by David Weber
He wasn't thinking about it any longer. Indeed, he was no longer capable of thought. Yet neither was he capable of letting go. Some final store of determination, dredged not from training, or strength of will, but from who and what he was and the promise he'd made a terrified young woman, held him still. The shield he'd thrown about her soul frayed, thinner and more tattered with every shallow, fluttering breath, and beyond that barrier, the demon stirred. A forked, slimy tongue caressed the mage's failing defenses. It slithered across them, savoring the treat waiting on their other side, yet not quite able to pierce them. Not yet. But soon, the demon knew. Soon.
Cherdahn glared down at the quivering, whimpering wreckage on his altar, and terror-fueled rage boiled behind his glittering eyes. Anger was no proper part of the ritual. Anger destroyed focus, diluted the distilled purity of cruelty, the perfect technique of agony, the Scorpion's service required. Cherdahn knew that, yet the knowledge meant little beside his own fear and his fury at the sacrifice who had somehow managed to defy him and all his years of skill and training for almost an hour.
He snarled and reached for his knife once more.
Trayn's body twitched. A white-hot bolt ripped back over the link to him, exploding deep within him, and then he exhaled explosively and slumped back against the stone floor. He was no longer truly conscious, but some elemental part of him felt the unspeakable gratitude of a young woman's soul in the moment it found blessed relief in death. In that moment, she recognized exactly what he had done for her, and she held the link between them open just an instant longer, sharing with him the joyous vista opening infinitely before her, giving him at least a glimpse of what he had won for both of them.
Then she was gone, and Trayn Aldarfro inhaled his first deep, lung-filling breath in over an hour.
Cherdahn froze, staring down at the altar in disbelief and sudden, choking terror.
He felt his acolytes staggering back around him, felt them turning to run, but his own muscles were frozen. There was no point fleeing.
His eyes slipped to the knife in his hand. The knife which had never failed him . . . until today.
He was still staring at it when the bonds holding the demon disappeared with the last scrap of the sacrifice's life energy.
Garsalt picked himself up from his knees, looking down at the bloody handprints Cherdahn's acolytes had left on his tunic. He started to reach for them, then stopped. He was no stranger to blood—no wizard attained the rank and authority he enjoyed in Carnadosa's hierarchy without learning the ways of blood magic—yet there was something different about this blood. He could feel the power in it, like acid, and his hand jerked away as if it had been stung.
And that was when the sounds from the other side of the chamber's door suddenly changed.
For just an instant, he couldn't quite identify the change. Then he realized—it was silence. There was no more chanting, there were no more shrieks, there was only silence, and a tremendous weight rolled off him as he realized Cherdahn had completed the ritual after all.
He was still turning back towards the chamber door with an enormous smile of relief when it exploded in a blizzard of splintered wood and a vast, scaled talon came slashing through the wreckage.
"Hold!"
The deep-voiced word of command froze Houghton and Jack Mashita in instant obedience. Their heads swiveled towards Bahzell, but the hradani wasn't looking at them. His eyes were closed, his ears flat, and muscles lumped along his jaw.
Bahzell was only faintly aware of his companions as he felt the demon exploding into freedom. The creature was completely unbound, free to make its own decisions, choose its own victims, and Bahzell could taste the rising storm of its exultant hunger.
"Walsharno!" his thought cried out.
"I feel it, Brother!" the reply came back, and they dropped back into one fused entity, despite the distance between them.
Bahzell watched through the courser's eyes as the entire top of the hill blasted into the rain drenched darkness. The demon heaved up out of the vast crater, towering against the lightning lashed clouds in a corona of poisonous green radiance. It was twice the size of the ones they had already faced, and grisly bits and pieces of the temple's last armsmen showered from its working jaws and night-black mandibles. It loomed into the heavens, bellowing its triumph and its hunger, and the terror of its coming went before it like some black hurricane.
But then it paused. The vast, misshapen head turned, cocking to one side, and it glared down at the single bright, blue star blazing on the grasslands at the base of the shattered hill.
