The Legions of Fire

by David Drake

  “Where the twisted horn is hid, the Wizard knows,” Varus shouted. The cord tying him shifted from green to the colors of a rainbow. It moved and changed hue when Alphena tried to focus on it. “Under the heaven-touching tree that is the world, the tears from Othinn’s eye fall on it!”

  A demon crawled from the pit. It was no taller than Alphena herself, though its torso rose in almost straight lines from its hips to shoulders as wide as those of Saxa’s new German doorman. Its face was brutishly human until it smiled, displaying not teeth but interlocking fangs.

  The creature seemed to shimmer. As it moved, Alphena saw what she had thought to be skin was a transparent membrane which enclosed licking flames. Spreading its abnormally long arms, it stepped toward Varus.

  A metal lantern lay on the floor beside Pandareus. He flung it, striking the demon in the chest. Instead of bouncing off, the bronze sheeting burst like a thunderbolt. The grinning demon continued forward.

  “Get my brother free!” Alphena cried, drawing her sword and placing herself in the demon’s way. She didn’t expect to do any good, but if an old Greek scholar could try to save Varus, then a healthy young woman with a sword had to do something.

  The demon’s chest quivered as though it were laughing, but Alphena couldn’t hear sounds well over the roaring chaos from the pit. The only thing she could hear clearly was the phrase Varus was chanting; that must have been more than sound. Had her brother become a magician?

  Behind her, Hedia bent over Varus; either she’d heard Alphena’s demand over the cacophony or she’d come to the same conclusion on her own. Hedia wasn’t somebody who needed to be told the obvious.

  Alphena shuffled forward, though the demon also continued to advance. She wished she had a shield, but the way the lantern had burned suggested that the creature’s gripping hand would turn laminated wood into an inferno. She didn’t know why she hoped for better from the blade of her sword; perhaps because there was nothing else to hope for. That was a good enough reason.

  The demon made a quick snatch for Alphena’s face with its left arm. She responded the way Lenatus had trained her to do if an opponent attacked with his spear high: she swiped her sword sideways, chopping the demon’s hand off. The blade went through the creature’s arm as easily as it would have through water.

  Fire gushed from both edges of the wound. The hand flexed, then in an eyeblink drained to a glistening patch on the stone floor. The demon’s body flailed, spewing flames like the flue of an overstoked oven. It lost shape and shrank in on itself as it tumbled, still blazing, into the pit from which it had climbed.

  Two more demons appeared over the rim. Alphena thrust one through the face. It curved back into the depths, its head a roaring torch, but its right hand had swept close enough to singe the hairs on her lower leg. She’d forgotten how long the creatures’ arms were, so her instinctive response had almost been fatal.

  Her sword gleamed like sunlight. The other demon hunched onto the temple floor. Alphena slashed at the creature’s elbow. It twisted quickly to snatch the blade from her, so her edge sheared its hand and forearm, opening them wide. A flaring bloom sucked out the demon’s life, leaving only a slick gleam on the stone.

  Demon flesh made no more resistance to this blade than fog would. Alphena panted, dizzy from exertion and the reek of sulfur that the demons brought with them. I can do this! I am good for something!

  Alphena looked into the pit. A demon near the rim reached for her ankle. She took its hand off at the wrist but jumped back instead of watching the creature bounce down the slope as a fiery pinwheel: two more demons were so close that they would have had her if she’d hesitated.

  Beyond those two, stretching down into the hazy depths, were thousands more. Thousands of demons, and likely thousands of thousands besides crawling up from deeper yet.

  Alphena took a quick glance behind her. Hedia was fussing over Varus, but the fetters of light still bound him. Alphena started to snarl a curse, but she bit the words off. She’d seen her mother respond to a crisis. If Hedia was having trouble cutting Varus loose, then very likely anyone would have had trouble.

  And besides, Alphena didn’t have time to worry about what other people did.

  She’d given back a step when she saw how close the pair of demons were. A hand reached over the rim of the pit, its claws shrieking against the stone.

