Dragonstar

18

On the occasion of his previous journey through Hell in company with a demon, John had asked whether the road they traveled was a standard path: Did one who sought the horrors of Paradise first have to pass through the Hell of Winds, for instance, if his starting point was the world that John knew as reality?

This had seemed to him a reasonable question, but Amayon wouldn’t answer, not that John had expected the demon would tell the truth in any case. He had therefore made careful notes of the sigils that marked the doors opening between one Hell and the next, and leading from the Hells into the worlds that they abutted: It was all he could do. Those sigils, as far as he was able to tell, were written on the doors through which he and the demons with whom he now traveled passed on the way to Prokep.

He had no time now to make notes. The demons drove him mercilessly through a Hell whose air clogged wet and almost unbreathably thick in his lungs, as if he were perpetually drowning; where all things seemed to glow greasily in half-twilight and where balls of light swam like schools of fish in the air and fled the sight of the demon band—“Fat lot of good to rush, isn’t it?” he inquired of Amayon as he stumbled through knee-deep muck whose composition he could only guess in the dim blue light. “We’re going to come out in Prokep pretty much the same time we went in at Alyn, aren’t we? I mean, we’ll still have three days before the Moon of Winds.”

The demon said, “You know nothing about it,” and kept walking—lightly, on top of the sucking odiferous ooze, moving as if neither it nor the gluey air touched him.

John retorted, “Of course I know nuthin’ about it, you silly oic! If I did I wouldn’t be askin’ you!” But later he guessed the reason. Though time did not alter in Hell—and travelers emerged, as he had noted, at pretty much the same time in the real world as they went in—the corpses of the gnomes that the demon escort rode continued to decay. The flesh of their faces discolored, sagging and puffing up grotesquely beneath moldering beards; the demons seemed to take delight in the growing stink of the flesh, like boys holding farting matches to offend adults. Amayon—presumably a senior in the infernal ranks—treated their behavior with amused contempt, but like them he never offered John any threat. As for the gray thing, it was always in shadow, never clearly glimpsed, gone whenever John turned his head. But he could feel it, always behind him, a cold presence he never forgot.

They passed again through the Hell of the Shining Things, marching for what felt like days along one of the black-rock river-cuts through those desolate red highlands under a scarlet sky. John was stumbling from thirst and hunger, and from the exhaustion of pushing through the Blue Hell, but the demons forced him on. They were afraid here, watching and listening, pushing forward in visible dread. Even before those flaming wheels of light and eyes appeared, John was confirmed in his suspicion: The Shining Things had the power to kill demons. When one appeared on the cliff-top above them in a glitter of ozone and lightning, Amayon and the gnomes and even the gray thing took cover. John himself collapsed onto a silver-flecked rock, desperate only for rest, his drawn sword across his knees. He watched the thing warily, but it ignored him. Instead, it flushed one of the gnomes and pursued it down the gully, the gnome racing in panic and then, when the dead flesh would flee no faster, the demon shucking clear of it, escaping in a long glowing serpent through the mouth and growing legs to run. The glowing wheel overtook it, though—the Shining Things could travel heart-stoppingly fast—and ripped it to shreds. John could hear it screaming from where he sat.

A creature belonging to the Lord of this Hell—if this Hell had a Lord? Or was it like a dragon, an independent being, with thoughts and intentions of its own?

If he walked up to it and tried to open a conversation, would he be glad or sorry thirty seconds later?

He leaned his head back against the rock, shut his eyes. It might save him some effort.

A hand fell on his shoulder, gone when he turned his head. “Let us be gone,” said a cold, distant voice, from somewhere behind him. “The Moon of Winds is on us. The stars move to their appointed places.”

“We’ll still have three days when we get out, won’t we?” he inquired interestedly, but the voice only said, “Come.”

Five or six gnomes emerged from the thorn-bushes, filthy now with clotted blood stringing out of their slashed and perforated flesh, and thrust at him with their halberds, forcing him to his feet. They passed the motionless corpse of the gnome whose demon the Shining Thing had slain, and even the demons who would happily play games with the entrails of their victims walked gingerly around the spot. They pressed on along the watercourse as quickly as John could be driven to march. The huge, leathery carry-beasts raised their heads from the watercourse at the bottom of the gorge like obese birds, watching them pass. Even had John been ignorant enough to drink those rusty waters he suspected the gray shadow would not have let him.

They needed him in Prokep. Otherwise, of course, Amayon would have derived considerable amusement from getting him to drink the water in Hell, trapping him there forever.

