All amounted to the same horror-haunted abomination: each several portion of the demon’s body had inspired rebellion against the natural order, against the very harmony of the universe. The nonbeing Lamarred had brought into her world was a cancer on it, and destiny had appointed Tiana the surgeon to remove it.
This she believed.
Though risk to doctor and patient was great, the alternative was certain disaster.
Steeling herself, the pirate queen dried her tears and cursed her weakness in shedding them. She gathered up the legs and feet of Derramal and carried them to her own cabin.
Here the few crewmen aboard had placed the rest of that noxious demonic corpse, along with the clothing from Collada, a large jug of oil, and Turgumbruda’s surgical tools. Surgery had long been her post-combat province aboard Vixen, and this task was fascinating. Nor had she reason to take overmuch care; the bones snapped errily together and, once she’d stitched the muscles together, they knit before her dread-sickened eyes. Nor did a single part of the body now exhibit any sign of preternatural life.
She left the head in its ivory box while she dressed the corpse in the silver-lined clothing, and made a few other preparations. Only then did she open that ivory chest to look upon the severed head of Derramal. Yes, she recognised the face. Though the open eyes neither moved nor focused, she felt sure that they saw.
In a few minutes she had attached the head to the body and placed the corpse in the coffin with its black lining and black-covered mirror in the lid. Stepping back, she gazed thoughtfully for a time on that silent, sinister corpse. Then she closed the lid and summoned Bardon, Gunda’s successor as second mate.
To him she handed the finest jewel she had taken from the Tombof Kings. “In the House of Delightful Women,” she told that scion of a long-impoverished noble family, “there is a girl named Darvra. Caranga greatly favours her, partly because she is black and too because she possesses some character. Go to her. Tell her that if she sails one voyage on Vixen and makes Caranga happy, this jewel is hers. Make clear that she will have no easy task. Neither she nor anyone else is to arouse Caranga. I’m for shore, Bardon. Prepare to set sail. If I return by dawn, well and good. With or without me, though, Vixen is to sail at sunrise with Bardon commanding.”
“Sail… for where, Captain?”
“It doesn’t matter. Just put all possible sea betwixt you and Reme before Caranga wakes. And then give him this letter.”
Tiana knew that puzzled or no, Bardon would obey. Once Caranga awoke, command would be his. Her letter would protect Bardon from his wrath — and Caranga would be far from Reme, distracted by a woman he was considerably taken with. He’d want to avenge Tiana’s death, of course, but with no notion whom to attack — or where. His only logical course would be to wait and see whom Sulun Tha and Pyre attacked, and Caranga did frequently take note of logic. Hopefully, she had saved his life.
Tiana had made what preparations she could for defeat.
The time was now for her to test her preparations for victory.
Soon a strange procession wended through the nighted streets of Ilan’s capital city and chief port. At its head was a lithe, bemazingly shapely young woman in tight silken shirt and scandalously short pants, also snug. She wore neither black cloak nor rapier, but carried a heavy cutlass. Behind her came six seamen, obviously pirates, carrying a coffin. Footfalls melted into the brooding shadows at sight of them; so did a band of no less than three stalwarts of the City Watch,
The Inn of the Smiling Skull was dark and empty. Tiana easily gained entry. Lighting a candle, she bade her men stand the coffin before the curtained wall. They braced a table on either side of it; on one Tiana set her single candle. Nor did those stout pirates make demurrer to her command to return to Vixen.
Tiana was alone in the doom-haunted web of Lamarred/Derramal.
With a sudden motion, she snatched the curtain of mauve king’s cord from the wall in a great rustle of heavy fabric. Revealed was the mirror that housed the demon’s soul. The face that stared at her from the glass seemed mild, harmless, not at all the monster that threatened unbelievable peril to all the world.
“Greetings, Lamarred,” Tiana said equably. “I have brought you the body of Derramal.”
She opened the standing coffin, revealing the body and arranging the lid so that the inner surface faced the tavern mirror.
