At least most of the time Aohila looked like something, even if she did have snakes in her hair.
Snakes in her hair …
The image snagged in his mind, almost reminding him of something, but it was driven out again when the shadow urged, “If you are killed—”
“Hard cheese to you.” John shut his eyes, waves of dizziness making the desert sway around him as if he clung to a raft at sea.
The gray thing was saying something about Jenny and the children, but all John could do for a time was cling to the cold sand. Aohila, he thought, not knowing why the Demon Queen's image returned to his mind so strongly now. It's the full of the moon, the last day of the Dragonstar's influence, Folcalor and his goons are here, Adromelech is readying himself to come forth.…
So where is she?
His sight cleared. The first thing he saw was Amayon, drawing a sigil in the dust with one finger and putting talisman crystals around it, weaving a pattern of sacrificial deaths.
Noon was five hours off. Moonrise, twelve or so.
Jenny me love, he thought, I hope you're somewhere near.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The sun stood three-quarters of the way to noon. Heat rippled in waves from the sand. Dust crusted on his skin, in his mouth, in his nose, on his spectacles, John forced himself to stand. The ribs Caradoc had cracked in the gatehouse fight gouged him like knives, and he felt eighty years old.
Curiously, he noted that through everything his spectacles were intact. Whatever else could be said about Jenny's magic, he reflected, that was one spell that worked like a champion. Gingerly, clumsily, he tore strips from what was left of his shirtsleeves and bandaged a cut arm and the lacerated fingers of his right hand: Amayon jeered, “Did we get a boo-boo?” as if to a child, but a shadowy hand slipped around John's shoulder to steady the rag as he tied the knot. But for the presence of the shadow, John guessed Amayon would have taken advantage of the moment to do more than sneer.
Among the stones all around the silvery glimmer of the demons flickered in the dry glaring sunlight. Dust-devils fleeted on the Blind Spot's edge like a deadly perimeter, rising and falling, little whirlpools of sharp pebbles stirring and settling. Waiting.
This, thought John, is going to be bad.
“Follow me,” he said. “Keep them off me. The way into the Salt Garden opens only at noon, and only for a few minutes. If we miss it, we'll never hold out till evenin'.”
“Tell me where it is.”
“It's up your nose,” retorted John. “Just follow me.”
The dust-devils whirled up again, then settled—possibly at some spell of the gray thing's, though John as usual could feel nothing; in any case, the men of Bel were waiting, armed, tireless, many of them already dead. He thought there were fewer of them than even the fighting could account for, but it was still going to be a bad run to the gate.
“That bottle, now,” he said softly, speaking over his shoulder. “If Folcalor should show up—”
“Folcalor will come,” whispered the shadow, “when the way is prepared, when his power is at its height. I think not sooner. And I do not believe that his Greatness Lord Adromelech would tolerate it, should another trap the Arch-Traitor and deprive him of the pleasure.”
John didn't even phrase his first thought—Good—in his mind. If worst came to worst, he'd been prepared to spend the rest of eternity trapped in the bottle with Folcalor, though with Adromelech loose and roving around it was half the battle lost right there: Now he only muttered truculently, “Well, I ain't keen on gettin' killed so his Greatness can have the privilege of trappin' Folcalor after I'm dead,” a remark which the shadow ignored.
Jen, I hope you and Morkeleb got your spells in place while we were all hidin' out beyond the Gate of Winds.
Because if something had gone wrong, reflected John wearily, he was going to be in tremendous trouble when Adromelech pulled the stopper out of that bottle and disappeared along with his foe. They're never gonna believe me if I say, “Goodness gracious, how'd that happen?”
He wiped the dust from his spectacles, triangulated on the unmarked spot—he could see it in the distance, about half a mile to the south of the Blind Spot—and shifted the grip of his cramped and blistered hand on his sword.