There was a gate beneath a shelf of black rock, halfway up a cliff. Two of the gnomes fell in the climb, shattering their bodies on the rocks below the perilous thread of trail. Pressed to the rockface himself, John glimpsed them crawling frantically to their hands and knees again—most of their bones were broken—and dragging themselves toward the trailhead to get away from the Shining Things, which appeared on the hillslope below. Before John could see the demons taken the gray thing drew him through the gate.

Then they were in Prokep.

The baroque pearl of the moon was much as it had been when last he’d glimpsed it between the Winterlands storms, clipped like a debased coin. Its silvery light edged the dark block of the palace foundation, silhouetted the irregular shapes of broken pillars against pewter sand. Dust fraying from the dune-tops caught the wan light, ghosts fleeing in the emptiness. The air was bitterly cold.

“Where is the Henge?” Though the voice that hissed behind him generally had no expression, John felt now that he was being accused of putting it in his pocket the last time he was here.

“What does it matter?” he replied. “It’s three days yet till the moon comes full.” The Dragonstar was barely to be seen above the far-off ridge of hills, a blurry dot no brighter than some of the stars called Seven Sisters (though there were actually over a dozen of them, when John had viewed them through a telescope—They brought their maids, he’d explained to Ian). He looked around him and pulled his gloves from his belt, glad he’d had them on when the gnomes had dragged him through the gate in the blinding glare of light.

Amayon, who had walked off a step or two to view the city in its shallow basin before them, said something in the tongue of the demons, and John thought he caught the name of Folcalor.

“He’ll be here already, you know,” he commented casually, and felt the cold grip close on his arm from behind, far stronger than that thin, bodiless voice would give one cause to think. “Maybe not in the city, but in the desert, watchin’.”

“If you have betrayed us to him—”

“And what good would that have done me?” retorted John. “Both lots of you are much of a muchness, y’know. But if you think Caradoc didn’t, I’ve got the Crown Jewels of Bel here in me pocket that I’d be glad to sell you … an’ stop doin’ that!” he added, for he had turned around, instinctively, to face the thing he spoke to, and of course there was nothing there.

“What do you know of it?” Amayon planted himself in his path.

“I know Caradoc,” said John simply. Filthy, ravenous, and trembling with fatigue, he was in no mood for the demon’s mocking remarks. “You think, as close as his mind was to Folcalor’s, that he didn’t scream out his name as you blew his soul into eternity?”

Amayon’s blue eyes went to some point just beyond John’s shoulder, as if meeting the gaze of whatever it was that stood there smelling of dust and grave-clothes.

“An hour before the sun rises,” said John, “a gate’ll open into a place called the Garden of Winds. We can stay there safe until the moon waxes full. I can get you from there into the Maze, an’ thus to the Henge. I hope one of you’s brought water an’ food, because I’m clemmed.”

Of course they hadn’t. So John led them down the dunes, their boots sinking into the sliding black crystalline sand, and by a circuitous route toward the foundation of the palace, where, he hoped, the last of the dried meat Corvin had left stored for him would still be moderately edible. If, as he guessed, they had emerged from the gate in the same hour that they went into Hell, even flying at top speed Morkeleb could not bring Jenny here in under a day. He prayed he wasn’t far wrong in that calculation. If Folcalor or any of his minions awaited them already, they gave no sign of it.

Nevertheless, the demons were nervous, holding close together and scattering in panic at the sight of every dust-devil. Even Amayon was on edge, and left off his needling references to Jenny to lapse into watchful silence. One of the gnomes who strayed from the group did vanish, and by the way the others muttered amongst themselves, John didn’t think the demon had simply fled.

They gathered the two jars of water and the few scraps of rather leathery mutton that John had hung down the coldest well in the crypts; returning through the dark windy desolation he led them across one of the places Morkeleb had identified for him—a square of about thirty feet in the midst of the city, close beside a pair of crumbling pillars of red sandstone—where magic would not work at all. Two of the gnome bodies collapsed, the demons emerging from them in a whisper of silvery smoke. John himself, who’d taken the precaution of carrying the water jars, made sure he jumped like a startled deer, then went straight to where Amayon and the surviving gnomes stood—they’d walked spread out and he’d only managed to maneuver two into the Blind Spot.

“I told you no tricks!” The bony pressure of a hand crushed his shoulder, and all over his body his skin began to itch, and then to burn.

“You think if I knew of traps here I wouldn’t pick a better one than that?” he protested, and forced himself to stand still while the searing heat grew. “If I’d wanted ’em dead, believe me, I’ve got a sword that’ll kill quicker.” He didn’t add that whittling down the odds with his sword would have brought them all down on him, aside from making it obvious what he was doing; he did his best to sound like Adric when accused of borrowing the boar-spears. The smell of charred flesh breathed for a moment in his nostrils, then subsided. The moon’s cold light shone on thin ghosts of dust blowing over the empty city. The shadow did not reply.

