by John Daulton
“I’ve spent enough time as a crying mess,” Orli said. “Turns out it doesn’t help all that much.”
Angela nodded, but unscrewed the cap on the flask. She raised it toward Orli who waved it off. “Do you mind if I do?” the woman asked.
Orli actually smiled. “Knock yourself out.” She watched the young lawyer’s face contort with each successive swig and wondered if this was the first time she’d ever had a drink. It seemed obvious that it was. Making today a day for new chemicals for everyone.
Chapter 21
Gromf and Kazuk-Hal-Mandik spent the better part of two full days listening and memorizing the summoning spells. They listened to the verses of the song as the woman sang, over and over, slowly committing the sounds to memory. Kazuk-Hal-Mandik had taught himself much of the human language in his time living in the world, but for Gromf it was all new. The sounds were ugly and tasted like rancid meat between his teeth. But he had Discipline, and he learned the sounds anyway. Two days gone, they were out of time for practicing. Now was time to try and see if it really worked.
“Go and tell Warlord we are ready,” Kazuk-Hal-Mandik commanded the singer. “Ask that he bring ten warriors. And then you may get some rest.” She was careful not to show relief, but the sagging of her features and the hoarse rasp that had become her voice was evidence of how worn down she was. She lowered her gaze and left them, and Gromf was pleased to hear the sound of her bare feet running upon the stone once she had left the room, sprinting to follow the old shaman’s orders despite how exhausted she was. She would produce good younglings for the All Clans, strong in spirit and in mind. Gromf approved of her. Perhaps when he reached his hundredth season he would take her for his second mate.
“One time,” warned Kazuk-Hal-Mandik when the woman was out of earshot. “Just one demon. From the first verses. And no God Stone.”
“I know,” snapped Gromf. He too was tired. He hadn’t slept in five sunsets. His temper floated near the surface now.
Shortly after, the sound of rattling armor and many heavy footfalls echoed down the corridor beyond the Chamber of Discipline, occasionally punctuated by the strike of wooden spear butts on the stone. Soon Warlord appeared accompanied by ten warriors, just as Kazuk-Hal-Mandik had asked. That was good, the old shaman thought. For all Warlord’s mighty roaring, he too believed.
“Slay it when it comes,” was all the warning the old warlock gave. “Do not wait to watch and see what it does.”
Warlord tightened several straps of his armor and several of the others donned helmets, buckling them on snugly. Gromf was pleased to see nothing but eagerness in their eyes. These were all mighty orcs, fearsome and tested in war. They spread around the room, Warlord with his enormous double-bladed axe standing nearest to the door. He would die before a conjured demon ran loose among his people.
“Bring them forth,” commanded Warlord, his teeth wicked sharp and glinting golden in the firelight.
Kazuk-Hal-Mandik took a pouch of sulfur and sprinkled the yellow dust around in a circle, just as the verses of the song had said. He then turned to Gromf and nodded for him to begin.
Gromf reached into the swirling storm of mana as he sang the words that built containment into the yellow ring Kazuk-Hal-Mandik had poured, the words meant to bind the creature inside. He was careful to speak them right.
He let his mind drift away then, falling out of the perfect cube of space that made the Chamber of Discipline, falling out into the mana currents, guided by the rhythms and the words that sought the anger through the center of the world, the anger that reached out with its teeming thirst for blood and the taste of death on its gnashing teeth, the milling sea of ravenousness that leaked its hunger through the very core of Prosperion. He looked for the braided strands promised by the song, the twisting threads that hid in the tempest of the mana, lost in the miasma of so much activity like a bit of leather thong tossed in a roaring fire, consumed by it physically as it was drowned in the light. But Gromf found it because he knew that it was there. He found it by its tiny whirling melody, and he grasped it with the fingers of his mind, tugging on it gently as if pulling himself along, the thread of it the lifeline keeping him from falling out of an abyss.
