Rage of a Demon King (52 page)

Jadow motioned to where he had two horses tied to a broken-down fence and said, “Think I’d rather ride with you.” Jadow and his soldier got the two horses, mounted, and returned to Erik’s side. “Ride where I tell you, boys, and everything will be fine.”

Erik motioned for Jadow to lead and followed him into the small town of Wolverton. “What have you done?”

“Well,” said Jadow, “you asked for some nasty surprises, so we obliged. A couple of pits here, a few casks of oil there, some torches we just set burning in that building, some other little things. Nothing will be too damaging, but it should slow them as they start inspecting every building.”

Erik nodded his approval. “Very good.”

They rode through Wolverton. The town lay across the King’s Highway, but it was surrounded on the north and south by flat meadows and groves, providing an impossible defensive position. If Jadow’s surprises slowed the enemy a little, making them circle around the town instead of marching straight through, the extra minutes would save lives. Erik and Jadow came up behind the last wagon, slowly working its way along the King’s Highway. Erik turned to Jadow. “You and the horse archers guard this and the other stragglers. I have to ride ahead.”

“Yes, sir,” said Jadow with his customary smile and half-mocking salute.

Erik pushed his tired horse forward, passing the last of the baggage wagons and a few walking wounded who could find no room in the wagons. Twice he found men resting on the side of the road, and he ordered them to keep going, lest they fall too far behind and be killed by the enemy.

As sundown neared, he was forced to rest his horse. Here the road rose steeply, heading to the summit. He looked down the trail and was astonished to see the long line of men and wagons trudging along the highway. He had ridden past every wagon behind him, yet until this moment he had no concept of how many men were still on the road. Torches were lit here and there, and soon a long, flaming line seemed to be creeping along the King’s Highway, coming his way, a stately procession.

Erik felt a quickening urgency that precluded his standing idle, so he dismounted and led his horse along. He passed a wagon at the side of the road, where men worked frantically to repair a broken spoke, and when he turned a bend in the road, he saw it: Darkmoor.

Athwart the highway rested the walled city of Darkmoor, and along the eastern side of the mountains ran Nightmare Ridge. There, Erik knew, the fate of the Kingdom and the world of Midkemia would be decided. The city was now ablaze with lanterns and torches along the wall, so from this distance it looked as if a celebration was in progress. Erik knew it was an illusion, for those lights meant the full weight of the Western Realm’s defenses would soon be in place.

The region of Darkmoor was actually to the south and east of the city that bore its name. The original Castle Darkmoor had been built as the Kingdom’s westernmost defense long before the founding of Krondor. Over the years the town, then the city, of Darkmoor arose, until it, too, had been enclosed by a wall. After Wolverton, Erik had ridden through a relatively empty landscape, as most of the terrain close
to the city was rocky and nonarable. Small trees and tough mountain grasses, low brush, and some flowers hugged the roadside. Farther back, trees grew deep in the valleys and gullies running down the west face. Most of the area around the city itself had been forested clear ages ago. Food and other perishables were hauled into Darkmoor from lower-lying farming hamlets.

On the highest peak to the north of the King’s Highway, rising like a guardian, was the original Darkmoor Keep. It was now a citadel, for it had originally been been built as a walled fort and the wall and moat around the castle had never been removed. Now the city sprawled out across the pass, and the King’s Highway ran through a massive oak gate, bound with iron and flanked by high turrets, each with crenellated, overhanging parapets. Erik judged that no one attempting to reach the gate would be able to do so without being exposed to bow fire, catapults, or hot water or oil from above.

The setting sun threw a red highlight on the castle, and Erik turned to the west. In the distance he saw the sun disappear in a haze of smoke, from the fires in Ravensburg and Wolverton.

Erik reached the gate of the city to discover that the street was packed with refugees from the west. He led his horse past frustrated soldiers trying to deal with the throng of humanity attempting to squeeze into the city.

Erik shouted, “Which way to the keep?”