“And you’ve even clothed him! Ah thank you, my dear, sweet, over bosomed fool! Now shall I keep the promise I swore on my Power.”
Lamarred’s gaze swerved from Derramal to her, and Tiana was instantly and completely gripped in paralysis. “Ignorant trull! You were placed on this plane to please ruttish men with that arrogantly spectacular body, not to match wits with me!”
And leaving her helplessly immovable, he spoke on, in a language not of humankind but of demons. His words were baneful echoes of the phantasmal night and the desolate void. To hear him was for a human to grue and stand on the brink of gibbering madness.
The incantation accomplished its dark purpose.
The dead lips of the corpse opened, and Derramal made reply. “The hiding place of Bealost is our belly, for I ate both the babe’s body and soul.”
And then the body returned to inertness, braced erect in the coffin.
“There,” Lamarred smiled, “poor stupid blowze, I have kept the letter of my promise — and so I am free to drink your soul.” The sorcerer’s gloating eyes were filled with the cold triumph of a cobra that has captured a lovely songbird. “As Derramal’s head, I heard you plotting my demise with Pyre! But you shall have no opportunity to carry out your silly little human plan, wench!”
The demon-wizard’s eyes swelled, changed from a burning red to maleficent black. Now they were become great empty voids, sucking at her soul, tearing it from her body.
Tiana’s despair and dismay were mingled with bitter self-reproach: she’d been so sure the monster’s ego would spur him to play the enjoyable game of cat and mouse. Now she must pay a ghastly price for her own ego-wrought error. Neither her strength of body nor of will was of aught avail; this demonman’s terrible Power was dragging forth her very soul. She was completely powerless.
Then the pressure, eased, though she remained unable to move.
“Tell me, my sweet supper,” Lamarred purred, “have you any last words? For instance… art sorry you slew old Sulun Tha, that revolting embodiment of Order and Good?”
Lamarred was indeed playing cat and mouse, did indeed have to gloat, and might still enter her trap. But only Tiana’s lips were free to move. She must make the most of that…
“Sulun Tha lives.”
“What?”
“I did not slay Sulun Tha of Lieden in Collada.”
“Then… how could you possibly have got the head?”
“He gave it to me, saying that he and others — meaning Pyre, of course — would war against you.” On speaking those words, she felt the iron grip of paralysis weaken a whit; news that his great enemies were alive and allied had shaken Lamarred! “Oh… but they’d rather have peace — Sulun Tha sent you a present…”
“Slut! I shall release only your right hand — show me.”
The hand of his piratical captive came alive — and flashed to the lid of the open coffin. In one swift motion, she tore away the black covering to reveal the excellent Colladan mirror. Lamarred stared into it — and Tiana was free in every limb.
Her voice lilted with clear triumph. “Atop Mount Erstand I found an inscription, monster. It said that Derramal’s soul is free and reigns beyond the silver plane, and that only a countless host of swords striking from beyond infinity could slay him. Tell me Demon… is this a countless host of swords?”
Tiana accompanied those words by raising her cutlass between the tavern mirror and the one in the coffin lid, so that its reflection was repeated and re-repeated and doubled to infinity. And she saw horror in Lamarred’s eyes.
Yet Lamarred did not quail or freeze with f
right. As she aimed a blow at the coffin mirror, the demonic wizard unleashed a desperate catalogue of black spells. He was like a warrior who had need of striking one true blow but in panic hurled a flurry of inaccurate strokes.
Paralysis gripped every part of her body save her swordarm, for it was amove and could not be stopped. It seemed to enter thick mud, and was terribly slowed. She strove to force arm and cutlass toward the mirror.
Icy winds and searing flames raged at her body.
Hands plucked at her obscenely.
The black eyes sucked at her soul, and her body was racked with pain when diabolical claws slashed across her breasts.
Her sword and the mirror vanished. She saw that she was driving her arm into the mouth of a ravening, drooling wolf whose finger-long teeth were sharp as needles. With desperate effort of will, Tiana told herself that it did not exist, and she continued to force her arm forward. The wolf wavered — an enormous cobra appeared in its place. Its yawning mouth gaped hugely and rushed at her head. Tiana had a fleeting glimpse of shining dagger-teeth and dripping venom and the mouth’s scarlet interior.
