a unified and deafening screech. I glanced next to me and saw Jigme who
seemed massive, holding aloft the sacred spear called Vel. Pemba likewise
swung Gada, a beryl corposant ambient about theeagle’s beaks that seemed
hungry for violence and Sibu and Purba, their fear almost palpable but each
wearing grim masks of determination, fealty and steadfastness that belied their
current states of nervous solicitude.
“Purba, give them a blast!” I yelled.
He drew the mighty conch from where it dangled from a drawstring at
his side and blew the first note I was to hear on that magical carapace. I felt
suddenly as though I was at the head of an army of ten thousands and against
us stood a rag tag and disorganised band of cowardly brigands. I raised the
Sudarshana Chakra as Purba finished the blast and the looks on the faces of
the hordes gathered there would not have been more astounding than if we five
had suddenly become as Storm Giants.
Many dropped their weapons and ran while some attacked each other in
the frenzy that ensued, as though they must escape at any cost and through
their own if need be. Those that were able to overcome the spell of the Shanka
charged, and we charged too, weapons held high, screaming for blood. When describing fighting on a large scale, there is a temptation to talk
about two sides to the skirmish. For example, we advanced, they fell back, our
weapons brought them down and they swarmed towards us in their
overwhelming numbers. This aerial view of a combat is not how it happens from the point of view of the participants. Once the lines are joined, the fighting invariably degenerates in individual stoushes. The pugilist takes on one opponent at a time, the mounted lancer likewise. In martial arts students are drilled in being able to fight in eighteen directions, directly in front, to the sides and rear and then the small gradations between. Thus, I found myself striking out with my staff at all angles with each blow either stabbing, whacking, parrying or blocking as the Sudarshana whirled out and above the enemy carving a path through them. Each time it returned to me I would send it out again, twenty, thirty or more would fall as it ground a path through a wilderness of evil. But still they came; innumerable, profuse, as multitudinous
as the inhabitants of the dry land.
Our situations could not have been more different. They had many, we,
few; they were armoured, we, hardly; the foot soldiers of the first wave were
short and quick but poorly drilled and panicked, we were steadfast and
resolute. I fought because to not fight would be to die, but more, I screamed
and relished this chance to remove these creatures from the world, and with
each stroke screamed, “For Lhapka! For Nimu!”
I had trained and fought and trained and fought for most of my life for
this opportunity and I revelled in the strength and power of my youth and my
belief. I noticed however that for every demon that fell screaming its guttural
curses under a stroke from my cudgel or that fell with severed arms and heads
as the Sudarshana raced effortlessly through them like a warm knife through
yak butter, that I became further separated from my friends. I did not know in
what direction they were but heard the measured and reassuring blasts from
the conch.
As the bodies of my foes piled about me, I worked my way back to where
I thought the conch blasts emanated from and soon I was fighting with Purba
and Sibu on my left and right, their magical knives running black with the
blood of these creatures. Purba blew another magical blast through the Shanka
andI called for Pemba and Jigme, “To me! To me!”
I could see this fight was going to continue until we were too exhausted
and then we would be set upon. It reminded me of the wolves all over again.
Through the miasma of whirling swords and shields and amongst the screams
of the injured and dying I saw the flashing azure arc of Gada slicing through
the throngs of demons as Pemba worked his way toward us. From the other
direction, one who I at first thought a monster fighting through his own ranks
to get to us came Jigme, now a hulking behemoth, his black robes in tatters
and standing a good twelve feet tall, covered in the black ooze that was their
blood, fearsome to behold in a wrath that had made him pythonic and
invincible. He advanced relentlessly through the sea of hapless demons like a
ship through flailing seas, the mighty Vel sending the twisted and misshapen
beasts hither and thither with each mighty stroke.
Before long he had made it back and, surrounded by my protectors, I
dropped my cudgel and bade the Sudarshana to return to me while I bowed
my head, closed my eyes and clasped my hands in prayer together at my
forehead. I invoked the power of the Laghima, the ability to levitate, as I
thought back then. Above the melee I drifted. I opened my eyes at a height of
some thirty feet and saw the throngs of demons, much lessened now that the
piles of the dead and the dying formed dykes that their fellows had to scale to
enter the fray. Hundreds of arrows were suddenly launched towards me and I
clasped with my left hand the pendant of silver and jade that glowed with an
unearthly light and heat while with my right hand I drew an invisible arc about
our small troupe, shattering all those hundreds of arrows and bolts as though
an impenetrable glass wall had been closed upon them. Wyverns flew towards
me and battered themselves against the protective bubble.
I then invoked the power of Ishitva, or dominion. My silent command to
cease the hostilities went out from me like a wave and the result was
astounding. The demon hordes wavered and looked at each other, the
individual reactions as different as the look of each demon fighter. Some fell
to their knees, some turned their weapons on themselves, some fled and in others a madness was born where they attacked one another in a frenzied
lunacy.
