“That’s hardly time enough . . . and he’s still bleeding from this cut in his throat. I ought to stop the bleeding at least.” The old woman’s hands were gentle as she pressed a folded cloth to my face.
“They don’t want the rai-kirah to have time to recover in between. They want to beat down the cursed demon. Destroy it.”
“Well, I hope they get it done this time. Master Seyonne was a kind man. A good man. The young Wardens had such strange tales of their experiences. Tell me, Kafydda, what will happen if they cannot get the demon out of him?”
“We’ll have to kill him. The Queen knows the law.” Kafydda—Fiona. My watchdog was still watching.
The second time I came to awareness in the cave, I knew where I was. Denas had taken the liberty of making me a dragon again. He seemed to have the freedom to do as he willed with my shape while my soul was being manipulated by Ezzarian sorcery.
“ . . . Hyssad! Begone! It is not yours . . . and it will not survive this day.” The last echoes of the challenge still echoed from the rocks. The hateful words drew me inexorably toward the mouth of the cave. I understood well why the demons despised them so. But I would have gone out anyway. The challenger was Merryt.
Fury and power surged in my veins. There was only one thing I needed to know before I began. “How much time do we need?”
Some have crossed. Many have not. There are still a number of hours remaining to this night.
“And Vyx?”
I cannot tell. To make this passage fast and secret as he asked, he has to force the legion from its hosts sooner than they would like. For many, this is their first experience of life since the dark times, so they’re likely hard to dislodge. The
pandye gash
have put up some kind of barrier, and I don’t know if any more will be able to pass the gateway. Merryt must not get through until Vyx tells us the fortress is secure. You should kill the vile ylad.
But if I killed Merryt right away, Ysanne would believe that I—Seyonne—was unsalvageable. She would kill me and be free to reinforce the blockade. Until the demons passed through the gate or until I was sure that they couldn’t, I had to hold. It might not work, but it was all I could do. “I’ll hold him,” I said. And then I would kill him.
I couldn’t see Merryt when I emerged from the cave. Likely Tegyr had told him about the dragon form, and he was waiting to see what shape I would choose. As before, I reverted to my own shape. I knew more about fighting in my own body, and I really had no desire to roast Merryt . . . not right away at least. We needed to have a nice long chase. I didn’t want to discourage him, lest he decide to leave me and go on about his business.
“Ah, the abomination.” Merryt stood atop the promontory, looking down on me with such hatred as I had never felt in all my demon combats. “How does it feel to be on the wrong side of this battle? To hear the words and know that the chants and rituals are all aimed at you? And you, Denas, to know that you will remain trapped in this human flesh . . . until I kill it, and you disappear into the void. There is no afterlife for a demon.” He jumped down in front of me, landing lightly on the balls of his feet, as if he were twenty-seven instead of three hundred and seventy years old. He twirled the Warden’s knife in his fingers. “Tell me, abomination, how did you do it?”
“Do what?” I approached carefully, ready for any treachery, choosing a springy, fine-edged blade for my weapon.
“How did you lay the filthy spell to keep me out?”
“Spell?” I expected to hear more of his ranting, but without another word, he pounced, knocking me off balance with a ferocious attack, followed by a boot in the chest, then spinning around with a dagger blade slashing at my throat. I caught his arm and was tempted to break it in my surprise, but instead I flipped him onto his back and kicked him over the break in the slope, letting him slide and bump to a stop before coming on him again. No rushing. And no more distractions. This was not a child.
His weapon had bounced out of his hand. I kicked it toward him. “I’m not finished with you yet,” I said. Warily I stepped close to where the Ezzarian lay on his back.
With remarkable quickness, he scrambled to his feet and laid into me, the knife changed to a broadsword. “Nor am I finished with you, demon. You will tell me what I want to know if I have to carve your polluted flesh into ribbons.”
We ranged all over that rocky knob, then took our duel down into the dry riverbed and traversed the length of it. He was good. Better than I had expected. He wanted me dead, but only after he had mastered me. I was better. I just couldn’t afford to show it. I had to keep him believing he could win. Yet if we went too long, it might not matter who was better. I hoped Vyx was getting about his business smartly. It had been a very long two days.
