The spell lay in the gates, then, and it knew to avoid them. And had the legs, the build to do that, to run like a millipede up and down the walls. Perhaps it had always known that he would seek shelter in this maze; perhaps it had waited deliberately to catch him here, though its reasons were obscure.
Imber could climb walls, and hope to see a way out from the top; but he couldn't climb as the monster did, as easily as running. It was coming through the sunflowers, the blooms were high enough to hide it but it must be close, it must catch him in a moment.
Imber turned and ran, back the way he'd come.
As he'd anticipated, it led him not out into the open but further into confusion, into fields he had not seen: more crops, more doorways, more moments of jolting shock as the stars realigned themselves at every turn. His head spun, his muscles ached, his breathing laboured as he drove himself on and on, faster, harder - and often, often he saw the creature that he fled, ahead or to one side or the other, always coming over a wall with that smooth scuttling run that spoke of infinite stamina, infinite knowingness — ‘ will always find you, little mortal- and infinite patience, you cannot always run.
Soon he found himself stumbling over his own tracks in the soft earth, but they were no use to him, going this way or that, no kind of guide. The earth was soft and watered, the crops were tended, weeded, must be harvested — men must come and go within this maze. Magicians, no doubt, immune to any spell: though it was hard to think of such men grubbing their ringers in the earth to grow millet for their morning porridge.
It was hard to think at all, as the sweat ran and the air stung his throat, his legs trembled beneath his weight and he all but fell as he plunged through one more doorway.
Plunged from near-darkness into soft and simple light, and all but fell again from the simple shock of it; and did fall to his knees - more in wonder than in worship, though how much more he was glad not to be challenged on - when he saw who stood there among the broadleaf greens.
There were two figures in the light. One was a boy who held a lamp, a page in service to his mistress; the other was Julianne.
They made a strange and troubling tableau, standing with their feet in leaves that were green where the pool of lamplight fell, that turned silver under the stars and black beneath the walls; they looked as though they stood on the stillness of the ocean, as though they were statues cast in light against the darkness that only they could hold back, and only for a time, what time they lingered here. He did not think they would linger long. Not for a moment did he think that Julianne was here to be rescued, by him or anyone.
She smiled at him, and gestured: stand up, come closer.
He did both, slowly and reverently, which might equally have been said slowly and fearfully, because that too was true. He felt as though he were approaching some sudden manifestation of the God, a revelation to be both feared and revered.
When he was near enough she reached out a hand, though, in a way that was all wife and nothing saintly: as though she needed the reassurance of his physical touch as urgently as he did hers.
Their fingers met, and gripped: fumblingly at first, and then with a solid certainty. He might have crushed her hand between both of his; he might have dragged her to him, crushed her slenderness against his weight; he might have crushed any resistance in her, to claim her as his again. He thought there was permission, implicit in her touch.
He did none of those. He let her choose how tightly she held him, tighter than a social favour but not tight enough for passion, never tight enough for him. He felt a tremble in her fingers and thought that she was fighting her own instincts, holding back.
He stood and gazed at her. His lips shaped her name without breath, without sound. He marvelled at her as he always had, at her height and beauty and the straight gaze of her measuring eyes. He wondered how he stood in her assessment, and only then why and how she stood here, waiting to assess; and only then - when the boy shifted at her side and all the shadows danced in time with him to remind Imber of what had driven him here to find her -only then, too late for any dream of safety, did he realise how very far he'd failed her.
Still breathless from the running, breathless from the startlement of her, breathless as ever in her presence, he gasped what little air he could and croaked, "Ware, run, there's a demon, I'll face it while you flee . ..'
It came out strangled, all but incomprehensible; it was in any case too late. His arm had pointed back, behind him, through the opening, but the monster came over the wall as it always did. This was like a child's dream - a dream of his own, as he'd found that becoming adult was no defence against the nightmares that had always dogged his sleeping: a dream of being hunted by an unchanging, relentless evil that would always, always reach him in the end. Except that he had never for one moment imagined that he was dreaming tonight, despite the unearthly horror and uncanny knowingness of what he fled, the impossibility of what and who he'd found. That thing was real and really here, and so was he, and so appallingly was Julianne.
