White Devil Mountain (14 page)

Lilia looked up at the sky again and clucked her tongue. “Mark my words, I’ll be relaxing with a long, hot shower before this is over.”

Now the refuge was her only hope. Taking the longsword from her back to support her weight, she barely managed to get up on her left leg. Even advancing a single step sent acute pain shooting through her right foot. Apparently she’d broken bones in her ankle and knee. Still, Lilia had to grin.

“That’ll clear away the cobwebs!”

In the snow, her body heat would soon be drained and sleepiness would beset her. When that happened, pain would undoubtedly be the best way to keep herself awake.

But things didn’t go at all as planned. Search as she might, she was unable to locate the refuge. Lilia, covered in white, spent an hour in her fruitless quest, and now she collapsed in the snow.

“Not done yet!”

At this rate, there was no advantage in her having abandoned the rest of the group. Every time she moved her right foot a dull pain spread through her, making it hard to get around. Her consciousness suddenly started slipping away. Quickly raising the sword she was using as a cane, she drew the blade from its sheath and set it down to her right. She took a backhanded hold of the hilt with her right hand. Then, rolling up her left sleeve, she bit into her bicep. About ten seconds later, she felt something warm spreading through her mouth, which had been frozen.

Lilia sucked down her own rapidly cooling blood. The blood that poured out without end seemed hot. While she was focused solely on drinking, something moved down by her feet. Her eyes shifted to catch it. It was the still-compacted refuge. Before she could feel joy at this, Lilia was chilled in another sense. There was someone just beyond the refuge. Someone whose very presence could keep even a Huntress honed by countless battles from moving a muscle.

“That must be delicious. What could be better than your own blood?” The low, solemn voice seemed to ricochet off the snow and the wind.

Yeah, it’s really good
, Lilia replied in her mind, pinning all her hopes on her right hand. Taking the blade she’d set down to her right, she made a backhanded slash. It mowed right through her opponent’s torso. But the movement stopped at his waist. Although it came to rest softly, the blade wouldn’t move, as if it were embedded in a rock wall. A rock wall that seemed to boast an infinite mass.

“You nicked my finger a little,” the voice said.

It took some time for her to comprehend what that meant. “You stopped my sword—with your fingers?”

“Quite impressive talent you have. As child’s play goes, that is,” the voice continued. Disturbingly, it didn’t seem to be mocking her. It continued, “That settles it!”

Before Lilia could even frame the question
Settles what?
a black figure filled her entire field of view.

How the Demon Castle Came to Be

chapter 6

I

L
ooks like it’s over, more or less. They’re putting the tents up now. With two fellas there, they should be fine. One of ’em is wounded, though.”

The hoarse voice was slammed by the gusting snow. Lowering the left hand he’d held out toward the rocky ridge, D turned in a different direction, looking down at the sarcophagus at his feet. He was inside the aircraft, and the ceiling and side of the fuselage had been torn apart. A chain lay coiled like a snake, and a thick lid that looked to weigh about a ton had been knocked casually to the floor.

“Well, that Duke Gilzen sure is one hell of a Nobleman. More than ten thousand years trapped in this coffin, buried under rocks and dirt, and there isn’t even the smallest trace of malice or indignation. He must’ve been too busy to hold onto such things. Heh heh, a little break—some Relaxation Time, eh?”

A great many murals and ancient writings documented examples of Nobles who’d closed themselves away in coffins to escape from the world.
Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
As if infatuated with these words, many Nobles bid adieu to the moonlight and masquerades, then sealed themselves away in the earth. Though the reason was unknown, in two places writings were discovered that described a weariness with the material world. This is where the concept of Relaxation Time originated. Later excavation discovered that most of those who’d abandoned this world had never returned to the surface again, having taken their only way out of eternal life under the cold, dark soil. All that remained in the bottom of the coffin was opulent clothing and accessories, a pile of dust—and a bloodstained stake of ash. What had they reflected on in their coffins, and what had they felt?

Of course, Duke Gilzen hadn’t returned to the soil of his own accord. His hatred and frustration could well be imagined. And yet the hoarse voice said there were none.

“Hate distilled to its purest form,” D said softly. “After shattering the bounds of comprehension, it becomes a void and no trace of it can be detected. But that void takes the impurities from any and every emotion.”

“Do you know anyone whose body burns with pure hatred?”

Nothing from the Hunter.

“It would probably literally burn out your body. Does Gilzen still have a human form or not? Hell, the mountain folk he bit came back to life in broad daylight. D, there’s no record of Gilzen having that ability. Maddened by hate in his coffin, he must’ve developed that power. If left unchecked, the vampires he creates could rise from their graves in daylight and set off like an army in search of human lifeblood. Who could stop demons of darkness unfazed by the sun?”

The voice stopped there for a moment. It had to calm itself from its agitated state. Soon it continued, “Not you. You don’t measure up to Gilzen yet. The only thing in our favor is that your power increases day by day, but still you’re only a match for what he was ten thousand years ago. You can’t compare to what he is now. You can’t fight him!”

