The Crystal Mountain (27 page)

Garin saw the turmoil in her wide, frightened eyes. He realized she was on the verge of breaking down. He moved closer to her and drew her to him. “Tell me,” he said, trying to comfort her.

Nilsa shook her head. “I cannot find the courage to…” She looked away, her mouth opening and shutting. “T6 let him in,” she said. She brought her hands up and pressed her palms against her temples. “Torm, I mean. I want to, I really do, but…”

Garin’s eyes widened. “You have not pledged fealty to Torm yet?” he asked, incredulous. “Nilsa, you must. You have no power! You cannot withstand the demons if you—”

“I know,” she said, her voice breaking. “I just can’t. There’s a part of me that will die if I accept that Tyr has… has… Oh, Garin, I’m so scared!”

His own heart pounding, his own hands trembling, Garin firmed his grasp on his companion. He began a silent prayer.

Blessed Tyr—No. Torm, he corrected. Blessed Torm. Grant us strength today, not just in our limbs, but in our hearts. Please guide us and grant us courage so that we may face the looming battle before us unafraid.

Garin drew a deep breath, feeling calm wash over him. Torm’s spirit infused him. It felt different from the familiar touch of Tyr, but it comforted him.

She just needs a glimpse of this to understand. Once she knows him, she’ll embrace him.

“Nilsa,” he said, drawing her gaze to his own. He stared deeply into her eyes. “This is real, right now. You’ve got to do this, or you will not survive the field today.”

She nodded. “Yes,” she said. “Help me.”

“Torm welcomes you into the fold. It is strange and frightening, I know, but he will comfort you. Tyr wishes it. Do not be afraid. Instead, let your spirit soar, let your majestic countenance reflect Torm’s might, even as your heart sings for Tyr’s safety.”

“I want to,” she said, “but I—”

A thunderous blast erupted from the opposite side of the glade, drowning out Nilsa’s final words. Fire roared into the sky. Trees and dirt sprayed everywhere. Black, churning smoke poured out of a jagged opening in the ground very near the edge of the world, blotting out the wall of nothingness beyond.

Another eruption struck to the angel’s left, and then two more, almost simultaneously, to Garin’s right. A cacophony of blasts reverberated through the surrounding woods as explosion after explosion tore the land apart and filled the sky with flame and ash. An entire row of the devastating blasts formed a continuous wall before the celestials.

The first of the demons rushed out of that conflagration, a motley swarm of every imaginable shape and size, all disgusting to behold. Hideous creatures of pasty white or red flesh loped on misshapen legs. Bulbous heads that seemed too fat for spindly necks jostled and bounced, while arms that looked to be too short to be useful flapped spastically. Flames licked the ground where they ran, and a foul stench preceded

them. They screamed in delight at the sight of the defenders and rushed forward, waving clubs and sickles, spears and blades at their enemies. Behind them, a constant flow fed the swarm, pouring from the gashes in the ground.

Garin released Nilsa and spun to his right. “First rank, to them!” he cried, magically amplifying his voice so that the archons all down the line could hear him. “Second rank, hold!”

He turned back and found Nilsa down on her knees, gaping at the onrushing horde. She was not issuing orders to her troops. They were milling in confusion as his side of the line pressed forward.

Garin repeated his orders to the celestials under Nilsa’s command, then squatted down and grabbed her face in his hands.

“Nilsa!” he shouted at her, making her look at him. “I need you, right now! Open your heart to Torm! His presence will give you strength, but you have to trust him as you always trusted Tyr.”

He risked a glance up at the field of battle and saw that the demons and the archons were only thirty paces apart by then, two rows of combatants charging full tilt at one another.

Nilsa sobbed. “I’m so scared!” she cried. “I cannot abandon Tyr! He will fade away! I could not bear it!”

Garin fought back his panic with every ounce of his self-control. He pulled his gaze away from the impending melee and returned his attention to the angel weeping at his feet. “Nilsa,” he said as calmly as he could, “Tyr’s destiny is his own. You cannot control it. You can only follow the path set before you. Torm needs you. These soldiers need you.” He drew a deep breath and added, “I need you.”

Please, Nilsa, stand up and fight.