The moment they stepped clear of the Blind Spot, Folca-lor's demons were around them like sharks around a foundering raft. Whirlwinds and dust blasted them: pebbles, sand, what felt like razor-edged shards of glass. Spells of dizziness, nausea, pain. Counterspells darted, flames searing up through the sand only to be smothered with dust or swept away with wind. Blindness came and went, as if someone repeatedly caught the burning glare of the sun on silvered glass and directed it into his eyes. Out of the blindness and the dust swords slashed at him, never quite coming near enough to get in a counterstroke; he felt as he had when he was a child, when his father would thrust a sword into his hand and drive him hard against the courtyard wall.…
It had taught him. But he hadn't liked it.
Damned to you lot. If you didn't get me with semiautomatic submachine guns in Corvin's laboratory, you're not going to do it with handfuls of pebbles in wind.
“Hold them off !” he yelled, barely able to see the pillar, the hill, the bulk of the palace foundation that told him where he was. He fell to his knees, dust and rock tearing him, demons shrieking.…
I'd better have this right.
The sun was overhead. On the ground he traced the sigil of the door, that Amayon had traced on every gate from the Wraithmire to Paradise and beyond. Shrieking whirlwinds tore the sign away, and he traced it again.
The demons swept past him, across the sigil.
And disappeared, leaving him alone to face blindness and dust and men slashing out of the whirling brown wall of blown sand with spears.
He killed one, two … then green fire roared up between him and them, and he dove over where the sigil had been and prayed to the Old God and the Old God's Granny that his calculations were right.
He was on his knees in the Salt Garden. Brushing the dust off his velvet doublet, Amayon sniffed, “Some warrior.”
“All I need to do is get through it alive.” John climbed stiffly to his feet. Beds of salt stretched in all directions around them, granite-bordered, like flower-beds in the Long Garden of the palace at Bel, decorated with winding paths of stepping-stones. The smell of salt burned in the air, and waves of heat breathed from the ground. It was always noon here.
Around them the silvery slumped demons were faded, ashen lizards slowly shriveling in the burning air. John couldn't see the gray thing, but guessed it was right there behind him as always.
“Let's go, you lot,” he said with a briskness he was far from feeling. “I want to get done with this as badly as you do.” Turning, he led the way into the Maze.
For days in Prokep he had studied it, trying this route or that one and making notes: Its pathways had changed their appearance from day to day, but the count of the turnings had remained ever the same. Through walls of gray rock or fognetted hedge, he led the demons swiftly, listening behind him, around him, in the curious stillness of whatever Hell or enclave or world constituted the world of the Maze. He guessed that some of Folcalor's forces at least had followed them in, and prayed again that Morkeleb and the dragons had put his plan into motion—and that his plan would work. When he was younger he'd comforted himself going into battle by saying, Well, they can't do more than kill you, but lately he'd found out this wasn't true.
He wondered where Jenny was, and if she was all right.
And smiled, only thinking about her. That lovely, strange, and solitary lady, wherever she was, whatever she did. He'd kissed her in the alleyway behind the tavern, and felt her arms around him, and she was his lady again.
Blister the lot of you, he thought, glancing back over his shoulder—of course he couldn't see the gray thing, but the rest of the demons looked paler, smaller, and even Amayon seemed to have lost a little of his glossy loo
k. I'll survive this to have a life with her yet.
As he threaded the paths of the Maze, and watched the demons around him fade and wither, he understood the wisdom of the mages who had died in the Henge, powering this whole system of traps with their deaths. Of course they'd needed a way to reach the Henge themselves, in case of unforeseen emergencies. The Maze fed on magic, as the demons did. The longer they stayed in it, the more it leached them, their own magic going to feed the strength of the Henge. He toyed with the notion of leading them here and there until they simply disappeared, but dropped it: With the talisman jewels as a source of power, he had no idea how long they'd last, and in any case his goal was to get the catch-bottle to Adromelech. Even without the gray thing's spells, Folcalor might very well be capable of breaking the Henge from the outside anyway.
The demons had defeated the magic of the wizards by sourcing their power in an alien star.
The answer was to combat them not with strength, but with a thing they did not understand.
The spring day faded, as they wound and rewound their way between the walls of the Maze.
The Moon of Winds stood cold as a bride's pearl in the dimming sky.
