“Thank you, friend. See to it that Casimira is fed and watered, will you? Hayk, see to Ember.”
“Aye, Chief,” Davor Sabas said with a nod. Another man took Ember’s reins and they rode to a spot not far away where the horses were being tended. The rest of the men occupied themselves with caring for the horses and setting up camp. There seemed to be about thirty of them.
“It is good to see you as well, Ilona,” I said, and found that I meant it.
“I encountered Nebjosa and his men about ten miles south of the city,” Ilona said. “He convinced me that I would not make it home. Torzseki scouts had reported that the Barbaroki were nearly to Delivaros, and they would have the city surrounded before I got there. I was willing to die fighting to save Delivaros, but I see no point in offering myself up to the Barbaroki on the plain.”
“Then your destiny lies with us after all.”
“Perhaps I have no destiny. I move about like a twig caught in the current of a river.”
“You should not stay,” Rodric said. “Voros Korom will come tonight, and our chances against him are not good.”
“No, I will not leave the defense of Nagyvaros to a sorcerer. If I am to hold on to what is left of my faith, I must be willing to face the demon myself.”
“Speaking for me and my men,” Nebjosa said, “we will not spurn any ally against Voros Korom. I know little of such creatures, but I know that he will not stop at Nagyvaros. If Konrad’s magic can be of use against the demon, I welcome it.”
“It is the wraiths I am most concerned about,” I said. “Your bows can bring Voros Korom down, but not if the wraiths kill us all before we can get close to him.”
“And you have a way of vanquishing the wraiths?”
I sighed. “Chief, I have to tell you something, and you are not going to like it.”
“That you exaggerated your power? I’m well aware of that, Konrad. I used you as much as you used me. I never considered the wraiths a threat as long as they kept to the ruins of Romok, but I needed a way to reassure my people. Hiring a supposed sorcerer who could tell me what I already knew was an inexpensive way of solving the problem.”
“It seems I underestimated you. I apologize, Nebjosa.”
The chief shrugged. “I was also quite aware from the beginning that you possess far more power than you realize. My people are largely ignorant of the intricacies of magic, but I know what that brand signifies. You have the power to stop Voros Korom and his horde. The only question is whether you have learned how.”
“I do not know,” I confessed. “I have been studying the properties of the arcane energy called tvari and practicing the use of it, but I will not know for certain whether any of my knowledge will do any good until I face the wraiths again. I think I may know a way to render myself immune to their attacks, at least temporarily, but that alone will do little good. Even if I could get close to Voros Korom, I do not think I could kill him with a rapier.”
“Our arrows may be little more than an annoyance to him,” Nebjosa said, “but we will do what we can to distract him so that you can execute the death blow. I would offer you horses, but we have only enough for our own men. Ember is yours, of course.”
“I will not need her,” I said. “I can stand and face Voros Korom on my own, and though I am certain she would stand fast, I would not put in her in so much danger if I can avoid it.”
“Let Ilona take her, then. The animal has taken a liking to her.”
Ilona shook her head. “I too will stand alone.”
“If these two fools will face the demon on foot,” said Rodric, “then I suppose I must as well.”
“I will take her,” Vili said. “I cannot ride and fight at the same time, but I don’t suppose my dagger will be of much use against the wraiths in any case. I can at least serve as a distraction.”
“Very good,” Nebjosa said. “The boy is light and she is a very fast horse. If we can keep the wraiths confused, perhaps we will have a chance. Now I must ask you to excuse me. My men are hungry and tired, and we must eat and rest before the rising of the moon.” The chief walked away to join the others in his camp. I counted the men: there were twenty-eight Torzseki altogether, including Nebjosa. I had hoped for five hundred archers, but they would have to do.
Ilona joined Rodric, Vili and me in our camp. The sky was darkening, and Rodric informed us we had about two hours until the moon appeared. Vili offered to keep watch, and I assented. One of the Torzseki already stood on a low hill to the east, watching for any sign of Voros Korom, but it wouldn’t hurt to have another sentry. Rodric, Ilona and I sat around the fire, waiting anxiously.