He pulled and willed the braid to thickening, dragging himself down into the depths of the mana, finding as he did that the twists of the cord, in their windings, seemed to stir the mana itself. He inched along, tugging himself with thoughts like hands over hands toward the circling motion, the pink and purple whorl of everything, crawling slowly down into an increasing chaos that rotated faster and faster as he went.
He pulled along more quickly, the vortex giving him speed. He made good time, and he travelled deeper and deeper, the vortex narrowing. In time he found the bottom, a tiny hole, it might have been the iris of some tiny creature’s eye. Light shone through it as if it were an arrow hole in a drying hide.
He leaned down toward the opening, moving in the way of non-action within the mana, and peered through the hole, peeking like a youngling watching grownups mate. He saw them then, the demons, the essence of them anyway, visible in both the realm of light and the mana stream. At first he started, wondering how such a thing could be, but he did not question it. This was a thing of gods, so it could be so if it was so. He watched from his high vantage place, down upon a vast landscape, ragged and profane, edged by ocean on all sides, though somehow he only knew that it was, the sense one has that a thing is true without a way to see. All he could see were the monstrosities, the countless hordes of moving, twisting bodies in a wide valley, the sunlight pouring down into it devoured by huge formations of the yellow stone. The God Stone was everywhere.
He watched and knew that he must be careful. He knew instinctively now what it was that Kazuk-Hal-Mandik had begun, and he knew why it was that the old warlock was letting him experiment with it first. If he could have, he would have spit at such cunning cowardice. But it was foolish to think such things. It lacked Discipline, for the warlock had handed over far more power than he must have understood, and in that moment Gromf understood nearly perfectly.
This tiny iris through which he peeked could be opened at his command. He could open this and let them out of that valley, let them climb up through the tunnel and out upon Kurr, all of them, that valley filled with them like the dung swamps made by the lightning bats in the northern caves, waist-deep rivers of fecal ooze teeming with flesh-eating worms of numbers too huge for considering. The demons were such as those worms, heaped upon one another in a seething mass that lapped like black water up the edges of the valley. He could not help but wonder what kept them from getting out, from cresting their confines and devouring the island they infested so horribly.
Something flashed on the mountainside then, as if calling him, as if reading his thoughts and guiding him to the place, and he focused there long enough to see the misshapen head and elongated, twisted limbs of the rocky-faced creature, the face of God that he’d seen in Kazuk-Hal-Mandik’s pond. God grew before him then, laughing, and Gromf could see in that wide, lichen-encrusted face the awareness of his growing fear, Gromf’s fear, of which even he was only barely aware.
He quickly cut that vision off, stomped it out like the last embers of an old fire. He looked away from God and sought a lesser demon to bring out. There were so many, crawling over each other like a great bowl of misshapen maggots, it was hard to pick. So he chose just any one. He shaped a spear of mana, straight and with a hard, barbed point, an idea, and flung it down at the first demon that caught his eye. Then he hauled it out as if it were a fish on a line.
With one great yank, he pulled it free of the mana, pulled it free of the island and out through the center of the world. Into the Chamber of Discipline.
The demon stood three times taller than Warlord when it appeared, a thick hulk of ambiguous body and a mass of spindly limbs. It was so black that even the firelight did nothing to illuminate it, though the light did glimmer off its twenty or so insect eyes, red
bulbs protruding from what served it for a face, each moving independently as it evaluated its enemies. It blinked at them, regarding them in a wave that moved across all of those glowing orbs, or only some, it was impossible to be sure, and then it leapt into the darkness high above with a roar that sent a rain of dust and pebbles falling down.
Both Gromf and the old warlock conjured bolts of ice as a whisk of arrows from the warriors followed the creature up into the obscurity high above.
“Save that, fools,” snarled Warlord. “See it first. Discipline.” Then, tilting his huge head backward, he roared up at the demon, calling out the challenge in the private language of the northern clan. “Come and fight, god-spawned coward. Come face death.”