Shoving and glowering at each other, the dis-bodied demons rematerialized and returned to the fallen corpses, pawing at the necks and bringing out from behind the mildewed beards small sacks of leather on strings. But their hands couldn’t grasp the material objects easily, and one fell, scattering its contents: queer-gleaming jewels, the sight of which brought John’s shorn hair bristling on his nape. Talisman gems. Stolen souls.

Deaths.

Aohila was right, John reflected as the dead gnomes scooped up the jewels, when she told Jenny that Adromelech would be collecting these soul-gems, too. That pointed to treason in Folcalor’s ranks, because if he recalled correctly it had been Folcalor’s original idea, to betray his master the Hell-Lord by imprisoning and keeping the souls of the wizards they took.

Guesswork on the Demon Queen’s part? Like goose, like gander … Or was she in fact allied with one or the other?

The possibility made him shiver. Now, that’s REALLY all I’d need.…

“Hurry,” snapped the cold voice behind him. “We must be out of here, in concealment, before Folcalor comes.”

“He’s one up on you, anyway, if he’s got a gnome mage’s power to work with.” John turned to survey the desolation with leisurely interest that he was far from feeling. Something caught his eye, a gleam of light on the corner of the palace foundation that loomed behind them, that had not been there three weeks ago. “How many hid out with him under Somanthus Isle, when the Gate of the Sea-Hell was closed? Or has he been recruitin’ little wights an’ pooks out of the swamps, all these years?”

“Do not jest, Dragonsbane.” The voice sounded colder and yet more distant; the lesser demons seemed to be trying to look around them, in all directions at once. Two materialized extra eyes to assist in that effort—there was no more jocularity about stinks and throwing rotting ears and toes. “The traitor Folcalor has not forgiven you for enlisting the Hell-Queen’s aid against him. It will go ill for you indeed if he prevails. And for all those you hold dear. Remember that, when you are tempted to betray us.”

They passed through the invisible gate—whose location John had meticulously noted on his previous stay—and into the place Morkeleb had called the Garden of Winds. They were in hiding there for three days.

As Morkeleb had shown him, in that brief, dazzling vision of the map of Prokep spread out in strange pools and corridors of awareness in his mind, the Garden of Winds was the desert itself. John turned the moment they came through the gate and triangulated on the distant landmarks as he did in the Winterlands, rather than physically marking the spot with stones. Though Amayon and the shadow appeared to appreciate the fact that they needed John’s guidance to reach the Henge, the rest of the demons would probably think it an enormous joke to move whatever markers he placed. He wasn’t entirely sure that the demons couldn’t see the gate from this side, or perceive something about it that he could not.

It was best, he had found, when dealing with demons, to assume that anything they could tamper with, they would, sheerly because they could not help doing so.

Still, three days was a long time, to remain in the wilderness with demons.

It helped that what lay beyond the gate was nothing but open desert. From the midst of the ruins of Prokep, the gate opened straight into endless wasteland. The sand was red, not blackish, and even the rocks of the hills nearby did not seem to be of the same composition. When John walked to those hills, laboring under the weight of the water jars, from the summit he saw nothing but more emptiness, limitless plains of rocks stained black by years in the sun. He spent most of the ensuing days in the small cave that he found, keeping an eye on the water. There wasn’t much else to do, and though he was not able to sleep much, between the night cold and the demons and the dreams the demons sent, the rest was welcome.

The demons, once they found they could not disconcert him by whatever hideous or lascivious forms they took, scattered over the sand to pursue other amusements by tormenting one another, for there were not even animals in this blasted land. From the cave-mouth John watched the dust-devils chase one another, and wondered how many of those Hellspawned wights followed the gray shadow willingly.

Always, when he turned back to the cave’s darkness, he glimpsed that tall, silent form out of the corner of his eye. It never left him, even when he stood outside in the noon sun. He could not see it, but he smelled the cold breath of stone and mold.

Which was good, he thought. There was less chance it would be anywhere near the gate, when Morkeleb and Jenny reached Prokep.

In the Garden of Winds, John ate and drank as little as he could; slept as little as he could, lying on the sandy cave-floor with the demon sword beneath him, shivering in his Winterlands clothes. There were not even scorpions here, or snakes; nothing but sand and arid rock. The days were hot; the nights, cold enough to freeze the water in the jars.

