At the Gates of Darkness Part 10

His brother ignored the quip and started cleaning the small carca.s.s with his battle knife. It was a clumsy tool, but a few days practice had given him the ability not to totally destroy their supper before it was cooked. After a roasting, it would provide less than a few ounces of meat and only a tiny bit of fat, but it would be enough to keep them alive for another day. They had slowly gained back enough strength to mount a single defence should they be discovered, but neither had the energy for prolonged combat.

So lying in wait was their current tactic, but both knew that option had a limited expectation for survival. They quickly devoured their meal and Gulamendis said, 'The thing I find most annoying about this at the moment, is the need to walk down to the stream every time I get thirsty.'

'Then don't get thirsty,' replied his brother. 'Or find us a d.a.m.n jar or bucket or something to fetch water back.'

'I already suggested we use your boot...' said the Demon Master, in a weak attempt at humour.

His brother made a face indicating what he thought of that notion. 'How long can we sit here wondering?' asked the Conjurer.

'I don't know,' said his brother, on the border of exasperation. 'So much of this makes no sense to me.'

Laromendis had heard his brother's concerns before, from the first moment they had spied the demons over the rise, but asked, 'Perhaps if you outline it, one more time.'

'To what end?' asked Gulamendis, showing his frustration. 'Everything I know of demons must be wrong, or at least flawed. Both that human warlock, Amirantha, and I have lost the confidence to trust our conjurations. The rise of the Demon King made it certain we could not trust any creature we summoned to not turn on us; or to vanish back to their realm and report what they saw.

'Until we got here, our experience with the demons taught us that if they were not confined by magic they were out of control. On every other world the attacks on our people have taught us they were nothing but a horde of monsters, unrelenting, unforgiving, and without any sort of strategy save to a.s.sault, a.s.sault, a.s.sault.'

'We saw those captains on Andcardia,' reminded his brother. 'They were giving orders.'

'It looked like they were herding livestock, directing the flow of a stampede, not directing a coordinated attack.' He sighed. 'But that camp...' He shrugged in resignation. 'I can't explain it. I have no idea who is commanding them, but they are behaving unlike any group of demons I have ever heard of, let alone come in contact with.'

His brother said, 'I understand. You feel like someone has changed the governing laws of your art, without bothering to tell you.' Starting to rise, he said, 'Let's get something to drink and then decide if we want to watch the demons do nothing tonight.' As he started to rise, the ground suddenly heaved beneath them as a loud explosion echoed outside.

Laromendis was knocked on his rump while his brother said, 'What was that?'

Both looked up as dirt came showering down on them from the ceiling of the dark cave, barely illuminated by daylight coming through the entrance, fifty feet away. 'Get out!' shouted Gulamendis. 'This thing is collapsing.'

As the ground under their feet shook, they staggered to the entrance amidst a shower of dusty and loose rocks. Once outside they looked around, as Laromendis said, 'Earthquake?'

Another distant boom, followed by another lurch in the ground, and Gulamendis said, 'I don't think so.'

They quickly realized that the noise was coming from the other side of the ridge. Motioning for his brother to follow him, Gulamendis tried to half-climb, half-crawl up the shaking hillside. As they neared the crest they could hear the sounds of battle ringing in the distance, punctuated by more ground shaking explosions.

Peering over they could see only chaos.

Smoke and dust filled the air as thousands of demons were rolling out of their encampments to meet an onslaught of more demons.

'What is this?' asked Laromendis, not bothering to keep his voice down. Everywhere they looked demons were battling each other. The oddest aspect of this mad scene was the demons who were from the camp wore armour roughly uniform in fashion: dull silverfish breast armour and helms, some with spaulders or pauldrons, others without shoulder protection. Some possessed greaves or boots, while others-those with ma.s.sive feet and claws-went barefoot. But it was easy to see that they fought under the same banner. That banner was raised high on top of a long pole in the centre of the camp, a ma.s.sive black cloth with a red design upon it, impossible to see in detail at this distance.

The attackers were likewise attired in a haphazard fashion, but their armour was dark blue grey in colour and they flew no banner in the field. But they had clearly enjoyed the advantage in surprise and ferocity.

Even without arms, demons were lethally effective fighters; with weapons they were even more terrifying. The slaughter didn't pause: on every side demons went down in screams of pain, fountains of smoking blood, and body parts sailing through the air. It was butchery in every sense of the word.

Gulamendis replied, 'A demonic revolt, by the look of it.'

'There,' said the Conjurer, pointing across the valley to the ridge opposite the one they hid behind.

In the distance, Laromendis could see what had caught his brother's attention. On top of the ridge stood a ma.s.sive figure, dwarfing those around him. It was still impossible to make out details at this distance, but it was clear that group on top of the distant ridge was orchestrating the a.s.sault on the demon horde encamped in the valley below.