A soldier looked over his shoulder and, seeing the crimson eagle on Erik’s tunic, and the badge of rank, said, “To the center of town, and then left on High Street, Captain!”

Erik led his horse through the throng, occasionally having to shove someone aside to get past knots of confused citizens and fatigued, short-tempered soldiers. The journey took him nearly an hour.

Eventually he reached the ancient drawbridge that crossed the moat separating the citadel from the rest of city. A squad of soldiers had blocked off the street for a hundred yards in all directions, so that those needing quick access to and from the Prince’s headquarters would not be impeded.

Erik approached the guard and pointed to the west. “Tell me, is that a clear passage to the western gate?”

The guard said, “It is. Runs along the wall and turns at that corner down there.”

Erik sighed. “I wish someone at the gate had mentioned that.” He started past the guard, who dropped a spear before Erik’s chest.

“Here, now. Where do you think you’re going?”

“To see the Prince and General Greylock,” said a very tired Erik.

“And suppose you show me some orders, then?”

Erik said, “Orders? From whom?”

“Your officer, assuming you’re not another deserter looking to tell the General some cock-and-bull story about being separated from your unit.”

Erik slowly reached up, took a grip on the spear shaft, and without apparent effort moved it back upright, despite the soldier’s attempts to keep it where he had it. As the man’s jaw tightened and his eyes widened, Erik said, “I am an officer. I know I look worse for wear, but I need to see the Prince.”

Other soldiers were approaching as they noticed the confrontation. Another shouted, “Hey, Sergeant!”

A sergeant in the uniform of Darkmoor, a black shield with a red raven on a branch on a tan tabard, ran over. “What’s this, then?”

The soldier said, “This fellow wants to see the Prince.”

The sergeant, a tough old boot used to instant obedience by his men, snapped, “And just who the hell might you be that the Prince would want to see you?”

Erik pushed aside the spear and stepped forward, locking eyes with the sergeant. “Erik von Darkmoor, Captain of the Prince’s Special Command!”

At the mention of his name, several of the soldiers stepped aside, while the others glanced at the sergeant. The old veteran grinned and said, “Looks like you’ve seen a bit of trouble, then, Captain.”

“You could say that. Now, step aside!”

The sergeant didn’t hesitate, moving briskly to one side. As Erik passed, he handed the reins to the sergeant, saying, “Get him some water and feed him. He’s all done in. Then send word where you’ve stabled him. He’s a good horse and I don’t want to lose him.”

The sergeant took the reins. As Erik walked away, he said without looking back, “Oh, and when my sergeant arrives, send him straight to me. You’ll have no trouble recognizing him. He’s a tall, Keshian-looking fellow, dark skin, and he’ll snatch your head right off your shoulders if you give him one half the trouble you just gave me.”

Erik crossed the drawbridge. He looked up at the lights shining in the many windows of the ancient castle. Founded by one of his ancestors, Castle Darkmoor was an alien place to Erik. As a boy he
had dreamed of someday being summoned here by his father, to be recognized and given a place in the household. When those dreams died, they were replaced by curiosity. Then they faded altogether. Now the castle had the ominous look of a bad place to die, and as he walked through the gatehouse, entering the ancient castle bailey, Erik realized that the feeling came from the fact that not only was there an army on its way here that wanted him dead, inside was a woman who had vowed to see him dead: Mathilda von Darkmoor, his father’s widow and mother of the half brother he had killed.

With a deep sigh, Erik turned to a captain of the Guard and said, “Take me to Greylock. I’m Captain von Darkmoor.”

Without a word the captain saluted, turned smartly, and led Erik into his ancestral home.

Calis studied the gem.

He was so engrossed in it he almost failed to notice the appearance of four figures in the great hall of the oracle. He glanced at the oracle’s attendants, and as they displayed no distress, he assumed there was no danger.

He looked at the new arrivals and saw his father, resplendent in his white-and-gold armor, standing beside Nakor, Sho Pi, and a man dressed in the raiment of a monk of Ishap. Calis forced himself away from studying the gem and, rose to greet them.