The moon had not been above the horizon for more than a few minutes when Vili came running back to us.
“I see them!” Vili cried. “The wraiths!”
A cry went up at the Torzsek camp as well. Men leapt to their feet and began to saddle their horses. Nebjosa led Ember toward us. Vili took the reins from him and mounted her. “They’re less than a mile away,” he said, peering into the east. “Moving fast. I cannot make out Voros Korom yet, but the wraiths will be here soon.”
“Then I must mount up as well,” Nebjosa said. “Good luck, sorcerer. We will do what we can.” He disappeared into the darkness.
I strapped on my rapier and Ilona picked up her stick. Rodric already had his bow in hand and his quiver strapped to his back. “What’s the plan, captain?” Rodric said.
“Wait here,” I said, pulling the torch down from the pole. “Things are going to get chaotic with all those Torzseki around. Stay near the fire so they can see you. Otherwise you’re likely to get trampled. When Voros Korom is in range, start firing. Ilona, your stick is not going to do you any good. I suggest that you flee from this place. Go north, out of Voros Korom’s path.”
“I will stay,” Ilona said.
I sighed and shook my head. Rodric shrugged.
“What will you do?” Rodric asked.
“I will go to meet the demon,” I said.
*****
Vili rode on ahead of me. With the Torzseki aiding me, I had hoped to keep my friends some distance from Voros Korom, but Vili would not be restrained. Rodric could hit the demon with an arrow as easily from a hundred yards as from ten, and Ilona would be useless with her little fighting stick. It was a miracle she had gotten in a couple of blows against the demon at Magas Komaron, and the demon had barely felt them.
The wraiths soon came into view, darting back and forth across the plain, hungry for warm souls. Ordinarily when the wraiths encountered a living human, they would separate the person’s soul from his body and absorb the soul into their collective, but Eben told me they would be unlikely to do this during a pitched battle. Assimilating a victim’s soul took some time, and the wraiths would be busy defending Voros Korom from attacks. This was some comfort: those who died here this night would at least be at peace. I could only hope that Vili’s eagerness to rescue his parents would not result in him being one of them.
I had nearly lost sight of Vili in the semi-darkness when Ember turned and came galloping back toward me. She turned sharply to the right a dozen or so paces ahead, leading three of the wraiths away from me. Coming up behind me on both sides was the sound of thundering hoofbeats. More wraiths flitted about some distance before me, to the left and the right. Directly ahead was the massive, shadowy, flickering, red-eyed form of Voros Korom.
I walked on as Torzsek warriors tore past me on both sides. Dozens of arrows shot overhead toward Voros Korom; a few may have hit their mark, but the demon did not flinch or slow. If he still bore any injuries from his fall from Magas Komaron, they were not evident.
Soon a half-dozen wraiths were chasing Vili, and he continued to lead them this way and that, allowing me to move within fifty paces of Voros Korom. Ember was fast enough to stay just ahead of the wraiths, but she was running at top speed and would begin to tire soon. The Torzseki remained just out of the wraiths’ reach, forming a circle of horsemen that moved
counter-clockwise around Voros Korom. The Torzseki, skilled at using bows on horseback, continued to pepper the demon with arrows while the demons surged outwards, vanishing just before they reached the horses.
I was now within forty paces of Voros Korom, and the wraiths Vili hadn’t distracted had begun to take an interest in me. Three came toward me from different angles, and I saw Ember galloping toward me, now trailing nearly a dozen of the creatures.
“No!” I cried, waving my arms at Vili. “You’ve done enough. Go!”
For a moment, Ember continued galloping toward me. Then she abruptly changed course, throwing up a cloud of dust around me. I heard Vili call something to me, but his words were lost in the chaos. When the dust cleared, Ember was galloping away. The three wraiths were almost on me.
