Winterlands 4 - Dragonstar (39 page)

The demons had defeated the magic of the wizards by sourcing their power in an alien star.

The answer was to combat them not with strength, but with a thing they did not understand.

The spring day faded, as they wound and rewound their way between the walls of the Maze.

The Moon of Winds stood cold as a bride's pearl in the dimming sky.

Above the hills—visible, as the broken pillars of the city were visible, as the barren, time-scored foundation of the old palace was visible—the Dragonstar flickered, a diamond speck in the deepening blue.

When they came out of the Maze, the Maze itself was no longer to be seen. Only a suggestion of smoke, glowing in the low places of the ground. The ruined city of Prokep stretched around them, as it had that first night, when Corvin had said, I did not think that I had been gone so long.

Around the Henge, the city itself lay motionless as stone. But moonlight glinted, here and there, on crystals: on the tops of the broken pillars, or on the foundation of the palace, or simply laid in the sand where the sand would cover them within days. More than once during the fighting retreat to the Salt Garden, John had glimpsed runes written on stones that had not been here when he'd searched the city three weeks ago.

Jen, he thought, his heart hammering, this had better work.

The night around the Henge flowed with demons, blueshining and hideous, and stank of all the foulness of Hell. That cold, strong hand closed on John's nape again, and he stood still, looking into the ring, feeling the demons gather at his back.

Out of the puddle or ice-chip or whatever it was in the center, a firefly seemed to rise. It danced for a moment among the stones, and tiny as it was, its hot small light picked edges of white fire along the rough rune-scribed menhirs and on Amayon's smiling, boyish face.

Amayon took the talisman jewels from the gnomes—despite his greater powers he, too, had trouble carrying that many material objects—and moved around the ring, scattering them on the earth like a farmer seeding a field. Far away behind him John heard the gray thing singing, an eerie wail like a dying child, though the hand still gripped his neck. Gaw, what if they decide to use my life as one of those they're getting power from? He shifted his grip on his sword. If it comes to it, Ama-yon's the one I'll kill.

There seemed now to be half a dozen fireflies, drifting in the blue dusk within the Henge.

Where the jewels lay scattered, lines of light began to burn in the dust. Charred curves and sigils, fingerlets of fire burning up out of the ground. Threads of greenish lightning snaked over the stones; the air crackled with ozone. Somewhere within the Henge a deep voice called out, a bass echo of the gray thing's thin sobbing, an obscene chuckle mocking primal grief. The two voices merged, separated, and merged again, and white light flashed across the clear sky overhead, and underfoot the earth spoke, a sullen, terrible growling. For a nightmarish instant John had the sickened sense that the ground was about to give way.

The grip on his arms thrust him forward between the stones, and into the Henge.

As when he had stepped through Miss Mab's Sigil of the Door pasted onto the Burning Mirror's black surface, everything changed. Once inside the Henge, John saw how what he'd taken for a chip of ice or glass, or a small puddle in its center, was in fact a pool three or four yards across. Its surface trembled with a constant, shivering agitation, and steam billowed from it, flowing out over the ground and veiling the feet of the stones. How many stones could I count from here? John wondered frivolously, and dismissed the thought at once as something likely to get him killed. Through the steam he saw designs traced on the earth, sigils and power-curves and runes, fantastically intricate. If they made them like Jenny did, with whispered spells and power laid on every mark, they must have been at it for weeks.

Or years.

Or centuries.

In a chair beside the pool Adromelech sat. Gross, gelid, he glowed faintly, like rotting fish. He turned yellow eyes on John and the eyes made John feel cold and sick. They were eyes that cared nothing, that wanted everything, eyes that devoured everything they touched. Demon eyes. Eyes you couldn't look at because if you did, you'd understand things that would cause you to kill yourself later.… John moved his gaze quickly aside. And seeing this, Adromelech smiled, long silver tongue slipping out between dripping teeth.

So you have a sword that will kill, little friend? Amusement deepened in the flat, vile gaze. The smell of the demon was appalling, sewage and carrion and gangrene and carnage, and the demon-stink of burned blood. John knew without being told that what he smelled was the thing's soul. But you know it won't be necessary, don't you? You leave us be, my far-wandering friend, and we'll leave you be. You've done us good service. We are fair.

