torg 01 - Storm Knights (19 page)

"It's dead, Katrina."

"You must order your men to tear the stelae apart, Nicolai. You must do this before the storm begins."

Overhead, the clouds were thick and black. Indeed, the storm would start very soon.

"The Japanese suggested the same course of action, Katrina."

The young woman's face fell. "The Japanese?"

"Yes. His name was Nagoya. He was sent by the Japanese government to help us find the stelae. That's what he called it, a stelae. But you had already found it, so I sent him on his way."

"Beware Nagoya, Nicolai. The image of him I see in your mind frightens me."

She looked like a little girl then, small and vulnerable. Ondarev wanted to reach out and take her in his arms to comfort her. To wipe away her fear as easily as he wiped away her tears. But he could not make his arms respond. Not yet, not now. Not in the shadow of the stelae.

He heard someone approaching. It was one of the soldiers who had been in on the discovery of the object. Ondarev tried to remember his name, but it refused to come to him.

The soldier stopped a few feet away, cautiously keeping distance between himself and the stelae. Behind him, Ondarev saw a sea of wheat, the stalks rippling in the evening breeze.

"What can I do for you, soldier?" Ondarev asked, cursing himself for forgetting the soldier's name. He had always prided himself on being able to recall the names of the men under his command. Why was this one eluding him?

The soldier saluted. "Captain, the science team has

//

As Ondarev watched, four metal blades exploded from the soldier's chest. Blood spurted, and the soldier's sentence was cut off. His eyes widened with surprise, and then they closed. Ondarev thought there should have been a scream of pain or terror. The relative silence made the scene worse somehow.

The soldier collapsed to the ground. Standing in his place was a terrible figure. It was man sized, wearing black leather and chains. Metal wings burst from its back, and metal blades extended from its fingers. Parts of its body were metallic, full of circuitry and dancing electrical pulses. The other parts were gray, ashen. Its skin was rough and resembled dried leather of a quality much below the crisp material it wore.

Ondarev shoved Katrina behind him, while at the same time he drew his pistol from its holster. The creature smiled, and the captain saw that its mouth was filled with sharp teeth. He also noticed, quite objectively, that it had some kind of metal studs protruding from its neck and temples.

In apparent slow motion, Ondarev raised his pistol to fire. But the creature moved faster, slashing out with metal claws still stained by the soldier's blood. The claws caught the pistol on the edge of the barrel. There was a clang of metal on metal, and then the pistol flew from Ondarev's hand.

But the captain refused to wait for the claws to slash again. He leaped forward, smashing into the creature's stomach with as much force as he could muster. The creature staggered, but would not fall back. It grabbed Ondarev by the back of the neck and pulled him down.

Raising his claws to strike, the creature spoke. "You almost won, stormer. If I hadn't decided to check on the stelae, you would have caused a major system crash. That's too bad, isn't it?"

Then Ondarev heard the discharge of a pistol. And another. And another. Three spots of blood appeared on the creature's chest. It looked up in surprise to see who had shot it, then it collapsed in a heap beside the dead soldier.

Ondarev drew in a great gulp of breath. Katrina was standing there, holding his pistol in her hands.

"I fired at its voice, Nicolai," she sobbed. "Can we destroy the stelae now?"

"Yes, Katrina, yes."

He held her then, letting her cry into his shoulder. He looked down at the two dead bodies, and the soldier's name came back to him.

"Rest in peace, Private Dvorak," he whispered, "rest in peace."

57

"Repent!" yelled the robed monk. "Dark days are upon us and a new prophet shall arise to lead us into the light! But you must repent!"

"Earth peasants," muttered Yukira as he pushed through the crowded Paris street. His leather briefcase bounced off a number of the men and women listening to the monk, but most dismissed him with a harsh look or a mumbled word. He didn't care.

Finally he was past the crowd, but he was still blocks from his destination. Yukira hated to be late, but with the primitive modes of transportation available in this cosm, he didn't have any choice. He checked his watch, then double tapped the band. This caused the face of the watch to opaque, then, when it cleared, the digital readout was replaced by a grid with two blinking lights. The yellow light represented Yukira, the red light his destination.

He could cut across the alley up ahead. That would cut blocks off his walk and get him to Elysee Palace slightly faster than his original route. He stopped briefly at a sidewalk cafe to make use of an empty table. He rested his briefcase atop it and snapped the lid open. The machinery did not appear damaged, but he noticed a streak on the chrome logo. With his finger, he wiped the streak from the chrome "K", so that no mark would hinder it from standing out against the red circle it sat upon.

The alley was nothing more than a deserted passage between the back doors of small shops and cafes. Yukira hurried along, letting some of his natural caution lapse. Perhaps that was why he was unprepared when the kitchen boy stepped out of a doorway with a tray of food scraps. Yukira plowed into the boy, and the two, the briefcase, the tray, and the food scraps all landed in a heap on the ground.

Yukira, brushing fruit rinds from his lapel, grabbed the boy roughly and hauled him against the wall.

"Ord!" he screamed at the boy. But, in his anger, he spoke the words in Japanese, so the boy only got the tone of Yukira's vehemence, not the actual meaning. "You dare interfere with a servant of Kanawa? I should let the Inquisitors arrive so that you can learn true fear! But that would not serve my master's purpose."

The boy, confused and frightened, struggled vainly to get free. Yukira, however, had no intention of letting him leave until he learned proper respect for his betters.

"Speak, ord! Beg for your worthless life!"

"You serve your master well, heathen," said a voice from behind Yukira, speaking fluent Japanese. "Bullying an ord in a language he does not understand no doubt accomplishes some great sacrilegious task that is beyond my sensibilities."

The Japanese started to move, but a sharp metal object placed in the small of his back gave him pause.