Flyers rose up to meet those already overhead, and the two elves suddenly understood the source of the ma.s.sive quakes and explosions. The invading flying demons carried large objects which they released above the ground forces below; when they struck the ground, a ma.s.sive amount of energy was released, throwing a tower of earth, smoke, flame, and bits of destroyed demons into the air. The early a.s.sault must have included attacks on positions closer to where the brother's hid, for these impacts felt less severe.

From three gullies down, just outside the valley, a stream of attacking monstrosities flooded into the fray. They rolled into the encamped army, already caught up in the throes of panic, and the slaughter gained pace.

'What is going on?' asked Laromendis.

'Can you conjure enough cover for us to remain unseen if we need it?' asked his brother.

'Not for long.'

'If what I think is happening, is happening, we won't need it for long. Come we must hurry.'

The Demon Master headed off at a trot, staying just below the ridge and following it around the rim of the valley. Occasionally the ground shook, but the air a.s.sault ceased as the two opposing forces became entwined in hand-to-hand combat. Every so often, Gulamendis would peer over the edge then motion for his brother to follow.

They reached an outcropping of rocks, from which they could better observe what went on, and Laromendis asked, 'Do you recognize any of them?'

He nodded to the demons perched on the rim of the valley. Now they were close enough that Gulamendis could make out some details. The demon at the centre of the group was ma.s.sive, perhaps twenty or twenty-five feet tall, with gigantic wings folded behind him. It might have been a flyer once, or the wings might just be there to affect a more impressive visage when unfolded, but the Demon Master doubted the creature could truly fly without magic. On either side of it waited demons of a type Gulamendis had never encountered before, black-skinned monstrosities that were, from the waist up, roughly half-human, and some sort of lizard creature below. Long tails dragged behind them and they were constantly watching in all directions.

'I think those two,' he said softly, pointing to the half-lizard demons, 'are guards or companions of some sort.' He made a small circular motion with his finger as he pointed. 'The rest are battle demons, but I've never seen them standing motionless, and never have seen them wearing armour and bearing arms.'

He knelt down and said, 'We're seeing something very new here.'

'What?'

'I'll tell you when we have a little more leisure time,' said Gulamendis. 'The big one is either the Demon King, Maarg, or someone who looks a great deal like the description Pug gave me.'

'Didn't Pug also tell you Maarg was found dead on some other world?'

'Well,' said Gulamendis, 'there's dead and then there's dead. I've been dispatching demons back to their own realm for years, and have even imagined I have destroyed a few, but I can't really say if they died or just went back where they came from in a messier fashion.' He glanced back over the rocks. 'If I'm right, we should find a way out of here down behind those monsters.'

'We'd better move, because this battle is going to be over soon, and I don't want to be here when the victors start looking around for more things to chew on.'

The Demon Master nodded. 'Be ready to make us look like rocks if needed.'

'I'll try,' answered his brother.

They moved slowly, checking their progress every ten yards or so, and then suddenly Gulamendis halted his brother. 'Something's not right.'

'What do you mean,' asked the Conjurer.

'I can sense demons all over this valley. It's like a throng shouting at me, but from ahead...Nothing.'

'Nothing?'

'If I close my eyes, there are no demons up on that ridge.'

Laromendis peeked over the rise and studied the scene for a moment, then said, 'That's odd.'

'What do you see?'

'Be silent; watch for a few minutes then tell me what you see.'

The two brothers ventured another look at the demons on the ridge, now less than a two hundred yards away. The Demon King stood with his arms crossed over his obscenely large stomach, his face a mask of delighted evil and he glared down on the struggle with burning red eyes. Suddenly, his hand shot up into the air and he motioned, urging his followers onward, but no more reinforcements were coming. 'Why is he signalling the attack when fight is almost done,' asked Laromendis.

'Because he's not signalling an attack. Come with me,' said Gulamendis as he crouched and hurried along just below the circling rocks that shielded them from sight.

Keeping out of sight as best they could, they got closer than Laromendis felt comfortable with, then Gulamendis said quietly, 'Look, brother!'

They peered at the a.s.sembled demons and saw the Demon King signal the attack again. 'What?' then Laromendis closed his eyes. 'I'm a fool. It's all a conjuration.'

'A very good illusion, from what I can tell. It would fool anyone who can't sense demons, even you dear brother; and no one else is going to get close enough to see that this is all a trick of lights and magic.'

'But why-?'

'We can ponder that later,' said Gulamendis. 'We need to find the way home, or at least somewhere other than here. Why those demons were lured here to be slaughtered by their own kind is a matter for another time; right now we need to see if there's a gate of some sort down that side of the mountain.'

He hurried, unconcerned about being seen by the illusions nearby and Laromendis followed. The fatigue from days of privation were offset by the excitement of possibly finding a safe route off this desert planet, and they moved quickly.

