Healed by Hope (23 page)

64

ONCE THEY SCRAMBLED free of the hole, it wasn’t difficult for Torg and Laylah to find Vedana’s trail. The air stank of her, and there were droplets of crimson poison on the ice that were as gruesome as a sprinkling of blood. Together they marched toward the southeast in search of a quarry that to this point had evaded everyone, including Invictus.

As dawn swept over the frigid wastes, they found Vedana atop the mammoth. Torg felt an instant surge of hatred, and he grasped the tang of the Silver Sword and drew the deadly weapon from its scabbard. Laylah held Obhasa like a torch. They stood motionless and watched the demon sleep. She snored as loudly as Ugga once had.

“She’s different,” Laylah finally whispered. “Do you sense it?”

“She’s alive,” Torg said. “But does that make her less dangerous? Or more?”

“I’m not sure. But I believe it gives us at least one advantage over her that we previously lacked.”

“Tell me.”

Laylah smiled wickedly. “She can’t vanish quite so easily.”

Torg nodded. Still whispering, he said, “Sister Tathagata, if she were here now, would counsel both of us to walk away. The High Nun would say, ‘Violence begets violence. This is the law . . . immutable.’ The snow giants chant this in their communions. What say you, Laylah? Will you walk away?”

“I love you,
Torgon
—now and for many lifetimes to come. You are my king, and it would bring me nothing but pleasure to follow your every command. But if you ordered me to walk away now, I would defy you. The demon is alive. This must not be permitted.”

Torg’s smile was wickeder than hers. “Quoting a friend of mine, ‘Violence begets violence, but sometimes it is an answer, nonetheless.’”

Torg said these last words louder than a whisper, and it was enough to cause Vedana to stir. Dawn was now in full flame, and when the demon lifted her head, Torg could see that her scraggly hair and wrinkled face were caked with dried blood. It was hideous.

“Who’s there?” Vedana said groggily. Then she brushed gore from her eyes and repeated,
“Who’s there?”

Laylah spoke first. “It’s your granddaughter.”

“And the son of the man you murdered.”

Vedana gasped but then cackled. “Speak more plainly! I have had thousands of
granddaughters
. And countless men are fatherless because of me.”

“We speak how we please,” Torg said. “It is you who must do as you are told.”

At this, Vedana rose atop the ruined mammoth, her eyes suddenly aglow.

“You’ve always been full of yourself, Death-Knower. So very proud. But as you so like to say, you are not my match.”

“We shall see what we shall see,” Torg and Laylah said in unison.

“Isn’t that sweet?” the demon taunted. “You’re so in love, you can read each other’s thoughts.”

“Right now,” Laylah said, “we are
in hate
, not love. We hate you. And we have come to destroy you.”

Vedana cackled again, then coughed and spit up a gob of hairy flesh. “Uggh,” she said. “That’s gross.” Then she continued, “Destroy me? Many have tried, all have failed. What makes the two of you so special?”

“
Mayam vo niyati
(We are your doom),” Torg said.

The demon seemed to consider this. “You know . . . I could just fly away. It’s not like you could catch me. But I’m in the mood for fun. And with the two of you out of the way, who else would be left to oppose me?”

“Flee or fight,” Torg said. “It matters naught. One way or the other, we will hunt you down.”

“Ooooh . . . bold words from such a silly little boy. You want to play?”

Then the demon bent over and appeared to dissolve. A moment later, she was gone. Torg and Laylah looked in all directions but could find no signs of her.

“Can she still enter her realm?” Laylah said warily.

“I do not believe that she can,” Torg said. “She is here somewhere. But she has retained the ability to shape-shift, which is a high power.”

As if in response to his words, the carcass of the mammoth came disturbingly to life, rocking several times on its side before rising to a kneeling position and then standing. The beast was huge, and its eyes glowed crimson. One of its tusks had been snapped in two.

“Yes, we want to play,” Torg whispered. The Silver Sword was cold, but that made it no less dangerous. In Laylah’s hands, Obhasa glowed like a spire of lava.

From the ruined tusk a flare of fiery poison erupted. Torg noted that it was directed at Laylah. The demon saw her as the more dangerous of the two and desired to eliminate her first. Torg felt a twinge of pride. Laylah deserved this kind of respect, even if from a creature of such evil.

