The Crystal Mountain (29 page)

Euphoria filled him. Thank you, my lord, he thought in exhilaration, slashing a demon practically in half. A true servant could ask for nothing more than such blessings as these.

The body of the fiend tumbled away as Kael spun and hammered at another one, first shattering its blade, then taking its arm from it. The demon howled in anguish and tried to dart away, but a sudden swarm of hailstones slammed into it, pummeling it and sending it limply spiraling into the cloud bank below.

Kael turned to see his father give him a wry grin before he was forced to turn his attention to another pair of demons. They tried to flank him, using both direction and altitude to keep him confused. Kael shifted to one side as the closest of the two fiends jabbed at him with its spear. He yanked his blade down through the center of the weapon, snapping it in half. He kicked at the other, knocking its weapon completely free of the demon’s grasp.

With a shout of elation, Kael whirled around, his blade whistling through the air. At the end of his rotation, both fiends bore mortal wounds and plummeted away from him.

With no more demons in the immediate vicinity, Kael sought Pharaun. He spotted the wizard surrounded by three

more of the black fiends. With an urgency born of concern for his father, Kael willed his magic boots to get him close to the trio. He rushed at the nearest one while the drow twisted and dodged to avoid the creatures’ attacks.

Kael took the head of the first one before the other two even realized he was there. As it fell from the sky, the knight rammed his heavy blade through a second one, which had turned to face him. Its expression went from smug glee to surprise as the sword impaled it, and it gave a plaintive cry as Kael shoved it back off the end of his weapon with his boot.

Pharaun unleashed a string of arcane missiles, very much like those Aliisza so often used. The swarm of glowing darts whistled as they homed in on the third demon, which watched them rush at it with wide-eyed fright. The tiny missiles struck the demon with a series of staccato pops, and buried themselves in its bare chest, leaving smoking holes there. The demon gasped and clutched at its misshapen flesh.

Both demons plunged away into the clouds beneath them.

Kael cast a glance around, seeking more enemies to confront, but no more swooped or swarmed in the vicinity. It appeared that they had finished the wretched things off.

“You remember Ryld,” Pharaun asked, “the weaponmaster I once fought alongside? Well, you handle a blade about as well as he did. I have to say, this little scrape has brought back more than a few memories. I’m downright giddy. Can you imagine if you had grown up with me in Menzoberranzan, instead of here in this detesta—Well, in this place?”

“I don’t believe we would have found ourselves running in quire the same circles,” Kael said, but he caught himself grinning just the same. “But thank you for the compliment.”

“Oh, by the Great Spider,” Pharaun muttered. “Look.”

Kael turned to find what his companion had spotted. He gasped. The grotesque aberration that Zasian had described to Tauran and Kael, the fused beings of Micus and Myshik, soared through the air near the Lifespring. It made a wide turn and headed straight toward Tauran, who stood upon the beach near the water’s edge, staring in horror at the thing. Eirwyn gaped beside him, her mace drooping at her side.

Vhok also stood there, one arm hanging limply at his side. Noting that the two celestials paid no attention to him, the cambion leaped over the side of the basin and flew into the mists beneath it, vanishing from sight.

“Come,” Kael said. “We’ve got to help.”

Heeding Tauran’s tactics, Aliisza tried to make her way toward Kaanyr. She shifted and dodged, zipping through the swarming demons, hoping to slip through their skirmish line and reach the cambion.

It was not to be.

The disgusting creatures with their bare muscles and raw sinew recognized her efforts and moved to block her. She engaged the first one, parrying a spear thrust with her own slender long sword. A second fiend swooped in behind her and she had to lunge to the side to evade a raking claw. As she maneuvered, she cast repeated glances toward Kaanyr.

Dread at seeing him again mingled with rising anger. She was not so much worried about his enmity as she was afraid of her own reaction.

She wanted to hurt him. She wanted him to feel the pain he had dealt her, which she was feeling all over again.

Here you are, she seethed, still trying to reach the Lifespring. Your bullheaded obsession with this place has cost you everything, and you’re too blind to see it. She shook her head in disgust. Why couldn’t you have cared about me this much? Half this much?

