"Bring them as well, if they insist."
"They will."
Kolhol nodded, then waited while the page went to fetch Frost. A few moments later the sorcerer and his warriors strode up the center of the great hall, and stood before the king. Frost was large but not slovenly, not quite the sort of bulk Tasche had supported, nor was there quite as much of it. No, muscle guided Frost's every movement, and an air of confidence Tasche could never have imagined. He was brightly robed and topped by a bright, floppy hat; he wore a dark, short-cropped beard and long dark hair that emerged from beneath the hat and fell nearly to his shoulders. He held an unremarkable staff in one hand and gestured a greeting with the other.
Kolhol was instantly envious of the two warriors, especially the female, tall, dark-skinned and powerful, clad in overlapping leather and metal sewn armor. The male was even larger and looked the equal of any opponent Kolhol could imagine. Each of them carried the most impressive weapons Kolhol had ever seen, certainly they were Subartans of the Kaya Desert.
"A fine palace," Frost said. "My compliments, Lord Kolhol." Frost's voice was large and assertive, befitting his girth and stature.
"I have heard many things about you, Frost, most of them good. They say you live by a code. So do I."
"One man's code need not be another's."
Kolhol moaned under his breath. He'd expected this would not be easy, but one could always hope for the unexpected. He cleared his throat and went on.
"I find myself in need of the services of one such as yourself. Would you consider, for the right rewards . . . ?"
"Many are in need of me. Many go unsatisfied. Some go in devastation. But you need not concern yourself with that. I have come here today for only one reason, the safe return of my aunt Shassel, who was taken here by your own soldiers. No doubt behind your back. Which does not speak well of you or your men, but for now that is only your misfortune, and I do not intend to add to it. No, this day I want only Shassel. Immediately."
Kolhol had no answer Frost would want to hear. He did, however, have two paths to follow as he saw it: He could order his men to attack Frost and attempt to kill him, even join in perhaps, and end up with a lot of dead and wounded—or he could do as he'd planned, and lie. Place blame where he could and leave it there. Yet he needed Frost's help as well. His life, perhaps the future of Grenarii, was at stake. He couldn't let Frost turn him down. He had to make sure that didn't happen.
Already he saw that such a course would require very big lies, dangerous lies. However, as he saw it, he didn't have much of a choice; and he could blend the lies with the truth, so as to make the mix more palatable. Kolhol smiled to himself and tried to feel a little better about it. A young warrior had only brawn and enthusiasm, but he had other weapons these days—his experience and his wits—a boast his son and that wizard Tasche could not make.
"I do have her," he said, trying not to wince as he did. "And she is—safe and sound. I will turn her over to you very soon, but first, I need your help. In fact, we can help each other. I cannot get to her, you see. My son, Prince Haggel and my own court wizard, Tasche, have her tucked away in an old castle in the Maardre Forest to the east. A great demon beast of some kind stands between them and us, a beast I fear even my great army may not be able to stop. It wreaks havoc in the countryside even now, causing death and destruction wherever it goes."
"There are always beasts, always troubles," Frost replied, shaking his head. "I am not concerned with yours, only my own. Deal with this trouble yourself and return Shassel to me, or the beast will be the least of your worries."
"Surely you can help! I will pay you very well, you will save countless lives, and you will get your aunt back. If we cannot reach her, how will you? What if the beast turns back toward the castle before we can stop it, what then?"
"It is you who brought her here, therefore it is you who must bring her to me. Unharmed."
Kolhol watched the two warriors; they stood straight, feet apart, breathing steadily, eyes in constant motion, muscles tense and ready but not strained. Magnificent, he thought. He would lose a lot of time and men trying to get past them to attack the wizard, and that would give the wizard time to visit all manner of vile magery upon him . . .
"It is not my fault!" Kolhol said, adding another truth to the lies, a painful truth. "My son and Tasche went behind my back. I have no idea what they think they are up to, snatching your aunt, demon creatures, hiding in the forests; but I am only too happy to deal with them as soon as I can get to them. We are both victims, Frost, and we can help each other. It is the only way."