“Father,” he said, hugging Tomas. Then he shook hands with Nakor.

Nakor said, “This is Dominic. He is the Abbot at Sarth. I thought he would prove useful to have with us.”

Calis nodded.

Tomas asked, “You were engrossed in the gem when we arrived.”

Calis said, “I am seeing things in it, Father.”

Tomas said, “We need to talk.” He glanced at the others and said, “But first I must pay my respects.”

He crossed to the great, recumbent dragon, paused next to the gigantic head, and gently touched it. “Well met, old friend,” he said softly.

Then he turned to the senior of her companions and said, “Is she well?”

The old man bowed slightly and said, “She dreams, and in her dreams she relives a thousand lives, sharing them with the soul who will occupy that great body after her.” He motioned to a young boy, who came to stand before Tomas. “As I do with my replacement.”

Tomas nodded. “Most ancient of races, we have transported you from one doom to another.”

“There is risk,” said the old man, “but there is purpose. We know that much.”

Tomas nodded again and returned to Calis and the others.

Dominic looked past Tomas with wide eyes. “I never would have believed.”

Nakor laughed. “No matter what I see, I never imagine I’ve seen it all. The universe offers endless surprises.”

Calis said, “How is it you all managed to arrive together?”

“Long story,” said Nakor. He produced a Tsurani transportation globe and said, “Not many of these left. Should get some more.”

Calis smiled. “Unfortunately, the rift to Kelewan is on Stardock, and last I looked it’s now firmly in the hands of Kesh.”

“Not so firmly,” said Nakor with a grin.

“What do you mean?” asked Calis.

Nakor shrugged. “Pug asked me to think of something, so I did.”

“What?” asked Tomas.

“I’ll tell you when we survive this coming ordeal and the fate of Stardock has some meaning.”

Tomas said, “Calis, what did you mean about seeing things in the gem?”

Calis looked at his father in surprise, and asked, “Can’t you see them?”

Tomas turned his attention to the Lifestone, an artifact he knew in some ways more intimately than any living being on Midkemia. He let his mind relax and watched the cool green surface, and after a moment saw a pulsing light, faint and hard to apprehend if one tried too hard. After a moment he said, “I see no images.”

“Odd,” said Calis. “They were apparent to me the first few moments I looked at it.”

“What do you see?” asked Nakor.

Calis said, “I don’t know if I have words. But I think I’m seeing the true history of this world.”

Nakor sat on the floor. “Oh, this is most interesting. Please, tell me what you think you see.”

Calis sat, as if to compose his thoughts.

Suddenly Pug and Miranda appeared.

Tomas welcomed his old friend and Miranda, motioning for them to sit.

“What is it?” asked Pug.

Tomas said, “Calis is about to tell us what he sees in the Lifestone.”

Calis glanced to Miranda and to Pug, and for a moment he held the magician’s gaze. Then he smiled. “I’m pleased to see you both again.”

Miranda returned his smile. “As we are to see you.”

Calis said, “I must speak of the Lifestone.”

Nakor turned to Sho Pi and said, “Memorize every word if you want to continue bearing the mantle of disciple.”

“Yes, Master.”

Calis said, “The Lifestone is Midkemia, in the purest form, a reflection of all life that has gone before, is now, or will be, from the dawn until the end of time.”

All fell silent as Calis considered his words.

“At the beginning, there was nothing and then came the universe. Pug and my father bore witness to that creation, as I have heard the story.” He smiled at his father. “Several times.”

“When the universe was born, it was aware, but in a fashion so far beyond what we comprehend that we have no adequate concepts to understand that awareness.”

Nakor grinned. “It is like ants carrying food to their hive, while overhead a dragon sits atop a mountain. The ants have no concept of the dragon.”

Calis said, “More, but that is not an entirely faulty comparison.

“This awareness is more than any of us—all of us together—could comprehend. It is so vast and so time less. . . .” He paused. “I don’t think I can say more about it.

“When Midkemia was formed, it was home to powers, basic forces of nature. Mindless, they were forces that built up and tore down.”

