“Stop!” The human woman from the demon lord’s dungeon stepped forward into the small gap between the groups, voice weak against the babble. “You don’t know what you’re doing! He’ll kill us all.”
For a moment, Arrow wondered if any of the Magister’s side would listen. There were perhaps two dozen of them, and even though they were armed or carrying a bandoleer, several had pale faces. Faced with the reality of the demon lord crawling out of the portal, perhaps. Theory was always different to the actual practice, Arrow knew. Surely not all of them could have been involved in the deliberate gathering of human sacrifice to power the portal. Not all of the Collegia’s magicians knew about the demon realm to start with.
The Magister stared back at the woman for a moment, his face impossible to read.
“You disappoint me, child,” he said at length, voice gentle. “We are on the brink of a new age. A new dawn for humanity.”
“Oh, do give over,” Dorian said, hands on hips, squaring off to his leader. “You’re just a power-crazed old man. Long past your best.”
“Past my best.” For the first time the genial facade crumbled, the Magister’s carefully modulated voice rising with his temper. He thumped the end of his staff down on the floor, a shock wave reverberating through the room. Pre-prepared spell, Arrow thought. She wondered how much power he had expended in creating those little spells, and how many he carried. “Let’s see, shall we.”
“Oh, do, let’s.” Juniper was beside Dorian, eyes gleaming, ready for a fight. “You stupid old man. You’ve no idea what you’re dealing with.”
“Power for us all,” the Magister answered, teeth bared. “That’s what we agreed.”
Agreed.
An ice pick shoved into her heart along with the barb of surjusi power. The bargain. The foolish humans thought they had agreed something. With Saul. A quick glance over her shoulder and she saw Saul further out of the portal. Not as far as he should be. A look towards the Erith showed that Gilean and Willan had been joined by several of the more powerful Erith in keeping the hold spell active, Serran among them, the old mage’s face showing the strain. Even combined, the demon lord was winning. Slowly. But he was winning.
And the humans thought that Saul was on their side.
Arrow moved a deliberate few paces forward, still within the amber circle, facing the Magister.
“No bargain was struck,” Arrow told him. She had not raised her voice but she was heard.
“What do you mean?” The Magister sounded shaken for the first time, eyes darting behind Arrow to the creature rising. “You are here. The portal.”
“No bargain has been made,” Arrow repeated. “The war mage Willan and I crafted the spell, and the Erith powered the portal.” Her lip curled, voice deepening to darkness again, “Even if all your acolytes had been sacrificed, there is not enough power in them to open a portal.”
“Nonsense,” he spluttered, skin pale, voice trembling, “we calculated the power needed. Chose them carefully.”
“You chose me? Chose me to be sacrificed?” the woman shrieked. She had moved closer to Mark and now snatched the discarded dagger from the floor, charging at the Magister with a scream, weapon raised. Not a warrior. Even Arrow could tell that.
She never reached her target. One of the uniformed combat magicians surrounding the Magister moved, drawing a long sword, stepping forward, making two sweeping cuts that Arrow’s eyes could barely follow. The woman’s hand, clutching the dagger, fell to the floor before the rest of her fell with a dull thump, the artery in her neck severed and a fountain of blood soaring out, spattering across the humans, and against the amber of the protection spell.
Screaming started. Humans who were not part of the conspiracy, many of them painted with blood, ran for the doors, only to find them locked. The Premiere was bustled to the wall by her security, one of them moving to the doors in an effort to get them open, the woman herself shouting something unintelligible at the Magister amid the chorus of panic from her people.
“Sheep,” the Magister pronounced, his lip curling in apparent disgust. Arrow could not place the word for a moment but the insult was clear. “We can still make a bargain,” he continued, turning back to his people. “Get us through.” This last command was made to the magician calmly putting his sword away.
The magician nodded and gestured to another pair of human magicians, those who had worn suits and blended in with the delegation. They moved, producing boxes like the one Mark had used in the demon realm, and stepped towards the amber circle still guarded by the Erith and ‘kin. Arrow’s sword writhed at her back, sensing more of its enemy.
