The Demon's Blade

by Steven Drake

  The way down proved surprisingly easy, and the horses seemed glad of the change to a downward course. Dawn was still some hours away when they stood upon a craggy, broken plain of strewn boulders, towering rock spires, and red and brown stone formations stacked into bizarre shapes by some unknown force of nature. The remainder of the night was spent heading southwards on the plain, covering as much distance as possible between the ridge and the distant canyon. When the morning sun rose, sending rays of golden light into the sky, the travelers camped under a cave-like rock formation, where red stone seemed to rear up out of the ground, roll over, and fall back to the ground, as though the earth had crashed in a great wave upon itself. Within the deepest point, travelers and horses were sheltered upon three sides, looking out a narrow opening that faced east.

  After a quick meal, they settled in for another day of rest. Rana insisted this time on taking the first watch. Though the confrontation earlier had roused Darien’s suspicions once again, he finally acquiesced, but took the sword and armor once again as a precaution. The woman, for her part, did not protest this condition, and sat near the entrance while the other two laid down to sleep. The day passed uneventfully, with each of the three taking a turn watching the entrance.

  Next evening, the travelers set out again towards the canyon they had seen in the south. The way opened easily before them, and by midnight, they had found their way to the lip of the canyon. Water rushed along the canyon floor in treacherous rapids and filled the air with its sound, a continuous hum of water splashing and crashing through the rocks, then echoing up the canyon walls. The travelers followed the lip of the canyon for several miles, and as they did so, the land rose steadily, leaving the canyon and the river increasingly far below them. Already, the canyon floor lay at least thirty or forty feet below the rim, and the canyon sides had grown markedly steeper.

  As the land continued to rise, Darien worried that they were too exposed on the highland, too easily seen at a distance even in darkness. After a short discussion, he decided find a way down into the canyon, and travel beside the water. After all, the fairy had advised them to follow the water, and the water in the river was low, leaving dry banks several yards wide on each side. It took most of the remainder of the early morning darkness to find a safe way to reach the canyon floor, and when they finally did, it was time to camp. They found a dry grotto on one side of the canyon, probably carved by the river when its waters were higher, but dry enough on this occasion. They camped there for the day, once again taking turns to watch. Another night of travel had passed without incident, and without sign or sound of pursuit. All the same, the wary shade remained troubled by the same odd foreboding he had felt just a few days earlier. After the dream and its revelations, then the tense confrontation with Rana, the strange feeling had faded from his mind, but it now returned, stronger than before.

  The continued lack of any sign or sound of their pursuers, something that his distracted mind had missed before, now troubled him. It seemed the goblins had utterly abandoned their search, something that made no sense to his strategic mind. The goblins usual tactic when tracking a target was to send out riders in several directions, looking for a trail. In this terrain, the goblin mounts were far faster than their own, and the three travelers could not have come that far from Thordas given the circuitous path they had taken since then. Goblin scouts used the howls of the warrogs to communicate from one to the other, and those howls should have been easily heard for many miles round. Instead there was nothing, no sounds, no tracks, no goblins, nothing. However, without any more clues, it was useless to worry, so he laid down to sleep.

  Darien awoke suddenly staring at the ghostly pale face of a terrified Jerris. The older half-elf quickly realized the reason for the lad’s expression. All around them, the sounds of the warrogs could be heard echoing through the canyon. For a moment, the older half-elf hoped that the echoes in the canyon were playing tricks with his ears, but after only a few seconds, it was clear this was not the case. Howls came from one direction, then were purposefully answered further along. Once again they were trapped, just as in Thordas, as though the enemy had known where they were the entire time, and waited for this moment to close the trap. This time, though, at least one powerful mage, perhaps more than one, was accompanying the goblins, somewhere further down the river. The presence of a powerful magical aura, nearly as strong as his own, was unmistakable.

