At the Gates of Darkness Part 6

'The flyers and most of the smaller demons won't trouble us unless we wander close to them, but the more powerful ones will sense we are here eventually.'

The warrior looked at him and said, 'You know about demons?'

'More than I care to reveal,' he said, 'but I think I know how we can avoid them, for a while longer.'

'If only we knew how to open this d.a.m.n portal,' said Laromendis.

Gulamendis said, 'Something has occurred to me.'

'What?' asked his brother.

Gulamendis looked at the bodies on the floor and pointed to one dressed in a robe, and said, 'Arosha, is that the galasmancer?'

The Sentinel's knees weakened, and Laromendis helped him sit. 'Yes, and the others are the rest of my company of Sentinels.'

'Then they didn't have time to escape.'

'Obviously,' said Laromendis to his brother. 'Your point?'

Gulamendis went to the body of the fallen portal builder and pulled a demon corpse that covered him, he then turned over the blood drenched figure. The dead elf clutched a yellow stone in his hand, so firmly Gulamendis had to pry it from his fingers. Holding up the faintly pulsing stone, he said, 'He didn't destroy the portal! He only pulled the power crystal from it.' He pointed to the empty hole where the crystal should be placed. 'The portal should open if we put this back in here, and we can get home!' He reached down and pulled a small bag from the galasmancer's belt and quickly tied it to his own.

'It wouldn't do any good,' said Arosha. 'For the time being, anything that travels through a portal from this world will be killed the second it steps through.'

'Lovely,' muttered Laromendis. 'Now what?'

Gulamendis paused, then said, 'We go somewhere else.'

'Where?' asked his brother.

'Sorcerer's Isle,' said the Demon Master.

'How do you propose we do that?'

Gulamendis said, 'When I visited the island I was shown one of their rift gates. The wards there that act as a beacon.' He realized he was now at the very edge of his knowledge. Looking at the Sentinel he said, 'How much do you know about portals?'

The wounded elf smiled slightly. 'I've been watching galasmancers play with those things long enough to have a fair idea how they work. But I don't know if I could find a portal that we didn't build.'

'Here's what I know,' said Gulamendis. 'According to the human, Pug, their rifts share an affinity; if a rift exists there and you then create a second rift, it tends to follow the first.'

'Tends to?' asked his brother in a sceptical tone.

'If you have a better idea, I would welcome it,' said the Demon Master. 'You can activate this gate?' Gulamendis asked the Sentinel.

'Yes,' said Arosha. 'That's the easy part. Setting a different destination other than the one already cast is the hard part. I think I've seen it done often enough to have a sense of how to do it, but only to reach other known portals, all now closed. If I open any of them from this end...They'll be guarded or worse.'

'What's worse?'

'The portal could be buried under rock, or at the bottom of a lake.' The Sentinel shrugged, though it made him wince. 'I can imagine what would happen if you stepped through into solid rock.'

Gulamendis said, 'Do you know the way to E'bar?'

The Sentinel said, 'It is already set for the new city.' He slowly rose and said, 'But as I said, if we activate the portal and step through, archers will fill us with arrows before we say a word.'

Gulamendis became thoughtful and then said, 'We change something.'

'Something?' asked his brother.

'What?' asked the Sentinel.

'Set it just past E'bar. If Pug is correct, a new rift should form, somewhere nearby.'

'How nearby?' asked the Conjurer.

The younger brother fixed Laromendis with an exasperated look and said, 'I will settle for anywhere on the same planet.'

'As long as we don't end up in the middle of the sea, or under a mountain...'

'Can you do it?' asked Gulamendis.

The Sentinel indicated that he needed help to reach the portal controls and the Conjurer put his arm around the wounded elf's waist. Laromendis shot his brother a concerned expression and with a slight shake of his head told him the Sentinel was in worse shape than he had first thought. He helped the guardsman stand before the controls, and felt blood drenching his arm where he held him.

Runes were set in a large platter before them, several glowing with a faint light. 'There's magic in the device, independent of the gate power.' He pointed to the crystal Gulamendis held and said, 'That will get the gate open.' He glanced around and said, 'Let me study this while you look for another stone. The galas-mancer should have it.'

'What type of stone?' asked Laromendis.

'It may be purple or blue.'

Laromendis did as he was asked and returned a moment later with a purple crystal half the size of the yellow one his brother still held. 'What is this?'

'It will close down this portal after we go. The gate will be useless and the demons will have to find another way to E'bar.'

'How does it work?' asked Laromendis.

With a slight smile, the pale Sentinel said, 'I pull out the yellow crystal, replace it with this one, hit any mark on the controls...'

'And then what?' asked Gulamendis.

'It explodes.'

Both brothers were mute.

The Sentinel said, 'We all know I'm already a dead man. I can barely stand. You'd better go now, or I won't be able to close the portal after you. Good fortune.'

Laromendis started to say something, but couldn't find the words, so he simply nodded.

The Sentinel placed the yellow crystal in a small depression cut in the surface of the control panel and it began to pulse with a stronger light. He struck all the runes but one, and held up his hand. 'I've put in the runes needed,' he started to sway, but gripped hard on the edge of the panel. 'Pick any rune save that one.'

Gulamendis didn't hesitate, he reached over, picked one randomly and pushed it. A faint hum was followed by a sudden increase in the pressure of the room, as if a huge influx of wind swept through it; then they heard a faint thumping sound. A grey void, colours shimmering across its surface like oil on water, appeared between the sides of the portal device.