From Obhasa came a countering blast that broadened and flattened. The red fire was cast harmlessly aside. The mammoth trumpeted, as if enraged.

But Laylah wasn’t through. She thrust Obhasa forward and unleashed a searing bolt of blue-white energy, striking the beast on the top of its gigantic skull. Hair and flesh splashed outward, spinning grotesquely in the air. The mammoth trumpeted again.

By then, Torg was climbing up the beast’s side, using its mottled hair like a rope ladder. Once atop its bulging spine, he swept the Silver Sword down in a blurred arc, hacking through hide and bone in one mighty stroke.

The second injury, combined with the first, proved fatal, and the mammoth sagged and then collapsed. Torg leapt easily aside, flicking steaming blood off the two-edged blade. Laylah appeared next to him, her blue-gray eyes ablaze.

“Too easy,” she said.

“Much too easy.”

Though the mammoth’s death throes had already subsided, a portion of its thick hide seemed to bloat and then bubble.

Vedana burst from the creature’s side with a howling screech. The demon could not have been more disgusting if she had bathed in a pool of gore. She shook her head wildly, flicking red droplets from her hair. Then she glared down at Torg and Laylah, her eyes as menacing as a rabid beast’s.

“I . . . didn’t . . . like . . . that
.
”

“And you think we care?” Laylah said.

Slowly Vedana dropped her head back so that her wrinkled face was aimed skyward. Then she let out a bizarre screech riddled with growls, moans, and cackles. This spooked even Torg, and he took a step back, noticing in his peripheral vision that Laylah had done the same.

When Vedana brought her head forward, her appearance had changed—for the worse. Now she bore the hideous face of a Warlish witch in her ugly state. Her eye sockets were empty, her cheeks hollow, her mouth filled with jagged teeth. When she smiled, she resembled the most horrid nightmare of any child’s dreams.

But Torg and Laylah were not children, and this time they held their ground.

“You will care before I am through,” Vedana said. Then she added, “It’s two against one, but not for long. Do you think that I don’t have friends? While I slept, they came to me and said hello. Just because I’m changed doesn’t mean that I’m forsaken.”

Now the sun had risen far enough to cast a blinding light over the frozen wastes. The air was dry and cold, and there was little wind. Torg and Laylah had walked a great distance the previous night and left the crater far behind, and now the ice-packed ground was flat for as far as they could see. Coming toward them across the plain were several score white figures, so perfectly camouflaged that at first they were virtually invisible. But as they grew near, Torg could make them out plainly enough.

White wolves. A hundred, at least.

Normally these smaller cousins of black mountain wolves would have posed little threat to Torg and Laylah, other than to occupy their time. But these wolves were different. Their glowing eyes betrayed their disguise. They were demons incarnate.

“My babies still love me . . . and are eager to do my bidding,” Vedana said.

“I care naught,” Torg said. “You murdered my father . . . and for that offense I will see that you are punished.”

“And you murdered Takoda, as well,” Laylah said.

Vedana pressed her right hand against her breast. “Oh, boo hoo! You’re making me feel so . . .
guilty
. I suppose I should cast myself upon your sword and be done with it.” Then she cackled again, raised her bony arms, and shouted, “
Paharati
! (Attack!)”

The wolves snarled and reared up, scissor-kicking their front legs frenetically.

Torg prepared for a full-on charge. Instead, a sudden wind swept around the magical beasts, and they burst into frozen dust and vanished.

Torg remained wary, knees bent, weight slightly forward, upper body balanced smoothly atop his hips. Every sense was hyperalert, yet his vision was purposefully blurred, allowing for a wider line of sight. Laylah slid around so that they were back to back, the top of her buttocks nestling against the bottom of his. Even in such a tense situation, Torg experienced a surge of lust.

There was another unexpected gust of wind. Particles of ice and snow swirled in front of Torg’s face and blew into his eyes, as if to blind him. Suddenly the granules coalesced, and a white wolf stood before him not two paces away, jaws opened wide. The beast lashed forward, attempting to bite his face. But Torg was too fast, delivering a downward stroke that hacked through the snout and then deep into the chest.

