The Demon's Blade

by Steven Drake

  "You're quite perceptive when you're not overreacting," the Executioner remarked. "Tobin probably assumed you already knew. I intended to tell you, but I wasn't sure you were ready, or that I was."

  "What is it?" Jerris asked. "Is it cursed or something?"

  "Yes, in a manner of speaking," Darien answered, easing his horse to a stop, and looking Jerris straight in the eye. "The weapon I carry is one that even you should have heard of, and it is the principle reason the Master hunts me. It was, and is, the source of his magical power. You see, this is the Demon Sword, made by the elves long ago to match the power of their enemies."

  "That's... That's impossible," The lad stuttered, dumbfounded, his face suddenly ghostly white in the dim cavern. "You mean that legend is actually true? My mother told me that tale as a child. I thought it was just a myth. How do you know that's the Demon Sword, and how do you have it?"

  "That part is simple, and should have been obvious anyway. Varias, my old master, used the power of this weapon to make himself into what he is now, the Demon King. His form now matches the frightening power he wields. I have seen his power, and it provides ample evidence that this is the Demon Sword," Darien explained, his voice low and hushed. "I managed to figure out where it was, then steal it. I managed to escape, fled north, and have been wandering ever since. It's been around five years since I escaped."

  "Five years? Then how do you still have it? The legends say the voices of demons drove its holders mad."

  "That question, I'm afraid I can't answer very well." The mage answered, "The Demon Sword nearly drove me to madness when I first stole it, but by chance or by some design of fate, I met a man who cast a spell upon me to slow the progress of the corruption. As long as I don't use the sword, the spell will delay the sword's effects for an indefinite period of time, not forever, but hopefully long enough for me to figure out what to do with it."

  "Why do you carry it around if you can't use it? Why not hide it somewhere he won't find it, and be rid of it entirely?"

  "I didn't mean I can’t use the sword," Darien said. "I only meant that it would be dangerous for me to use it. The old man told me the spell would weaken if I tried to use the sword. However, I would use it if the need were great enough, and if I had no other way to escape from a situation. As for hiding it, that wouldn't do any good at all. The sword binds itself to whoever picks it up, just as demons used to possess the bodies of mortals like us. It wouldn't matter how far away I ran, nor would it do any good if someone else took it. I would still be bound to it, and it to me. It only binds to one person at a time, and becomes something like an extension of that person's own body, an arm that cannot be severed."

  "Alright," Jerris acknowledged, "but if the Demon King had it first, how did it bind itself to you? Wouldn't it have stayed bound to the Demon King?"

  "It would have, if it had ever been bound to him in the first place, but the situation is more complicated than it seems. He made a crystal to contain the sword and slowly drain its power. Somehow, it protected him from the madness, and allowed him to use the demon sword as a magical fountain, from which he could draw small amounts of energy over time, and transfer that energy into himself. His purpose all along was to drain the sword's power indirectly without wielding the sword itself. He never touched the blade directly, and was never bound to it as I am. His plan was very clever, and nearly perfect. However, he still became connected to the sword in some way. Either he can’t, or won’t, sever his connection to it. I can't really explain it since I don't completely understand it myself, but now that the sword is bound to me, it has begun to pull back against him, draining his power and strengthening itself. That is why he pursues me so ruthlessly. The old man who cast the spell on me explained all this to me. My instincts tell me that he spoke the truth, but I don’t know for certain he was right. If we actually find this hidden elf city, perhaps they’ll know something about this weapon. It was the elves who made it." Darien watched Jerris closely for any reaction. He half expected the boy to run back to Vorog, or to pass out from shock. Surprisingly, neither of these two things occurred.

  "Alright, as unbelievable as that sounds, I suppose I believe it, coming from you," Jerris remarked. "It's an incredible story, but it makes sense. I had been wondering why the Demon King was trying so hard to hunt down one person." Jerris then paused for a few moments and added, "There’s just one more thing that bothers me. Why did you steal the sword? You knew what it was. Didn’t you realize what would happen?”

