[Lanen Kaelar 03] - Redeeming the Lost (20 page)

Berys busied himself directing the guards, who
drew stones from their packs and started building something while he started
drawing things on the floor. I couldn’t yet tell what it was going to be, but I
was certain to my marrow that it held my death. They might want Lanen for
something particular but I was of no use to them at all.

I had nothing to lose. Might as well enjoy
myself.

“Bloody Marik of bloody Gundar,” I spat. At
least I might enjoy a litde Marik-baiting, if I could do nothing else. “Last I
heard you were mindless and drooling.”

“No change there, then,” put in Lanen. Her
face was white and drained, but her voice was steady as a rock.

Marik ignored her and came near to me, staring
intently. “Who the devil are you to give a damn?” he asked, lifting a lantern
and peering at me.

I glared back at him, unable to fight, unable
to move a muscle. “I could have killed you stone dead back then,” I spat. “Should
have finished the job.” A defiant smile touched my lips. “Though I hear you’ve
been limping ever since. Some good comes of everything, seemingly.”

“Who in all the Hells are you?” he asked
again. “I don’t remember you! No human gave me this limp, it was the demons
when we made the—”

“Oh, no,” I interrupted. “We gave you that
limp right enough. Indirectly. And at the least, Maran broke a few of your ribs
for you. I heard them go.”

His eyes widened. “You bastard! You were the
one who took on Berys while she knocked me out! You and that whore Maran ruined
my life!” Marik cursed, throwing down his lantern. He grabbed the front of my
tunic to steady himself and threw a punch at me with all his strength. I saw it
coming and managed to turn my face away enough tp save my nose, but my jaw hurt
like hell—and I could do nothing but wait for the next one.

“Your courage astounds me, Father,” drawled
Lanen sarcastically as Marik drew back for a worse blow. “Striking a helpless
man. Such daring.”

He stepped over to where she was held and
slapped her, hard. “Mock while you can, Daughter,” he snarled, turning the last
word into a curse. “You’re demon fodder.”

“Leave off, Marik, I need that one,” murmured
Berys. “Come, it’s time. You,” he called to one of the guards, “bring her to
the altar.” It was only a few steps. No!

“Damn you, let her alone!” I shouted,
stupidly.

It was come, then. My ending, or the start of
some foul half-life I dared not even think on. I was still held by Berys’s
spell, which I could do nothing about. Terror gripped me, gut-wrenching,
breath-stealing terror.

That was what did it, I think.

I have always gone straight from fear to
anger, and the greater the fear, the deeper the anger. But what took me over
was not anger, or not only anger. It was—it was most like that moment when you
first become aware and leave childhood behind forever; or when you first had to
deal with death and you realised that life is always too short. I felt the
change in my breath, in my blood, in the very beating of my heart, and it
happened between one instant and the next. My very vision changed—it was the
difference between looking at rain through thick glass and stepping out into a
thunderstorm, when you can not only see but feel and hear the downpour and
smell every drop. And it was not vision only that was affected. I had always
known Berys was evil but now I could see it, and worse yet I could smell it. He
reeked, a stench like rotten meat but much worse, coming off him in waves. I
was hard put to it not to retch. He was my death and he stood there smiling.

And the soul’s-fire I had discovered in that
dry hopeless place exploded like a newborn star.

I threw back my head and cried aloud, words I
didn’t understand, and a great pulse of power blazed from me. The guard
screamed and let go, Marik staggered backwards and fell, and I could feel Berys
s will shatter and saw him reeling from the shock. I could move.

I often wonder what would have happened next
if the wall hadn’t disappeared.

I was trying still to master myself in the
face of whatever the Hells the girl had done when I felt it, a rumble deeper
than sound that shook my feet—there was no more warning than that, thanks to
Berys’s brilliant idea to keep us all from being distracted by sounds from
outside—and my nightmare rose howling before me.

