“I would have gone much higher, were you a better barterer.”
The two of them laughed and hugged again, and cheers went up from the table as the doors behind the bar were pushed open by people bringing food from the kitchen, platters of eggs and great bowls of thick Soutermese sausage, spiced with Agintan pepper and wild chives. The party ate, together, and for an hour the thoughts of what came next for each of them were held at bay. It seemed that whatever was to come, it surely must be better than what had gone before.
*
The Ayzantine vessel sailed at first light so Nesha-tari left Souterm without returning to the inn, saying goodbye to no one but the Westerners and Zebulon. She did however stand in the stern as the ship left the docks, looking back at the skyline she had first seen little more than a month ago, though it already seemed much longer. She felt no Hunger as of yet, and so was unconcerned by the ship’s crewmen around her. Neither did they leer at Nesha-tari any more than they would have at any other woman.
She had completed the task given to her by Akroya successfully, slaying Horayachus and keeping the Red Priest’s plans for the Duchess of Chengdea from coming to fruition. Nesha-tari still had no idea if the second thing had really been of any interest to the Blue Dragon, but she could not imagine he would have a problem with it. She had been bidden to sail to Roseille to meet with others in Akroya’s service after the task, and from there she thought surely she would be allowed to return home. Back to the high desert desolation of the Hakalya, and back to the life she had known now for more than a century. She had been waiting for that return since the moment she came down from the desert, and though she was moving toward it now Nesha-tari was still looking back, away from her future.
The servants of Blue Akroya were a contentious lot, and their cut-throat rivalry for the Dragon’s favor often became literal. They were the only people Nesha-tari had ever known in her life, not counting prey, and they were her most dangerous enemies. There was not one among them who Nesha-tari could even tenuously consider a friend.
Though Nesha-tari knew it was ridiculous for her to think of any of the people she was now leaving in that way either, she felt something like melancholy as Souterm receded in her sight. Amatesu and Uriako Shikashe had been her companions for months, and the shukenja had told the others their terrible story to demonstrate that they were not so different than was Nesha-tari herself. Little better, and perhaps even worse. The Jobian Kendall Heggenauer, despite his initial revulsion, had put himself between Nesha-tari and Balan, even as the Devil Lord was exposing her for what she truly was. Despite seeing her true form the party had stayed with her, and taken her with them when they escaped Vod’Adia.
That, to Nesha-tari, seemed to be the sort of thing that friends would do, though she had never had any personal experience with the phenomenon. She was half Lamia and half human, but only the first had ever been of any value to her, or to the Blue Master to whom her mother had sold her, long ago.
Nesha-tari was leaving what might have been a different kind of life had things been much different, but somewhere within her she knew that it was a kind of life she could only consider at a time like this, while she was not Hungry. She thought about it for those moments all the same, and she did not leave the stern railing until the city of Souterm had disappeared around a bend of the river, the waters carrying her back toward home and the thing that she could not help being.
*
Black Danavod returned to Vod’Adia with the setting sun, skimming low over swamp and hill on her great wings. She dropped into the valley on the southern side, away from the Camp Town. The Great Dragon shivered as she broke through the cloudy veil, for even a creature of her colossal power was not immune to the sheer magnitude of the magic that had once been worked in the dark city, the Cataclysm that for a time had severed the place from this world and ringed it in occluding fog.
As she passed through the veil, Danavod thought she could almost sense that it was slightly weaker than it had been this morning, though that may have been her imagination. It was probably too early to feel it, though she knew it was happening.
Danavod beat her wings and pulled up her snout as she came in low over the city, swerving around towers. She did not roar this time as she was not in the mood. She pulled up sharply before the palace, rising high above it on a level with the pointed roofs of the nine subsidiary towers, then settling back toward the familiar courtyard within one connecting wing.
Balan awaited her there, ringed by several of his little spiky minions who all winked away before Danavod settled to a landing on her hind legs, leaving the Devil Lord alone. Danavod folded her wings and planted her forelegs, sitting cat-like in the courtyard directly before Balan, who bowed.
“Your Humongousness,” he called. Danavod’s head loomed high above him at the end of her long neck.
“Balan,” Danavod’s disembodied voice purred out in the gathering gloom.
“I hear the monkeys got away. Rough, that.”
“Nesha-tari told me the Circle Wizard did nothing at the Node,” Danavod said. “Yet he was allowed to reach that place.”
“Well, I don’t know that allowed is really the word…” Balan said.
“Did you arrange for the Wizard to come unto the Node, Balan?”
The devil winced and scratched the back of his neck.
“Yes I did.”
Danavod flicked out a single claw, a casual gesture that laid the devil’s abdomen open almost to his spine. Balan screamed and collapsed on his seat. Spiney devils began to pop into existence all around, while larger Bearded ones pounded out from the halls giving into the courtyard.
“Shall I kill all your minions as well, Balan?” Danavod called.
“Out!” Balan shouted. “Everybody out!”