The guards moved as one, sensing the threat even if they did not understand it, but they were too late. The boxes activated. The battle wards around the Erith fell. The spell of protection Serran’s son had made faded to nothing. The hold spell that had been slowing Saul down disappeared, Erith who had been holding the spell gasping, a few collapsing to their knees as their use of power was cut off. Willan took a staggering step to the side, held up at once by Iserat, Orlis there to support Gilean.
“What is that?” Miach hissed.
“A machine that can disable magic,” Arrow told him, lips stiff. “There is something surjusi in them.” The machines had a limited range, though. They had destroyed the Erith’s wards, the protective circle and the hold spell. But the portal spell and translation spell, in the centre of the room, were still active. Interesting. She filed that away for further consideration in the future. If there was one.
“How do we stop it?” Matthias asked. His face was tight. He had heard the surjusi part.
“Like this,” Zachary said, moving with the lightning speed and power of the master predator he was, slamming his fist into one then the other. The boxes shattered into bits of metal and plastic and dust, wires sticking out.
“They will have more,” Arrow warned, staying within the circle. The barb wound around her heart wanted her to move, to get out of the circle, to play with the pretty, foolish things. Her feet twitched in their socks, half a pace forward before she really knew what she was doing. She took a breath, settled herself and forced herself three full paces back inside the circle. Closer to Saul. That could not be helped. And there would be no place safe from him once he got through.
She turned back to look at Saul, found the surjusi’s black eyes fixed on her. The barb shivered in delight. The rest of her wanted to scream and run.
“Activate the circle,” Miach ordered someone. “Search the humans. We need to make sure there are no more of those devices.”
“We’d be delighted to help,” Zachary offered, anger carrying on their air.
Around her the circle sprang back into being, Gilean’s face set as he met her eyes across the amber. She inclined her head in thanks. He returned the gesture, eyes filling, taking Orlis’ hand as the journeyman came to stand shoulder to shoulder with him.
“Hold,” Arrow told him, the darkness in her voice no longer shocking to her.
“As long as there is breath in me,” Gilean promised.
The six were there with him, faces set, the dense battle wards they had used for so long in the demon realm tight around them.
“What can we do?” Kallish asked, seemingly with no direction.
“Stop the idiot humans,” Arrow suggested.
“With great pleasure.”
The human conspirators took a collective step back as the White Guard and shifkin descended on them, gleefully stripping the magicians of their vials and potions and magicians and warriors both of an army’s worth of weaponry, discarded into a single, growing pile watched over by a junior third from one of the cadres.
The humans had no chance. None of them managed to deploy a spell, or use any of their weapons. They were simply overwhelmed, stripped of everything dangerous, and tied up with vast quantities of rope that the White Guard produced, all of them also gagged. The Magister was last, Zachary searching him thoroughly to make sure there were no weapons hidd
en in his robes.
The robes. Finally, Arrow remembered where she had seen Saul’s outfit before. It was an approximation of human garb. The robes of an ancient priesthood, long since discarded. A closed group that had been rumoured to practice human sacrifice. She wondered how long Saul had been influencing parts of humanity.
“You see,” the Magister shouted to the humans huddled by the doors. “You see how they treat us. This is why we need-”
He was stopped as Dorian shoved a cloth in his mouth, none too gently, and took great care in binding it thoroughly.
“This is why we need to work with the Erith and the shifkin,” the Premiere said. She had escaped her security, or perhaps they had let her go now that the humans were contained. “Because you brought your strongest and best with you today and they were defeated in moments. And they did not kill anyone.”
“I like her,” Eimille vel Falsen said, voice clear amid the ring of White Guard still protecting the Taellan. Perhaps Eimille had forgotten the translation spell still in operation. Arrow doubted it. Eimille had begun playing Court politics among the Erith for a length of time that most humans found incomprehensible for the span of a single life.