“My job is to rescue survivors, locate the cargo they carried—and dispose of its contents.”

“And that’s why I’m telling you
not right now
. You’ll get your chance, guaranteed. You just have to bide your time.”

“His castle was on this mountain. The aircraft crash-landed here. That’s no coincidence. A tremendous will is working toward Gilzen’s revival. If he gets into his castle, it’ll be the end of the world.”

“A land of endless night, you mean? But . . .”

“I’m going.”

Before he’d even spoken, D was in motion. The instant he stepped from the fuselage, gusting snow enveloped him, but since the aircraft itself was riddled with holes it wasn’t much of a change.

“Where are we headed?”

“To search for his castle. It should be up there.”

“What about the others? Oh, that’s right, you said they’d be better off not going. Took all that into consideration when you left them behind, didn’t you? But I didn’t think Gilzen would come into this.”

As if to say all that would depend on their fate, D headed forward without even a glance back at the rocky ridge. The rock shelf snaked along the mountainside.

“Looks like the poor crew was out of luck,” the hoarse voice said. Its tone wasn’t exactly maudlin. Luck was luck—nothing to get emotional about there. “There were some bloodstains, but nothing that they couldn’t survive. No doubt Gilzen carried ’em off when he got out of his coffin. With some repairs, the bird might fly again. They weren’t quite as lucky as it was.”

After following the line of the mountain for fifty yards from the aircraft, D halted. The rock shelf abruptly ended there. His beautiful, if not glowing, visage looked up at a rockface that was nearly vertical. Though enough to daunt the average person or even a professional climber, the mountainside didn’t seem a serious obstacle to this young man. The only reason he looked up was to determine the most direct route for his ascent, and less than five seconds later D was reaching for a protrusion from the rockface with one hand. Gliding up the wall of rock like a heavenly reptile, the figure seemed to take the blustering wind and snow like a lovely serenade to his beauty.

“He comes, the one from earlier,” a wrinkled, withered old voice said. Though the voice seemed to be that of an old man, the face and form that rose from the faint gloom were those of a crone. Dressed in what appeared to be dozens of layers of cloth, each stitched together from multicolored scraps, she resembled the sort of vagabond women that could often be found in Frontier villages. But she didn’t have a vagabond’s eyes. Or a vagabond’s nose. Or even a vagabond’s mouth. All of these features she lacked. The face crowned with hair that frizzed out like broken springs had nothing save a single blood-red eyeball set in the middle of it.

“What do you make of this?” a different voice inquired.

Darkness loomed by the crone’s side. And not in the sense of a person merely dressed in black. The square room was split down the middle, with the old woman in the light half and the other half filled with darkness. Where the crone was, white held sway. Here and there were glimpses of a lustrous sheen in what seemed to be an unusually cramped room, but then behind the crone it seemed to go on forever—spreading to the very ends of the earth, as it were—and before long the lustrous things that’d seemed to prove how tight the quarters were had changed their positions, so that the space bounding the old woman looked to be infinite. Where was this place? And who was it that lurked in the darkness?

“He is a fearsome opponent,” the crone replied. Her gray complexion turned paler still. “At present, his highness the duke is stronger, but even this old woman can’t say if such will be the case tomorrow.”

“Do you mean to say he might become something greater than me?”

There was no reply.

“Before being interred in the cold, dark earth, I heard something. A success had been born to
him
, they said. I think this one can be none other than that success. The shot that one got off—that worthless piece of lead shook me with bone-breaking force.” The voice halted. When it rang out again, it held an unexpected feeling— remorse. “I’m afraid I must ask you to die again after all, Sunya.”

“As you wish,” the crone replied joyously, bowing. Tears glistened in her eye. “Ten thousand years ago I lost this life along with you, milord, but I was raised sooner than any other. That is enough to satisfy this old woman. To perish once more is nothing to me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why should you apologize to the likes of me? Tell that to every last living thing as they all meet their ends by your hand. That, an eternal curse on an entire planet, should be sung of you, and you shall be showered with praise from the hereafter.”

Her voice rose and dipped, a paean of interchanging gentleness and fervor.

The crone didn’t wait for the nothingness that would follow. From garments that resembled an accumulation of resplendent trash there appeared an arm like a withered tree. In her fist she gripped a slender dagger. Her other hand appeared, joining the first, and the crone used them to plunge the dagger into her own heart. A second later her body exploded into a hundred billion drops of blood. The fog of blood eddied.

At that point an arm appeared from the depths of the darkness. Sheathed in a long glove, it was stained with blood up to its black sleeve, but it held what looked for all the world like a single stone key. Extending the key into empty space, it was instantly shrouded in vermilion gauze.

“A baptism of blood, so that the castle may be restored.”

The words came in the voice of the crone.

As if in response, from somewhere that could’ve been either quite distant or very close, there resounded a strident clank of hard objects meshing together.