Merryt did not speak, save for his constant mouthings that I had set some spell and he needed the word to break it. I couldn’t imagine what he wanted. He could not mean the gateway. Until the first light of dawn, it lay open to any who walked through it.
Once, Merryt lost his weapon and took off running. But moments later, as I searched for him, trying to decide how to get him armed again, he jumped down on my back laughing merrily and came near slicing off one of my wings. He had brought more than one Warden’s knife. The second time he lost a weapon, I knew to be careful, and indeed, he came up with a third.
We had been at it for nearly an hour when my left thigh seized with a cramp. I stirred up a cloud of ash with my wings, then used the cover to slip down into a thick stand of burned trees. Flattening my back against a charred trunk, I stretched out the cramp and forced my hard breathing shallow so as not to inhale too much of the choking dust. Merryt was somewhere to my left and up. I could hear him coughing. I’d left a gash in one of his legs, and it looked like he’d torn something in his left shoulder. Neither injury was debilitating. Just painful enough to make him angry. He had left a shallow cut across the middle of my back. Not serious, but it kept breaking open every time I moved, and there was no way to bind it up. I bent over and leaned my hands on my knees. I was getting tired. Well, so was Merryt.
“Where are you, demon?” he called, still coughing. “The blood on my sword is getting dry. I need to freshen it. But first . . . perhaps I need a different weapon . . . Aife!”
I started up the opposite slope, planning to come around behind him, but as I did so the sky dimmed from gray to black, as if the torch of day had been snuffed out.
I heard him running for the portal, and in less time than a gnat’s breath, the ground crumbled beneath my feet, and my belly heaved with the now familiar nausea of nothingness.
Wake up, Exile. Curse it all, will you wake up? Someone is already in the cave, and I didn’t have time to change your form.
My head felt like new-forged iron: pulsing, hammered, hot, and soft. I was trying to figure out who was working so hard at waking me, when I glimpsed a flash of silver in the darkness, and my training saved my life. I could not consciously have come up with the plan to roll out of the way and bring an arm around like a battering ram to take out my attacker. I connected with a body, but I couldn’t see where it had landed or what was its condition, so I backed away and hit a stone wall. Ash and soot sprinkled on my head like dry rain. I was back in that other place again . . . inside my own soul . . . mind . . . whatever was the truth of the landscape the Aife wove.
I struggled to remember what had happened since Merryt ran for the portal, but could come up with nothing. Sickness. Falling. I felt the back of my shirt and found it wet with blood. My leg still ached from my cramp. The bruises from my battle with Merryt were still fresh. I had not regenerated. Ysanne must not have shut down the portal as she had after Tegyr, Emrys, and Drych had gone back. To hold the portal open between battles was tiring for the Aife, but worse for me. I felt like I had rolled down a mountain in an avalanche. The toll of the long days and nights, the sorcery I had worked, the combat, the fear of my change . . . all of it dogged my feet like iron shackles.
Another flash of silver. I dodged it and ran outside the cave. It was Drych who came after me, his face still serious . . . and far too fresh and rested for my taste. How long was this taking? For the first time in forever, I thought of Aleksander. How in the name of sense was I going to get to him in time? If I was fighting here too long . . . captive . . . he would think I had betrayed him again.
I had little time to worry about it. At least three Wardens were present. Maybe more. Perhaps the Ezzarians had sensed the demons slipping past their barrier and realized that they needed to be done with me. Perhaps they guessed that I was reaching the end of my endurance. Although the Aife could not see what occurred on the battleground, she could sense the changes in the Wardens and the demon. If Ysanne was still the Aife—and of course she was, for only Ysanne was skilled enough to bring more than one Warden at a time beyond a portal—she would read every change in me as an author reads his own book.
I took to the air to escape Drych and surveyed the desolation until I caught sight of Merryt. I had to kill him before I got too tired. Merryt and Tegyr were together, creeping through a region thick with charred trees that backed up to a sheer cliff. I touched earth and took them on.