  Jerris had already started trying to wake Rana, while Darien readied the horses, and strained his mind to come up with some new plan of escape. A few minutes later, the lady knight was awake, and donning her armor for battle. Darien motioned the others over to decide on a plan.

  “We need to consider our options,” Darien began, speaking calmly in an attempt to ease Jerris’ obvious fears. “We must assume our enemy knows we are in this canyon.”

  “But how, none of us have seen anything for days?” Jerris said.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Rana shook her head dismissively. “They’ve caught up to us twice now, and each time they trapped us in exactly the same fashion. No matter how they’re finding us, we have to assume they knew where we were the whole time, and were just waiting for another opportunity.”

  “We don’t know that,” Darien said. “They may have picked up our trail and followed it here, then gotten ahead of us while we rested.”

  “We don’t know that? Are you blind? Twice they’ve caught us by surprise, each time surrounding us. The sounds are all coming from inside the canyon. How could they surround us if they don’t know where we are?” the golden haired woman said. “Don’t you see what’s going on? At every turn, your enemy knew exactly where you would run. The creature in the tunnel, the goblins in Thordas, and now this.” The Executioner nodded uneasily as the lady knight stared him down. “You’ve played right into his plan from the beginning. He must have known you were hiding in Vorstal, but finding you there would have taken a long time, and spread him too thin, so he flushed you like a pheasant in the bush. He knew from the beginning that you would run. That’s all you’ve done since you left the Demon King’s service, is it not? He knew it and he prepared for it, covering your means of escape, and setting traps for you. I can feel the aura of at least one powerful mage somewhere ahead. You must have felt it too. It must be Avirosa. He means to finish it here.”

  The usually thorough and calculating mind of the Executioner stopped cold. Until that moment, it had not even occurred to him, but now that Rana had placed it in front of him, the truth of it was undeniable. How could I have so easily fallen into this trap? The timing was perfect. With winter oncoming, there would be only two paths of escape. From the beginning, I thought that Avirosa would expect me to head west, but I must have been wrong. The goblins must have threatened Mandala, forcing the city to fortify itself, and closing off that route. That forced my hand, and sent me to the underpass, and into the gloom crawler. Then there was the trap at Thordas, and the revelation that the pass at Galad had been closed by an avalanche. The avalanche! They must have triggered it. No single mage could have done it, but several working together could have. That’s why the goblins at Thordas had no commanders. The shades hadn’t had enough time to get back, and they expected me to come to the pass anyway. They would have expected me to force the passage westward, then fallen upon me at Galad while I was already weakened by the chase. When I turned south, it confused them, so they had to regroup. It still doesn’t explain how they knew my exact position, but everything fits. Rana was right. I’ve been beaten so easily, driven like a fox before the hounds. Have I really become that weak?

  “Darien, what do we do?” Jerris asked plaintively as he nervously drummed his fingers, waiting for a response from the silent shade. The older half-elf noticed the desperate look of fear and questioning in the boy’s young eyes. He could not help but feel that he had failed Jerris, that despite his best efforts, he had led the boy to ruin after all. He swallowed hard, realizing what he had to do. This would be
the end of their journey together.

  “Loathe as I am to admit it, Rana is right. I’ve been outmaneuvered. The game is up, and I’ve lost. Even if we left the horses and could climb out of the canyon, they’d just find us again. There’s no point in running anymore, at least not for me.”

  “What do you mean, ‘not for you’?” Rana said. “You’re not thinking of splitting up? What would that accomplish? Even if one of us manages to escape, won’t he just find the one that gets away the same way he did this time?”

  “Perhaps, and perhaps not,” the Executioner said, a hint of resignation coloring his voice. “It’s me he’s after, not you. Once he finds me, he will probably ignore the two of you entirely. If I deliberately show myself while you hide, I can draw them to me. Once that happens, you simply have to run in the opposite direction, and find a path up out of the canyon. You still have the faerie to guide you.”

  “I can’t just leave you here to die! I won’t!” Jerris exclaimed, his voice turning to a high pitched cry, tears forming in his eyes.