Amayon, in various guises both female and male, ceased trying to seduce him when he discovered John was taking notes of his ploys. The demons who remained in the decomposing bodies of the gnomes would come into the cave now and then, but after dealing with Caradoc and the corpse-wight in Bel, John was not impressed, and said so. As long as he had the demon-killer sword, they would not come too near. In the bitter nights he watched the stars, observing that the Dragonstar was no longer even visible above the horizon, and wondered if Jenny and Morkeleb had reached the enchanted city in safety, and whether in hiding there they spoke of other worlds. If they were in greater peril in Prokep’s haunted Mazes, at least they had company, and there was much to be said for that. He found he missed them both.

The silver marks traced on his skin gleamed permanently now, even shining faintly phosphorescent in the dark.

The moon waxed, and the eternal wind blew winter-cold. But whether this place was in the same year or the same lifetime as the ruins of Prokep where Adromelech waited in the Henge within the Maze, John could not tell.

He lived in the silence of wind thrumming over stone, and waited, hoping to goodness Jenny and Morkeleb would figure out from his tracks what he’d done and where he was, and arrange their plans accordingly.

Just after midnight of the second night, John drank the rest of the water in the jar and started for the gate. Amayon walked beside him, in his usual guise of a beautiful boy of about fifteen. The remains of the gnomes, perhaps eight strong, followed, amid a rabble of unbodied demons whispering and shoving and glowing like fungus in the dark.

Would they rather, he wondered, have remained in this desolation, without even animals to torture, rather than risk torment and being devoured themselves? Or did they care, not knowing any other way to exist?

They all seemed to be present, however—John counted them, as undoubtedly the gray thing did as well. The gnomes were in bad shape, each trudging along in a humming column of flies, the only life John had seen since coming to the Garden of Winds. Presumably the corpses had been fly-blown long before their arrival here. Each still bore his small sack of talisman jewels, which troubled John far more than the presence of half-seen shadows or animate corpses. The moon had set, and the sky overhead seemed filmed, though there was no trace of cloud to be seen. The light sickened, as if the desert stars were in eclipse. Wind brushed chill over the silent land.

In the predawn hush beside the gate, Amayon whispered something in the demon tongue, and again John heard Folcalor’s name.

“There’s two ways into the Maze,” John said over his shoulder to the shadow. “It’s a gie long way across the city to the first one, that opens at sunrise. The second doesn’t open till noon, but if Folcalor is lurkin’ about, he’s gonna have his goons to back him up. Your lads don’t look in any too good shape. An’ don’t tell me to keep me voice down,” he added, as Amayon opened his mouth to do so. “Folcalor can smell your friends better than he can hear me, that’s for certain. We may not make that gate by sunrise as it is, y’know.”

In the event they did not. John said, “Curse,” as the brightening light found them still hurrying along the edge of the palace foundation, their steps slowed by duned sand. Though he strode fast, his longer legs far outdistancing the stumbling gnomes, he knew the likelihood of finding the gate still in existence was slim. Amayon flitted beside him, weightless and tireless as he had been in the Blue Hell: “Can’t you go faster? No wonder Jenny deceives you with every man she meets. You have no more strength than a dotard.”

“I’m gie glad she does,” replied John, trying hard not to pant, “for she always comes back to me with wonderful tales of ’em all … you, too, come to think on it, you and Folcalor—”

“Shut up!”

John didn’t flatter himself that he’d annoyed the demon—he, too, saw movement among the broken pillars, men striding toward them through the dust, and the glitter of swords in the rising light.

Folcalor’s men, here at last.

“Ticked at you, is he?” he inquired conversationally, seeing the fresh-faced demon’s uncertainty. On the high corner of the palace foundation John glimpsed again the spark of crystal, catching the morning light with an inner fire. “Vowed to be his vassal, or somethin’ of the sort?”

“You know nothing of it,” snapped Amayon.

“I know you were Folcalor’s little pal over the winter,” said John. He leaned against a broken corner of a wall, thrusting up through the sand, and noted that a sigil had been recently burned into a stone. The charring was fresh; it hadn’t been there three weeks ago. “Jenny’s told me of the pair of you, back in the days when you were helpin’ him put together the dragon corps to put Rocklys, poor fool, on the throne of Bel as his pawn. How much that means among demons I don’t know, of course—”

“It means among demons what it means among men,” said the shadow’s cold voice behind him. “One cannot always be watching one’s back.”

“I was always Adromelech’s vassal,” Amayon insisted, a trifle loudly, looking like he wanted to transform into a wisp of smoke and fly to the gate. “Can’t you go faster? Or is this, too, a trick …?”