  Alphena thrust, taking off a finger and sparking a divot from the floor. Her blade sang, but its edge remained sharp as sunlight. She backhanded the blade through the face of the other demon.

  That one simply dropped toward its oncoming fellows, but the first tried to continue climbing. It stumbled and fell when the scintillant roar from its missing finger devoured its hand. Destruction was working up its arm before the last of the fire drained out. Its casing gleamed on the stone like a slug’s trail.

  More demons were coming. Infinitely more.

  Alphena poised, her left arm advanced slightly to balance the weight of her sword. Her brother couldn’t move, so she was going to stand here until he was freed or she was killed.

  Or perhaps she would kill all the demons, too many for her even to count. That didn’t seem likely, but right now it didn’t seem likely that Varus could be freed either.

  Three demons came at her together. Alphena had her rhythm now; she would nick each one and it would bleed into a fiery spectacle. These wouldn’t get past her.

  Eventually a creature from the hordes climbing upward would turn Alphena, daughter of Gaius Saxa, into a stench and a few scraps of charred bone; but not yet. She thrust, and slashed, and thrust again; and more demons shoved their way past the blazing torches of their fellows.

  UNDER OTHER CIRCUMSTANCES Hedia would have reacted vividly at being ordered around by a chit of a girl, but this wasn’t the time for it. Besides, Alphena had jumped into the path of a fire demon without being told. Hedia wasn’t sure she’d have been willing to do that even if there was no one else available. The girl could be forgiven for blurting something silly in the heat of the moment.

  Hedia knelt at the side of her son. Whatever Varus had been doing, he seemed healthy enough now. He’d lost his toga during the ceremony before all this started to happen, but his tunic wasn’t torn or bloody.

  Hedia knew she herself must look a fright. The first thing she’d do when it was over would be to take a bath. And she’d have these clothes burned, including the slippers that she’d worn through! Why, she didn’t know when her feet could be pampered back to normal.

  Part of her mind laughed at herself—her worst enemies wouldn’t claim that she was either stupid or lacking in self-awareness. Another part really was worried about her appearance, however. It wasn’t the part that was in control, though; not now or ever.

  The ligature holding Varus wasn’t a shimmering rope, and it didn’t have a knot. Colors rippled along it in a fashion that subtly reminded Hedia of the way a snake slithered—but this snake had its tail in its mouth. She tried to grip it, then jerked her hand away with a shout. It bit me!

  But it hadn’t, or anyway no more than the prickle that she sometimes got from touching an amber bead. It was not knowing what was happening that had made her react as though a viper had struck out of the dark.

  Hedia closed her hand on the binding again, feeling only a slick coldness this time. She gripped as firmly as she could, but the colors raced along the shape undeterred. She tried to lift it away from Varus so that she wouldn’t nick him with her blade; it didn’t budge.

  Shapes like reflections of Nemastes quivered in the air. She couldn’t see them clearly, though she was sure they were there. They reminded her of when she’d walked into the garden and seen Alphena disappearing. These bald, lowering figures had the same almost-presence to her eyes as Persica had had at that moment.

  Grimacing, Hedia jabbed her dagger’s needle point at the fetter, planning to lift the blade and saw through the upper half while she tried to figure out what to do with the rest. Keen as the d
agger was, it glanced off as though from polished granite.

  The boy seemed remarkably calm for someone who was bound in the path of monsters which would destroy him as soon as they’d disposed of his sister. Brave as Alphena was—and skilled, judging by Hedia’s glance as the sword the girl had insisted on digging up sliced through a pair of demons—it could be only a matter of time before they bore her down.

  Varus’s left hand clutched the ivory head he’d been wearing since his poetry reading. He paid no attention to Hedia, though a flick of his eyes as she bent over him showed that he wasn’t in a trance. He was chanting the same stanza over and over: “Where the twisted horn is hid, the Wizard knows!”

  Was Varus the wizard? If so, Hedia certainly wished he’d do something to end this, this!