Above the hills—visible, as the broken pillars of the city were visible, as the barren, time-scored foundation of the old palace was visible—the Dragonstar flickered, a diamond speck in the deepening blue.
When they came out of the Maze, the Maze itself was no longer to be seen. Only a suggestion of smoke, glowing in the low places of the ground. The ruined city of Prokep stretched around them, as it had that first night, when Corvin had said, I did not think that I had been gone so long.
Around the Henge, the city itself lay motionless as stone. But moonlight glinted, here and there, on crystals: on the tops of the broken pillars, or on the foundation of the palace, or simply laid in the sand where the sand would cover them within days. More than once during the fighting retreat to the Salt Garden, John had glimpsed runes written on stones that had not been here when he'd searched the city three weeks ago.
Jen, he thought, his heart hammering, this had better work.
The night around the Henge flowed with demons, blueshining and hideous, and stank of all the foulness of Hell. That cold, strong hand closed on John's nape again, and he stood still, looking into the ring, feeling the demons gather at his back.
Out of the puddle or ice-chip or whatever it was in the center, a firefly seemed to rise. It danced for a moment among the stones, and tiny as it was, its hot small light picked edges of white fire along the rough rune-scribed menhirs and on Amayon's smiling, boyish face.
Amayon took the talisman jewels from the gnomes—despite his greater powers he, too, had trouble carrying that many material objects—and moved around the ring, scattering them on the earth like a farmer seeding a field. Far away behind him John heard the gray thing singing, an eerie wail like a dying child, though the hand still gripped his neck. Gaw, what if they decide to use my life as one of those they're getting power from? He shifted his grip on his sword. If it comes to it, Ama-yon's the one I'll kill.
There seemed now to be half a dozen fireflies, drifting in the blue dusk within the Henge.
Where the jewels lay scattered, lines of light began to burn in the dust. Charred curves and sigils, fingerlets of fire burning up out of the ground. Threads of greenish lightning snaked over the stones; the air crackled with ozone. Somewhere within the Henge a deep voice called out, a bass echo of the gray thing's thin sobbing, an obscene chuckle mocking primal grief. The two voices merged, separated, and merged again, and white light flashed across the clear sky overhead, and underfoot the earth spoke, a sullen, terrible growling. For a nightmarish instant John had the sickened sense that the ground was about to give way.
The grip on his arms thrust him forward between the stones, and into the Henge.
As when he had stepped through Miss Mab's Sigil of the Door pasted onto the Burning Mirror's black surface, everything changed. Once inside the Henge, John saw how what he'd taken for a chip of ice or glass, or a small puddle in its center, was in fact a pool three or four yards across. Its surface trembled with a constant, shivering agitation, and steam billowed from it, flowing out over the ground and veiling the feet of the stones. How many stones could I count from here? John wondered frivolously, and dismissed the thought at once as something likely to get him killed. Through the steam he saw designs traced on the earth, sigils and power-curves and runes, fantastically intricate. If they made them like Jenny did, with whispered spells and power laid on every mark, they must have been at it for weeks.
Or years.
Or centuries.
In a chair beside the pool Adromelech sat. Gross, gelid, he glowed faintly, like rotting fish. He turned yellow eyes on John and the eyes made John feel cold and sick. They were eyes that cared nothing, that wanted everything, eyes that devoured everything they touched. Demon eyes. Eyes you couldn't look at because if you did, you'd understand things that would cause you to kill yourself later.… John moved his gaze quickly aside. And seeing this, Adromelech smiled, long silver tongue slipping out between dripping teeth.
So you have a sword that will kill, little friend? Amusement deepened in the flat, vile gaze. The smell of the demon was appalling, sewage and carrion and gangrene and carnage, and the demon-stink of burned blood. John knew without being told that what he smelled was the thing's soul. But you know it won't be necessary, don't you? You leave us be, my far-wandering friend, and we'll leave you be. You've done us good service. We are fair.
John clamped his mind shut against the words, And I'm Queen of the May, and said, “I don't give a shovel of mud if you're fair or not. Just get me home and leave us be. That's all I ask.”
And tried very much to sound like the kind of man who'd believe what a demon told him.