Chapter Twenty-one
I closed my eyes and pushed my consciousness to Veszedelem. Tapping into the tvari, I redirected a bit of it to my body and then pulled my physical form after myself into the shadow world. Then I directed some of my awareness back to the Plain of Savlos. I shuddered as the wraiths passed through me. Confused, they circled back and tried again. They could sense my presence, but my body was safely hidden in Veszedelem. They passed through me several more times, and each time I felt them like a chill wind, but they had no power to harm me. They swirled angrily about me, conferring in a confused jumble of voices about what to do. I ignored them.
The next part was going to be the real challenge. Eben had never directly answered my question about why I always appeared in the same place in Veszedelem. This seemed to be another secret he was keeping from me, but I gathered that this point served as a sort of mental anchor for me, in the same way that a grown man’s dreams will often take place in his childhood home. Traveling the path of least resistance would take me to that spot, but there was no reason I had to travel to that spot. With some effort, I could cause myself to manifest at any location in the shadow world I had visited. By the same token, once my body had been transported to Veszedelem, I did not have to reappear at the same place in Orszag where I had left. I could transfer my body to Veszedelem and then transfer it back to Orszag in a different location. Because of the time lag, it would appear that I had teleported instantly from one place to another.
I had experimented with this idea while in the cell under the Governor’s palace, with limited success. So limited, in fact, that the others had never even noticed I was doing it. I would travel to Veszedelem and then attempt to return to a place an inch or so away from where I started out. I had managed to do it a few times, but the attempts exhausted me. If I’d had more time to practice, I might even have escaped the cell, but I wasn’t confident enough in my ability to avoid being wedged halfway through the bars.
I was certain that it was some variation on this trick that caused Voros Korom to appear almost as if he were in two places at once. He didn’t seem to be able to teleport more than a few inches, and usually it was only an arm or a leg that moved this way, rather than his whole body. Voros Korom had certainly had plenty of time to master the skill, but he had had no formal teaching; it was possible that he’d never fully learned to use the abilities granted to him by his unique birthright. More likely, I thought, his inability to teleport longer distances stemmed from some natural limitation. A horse is naturally more adept at leaping fences than a man, but it lacks the ability to unlatch a gate. I was counting on my mental discipline and understanding of tvari to give me an ability Voros Korom did not possess.
Splitting my awareness between Orszag and Veszedelem, I focused on a point about two feet in front of me. Being half in Orszag and half in the shadow world is an unsettling experience because of the difference in the way time moves in each place. One part of you is aware that time is moving at an ordinary pace, while to another part it seems as if the entire world is virtually frozen in place. Even the darting wraiths moved so slowly that their advance was almost imperceptible. Having picked the spot in Orszag where I wished to be, I waited until the wraiths were clear and then pulled my body through. For a moment I thought I might not have the strength to do it, but teleporting on the open plain proved easier than in my cell. I found myself transported slightly closer to Voros Korom. The demon, distracted by the rain of arrows, had not yet seen me.
The wraiths, screaming in surprise and anger, whirled back toward me again. I waited as long as I dared, recovering my strength, and then winked out of existence again. This time it was easier: I was getting more adept at grabbing just the right amount of tvari and channeling it properly. Now back in Veszedelem, I saw that I faced another threat: the demons from the hills were once again racing across the plain toward me. I needed to wait until the optimal moment to return to Orszag, but if I stayed too long in Veszedelem, I risked being torn apart by demons. Not wishing to fight a war in two different worlds at the same time, I ran toward the keep.
Simultaneously, I reappeared in Orszag, a few feet closer to Voros Korom. He had been moving toward me, and now we were only about twenty paces apart. Arrows continued to fly at him from all directions, but now he took notice of me. He began to move faster, and he growled a command, pointing in my direction. I saw that his mutilated right eye remained half-closed. The wraiths harassing the Torzsek archers suddenly reversed course in response to his order and shot toward me. Again, I waited as long as I dared and then returned to Veszedelem.