Frost was clearly thinking things over, and Kolhol began to think he may have said just the right thing. Which would please him immensely. If he could get Frost to rid the kingdom of the beast, then Haggel and Tasche—who were apparently already dead—could be blamed for Shassel's death. Meanwhile, Kolhol could work on Frost a little more, try to find a way to win him over, to convince him to fight at Kolhol's side in the inevitable war with Worlish.
Frost said nothing. Kolhol felt himself falling prey to frustration and anger, and why shouldn't he? "My men are fighting the beast, they are dying even now," he said.
"I am reluctant to believe you, Kolhol," Frost said at last. "Though it seems I have little choice for the time being. But I must warn you, that may be a short time."
"Fair enough!" Kolhol shouted to the heavens, rising to his feet. The gods were smiling on him this day. And if they were not, he didn't need them anyway. He raised one fist in the air. "We leave at once!"
* * *
Frost did not trust Kolhol even within sight of him; all the same he had the king and his soldiers, more than sixty in all, ride ahead while he and his Subartans followed along behind. It was dark by the time they left, and several times the troops stopped to rest, even to sleep briefly. Frost did not protest. He had been riding horseback almost non-stop for days; he was sore, everything hurt, and he was extremely tired, yet even his sleep, when he managed any, was fitful and worried. But a little rest still helped, and would be needed if the task of dealing with the demon creature was to be a difficult one. He tried to redirect his thoughts, to concentrate on the coming encounter, and do his best to prepare.
He didn't doubt that he would prevail. Tasche, by Frost's best estimate, was not capable of the complex and exhaustive lengths required to extract a truly powerful creature from the darkness. But whatever he'd accomplished, controlling any order of dark manifestation would be the far more difficult part of his plan—though apparently Tasche had already found that out.
"What do you plan to do when we find the beast?" Kolhol asked, as the troops rested on a hilltop overlooking a small and peaceful moonlit valley.
"When we do, I will tell you," Frost answered. Kolhol took affront, but Frost made no effort to placate him. He had no intention of chatting with the king, of making "friends." Though clearly Kolhol was trying to move in that direction. The more time Frost spent around Kolhol, the less he trusted the man; not that Kolhol struck him as an evil sort, or a veteran liar, like Andair, but the sense that there was more here than Kolhol was letting on was unshakable. So Frost shook Kolhol off and went back to his meditations, until the order was given, and they got moving again.
It was just after dawn when they came upon the beast.
The men at the front of the line barked the alarm as they crested a low knoll, but everyone, all the way back, saw the creature at the same time—a towering thing, tromping through the forest, smoking and glowing and leaving a trail of burnt, steaming, crackling woodland wreckage behind. Frost had expected a monster, but the beast before him now exceeded all expectations.
It had grown taller than the oldest trees and bigger around than the towers of Weldhem Castle—and it was moving along the main road, a path that would take it through Grenarii's most populated areas. Frost held fast on the knoll and watched, surrounded by Kolhol's soldiers; both were there to protect and aid the other, though neither drew com
fort from the fact as their eyes had borne witness to what was happening.
"Kolhol, do you see that?" Frost said, pointing with the top of his staff and poking Kolhol's side with his elbow as the king drew up beside him. Kolhol did not so much as flinch, so dazzled was he by the sight. As the beast walked, everything before it burst into flames, but in its wake only faint trails of smoke curled up from the places where it had been. Kolhol did nod, however slightly.
"Your wizard Tasche has outdone himself, whether by accident or design," Frost said. "Containing that beast will be difficult and costly, if it is possible at all."
"But you have the Demon Blade!" Kolhol blurted out, as if his trance had suddenly been broken. He turned but stopped short of grabbing Frost by the arms. "You can stop it, can't you?"