  “Of course I did, Jerris.” He paused, wondering how best to explain, how much of his past to reveal to the boy’s innocent curiosity. “You must understand; I did not intend to escape from the Master. I intended to kill him, then myself. Only after I failed did I decide to run.”

  “But…why? Why go so far to kill him? What did he…”

  “Enough!” Darien interrupted harshly. “There are some questions better left unasked. I had my reasons, none of which are of any particular importance now. Leave it at that.”

  “Alright, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”

  “No need for apologies, but you should be wary of asking men about their past. Many have secrets that are best left hidden.” Darien used his most tolerant and forgiving tone. “Now, was there anything else?”

  “No, I suppose not. Thanks for telling me,” Jerris said as he shrugged, his fear seemingly forgotten. “I suppose I should be afraid, but for some reason I'm not. I actually feel better knowing the whole truth.”

  Darien sat upon his horse, dumbfounded, and marveled at the youth. He had expected quite a different reaction. When Tobin had recognized the sword, the old dwarf had turned white and backed into one of his bookcases, sending tomes toppling down upon him and nearly overturning the entire thing. Jerris, on the other hand, had been more apprehensive about riding a horse than about traveling with the most terrible weapon ever made. "You're welcome, I suppose,"

  The hours dragged onward as they continued down the long descent. In the timeless emptiness of the underpass, it became impossible to judge how long they rode, but after what must have been several tedious hours, the path widened and leveled off. Side tunnels began to appear regularly along the right hand wall, some small semicircular tunnels like the underpass, some like doorways of long abandoned dwellings, and a few like the burrows of some great tunneling creature. Darien felt uneasy, staring into the dark emptiness of the passages. Enemies could be hiding in any one of them, each an ideal location for an ambush.

  While the cautious Executioner was uneasy, the horses were even more so, especially the younger colt, Cloud. The beast stopped and issued noisy protests a number of times, as if perceiving some unseen danger. Finally, the horse would go no further, rearing up and neighing loudly. Terra, though more calm than her younger comrade, showed signs of tension, her ears laying back and her head low.

  “What do you think is wrong with the horses?” Jerris asked.

  “I’m not sure. Maybe nothing, but animals can often sense danger that we cannot. Stay here, I’ll make my way up the path to see if I can see anything,” the older half-elf replied.

  He got down from the saddle, and walked a few yards ahead, finding nothing. He checked the first few yards of each side passage as he went along, keeping alert for traps, spells, ambushers, and other dangers. He covered a distance of about thirty yards, moving from one passage to the next.

  He turned to go back to get the horses when he suddenly realized something important. The horses had fallen dead silent. Their heads were down and they were still as death. He had seen animals behave this way before. They were tensed, ready to bolt, aware of danger but uncertain from which direction it would come.

  Then Darien heard it, a faint, chittering, clicking sound, like hundreds of tiny fingers tapping on the walls some distance away. Already he knew what was coming.

  “Jerris, take the horses back up the passageway, now!” he shouted.

  “Why? What’s going on?” the lad shout
ed back.

  “Don’t ask questions. There’s no time. Just do it!” This time, hearing the urgency in the shade’s voice, Jerris complied.

  The Executioner drew his sword, and focused his senses, trying to ascertain where the creature would come from. The chittering seemed to come from several directions at once, echoing out of every dark opening. He focused on the largest semicircular passage, but that proved to be a poor choice. He never saw from which passage the creature appeared, only that it must have emerged somewhere further down the main tunnel. He scarcely noticed in time to dodge the flurry of hooked, snake-like appendages that assailed him, leaping back up the main underpass tunnel and rolling as he landed, and turning to face his assailant.