He gestured her back with his arm, and the boy with her, so that they at least had the gateway to flee through, and he had the creature before him. It had followed him this far, perhaps he was all it wanted; if not he could buy them some time at any rate, though not he feared a very great deal of time. He could see the thing more clearly and more closely now that he was no longer running, now that it was coming to him across a ground-crop, now there was a true and steady light. If he'd ever felt a moment's shame at how he'd fled at first sight of it, he could have abandoned that at a glance. Some creatures were not made for men to fight. This wicked beast had horns and claws and antennae like whips, such as no millipede that ever walked the world; its glowing eyes were shielded within plates of black and gleaming armour. Its innumerable feet marched forward like tattooing-needles, swift and sharp and deadly. It would overrun him, he thought, and never pause, never need to glance behind. Every step would puncture and pierce deep; never mind a man, a hundred such steps would shred a bull to rags and threads of flesh, and it could take a hundred steps to cover the length of a man, the length of him ...
'Run,' he said, making the effort now to find his voice, too late. 'Julianne, run - and you, boy, go with her. This thing is mine.'
'If yours, why should we run?' she countered stubbornly. 'Imber, has that blade been blessed?'
'What?'
'By a priest, a man of faith sworn to the God ...'
'No.' What was she talking about, why was she talking at all, why was she not in flight? Because she had some care for him, and would not leave him? That was madness, they would all die together, to no point. He drew breath to say so: to scream it, indeed, to throw her from him by the sheer power of his desperation and all of it located in his voice. If he were a djinni he would have made a great wind to carry her far, far from here, far from wherever she had come from, out of this cursed country and safe home to his own hearth which ought also to be hers ...
No djinni he, and not fast enough even to shout; she cut across him, and was as sharp and piercing as any one of the monster's needle legs that had carried it so close now, almost the length of the field and she was still talking.
'Then put it up, it'll do you no good. That's an 'ifrit, and no mortal sword can cut it. The knife I carried is blessed, but...'
'But I have that, my lady' The boy, his first words of the night, and Imber was almost too distrait to hear them, far too concerned, confused to care.
Until all the shadows shrank and turned and stretched at once, as the lamp was lobbed high over his shoulder and flared as it fell, splashed like a coughing ball of fire onto the monster's head.
The creature - 'ifrit, she had said, and perhaps he should have named it himself, he surely should have known - reared up till half its length stood tall, higher than a man, legs and antennae waving wildly and ineffectually while the oil blazed between its eyes.
A small body hurtled past Imber, chased by a voice, Julianne's, shrie
king as he had meant to shriek himself:
'Roald, no! It's too short, you can't—!'
But he could, or he thought he could, or he thought he had to try. And he was a boy, with a lady to defend and a knight to watch him do it; she had no hope of calling him back. Imber recognised the impulse even as he started forward himself, too slow, too late again.
The boy Roald had a knife in his hand: a knife that lacked perhaps a little elegance to be appropriate as a lady's blade, but lacked much more to be a weapon fit to face a monster such as this. Imber had run from doing that with his own long sword.
Now he had to, unwilling as he was. He advanced against the beast, but not fast enough to catch the boy ahead. He was vaguely aware that Julianne was shouting something at his back; it might have been a name — Esren, Esren, damn you!- but it meant nothing to him.
What he saw meant little more. There was light, but not enough; the flaring oil had burned bright enough to blind him to the more delicate web of starlight, and now that flare had subsided he was squinting, struggling with shadows.
