Demon Blade

by Mark A. Garland

  "I can't see," she whispered to Sharryl, feeling the other woman's hand still on her back.

  "We don't have to," Sharryl said. "Listen."

  She heard bows firing, arrows flying, bouncing off the stone walls above her head, then men screaming and cursing and dying all around her.

  "They're killing each other," she said.

  "Yes, a few anyway. Now, crawl!" Sharryl told her.

  She heard Frost moving behind her again as they started off and decided he was on the floor as well, crawling as she was. The warding spell had protected the wizard from the initial barrage, but such things had limits; by now he too was probably vulnerable—and enormously unhappy about it.

  "We're near the room's north wall," Sharryl said, after navigating a stout table leg, then pulling Madia after her. "Where would you like to go?"

  "There should be a stairwell just ahead of us."

  They crawled a few more yards until they encountered the wall, then Sharryl followed Madia, tracing the stone, until their hands found the raised stone of the steps. Sharryl paused then, waiting for Rosivok. She rose and stumbled up, then out, through the doorway at the top of the stairs into a wide, empty corridor. The others quickly followed, pulling the door shut behind them.

  Rosivok and Sharryl stood guard while Frost renewed the warding spells on both Madia and himself, though he left her appearance alone; there was at least a possibility that she might find herself among friends, he explained, and she was inclined to agree, though she was by no means certain.

  "We will not be caught unawares again," Frost said after that. He held his staff close to his breast and whispered to it, moving his hands over it as he did. When he finished, he turned and held the staff toward the door just behind them. The thick end in his hand began to quiver. As he moved the staff away again, the motion subsided. Without another word, he turned and set off down the hall, leading with the staff.

  "Which way?" Frost asked, slowing as they neared a junction. "The shortest route to Lord Ferris' chambers?"

  "Through the courtyard, this way," Madia said, taking the lead again. Another two hallways and the group found themselves in a private courtyard filled with flowering shrubberies and stone benches. "There," Madia said, pointing to the balconies above the far side of the yard.

  They paused, watching Frost's staff, then continued when all seemed well. Halfway across the yard, Frost's staff nearly leaped from his hand.

  Across the yard a cluster of swordsmen burst through a row of arches, trampling shrubs and low hedgerows as they came. Frost stood pat, already engrossed with his spells. Madia followed Rosivok and Sharryl as they moved forward to meet the attackers.

  She took on the first man she came to, fending off a clumsy thrust and countering with a messy but deadly blow to the throat. She looked left and saw Rosivok already standing over three dead men, saw Sharryl cutting the middle out of her third kill. Impossible to keep up with, Madia thought. Then she found three soldiers confronting her, and a fourth joining in, and she began backing off, deflecting a flurry of blades as the soldiers closed in.

  Suddenly they each stood back and froze in place, wearing looks of surprise and anguish. As they tried to move, Madia saw them wince, and heard their muffled moans. She chanced another glance sideways and saw that all of the attackers were so afflicted, all standing as still as possible.

  Rosivok and Sharryl advanced on them, scything them like an unwanted thicket. Madia followed, cutting first one man down, then going after a second. Most went hobbling away, backward at first, getting themselves turned around as they went, groaning through gritted teeth with each step they took. She looked back and saw Frost leaning easily on his staff, just watching.

  "Enough!" he called out. "We will go and have our visit with the grand chamberlain without further delay." He looked at Madia and she nodded. Then a voice, loud and echoing among the courtyard's stone walls, called out from somewhere above them: "He awaits you now!"

  Madia looked up to see a figure high on a balcony, staring down at them: Lord Ferris.

  "You appear to be a formidable mage," Ferris said. "Able to embarrass my guard, and conjure the image of our dead princess upon this poor girl, so to fool the court, no doubt. And such a large, strong fellow, capable of great endurance, surely. You will be remembered well . . . by some."

  "And known to many!" Frost replied.

