Kingdoms of the Night (The Far Kingdoms)

by Allan Cole, Chris Bunch

  “Tell me what you see, then,” Ba’land said.

  Janela studied him a moment, then said. “I see an uneasy king. So uneasy it makes one wonder at the stability of his crown. You seem to fear many things which makes one wonder even more.

  “I’ll list them. You feared us, which you can’t honestly deny. You fear ghosts. You fear wild demons like Elam.” She pointed to the roots shaking above us as the workmen made another try. “You even fear that tree.”

  Ba’land hissed. He didn’t like her words. But he said nothing.

  “I also think in your own world you and your kind have consumed more power than is wise. It’s like a city that cuts down all the forests to build their homes and heat them as well. Eventually they have to travel very far and pay a dear price for something that was once so close. That is what you have done. In more places, perhaps, than just our world.

  “There must be other demon kings with similar problems, kings who would love to see their brother monarch fall. If so, it follows that you are stretched quite thin, Ba’land, merely defending what you hold.”

  Ba’land recovered his foul humor. “Pity I didn’t catch you sooner,” he said. “I could have made you into such an amusing little pet.” He kicked Tobray. “Much better than this.”

  Janela put a hand to her breast. “Oh la, sir!” she said coyly. “Such words stir a maid’s poor heart anticipating your demonly attentions. We all saw what an affect you have on mortal women. How you charmed the fair Thalila who so willingly danced her way into your arms.”

  “Willingly or not,” Ba’land growled, “I had her.”

  “Did you, now?” Janela said. “Or did she have you? You saw how she played you the fool. How she conspired — and quite successfully — against you. And you never knew, did you? Not until I revealed it in this very chamber.”

  “I saw nothing you didn’t intend, witch!” Ba’land snarled. “The vision was nothing but a trick. And a low one at that.”

  “Was it?” Janela said.

  She held her hand out. In it I saw the stone box with the carving of the dancing maid etched clear by the blue light.

  “Shall I call her back for you?” Janela asked. “Would you like to see her dance once again?”

  As she spoke Janela’s free hand traced a curving figure in the air. Ba’land turned his head, perhaps to command a guard to have the box taken away. But as he turned a familiar seductive figure wavered into view and his head snapped back.

  The dancer’s music swelled from the empty pit and the faint figure of the maid firmed into flesh.

  The demon king gaped as Thalila’s slender limbs moved in graceful time to the music.

  She was ice in the pale light, but ice that begged to be melted. Hips twitching to be grasped, breasts heaving for a lover’s kiss, lips blowing promises of future delights.

  Her perfume charged the air with the spice of seduction, I saw Ba’land shudder when her hands rose in a long slow caress from thighs to breasts.

  Janela motioned and the dancer vanished. It was so abrupt it left Ba’land gaping like a wide-jawed sea snake.

  She stepped forward, holding out the box. “Here,” she whispered. “Thalila. For you?”

  Ba’land gnashed his teeth and held out a hand. Janela mounted the steps. When she reached his magical shield she said, “She’s waiting, Ba’land. Waiting only for you.”

  Ba’land gestured impatiently and the shield dissolved.

  Janela took one more step, then suddenly snatched the lid off the box.

  The demon Mitel exploded from it, howling in fury for being trapped inside so long.

  King Azbaas’ Favorite saw Ba’land first and bounded toward him bellowing blood lust.

  Ba’land was so frozen in surprise Mitel nearly got him but the demon king kicked his throne over backwards. It shattered into splintered ruins and Tobray scrambled out of the way as Mitel plunged after Ba’land.

  The demon soldiers rushed to help their master, who had rolled to his feet to match Mitel talon for talon. King Ignati shouted, bolted from his throne and tried to block the first demon who came up the stairs. But he was pushed aside contemptuously and a blade ran in and out of his chest.

  His son shouted an oath and leaped on his father’s killer, curling a brawny arm around his neck and snapping it.

  Solaros jumped free and called to his men. The shackled soldiers struggled in their chains as other Tyrenians boiled over to help free them. The Prince raced across the room to join his men.