Worse, though, was the insanity of what he watched, like a tapestry of myth brought into life. The monster was compounded of demonseed and horror, all the terrors of all the stories of the dark; the boy was just a boy, a rough-clad serving lad with a poniard in his fist. He'd likely never used a knife in his life except to cut himself a trencher from the loaf, and the thing he fought was vastly bigger than himself and vastly malign. There was a smell this close, a dry and dusty odour, the spice-smell of the desert, nothing at all unpleasant except that Imber's soul abhorred it. It was the stink of evil embodied, all that he most loathed, that he'd been trained to fear and to resist; and so he should not be surprised to meet it here in Surayon, and yet he was. A faint sense-memory said it had the same core-smell as the djinni, and that was a surprise too, but the greatest was to see the boy Roald not overwhelmed by anything about the creature, the 'ifrit: not its size, not its appearance, not its emanation of wickedness.
Roald simply ran at it while it was still erect, in pain or shock from its burning; he held his blade high and two-handed - his tiny blade, it seemed, against the looming black of the monster's belly and the waving menace of its legs - and plunged it home.
And it sank home where it truly looked as though it shouldn't, as though that shimmering black armour ought to shrug it off without a scratch; sank haft-deep through the belly-plates of the beast as easily as though it slid through the mirror surface of a pool. Roald screamed in triumph and dragged it down like a slaughterer's man opening an ox, and Imber looked for the slipperiness of guts to come tumbling out of the rent he made.
Nothing did, unless there was a little smoke or steam, a mistiness suddenly around them. Well, the creature had fire in its eyes; perhaps its guts were smoking hot. Perhaps its guts were smoke. Whatever, it was wounded; and Roaid was at it again already, slashing at its threshing legs. They were blows without force, driven by pure fury — and fury was enough, because wherever blade met limb it was the limb that failed. The boy might have been cutting taut strings with a razor, or lopping branches with his father’s billhook.
The creature was peering down at him, though, from its reared height; and it had legs enough and to spare, and seemed not to be too deeply hurt. As Julianne had said, the knife was simply too short to do much damage. The boy was doing brave work, but it needed a man with a man’s strength and steel to finish the task.
Conscious of Julianne at his back — Julianne in danger, yes, but also and very much Julianne watching him — Imber called out, 'Back, lad, you get back, you can do no more here,' as he closed with the creature.
Distracted as it was, he had an executioner’s time to set himself, time to swing. Brought his long sword scything round with all the power and timing of a lifetime's training, backed by his long hunt and his bad day and his own determined fury, not to disgrace himself before this girl, this stranger his wife. There was a sweet edge on his blade, that he knew, and it should have sheared the monster's body half through, given how easily the boy's small knife had cut it.
Instead the edge met the armour and didn't cut, didn't mark, didn't even skid off at an angle; it simply stopped. Stopped dead, as though he'd been trying to hew granite. The jar of its stopping snagged every bone in his body, numbed his arms up to his shoulders and snatched the air from his lungs again; the blade rang falsely and dropped from his helpless fingers.
Stunned, bewildered, he was as checked as his blade: standing useless, only peripherally aware of Julianne's bellow from behind, hearing without understanding as she roared, 'I told you, your swords no good! Back, both, the knifes as bad...'
But Roald wasn't listening to her any more than he had to Imber. He was still there, a close arm's reach from the 'ifrit, still hacking and slashing, still carving his way into the monstrous body. Every stroke cut through the carapace that had halted Imber's heavy sword; it was slow work, though, and the 'ifrit was aware, poised like a snake on its tail, and it seemed to Imber as though the whole world were equally poised and still, waiting for the strike. Only the boy seemed oblivious, grunting and cursing under his breath as he chopped. Julianne was shrieking at him again, but he was as deaf to her as he was to the moment.
Imber might have tried to seize him, to snatch him back, but that would only have meant both of them falling under the monster's horns, and no defence for Julianne thereafter. Instead he fumbled on the ground for his fallen sword, scrabbling to pluck it up with deadened hands. He lifted the point again against the 'ifrit, thinking perhaps to thrust it into a wound that the boy had made before him, if he couldn't cut through that impervious shell, see what damage a length of good Outremer steel could wreak in a demon's innards, if once it could get in there . . .