I could neither move nor act, I could not
think, I could only stare and scream. I had dreamed this so many times, dreading
it both mad and sane, seen it again and again—but this was not in some distant
place, half legend, where dragons dwelt and anything might happen. This was not
some light timber frame wall being torn away. The walls of the College were of
shaped stone, three feet thick and centuries old, and that monster pulled down
fifteen feet of wall at once. It was twice the size of the silver one, its head
barely fit within the room, its vast bronze jaws agape and roaring, tearing
down more of the wall to get at me.

I felt someone take me by the arm to throw me
to it. I fought with all my strength, but that grip was iron. A brilliant fight
flared before my eyes and I was tossed into it, whether I would or no.

A moment of nothing, a moment in which nor
breath nor light existed, and I stumbled out onto a high platform under quiet
stars. There were high mountains around about me with snow on their sharp
summits, ghostly in the pale moonlight. It was peaceful, a good place, it
almost looked familiar—so long ago—faint memories of years long past, coming to
the top of this tower as a child, wrapped in a bear skin to keep warm, gazing
with delight on the mountains in winter… bloody Hells.

I was home. Castle Gundar. Halfway across the
world] Those were the East Mountains around my home. I knew them all by name, I’d
spent years clambering among them—Old Woman, Cloud Catcher, Demons Tooth, the
Needle, the Three Sisters—only—how the Hells was I come here?

I took a step, tripped over a loose stone, and
fell against something—someone—

It was Berys, at my side. Looking pleased with
himself.

As soon as Berys and Marik disappeared,
Shikrar drew his head back out of the room—just as well, he didn’t really fit.
Jamie and I scrambled over the rubble of the wall. Shikrar for all his size was
hard to see in the fitful moonlight, but there by his feet—a tiny figure—

Oh, dear Goddess.

Varien. Varien. Varien.

I ran towards him and we met with a thump,
arms wrapped round one another, and held on as though we would never let go. I
was swearing at him—“Damn you, Varien, where have you been, I couldn’t hear
you, I thought that bastard had killed you”—but I am not certain that he heard
me. He was muttering much the same nonsense, after all, and we kept
interrupting ourselves as we kissed frantically.

Of course, it couldn’t last. He had just
managed to control himself so far as to lean back within my arms and look at
me, when with the loudest noise I had ever heard a great light burst into the
dark sky, flames leaping high against the stars, and bits of masonry began to
rain down upon us.

The College was burning.

“NO!” cried Rikard, sprinting towards the
doors. I managed to catch him and haul him back just in time, for Shikrar would
have trampled him as he hurried towards the fire. I only just noticed Kedra
landing outside the College walls.

I had only seen Shikrar briefly in the fight
in the High Field, burning off the little demons: I had been dealing with my
own distractions when he took on the big Raksha. After that, despite his great
size, he had impressed me mainly as being wise and calm as we spoke together on
the way down from the mountains. True enough, his sheer size was a threat, but
it was hard to know what kind of real power he could wield. I had just watched
him tear apart stone walls with no apparent effort, but I still wasn’t ready.
He moved across the courtyard like a snake through water.

“For Shia’s sake, let me go!” shouted Rikard,
wrenching himself free. He ran like a man demented and began pounding uselessly
at the doors of the burning building, unlocked but unmoving. “There are people
trapped in there!”

Shikrar stood before the doors. “Stand away,
Gedri,” he said, that vast ancient voice deep and resonant in the courtyard.

I hadn’t thought Rikard could move that fast. Just
as well I was wrong.

Shikrar tore open the doors like a child
tearing a leaf of grass, and flung them to the stones. Several dozen people
rushed out, fire behind them, terror in their eyes. Some were shouting, some
were screaming, some were wide-eyed and staring and looked as if they would
never speak again. Vilkas and Aral, borne hither by Kedra, ran to help their
comrades.