Nilsa swallowed and closed her eyes. “Very well,” she said, her voice trembling.

A great shout erupted as the two moving walls, archon and demon, slammed together. Garin shot a glance up. The battle had been joined.

Garin looked down to see Nilsa, her lips trembling, her eyes squeezed shut, muttering something he could not hear.

That’s it, he thought. You can do it. Torm will bless you if you only let him in.

Nilsa gasped, and Garin could almost see a new radiance burst around her. Her features smoothed, and the anguish and fear faded, leaving her body. Her mouth widened in a contented smile. She opened her eyes, and they glowed with newfound reverence.

“He told me that he was proud of me,” she said. “He told me to be his example.” She climbed to her feet. “I’m sorry. I’m ready now.”

Relieved, Garin pointed to the reserve forces of archons that had remained back. “Take your command,” he said. “Do not advance until I give you the signal.”

Nilsa nodded, still smiling. “As we agreed,” she said.

Garin turned and left her there. He pushed himself into the air and sped toward the mad clash ahead. Already, he could see countless bodies, more demons than archons, scattered across the field. The celestials fought with precision, using one another for protection, as they had been trained.

The demons swarmed in a mad, chaotic mess.

They dropped by the dozen, sliced and stabbed by the archons.

For every fiend slain, ten scampered out of the rift in the ground.

Blessed Torm, Garin prayed as he rushed toward a weak point in the archons’ line. Give me the strength to withstand this.

He reached the gap and slammed his mace through the skull of a slavering demon. Without waiting to watch it fall, he shouted a holy word of power at the mass of demons behind it. The divine energy of the bellow pummeled the fiends like a shock wave, bowling them over four ranks deep. Archons advanced into the midst of them and attacked, slaying demons as rapidly as they could swing their weapons.

Garin turned and uttered the powerful holy word again, blasting another dozen demons backward. Archons surged into the hole and made short work of their downed foes.

Good, Garin thought, growing more confident. Quick and efficient. We must conserve our—

A shadow engulfed Garin, and he looked up just in time to be struck by the taloned feet of a demon. The blow caught him on the shoulder. It tore through his tunic and sliced into his flesh as it sent him flailing backward onto the torn, blood-soaked ground.

Garin scrambled to rise again. He took a better look at the stout creature and faltered. It had the pincers and markings of a glabrezu demon, but it was no ordinary member of its species. Larger and more powerfully built than any glabrezu Garin had ever seen, it sprouted broad wings that fanned out to either side of its back.

By the Maimed One, he thought out of habit, they’re breeding them to fly. Ty—Torm save us all.

The demon rose to its full height and bellowed out a rumbling word in Abyssal that made Garin cringe and cover his ears. Archons for five paces on a side stumbled and

faltered at the sound. They seemed to lose their way, their concentration, unable to resist as the lesser demons leaped upon them and rent them with their claws and weapons.

The winged glabrezu whipped one of its huge pincered limbs out and snagged a stunned archon in its grasp. The hound warrior struggled for a moment, pulling futilely at the razor-sharp claw encircling its neck. Then the powerful appendage flexed, and the archons head separated from its body in a single snip. The hound warrior collapsed and the glabrezu smiled at Garin. It brought the pincer up and ran its long, forked tongue along the blood, savoring it.

“Let us dance, angel,” the beast said, advancing with its claws extended toward him.

Garin adjusted the grip on his mace and motioned for the demon to come closer. “I have just the music for it.”

Vhok levitated above his troops, glaring toward the front of the column. The scorching, acrid wind buffeted him as he hovered, and the impatient shouts and growls rising from the morass of demons grated on his ears. He could see a great archway ahead in the distance, a monolithic stone structure rising from the broken plain. Fiery red lightning spider-webbed across the surface of the stone, but in the center, where the foremost demon troops passed through it, he could see a writhing darkness that flickered with pulsing blue light.

The arch stood as one among many, a cluster of half a dozen portals arranged in a circle. Demons surrounded the clump of arcane doorways, a sea of bodies stretching all across the desiccated, gravel-strewn plain of Lord Axithar’s domain.