It bellowed again, and a defiant whistle of equine challenge answered it, slashing through the rain like Tomanâk's own trumpet. Walsharno, son of Mathygan and Yorthandro, stared up at his enormous foe, and a needle-sharp lance of blue power ripped out across the darkness. It smashed into the demon's sickly green nimbus, and the creature shrieked again—this time in as much hurt as fury—as the cleansing azure brilliance of Tomanâk exploded against it.
A whirlwind stormfront roared outward, and blinding light flashed, reflecting from the storm clouds' belly, etching the wind-driven wildness of the grasslands in its actinic glare. The demon howled, pouring itself up out of the violated earth into the pounding rain, flowing down the hill towards the courser, and Walsharno stood his ground.
He was not alone. Bahzell was with him, joined mind-to-mind and soul-to-soul, buttressing the stallion's wild, fierce strength with every ounce of his own elemental stubbornness, his own Rage. And Tomanâk was with them both, reaching out, opening to them, offering them all that any mortal—even his champions—could touch and survive. They poured their strength, their adamantine refusal to yield, into that glittering lance of light, and the unique alloy of mortal courage and outrage blended with their deity's power to forge and shape that battering ram of raw energy pouring out of Walsharno.
The demon screamed, writhing in torment yet continuing to advance, and Bahzell clenched his fists, leaning his forehead against the tunnel's stone wall while he reached deeper, and deeper still. He dredged up all that lay within him, and felt the titanic conflict wavering, seesawing back and forth.
And then he felt something else, another presence, and reached out towards it. For an instant, he had no idea what it was. It glittered with its own refusal to yield, its own fierce defiance, almost like another champion of Tomanâk, and yet not quite. And as it reached back towards him, he suddenly knew it.
A third mortal presence joined itself to the struggle. It lacked Bahzell's Rage, lacked Walsharno's fierce wildness, but it had its own unquenchable strength. Its steely core of determination and duty, its rejection of darkness and the power of a will which could die, but never be broken. And as it joined with Bahzell and Walsharno, it opened a third channel to Tomanâk. A fresh tide of power rippled into them, and the titanic cable of power raging out from Walsharno pulsed with a new strength, a new fury.
The demon paused. Its head and wings lashed, mandibles scissored furiously, and talons ripped huge furrows out of what was left of the hillside. It shrieked in defiance . . . but it also stopped. The green corona about it glared brighter, hotter, wavering like sheet lightning, as the torrent of Tomanâk's rejection battered its way through it inch by inch. The terrific concussion of that conflict seemed to shake the earth. The raw brilliance fountaining upward from it could be seen from fifty miles away. The thunderheads above the hill peeled back, burned away, opening a hole to the stars, and still the intolerable balance held.
It held, and held, and held. And then, without warning, it suddenly tipped.
There was one, final blinding flash of light. A ring of fire rolled down the shattered hillside, sweeping out in all directions like a tidal wave of blue glory, and the demon was gone.
XVIII
"I'm thinking its past time Ken and Jack were going home, Wencit," Bahzell rumbled.
He, Walsharno, and the wizard stood with Houghton and Mashita beside Tough Mama as the rising sun poure
d golden light over the churned and broken ruins of what had once been a large hill. Much of that hill had tumbled down into the streambed at its foot, and a large pond or modest lake was already backing up behind it. The liberated captives—over sixty children, and eleven surviving adults—sat on the wet, rain-washed grass above that slowly broadening sheet of water, staring up at the blue sky and sunlight they had never expected to see again.
Bahzell and Walsharno had healed the hurt among them, and the cleansing power of Tomanâk had blunted the worst of the memories, taken away the most horrifying of the nightmares.
Trayn Aldarfro sat with them. The mage's face was worn, his eyes filled with shadows, yet a deep, indescribable sense of peace enfolded him.
"I suppose it is time I started figuring out exactly how to get them there," Wencit conceded after a moment, smiling at the two Marines. "I've been just a bit busy, you know."