  Beyond the thrones Ba’land was locked with Mitel. The two demons grappled, Mitel trying to sink his teeth into Ba’land’s throat while Ba’land clawed at Mitel’s abdomen with his feet. The demon king broke away, lashing out with all his might.

  The blow sent Mitel staggering back into the first wave of Ba’land’s soldiers. Demons went down in a wild tumble and a sword came skittering almost to my feet. I snatched it up and instinctively started forward.

  Janela grabbed my hand and shouted, “Wait, Amalric!”

  On the throne platform Ba’land caught Mitel behind the neck. Mitel lashed back with his taloned feet but then Ba’land’s soldiers were on him and he went slack as they plunged their swords into his body.

  Ba’land reared up, roaring for his soldiers to surround him, then swiveled about to hunt us with his big yellow eye.

  I heard Pip and the others cry our names and knew they were charging to our sides.

  Ba’land saw us and Janela clutched my hand harder, hissing for me not to let go. The demon king flung his arms high, summoning a mighty spell to strike us down.

  Janela held up the box and shouted, “Open!”

  The floor fell away and just as Ba’land sent a rolling ball of lightning crackling toward us the underground spring exploded out of the earth. It wasn’t cooling, life-giving water, but a deadly sheet of silver fire.

  The two forces met. There was a great blast, sweeping Ba’land and the demons away and up.

  The blast caught us and my ears were filled with a great howling and a wind of pure white light flung us high.

  Then we were falling and Janela was gripping my hand tighter and tighter as we fell.

  We fell so far I thought we’d never stop.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  BATTLE WITHOUT END

  I stood on a great plain ringed by mountains that belched fire into a sky spattered with dark clouds against a red sunset. Behind me gaped cave mouths and somehow I knew I’d come from them, not fallen from the sky as my mind had foolishly told me.

  I wore a rough fur tunic that fell below my knees and there was a crude rope of dried vines around my waist, a dagger laboriously chipped from flint stuck in it. I carried a club that had a jagged shard of obsidian buried in it.

  Around me were men and women, more than one hundred and fifty of them, dressed much like I was and armed with clubs or thrusting spears topped with flint or jagged rock. They stood in ranks, expecting battle. I recognized them — there was Pip, Otavi, Towra, Beran, all four Cyralian brothers and the others who’d sailed from Orissa with me. The others were the Tyrenian soldiers we’d trained, among them their generals, Emerle and Thrade — the sacrifice Ba’land had demanded. I looked about and didn’t see Prince Solaros — for some reason he hadn’t been carried into this world with us.

  Quatervals stood in front of me and not far behind him in the crowd was Kele.

  “They caught you,” I sorrowed. “Now Hermias will know nothing.”

  “No,” Quatervals said. “We are far down the road now, not far from that haunted village.”

  “Then—”

  “We are, we shall be, where we are needed... when we are needed.”

  Before I could ask another question the drums began. To one side of my small army danced half a dozen chanting shamans, Tobray the loudest of the chanters. To their fore was Janela, naked, her hair swirling as she danced, her arms moving in wild supplication. I felt lust and my member stiffened, then anger gripped me as the
drums grew louder and across the plain the demon army moved against us... against our homes.

  At their fore was the demon king I’d known as Ba’land. I screamed rage and we charged forward, running down the slopes to meet them, our bare feet not feeling the sharp rocks.

  As we charged the demons also broke into a run and our armies crashed together. Then there was nothing but a melee of cutting and slashing, the demons’ talons and fangs ripping at us. I saw Otavi smash one monster’s head away and the monster keened pain through the ruins of his throat and fell, ichor pouring. Another horror, this with four arms and armed with scythe-like claws slashed, cutting Otavi’s arm off. Bellowing laughter my former stableman sprayed blood from the stump of his arm into the demon’s face, blinding him, then stove in the creature’s chest before he died.

  Pip dueled with an equally small monster, bowlegged, squat like a toad; then they staggered together and went down, daggers buried in each others’ bodies.