But then that iron will of the other contested with me again. I turned in
time to see it materialise upon the dais before the throne of Khyunglung
Ngülkhar and I quailed. I have already described the picture in the
antechamber set in ancient tiles. The reality was much worse. A creature of
fire that seemed a twisted amalgam of man and lion and dragon brandished a
spear in one hand and a flaming sword in another. It was more than double
even Jigme’s incredible height. It regarded us briefly and then roared a deathly
sound that in a moment undid the spell that I had worked to drive the demons
back.
With their master suddenly revealed, the remaining hosts of demons were
suddenly strengthened and espied a chance for victory. But rather than rush
us, they held back, deferring to their captain-general. They now sought to do
no more than stop us escaping and growled and chanted, waiting to see the
sport that their master would provide with these rats from the upper realm. In
the stalemate that ensued I turned andyelled at the creature, “I am Tashiga …” It swung towards me and my feeble spell was undone. I fell to the ground
with a jarring crunch and would have probably died then had not the others
rushed to try and catch me. We sprawled on the ground that was already
covered with the bodies of the fallen and stood in ti
me to see the huge beast
slowly moving toward us.
It seemed afire with a heat that was not of our sun, a heat that defiled and
sickened even while it burnt us. The beast roared in twisted rage, a sound as
deep and grating as the rocks of this city, belching flames that were of the
lowest of realms to scorch the ceiling fifty fathoms above us.
From behind the demon lord I spied a black-clad figure, one that I had
hoped never to see again, and I knew that our approach to the city had been
tracked probably even before we had come into the vast cavern. The demon lord bowed low and let out another ferocious growl. A blazing
wall of consuming fire suddenly washed over us and with my hands held up I prayed the flimsy shield I fashioned would save us. The stench of the creature’s breath that washed over us held the very pall of the black land. When the fire storm had passed, there was no evidence of the fallen demon
warriors, only a noxious and fuliginous ash.
I thought I knew fear when theNāgī drew me inexorably into the depths
of the underdark lake and I fancied I was about to drown, but I positively
quailed at the size and power of this hideous beast. Flames roared along its
hideous pelage as it brandished the aureate sword toward us. But I was
suddenly strengthened as I beheld the resolute courage in the faces of my
friends about me. Jigme would attack as soon as I gave the command. Pemba
had learnt what fealty meant and had found a calling that was his own, rather
than what might have been thrust upon him, and the two retainers, who I would
have wagered should have crumbled in terror, stood resolute and firm, their
kirpans brandished before them. Sibu firmly clasped the lotus pendant that
glowed with a heavenly brilliance and Purba held aloft the mighty Shanka,
ready to again breathe that note to uplift us while damning our foes. I suddenly had the strength to speak again. But a terrible spell from the
creature bored into me, a preternatural physic blast that seemed born of this
creature or this realm that sought to strip my powers and my determination
from me and hasten our doom. I could see that the longer we stood in that
deadly place, the more our resolve would be weakened. I stood, and with a
newly found courage and a fey thirst for death, shook off the filth of the beast’s
foul magic.
I laughed, and as weak as it was, it carried more power than a hundred
brave knights in that place. I spread my arms wide and spoke in power and
command, thinking of what brave Abbott Tomas would say to this fell
abomination: Blake certainly;
“O what limb rending pains I feel, thy fire and my frost Mingle in howling pains, in furrows by thy lightnings rent; This is eternal death; and this the torment long foretold!
“ I know your name, Likmigya!” I screamed. “Thou art Orc, the serpent – wreathed round the accurs-ed tree. Wrathful, burnt, the Stone of Night; and like the eternal lion’s howl, in famine and war, devourer of the children of Enitharmon, blasphemous demon; I name you hated!”
A tsunami of fire washed over us and in the cacophony of its hatred and its undeniable power I screamed back at it.
“You may think to kill us all, but we will prevail. I see your doom, demon! Serviam dea omnipotens et summum bonum! Go back to the abyss! Your Master has no power here!”
This mighty demon lord, this ancient and fell demogorgon of the underworld, paused, if only for an instant. Then it bellowed its ferocity again and launched at us with its mighty flaming sword. The others scattered left and right and I saw the blade coming down right on top of me. In the sparse second before that unholy weapon cleaved me in twain, I knelt, and with my hands held at my forehead, my eyes closed and head bowed in prayer, I saw the purelands.
The creature’s fell blade met a rondure of force and exploded in a dazzling brilliance. Reality was torn asunder and in the instant that I looked up could see the lurid caligin of the abyss yawning before me. I was at once deafened and blinded and the world seemed to slow so that I saw everything moving at fraction of its pace.
As the demon hordes suddenly swarmed up from behind us, I saw in slow and soundless opacity Purba blowing on his conch and slashing with his knife. Sibu’s blade turned aside a cruelly curved short sword that would have spitted me, the lotus pendant at his neck burning with a holy fire that blinded and tormented the demons that saw it so they went mad and gouged at their own helmeted faces. In the other direction, Pemba and Jigme had launched themselves at the demon lord, Jigme’s courageous Vel singing as he leaped through the air intent on driving ittowards the creature’s stone heart while Pemba’s glowing Gadasmashed through the beast’s right arm as it recoiled from the failed attempt to destroy me.