Arrow found her eyes on Zachary’s face and saw the swiftly-hidden smile. He had worked hard for this summit. He sensed her glance and met her eyes, expression serious. Right. There was still work to do.
She could not look at Kester, standing amid the Erith. It hurt.
Instead, in a circle of Erith magic, Arrow turned to Saul.
The barb was worming its way right through her heart now, burrowing deeper. She ignored it. There was a ring of shifkin and Erith, battle ready and powerful. They should be enough to stop her when her core was lost to the dark. She hoped. Assuming there was anything left of her. She shook the thought away. Not the first time she had faced her own death. And she had work to do. One last thing before the corruption took her.
Her power came to her bidding, silver marred with sickly green, the surjusi corruption evident. The words of banishment came easily, familiar to her tongue.
“You will have no purchase in this place. Your anchor will be torn up. Your substance will be destroyed. Your soul will return to the place from whence it came. This I declare. This I bind. This I put my will to.” Three repetitions was supposed to be the key. According to Serran, the spell’s creator. It did not always work that way. At her back, the sword pulsed, ready and eager to be used. She hoped it would not come to that. If she needed the sword, Saul would be through into this world and she was quite certain, to the very depth and core of her corrupted being, that even with the sword, she would lose.
“You cannot defeat me.” Saul’s voice was weighted with his presence in the world. A shoulder was through now. Much more and he would be fully into the world.
“I know your true name.” In the demon realm, amid the silence and the dark, Saul’s true name was written in the realm’s magic, layered everywhere for a curious mage to see. The key to sending him back.
“But you cannot say it, can you?” The voice taunted.
No. She could not say it. Not if she wanted to live. But, like so many things, it was too late for that. Every part of her was saturated with surjusi power, the tiny bit she had drawn in somehow multiplying. And the point of it was so close, so very close, to the centre of her heart.
Outside the circle she sensed rather than saw Kester move, perhaps guessing what she was about. At the edge of her sight she saw him held. Undurat had him. And Kallish. And another five warriors moving as one unit, holding him outside.
She set it all aside, looked into the dark, down into the velvet black and midnight depths, the welcoming warmth that beckoned her. She resisted the pull. Gathered the name to her, the bits and pieces of it picked up amongst the surjusi power, the true name that every inhabitant of the demon realm had, from the smallest worm to its greatest lord. The key to sending Saul back to his own realm.
The mark on her cheek blazed, the heartland’s favour burning into her skin.
The name gathered force. The lines of her neck distended, trying to accommodate the shape of it, her skull splintering into agony trying to hold the whole of it.
She held the name in her being, the bag of flesh and bones that contained her no match for the name that shaped the demon lord’s essence. A name that was not so much a word but sounds no living throat could manage. Gathered it in. Inspected every part of it until she was sure, certain, that she had it all. Held the name until she was shaking with the hurt of it, until every bone was fragmenting, until she could see nothing else, sense nothing else.
She held it until the barb in her heart was all the way in, then she pulled the barb all the way through, out the other side. It tore with white agony, but it came. Out of her core. She bound it into the name.
Then, only then, she opened her mouth and spoke the name.
It tore the insides of her mouth, scorched her tongue, fractured her teeth, shattered her jaw, blinded her, deafened her, crippled her to nothing but second sight.
The name left her. The sound poured out of her along with the sickly green bit of surjusi power she had carried and all the hurt of bearing the name.
And her power poured out of her, no longer corrupted, pure, blinding silver. Her own power. Shadow-walker.
The name and the power cascaded over Saul. His shriek of rage would have burst her ears if she had any left.
The enormity of his presence faded, spiralling back into the portal, back to his own realm, and she framed the word to close the portal. It was the effort of her life to shape that one, simple, Erith word. But she did. The tight knot of magic, pure Erith amber, the portal powered by the six and Serran, disappeared to nothing, the portal gone.