“Rathar and Mythar,” said Tomas. “The Two Blind Gods of Creation.”

“As good a name for those forces as any,” agreed Nakor. Calis said, “Then came a reordering of things. Consciousness arose, and the beings that were mindless became purposeful. It is we who define the gods, in a fashion that makes sense to us, but they are so much more than this.

“The order of the universe is like a gem with many facets, and we see only one, that which reflects the existence of our own world.”

Pug said, “It is shared with other worlds?”

“Oh yes,” said Calis softly. “With all worlds. This is one of the key reasons why what we do here has a profound bearing upon every other world in the cosmos. It is the primal struggle between that which we label good and that which we call evil, and it exists in every corner of creation.”

He turned to look at the others in the great cave and said, “I could speak for hours, so let me distill what I think I have discovered.”

Calis composed his thoughts, then continued. “The Valheru were more than just the first race to live on Midkemia. They were a bridge between immortal and mortal. They were the first experiment, if you will, of the gods.”

“Experiment?” said Pug. “What kind of an experiment?”

“I don’t know,” said Calis. “I can’t even be certain what I’m saying is true, only that it feels true.”

Nakor said, “It’s true.”

All eyes turned toward the little Isalani. He grinned. “It makes sense.”

Pug said, “What makes sense?”

Nakor said, “Has anyone besides me wondered why we think?”

As the question came seemingly from out of the blue, everyone exchanged astonished glances. Pug laughed. “Not recently, no.”

“We think because the gods have given us the power of apprehension,” said Dominic.

Nakor shook his finger at the Abbot. “You know that’s dogma, and you know the gods are as much the creation of mankind as mankind is the creation of the gods.”

Pug asked, “So, then, what is your point?”

“Oh, just wondering,” said Nakor. “I was thinking of that story you told me, about when you and Tomas went to find Macros, and you saw the creation of the universe.”

“And?” asked Tomas.

“Well,” began Nakor, “it seems to me you have to begin at the beginning.”

Pug stared at the little man and burst out laughing. Within seconds everyone was laughing.

“See,” said Nakor, “humor is a property of intelligence.”

“All right, Nakor,” said Miranda, “what are you talking about?”

Nakor said, “Something started it all.”

“Yes,” said Dominic. “There was a primal urge, a creator, something.”

“Suppose,” said Nakor, “it was a self-creation?”

“The universe just decided to awaken one day?” asked Miranda.

Nakor pondered the question a moment. “There is something I think we should always keep in mind: everything we talk about is limited by our own perceptions, our own ability to understand, in short by our very nature.”

“True,” agreed Pug.

“So to say the universe woke up one day is perhaps at one and the same time the most apt and the most incomplete way of putting it,” said Nakor.

Dominic said, “This sort of debate is common in the courts of the church. The exercises in logic and faith can often be frustrating.”

“But I think we have something here few of your brothers have, Abbot,” said Nakor. “Eyewitnesses to creation.”

“If that is what they saw,” said Dominic.

“Ah,” said Nakor and he could barely contain his glee. “We cannot be sure about anything, can we?”

“ ‘What is reality?’ is a common question in those moot courts I spoke of,” said the Abbot.

“Reality is what you bump into in the dark,” said Miranda dryly.

Nakor laughed, then he said, “You’ve talked about this big ball thing blowing up to make the universe, right?”

Pug nodded.

“So, what if
everything
was inside that ball?”

“We assume it was,” said Pug.

“Well, what was outside the ball?”

“We were,” said Pug quickly, “and the Garden and the City Forever.”

“But you come from within that big ball,” said Nakor, and as the others watched, he stood and began to pace, animated by being on the brink of understanding. “I mean, you were born ages into the future from the creation, but from stuff inside the ball, if you see.”

“What about the City Forever?” asked Miranda.

“Maybe it was created far in the future; what do you think?”

“By whom?” asked Pug.