The archmage’s spell was suddenly broken and turning my back on the demon lord, I stood up and clapped my hands above my head. The resulting thunderclap sent a shockwave throughout the hall that knocked the demon army off its feet. I then concentrated on the ceiling above them.
“Go back to the pits from whence you came!” I yelled. They saw too late what I intended and the thousands that suddenly tried to either flee or to attack were consumed in a cataclysm as immeasurable tons of rock crushed them from above.
I turned back to Jigme and Pemba and was shocked to see Jigme, still and unmoving, laying along the wall behind the creature among the debris while Likmigya, one huge arm hanging limp and immobile, threw his power at Pemba who moved like a black-robe himself, slashing out with the indomitable Gada. I yelled out for the sisters to aid him and they appeared, tiny, frail, yet clad for battle and armed with tiny bows. Their arrows, like little lightening bolts,exploded against the beast’s scorching hide and bit deep.
At that moment I saw my opportunity to end this battle. I raised my arms and started chanting but I was suddenly hit from behind and knocked off my feet. Winded, I looked up to see the black-clad horror that was the Cimmerii moving toward me with its hands that were the deadly sickles of ice I remembered from the mountain side reaching out to slash at me.
“Vajra!” I yelled and she was suddenly there, but with all the power of Heaven pouring toward the fell demon lord.
I was about to yell for Pemba but I was too late. A fey chartreuse light enveloped him and he screamed.
The demon lordlaughed in a cruel and guttural fashion as Vajra’s huge claws raked his faced and pushed him down in a ruin of twisted dragon wings and flaming putrefaction.
I had taken my eyes off the Cimmerii for only those few seconds and he was upon me. But then an arm suddenly wrapped about the cowled throat as those long fingers plunged into my upper chest and through to the rock below me. I screamed in an agony I would fail miserably in even trying to convey but a part of. I grabbed the creature’s armoured wrist and poured my own power into it just as the magical kirpancame over the creature’s shoulder with as much force as Purba could give it, right into its cowled face.
“I know what you are, fiend!” I screamed in desperation. “Go back to the shadows!”
To describe what I saw next is hardly possible. As the mighty amur, Vajra, grown to the same size as the demon king, tore at him in infinite fury in a battle of the gods, and a sorcerous beryl mist enveloped Pemba in paroxysms of agony, the fell black clad beast before me screamed its deathly shriek with Purba’s knife lodged in the centre of that caliginous abyss, its own pentadactyl of razor-like knives protruding from my own body. By whatever frigid and demonic power the Cimmerii was able to exist in this Irth, the amazing strength it had seemed more than either of us could overcome. But by whatever damage Purba’s magical knife and maybe my own powers had inflicted, that well of emptiness cowled by the living armour became as whitehot as a star and in a shimmering brilliance it suddenly exploded.
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Blinded, deafened and burnt I was thrown back by the shockwave. I remember, in the pain-filled effluvium of my mind, seeing in that moment slowed to an infinitesimal crawl, the silhouette of the kirpan as it clattered to the ground and in the same instant seeing Purba utterly consumed by that deathly light and obliterated. Where he had stood only a blackened husk remained. I think he lived still for a second or two, a look of shock more than anything else etched across his ruined face. He staggered backward before crumbling into black ash.
Gasping and in incredible pain I glanced towards Pemba. The mist had abated. I could not believe my eyes. Pemba was huge. I thought him porcine before but now he could hardly stand. His adiposity was sickening to behold. His flesh sagged from his bones in morbid corpulence so that I could not even make out his face. He seemed to be melting where he stood and his robes, unable to contain the burgeoning flesh within, tore apart in strips.
As he fell, collapsing under his own incredible weight in a sickening thud upon the glazed floor of the hall, he managed to look at me in torment and misery. Blood poured from every orifice as his body was crushed by its own weight.
“Help … me!” he blubbered through lips that sagged from his gums.
I crawled to him, my robe suddenly sodden with my ownlife’s blood that poured freely down my chest. Sibu, flanked by the sisters, who had by their arts managed to account for the remaining demonspawn behind us, hurried to me. Sibu sheathed his own knife and ran toward where Purba had fallen, tears rolling down his face in soundless grief.
“Gods!” he quailed as he picked up the Shankaand Purba’s dust covered kirpan from the ruination that had been our friend and travelling companion. Pemba thrashed helplessly like a stricken turtle.
His fleshy hand still clasped Gada and without sparing a thought for the battle that waxed hotter beside us I knelt beside Pemba.
“Help me!” he breathed through his tears as his massive chest heaved.
“I will try Pemba. Be still.” I held his wrist and smiled at him. “You have redeemed yourself today my friend– you fought bravely.”
“Thank … you … Tash-i,” he whispered.
I held his hand and concentrated but after perhaps fifty breaths I realised nothing I could do would help him, such was the devilry of the demon lord’s power. I placed my arm round his head and hugged him as he broke into tears.
The War of the Realms Page 23