"You have come to this land to interfere with
my master's
work," the voice continued. "Perhaps you meant to warn the government? Maybe give them the secrets to discovering stelae? No matter. I have found you and I shall save your heathen soul. Tell me, do you repent of your sins?"

"I repent nothing!" Yukira shouted. "I defy you and your master! As an agent of a High Lord, I demand you release me!"

"Very well, I release you," the voice said, burying the sharp metal object into Yukira's spine. Yukira fell forward, sliding off the object and spinning with his last ounce of strength to face his adversary. He spun far enough to see that it was the monk that had inspired the street crowd standing over him, holding a bloody knife. Then he fell into darkness.

"Go, my son," he heard the monk's words follow him into the dark. " Go and sin no more."

58

In another cosm, on another world, Lady Pella Ardi-nay stood upon the battlement of her castle, overlooking the assembled masses of the world of Aysle.

"They are ready, my Lady," said the elven wizard who bowed before her.

"Are they, Delyndun?" Ardinay asked. Her mood was dark, distant, on this, her day of glory. "When we are out of earshot of the masses, do not call me 'Lady'. I am still Lord Angar Uthorion underneath this feminine flesh."

"Of course, Lord Uthorion, forgive my error," De-lyndun said.

"Enough," Ardinay who was Uthorion ordered, "get to the front of the line and drop the maelstrom bridge."

"As you wish, Lord Uthorion."

Uthorion, who wore the body of Ardinay, looked down at the assemblage. All the beings of Aysle under his command were represented. Humans, dwarves, dragons, the demons of the Wild Hunt. Only the giants remained beyond his grasp, and the majority of the elves, who held Ardinay in contempt.

Before the elf mage disappeared down the tower steps, Ardinay who was Uthorion called out one final order.

"Remember, Delyndun," he said through soft, red female lips, "you are to descend the bridge first. I shall not follow until you assure me that
she
is not on this world called Earth."

"But, Lord," Delyndun asked, "does not the Gaunt Man expect you ...?"

"Damn the Gaunt Man! He does not have a prophecy haunting him through eternity!" Uthorion, who wore the body of Ardinay, buried his smooth, beautiful face into his smooth, beautiful hands.

"She has not appeared on any of the worlds we have taken since that day, my master," the elf said, trying to provide comfort with his words.

"Which only means that it might be the next one, or the one after that. In some ways, I hope she is on this world. Then, at least, we can finally be done with prophecies."

"I shall make sure, my Lord."

"Then," Uthorion said, letting his own darkness fill Ardinay's sparkling eyes, "drop the bridge."

Twelve days after the jungle bridge fell to Earth in New York City, thirteen days after a bridge of tormented souls dropped into Borneo, a third bridge descended out of the storm. This was a stonework bridge, formed from colossal blocks of fitted stone. It crashed upon the British Isles, and quickly the reality of Aysle washed down the bridge to fill the area bounded by previously-placed stelae. Suddenly magic was the predominant law of nature, and a wave of bizarre creatures crossed over from the cosm to the newly-created realm of Aysle.

59

Tolwyn paced restlessly back and forth in the small hospital room. The doctors handling Tolwyn's case were reluctant to discharge her from their observation, even though she seemed to be in perfect health, if a bit fatigued. They refused to admit openly that something which they could not explain medically had happened to their patient.

Father Bryce stood in the doorway, watching her short, revealing hospital gown flap as she paced about the room. Her body moved fluidly in the small space available for walking, between bed and wall, between window and closet. She looked to Bryce like a caged lioness who had not yet resigned herself to the fact of her imprisonment, like a lioness waiting for the door of her cage to spring open so that she could batter her keeper and leap over his body to freedom.

When he looked at her eyes, as she turned in his direction after pacing the short length of the room, he knew she was not yet ready to escape this cage. There was confusion in her eyes, and frustration, and anger. She knew she was trapped and caged, but she did not know her keeper or in which direction to leap. Her deeply tanned legs flashed beneath the short, pale-blue material of the hospital gown. His eyes kept looking somewhere else in the room, then returning, almost but not quite involuntarily, to watch the well-defined muscles in Tolwyn's legs bunch, stretch and release as the weight of her body moved from the heel to the ball of each of her long feet. His breath caught in his throat when she turned and the untied, full-length opening down the back of her gown fluttered and exposed her strong, tapering back and the swaying, firmly muscled half-globes of her nethermost cheeks.

His maleness rose within him. He struggled with himself and the way of life he had chosen. The vows he had taken never required him to deny his sexual nature. But they did require that he not act upon it. Since he had not yet renounced those vows, and, perhaps, never would, he used the mental techniques of self-control he had learned in the seminary. Then, slowly, deliberately, he took off the black cloak of his desire and placed it on a sturdy wooden hanger. He straightened its draping folds, brushed a few flakes of dandruff from its richly velvet collar, hung it on the rack in the closet of his weaknesses, and firmly shut the door on that closet.

Still, he looked at Tolwyn's legs, but now with questioning and wonderment. There were scars upon her legs, scars that had not been there yesterday, scars that were old and white and long healed.

"Good morning," he finally said, catching her attention and causing her to stop pacing and stand before the uncurtained window of the room. Through the hospital gown, the morning light backlit and outlined the curves of her body. Bryce moved farther into the room, sitting lightly on the foot of the unmade bed to deliberately change the angle of his vision.

For a moment, she looked as if she didn't know who Bryce was. Then her eyes cleared and she said, "Good morning to you, Christopher Bryce."

"Where are you going in such a hurry, and with such fierce determination?" he joked.

Tolwyn looked lost for an answer to his question, and Bryce, regretting his need to know more about this woman, wished he had not asked it.

"I do not know," she finally answered. While she spoke, her left hand drifted to the night stand and the vase holding the blue and red flower.