"Excuses, excuses," Houghton replied with an answering smile. Then he looked at his battered LAV and shook his head. "On the other hand, I'm not entirely positive sending us home is the best option. When Lieutenant Alvarez sees this —!"
"Well, as to that," Bahzell said slowly, looking at the faint blue glow, visible only to a champion of Tomanâk, which clung to Houghton even now, "I'm thinking as how we could be finding a place for you here, Sword Brother." Houghton looked up, eyes widening slightly at Bahzell's form of address, and the hradani smiled gravely at him. "We'd not have stopped that demon without you. That makes you one of our own . . . and a man's never after having enough sword brothers to watch his back."
"I —" Houghton paused and cleared his throat. "I'm honored by the offer," he said then, forcing himself to set aside the habitual armor of levity and match Bahzell's willingness to speak the truth of his feelings. "Deeply honored . . . Sword Brother. But I have obligations, oaths I've sworn to my own universe and my own country."
"No doubt you have," Bahzell agreed. "Still and all, a man's the right to make the choices his actions have earned. I'm thinking you and Jack both fall into that category."
"It's tempting," Houghton said frankly. "Very tempting. In fact—"
The Marine broke off, eyes widening, as someone else stepped out of infinity into the now.
Kenneth Houghton had never before seen Tomanâk Orfro, God of War and Judge of Princes, but he recognized him instantly. The deity stood before them, half again Bahzell's height, brown eyes and hair gleaming in the morning light. The crossed mace and sword of his order glittered on the breast of his simple green surcoat, and an enormous sword was sheathed across his back. The power of his presence reached out like a fist, yet there was no threat in it, no arrogance, and he smiled.
"I did warn you and Walsharno you'd find brothers in strange places, didn't I, Bahzell?"
Houghton hadn't believed it was possible for a voice to be even deeper and more resonant than Bahzell's, but Tomanâk's managed it easily.
"Aye, so you did," Bahzell agreed, turning to face his deity. "And I'm thinking as how I'd just as soon be keeping him."
"I know." Tomanâk looked down at Houghton, and the glow around the Marine strengthened. But then the god shook his head. "I know," he repeated, "and I'd be most pleased to see Gunnery Sergeant Houghton numbered among my blades. But this isn't his place, Bahzell."
Bahzell started to open his mouth, then closed it firmly, and Tomanâk chuckled. The sound ran through the morning like music, and two or three of the children by the water laughed out loud.
"There are times, Bahzell," Tomanâk said. "Oh, there are times. But I see that even your stubbornness has limits."
"I'd not be saying that," Bahzell replied. "If it's 'stubborn' you're wanting, then I've all of that you might need. But I'm thinking there's more than you've said."
"Because there is," Tomanâk agreed. "And not just the oaths he's already mentioned, the obligations any man of honor must meet if he's to be true to himself. That would be reason enough, but there's a stronger and far more important reason, as well."
He turned his attention back to Houghton and shook his head.
"I know what you're thinking, Kenneth Houghton," he rumbled. "And you're wrong."
"Wrong?" Houghton repeated, and Tomanâk nodded.
"You're thinking that what's happened to you over the last day or so has been your salvation. That you've rediscovered the difference between good and evil—the reason it's necessary to choose between them. And you're afraid that if you return to your own time, your own place, without your Gwynn, without such clear-cut choices, you'll lose that certainty."
Houghton's eyes winced at the mention of his dead wife, but he continued to meet Tomanâk's gaze levelly, and the war god nodded.
"I know what you fear, and why," he said gently. "Your universe is very different from this one. It's not mine, any more than this one is yours, but I know it. And as you've visited this one, I've visited yours. As I've explained to Bahzell, all universes are one, in one sense, even while each of them is unique. And just as Bahzell and Walsharno exist in dozens, or scores, or even hundreds and thousands of other universes, so do you. In some of them, you know Bahzell and Walsharno well. In others, you've never met . . . and never will. But in every universe in which you live, you, like them, have decisions to make. And, like them, you make them well."