Frost said nothing as he went back to watching the destruction drawing nearer. All around, beyond the reach of the flames and the blackened, smoky trail they left behind, everything that lived was dying. The circle of death extended several hundred paces from the demon beast, and the effect was almost instantaneous.
"The creature can absorb any sort of energy, and at an extravagant rate," Frost explained, "which poses a particular problem."
"What?" Kolhol asked, growing incredibly keen now. "What problem? Surely you can fight it."
Frost sighed and closed his eyes for a moment. It would take too long to explain to someone like Kolhol, but clearly, he must try. He took a breath and turned to the king: "Any attempt to use the Demon Blade against that beast might well backfire," he said. "It would come down to a contest between the Demon Blade's ability to draw energy from the creature, and the creature's ability to draw from the Blade—and from me." If I do anything even slightly wrong, Frost guessed, the beast might outpull me, might drain me instead.
"You are not making any sense!" Kolhol argued.
"And you are making too much noise."
"By the Gods!" Kolhol cursed.
"Your gods can help if they like," Frost said, annoyed at the way his attention was being divided. Kolhol seemed intensely frustrated—a warrior's rage barely contained—or the rage had flared to cover something else.
"Why don't you just strike it down?" Kolhol huffed. "What good is a magical sword if you can't use it?"
"The answer is complicated, but the power of the Blade does not work that way."
"But ours do!" Kolhol shouted, wild in the eyes now as his horse stirred beneath him and the beast lumbered nearer. He drew his sword, which brought a great chorus of ringing steel as sixty men drew theirs in kind.
We will need to do better, Frost thought, paying them as little mind as possible. He had few options, but the only one that came to mind was to combat the beast by pulling energy from another source, then using it and all the power he could draw from himself to create an intense, single pulse strong enough to destroy the creature. But if the beast absorbed the blast, it would grow much stronger instead, and larger, and then there would be no other means of stopping it. Not even with sixty courageous warriors.
"Wait," Frost said. "Hold your men."
"We have to do something, or it will keep growing and walking and growing, keep destroying everything until it has laid waste to half of Grenarii, and perhaps much of Worlish to come after," Kolhol said.
Quite correct, Frost thought. "I know," he said. "But tell your men to stay back for now. I have something in mind." With that he dismounted, and started ahead, toward the beast.
"It's about time!" Kolhol shouted after him, but Frost noted neither king nor soldiers tried to follow.
The stock remedy for an unsavory creature of preternatural heritage—especially when controlling the creature was not possible—was to construct a magical trap, and traps were something Frost had his share of experience with. The spell that had always worked best for him was a straight-forward one, though it came in five parts, each of which worked to form one side and finally the top of the magical "box." Size was all that mattered after that, along with supplying the trap with enough energy to maintain it against the usually violent attempts of whatever was inside to escape. In this case, the trap was going to have to be very, very big; indeed, Frost had never attempted to build one like it, and so far as he knew no one else had, either. He walked on, followed closely by his Subartans, until he stood as near as he dared. With each step he grew increasingly aware of the depths of the demon beast's powers, and he feared no trap or spell might work against it. An almost irrational fear, he thought, and probably due in some part to the creature's powers as well. Whatever Tasche had done, he'd done it huge, and blundered badly, that was certain. Almost as certain as his consequent demise, though that remained to be seen.
Summoning all his strengths, Frost finished the fourth, then the fifth segments of the spell, then added his binding phrase, and the trap began to take shape. A faint crackling of energies marked the outline of a rough and changing bluish-green cube that formed all around the beast and sizzled harmlessly where it came in contact with the leaves and branches of nearby treetops. The beast seemed oblivious to all of this, and made no reaction out of the ordinary—ordinary for it—until it turned and glanced downward and caught sight of Frost. For an instant nothing happened. Then the beast suddenly raged toward him.