As they pa.s.sed the illusions, they found a wide trail, and realized it was freshly trampled by thousands of feet. 'Well, now we know the attacking army is real,' said Laromendis.

'Demons can't be fooled that long,' said his brother. 'I thought you'd have discovered that when they started ignoring your conjurations and started attacking us.'

'I thought perhaps in a melee, with blood and screaming demons on all sides, they might not have the facility to judge if there was enough demon stench in the air,' said the Conjurer as they quickly descended the trail, almost running.

'Point taken,' conceded his brother. 'Still, you're the conjurer. Could you create the illusion of an army on that scale?'

'No,' said Laromendis, his breath beginning to come hard. 'No one could. It would take a dozen as good as me. And then they couldn't sustain it for long. That's a great deal of magic being used. To achieve it to endure this long, at this level, it would take a hundred better than me.'

'Well, let's hope whoever's behind this monstrous betrayal is too occupied with whatever they are doing up there to notice the two of us slipping away.'

Suddenly the hair on their arms stood up and both slid to a halt, dust rising from their sliding feet.

'What's that?' asked Gulamendis.

'A barrier...' Laromendis reached out and drew his hand back. 'It doesn't hurt, but it's not a particularly pleasant feeling, either.'

'What is it?'

Pushing with his fingers, Laromendis said, 'I think it's-' He stepped forward and vanished from his brother's sight.

'Laro!' shouted the Demon Master.

Abruptly, a hand reached out of the air and grabbed him by the arm, yanking him forward.

'Where are we?' asked Gulamendis.

Wherever it was, it wasn't the desert world upon which they had stood only a moment before.

They stood in an empty marshalling yard of a ma.s.sive black stone fortress. Walls thirty feet high rose up on all sides of an open area two hundred yards across and a hundred deep. Above them rose a keep unlike anything they had seen before. If the castle created by the Black Sorcerer had been designed to impose a warning on pa.s.sing ships, the sight of this fortress would have simply scared the sailors to death.

In the sky above them hung a canopy of black clouds so thick it was impossible to tell the time of day, or if it was night. They were lit from below by the angry red light from a series of volcanoes that surrounded this place. Lightning exploded across the sky in the distance, and moments later was followed by peals of thunder that could be felt.

'Where are we?' repeated Gulamendis.

His brother grabbed his arm and pulled him into the relative shelter of the shadow of a corner tower. In the distance a large figure had walked out of the entrance of the vast fortress, across the yard; and even though it was three hundred feet away, they could see it was a ma.s.sive battle demon, perhaps a dozen feet tall. It moved with purpose, but rather than attacking them, it travelled at an oblique angle to their position, intent upon some other business. Like those they had seen on the other world, it wore armour and carried a ma.s.sive two-handed sword strapped across its back.

'Is this the demon realm?' asked Laromendis.

'It can't be,' answered his brother.

'Why not?'

'Because if it was the Fifth Circle, we would be almost certainly dead by now. Everything we know about the Fifth Circle says we would die within minutes if we weren't protected by strong magic.'

'Kosridi,' said Laromendis, referring to the tales they had learned about the human magician, Pug, and his allies travelling to the Second Circle.

'Yes,' said his brother.

'On the other hand,' said Laromendis, 'who is to say the laws within the Fifth Circle are the same as the Second?'

'I'll argue the theory later,' said Gulamendis. 'Despite that, I can't sense any demons.'

'Another illusion?'

Gulamendis slapped the wall of stone behind him and felt the palm of his hand sting. 'What do you think?'

Laromendis closed his eyes for a moment, touched the wall, then said, 'If it's a conjured fortress, whoever's responsible for it has the powers of a G.o.d.'

'Let's see if we can find a better place to hide, while we decide what to do next,' said Gulamendis.

Setting off along the base of the wall, staying as deep in the shadows as they could, the two seven foot elves who stood tried to make themselves as small and inconspicuous as possible.

'This may not be the demon realm,' said Laromendis, 'but the air is choking me.'

'It's the smoke and ash from the volcanoes,' whispered his brother.

'Who builds anything like this in a place like this?'

'I have no idea,' replied Gulamendis. 'Over there.' He pointed to a small building that appeared to have been constructed after the wall. It was a simple wooden structure, a shed or storage room.

They crept along. There had been no threat since they had spied the single demon crossing the marshalling yard, but they had no idea if they were nevertheless being observed from any one of the hundred or so windows in the keep above. It reared at least a dozen storeys above them, a ma.s.sive malignant presence against the evil red and grey sky.

'Flyers!' said Gulamendis, pointing above the top of the keep.

A dozen black specks appeared in the red glow and then vanished, only to reappear a moment later, growing larger. 'They're coming this way,' said the Conjurer.

'Let's see what's in here,' said Gulamendis, opening the unlatched door.

Inside the hut sacks and boxes were arranged in a roughly organized fashion. When the door was closed, they were plunged into darkness.