, were gone.
The Hero of Strength clambered to his feet and saw, as he might have expected, the Hero of Skill emerging from the woods. The barrel of his gun was still smoking.
“You may want to rethink your ‘run on ahead and nearly get killed if not for me’ strategy,” Locke said drily.
“Good point,” Thomas was forced to admit. “Thank you for the save, by the way.”
“You would have managed to fight your way out entirely on your own.”
“Maybe not.”
“Undoubtedly not,” replied Locke. “I was being generous in order to assuage your ego.”
“All I need to feel assuaged is to kill the bastards.”
“Then let us attend to it,” said the Hero of Skill.
They sped through the woods then, and as they did so, they quickly put together what seemed a reasonable plan: the Hero of Strength would handle the bulk of the heavy lifting when it came to dispatching the balverines, while the Hero of Skill would see to rescuing the intended victims of the Balverine Order.
The minimal distance between them and the temple was hardly without difficulties. Balverines leaped out at them with seeming randomness, trying to throw them off step, catch them by surprise, take them down. In every instance, they failed: the Heroes of Skill and Strength were not to be caught off guard, intercepting attacks and ruthlessly gunning or cutting down all opposition. The Hero of Strength carried the lion’s share of offense since the Hero of Skill did not have an infinite number of bullets.
They left a trail of bloody mayhem in their wake and, upon reaching the temple with minutes to go until midnight, saw they had a clear path to the mouth of their goal.
“It’s too easy,” said Quentin Locke, putting an arm out and preventing Thomas from advancing.
Determined to reach the temple’s interio
r and find the monster who had crippled his family and destroyed so much of his life, it was everything Thomas could do to heed Locke’s counsel. “You think they’re waiting for us?”
“I surely do.”
“But that’s the only entrance.”
“So far as we know.”
“Then we need to draw them out if they’re in hiding.”
“I suppose, but—”
“Then,” said the Hero of Strength, “it is necessary for us to remember the plan. I will draw them out, and you will get to the prisoners.”
He half rose to standing, and Locke said sharply, “Getting yourself killed so that you can join your brother is hardly a wise plan.”
“That is not my plan.”
“I would be hard-pressed to prove otherwise.”
“We,” said Thomas, “are losing time.”
“Then,” came a slightly out-of-breath voice from behind, “you are not going to benefit anyone by wasting more of it here.”
They turned and saw the Hero of Will walk boldly past them without slowing so much as a step. “James!” Thomas cried out, overjoyed, and suddenly fear for his friend caught up with him. “Wait!”
James did not wait. Instead, he strode out into the open, making no effort to look around or anticipate any manner of assault.
He had taken five paces out into the open and suddenly balverines were descending from on high, like sleet, roaring their triumph.
They had been secreted against the rock face of the temple itself, flattened, waiting, their eyes closed so that their presence would not be betrayed by their gleaming yellow orbs. Now they fell en masse toward their target, far too many to count, anticipating sinking their claws and fangs into the flesh of the lone Hero.
The Hero of Will glanced up at them and spread his hands. The air rippled upward and then blasted like a geyser of pure power.
The name for the spell was Force Push, and it carved a divide between the plummeting balverines, scattering them to either side, halving their forces. Some of the balverines were hit directly with such intensity that they were crushed against the very rock face that had been their shelter only seconds earlier.