  "Your legacy ends here," Ferris said. "You are also a formidable nuisance. I would ask of one so wise in years and magic, such as yourself: what is it you hoped to gain by these incredible actions?"

  "Justice, perhaps," Frost replied, holding himself erect by clutching his staff in both hands.

  "You feel your death will represent some sort of justice? Then tell me, who have you wronged?"

  "Madia has been wronged, my lord, and her father, and the memory of her grandfather, as have the people of this realm. It is that legacy I champion, and your right to it which I contest."

  "This made-up girl you bring makes no difference to anyone. And my legacy is my own. As for you, I had thought to make you perform for my court, payment for sparing your life, but I can already see that you are far too confused to honor such a bargain."

  Madia noticed both Subartans moving at the right edge of her vision, keeping low, ready stances. They faced a creature no more than a yard or so tall, a thing with black eyes and dirty crimson flesh, a naked, knobby, pointy-faced imp that seemed almost humorous at first glance, though much less so as it came closer, growing more distinct, baring deadly black teeth as it grinned and opened its generous mouth. It leaped abruptly and landed exactly between Rosivok and Sharryl.

  "No!" Frost shouted, and the Subartans stepped back and stood still, each still facing the thing. It glared at them, features twisting, then it turned to Frost and its expression changed. The wizard pointed his staff and shouted a single sound, and the creature shrieked, then leaped again, howling and screaming as it went. It landed halfway across the courtyard and began rolling about, still howling: a high-pitched shredded sound, like a wild dog being horribly maimed.

  Madia glanced back up at Ferris and saw that his expression had changed as well, had become one of agitation. He raised his arms and moved his lips, and the air within the courtyard seemed to ignite. The flash was blinding, the sound deafening. An invisible wave of air rushed against Madia like the slap of some great hand, knocking her hard to the ground, stunned. Her body ached everywhere as she tried to move, but she raised her head enough to see that her companions were laid out as she was, including Frost.

  Fresh movement called her attention. Soldiers were edging back toward them, their paralysis apparently receding, their temerity restored. Rosivok seemed to notice, too, and began pulling himself up; Sharryl was slower, but in a moment both Subartans were largely on their feet again.

  They helped Frost up, and Madia saw the look in his eyes: a ferocious, blazing indignation, all traces of balance and reason vanished now. He reached up toward Ferris and spoke a series of rapid commands. The balcony itself began to shake, threatening to give way as bits of stone and mortar crumbled and fell.

  Then Ferris shouted back strange words of his own, and the shaking and crumbling stopped.

  Frost was already adding new phrases, waving his arms and staff about, a wild man now, as Madia had never dreamed he could become. He took his eyes off the balcony and looked about, then pointed his staff. With a shout he raised one of the yard's many stone benches off the ground and sent it hurtling at Ferris. But before it arrived, Ferris somehow managed to blast the object into dust and gravel, all of which fell to the ground below, sending soldiers scurrying to get out of the way.

  "Madia!" Rosivok shouted. She turned to find the two Subartans engaging the approaching soldiers. He was calling for her help.

  As she gathered herself and started forward, she heard Frost scream like a man being brutally tortured. Madia looked to see him staggering backward, shaking, clutching his staff tightly in both hands as
he held it out horizontally before him. Ferris had his own hands held out and up over his head, his eyes closed, his mouth open. She could hear a sound coming from him, too: a long, low tone that hardly seemed possible for a human voice, a steady note that carried on without a single breath of interruption.

  The smaller demon-creature was up again, recovering now; it circled Frost, getting closer and apparently getting excited about it. Rosivok broke off suddenly and lunged at the thing, which made it leap as it had before. But to his credit, Rosivok, seeming to anticipate the move, bounded up to intercept the imp's trajectory. He sliced through one of the creature's knobby legs as it passed over his head and the demon screamed again. It fell in a misshapen heap a few yards away and began flopping about, its head thrashing as it continued to scream, black blood running from the stub of the severed limb.