She saw Tauran appear next to the cambion and felt a pang of jealousy that the angel might do in her former lover before she got the chance herself.

Then a spear thrust ripped a small hole through one of her wings, and Aliisza gasped in pain. She turned her full attention to her own fight.

“That is going to cost you,” she snarled at the fiend that had wounded her. The creature leered at her. She poured all her pent-up anger and anguish into the attack, assaulting the demon with a flurry of sword thrusts and cuts.

The second demon saw her doggedness as an opportunity to get inside her defenses and maneuvered around behind her. Aliisza expected the ploy, though, and she kept orbiting around her quarry as she hammered away at his defenses. The constant motion kept the second one from closing in.

Her target tried to block the strikes, but her hatred lent strength to her efforts, and each blow that rained down on the beast rang with power and drove it backward. The demon grew desperate and began to retreat from her. Thinking quickly, Aliisza feinted another strike at the fleeing demon, then turned her rage fully onto the second one, which was still attempting to get around behind her.

Suck on steel, you pathetic vermin, she thought, twisting suddenly and lunging into a somersault. The maneuver

brought her blade under the pursuing creature and it dug deep into its thigh.

The demon screamed and writhed as it yanked itself backward. Aliisza rolled over and came after it, eager for the kill. The demon spun and fled. Aliisza chased it, twisting and turning through the air as she tried to keep up with its frantic maneuvers to escape her. When it suddenly flipped over and dived into a cloud bank, she wheeled around to keep up. It was only after she lost sight of the fiend within the cottony white that her innate sense of imminent danger struck her and she hesitated.

Ambush, she thought.

Her fears were well-founded. Two more demons loomed around her, one from the side and the other from behind. They attacked. Aliisza squirmed to evade the first sword strike, but she couldn’t quite parry the second and the blade cut into her hip. The wound did not feel deep and she tried to ignore the pain.

Desperate times… she thought, bringing her hand up and channeling her magic.

A burst of blue fire shot from her fingertips. The glow surrounded her, making the fog of the clouds turn azure.

The inferno drove the demon back, screaming. Aliisza doubled over in pain.

Gods and devils, that hurts!

It was worse than she ever remembered. She folded her wings and dropped like a stone to avoid being struck by another enemy. She fell through the bottom of the cloud into open sky and continued to plunge for a few more heartbeats. The pain ate away at her, like some beast dwelling in her gut and devouring her from the inside.

She desperately wished for Zasian’s healing touch. Or Tauran’s. Please make it stop.

The pain finally subsided enough for Aliisza to catch her breath and regain control. She fanned her wings and glided levelly.

The three demons had followed her. The one she had wounded originally and the scorched one that had tried to surprise her both lagged behind, but the uninjured one closed in fast.

She could not fight all three of them, even in open space where she could see them clearly. She also could not escape. I don’t want it to hurt! Do it.

Acting quickly before she could stop herself, Aliisza conjured magic again. She brought forth a hollow hemisphere of stone, cobalt in color. She positioned it in just the right place so that the inverted bowl engulfed the fiend. The stone, with the demon inside and beneath it, dropped away.

Aliisza vomited and saw blood spray from her mouth. No more, she pleaded with herself. You can’t take this!

Have to. Can’t let Kaanyr win.

Fighting against the excruciating pain, Aliisza quickly began a third spell. Before the other two demons could draw close to her, she completed the magic, summoning a large ball of cerulean fire that burst around them.

One of the remaining two fiends went limp and fell away, but the other survived the conflagration and came on.

Aliisza hardly noticed. She curled into a fetal position, her body shaking from the excruciating pain. She plummeted from the sky, slipping from consciousness.

Garin launched himself at the hulking glabrezu and raised his mace high. He swung the blessed weapon down with all of his might, aiming at the demon’s head. The fiend, seeing what was coming, brought an arm up to block the blow, but Garin’s ferocity was too much. The mace crashed into the demon’s limb and drove it downward. The head of the mace struck the glabrezu, though it was not enough to crush the fiend’s skull.