  Darien tried his best to comfort the young man. “You won’t be leaving me here to die. I don’t intend to die here, but I may have to use the Demon Sword. There’s a very powerful shade there, and probably several others under his command. If it isn’t Avirosa, it’s someone just as dangerous. This isn’t your fight. Enough people have died on my account. The two of you need not share this doom.”

  “To the thirteen hells with that!” Rana stomped her foot angrily, then firmly planted herself in front of Darien with her hands on her hips. “You gave up the right to claim that anything is ‘your fight’ when you picked up that sword. Didn’t you just tell me a few days ago that this was bigger than the three of us? Didn’t you explain what would happen if the Demon King got that weapon back? What has changed since then? Nothing, except that you’re afraid you might actually lose. Do you think you’re making a noble sacrifice? Is that what you want, to die a glorious death in battle? Do you think that will redeem your crimes? Will one act of heroism erase years of cruelty and evil?”

  “Of course I don’t think that,” Darien muttered unthinkingly, his mind still registering the shock of the woman’s reaction to his offer to let her escape. “This isn’t some quest to redeem myself. I know well enough that I’m beyond any redemption in your eyes, or the eyes of countless others like you.”

  “Then what is it about? What, exactly, is the point of letting the two of us escape? What will that accomplish? If you win, you turn yourself into a monster, perhaps more terrible than the Demon King. If you lose, then the Demon King gets the sword, and that’s much worse.”

  “I won’t lose. I’ve felt the sword’s power, and you haven’t. Avirosa is a fool if he thinks he can stand against it. I may not be the equal of the Master, but I can at least far surpass his generals. You can’t stop me.”

  “Maybe not, but I can try,” the stubborn woman fired back. “At any rate, I’m not going to let you rush into a foolish death because of some warped sense of guilt. Your life is no longer your own, and you can’t just throw it away that easily. I set out to avenge my family by killing you, but I see now that killing you would be as much a mercy as a punishment. There’s nothing I can do to you worse than what you’ve already done to yourself.” Darien shifted uneasily, stunned by the realization that the woman who had tried to take his life less than a week ago was now just as vehemently trying to save it. Rana stared straight into his eyes, reading his confusion, and pushed even harder. “That weapon you carry can bring ruin to every person walking this world. Your life belongs to them now. If you mean to use the sword, then you will do it with the two of us standing beside you. If our lives mean so much to you, then perhaps that will allow you to use it without losing your mind. The fact that you have been able to keep it this long must mean something. I don’t yet know what that is, but I intend to find out. Perhaps the miserable fate of having to aid my family’s murderer is my own just punishment for seeking bloody vengeance. Whatever the case, we can’t just sit here and curse our miserable luck. We’re in this together now, tethered by fate whether we like it or not. Now stop this nonsense about letting us escape, and think of a better plan.”

  “Leave him alone,” Jerris said. “Can’t you see that he’s doing the best he can? You don’t have to berate him about it.”

  “Peace, Jerris,” Darien said, raising his hand and shaking his head. “She’s right again, and right to say it. There’s no point in further debating the matter.”

  “So, upriver or downriver?” Rana asked. “That’s the only two choices we have, and somehow I doubt we’ll be fortunate enough to find a path up out of this canyon either way.”

  Darien shook his head as he and Jerris mounted up. “We’ll head downstream, quickly but carefully. Watch the rim of the canyon for mages. They may try to bring a landslide down on top of us…” Darien’s voice trailed off, as an idea suddenly struck him, obvious as he thought about it. They could indeed send down a landslide from above, but it was far easier to create such a spell from the canyon floor, and block the canyon entirely.

  “What is it?” Jerris asked curiously, noticing the change in his older companion.

  “Oh, just an idea. You’ll see.”