John clamped his mind shut against the words, And I'm Queen of the May, and said, “I don't give a shovel of mud if you're fair or not. Just get me home and leave us be. That's all I ask.”

And tried very much to sound like the kind of man who'd believe what a demon told him.

Of course. Adromelech's voice in his mind was almost a purr. In the globe of the demon's huge belly John could see the half-digested shards of other wights: a staring eye here, a disembodied mouth screaming and another chewing on some organ that was all that it could reach.

Adromelech stretched out his hand, curiously white and childlike—a little girl's hand. John didn't exactly see the gray thing, but there was something there by the Arch-Wight's throne, something he couldn't look at properly, and a moment later Adromelech held the silver catch-bottle. He chuckled again, gloating, and John thought he'd suffocate, wondering if Adromelech guessed the nature of the trap. But the Arch-Wight stroked and kissed the silver bottle, wrapping his long tongue around it while Amayon prostrated himself at Adrom-elech's feet, kissing and licking and sucking, half-hidden by the drifting smoke.

Outside the Henge, silent lightning flashed in the empty sky. Though John could have sworn it had been the shadow thing chanting, now that the creature was inside the ring with him he could still hear its voice outside, calling down power, calling on the lightning, on the Dragonstar. Calling on the full moon and the deaths of those whose souls were locked in the final instant of agony within the talisman jewels. Hothwais of death, he thought, and saw how the jewels glowed on the ground outside, fire within them brightening and dimming in time to the cold far-off chanting voice. No wonder they started with the magic of the gnomes. Still delightedly caressing the catch-bottle, Adromelech began to chant again as well, a clammy bass that spoke like the rumblings in the earth.

Things were coming out of the pool. Curling silver things in glass shells that broke like eggs as the demons within them grew and uncoiled. Things that mutated in shape and in size, tentacled and rubbery, others like glistening lizards. Some floated in the air, blown up like bladders: grinning mouths yammering unheard random words, demon eyes. John glanced behind him and backed as close to the stones as he could, fighting the urge to bolt. In the moment that the Henge was broken, he thought, they would have power, over his body and possibly his mind as well. And he'd better not draw attention to himself one moment before they were completely occupied with other things.

Adromelech laughed in triumph. There were things outside the Henge now as well, glistening half-visible in the twilight, only half material. Grinning things, with eyes that shone like red mirrors. Human things holding jewels in their hands, and each jewel screamed and cried for pity with desperate tiny voices. Overhead, the Moon of Winds climbed to mid-heaven, and the Dragonstar's twin tails whipped and flickered in the dimming sky. The whole world smelled of scalded blood.

The sigils underfoot began to burn.

John stepped off the marks—it was difficult to find a clear space—and watched the tongues of fire dart from the talisman gems and run up and down those intricate lines. White light stabbed up from the pool, and Adromelech laughed again and raised his hands in triumph.

The heat inside the Henge coalesced, the air at flamingpoint, like being bound to the stake again. Lines of ghostly fire crawled up the stones, sigils burning into the rock, as if brands were pressed on them from the inside, fire eating outward from the core. Half-suffocated, John could see Folcalor's demons outside, though, pressing against the invisible bounds. Shrieking cacophony, and spells of malice ready to pop like a rupturing blister, to pour poison inward and outward. Jewels glittered in the demon hands: stolen souls. Stolen deaths.

Another deep voice chanted, taking up the time of Adrom-elech's and the gray wight's. A flash of fire, and John saw between two of the stones a mirror with an iron frame, the black enamel of its surface cracked across and across and silver light pouring out of it and surrounding its conqueror in a halo of iridescent dark. Goffyer the gnome mage, arms outflung and Folcalor's demon grin transforming his wrinkled face. Power flashed around him like whirling knives.

On the edge of the world, the Dragonstar glimmered, a faroff mirror reflecting alien magic and alien hate.

Adromelech threw up his arms and cried out, calling the Dragonstar by its true name: the name it knew itself by, among all the true names of the stars.