'Go, quickly,' said the Sentinel, and the brothers hesitated for only a second, then stepped through. Certain death was their reward if they remained, so it made little difference if death also waited on the other side of the portal. But it also held the chance of salvation, and so they took it.

They were under water. They both experienced a moment of disorientation and used all of their focus and will power not to gasp in lungfuls of water. It was also very dark.

Fighting his panic, Laromendis realized they were not too deep, as he had learnt to judge water pressure while diving for sh.e.l.lfish as a youth. He blew out a small breath and felt the bubbles rise up his face. In the gloom he knew which way as up. He grabbed his brother's arm and pulled, and they both swam furiously to the surface.

They had been less than ten feet below the surface, but it had felt like one hundred. They broke above rolling combers and spat out mouthfuls of seawater.

Gasping for air, Gulamendis said, 'We aren't dead...Yet.'

Looking around, his brother said, 'We have time. I have no idea where we are.'

Gulamendis said, 'This isn't Home.'

'How do you know?'

'Demons. I can sense them.'

'How many?'

'A lot.'

The chop of the sea water would have been called relatively mild by a sailor, but that judgment was made from a boat. The peak to trough was roughly six feet, so they tried to time their exploration, looking in circles each time they crested the rising water.

'Lights!' said Laromendis.

'Where?' asked his brother as he slid into a trough and began to rise again.

'That way,' said Laromendis.

'I can't see where you're pointing. It's as dark as a cave.'

'You're right.' He swam closer to his brother and could barely make out his face. But it was faintly illuminated and Gulamendis turned to look for the light's source.

A single moon had risen high in the night sky, a slivered crescent obscured by a heavy curtain. 'Fog,' said Laromendis.

'Then we'd better make for those lights before they are obscured,' said Gulamendis. He felt his brother's hand on his shoulder and felt himself moving. He didn't need any more convincing and began to swim.

The brothers were not particularly powerful, but their people had greater strength and endurance than humans or even the lesser elves of Home. And both had spent years living close to an ocean, so could swim well. They had been forced to rely on what they could bring in from the sea more times than they cared to remember.

'Listen,' said Gulamendis as he paused.

'What?'

'I hear breakers.'

'Good. I'm starting to go numb and was desperately hoping we saw lights on land and not a pa.s.sing ship.'

Saying nothing more, they set out towards the sound of breakers.

Minutes later the two exhausted, chilled elves heaved themselves out of the surf and trudged ash.o.r.e in the dark. The beach was broad and welcoming, which they both counted as fortunate. A sudden crash into jagged rocks would have almost ended this escape.

'Where do you think we are?' asked Laromendis.

'I have no idea, but with a little luck I might be able to find out. Even if this is one of the worlds taken by the Demon Legion, we might be able to come up with another means of reaching home.'

'You always were the one able to look on the bright side of things; it's ironic that you ended up spending so much time in dark caves as a child.'

His brother tried to chuckle, but couldn't quite find the energy. 'There!' he said suddenly, pointing to light dotting the side of the hill above them, before they were again consumed by the mist.

'Torches, I think,' whispered Laromendis. Without another word they started moving up the beach, moving cautiously in the darkness. Like all of their race, they possessed good night-vision, but they still needed some light with which to see, and the sliver of moon provided very little. The land was shrouded in a murky haze as they worked their way carefully along a path, possibly a game trail, that led away from the beach; movement was slow as it was littered with rocks and bramble.

Gulamendis kept his voice low and said, 'There are a lot of demons nearby.'

His brother whispered, 'We need to get further away from the beach. If there are demons around, we need to find a place to hide until we can work out what to do next. You were the one who told me some of those flyers can see in the dark.'

'Thanks for reminding me,' the Demon Master whispered in return. 'But not many of them are able to, and none of them like to fly in fog, it would be too easy to fly into something.'

They reached a sharp bend in the path and continued up the hillside. As they climbed higher, the fog thinned and a few minutes later they broke clear of it. The sky on the other side of the cliff was aglow, and they crouched instinctively fearful of being spotted by sentries.

Looking down, they could just see the game trail they had climbed vanish below them into a low lying bank of heavy mist. The heavy marine air that rolled in off the sea at sundown, would usually burn off by midmorning, but natural barriers like the cliff face could hold it in place for longer if it was thick, although the mist would never extend far inland.

Nearing the top of the bluff, they saw no sign of any other living thing, but they continued to move with exhausted caution. Neither of them had enough reserves left for a fight or a dash. Besides, where would they flee to?

The bluff swept away on both sides as they came to a cut at the top of the trail and found themselves on a plateau. Even without the fog, there was little light, the sliver of moon provided only faint illumination.

Scrub and a few scrawny trees dominated the landscape: a vague tangle of shadows and patterns of dark grey and black aided by the weak distant glow in the distance.

'Demons?' asked Laromendis quietly.

'No closer than they were,' answered his brother.

'I suggest we just sit and wait for dawn.'

Gulamendis squatted on the ground, then slowly stretched out his legs. After a moment, he said, 'No,' and rose quietly.

'No, what?' asked his brother, on the verge of sitting.

'You rest. I'll stay awake.'

'Why?' said Laromendis, despite the fact he didn't intend to argue over it.

'You have spent the last three days spinning illusions while I have only pointed a wand now and again. We both know I have no control over demons if their captains or lords are around, and even if I could command one, there are dozens running around us.

'You need rest more than I do, and if we need any talent tomorrow, it will be your skill at conjuration. I'll sleep tomorrow if we can find a safe place.'

'You have no idea how long we have until dawn. The sun may have set only an hour ago.'

'I have no idea how long night is on this world, either, but it doesn't matter. Sleep and I'll keep watch.'