  Chapter 23: The Executioner and the Wraith

  They rode down the canyon, howls echoing all round them. The Executioner watched the rim of the canyon, vigilant eyes searching for any enemies that might be waiting. He kept the other two close by him, as far from the canyon wall as possible, even walking in the water where the current was slow. It wasn’t long before he saw it, a narrow point in the canyon, where the canyon walls drew near to one another. The water charged through the gap just below the path, through a deep channel cut deeply into the narrow space. This was the point he had been looking for. The three travelers gingerly made their way along a narrow ledge just above the water, and once they were through, Darien motioned his two companions ahead.

  Darien then prepared to channel the earth spell. He climbed down from his horse, and put his hand upon the stone, focusing the energy on a point about halfway up the western canyon wall. The ground shook, and a crack formed, snaking out from his hand up to the point he had chosen. Then he turned, quickly pulled himself up on Cloud’s back, and urged the horse forward. Behind him, there was a loud crack as part of the canyon fell away, then a rumbling din as the rocks broke apart, and tumbled crashing into the gap. Once the magic had ceased, the gap was filled up to a height of several feet. The water of the river quickly filled the space behind the blockage, and trickled through gaps between the stones, then tumbled over the top. No path remained for any pursuers to follow.

  Without a word, the three started forward again, satisfied now that the pursuers upriver would not be able to pass. A few minutes later, the travelers rounded a bend in the river, where the canyon opened wide and ran straight ahead for several hundred yards straight into the distance. The river ran wide and shallow here, no more than calf deep. The hard stone of the canyon floor was replaced by loose round gravel, yellow, red, gray, white, and black. The barking and yelping of the warrogs could be heard somewhere ahead. They were close.

  Darien focused his sight far into the distance, as far as his magic would allow. The canyon ended at a sheer rock face, while the water disappeared into a dark opening, passing underground. Dark shapes flitted and danced against the stone backdrop, sure signs of movement, but he could make out no more. He slowed the pace to a walk, and moved cautiously ahead. Soon, the shapes became clearer ahead, and the Executioner could tell what he was up against. Half a dozen cloaked figures stood in front of the cliff face to the right of the river. A company of twenty-five or so goblins, armed with long knives, guarded the left bank. Just inside the mouth of the cave, a large shape could be seen, crouching in the darkness, and staring out with cold yellow eyes. As Darien drew slowly closer, he recognized the shape of a wyvern, a green scaly lizard with a long snakelike body, thick rear legs ending in vicio
us talons, and leathery wings instead of front legs. A saddle was secured just above the wings, behind the serpentine neck. Wyverns were violent, vicious creatures, difficult to control. There was only one mage in the service of the Demon King who possessed the necessary skill in domination magic to bring one to heal. It was certain now that Avirosa was here.

  When they had closed to within a hundred yards, the three unlikely comrades took shelter in a shaded alcove on the canyon wall out of sight of the enemy to prepare whatever plan they could.

  “Do you think they saw us?” Jerris asked.

  “I don’t think so. The area where they stand is in the sun, and we have been walking in the shadows of the canyon wall. They won’t be able to see us until we’re very close,” Darien answered, and Rana nodded her agreement.

  “So, do we just charge them, or do you have some other idea?” the lady knight asked.

  “Well, they know we’re coming, but we may still be able to surprise them, at least partially.”

  “How do you think you’re going to manage that? They’re going to be looking for us.”

  “No, they’re going to be looking for me,” the wily half-elf said. “They don’t know who you are and probably don’t care. They know I’m traveling with two companions, but I doubt they consider you much of a threat, at least not compared to me. They know me and my reputation in the order. They may have seen me fight. They’ll be afraid of me, hopefully so much so that they ignore everything else. Avirosa loves to avoid direct confrontations, so I may be able to delay him, if I go out first and pretend to parlay with him. While their attention is focused on me, you just have to stick to the shadows of the canyon wall, use the stray boulders for cover, and get close enough for a quick strike. You have the speed for it. I saw that much when you fought me.”