The devils sulked and growled but withdrew, either on foot or by simply disappearing. Their lord groaned and flopped onto his back on the flagstones, clutching his leprous innards to his belly with both hands. Danavod leaned forward so her massive head hung in the air directly above him. Red blood was forming a pool around Balan, and two black horns had sprung out of his forehead, as he was distinctly not in full control of himself at the moment. The devil’s blood looked and smelled just like that of the humans. Danavod had always thought that implied that the two species were related.
“Madame, you have no idea how much that hurts,” Balan hissed through his fanged teeth.
“You are a Prince of Hell, Balan. You will survive that wound. Though I expect those pants are a loss.”
Balan groaned and opened his burning red eyes.
“What has happened at the Node?” Danavod growled. The devil sighed up at her.
“Honestly, we don’t know. One of Nesha-tari’s minions blundered through the thing, and came back only a minute later. We examined the gate afterwards, though as near as we could tell it remained unchanged. But then the monkeys got out of the city.”
“They teleported.”
“Yes, twice. A heads-up that they could do that would have been nice, by the way. Anyhow, as soon as they were gone…the world stopped spinning.”
Lying on his back, Balan gave a shrug that made him grunt and clutch his hands more tightly against his belly. Most of his entrails had oozed back into his body, though he was still awash in gore.
“What do you mean?” Danavod demanded.
“Well, not the world, but this city at any rate. Vod’Adia has been turning since the Witch King Kanderamath cast his spells, your Massiveness. I am told gyring is the technical term. Not at a speed where it was perceptible for the one month in a century that it appears here, but moving all the same. When the monkeys scurried out past your frogs and whatnot, Vod’Adia ceased to turn. And here it sits.”
Balan raised his hoof just enough to tap it against the flagstones a couple times, shooting up two sparks.
“It is your fault, Balan,” Danavod growled even as her voice spoke. “Had you done as you were told, stopped the Wizard and tu
rned back Akroya’s servant, none of this would have occurred.”
Balan’s diabolic features twisted in an ugly sneer, and Danavod realized with some surprise that the creature was as angry as it was afraid. Balan raised one trembling hand to point at the horns now jutting from his forehead. The gray flesh of his abdomen was already knitting itself neatly back together.
“Madame, please. Did you not see the horns? How about the cloven hoof and the tail? I am a devil, Madame, and I don’t do nothing for nobody, ’less I got a contract, see? We are like a union that way.”
Danavod extended the claws of her right foreleg again, and Balan cringed back against the ground. She held the claws in the air above the devil, extending only the scimitar-nail of one digit until it almost touched his forehead.
“Do it, if you are going to,” Balan spat. “That is the only way I will get home now.”
“What do you mean?”
The devil lord let out a rough exhalation. “With Vod’Adia stationary, there is no longer any connection to the Outer Planes. I can’t go back to Hell, nor can any of my devils, short of having our bodies slain in this world. Same with the demons from the Abyss, and the various and sundry ne’er-do-wells from Ghenna and Tarterus. We are all stuck until we are killed here, and that mode of travel is not much to anyone’s liking.”
Danavod thought intently, two tendrils of noxious green smoke emerging unnoticed from her snout. She moved her claw aside and put it on the ground next to Balan, absently gouging the stone.
“That is why you did not seek to hide from me,” she said. “You knew I would return, and you knew I would be angry.”
“I had an inkling.”
“Do you wish me to kill you, Balan? There is not very much else in this world that could do so.”
Balan took his left hand away from his abdomen, which was again smooth and whole though still of his sickly pallor. He leaned up on his elbows and looked at the pool of gore he was lying in, and the state of his slashed and soaked garments.
“This is such an awful week for my wardrobe. No, your Great Hulkingness, I do not want you to kill me. For as I say, dying to go home entails a great deal of unpleasantness, and takes a terrible long time. Also, as you have pointed out a time or ten before, you know ways to obliterate me utterly, leaving no soul to travel back to Hell.”
“So I do,” Danavod said.
“Great,” Balan sighed. He looked up toward the sky, but frowned as he could just see his own sharp, black horns as they projected a bit forward from his temples. He glared at them until they sank back into his skull, then he pointed up at the sky.
“That veil is not actually doing anything right now. It is just a shadow, of a sort. We believe that at the end of the month, instead of becoming impermeable again, it is simply going to dissipate. That will leave the Sable City sitting here, where everyone in this world will be able to see that it has returned. And what would your Immensity suppose happens then?”
“The humans will come for it.”
“Right. Not as small parties you can manage, but as the armies of nations. There is just too much wealth left in this place for the monkeys to leave it alone.”
“You think I would permit this?”
“I think a bunch of toads and oversized goblins won’t be enough to stop them. And didn’t a number of your Great Dragon relations already get themselves killed? After they started eating whole armies and burning down cities? As I recall, a band of dwarves murdered a good Dragon just for sitting on top of a gold mine!”
Danavod was silent for a time, emitting not a grumble nor a single puff of smoke.
“You know much of this world, Balan,” she finally said.