The demon staggered down to one knee, still using its arm to protect itself. Nilsa writhed at its feet, sobbing.

“You are finished!” Garin shouted. He brought the mace back overhead for another strike. The fiend punched outward with its other pincer and slammed it into the angel’s gut. Garin shot backward, the breath knocked from him. He dropped back to the ground, gasping for air.

The glabrezu reached down and slipped its pincer around Nilsa’s neck. It grinned at Garin.

The angel stared at the beast as he tried to draw regain his breath. “No,” he wheezed. “Don’t!”

“You’re pathetic,” the demon snarled, “and weak. Your days of self-righteous demagoguery are over!”

No! Please grant me this, the angel prayed.

Garin channeled every bit of divine power he could find. He drew it from within, calling on Torm’s link with him. He also absorbed it from the ground beneath him, the essence of the deity’s will made manifest.

Raw energy surged through Garin. His body crackled, straining to hold and focus it. In a heartbeat, he was filled to overflowing. He could not contain the staggering force. With a cry of elation and agony mingled together, he unleashed a holy blast.

Blinding light erupted from the demon, surrounded it. A column of divine retribution shone upward into the heavens above. The burst was so brilliant, so dazzling, it filled Garin’s sight. He flinched and brought his arm up, but he could not cover his eyes. The glory of the radiance overwhelmed him.

When the smiting faded, the glabrezu was no more. A circle of scorched ground smoked where the creature had been before. Nilsa lay sprawled there, shuddering.

Garin went limp, completely exhausted.

I am yours, blessed Torm, he thought as he collapsed to the ground.

As the angel tried to regain his strength so he could tend to Nilsa, he could hear the battle still raging all around him. He glanced to the side and saw the ground still disgorging demons. The remaining archons were much fewer in number than they had been. They struggled to hold lines, and often, the demons surrounded them completely, creating islands of the hound warriors in a sea of seething, chaotic fury.

When such an island began to collapse, the archons would

vanish, reappearing instantly in a more coherent line along the demons’ flanks. In that way, they managed to stave off destruction.

But they were losing ground.

Garin got to his hands and knees and crawled to where Nilsa lay. The wounded angel shuddered as she cried. Garin reached her and pulled her to him.

“My wing,” she sobbed. “It took my wing.”

“Shh,” Garin replied. He examined the stump of her ruined appendage and saw that it still bled freely. He could sense that Nilsa was weak from blood loss. Grimacing in effort, he channeled what little power he had left into a flow of healing energy. He directed the divine salve into her body, staunching the flow of blood. It was a trickle of his usual efficacy, but it would save her life.

I’m sorry it’s not more, he thought, saddened. I am spent.

Nilsa ceased most of her writhing as the soothing powers ameliorated the worst of her pain. She sagged in Garin’s arms. “My wing,” she repeated in a near-whisper.

“We’ve got to get you off the battlefield,” he said. He turned and peered one way and then another, seeking some able body to help him.

The archons were drawing back, losing the field. A few of them—perhaps a dozen—seeing the angel down, teleported to the pair. “Captain,” one said, “we’re being overrun. We need to pull back and summon reinforcements.”

Garin nodded. “She can’t move. We have to get her out of here.”

“How?” the archon asked. “What do you wish of us?”

“Carry her,” Garin said. “Back, to our own lines.”

The archon nodded. “You two,” he said, pointing to two

of the warriors, “lift her. The rest, fan out, keep the rabble away. Let’s go!”

Garin grabbed the speaker by the arm. “You have to get word to the commanders. You have to let them know that we have lost this position. I won’t leave her, and you can travel faster. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” the archon said. He vanished.

The remaining eight archons formed a loose circle around Nilsa and her bearers. Two took point, four watched the flanks, and the remaining two brought up the rear. As a group, they made their way back, away from the edge of the world where the gashes in the ground belched up more demons. The ones already there pursued the archons, running to surround them.

“Faster,” Garin said, feeling his strength beginning to return. “I’ll clear a path.”

He moved to the point and blasted the closest fiends with a word of power. The screaming, clamoring demons fell back from his efforts, and the archons surged into them, hacking and slicing them.