Then the serpent too vanished, and she was enveloped in slimy, wet blackness that brought on shuddery feelings of the ultimate distaste.
That illusion prevailed, and she shivered — and then her will prevailed and all was normal and real again as the cutlass smashed into the mirror.
For an instant the sword appeared to have penetrated the glass without breaking it. She could see Lamarred’s reflection, writhing, pierced by swords without number. Then both mirrors erupted into flying pieces of glass. The light of the single candle was multiplied by the fragments so that the room was alive with an insane kaleidoscope of blazing colours. The sound of the shattering mirrors was like the tolling of a great bell, heard from within the bell.
Mirrors, sound, and Lamarred passed; candle and Tiana and sword remained. She stood alone but for a coffined corpse in an empty tavern. Lamarred, who had called from the abysmal void and united with a baleful nonbeing, was no more. Tiana bore not a mark.
The corpse of Derramal opened its dead eyes. The eyes contained not hatred, but a dreadful avid hunger.
It spoke in the voice of Lamarred, and Tiana’s back crawled.
“I see we underestimated you. You have destroyed much of our Power. Why brought you this body here? Had you smashed my mirror while my body was dispersed, my soul would have been destroyed.”
“Two reasons, soulless monster! First, I knew that the parts of your foul body inspire evil wherever they lie. Nor could they be destroyed unless reunited with your vomitus soul. And second… for what you did to my brother, chaos-spawn, I want you to suffer a painful death!”
“You are most confident in your sword,” Derramal said, with a sneering smile.
Sudden jerks of the creature’s arms smashed the coffin to splinters. The demon-thing stepped forth and a long arm shot out. Bare fingers closed on Tiana’s razor-edged blade — and snapped it, as easily as a hammer smashed glass.
“Now, luscious trull of a human, it is time for you to pay for the inconvenience you have caused me with your pitiful efforts. It is long since I tasted human flesh, and you will be especially delicious.”
Tiana still clung to the broken cutlass as though it were a useful weapon. In a tone calm as one discussing the weather, she made reply.
“You say I’d taste good. I’m surprised that the reanimated corpse of a nonbeing would have any sense of taste or smell.”
“My lack of sense of taste as humans understand it will make no difference to you,” it said, and reached for her.
Tiana backed and sidestepped a pace. Her hip jarred the table beside the coffin. “Aye,” she said in the same calm voice, “but the lack of smell will make a great deal of difference to you.”
Suspicion grew from vagueness to a yellow-tinged light that approached fear in Derramal’s eyes. Its hand paused, with cold fingers at her throat. “Why say you so?”
“Because, if you could smell, you would know that I soaked your handsome new clothing in lamp-oil!” And with the broken cutlass Tiana swept the candle from the table onto Derramal’s chest.
In terror the monster leaped back, but flame sprang up brightly. His beating at himself succeeded only in spreading fire over oil saturated clothing. Nor could the fingers that snapped steel rip away the burning clothing; Derramal was from beyond the silver plane, and silver was a barrier that bound him. He was unable to tear the silver lining of his clothes. Flames spread in a rush and he was completely enveloped in dancing oily fire. Dry flesh commenced to bum with an acrid odour.
“Derramal!” It was the triumphing voice of an arrogant pirate. “How tastes the fire, chaos-spawned monster who ate my brother?”
The demon charged, flame-enveloped. She easily evaded him, dodging here and there so that he was constantly amove — feeding the flames with the air he himself stirred. He was howling now. Tiana danced close to the monster become torch, letting his flaming arms pass within inches of her while she hurled taunts at him. Vengeance was like the finest of old wines. None of his — its — blindly flailing blows found her, but the tavern’s furniture suffered. Soon the floor of the inn where so many had vanished, soul-eaten, was strewed with the flinders of broken tables and chairs. Some burned.