“Aye, I just can’t wait to cut loose from Peek-a-Boo back there and throw meself into Folcalor’s arms. Curse it, we’re never gonna—”

One of the gnomes seized him, thrust him behind a pillar as an arrow sliced past, missing him by inches. The gnome’s hand left a sticky brown blot on John’s sleeve. Men came running at them from one of the doorways in the palace foundation, men in the garb of common ruffians in Bel, or the leathers and furs of the Winterlands bandits. John hadn’t realized quite how many of them there were, resurrected to demon life.

The next instant a stab of blinding pain went through his skull, almost dropping him to his knees, overwhelming and instantly abated: spell and counterspell, he guessed, angry at having his very flesh turned into a chess-piece in the demon war. He caught at the wall for support, fighting not to vomit; a foot away one of the gnomes struck a demon-ridden bandit with an ax, splitting its skull. As it collapsed, Amayon seized it, paying no attention whatsoever to the knife it thrust into him; grotesquely, the bleeding body straightened up, struggling with the remains of the head flopping back and forth.

Amayon opened his mouth, inhumanly wide, absurdly wide, jaw disjointing, like a grotesque puppet’s in a play. The demon boy inhaled, and something silvery pulled out of the bandit’s face, something that whipped wildly from side to side—

Amayon caught it with his teeth, grinning horribly, then took another breath, drawing it into himself. With the screaming thing still lashing back and forth against his chin, he glanced over at John, and winked as he sucked it in.

Elsewhere one of the dead gnomes was down, sliced to pieces by the men of Bel. Two others were chopping up one of the attackers, their own brown bones sticking out of their shredding flesh. Two of the men of Bel seized on a disembodied wight, devoured it as Amayon had done; John heard it shriek as it pulled apart. Flies roared and hummed. A dust-devil laced with fire swirled toward John across the sand and he pulled out his sword, but before it reached him the whirlwind shattered, flying apart in a rain of pebbles and silvery fragments. The cold skeletal hand of the shadow took him by the arm from behind, and he nearly jumped out of his skin.

“The place where the gnomes fell the first day,” said the demon voice in his ear. “The place where magic will not work—”

“Good thinking,” said John. “Follow me.”

He supposed the Blind Spot had been a room in some mage’s house. It seemed to have those dimensions, though its enclosing walls were long gone. The dead gnomes still lay there, alive with maggots, marking the spot—Saves me the trouble of triangulating, anyway. And incidentally would have saved Morkeleb and Jenny the trouble of searching the dust for his tracks, to figure out whether he’d gone to the Gate of Winds or not and how many demons were with him when he did. Amayon and the other demons, who whirled along beside them now in the shape of dust-devils or ghosts, dove at and struggled with the attackers, clawing and screaming. Only one gnome remained and he was clawed half to pieces, bone showing through the flesh; before they reached the Blind Spot he, too, was devoured. Talisman crystals scattered the sand, trampled into the dust.

Just as they reached the spot, two of Folcalor’s men sprang from behind the red pillars with spears. John saw them coming—human bodies on the whole slowed demons down. His first slash cut halfway through one attacker’s neck; as he disengaged for a sidelong chop through the body, he saw the other one turn suddenly, at no visible threat, and vanish in a flash of silver fire with a cry. Since slaying individual demons was no part of his plan with the dragons he guessed it was one of the traps set within the city—in any event, that, or the dying shriek of the attacker he’d struck, swept away further assault. He collapsed to his knees in the Blind Spot, darkness swirling into his vision:

Don’t faint. Whatever you do, don’t pass out now.

“Where lies the Maze?” the shadow’s voice hissed in his ear. “Show me, now, in case you can’t lead us later.”

You’ve got to be joking. John rolled over, but it was nowhere to be seen. He could only feel the chill of it, smell it just beside him, behind him.

At least most of the time Aohila looked like something, even if she did have snakes in her hair.

Snakes in her hair …

The image snagged in his mind, almost reminding him of something, but it was driven out again when the shadow urged, “If you are killed—”

“Hard cheese to you.” John shut his eyes, waves of dizziness making the desert sway around him as if he clung to a raft at sea.

The gray thing was saying something about Jenny and the children, but all John could do for a time was cling to the cold sand. Aohila, he thought, not knowing why the Demon Queen’s image returned to his mind so strongly now. It’s the full of the moon, the last day of the Dragonstar’s influence, Folcalor and his goons are here, Adromelech is readying himself to come forth.…

So where is she?

His sight cleared. The first thing he saw was Amayon, drawing a sigil in the dust with one finger and putting talisman crystals around it, weaving a pattern of sacrificial deaths.

Noon was five hours off. Moonrise, twelve or so.

Jenny me love, he thought, I hope you’re somewhere near.