  Though he knew what creature he faced, the enormous bulk of the beast shocked him still. He had never seen an adult gloom crawler in person. The most striking feature of the beast was the enormous shell upon its back, a jet black dome easily large enough to accommodate a loaded ox cart beneath. The hard shell bore large hornlike projections regularly spaced upon a rough scaly black surface, but this was not the principle danger. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of milky white, slime coated appendages emerged from the bottom edge of the dome shell on all sides of the beast. Each one was equipped with a single razor sharp claw at the tip, each a chisel for chipping and digging at hard mountain stone of its home, and equally capable of tearing through armor and rending flesh. The only way to tell the front of the monster from the back was a slight deviation in the shell’s bottom edge, an upward notch that marked the beast’s head. From that arch in the shell six longer appendages, two eyestalks, and a tube shaped mouth, emerged. Row upon row of gleaming white teeth lined the inside of the beast’s tubular maw. The longer appendages could reach several yards in front of the monster, each equipped with grasping three-clawed talons.

  The beast stared intently at Darien with luminous blue eyes, perched upon slimy stalks. The Executioner instantly knew what was happening. This was no random encounter. The gloom crawler had been tainted by domination magic. It was waiting for him, and only him.

  Darien turned back a moment, to check for Jerris. The lad had gone a significant distance up the tunnel, and was now struggling to hang on to the reins of the terrified horses, but he was at least out of the way of danger, for the moment. The gloom crawler struck again, sending three of the grasping talons toward the agile shade, who dodged again. The talon strikes flew in continuously, one after another, keeping him pinned several yards away.

  In the space of a scant few seconds, the Executioner quickly weighed his options. The hard shell was too thick for any sword strike. A shadow void might break through, but that was no guarantee. It might only enrage the beast, and a miss might bring the ceiling of the underpass down on top of him. Any earth spell posed an even greater risk of destabilizing the ancient tunnel. No, this would have to be a more conventional attack, and the first task would be to get rid of the talons.

  The agile shade danced with the half dozen grasping tendrils, waiting for an opportunity to strike. Soon enough, the gloom crawler overextended on one of its strikes, leaving itself vulnerable. With a quick slash, the Executioner sliced through one of the slimy arms, lopping off the talon, which flailed upon the dusty cave floor like a fish stranded upon a rock. The beast shrieked in pain and drew back, momentarily stunned, and Darien pressed his advantage. Two more talons dropped to the floor before the monster could react, but then it steadied itself and drew inward, lowering its shell about it.

  The beast lurched toward its opponent, its shell too close to the ground to allow any strike, and the tubed mouth opened wide, pushing the rings of teeth outward. The monster charged forward with surprising speed, and the close confines of the underpass worked to its advantage. The Executioner, however, held the advantage of quickness, and so lured the beast into charging straight at him as he stood with his back to the cave wall. At the last moment, he leapt clear, vaulted off the beast’s shell, and ran back up the tunnel several yards to gain distance. He then raised his hand to the beast’s open mouth as it turned to face him again. The moisture of the cave coalesced into shards of ice upon the tips of his fingers, then flew into the open mouth. Black blood spurted forth as the razor sharp ice shards found their mark.

  Again, the gloom crawler drew back, shrieking in pain. Had the monster not been driven by magic, it would probably have run, but the spell held it focused upon its target. Darien did not waste the monster’s moment of indecision. In a single motion, he drew a throwing dagger and hurled it into the beast’s right eye. A moment later, a second dagger flew forth, slicing into the eyestalk below the other eye, only narrowly missing severing the stalk entirely.

  Even so, the pain was too much for the gloom crawler, and it lost what little intelligence it possessed to a mad rage directed towards the enemy that had nearly blinded it. It charged towards Darien with all the speed it could muster, the clawed appendages clicking loudly upon the stone. The beast’s enormous bulk hurtled toward the shade with deadly speed, but in the beast’s rage, it lowered its defenses. Just as the beast had nearly reached him, the Executioner leapt into the air, swiftly turning and landing on the beast’s shell just to the right of the notch. In the next instant, Darien took his longsword with both hands, and buried the blade up to the hilt into the beast’s body, between the eyestalks and above the mouth. The gloom crawler shuddered to a stop, a gurgling sound came from somewhere inside the beast, it vomited up a horrid smelling mixture of blood and bile, and as suddenly as it had begun, the battle was over.