  If she couldn’t cut the shimmering bonds, perhaps she could pull Varus out of the way. Suiting her action to the thought, she grabbed him by the feet and tried to drag him toward the nearer side aisle. He slid easily on the polished mosaic floor, but her slippers didn’t grip well either. In struggling at the unfamiliar task—this was the sort of thing that servants did for her, by Hecate!—she almost stabbed her son through the ankle. This is no good!

  Hedia dropped the boy’s legs in a flash of insight. She’d been so focused on freeing Varus that she hadn’t been thinking about the real problem: the demons. Nemastes is calling them with that hellish flute music!

  Hedia turned abruptly and paused, swaying. She supposed she’d moved too quickly after her long climb up the ramp; that, and maybe the brimstone stink of the air here in the hall, were making her dizzy.

  Collecting herself, Hedia strode toward Nemastes with crisp, steady steps instead of risking a fall by trying to run. The wizard continued to play, watching her. He backed up a step, pressing against the shoulder-high plinth that supported the god’s throne. His expression was anguished.

  “Give me that!” Hedia said. She grabbed the flute with her left hand. She’d thought it was made of black wood, but the feel showed her it was bone.

  Nemastes held on to the instrument, but she’d pulled it away from his mouth. “You mustn’t!” he said. “I can turn back Surtr if I can only find the tune! Surtr will destroy your whole world unless you let me play!”

  “Give me the flute!” Hedia repeated, trying to jerk it away from him. “You’re raising these demons, you barbarian!”

  He tried to push her away. Hedia stabbed him in the left armpit; she’d almost forgotten that she still held the little knife. Nemastes bawled and tried to grab her arm. She jabbed him in the face. Her point skidded upward from his molars; a severed flap of his cheek sagged away.

  He let go of the flute and put his hands in front of his face for defense. Hedia pressed close and stabbed him repeatedly in the chest. She lost track of how many times the blade punched in; she even forgot what she was doing.

  There was no science to this, none of the calculation with which she had killed the faun. Hedia was white with fear and anger, striking blindly at the thing that she was afraid of. She gripped the flute in her left hand, but she’d forgotten about it.

  “Surtr …,” Nemastes whispered. He coughed a bubble; it burst, smearing his face with blood. Foam oozing from his punctured lungs covered his torso. He slipped into a sitting position, his back against the plinth, then toppled onto his side. In death, the wizard looked even more like a stick figure than he had when he was alive.

  A hand touched Hedia’s left shoulder from behind. She whirled, her bloody dagger poised to strike.

  CORYLUS HAD TRADED HIS SANDALS for the boots he’d taken from Odd’s body. They were gone now, along with Odd’s bandolier of equipment. He ran toward the Temple of Jupiter Best and Greatest, feeling the stone flags of the building’s plaza cool on his bare feet. From inside came roaring and the shrieks of the damned.

  The double doors at the top of the staircase were ajar. As Corylus slipped between the valves, he heard the cypress nymph call, “Good luck, Cousin. And be careful!”

  Corylus stepped into an angle where worlds met. The hall of the temple was a faint outline overlying a vast pit of sour yellow-green light. Demons—the same squat fire demons he had seen marching across Thule—were climbing out of the abyss, by handfuls at present but with unnumbered legions following.

  Above circled the Twelve like vultures, watching and waiting above their sibling Nemastes as they had done in Thule. That time they took the head of Botrug. Now—who knew? Perhaps they wanted the talisman back from Varus’s clutch.

  The pit was the present reality, but the Temple of Jupiter still existed as a sort of crystal scaffolding over it. At the edge of the chasm, Alphena faced fire demons with a sword which, to Corylus’s amazement, cut them apart. The weapons he’d seen in Thule had ignited like chaff, even the stone dagger Frothi had used in his last moments of life.

  Behind Alphena sprawled Varus, tied with rainbow loops. Pandareus, faceup with a bloody welt on the forehead, lay nearby; at the base of the seated statue of Jupiter, Hedia in a torn tunic struggled with the wizard Nemastes.

  Skirting the pit—and, in the waking world, keeping to the edge of the hall, just inside the pillars separating the side aisle—Corylus ran to Hedia’s aid. When he found a weapon, he’d try to help Alphena or perhaps cut Varus loose, but for now his task was clear.