  There was a creature in front of me with the face of a tiger, but surrounded by tentacles. A long-clawed forearm whipped at me and I smashed my club into his throat, pulling it free as it went down.

  It was a mass of killers and killed, a heaving, groaning throng that swayed back and forth, the rocks under our feet slippery with gore and what strange and many-colored fluids the demons had running through their body.

  As I fought on, trying to stay alive, trying not to notice when I was cut here, torn there, my eyes scanned the battle, looking for Ba’land. I saw him surrounded by his demon nobles and fought my way through the mass toward him.

  There were shouts from behind me to follow, to help, to bring down the demon king and I was at the point of a spearhead.

  But as we forced our way forward, all changed about us. I don’t know quite how to put it but it was if direction changed at will, so suddenly I would be alone on this plain, then surrounded by my foes, then by my own forces. Now I’d be striding forward toward Ba’land, then my steps were taking me back, back toward our caves.

  I shouted in rage, helpless against the spell the demon king was sending against us, and then I heard Janela’s steady chant, a long rhythm in a language I did not know, but it sent new blood and energy rushing through me and I knew how to travel in this strange world, stepping now forward, now back and then Ba’land was not ten feet in front of me, waiting, his talons scraping the rock. I started for him, then heard screams and had a moment to glance around.

  The demons had swept around my comrades, almost encircling them, and there were shouts to me to fall back, we must run.

  But their deaths, my death, meant nothing if I could slay Ba’land. Then he was no longer in front of me, but far, far away, standing atop a boulder, shrieking in joy.

  The bloodroar and -lust left me and sense returned and I was shouting orders, as was Towra. I knew Beran lay dead on the field, although I’d not seen her fall, and at my side was Quatervals, parrying a lunge from a horned monster and driving a spear through a gap in its carapace. It hissed agony, twisted and was dead.

  “Back! Back! Flee!” came the cries and so we did, not falling back as an army did, but running, broken, defeated.

  Janela stood in front of me, her eyes flaming.

  “We’ll turn here,” I gasped, my lungs searing.

  “No,” she shouted. “We cannot fight on! Not now! Not here!”

  I turned and looked back and the demoniac army was coming up the slopes toward our caves, screaming in triumph at their victory, Ba’land at their head. He was taller, stronger than before, full-fed on the deaths of my friends.

  I turned, to the hells with sense, they’d not desecrate our homes, bringing my club up for a last stand, Quatervals, blood pulsing from an ignored wound beside me, my ears deaf to Janela’s pleas and...

  * * * *

  ... We were falling, falling, endlessly...

  * * * *

  It was a green and beautiful pasture, gentle rain seeping down from the skies. My horse nickered impatiently, scenting the battle to come.

  I wore the uniform of an old-fashioned horse soldier, such as a cavalryman of the first Lycanthian War and a friend of my father, Paphos Karima Antero, might have worn: leather helm with a strip of steel from crown to nose with steel cheekplates, steel cuirass, breeches tucked into high boots that had steel sideplates against slashes. My horse was also armored, with an eerie helm over its head and eyes and leather skirts that hung below the saddle. I was armed with a saber hung on my saddle, a dagger and a long lance that a pennon floated from, a pennon matching the small one that trailed from my helmet’s crest.

  But our dress while familiar in period was unlike anything I’ve ever seen, the cuirass worked with strange designs in unusual colors and the pennon above of no city I knew.

  Beside me rode Janela, dressed much as I was but armed with a more slender sword. Flanking her were my captains, Towra, Beran, Kele and Quatervals.

  Waiting impatiently, their horses sometimes dancing in eagerness, were the rest of my soldiers, Orissan and Tyrenian.

  We were half-hidden by trees, looking down from this pasture at rolling meadows. Far across them the demon army was marching forward stolidly, moving in two great wings. Their cavalry was a ghastly array of demons mounted on strange beasts and other demons.

  Closer to my right was the rest of our forces, infantry in two divisions, reinforced by war elephants and hunting cats.

