“What a pair we make, we two,” Meralonne finally said softly.
“Yes.” The bard glanced at the slowly melting rock beneath the blurred frenzy of beast and demon. “Will it be enough?”
“I am no seer. But the Oathbinder is very near, and while he is here, his half-blood child is in her element. I would not choose this battle were I a ducal lord.”
Devon did not give Kallandras time to answer. “Kallandras, take him to the healers.”
Kallandras agreed, and Devon withdrew. But he noted, with mild irritation, that while Kallandras did lead Meralonne toward the healers, the mage did not actually allow himself to be tended. Not only that, but, after a conversation that was too quiet for Devon to catch, the mage actually had the gall, in the midst of the magic, the fire, and the roar of giants, to light his pipe.
The smell of the tobacco permeated the air.
Devon shook his head and turned away.
The beast that had, moments ago, been an almost witless human woman roared. The demon roared as well, although syllables lay in the depths of his ancient voice. Twice the edge of his sword struck her; twice it slid off something that must be scale, scraping as it slid. His whip, with its multiple tongues of flame, struck her tail, and the scent of burning hair joined the scent of mage’s pipe. That and the much stronger smell of burned flesh, where the Astari had once stood.
But blood was drawn by fanged jaw and long, ebon claws, and the demon lord rose, his wings carrying him above her. It should have given him the advantage, but her form took little damage from his fire and his shadow, and it seemed to Devon that the demon’s most effective weapon was . . . his sword.
It was not, of course, a normal sword; Devon suspected that it was not actually a sword at all, although it looked like a great sword with deep, red edges. He came to ground again, his wings like the wings of angry, threatened swans; Devon had no doubt they could break limbs if the demon were so inclined.
She lifted her head; it was horned. It had not been horned before she made her charge. She parried the sword and staggered, but she held her ground, roaring, growling, snapping, as if that were the whole of her necessary conversation.
But so, too, the demon lord.
“My Lord, the archers?” Devon asked softly.
But the Kings, who had lost one man to the sudden and swift reversal of his arrow’s flight, did not speak to allow it. She fought alone, and they bore witness. The magi still struggled with the demonic fires, although no new ones came; the god-born still chanted in their quiet, intense voices.
Devon shadowed the Kings; the Kings watched the battle. No one spoke, or if they did, their words didn’t carry. But in the stillness of the two raised, inhuman voices, one sound did: A horn.
The first note was long, and for a moment, when winded, it was the only sound in the hall. The second note was, beat for beat, as long as the first, but the third was shorter, sharper, rising at the tail end as if in either supplication or demand.
The demon lord looked up, looked, for a moment, past the Kings’ line to the man who had winded the horn; who was, even now, lowering it to adjust his grip on the haft of his spear: Lord Gilliam of Elseth.
Even at this distance, Devon saw clearly the smile that transformed the demonic features. He lifted his wings, driving the beast back with the force of their battering; he also lifted the sword—but this he drove into the very rock upon which he stood and fought. It cracked at the force of that single blow, and a crevice, hemming in the fury of red fire, opened; it traveled with speed and certainty toward where the Hunter Lord stood.
But the fires did not reach him, although they breached the mages’ shields. He had moved. He had moved, Devon thought, at least as fast as a trained Astari in his prime might have moved.
And then they were all moving. Evayne didn’t attempt to clear the area; she stood, her hands spread, palms down, as if to stabilize the rock beneath their feet before it threw them or melted.
But there was no second strike against the Hunter Lord because he leaped out of the circle inscribed by magical boundaries and into the fray itself.
“What is that fool doing?” Meralonne’s voice was not the only one to be heard, but it was loud with scorn and disbelief. Devon knew this man. The mage pointed, although it was hardly necessary; the beast could stand and fight no matter what the state of the ground beneath its feet—but the Hunter Lord was wearing leather, and Devon had no doubt that it was normal, sturdy, and expensive; it wasn’t magical. Patches of rock began to glow red; the ground around the Hunter was fast melting. He could dodge, yes, but sooner or later, there would be no place to stand.
Devon had no answer to give.
Meralonne APhaniel, injured, set his pipe aside and once again summoned his sword. The shield, however, did not materialize, and his shield arm still hung limply at his side. He could flex the fingers, however, and at the moment, they were curved in a fist.
Evayne’s voice was low enough that Devon didn’t catch her words, but the mage did not likewise speak softly.
“No?” He laughed; it was a bitter, heated sound. “Evayne, it is not for the student to choose the master’s battles.”
“I am not your student, nor have I been for—” heat now lent volume to her words.
“Evayne.” Kallandras spoke deceptively softly; his voice carried.
“What?”
“If Lord Elseth dies, who will wind the horn? And if the horn is not winded, who will face the god?”
A moment’s stillness, and then Evayne turned, the midnight folds of her robes moving as if in a gale, although the winds had long since died. Her eyes were narrow, and anger colored her cheeks. “I have lived my life in this cause. Do you think to remind me—”
Her words were lost to the sudden roar of demonic pain. It was a blessed sound, and Devon, as the Kings he served, forgot all else as he turned.