Not even demons were immune to destruction. When their physical incarnations were dealt a severe-enough blow, their essence was so thoroughly damaged it ceased to exist in both realms. As a result of Torg’s stroke, there was a terrible wailing sound—and then the wolf exploded, casting fur, flesh, and bone.

Now it was Laylah who was wailing. Torg pivoted and was horrified to see that three wolves had her at once. One had clamped down on her shoulder, and the other two were gnawing at her calves. Torg growled and sprang to her defense, but before he could reach her, at least a dozen wolves leapt upon him, their combined weight forcing him face-forward onto the ice. Instinctively, Torg entered
frenzy
. Blue-green energy erupted from every pore, incinerating his clothing and casting the wolves away. He scrambled to his feet, expecting to see Laylah being ripped apart, but was relieved that she was standing her ground against the attackers with a score of wolves already slaughtered at her feet. The sorceress wielded Obhasa like a stave, and from its rounded head spewed blue-white flame as hot as dragon fire. The demon wolves were no match for such fury. In the end, the few who survived scattered and then vanished again, only this time they did not reappear.

Torg rushed to Laylah, expecting to see her scarred and bloodied, but instead found her unmarred, other than her shredded clothing. At least she still was partially dressed. He once again was annoyingly naked.

Torg looked at Laylah with a sheepish grin but then grew serious when he saw her gasp at something behind him. He turned quickly, not sure what to expect next, and then he gasped too. Standing less than a stone’s throw away was a tall, heavily muscled man with deep-blue eyes and shoulder-length hair as black as a raven’s.

This stunned Torg. Tears leaked from his eyes and froze on his cheeks.

“Father . . .”

“I am lost . . . in the darkness,” Jhana said. “My son, why did you abandon me?”

Torg felt dizzy. He ignored the sudden grip on his arm. “I searched for you.
All
of the Tugars did. Thousands of us!”

Jhana stepped nearer. In his hand he held an albino snake, which writhed and hissed. The grip on Torg’s arm tightened, but he seemed unable to focus on anything but his father.

“I didn’t raise my son to be a liar,” the voice said, in a tone that was both disappointed and accusing. “I would have been easy to find, if you had looked hard enough.”

“I don’t understand . . .”

“
Torg . . . it’s not him!
” came a voice, fuzzy and distant.

“You don’t understand?” Jhana said. “Did I raise a simpleton as well as a liar?”

“Beloved!
It’s not him!”

“Even the Vasi masters gave up the search,” Torg explained. “Even the
Asēkhas
!”

Now his father was near enough to reach out and touch. The snake reared up and snapped at his face.

“Asēkhas . . . Vasi masters . . .
fools
, all of them!” Jhana said. “But you, I thought, would have had the wits to know where to find me. She took me, Torg. And you
permitted
this to happen.”

With a sudden snarl, Jhana stepped forward and shoved the snake at his son’s face, but now the serpent was solid as bone and sharp as a dagger. Another flash of white crashed in from the side, knocking the weapon away, and then Jhana was saying, “You wicked little bitch!”

In that instant, a veil was lifted from Torg’s eyes, and he saw through Vedana’s psychic guise. As fast as any living being had ever moved, Torg punched the point of the Silver Sword into the demon’s chest. The vision of Jhana vanished, and now the gray-haired lady stood before him. Vedana howled and grasped the two-edged blade with both hands. In doing so, several of her fingers were sliced away, and they spun in the air, still wriggling. From each finger spurted a miniature fountain of blood.

Slowly Torg removed the blade from Vedana’s chest.

When the point came clear there was another flash of white.

Obhasa crashed down onto Vedana’s skull.

White, blue, and red splashed outward, and the force of the conflagration knocked Torg onto his rump. From this vantage point, he watched Laylah lash out again with the ivory staff, cracking first against the demon’s jaw and then against the side of her neck. Vedana fell onto her back, and Laylah leapt upon her, snarling viciously. The sorceress placed Obhasa between Vedana’s sagging breasts and unleashed a torrent of white-blue magic. The demon arched her back and shrieked, kicking so violently that Laylah was cast aside.