Magister Rikard did well then, drawing them
all away to the far side of the courtyard, asking, listening, calming. In
moments he returned and began to speak, his voice impossibly steady.

“Berys has murdered the Magistri with the help
of a huge Rak-sha and a horde of the Rikti—and when the Magistri were gone, he
set them loose on the students and left.” Rikards voice cracked. “From what
some of them said, he was dared to call on one of the Lords of Hell. These”—he
gestured back at the little group huddled by the shattered gates—“only got out
because the demons took Berys’s guards along with everyone else. These folk
were closer to the doors and they had the presence of mind to run. They—we—Shia
save us,” he shuddered, his voice cracking at last. “We are all that is left.”

A huge voice laughed on the wind, a laugh that
racked my body with one great shudder, so heavy it was with evil. We all turned
to see the vast figure that rose up, surrounded by the flames that consumed the
College, seeming to enjoy their heat. It was the size of Shikrar but more
nearly human in form, though horned and fanged in a hideous mockery of the
Kantri. “Soon not even you, little wizard,” it cackled, and spat at Rikard. A
ball of poisonous green fire burned towards where Rikard stood staring aghast.
He raised the best shield of his Healer s aura that he could muster, but it
looked pale and weak in the light of that obscene fire. I was too far away to
help, too far away to do anything but watch him die—when the balefire was
batted out of the air by a dark wing, striking the ground with a loud hiss and
smoking poi-sonously on the cobbles.

Shikrar flew high,   foulness spurning.

Fury fuelled him,   fanned his anger,

drove him upwards:   urgent his desire,

swiftly to deal   death to the demon.

Words cannot do him justice. I had never seen
him fly so brilliantly, never in all our long lives together. Lanen and I held
each other and watched in awe. He spiralled high on the updraft from the
flames, keeping out of his enemy’s reach, gaming height, watching the demon’s
every move keenly.

There in the midst of burning stone, grown
vast on its obscene feast of flesh, was the Lord of the Fifth Hell, a huge
Rak-sha. It grew in its wrath, trying to make itself as large as Shikrar, but
it was trapped—it seems even Berys had some sense left, and had not loosed it
to rampage where it would. The thing was bound, likely to the building: if the
building were destroyed, it might find itself untrammelled.

The flames, fanned by the wild wind, bothered
it no more than they did Shikrar, but it seemed to take a passing pleasure in
the destruction the fire was causing. It started to lean over towards us, but
Shikrar swooped down and breathed Fire upon it as he passed—not the puny flames
that humans know, but the true Fire that is part of our being. The distraction
worked, though the demon managed to move out of the way of the flame. For the
most part. We all saw the scorch mark on its upper arm.

It laughed. I knew about the Lords of Hell and
was prepared, but several of the students were violently sick at the sound. So
would Death itself laugh to see a world dying of plague.

“So, the great Kantri are reduced to this? A
little firebrand to tickle me. Eat stone, dragon!” it cried, and wrenching off
a great lump of stone, threw it at Shikrar.

With the merest flick of his wings Shikrar
avoided the missile.

This seemed to amuse the creature, for it tore
off larger and larger sections of wall to throw at him. None of them came very
close, for Shikrar watched the Rakshas every move. When it stooped for a moment
to break off more stone, he darted in and struck with fangs and claws, tearing
a great hole in its shoulder, ripping gashes in its flesh as he passed swifdy
out of reach again, away from the long arms and poisonous claws. He was forced
to swerve again and again as the thing grabbed at him, but it was soon clear
that he was wearing it down, flying in, biting and away before he could be
touched, tearing holes in the foul flesh, darting away out of reach as its
claws tried to score his armour and failed to find purchase.

At last, though, his boldness was his
downfall. The Raksha, in real pain now, grabbed for him as he shot past a
little too close. It caught the tip of his tail, throwing him off balance in
the air before the edged scales cut deep into the demon’s hand. It cried out
but held on. Shikrar beat his wings furiously but he could not get free.