Balan climbed wearily to his feet and stood, though as Danavod had sliced his suspenders along with his body he now had to hold up his trousers with one hand. The Devil Lord attempted to do so with as much dignity as he could muster, though it was a losing cause.
“Adventurers have always brought a lot of baggage with them into Vod’Adia, including their knowledge,” Balan said. “There are those among my fellows who enjoy taking that from them, along with everything else.” Balan looked up at Danavod and sighed. “You can kill me or obliterate me, your Sizableness, and maybe you can root out most of the fiends within this entire city. But you will never get them all. There are just too many, and there are some of great cunning and strength. Some will escape, perhaps enough to make the Dead War that once raged here for thirty years look like a picnic.”
“Or?” Danavod said, and for the first time in a while, Balan grinned.
“Or we can renew our deal of cooperation, Mistress, now in these altered circumstances. I have full command of the devils here, and at least some sway with the rest of the wicked. Together, I imagine they would amount to an army unlike any that has ever walked this world.”
“And what would you seek to gain from such an arrangement, Balan?”
The devil nodded and pantomimed tipping a cap.
“Time, your Gargantuaness. This is a world replete with magic, and in such a place it is always possible to discover a shorter way from point A to point B. Plus, as long as me and mine are all stuck here, there is no reason for us not to have a bit of fun.”
The Dragon gazed down at the diabolic creature. Balan plainly knew much of her world, though he did not know nearly as much as did Danavod, who had dwelled here since before Men had even reckoned time, and before they had invented divisions between the present, the past, and the future. Balan had likely never heard of Danorian Prophecy, for there were few men yet alive who remembered its ways, and surely none of them had blundered into the devils’ clutches in Vod’Adia. Balan did not know that the return of the Sable City was but the first in a series of signs, signs that might presage something far worse yet to come. Danavod did know it, and she knew that depending on how things continued to unfold, she might well have need of an army far more formidable than the Shugak.
“I will require another contract, this time,” she said. “One that is exhaustive in its specific terms.”
“Goes without saying, Ma’am.”
Danavod puffed her toxic smoke.
“Speak on, then, Balan, for I am still listening.”
Epilogue
Kazandra gave Zebulon a firm shove, and he blundered backward through the snow, blinking his familiar eyes at hers. There was a sound like trumpeting from the tusks of the Node Gate as the man passed between them and disappeared, a sound audible even above the whipping arctic wind.
“Goodbye,” Kazandra yelled after him, and quietly added, “Say hello to Mom.”
“Zandra!” the old Wizard shouted. Kazandra turned and found him struggling toward her through the snow, wrestling with the staff from which light still shown, illuminating a wide circle in the blowing snow. She hurried over and the old man leaned heavily against her. She brought them both back across the snow to stand before the gate.
“What did you say to him?” the Wizard shouted. His long white beard was flapping wildly from beneath his scarf, and the deep hood of his parka shadowed his face.
“Nothing I shouldn’t have!” Zandra answered, screaming into the Wizard’s hood as the wind was fierce, and the old man was about half deaf.
They stood before the gate, two bulky figures squinting up at the sky full of spinning snow.
“Is that long enough!” Zandra shouted, and the Wizard’s hood bobbed.
“I think so. From what I remember.”
Zandra jerked off a heavy mitten, letting it hang from a cord around her wrist. Her hand started to ache from the cold immediately. The light from the staff winked out as the Wizard leaned it against his thin chest in heavy furs, and Zandra felt along his lone arm down to his hand, and pulled off his mitten. The two clasped bare hands in the noisy darkness, and Zandra took a hold of the staff.
“Are you ready, Uncle Phin?” Zandra yelled, and Phoarty said that he was.
Zandra tugged the old Wizard along, and followed her
father through the gate to Danor.
Here ends the first book of the Norothian Cycle, continued in Book II, Death of a Kingdom.
The Norothian Cycle
The first three Volumes of the Norothian Cycle are now available, as Tilda and company’s adventures continue.
Volume I – The Sable City
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004PLNNLS
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004PLNNLS
Volume II – Death of a Kingdom
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0057GII6U
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0057GII6U
Volume III – The Wind from Miilark
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005NFNZUE
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B005NFNZUE
M. Edward McNally is a proud member of the Indie Eclective. Yes, we know that sort of looks like a typo for either "Eclectic" or "Collective," but just try saying "Eclectic Collective" ten times fast and you will be saying "Eclective" soon enough.
Anyway, there are nine of us and we all write books, crossing genres and chewing gum. Do feel free to peruse for something that might tickle your fancy.
THE HALLOWEEN COLLECTION FROM THE INDIE ECLECTIVE
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005LPGG0C
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B005LPGG0C
Heather Marie Adkins - The Temple
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0057XOQ1E
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0057XOQ1E
Julia Crane - Coexist (Keegan's Chronicles)
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0055HFZ3A
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0055HFZ3A
Lizzy Ford - Kiera's Moon
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005GM1O1Q
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B005GM1O1Q
Talia Jager - The Ultimate Sacrifice (The Gifted Teens Series)
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0051PKVS0
The Sable City (The Norothian Cycle) Page 55