The hordes of the balor’s army marched toward the arches in fat, disorderly columns that wound through the islands of jagged stone and thorny brambles. Lord Axithar’s hulking black keep loomed in the distance, and Vhok could feel the balor’s eyes on the proceedings.

And this army is just one of many, Vhok mused with a grin. Mighty Orcus commands great power. The angels will fall this day.

The cambion began counting the number of legions ahead of his, but each time he started, he lost track of where one ended and another began, as the demons could not stay in coherent groups. Already, dretches in his own unit pushed and shoved one another, chafing at being forced to wait their turn.

We’ll never get there! Vhok fumed. I will lose control of them if this goes on much longer.

But the line crawled relentlessly forward, and Vhok passed the time cowing his charges with threats of painful, languishing deaths if they did not behave,

When they were second in line to pass through, he began to hear a strange whistling emanating from the arch, and he got a better look as the demons stepped into it. The darkness sucked them in, yanking them forward off their feet the moment a part of their bodies grazed against its surface.

Vhok felt a momentary worry. I hope they go where Lord Axithar says they do, he thought. If not… well then, too late for us.

He was just about to return to his own troops when an imp arrived with a message. “Vhissilka would speak with you,” it said in a whiny voice, then it tittered as it raced away to continue its business.

What does she want now? Vhok wondered, disgusted.

The cambion unfurled his magical cloak and surged upward. He circled around and followed the column of troops back until he spotted the marilith’s vanguard and angled toward it. The snake demon towered over the rest of her forces.

The cambion settled to the ground next to Vhissilka. “You summoned me?” he asked, trying to keep his tone deferential.

“Remember,” the marilith said, “you have my right flank. Do not allow your troops to advance too far ahead. I do not want to pass through the gate to find myself surrounded by angry angels. Only when I give the signal may you commence with your charge.”

“Of course,” Vhok said. It’s only the fifth time you’ve told me, you bitch.

“You have the item?” she asked.

Vhok suppressed a sigh and pulled a glass rod from within a pocket in his tunic. The tube, sealed at both ends, was not much longer than his index finger, and slightly fatter than his thumb. Like the arch, the inside of the rod swirled with a darkness shot through with blue flecks of light. He held the thing up for Vhissilka to see clearly, then returned it to the safety of his tunic.

“Very good,” the marilith said. “Be ready. Watch for my signal.”

“Of course.”

“Go,” Vhissilka said. “Return to your place. Rain death upon the enemy!”

Vhok gave her a casual salute and took to the air again, returning to his own unit. They were almost to the arch. The

last ranks of the legion ahead of them were passing through the portal, drawn into the swirling black mists. He settled to the ground beside a lieutenant, a ram-headed demon corralling dretches with his polearm. The cambion was fairly certain it was the same one he had been crossing paths with lately.

“We will crush them,” the demon said. “They are weak, puny things that love impotent gods.”

Vhok snorted. “Do not underestimate them, fool,” he said. “We fight on their lands today. They draw on powerful magic there, and if we are not careful, they will scatter us to the winds.”

The ram demon gave Vhok a rheumy stare. “Bah!” it said. “If you fear them so much, perhaps you should hide here while the rest of us make sport with their heads.”

Vhok smirked. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

It was their turn. The front row of his column of demons stood before the arch, on the verge of passing through it. The lead rank hesitated until the ram demon rushed forward and encouraged-them with liberal use of his weapon. “Move it, you craven worms! Into the arch! Find the enemy! Slay them all! Go! Go!”

The demons shuffled forward and vanished through the portal. More followed.

Vhok shot into the air. He swung around and made his way back to the end of his command. His elite cavalry force waited there.

Unlike the craven lesser demons, the lanky winged beasts stood proud and tall, disdainful of the rabble around them. The fiends reminded the cambion of lithe, wiry gargoyles, though they had no skin. Their dark, purplish-black flesh and muscles glistened wetly, bound together by

violet sinew. Black horns curved up and back from atop gaunt, skeletal ebony skulls in which red eyes glittered with fury. Their mouths hung agape, revealing rows of black, needlelike teeth and darting, forked tongues. Each one carried a slender, double-headed spear.

“We must taste the blood of angels!” one of them screamed.

The others clamored in agreement.