  As Corylus reached the struggling couple, Hedia stepped back. The wizard fell against the dais, then slumped to the floor. His chest was a mass of blood, and his face had been brutally sliced.

  Corylus touched Hedia’s shoulder and said, “Your ladyship?” She whirled, cocking back the little dagger in her hand. All he could see of the weapon was its point, glinting like a serpent’s fang through the gore.

  “Hedia!” he said. She was all blood too. Her face and hair were spattered, her silk tunic was stiff with it, and her right arm to the elbow dripped red … but it wasn’t her blood. Hedia was all right; physically, at least.

  Corylus thought he’d seen hell when he looked down into the pit, but the look in the eyes of this cultured, attractive woman froze him. He’d been reaching for her right wrist, just in case, but his hand stopped.

  Hedia’s expression became human again, changing as completely as water differs from ice. She held out the flute—Odd’s flute!—in her left hand and said, “Here. Do you know how to play this? I don’t think anything else can help this”—she gestured generally with her right arm; some of the blood was still wet enough to fly off in droplets—“affair.”

  “I might,” said Corylus. They were shouting to be heard over the roar from the pit; it sounded like the shore of the German Ocean during a winter storm, but there were keener, crueler noises within the brutal thunder.

  He examined the flute, ignoring all else that was going on around him. It looked exactly the same as it had when he’d played it in Thule; though of course he hadn’t played it, not really.

  Smiling, Corylus plucked out the reed that Nemastes had fitted to the knuckle end and replaced it with the one he’d stuck behind his ear when Odd returned it. He lifted it toward his lips, whispering, “Canina, are you still—”

  “And why wouldn’t I be, Cousin?” the tawny nymph said. She ruffled his hair with one hand. “The sun still rises and the rain falls, don’t they? Here, let’s see what we can do.”

  Canina reached into him as before. He felt his fingers shifting on the flute, touching the stops. His head bent slightly, and his lips began to play.

  Corylus couldn’t hear the music, but he heard the nymph in his heart laughing. Light flooded the hall, as clear as the sun glinting from ice. In it, risen from the pit and brandishing his flaming sword, stood Surtr just as Corylus had seen him dominating the landscape of Thule. The fire god roared, but now his raging cruelty held an undertone of fear: though Surtr was a deity, the cool light of the flute cut him.

  Cut him, and bound him. The pit and the creatures crawling up its slope froze into crystal while Canina played through Corylus’s lips. His
fingers moved with elegance on the stops, movements that mimicked the high steps of the Twelve as they danced. But the Twelve—

  Corylus lifted his eyes to where Nemastes’ siblings were circling. He half expected them to descend the way they had in Thule when Nemastes abandoned the ivory head.

  The Twelve still hung in the air, but their pattern had shaken into wild chaos like the play of raindrops on a pond. There was power in their movements, but they no longer directed that power.

  Corylus’s lips played and his fingers danced. Alphena dropped to her left knee. She gasped through her mouth, expelling her breath in racking sobs. Her right arm lay on her thigh; her hand kept the sword forward, waiting for demons to burst through the barrier enclosing them. Until then, she would rest.

  The ropes of shifting light had dropped away from Varus. He sat cross-legged, still holding the ivory head in his left hand as he recited. It didn’t seem to have occurred to him to run away now that he could.

  In a way Corylus supposed that it didn’t matter—from what he’d seen in Thule, there was no real escape unless Surtr was stopped. Still, he didn’t want to watch his friend incinerated if the flute player ran out of breath and strength. Most likely Corylus wouldn’t have long for regrets in that case, however.

  Corylus couldn’t grin while his lips were pursed on the reed, but he smiled in his heart. Canina was a good companion for however long he could hold out, cheerful and unflagging. His fingers or lips might cramp, or he might simply fall asleep and not even feel the demons whose release doomed him and the world, but the nymph would remain faithful for—how had she put it? For as long as the sun shone and the rain fell.

  Surtr bellowed in balked fury from the high clouds. Soon enough the god would be loose, but for now the icy trills of the flute bound him. Corylus played, and he smiled.