Frost fed energy to the spell and the outline of the cube flared into a brilliant blue-white wall through which the creature could be seen—arms and black claws flailing, the gaping black hole that must be its mouth opening as if the creature was howling up at the gods. Frost heard and felt the sound, shrill, yet bone-jarring at the same time. It echoed more in his mind than in his ears, and he wondered if the others could hear it at all over the fierce crackling of the cage. Then he felt the onset of fatigue as the spell began to take from him more than he could give it.
He held on, trying to maintain the spell as long as he could, fighting the beast's best efforts. Abruptly the beast fell back, apparently relenting. But after only a moment it spread its massive, molten arms and hands out to either side, threw its head back and howled anew, a very different, horn-like tone. Before Frost's eyes it turned an even deeper shade of orange-red beneath the black outlines. Suddenly the cage vanished into the beast, and was gone.
Frost stumbled back and fell. Rosivok tried to catch him but he landed sprawled on his haunches, one hand clasped to Rosivok's while the other clung to his staff. He tried to get his bearings, and realized the beast was coming toward him again.
Frost felt two pairs of strong arms grab hold of him just below the shoulders and haul back. Sharryl and Rosivok ran as best they could, pulling Frost along with them as if he weighed only half of what he truly did. Well, I nearly do, he thought, remembering that he was well below his physical peak these days. He felt inadequate, and decided in almost the same instant that he could not afford to be anything like that, no matter if he was . . .
"You have failed!" Kolhol said with venom as the Subartans drew up among the others again, then helped Frost get his feet under him. "You are no better than Tasche!"
"Your opinion is your own, but I would have you show me anyone who might do better," Frost said, almost as bitter.
Then he turned to his Subartans. "The beast could have digested the cage at any time," he said. "It did not. Not until it realized it could. It did not understand."
"It is stupid," Sharryl said, nodding understanding.
"Yes," Frost answered. "Go," he added, speaking now to Rosivok as well, "and circle around it. Take some of Kolhol's men, if you can get them out of hiding. Keep circling and attacking it with the slings, javelins, arrows, anything they've brought."
"How can we hope to harm it?" Kolhol demanded.
"The idea is to keep it thoroughly confused," Frost answered. "You must all do that, while I do what I must."
"You have another idea?" Kolhol asked.
"Yes."
The beast paused, clearly within striking distance, apparently taking aim. Frost accepted the nods of his Subartans—and Kolhol—
then watched them fan out into the forest and begin their attacks. The beast turned as expected, this way, then that. When it was sufficiently occupied, Frost removed his cloak, pulled the harness around, unwrapped the cloth and drew the Demon Blade.
* * *
Frost! Tasche came to realize the name as they, as he, looked down at the figure that approached. The name meant nothing to the rest of his demon mind, but enough of Tasche responded. Tasche could not think straight, could not see well, could not move as he had always moved. Fire churned in his belly, smoke filled his lungs, darkness welled up immeasurably behind him—yet all this meant almost nothing when compared to the energy that coursed through his body like a river fed by countless tiny springs. Power, strength and energy beyond imagining was his to do with as he wished, and he wished . . .
He wished for more!
He had the greatest urge to laugh out loud, loud as he could, loud enough to render deaf anyone in earshot. He did not seem to have that capacity, exactly, but he could do other things, he wanted to do other things, needed . . .
He needed to destroy Frost!
Yes, that was answer enough to a host of questions. Tasche had played second to such as him for most of his life, had always been challenged to prove himself equal to them, had always fallen short.
No! he thought. Now, here, it is different!
Tasche—Demon Tasche, unstoppable, splendid in his burning, growing, stomping glory. He tried to remember his spells, that was what this Frost would use to try to save himself, but the memories proved difficult somehow. Then he understood he didn't need them. He could simply draw the very life out of Frost, out of any like him, out of anything that lived.
Men scurried about, attacking him in their pitiful way. Tasche killed a few, but only a few. Many more could be killed later, he thought, men who belonged to Kolhol, once Tasche's king, though soon he too would be no more. But their sparks were small, as was the task of extinguishing them. Frost's was large, and he was there, right there, just stepping out from among the trees. Up to something, but it would not work.
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