Many times oiled and long greased-spattered, the inn floor caught.
Flames leaped up all about and the room filled with blinding smoke. Despite the danger, Tiana continued to mock the anguished demon. When a sudden rush carried it charging past her, it slammed into the stone wall. Pain and rage drove it now, and Derramal smashed blindly through that wall of mortared stone. In rushed cool air from the sea, and flames whooshed and waxed in brightness.
A hundred yards away lay the beating surf. Tiana assumed the monster could neither see nor smell that water, the entire reassembled body a torch that lit the Reman night in awful eeriness. Nevertheless, Derramal rushed blazing toward the sea. Tiana raced after that living torch that streamed flame like a bright yellow-and-orange cloak. She strained for speed, for even now she could lose and condemn the world thereby, if the nonbeing could hurl its unnaturally renewable body into the water. It was nearly there —
In a burst of the speed of desperation, Tiana outstripped it, paused and half-turned, and shot out a booted foot.
Tripped, the monster fell headlong with a crashing impact — and seemed to split in twain.
Half that flamebound apparition was the burning skeleton of the wizard; the other was the same shape but was a void, an empty vacuum in the universe.
The bones of half the apparition were white and blazed with a yellow-white flame; the other was black and burned with a weird, green flame that radiated darkness and cold. The fusion of human wizard and demonic nonbeing that was Derramal was split. Each tore furiously at the other. The suit had been reduced to a fine web of silver by the flames that now devoured the battling skeletons.
Heat and cold became intense, and Tiana backed away. The sand, where touched by the fiery bones, was melted and fused to glass or frosted with ice. Strangely, though the silver flashed in the red and green fires, it was not harmed by them. The demon could not break the bondage of silver, neither by the superhuman strength of its arms nor by the. dully roaring flames that enwrapped its writhing bones.
There came a sudden blast of total darkness and blinding light, so that Tiana blinked. When she opened her eyes, the fires were gone. Of Derramal nothing remained but a fine sift of the white powder of calcined bones. The breeze from the sea blew it up, dispersing it along the shore. Tiny grains of calx clung to Tiana’s boots. Then it was gone. Lamarred was gone. Derramal was gone.
Suddenly alone on the shore, Tiana was not alone.
All about her eddied a half-defined haze, a tenebrous cloud of people. She could see through them and yet she was able to distinguish expressions and recognise faces. There was Gunda, and there was Bealost; there was a host of others. They were thanking her, she realise
d, for she had slain their horrid slayer and host and rescued them from the foul misery of undeath within it; now they could rest or prepare to return in new forms, whatever became of those who were at last really dead. One by one, while Tiana stared and streamed tears, they closed their eyes and faded away.
And then she was truly alone on the Reman shore of the Great Sea.
For the first time this night, indeed for the first time in months, Tiana breathed freely and relaxed.
She had gambled her life on the quest, jeopardized and nearly lost that life far more than once. Tonight she had gambled it knowingly, deliberately, on three wishful guesses. The first was her interpretation of the inscription on Mount Erstand and her preparations in accord with that interpretation. The second was that even Derramal would be vulnerable to fire. This had been a fairly safe guess, as his left hand had fled, panicky, during the fire in the chapel of the Sisters of Death. The third and vital guess, and hope, was that both Sulun Tha and Pyre had greatly overestimated Derramal.
Doubtless the demon sorcerer’s powers had been as great as those two brilliant and strong wizards believed… but his powers amounted to little without courage. He or it had fled originally into the mirror; the hand had fled the flame; Tiana had gambled that Derramal/Lamarred was a coward and, that if attacked strongly and with confidence, he would be unable to use his deadly arts effectively.
She had wagered her life. She had been right. She had won her vengeance.
Incidentally, she had saved the world from the liberated man-nonbeing-demon.
With a long sigh, she felt a flow of great weariness — and then noted the pearly glow at the meeting of sea and sky… and the pink light that was beginning to pale the grey.
Demon in the Mirror Page 21