With a searing crash the tallest of the standing stones exploded, red-hot fragments of rock spraying like bullets through the Henge. John ducked, sword still in hand, as burning shards tore his face and clothing. Closer to him another stone burst, and another. A column of light, solid as alien rock, burst from the pool and fire rushed into the Henge from outside, demons howling, flame searing up from the ground.

It was time to run for it, and John ran. He knew he'd have only minutes, maybe only seconds, before the demons had their first flush of greedy joy at tearing one another and turned to attack a human. He ducked between two stones as they went cherry-red with heat; they exploded behind him, the shock flinging him forward on his face. He scrambled to his hands and knees, caught up his sword, made for the point in the ring where it was possible to get closest at sunset.

And Jenny was there. She had run up in the very wake of the demons and was now on her knees, huge swoops of her arm sketching a gate-sigil in red chalk on the ground. A silver shape struck at her from the air, and John slashed at it, the scream as it shredded away into fire making the demons still swirling around the outside of the Henge turn, aghast, then flee. But few noticed, for between the red-glowing stones John could see Folcalor like a lean silver-green tiger, shedding Goffyer's body as Adromelech's spells exploded it, plunging through the chaos of struggling shadows, plunging straight toward Adromelech.

Jenny scrambled to her feet, looked around—stood still and looked around, and John knew she was looking for him. With what was about to happen, he thought, with what was already going on inside the Henge, she was standing still and looking for him.

She yelled, “John!” and they grabbed hands like two children, plunged away from the stone circle as fast as they could run. Nauseating pain gripped and snapped at him, ripples and eddies of it, and of searing heat, the un-Limited side slips of the demon spells. Magic spread out through Prokep, toxic magic, madness and hate that could cover the world if unchecked. Handfast, John and Jenny plunged away from the Henge, toward the broken shaft of a pillar on whose top gleamed an ice-white crystal, that caught the light of the Dragonstar.

Beyond that pillar they turned and looked back, in time to see Folcalor fall upon Adromelech in a windmill of adamant claws. The Arch-wight flung up his girlish little arms, cried something that John knew to be Folcalor's true name, the name Caradoc had whispered to the silver bottle.…

And both were gone.

Jenny cried, “Now!” her voice like silver lightning, slicing the night.

At the top of the pillar, the crystal flashed. On a promontory of a broken wall, a second crystal caught the glancing reflection, and on a knee of half-buried stone, a third. In and around the Ring the demons were crying out, shrieking, some still tearing at one another and others casting about, seeking their lords. Around the outer perimeter of the burning stones, crystal to crystal, the icy light flashed, silver light licking across the intervening space, until the Henge was formed again, irregularly shaped and about a hundred yards beyond the original ring: crystals set in rune-written rock, an impassable, burning net.

The whining vibration of ether-plasma stabbed through John's skull.

“Dear gods, you didn't tell me about that!” gasped Jenny, pressing a hand to her head.

“Sorry, love.” John wiped the blood from his cheek with the back of his wrist, letting go of neither his sword nor her hand. He was trembling, sweat running down his face and so dizzy, he struggled only to stay on his feet, but could not take his eyes off the chaos within the Henge.

Out of the red-chalked Gate that Jenny had drawn in the ground, Shining Things were coming. Drawn by the smell of demons, they rose from the rock, and from the Hell beyond that rock: flashing wheels of wings and eyes, which rolled about among the shattered menhirs, devouring whatever they found. John saw the gray shadow-creature flee wailing, to be caught by a creature like a huge glowing slug, of the kind that had once nearly killed Amayon when the demon was guiding him through that particular Hell. Saw it drawn slowly into the slug's round, dark mouth. Heard it scream, with the panic agony of the dying, and it died slowly and hard. Smaller things, like burning hoops scattering lightning, darted in packs, encircling groups of demons and shredding them with claws of flame. Demons fled toward the smoking pool of the Hell-gate, but the Shining Things cut them off from it, pitiless and cold. Others tried to escape the Henge and into the outer world, but fell back crying from the burn of the ether, whose Otherworld nature they did not know or understand, and the Shining Things devoured them.

Jenny's hand closed tight over John's.