Gilliam, Lord Elseth, had resolved the issue of molten stone in a particuarly savage way; he now hung from the haft of a spear which was embedded too far into the demon’s back to be easily dislodged by frenzied movement. He clung to it without grace but with a determination that allowed for no fear.
And as the demon struggled with the weight of the Hunter Lord, he exposed himself to the savage and certain attack of the beast. Her great jaws snapped so quickly they could not be easily avoided by one encumbered with the weight of that spear.
It was not an elegant death; it was messy and bloody, and it came only slowly as the demon’s cries were severed, with its throat.
“It seems,” Meralonne said, “that this discussion is at an end.”
Isladar watched the roiling shadows framed by arch and crowned by keystone. The solitary keystone produced the only light in the coliseum, and it was now dim and pale. The voice of the Lord of the Hells could be more felt than heard. No one interrupted it.
But Karathis’ final cry could not be ignored, and it could not be diminished; it was a short and visceral statement, to which Sor Na Shannen’s sharp intake of breath was final punctuation. The shadows condensed and coiled as Lord Isladar watched.
It was too soon.
Too soon, he thought. In two months—for Ariane had damaged the arch, and the god’s passage had been slowed—Allasakar might emerge from the portal and walk the earth in possession of all his power and strength, the bridge between this world and the Hells complete and solid.
But Lord Karathis was—had been—the most powerful of the Kialli present, and none doubted that he was now dwindling to ash. Two months was beyond them, even with the power of their god to sustain them in their defense of this last stronghold.
What will you do, Lord? Not even Isladar was unwise enough to ask. He watched, as even the least of the kin present now watched. By his side, Sor Na Shannen, architect of Allasakar’s return, watched as well. The plane is almost open to you. Will you walk it lessened, Lord? Will you leave some part of your power behind, and enter the world early? Or will you wait in the Hel
ls for another such opportunity?
There had been only one, in all the years of the long sundering.
This is not the world it once was; then, the world conformed to your will and the will of your brethren; now it is wild and untended and it heeds its own will. Without the whole of your power, it might never clearly hear your voice, and what it cannot hear, it will not obey.
The demon lord dissolved into a fine, pale ash as it crumpled. Devon was not surprised; he had seen it before, albeit always with lesser creatures, lesser dangers. The ash itself did not remain undisturbed; as it fell, the beast’s jaws finally closed entirely, and she fell with him, across the orange ground.
The mages were prepared; they caught Lord Elseth before he could likewise touch the inimical stone, and they would have carried him above it to safety, but he demurred. Meralonne, not Sigurne, ordered the magi to obey the Hunter Lord, and they acquiesced; they understood that they were in his debt. They carried him as he bent above the invisible floor of their magic, and he gathered the beast in his arms.
Even as he began this ludicrous attempt, the beast shifted. She did not dissolve, as the demon had done, but her form dwindled, losing scale and singed fur and ridged horns; losing, as well, the prehensile tail and the long, curved claws. It was not as disturbing to watch as her first transformation had been. She stirred as he lifted her, but she didn’t open her eyes, and as he finally carried her into the heart of the Kings’ small army, the injuries she had sustained in her battle became apparent; she bled, and the wounds themselves were not clean.
The spear lay where it had fallen, and if Devon had wondered whether it was magical, the answer was immediately apparent; the hot, red rock didn’t burn it or otherwise touch it at all. Nor could the mages; the Hunter Lord, however, seemed unconcerned. The wild girl, naked now, her hair a tangled mess, her limbs bruised and bleeding, occupied the whole of his attention.
One man approached: Dantallon, the Queens’ healer. They spoke briefly, and after an obvious pause, the Hunter Lord very gently handed the wild girl into the healer’s keeping. He then turned and began to walk back toward the spear.
The mages had done what they could to make the passage possible; the city beyond the hall now waited. Gilliam retrieved the spear and paused as Evayne asked a question that Devon could not quite catch. The answer, however, was clear.
“I trust Dantallon,” he said softly, “and while she is part of me, not even I would force a child to hunt—and kill—her father.”
Devon frowned. The Hunter Lord’s quarry was not, in the end, the Lord of the Hells; it was his own god. He remembered that the Huntbrother had died a very traditional Breodanir death in the foyer of the Terafin manse; clearly, the Hunter Lord desired the elusive peace of vengeance.
It was not what the Kings desired.
They left the damaged hall behind, and as they did, the magi began to summon more light. It was dim light, and when it was brought to bear in silence, they discovered that were some shadows and some pockets of darkness that such simple light did not pierce. So the Exalted joined the Kings and brought a different light with them; that light was strong enough, although it was gentle. Devon, walking almost directly behind the men whose protection was his most significant duty, could see what the Kings saw.
The hall opened into another hall, shorter than the one in which they had met the demon. Its roof, like the roof of the first, was rounded and rough, suggesting cavern in a way that was at odds with the walls. Even these changed abruptly as they walked, walls giving way to rough stone and hard-packed dirt. It was not over, however.
There was no movement of moon to mark the passage of time in this unnatural night sky; it was broken instead by small whispers and truncated conversations as people noted the architecture or its lack. Devon didn’t speak. He listened, and he watched. Some of the magi did the same, but they trusted the Exalted, and their curious guide, to note any real danger.
