[Lanen Kaelar 03] - Redeeming the Lost (47 page)

I looked deeper. Ah. No, it wasn’t Berys. It
was foreign to him: the funnel that supplied him with the reserves he needed to
command so many of the Rakshasa. Rathen had escaped at his end by renouncing
the pact. I could see no way of closing that source. I tried all the obvious ways,
but nothing touched that vast river of strength. I could not close it or stop
it supplying him with ever-renewed power.

I released Berys, allowing him to move.
Instantly he drew out a demonline I had not seen and opened it.

“No,” I said, and reaching out, crushed it.

It closed. They can only be used once. It
disappeared.

Berys screamed and threw himself at me
physically. I had not considered that, and it was not a trivial attack—he had
the body of a man in his prime, and he easily outweighed me two to one. It might
even have succeeded if he had had two hands. As it was, I was able to wrest his
dagger from him and throw it over the side of the hill.

That was enough of that. Ruthlessly I stripped
away his remaining armour, all in a moment, until all that remained to him was
that source of power. He shook as he stood there, trying to say something.

I removed the silence. I was shaking myself.
The power that raged in me felt as if it would tear me apart. I promised I
would not kill him. I swore it, I must not kill him with this power.

The restraint threatened to unman me.

“Let me live,” he said instantly, going down
on his knees.

I sighed. Honestly, how stupid does he think I
am?

“I can give you more power even than you have
now,” he said. ‘There is a spell—I can give you all my own power, I will go
through the world blind and weak, but let me live!”

“Fool,” I said, and my own voice surprised
me—it was deeper and more resonant, it was grown huge. I felt as if I were
growing physically, as if my body could not possibly contain it all. “Are you
even now so blind? Behold,” I said, and let him See me. The flame that I had
held caged those long years roared now, searing what it touched, blending with
the Lady’s healing power and reinforcing it. A lick of blue flame snapped out,
of its own accord, and struck Berys like a physical blow. He fell back,
measuring bis length on the ground.

“Master,” he said, as if in awe. “You are the
greatest Mage that has ever lived. Let me serve you!” He scrabbled to his
knees. “I have ways of learning that which is hidden, I can help you to your
heart’s desire, I can give you that which no other knows of…”

“Be silent!” I commanded, angry with myself
that I could still not stop the flow of the corrupted Healers’ power to him. “You
could have nothing that I would ever desire.”

He smiled and reached inside his robes. “Indeed?
What of this?’

He drew out—Goddess, it was a human heart! No,
no, it was only shaped like a heart, made of that stone the jewellers call bloodstone,
that seems to bleed red when it is cut. It was incredibly detailed, for a
carven stone …

Berys’s eyes gleamed when he saw my curiosity.
I realised full well that he was regaining his strength as he played for time,
but I was intrigued. I did not fear anything that Berys could do to me.

“The Distant Heart,” he whispered. “It is the
Distant Heart of the Demonlord. Say you will spare me and it is yours.”

Berys was down. He had been down before,
screaming even though Vilkas didn’t touch him physically, but he’d gotten up
again and gone to stab the lad. He failed at that, too.

I thought at first I was seeing a cruel streak
in Vilkas, playing with Berys like that, but in the midst of trying to keep out
of the reach of demons, and as Vilkas dragged things out, I realised—he’s
barely twenty. He doesn’t know what to do now he’s got Berys in his power. And
he’s a Healer, they can’t kill intentionally without corrupting themselves
forever.

I, on the other hand, owed Berys recompense
for half a lifetime of wrongs. I owed him for teaching Maran what fear was; I
owed him for the demons he sent that chased her away from my side and kept her
from knowing her daughter; I owed him for all the ills that had beset my Lanen
this last year, and finally, least but greatest, I owed him revenge for the
life of the innocent, nameless babe he and Marik had sacrificed to make the
Farseer, without a thought to its parents, without a care for its wasted life,
a quarter of a century ago. To a fiend like Berys, life was a game, and it did
not matter who was murdered or trampled underfoot, so long as he won.

Berys was on his knees now, but I’d seen
Varien’s sword cut him in two with no effect. There had to be some way to get
to him—oh. Oh, that might work.

I reached over to Lanen, who was fighting
still but growing weary even as I watched. I must be quick.

I sliced open her scrip and caught the soulgem
Kedra had given her as it fell out. She didn’t have time to notice.

Somehow I didn’t think old Shikrar would mind
helping one more time.

It was harder than it sounds to stab Berys to
the heart and push the gleaming red soulgem into the wound before it could
heal, but I managed it.

At first Vilkas cried out nearly as loud as
Berys, the difference being that Berys kept on screaming.

I have never in all my years before or since
taken joy in ending a life, but by all that’s holy, I did that day.

The edges of the wound began to turn black and
shrivel. Berys was still alive, still screaming, as he began to smoke: Suddenly
Shikrar’s soulgem was surrounded by flame.

Berys was burning. He had enough strength to
try to heal himself for quite some time, but there was never any question what
the outcome would be. He was too terrified to realise that he was prolonging
his own agony.

I was rather surprised when Maran stepped
forward and struck his head off.

But then, she always did have a soft heart.

I collected the head and put it on the body,
where the flames burned most fiercely. No sense taking chances.

Free! We are free from the bindings put upon
us, free to loose the legions of Hell on that cursed silver dragon that has so
diminished us. I-Demonlord feel my old powers return with a shock, and we know
that Berys is no more. I scream the words into the air, I sing them, I take joy
in the chaos that will rule when all the Kantri are gone down into death and
demons rule the world.

I-Marik reel. I did not agree to this. Kill
the girl, kill the dragons, yes, but not demons to rule the world. Where would
be the gain for me? I fight for control.