Merryt still thought to gain his prize. After a brief flurry, I misjudged the angle of the cliff and got myself trapped in a wide, angular notch. With only one opponent, I would have been out quickly. But Merryt pressed me backward, while Tegyr guarded his left flank and prevented my slipping past. “The word, devil,” growled Merryt, grinning with such evil that I kept glancing over my shoulder. “Tell me the word or you will pay a price you’ve not yet counted.”
“I have no word to give you, save the tally of your faults, Merryt—murderer, thief, violator.”
“Perhaps I can prime your memory,” he said. “Here, boy, let’s switch sides. I want to test his strong side.” Merryt retreated a few steps so Tegyr could pass in front of him, but before the youth could take up his position, Merryt grabbed the startled young Warden and put a blade to his throat. “The word, devil. Give me the spell to open the gateway or I’ll carve a hole in this young neck.”
Stunned, horrified, I scanned Merryt’s face to find some evidence that he was bluffing, even as my feet crept forward ever so slightly to get within range of a knife throw. “There is no—”
Before I could so much as get out my protest, Merryt left a gaping bloody gash across Tegyr’s throat and shoved the tall young body to the ground. “I’ll have the word. You’ll not keep me from my destiny.”
“Murdering bastard!” I went after him with everything I had left, anger and indignation giving new life to my sword arm. Blow after blow I laid on him, blood madness blurring my vision and leaving me heedless of my own safety and good sense. Before a quarter hour more, I had him running for his life . . . exactly the wrong thing to do, for he ran straight to the top of a barren hill—where he found Nestayo, a cocky youth who could not have been fighting for a month.
“Nestayo! Keep away from him,” I yelled when I saw Merryt wrap his arm paternally around the unsuspecting young Warden’s shoulder. The knife was in position before Nestayo could turn to see me. “Verdonne’s child, Merryt, don’t do it.”
“Then tell me the word,” he yelled down from his hilltop. “You’ve sealed the gateway to human flesh, and I
will
pass. I will free the Nameless God to take his vengeance on those who have imprisoned him since time’s beginning. I will do it. Not you. Not Vyx. Not—”
“There is no word, Merryt.” I flew to the hilltop and touched earth only a few paces from him. “No spell. The gateway’s open. Gods of night, let this boy go. He’s done noth—”
“You lie, demon.” And Nestayo, too, was dead, his blood soaking the gray ash.
Beside myself with helpless fury, I would have slain Merryt then. But no sooner had Nestayo fallen, than Drych came running up the far side of the hill and caught sight of Nestayo’s body and me hacking at a staggering Merryt. “Keep away,” I screamed. “This wretch has murdered the others. For your life, Drych, for everything, stay away from him.”
My moment’s distraction had Merryt scrambling down into a dry gully that split the hillside. He was bleeding from wounds in his belly and a bone-deep laceration in his leg, off balance, reeling, his flat face dark with rage. I jumped down the steep slope, sliding and skidding on the gravel, ready to meet him at the bottom to finish him. One blow and I would rid the world of his evil. But Drych took a long leap and landed on his fresher legs between Merryt and me, his sword puncturing the flesh between my ribs before he had fairly landed. I pulled away quickly. For a moment I thought my lung was pierced. I tried to shape the wind to take me upward, so I could pounce on the squirming, growling Merryt from the other side; but Drych was too close, his dark eyes blazing and his sword hammering at me with fury. “Murdering demon!” he swore. “You’ve killed them all.”
The stubborn boy wouldn’t budge, so I had to push him back. My arms were like lead. My pierced side was burning. And then came an explosion of cold fire in my back as a spear point buried itself just beside my spine.
“We’ll die together, devil,” panted the fallen Merryt, hatred boiling from him like the blood from his mouth.
I backed away from the two of them, stumbling, trying to stay on my feet as I reached over my shoulder and around my side to reach the spear. Threatening to rip its own bloody way out, it was doing more damage every second. Drych looked from one to the other of us, evidently trying to decide whether to finish me or help the other Warden. “Keep away from him,” I said, grunting as I wrenched the steel point from my back and felt a river of blood wash down my back. “In the name of all the gods, believe me, Drych. He’s killed your friends and mine. For nothing. Nothing.” I tried to raise my sword again, but could not lift it.