  Darien dismounted from his perch on the lip of the crawler’s shell, retrieved his sword, and began to clean the blade, scarcely noticing Jerris as he walked up, leading the two horses.

  “What in the world was that?” The still shocked youth gasped as he stared at the now motionless and dead mass of the gloom crawler.

  “It is called a gloom crawler. I have never seen one this large before. Rather more importantly, it was a trap, deliberately set by someone, probably Avirosa, for me, and me only,” Darien calmly answered while he continued cleaning his blade.

  “I don’t understand. A trap? What do you mean?”

  “The beast acted under a spell of compulsion. It’s a form of domination magic. A simple idea is placed into the mind of a creature, usually to guard a certain place, or kill a certain person. In this case both,” Darien finished his explanation just as he finished cleaning the foul black blood from his sword, and sheathed the blade.

  “So, Avirosa left this thing here to kill you?”

  “So it would appear,” Darien stated. “I expected some sort of trap might be laid down here. I didn’t expect something this powerful. He must have gone to considerable trouble to get this creature here. Gloom crawlers don’t live in these mountains. Hopefully, we won’t encounter anything worse in the underpass.”

  “How much longer is this tunnel anyway?” Jerris asked, his voice apprehensive.

  “At least another day’s ride at a reasonable pace for these horses.”

  “Will we ride through the night then?” Jerris questioned.

  “No, even if we could, the horses would still be a problem. They need to be fresh in case we are caught in a chase.” Darien kept speaking as he climbed up onto Cloud’s saddle. “There’s a large open space, the midpoint of the underpass, some ways onward. We’ll camp there. Now mount up, we still have to cover a considerable distance before that.” Jerris got up onto his horse, Terra, and they continued onwards into the darkness of the underpass, leaving the corpse of the gloom crawler behind them.

  After perhaps a few more hours of dull travel, the midway point came into view. Here the road widened into a round plaza, perhaps twenty yards across. Once, this place had been a bustling hub of activity along the route to Vorog, but now it was an empty ruin. On one side, an opening in the mountainside formed a long, narrow window, open to the south. The window continued down the tunnel for some distance further down the underpass. An old wel
l without a bucket, clearly long abandoned, stood at the center of the plaza. To the rear of the cave, opposite the window, the outlines of ancient doors and passages long sealed could still be seen on the wall. Iron lamps hung from the ceiling in several places, but many were missing, and the few that remained had clearly not been lit with candle or torch for many years. There were only two magical torches on the far wall. The remainder of the light came from the moons and stars outside. An occasional breath of cool air blew in from the window.

  "What’s out there?" Jerris exclaimed as he hopped down off his horse and looked out the window.

  "Well, you can't see much now, but in the morning, we'll be able to see where we're headed."

  "It's good to see the stars," Jerris said as he stretched his arms over his head. "I think I've had about all I can take of caves and tunnels."

  Darien shrugged and turned away. Of course the boy must realize that there’s at least one more day of caves and tunnels. Jerris got his bedroll and laid it where he could look out the window at the stars. "Aren't you going to sleep?" Jerris asked.

  "Don't waste time worrying about my welfare. Focus on yourself," Darien grumbled. "I intend to watch and listen for a while at least."

  Jerris offered no further argument, and then all was quiet, except for the regular breathing of the now-sleeping lad and the musical drips of water falling from the cave walls somewhere in the distance. Darien remained awake for a long while. Oddly, it was the day's conversation rather than the battle with the gloom crawler that troubled his mind. Fighting and killing were second nature to Darien the Executioner, but talking about himself was not. It had been a long time since he had spoken with anyone about the sword, or about his time as a shade. He rarely thought about it himself; it haunted him, like a terrible shadow from which he could never quite emerge. In order to keep his sanity, he had learned to focus on the present moment, and push other thoughts aside. The conversation with Jerris, however, had brought those thoughts up to the surface, and on this night, he found it difficult to shake them. The memory of Kirin troubled him most. Kirin remained, even now, the closest thing to a friend he had ever had, and he could not push the scattered memories out of his mind as he slowly drifted into an uneasy sleep.