To my horror, I found myself back where I had started, at the same place on the plain where I always appeared. I’d been so intent on moving toward Voros Korom that I’d allowed my concentration to slip. Several minutes had passed in Veszedelem, and the demons were now almost upon me. There was no way I could reach the keep in time to evade them.
I blinked back to Orszag a few feet ahead of where I’d left, barely dodging the dozens of wraiths who were converging on the place where I’d been a split-second earlier. In another moment, they would be on me. I could not stay here, and I could not go back to Veszedelem; either place meant certain death. So I did the only thing I could do: I withdrew from both worlds, pulling my physical form into the place-that-was-not-a-place, the in-between that lay on the infinitesimal border that separated the material from the shadow.
Once there, however, I found that I was still not safe: the wraiths were there with me. I should have known it, of course. The wraiths were trapped between Orszag and Veszedelem. I had unwittingly traveled to their home turf.
When I’d come to the in-between before, it appeared to be a place without form or dimension, but now I seemed to be clinging to the inclined wall of a deep pit, the bottom of which opened to an endless abyss. The pit was shaped like a huge funnel, its slimy, muck-covered sides streaked with cracks that allowed one just enough purchase to stand. All around me, man-shaped things moaned and clawed against the walls of the pit, trying to drag themselves to the top. There were hundreds of them, both above and below me, visible only as pale shadows. I knew them only from their howls, which sounded the same as they did in Orszag: these horrible creatures, I knew, were the souls of the people who had been absorbed into the wraiths.
Indeed, I saw now that there were not multiple wraiths, but only one great clawing mass of damned souls, all trying to get out of the pit. As they climbed over each other, some dragged others down in the attempt to get out. Occasionally one would fall, screaming, into the pit. Wherever one managed to get out, many others followed, and I realized that each one of the wraiths was really the manifestation of one of these streaming processions of souls.
The opening was far above me, and I knew that it was the way back to Orszag—a rift torn in our world by the presence of Voros Korom. At the bottom of the abyss was Veszedelem, and the pit was a conduit that had been formed between the two. But despite their yearnings to escape the pit, the creatures in it could not survive there except for the energy radiated by Voros Korom.
The pit, I knew, was not “real,” whatever that meant in this place-that-was-not-a-place. It was merely a sort of metaphysical c
onduit between our world and Veszedelem. I knew, on some level, that I was not bound to remain in the pit; I could leave simply by forcing my awareness to a different “place” in the in-between, the way you can put one idea out of your mind and focus on another. But the more urgent one’s desire to stop thinking about something, the more that thing dominates one’s thoughts, and so it was with that pit and its clawing masses of souls.
I still might have succeeded in escaping but for the creatures’ sudden interest in this strange visitor to their domain. I was at a nearly unreachable spot on the wall of the pit, but every one of the creatures nearby—above, below, and to either side—was now clawing desperately to reach me. Far above, others still tried to escape the pit, but most had decided to forego that goal in favor of easier prey.
As the creatures came closer, I saw that although there was some variety among them, they tended toward the same appearance. The one clawing toward me from my left was a prime example: pale, hairless and seemingly androgynous, with unblinking white eyes, it had been reduced from eons in the pit to something no longer human; mutated into a thing that existed only to strive forever at a task it would never accomplish. Many of the others were nearly identical to it, but a few still retained some vestiges of their individuality—lumps resembling breasts or genitalia, wispy strands of hair, sometimes even scraps of clothing. But they all clawed their way toward me, some falling in the attempt.
I tried to climb across the wall away from them, but my escape options were limited, and they came at me from almost every angle. I was reduced to pulling at their limbs as they came close, in an attempt to dislodge them from the wall. Their claw-like hands held tightly to the wall, but few had the strength to fight me; they fell screaming into the abyss. More and more came, however, and I could not dislodge them all. They clawed and pulled at me, and I kicked and punched as long as I could, but there were just too many. One got a grip on my ankle and pulled my foot away from the wall.
The Rise of the Demon Prince Page 18