Of course. Adromelech's voice in his mind was almost a purr. In the globe of the demon's huge belly John could see the half-digested shards of other wights: a staring eye here, a disembodied mouth screaming and another chewing on some organ that was all that it could reach.
Adromelech stretched out his hand, curiously white and childlike—a little girl's hand. John didn't exactly see the gray thing, but there was something there by the Arch-Wight's throne, something he couldn't look at properly, and a moment later Adromelech held the silver catch-bottle. He chuckled again, gloating, and John thought he'd suffocate, wondering if Adromelech guessed the nature of the trap. But the Arch-Wight stroked and kissed the silver bottle, wrapping his long tongue around it while Amayon prostrated himself at Adrom-elech's feet, kissing and licking and sucking, half-hidden by the drifting smoke.
Outside the Henge, silent lightning flashed in the empty sky. Though John could have sworn it had been the shadow thing chanting, now that the creature was inside the ring with him he could still hear its voice outside, calling down power, calling on the lightning, on the Dragonstar. Calling on the full moon and the deaths of those whose souls were locked in the final instant of agony within the talisman jewels. Hothwais of death, he thought, and saw how the jewels glowed on the ground outside, fire within them brightening and dimming in time to the cold far-off chanting voice. No wonder they started with the magic of the gnomes. Still delightedly caressing the catch-bottle, Adromelech began to chant again as well, a clammy bass that spoke like the rumblings in the earth.
Things were coming out of the pool. Curling silver things in glass shells that broke like eggs as the demons within them grew and uncoiled. Things that mutated in shape and in size, tentacled and rubbery, others like glistening lizards. Some floated in the air, blown up like bladders: grinning mouths yammering unheard random words, demon eyes. John glanced behind him and backed as close to the stones as he could, fighting the urge to bolt. In the moment that the Henge was broken, he thought, they would have power, over his body and possibly his mind as well. And he'd better not draw attention to himself one moment before they were completely occupied with other things.
Adromelech laughed in triumph. There were things outside the Henge now as well, glistening half-visible in the twilight, only half material. Grinning things, with eyes that shone like red mirrors. Human things holding jewels in their hands, and each jewel screamed and cried for pity with desperate tiny voices. Overhead, the Moon of Winds climbed to mid-heaven, and the Dragonstar's twin tails whipped and flickered in the dimming sky. The whole world smelled of scalded blood.
The sigils underfoot began to burn.
John stepped off the marks—it was difficult to find a clear space—and watched the tongues of fire dart from the talisman gems and run up and down those intricate lines. White light stabbed up from the pool, and Adromelech laughed again and raised his hands in triumph.
The heat inside the Henge coalesced, the air at flamingpoint, like being bound to the stake again. Lines of ghostly fire crawled up the stones, sigils burning into the rock, as if brands were pressed on them from the inside, fire eating outward from the core. Half-suffocated, John could see Folcalor's demons outside, though, pressing against the invisible bounds. Shrieking cacophony, and spells of malice ready to pop like a rupturing blister, to pour poison inward and outward. Jewels glittered in the demon hands: stolen souls. Stolen deaths.
Another deep voice chanted, taking up the time of Adrom-elech's and the gray wight's. A flash of fire, and John saw between two of the stones a mirror with an iron frame, the black enamel of its surface cracked across and across and silver light pouring out of it and surrounding its conqueror in a halo of iridescent dark. Goffyer the gnome mage, arms outflung and Folcalor's demon grin transforming his wrinkled face. Power flashed around him like whirling knives.
On the edge of the world, the Dragonstar glimmered, a faroff mirror reflecting alien magic and alien hate.
Adromelech threw up his arms and cried out, calling the Dragonstar by its true name: the name it knew itself by, among all the true names of the stars.
With a searing crash the tallest of the standing stones exploded, red-hot fragments of rock spraying like bullets through the Henge. John ducked, sword still in hand, as burning shards tore his face and clothing. Closer to him another stone burst, and another. A column of light, solid as alien rock, burst from the pool and fire rushed into the Henge from outside, demons howling, flame searing up from the ground.
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