Whether by coincidence or by invitation, the enormous black beast dropped down upon Warlord, who only avoided being crushed by the magnitude of his combat prowess and reflexes so bestowed. As it was, he was still struck hard, and he hit the floor as if he’d been flung there from five times his height. The demon fell upon him, mandibles like moose antlers opening wide then slamming shut like things drawn apart by siege craft springs, the clacking of their closing echoing throughout the room like lightning strikes.
Warlord smashed each bite away with the flat of his axe, roaring challenges all the while. Both Gromf and Kazuk-Hal-Mandik sent forth their spears of ice, but the magic rolled off of the creature like raindrops off rocks.
The ten warriors sprinted from their places around the room and leapt upon the creature then, their spears and swords and axes raining down blows that were as furious as their war cries. The demon answered back, and the chamber filled with such sound as no orc had ever heard before, a warped and discordant symphony of a hundred thousand brass horns blown all at once.
The demon spun then and leapt shivering into the air, trying to fling them off, spearing one warrior as it came down, thrusting straight through his body with all nine points of an awful claw, which it then spread wide, ripping the warrior apart as easily as Gromf might open his hand.
One of the warriors, maintaining his purchase on the demon’s head, if it could be said to have such a thing, got a spear down in through one of its eyes and drove it deep into its skull, while another orc hacked off the bottom portion of one of its legs with a mighty swing of a bastard sword.
The demon reached back and peeled another orc away, one who was jamming a short sword into a joint in the black armor plating along its spine. It flung him across the chamber with such power that when he hit the wall, he burst like a soft fruit, striking with such force that hardly any meat of him fell wetly to the ground. He became a stain that the chamber would wear for centuries to come.
The demon pinned yet another warrior down beneath one of its several legs. Gromf could hear the warrior’s bones crack, but he could not focus on such things. He cast another spear of ice. This spell, like the first, glanced off the demon as if it were little more than a clod of dirt thrown by a youngling at play.
The demon roared as the orc upon its head worked the spear like a plunger through its eye, churning and twisting it around, mangling the soft parts inside. It swiped a long, crooked arm up at the orc, but the orc leapt over the blow and came back neatly where he had been before, gloriously agile and aware in combat, and right back at it with his spear.
Warlord, on his feet again, came charging in as the demon swiped again at the warrior scrambling its brains. He ran in and brought a mighty two-handed swing of his axe upon the demon’s chest, the blade of his weapon biting in the full measure of Warlord’s extended arm. The demon roared and swiped at Warlord with another of its dexterous limbs, but the mighty orc rolled under the blow, came back and yanked his great axe free. He couldn’t duck the return swipe of the demon’s limb this time, however, so he dove with it instead, rolling with its momentum and coming right back up on his feet.
The demon took the time to try for the spear-thrusting orc upon its head again, and this time was able to knock him off. It spun round then and with a back-handed—or back-clawed—swat, sent another warrior who was attacking its hind legs into the wall, just as it had done the first. Another stain was born.
Warlord charged back and once again sunk the great axe into the monster’s chest, even deeper this time. He swung himself up then, hanging from the haft, and put his feet in the first rent that he had made. His powerful thighs, thick as most orcs’ whole bodies, pressed hard against their new purchase as Warlord hauled obliquely at his axe handle like a lever. And lever it was.
A grotesque wet cracking sound erupted like the breaking of a tree, and with a roar of effort, Warlord pried loose a huge chunk of the black carapace that protected the demon’s heart, if such a vile pump could be so named. Yellow blood like pus gushed out over Warlord even as the breaking loose of the armored piece sent him flying back and down upon the ground. He rolled to his feet in time to see Kazuk-Hal-Mandik’s ice lance fly into the monster’s chest cavity, a diseased fissure of yellow and reddish meat. The magician’s weapon was followed almost immediately by two arrows and a throwing axe from three of the still standing warriors.