Still slow and shaken, though, he couldn't come at it soon enough. Something had got through to the boy, Julianne's sudden silence perhaps where her voice had never reached him. He glanced up from his butchery, and must have seen two baleful eyes of fire, with a blinded one between: eyes that must have swelled against the glitterdust of the sky behind, as the creature's head drove down.
Perhaps he did not, could not see the horns that impaled him, throat and belly; perhaps the double blow came so swiftly that he felt nothing, neither cold nor heat nor terror before he died.
The creature's head flung sideways, flung the broken body off; and then it turned, seeking its next enemy.
Imber was there, and he could hear it hiss as it found him. It had lost all its speed, though, it was floundering almost on its belly from the loss of legs and substance where Roald had hewn at it; and Julianne was calling again, and this time Imber would listen.
'Its eye, Imber, strike at its eye, that's all the hope you have '
And her hope also, for she lacked even a knife to meet it with, she'd said so. She used to flee from him, now she depended on him; somehow that firmed his double-handed grip, steadied his nerve and his trembling muscles both, gave him safe footing and a clear gaze.
He tracked the turn of the creatures head, watched his target and trusted his lady's word; waited his moment, which was just that moment before it thrust itself forward to destroy him.
He plunged towards it, all his weight behind the blow. The creature seemed to rise to meet the blade, so perfect was his timing or so gracious the hand of the God at his back to hurl him at it.
His point found the sunken socket of the 'ifrit's red eye, and all the length of his blade followed it down. Down and down, while his body twisted to avoid the reaching horns; he felt the quillons grate against its shell, and then a terrible wrench on his shoulder as the creature hurtled abruptly upwards, hissing like water on a fire now, like water falling over broken stones.
He let go of the sword's haft, or felt it slide from his grip rather as he fell hard on his back. Lay gazing up at the black shadow of the 'ifrit s bulk as it eclipsed half the sky, half the stars that he could see; it was a shadow that swayed, that was going to topple at any mom
ent, and when it did it would topple towards him, land atop him, crush him entirely out of life and there was nothing he could do, he was more than winded this time and could move his body no more than dead Roald could move his own ...
A moment before the 'ifrit fell, Imber remembered what the djinni had said to him on that strange summoning day that had begun this journey, if in truth it had not begun before, the day Julianne had snared his heart and kept it. Great peril, the djinni had said, and he'd thought it meant at Revanchard, he'd thought himself come too late to save her, failed in adventure as he had failed in love. But she'd been in peril here, terrible peril. He and the boy between them had met the need of the moment; neither one of them could have done the work alone. He was sorry for the boy's death, but glad also, as he was glad of his own that was coming; he felt that a price had been paid tonight, innocence and honour, and it was a small price for her life and less than she was worth ...
And then the 'ifrit began to fall; and as it fell it faded, so that he could see the stars through its body like jewels through a thickness of veils. Brighter and brighter they shone while the dark came down like a curtain falling too slowly, losing all its rush: a curtain of finer and finer fabric as it seemed, more and more sheer, until when at last it touched him it was only smoke drifting coldly in the windlessness, drifting and dying and gone, and his sword fell down heavily beside him as though a cloud had held it for a time and dropped it now, weary of its weight and pointlessness.
He lay still for a while, wondering how long he had been dreaming, just when he had parted company with the reality of the night. Then he tried to sit up, and the sharp ache in his shoulder, the soreness down his ribs and spine, the slow exhaustion in his legs all said that there was no dreaming here: that he had fled a monster, he had met Julianne, he had seen evil dissipate in death.
Unsure whether to feel shame or comfort that he had needed that assurance, the physical proof of wonders, he sat up despite the pain of it, and looked around. He was looking of course for her, for proof positive, and finding her of course where she should be, where she had to be because she was Julianne: not with him but with Roald, kneeling above the boy’s body over by the wall where the demonseed had tossed him, cradling his head in her lap while her hair fell down to hide his face and her own.
Hand of the King's Evil - Outremer 04 Page 42