  But already the soldiers were closing, working their way toward Frost, bold, as though he were no longer a threat. Madia looked at him again and saw that this was true—saw Frost's arms drop suddenly. He turned and fell to the ground where he lay breathing but motionless, beaten. On the balcony above, Ferris had opened his eyes again and lowered his hands. The terrible intensity on his face was already softening, being replaced by a growing calm.

  "They come!" Rosivok shouted. Madia turned her attention back to the soldiers as they rushed in. She dropped further back, nearer Frost, joining the two Subartans as they moved in close to where the wizard lay. The attackers were not great fighters, but there were at least two dozen of them now, and no amount of prowess was a match for so many. Some of them held back, still cautious, but most found courage enough. Madia heard Sharryl shout out to the Greater Gods and glanced left to see blood running from her right arm. She moved still closer, and the three of them found themselves nearly standing on top of Frost.

  Run, Madia thought, seeing this as their only choice, but she knew the two Subartans would not; they would stand and fight over his body until they were dead.

  Then the light of day was gone.

  Madia looked about frantically, blinking her eyes. The sun! She could see nothing at all in the total blackness. But it was not just the absence of sunlight, she guessed, for even a moonless night was filled with stars. I am blind, she realized. Completely. And then, just as suddenly, she was not.

  She saw the courtyard exactly as it had been, the soldiers pressing in all around her, but they did not attack. She thought they might still be blind as she had been, then noticed that their eyes seemed to work well enough. Several of the soldiers looked directly at her, but then they looked away as if she were not there. She looked at Sharryl and Rosivok and saw that they had changed, that they were not exactly themselves. Their own images remained, barely visible in a jumble of images, but what she saw for the most part were two of Ferris' own soldiers. More illusions of some sort, she decided. False glamors, like the one she had worn into the city.

  Frost!

  She looked down and saw a very large soldier lying behind her, rolling over and struggling to get to his feet. . . .

  "The knaves must have run while we could not see," Rosivok said abruptly, playing out his new role, apparently aware of the implications.

  "Which way?" one of the "real" soldiers asked.

  "Up, to the lord's chambers!" Rosivok shouted.

  "Aye!" another man said. "Assassins, and they are up to it still!"

  "Aye!" half the other men chimed, most of them making their way back toward the arches through which they had come, the way to the king's chambers—Lord Ferris' chambers, Madia corrected herself, a knot growing in her stomach as she weighed the thought.

  "Now," the man that was Frost said from behind her, in a voice almost too soft to hear, "we will go that way." He nodded to indicate a retreat. "Rosivok," Frost added, "tell them a good lie."

  "We will go down the way the intruders came!" the Subartan shouted, indicating Sharryl and Madia, and Frost. "To be sure they did not run out instead."

  "Very well," one of the men, a sergeant, agreed. But then he indicated two other men to go along as well. Rosivok nodded, and the six of them made their way back out of the yard. Madia kept watch on Frost, who was clearly having trouble keeping up. He seemed devoid of energy, barely able to navigate the courtyard's walkways. She could see just enough of his true image to notice that his clothing hung on him now, as though he had lost a great deal of weight—as though it wasn't Frost at all.

  The instant he passed through the archway, Frost stumbled and fell against the stone wall of the corridor beyond. Rosivok and Sharryl quickly turned their blades on the two soldiers. In an instant, both men lay dead.

  The Subartans took one of Frost's arms each and continued down the hall, back toward the lower banquet hall and the storage rooms beyond.

  * * *

  When they finally reached the stairwell that led to the street, Madia made the others pause.

  "We can't leave," she said. Then, "I can't leave."

  "I know," Frost mumbled, hoarse and fading, but rallying himself somewhat. "I know how you feel, but we must leave. All of us. The creature we faced is not the grand chamberlain as he pretends, nor a man of any kind. I have never encountered anything . . . to compare." He closed his eyes, breathing heavily, then looked at her again. "Ferris, the thing that he is, commands great powers, more than the greatest of sorcerers, more than any creature of this world.