  Trumpets blared and drums thundered as the two armies closed on each other.

  “This time we’ll have ’em,” Quatervals murmured.

  Janela reached out her hand and I held it, without taking my eyes from the battlefield below, waiting for our moment.

  “I love you,” she whispered and her words were heard by no one but me. Then she began a chant, almost as soft:

  “You see nothing

  You see naught

  Naught but trees

  Naught but grass

  Nothing here is of hurt

  Nothing here is of harm

  Your foe waits

  There

  You need not look

  You need not see.”

  I chanced a glance at her and she grinned and shrugged: “Even folk medicine might help fog Ba’land’s eyes... even for a single moment.”

  The two armies met below us — arrows reaching out to begin the battle and then the spear- and swordsmen clashed and the killing began once more.

  I heard a mutter from Kele about now being the time but paid no attention, watching closely as first one side then the other held the advantage. I grinned as I saw — just as I ordered — our left wing retreat as if they were being beaten back. Back and back and I heard the demon shrieks of mastery, they’d broken us.

  Now was the moment and I drew my sword rose high in my stirrups and shouted the charge. My cavalry stormed down from the heights full on the demons’ right flank.

  I have never been a soldier but somehow the commands were known to me and fell easily from my lips:

  “At the walk.... forward!”

  “At the trot...”

  “Couch... lances!”

  More than one hundred and fifty steel fingers dropped down, each one promising death.

  “At the gallop... CHARGE!”

  They did not see us, did not sense us until we smashed into their flank, our long spears smashing into their ranks and screams and howls of pain and surprise shattered the heavens. I left my lance buried in the body of a two-headed fanged beast with scales and oozing slime, pulled my saber and we hewed on.

  My mount shrilled agony and reared, pouring blood where a demon had slipped through and slashed its throat and I kicked free from the stirrups and slid back and away as my horse fell, kicking, crushing the monster that had slain it. I heard shouts: “Th’ Lord’s down... Lord Antero’s down...” and then Janela was beside me and I pulled myself up on the back of her steed and we plunged deeper into the throng, cutting, slashing, forcing our way to the center of the demon army to whe
re Ba’land’s banners rose.

  We were surrounded by the demons, some frantic to kill us, others equally eager to escape our bloody blades. But the press kept us alive — there wasn’t room enough for our enemies to close and destroy us and we kept moving, always moving, always closer to Ba’land.

  He rose above me, now wearing the silks of a dandy under his half-armor. He was armed with a shortspear and dagger. He was no more than a dozen feet away, his standard-bearer beside him — an awful creature I could not bear to look at for longer than an instant.

  Ba’land lunged at Janela and she ducked aside as I flung myself off her horse at him. Spearthrust... brushed away by my slashing saber, his dagger plunging at me and I knocked it aside, dancing away and cutting at him, blade whipping across his side, below his armor, and he howled and his blood — an awful black and green slime — gushed.

  Ba’land bellowed and stumbled back and I slashed at his color-bearer, missed him, but slashed the halberd that carried the demon’s standard in half. Before the monster could recover it I had it in my free hand, held high and the demons screamed rage and fear.

  Janela shouted and I turned and saw a demon had pulled himself up on her horse and had her throat in his claws, strangling, and her hand blurred back and forward, steel-toothed dagger burying itself in the monster and he fell away.

  Ba’land was a few feet from me, waiting my attack, but as I advanced a swirl of battlers came between us and I lost him.

  Janela was beside me and then others. I wiped blood from my eyes that ran down from a wound across my forehead and had a single instant to look about.

  Around me were the surviving members of my band, no more than thirty men and women, all of them wounded. The demons boiled about us, shouting in glee that they had me trapped.

  The rest of my army was far, far away, fighting desperately forward to rescue me.

  Quatervals somehow had picked up my lance and buried its butt deep in the earth. The blood-soaked pennon atop it with the houseflag of the Anteros snapped in the wind. He grinned at me:

  “Now they’ll have somethin’ to aim for.”