The demon croaked its outrage at that, staggering from side to side and crushing by purest accident another warrior as it thrashed about and even once rebounded off the wall. Everyone still standing sent spears and arrows and ice bolts flying into that oozing yellow and red mess, until at last the demon fell, emitting a low rumble for a time that could be felt through the stone floor. Its limbs twitched for a while after, clacking like falling stones against the chamber floor, its eyes rolling madly in its head, but eventually they went still. A long hiss came from it, and finally the panting orcs knew that it was dead.
They all stared at it for a time, Gromf shaking his head, wondering how he had any chance of controlling such a thing as that, despite what the human writing said. He was certain that Warlord would forbid ever summoning another one.
He was wrong.
“Finally,” said Warlord, coming to where Gromf and the old warlock were. “This is magic I respect. Set these creatures loose upon the humans and the golden queen’s rule will end.” He clapped Kazuk-Hal-Mandik so brutally on the shoulder, Gromf had to catch the aged orc lest Warlord’s enthusiasm knock him to the ground. “It will be different this time,” Warlord said. “It will be different, and I will finally take a name.”
Cries of victory and hope for the great global reign of the orcs rang out then from the surviving warriors, and for a time, Gromf could only watch and marvel at what he had seen. It was power to be sure, amazing power. But was it Discipline?
He also stared at the smudges of yellow dust on the floor where Kazuk-Hal-Mandik had poured out the sulfur meant to bind the thing. The circle was rubbed out in several places, and there ran like a foul river into it a pool of the demon’s pus-yellow blood. Gromf shook his head, but he said nothing until Warlord and the other warriors had gone.
Kazuk-Hal-Mandik followed them to the door, laughing with them, and shouting out promises of death to all of humanity, but when he turned back to Gromf, his grin vanished like sweaty fingerprints on a cold blade.
“You could not control it, could you?” the old warlock asked unnecessarily.
“I could not. I would not know how to try.”
“Nor I,” replied the withered old shaman. “But perhaps we can with the God Stone.”
“Perhaps,” said Gromf, uncertain if even the yellow stones would help. “And if we can’t?”
Kazuk-Hal-Mandik straightened himself and looked resigned. “Then it will be as it was with the dwarves. And we will be with God.”
Gromf was sure that was not in keeping with Discipline, but he kept the thought to himself. Before they tried this spell tomorrow, out on the plains beyond the golden queen’s gleaming city, he thought he’d better find the woman and listen to the song again.
Chapter 22
Orli didn’t fight the Fort Minot security men when they put her onto the table and strapped her down. She’d fought at fir
st when they dragged her out of her cell, kicking and butting with her head, but it had proved pointless. She also thought it pointless that they still followed these dumb old formalities, the meal and the solemnity, the execution itself.
The solemnity was probably the worst. The procession that had brought her into this room, a slow march down the long sterility of the hallways, the mumbling of the chaplain’s hopeless prayers, the clicking of Angela’s heels in the corridor, louder than they should have been, conspicuous given the absence of other sounds. Just the tap tap tap of her shoes and the mumble of the priest.
The execution chamber was made in the shape of a half circle, with windows around the arc looking out into another room where they revealed a laboratory. The lab was full of gleaming machinery and racks neatly filled with equipment and chemicals, and along one wall, several long cylindrical tanks were attached to pipes that ran up and disappeared into the ceiling. The windows, and the view into the laboratory, ended where the arc stopped and the chamber’s straight wall began. The upper half of this surface was all one large flat pane of mirrored glass. Orli could not see what was on the other side, but no doubt the witnesses would be watching from there.
Orli saw herself in that mirror as they strapped her to the table, which was tilted nearly upright at the time. They pulled up the elastic material of her plain black uniform sleeves to expose both arms above the elbow.
A stooped man with a ring of hair that had the look of a tonsure to Orli’s doomed eyes came in through a door in the back wall, from the laboratory, pushing a cart upon which lay a variety of medical gear. He pushed the cart near the cold stainless steel slab to which she was being bound as the guards secured her knees, waist and head with flat black straps. The guards left, and the stooped figure pressed the lever on the table that tilted it back, moving it slowly toward horizontal.