  "I did not believe, not until I saw the imp he set upon us." Another pause. Madia waited.

  "None but a demon prince could command such lesser demons," Frost went on. "I know what I felt, the power he brought to bear against me." He faded yet again, hanging like a dead man in the arms of his two Subartans. Then the eyes slowly opened once more. "Trickery saved us once," he said, "but do not count on it again."

  Madia was swept by a wave of implications, both future and past. What Frost was saying could mean many things. "Then my father," she said, feeling a chill as she realized it, "never stood any chance at all."

  "None," Frost replied, eyes closed.

  "And neither do we," Rosivok said, his voice edged with the first real sense of doubt, perhaps even fear, that Madia had ever felt from the Subartans. More than the soldiers and the imp, more than Ferris himself, this frightened her. Their confidence, and Frost's, had been an inspiration, a foundation on which to build. She felt something within her coming completely apart, and knew of nothing to stop it.

  "Come!" Rosivok said, moving again. "Come now!" Madia complied.

  The false glamors on each of them had already begun to fade as they hurried up and out into the city's streets, into the waiting shadows across the stone way—helping Frost along at first, carrying him entirely after that.

  "Who do you know here?" Rosivok asked. "Who can we go to for help?"

  Madia looked about her at the many houses, the peasants and beggars and freemen and others, their numbers scarce as night approached. She felt something immensely heavy inside of her now, a burden, terribly old and awkward and consummate, which the truth had forced upon her. She stared at her feet, fighting the sway. "There is . . . no one," she confessed.

  The Subartans looked at each other silently. "Of course," Sharryl said. Madia had no response.

  Then they turned and set off again, carrying Frost, who was now clearly a hundred pounds lighter than he had been when he'd first arrived at Kamrit. In a few minutes, they entered a small square ringed with shops and a scattering of guild halls. There was still a fair sized crowd here, apparently on hand for a public execution. A platform had been erected in the center of the square, and an axman's block stood at its center. Guards waited there with a man in irons, all standing to one side.

  Madia followed Sharryl and Rosivok as they hastened along the back edges of the crowd, largely unnoticed. In the streets beyond the square, they finally found a place to hide—a small stable, filthy for lack of attention and empty but for a single horse. They settled in a stall and waited for nightfall. In the stable's utter darknes
s, they let Frost rest, and began to discuss how they might get out of the city without his help—whether, with the guards alerted now, it was reasonable even to try.

  "Perhaps I can help," a new voice said, a faint silhouette that spoke from just inside the half-open stable door; a woman, though her form grew invisible as she entered further. Madia did not need to see the woman's face. She knew the voice, and this time it took her only a moment to place it.

  "Anna?" she asked.

  "Yes, my lady. Yes."

  * * *

  "I saw you in the square," Anna said, her form barely visible where she sat on the stable's floor close to Madia. "I followed you here."

  "Others may have recognized you as well," Rosivok said. "We must get away from Kamrit. The master must heal. No more battles for now."

  "I know," Madia said.

  "I have never before spoken to the dead," Anna whispered. "Tell me you are real."

  "I live," Madia said, "though it nearly wasn't so. I was set upon by robbers, then by a knight from this castle, then by soldiers from Lencia, perhaps lead by Prince Jaran himself, and all because—because someone betrayed me to my father, dear Anna. But how much of this do you already know?"

  "I've told you Madia, I did not betray you! Someone else must have told your father of your plans that evening. Lord Ferris, no doubt."

  "Perhaps," Madia said, seeing it now, how simple it was.

  "He has taken over the throne with such zeal, I can't believe he didn't plan it all along," Anna continued. "I think he somehow made your father ill. He tried to kill him, and may have done it, but—but I think he did not."