Nakor shrugged. “I don’t know, and for the moment I don’t care. Maybe when you’re a thousand years old you’re the one who makes the City Forever and sends it back to the dawn of time so you and Macros have someplace to sit to watch the universe being born.”

“Baby universes and thousand-year-old magicians,” said Dominic, obviously trying to be patient and losing the attempt.

Nakor held up his hand. “Why not? We know traveling through time is possible. Which brings up, what is time?”

They all glanced at one another and each began to answer, but soon all fell silent. “Time is time,” said Dominic. “It marks the passage of events.”

“No,” said Nakor. “Humans mark the passage of events. Time doesn’t care; time just is. But what is it?” He wore a delighted grin as he answered his own question: “Time is what keeps everything from happening at once.”

Pug’s eyebrows rose. “So in the ball everything was happening at once?”

“And then the universe changed!” said Nakor with glee.

“Why?” asked Miranda.

Nakor shrugged. “Who knows? It just did. Pug, you told me when you found Macros this last time, he had begun to merge with Sarig. Was he Macros or was he Sarig?”

“Both for a short while, but he was still mostly Macros.”

“I wish I could ask him, ‘As you were merging, did you lose your sense of being Macros?’ ” For a
moment Nakor looked genuinely regretful, but then his grin returned as he said, “I think it safe to say that the more you become one with a god, the less you stay you.”

“Then I understand,” said Dominic.

“What?” asked Miranda.

“What this madman is driving at.” The old Abbot put his finger to his head. “Mind. The spirit of the gods, the ‘everything’ he talks about as ‘stuff.’ If everything was occurring at once, before this creation, then everything was everything. No differentiation.”

“Yes!” said Nakor, delighted at the Abbot’s observations. “So, for reasons we will never know, the totality of creation acted to differentiate itself. This ‘birth’ of the universe was a means for the universe . . .” The Abbot’s eyes widened. “It was the universe attempting to become conscious!”

Tomas’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t follow. Humans are conscious, as are other intelligent races, and the gods are conscious, but the universe is . . . it is, that’s all.”

“No,” said Nakor. “Why humans? Why other thinking creatures?”

“I don’t know,” said Pug.

Nakor’s expression turned serious. “Because becoming mortal is the means by which the universe, this ‘stuff’ I talk about, becomes self-conscious, self-aware. Each life is the universe’s experiment, and each of us brings back knowledge to the universe when we die. Macros attempted to become one with a god, and learned that the further you get from mortality, the further you stray from that self-consciousness. Lesser Gods are more detached from ‘self’ than mortals; Greater Gods even more so, I wager.”

Dominic nodded. “The Tear of the Gods allows the Order to communicate with the Greater Gods. It is a very difficult task. We rarely attempt it and when we do, often the communications are incomprehensible.” The old Abbot sighed.

“The Tear is a valuable gift, for it lets us work the magic that proves to those who serve us that Ishap is still living, so we can worship and work toward his return, but the nature of the gods, even that one we worship, is far beyond our ability to know.”

Nakor laughed. “Very well, now if this universe was born the day Macros, Pug, and Tomas were watching, what does that say about the universe?”

“I don’t know,” admitted Pug.

“It’s a baby,” said Nakor.

Pug laughed. He couldn’t help himself. “The universe is several billion years old, by my calculations.”

Nakor shrugged. “That may be a two-year-old universe for all we know. What if it is?”

“What’s the point?” said Miranda.

Tomas said, “Yes. While all this is fascinating, we still have some problems to solve.”

Nakor said, “True, but the more we know about what it is we’re involved with, the more we have a chance of solving those problems.”

“Agreed, but where to begin?”

“I asked earlier, why do we think? I may have some idea.” Nakor paused, then continued, “Suppose for a moment the universe, everything in it, and everything that ever was or will be is linked.”

“We share something in common?” asked Dominic.

“No, more than that; we are all the same.” Looking at Pug and Miranda, Nakor said, “You call
it magic. I call it tricks.” To Dominic he said, “You call it prayer. But it’s all the same thing, and what it is . . .”