I-Demonlord effortlessly thrust that mind away
and take the body for myself. At last, I can do that which I have longed to do,
all down the centuries of darkness. Berys had summoned many of the Rakshasa.
Time to bring in the rest.

“Let the gates of all the Hells be flung open!
Come ye great Lords of Hell, come great and small, Raksha and Rikti, come feast
on your life-enemies—behold, I, the Demonlord, summon you all here to me!”

There was a soundless clap. The air shook, for
all I know the ground shook, and all in a moment the sky, the ground, the very
waters of the lake, were full of the screaming hordes of all the Seven Hells.
The noise was immense, the numbers uncountable. I laughed with delight.

The Kantri fight, desperately, outnumbered a
hundred to one. And there upon that little hill hard by, about to die among a
cluster of her companions, stands the one creature I need most desperately to
kill.

I start to fly towards her—she is so
close!—when that huge silver beast rises before me. It tries to scorch me,
fool, but it has no flame. Just then a great gust of wind throws me nearly on
my back in midair. I have to fall away and glide for a moment before I recover.
The silver one follows me, choking out its hatred from a dry belly, spitting
nothing at me—and before I can make any headway towards the girl the wind turns
against me again, blowing a gale from my left forward quarter. I yell my
frustration, flying as hard as I can against the wind. I am battered by gusts
from all sides, forcing me ever down. I cannot react quickly enough to recover,
I happen to look up—

—and see the silver dragon circling above me,
its mouth wide, spitting nothing at me but hot air. Air, winds, air, the damn
thing is controlling the winds with its breath!

“That one!” I cry to the nearest demons. “Kill
me that silver one!”

Nothing happens. The Rakshasa do not move. I
look around—none of them are moving. Damnation!

I ignore all else, I must reach that hill. The
silver dragon flies better than I do, it gets ahead of me, the wind slams me
back and down, again and again. I am moving forward, but so slowly, so horribly
slowly. I roar my frustration. It is exhausting, and several times I nearly
fall out of the sky—but she was not that far away to begin with.

I am near enough to the hill.

I draw in a deep breath, ready to pour the
molten stone in my gullet over the bowed and bloodied girl, for her death is my
freedom forever.

Wait—no—NO!

The sky turned black. For an instant I thought
a sudden storm was come up out of nowhere, but then it began to spread out. The
Kantri were going frantic, fighting—oh, dear Lady.

For all that I had been through up until that
moment, I give you my word, I was never so certain that I was going to die as
at that moment. The Rakshasa filled the air like a plague of insects, biting
and clawing the Kantri and the Dhrenagan, who fought back with vast courage in
the face of impossible odds.

It seemed to be raining blood.

And there was a large contingent of Rakshasa
coming our way. I drew my dagger lightly over my arm one last time, committed
my soul to the Lady, and waited for death to claim me. I had cut myself so
often there was blood all over my hands, but I swear I didn’t feel it.

They never reached us.

It was Vilkas, of course. I had watched in
amazement as he brushed off a legion of Rikti, a dozen of the Rakshasa—but when
Jamie had stepped forward and killed Berys, Vilkas seemed to go into a kind of
shock. Aral tried to help him, but then the Demon-lord unleashed the Hells and
he snapped back into focus, after a fashion. He put up a barrier between us and
the demons just before they reached us.

And he did nothing more.

Outside the barrier, the Kantri began to fall
from the sky, bloodied, dying, mobbed by demons.

I did not know which would break first, my
heart or my mind. “Vilkas, do something!” I shouted. “You cannot leave the
Kantri to die like that!” Every muscle in my body was tense as a bowstring. “Goddess,
you’re the only one who can help them!”

“You don’t understand, if I start—” he began.

“They will all die!” I screamed, my heart in
my throat. “In the name of the Lady, stop them!”

He raised his eyebrows and smiled. “Very well,”
he said. He raised his arms above his head and made a gesture as of throwing
something away—

And every demon stopped moving, apart from the
Demonlord. It was madly fighting Akor to reach us, that was clear enough.

But why?

“What do you think that damn thing wants?”
asked Rella. Her voice was ragged with weariness, and when I glanced at her I
realised that her voice was likely the strongest thing about her.

Maran was—eh?

Maran had put down her sword and taken off her
pack, and now she was drawing out the Farseer. Her movements were careful but
swift. I think we all knew there was not much time.

What in the world does she want that thing for
now? I wondered.

She knelt, the globe before her on the ground,
and said clearly, “Show me what the Demonlord fears.”

Damn my mother was a bright woman.

She looked up at me. “Everyone, here, come
look,” she snapped. We all hurried over.

There in the murky globe was a picture of me
holding something in my hand. But what the Hells—

“Ah,” said Vilkas. He was trembling as he
reached into his scrip and drew forth a shiny black stone. “You’ll be wanting
this, then.”

“What in all the Hells?” I wondered aloud. “It
looks like …”

“It is the Demonlords heart,” said Vilkas. “The
Distant Heart. The reason he didn’t die all those centuries ago when the
dragons burned him to a cinder.”

There was a roar from the skies. I looked up.
The Black
Dragon, for all that Akor
was throwing it about the skies, was nearly upon us.

I took the Distant Heart from Vilkas. The
blood on my hands, from all the shallow cuts on my arms, began to smoke when I
touched the thing, a great cloud of acrid smoke that I batted away with my free
hand. There was something happening—

I swore loudly and profanely and nearly
dropped the thing.

It was beating.

No longer stone, no longer dead now but flesh
and blood, it beat steadily in my palm, almost like a bird fluttering.