Leaving her with no purpose and no more time.
She collapsed to the floor, a useless bag of bones and flesh, with no sight or hearing, nothing but the second world. And the kiss of the heartland against the scorched skin where her cheek had been. The crisp cold of running water. The cool bite of snow on her tongue. The warmth of summer sun.
The hurt eased a fraction. Enough so that she could truly know she was dying. Her course run. Work done. The demon lord back where he belonged. The echo of his name grating her shattered bones together, vibration matching the rapid beat of her heart. Stupid heart. Trying to keep beating, keep her body alive when she knew it was done.
The scent of flowers and green. The heartland. Apparently trying to offer comfort where there was none to offer.
She had no eyes left to see. No ears to hear. The fading beat of her heart carried pain, the familiar taste of copper, her own blood, coated her damaged tongue. Even the heartland’s presence, feather light, was painful against the residue of the demon lord’s name.
I can make you whole, the heartland seemed to say.
Too much hurt, Arrow thought immediately. There was a quiet, dark place nearby. A place of rest where no one would try to kill her. Where no bones would be broken. No demands placed on her. Safe.
Boring.
She wanted to laugh at that thought but her ribs had fractured and she did not have enough air. So much pain. She longed for that peace.
No. Boring.
Safe.
Boring.
Her body shook as a laugh took her, uncaring of her ribs, unexpected and welcome, even with the cascade of pain. The deepest part of her, ripped open and unfettered in her dying body, was an adventurer.
Let me heal you. The heartland’s presence was almost full words now, the only thing she was aware of besides the dark and the pain. The presence carried a promise. Sunshine. Warmth. Laughter. Free of pain.
That deepest part, the one that craved something other than peace, rose up, took over, brushed against the heartland’s presence, and agreed.
The warmth and gentleness faded, replaced by blinding power. So bright her non-eyes could not bear it. The power smothered her, crept into every part of her being. Not gently, either. Piercing, bli
nding hurt. Bone fragments ground together, the damage of the demon lord’s name scraped raw again, and she screamed with what was left of her throat, and what little air she had left in her lungs.
Snap. Snap. Snap. Snap. Snap.
The sounds went on and on. Each one of her bones snapping back together from ribs to teeth to her arm that she had not known was broken. The influx of air into her restored lungs made her whimper as the air tore through her raw throat before the heartland’s power followed that, coating her throat with the blinding power of sunlight, burning.
She was crying. Tears ran down her face. Her eyes were whole, vision blurred. Her ears were picking up too much sound. Half a hundred heartbeats. The rasp of breath in lungs. The gentle creak of leather. The soft fall of leather soles on a wooden floor.
The heartland’s presence lifted, pressure easing. She took her first breath without pain in what seemed like an eternity. Her hearing faded, back to normal, the relief bringing more tears.
Whole. The heartland told her, drifting away until its presence faded to nothing.
“Arrow!” Kester was kneeling beside her, face tight with an expression she could not read. She could see him. Normal sight was restored. And hear him, although her hearing was still odd, picking up a roar of background noise.
She managed to sit up, disoriented and dizzy. Her body did not feel like hers. She touched her hand to her face, brushing away tears, and froze. The bones of her face felt wrong.
“What happened?” she asked.
“I do not know.”
“I am different.”
For answer, Kester produced a small mirror from a pocket and showed her. She stared at the tiny piece of mirrorglass, eyes blazing.
The heartland had made her whole, it thought. It had changed her. Her once human appearance was gone, pared back and stripped down. The angles and planes of her face were more Erith than anything else, the dusting of freckles still there but fainter than before. Even her hair was different, smoother in its tangles.
“I am not …” Her voice trailed off. She looked at her hands. They were subtly longer, more finely made. The heartland had left her a reminder, though. The misaligned fingers of her right hand were still there. Of all the things it could fix, it had left her that constant irritation, she thought, lips firming into a straight line.
Taellaneth Complete Series Box Set Page 110