"But —"
"I didn't say you always feel certain about your decisions," Tomanâk cut him off gently. "I just said that you choose well. You've questioned and doubted your choices in your own world. Indeed, you've blamed yourself for failing to choose at all. But the truth is that you've always chosen, and the choices you've made have been worthy of the man Gwynn Houghton loved. The man she still loves."
Houghton's eyes burned, and a huge hand rested gently on his shoulder for a moment.
"You universe is not mine, Kenneth Houghton, but a part of you always will be. Bahzell can tell you that I know my own, and I know you. In another universe, even I may be someone else, yet still I will know you for my own whenever we meet, wherever we meet. And I will claim you as my own, proudly. But now, I must send you home. You have things to do there still, and people who depend upon you. So go home, Kenneth Houghton. Go home, remembering all that happened here, and remembering this promise: someday you will meet Bahzell again, and your Gwynn will be with you when you do."
Houghton nodded, unable to speak, then blinked rapidly as Bahzell clasped his forearm. He looked up at the hradani, and Bahzell swept him into a sudden, crushing embrace.
"It's just as well, I've no doubt, that you and Brandark never meet, little man," the hradani rumbled. "One of you per universe is enough and more than enough, I'm thinking."
"I'll miss you—you and Wencit both," Houghton said, and knew it was true. "It's been a hell of a ride."
"That it has," Wencit agreed. "I'll try not to catch you up in any more misdirected spells, though."
"Probably just as well," Houghton said, regarding the Tough Mama's damages. "The repair bill for this is going to be a bitch. And I don't even want to think about the paperwork when I start trying to explain!"
"Some things not even a god can protect you from," Tomanâk rumbled. "Still, the least I can do is see to getting you home again without making Wencit sort through all the possible universes first. Assuming, of course, that he'd get it right this time."
"Thank you," Wencit said mildly, and Tomanâk chuckled again.
Bahzell turned to clasped Mashita's forearm, as well. The younger Marine started to say something, then stopped and simply shrugged. Bahzell nodded back, and Mashita climbed up on to Tough Mama's scorched and seared deck.
Houghton followed him, climbing back into the commander's hatch and taking one last look around, engraving every detail on his memory. Then he drew a deep breath and looked across at Tomanâk.
"Let's do it," he said.
Lieutenant Jefferson Enrique Alvarez walked moodily across the vehicle park.
He hadn't gotten much sleep. Company and Battalion had bot
h been less than amused by his report that someone had apparently decided to beam one of his LAVs up to the mother ship, and he wished he could blame them. Unfortunately, he couldn't. He couldn't even blame them for their obvious doubts about his own contact with reality. If he hadn't had over two dozen witnesses who all agreed with one another on the essentials, he wouldn't have believed it, either. Fourteen-ton armored vehicles didn't simply up and disappear in flashes of blue light. They especially didn't simply up and disappear taking his senior noncom with them.
Alvarez's jaw tightened as he admitted the truth to himself. No one liked losing men and equipment, even when he knew what the hell had happened to them, but losing Houghton—that was what really hurt. The Gunny had been the Platoon's true heart and soul. Alvarez might have commanded it; Gunny Houghton had run it. And he'd even managed, along the way, to keep one Lieutenant Jefferson Enrique Alvarez from fucking up.
But he wasn't going to be doing that any —
WHUMPF!
Alvarez stopped dead as an LAV materialized suddenly. It simply blinked into existence, twenty feet in front of him, and a fist of displaced air hit him briskly in the face. A ring of dust blew outward around it, and Alvarez heard a chorus of startled shouts rising from behind him.
The lieutenant stood there, staring at Tough Mama. She was missing one wheel entirely. Her right front wheel well was badly damaged—it looked for all the world as if something with claws had ripped it apart. The upper deck was pitted, burned and singed looking, the paint badly blistered where it hadn't been scorched completely away. And there were what looked like more claw marks on the front of the turret, as well.
But she was here.