Devon, trained by Duvari himself, did not, of course. Trust was almost a foreign concept. But there were no more demons to harry their forces, no opposition against which they must fight to gain their goal.
He made way only once, when Evayne approached the Kings. Her face was pale, her jaw set.
“Your Majesties, we are almost upon the Cathedral. Follow me now, and quickly.”
She led them without hesitation and without further pause.
The tunnel twisted sharply to the left, narrowing until it was barely two men wide. This caused only a brief pause, and an almost inaudible conversation between Duvari and the Kings, before they continued through the gap. Evayne moved as if the conversation had not taken place, and given the dark color of her robes, she was almost lost to sight as the roughness of these particular walls fell away, opening at last into a less well-girded darkness.
Their quiet voices no longer rebounded off tunnel walls; they vanished into the heights or the distance that the darkness did not easily allow them to penetrate. The Exalted once again began their tired chant, but Evayne now waved them to silence, the nicety of respect due their station irrelevant. She pulled the edges of her hood from around her face, exposing it in that instant: She was a woman in her prime, and time had worn distinct lines around the corners of her eyes and mouth; her eyes, in the poor light, seemed violet. Lifting her hands, turning her back to the darkness that waited, she said, “So that you will see and remember. Father!”
Her cloak roiled at her feet, struggling against her as if it were a caged creature. From out of the folds of that robe, the seer’s crystal rose. She did not, and had not, touched it; her hands were still lifted and her face upturned as if to catch its rising light. In its wake, light fell, and it fell like a rain of fire, but where it passed, color followed in its wake, and the whole of the unnatural night was, for a moment, stripped away and denied. As if the orange sparks were the brushstrokes of a frenzied artist, the bands of color grew until the whole of the cavern was revealed.
Here, they finally saw a literally fallen city: the facades of huge buildings, broken at the heights; the bases of statues in the center of open streets, and the rock and rubble that might once have been standing structures; the streets themselves, wider than the streets of the city above, but fronted entirely by buildings, and not the large grounds which characterized so much of Averalaan. Those streets extended for miles.
They were almost silent, even the mages, although that particular silence was certain not to last.
In the darkness of the coliseum, the keystone was now flickering as if light, suddenly understanding the severity of its peril, was desperately battering the rock in a final attempt to escape—and survive. It was almost done.
“My Lord,” someone said, “they are in the city.” It was not immediately clear who spoke, nor for whom the words were intended. The silence was thick and tense, but it was colored in all ways by anticipation. An era was about to end, or to begin, and they were to witness it.
“Lord Isladar, should we—”
Isladar lifted his hand. He did not kill the speaker. “No. Stand ready. He is almost nigh.”
“Now is the time,” Evayne said, lifting her voice. Only one part of the city her light had exposed was still dark, and that darkness rose from the ground to the sky like a pillar of glittering obsidian. It was to this that she now directed their attention.
“Kings, Exalted, Sacred; Members of the Order of the profound; Astari, Defenders, Priests—to the heart of a history that you could not have made, I have brought you.
“The Darkness rises; beneath the shadows that light cannot pierce, the citadel is waking. Allaksakar takes the last steps upon his path to this world. Let us meet him, as Moorelas met him; let us tender no less an answer.”
Light answered the words, and this time, Evayne did not tell the mages to guide or guard their magic. Nor did she still the sound of swords clashing against shields; that, Devon thought, would be the Northern contingent, although those born and raised closer to Averalaan soon joine
d them.
King Reymalyn lifted his voice not in command but in song—and that song was taken up, by bard and by soldier, and carried. Devon understood why men marched to song; had he not, he would have learned something by watching, by bearing witness.
Evayne lifted her voice to be heard; she had not finished, but she did not demand the quelling of those voices. “Lord Elseth, the time has come. It is the first of Veral. The sun is breaking across the horizon in Breodanir.” She lifted her seer’s crystal high enough that he might see it; Devon had not seen it return to her hand. From its heart, dawn’s light shone for a moment upon the form of Gilliam, Lord Elseth. He held his spear ready in grim silence, but his hand fell now to the horn by his side.
“Call the Hunt, Hunter Lord, and join it.”
After a marked hesitation, he did.
The horn’s music was unlike any horn call that Devon had ever heard in his life. It was not song, but like music, it invoked imagery, and this imagery was so at odds with what the seer’s light had revealed that he—and all of the Kings’ forces—were thrust, for a moment into the darkness not of stone and enclosed space but of nighttime forests. Those forests, ancient, bore trees thrice the width of a grown man; their roots ran deeper than this hidden city.
And in the heart of that forest, all manner of life existed, but only one thing now answered the call. It lumbered, huge, ancient, toward the dying notes, as if summoned, at last, to the Hunt.
To the Hunt of the stricken Lord Elseth, who desired the peace of his god’s death to still his own voices of loss. But it was more, much more, than that.
There was a god upon the plane. The Hunter God. And he had come from his forests to the streets below Averalaan, as promised.
In the ancient city of Vexusa, in the heartland of his greatest enemy, the Hunter God tendered his answer.
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