Captain Devorak struck out with his blade and for his troubles had his head snatched from his shoulders. The bowmen above fired down upon the creature, to little effect, while the less brave among the crew dove over the side.
The two leading commanders in the Royal Navy were now dead, and each captain would have to make a decision on his own, seeking instruction from the seniormost among them until a command structure could be reformed, but at least the bulk of the invaders’ fleet was destroyed.
Jakan killed and ate every man he could find, until he realized the ship had drifted to the northwest of the city. He hated the touch of seawater—it sucked energy from him—though he could abide it for a while. He abandoned the ship and launched himself into the air, attempting to glide back toward the inferno, that was his fleet and city. Fire caused no pain for him, though it was a terrible waste of life energy and meat.
And something called to him. Something unspoken said he could not just start destroying this army that he had seized, but he must use it, must move to the east, must find this thing that called to him.
And from some dark source, across a vast distance, came a word, a place, a destination: Sethanon.
James saw the leading guard hold up his hand. Everyone stopped. They had passed others along the way, refugees and invaders. No one seemed eager to press an attack in the dark sewers, yet. But James knew that if the invaders were flushing out those hiding belowground, the city was now theirs.
He calculated the time in his head and knew they had no more than ten minutes. They were a dozen paces from the northern gate, near the so-called sea gate, the gate used most by smugglers and thieves to get in and out of the city.
Lysle sent one of his thieves forward, a young woman who nimbly climbed up and reported back that the way was clear. James signaled and the evacuation began.
Lysle said, “Out you go.”
James said, “No. I’ll go last.”
“Captains and sinking ships?” asked Jimmy the Hand’s brother.
With a smile that showed only pain and fatigue, he said, “Something like that.”
“I’ll wait with you,” Gamina said.
James said, “I’d rather you didn’t.”
In his mind, James heard her say, You don’t want to leave, do you?
I don’t want to die, but I’ve caused so much death and destruction. This is the only home I know, Gamina. I don’t see how I can live with this.
Do you think I don’t understand that? she asked. I hear your thoughts and 1 feel your pain. There is nothing you can say that I won’t understand.
He looked into her eyes and smiled, and this time the smile was one of love and complete trust.
Then the world around them exploded. The six men on the other side of the gate were knocked to the ground and stunned. Three who were in the gate were shot from it like corks from a bottle and flew through the air, one breaking his neck on impact twenty yards away, the other two sustaining broken bones.
Inside the tunnel the very air turned into flames for an instant. In that brief moment, Gamina and James were linked in mind, their memories unfolding together, from the first instant they met as James swam in the lake near Stardock, first espying the love of his life as she bathed.
Almost drowning, he had been rescued by this woman who looked into his mind and saw everything he was, everything he had been, and loved him, who loved him despite everything he had done since then, despite the things he had asked her to do that had caused her pain.
Everything around them was forgotten as they clung to that profound love they had shared, the love that had brought them a son who was safely away, and two grandsons they adored. For a brief instant they relived their lives together, from the journey to Great Kesh to the return to Krondor. As flames burned away the flesh from their bodies, their minds were deep within their love for one another and they felt no pain.
Pug cried out. “Gamina!”
Hanam said, “What is it, magician?”
Looking desolate, Pug whispered, “My daughter is dead.”
The creature didn’t dare touch the magician to comfort him. The hunger was too fierce, and the touch of human flesh might drive him into a feeding frenzy. “I am sorry,” the creature said.
Pug took a deep breath and let it out with an audible sigh. “My son and daughter are both dead.” He had felt William’s death two days earlier, and now with Gamina’s passing a portion of his life was closing behind him. “I knew I would outlive both of them, Hanam, but to know something and experience it are two different things.”
“It is always thus,” said the Saaur Loremaster from within the demon’s body. “Among our race is a benediction that is repeated when a boy becomes a man and is given his first weapon: ‘Grandfather dies, father dies, son dies.’ Every Saaur repeats it when they get ready to ride into battle, sons beside fathers, for there is no crueler fate than for a parent to outlive a child.”
“Macros called long life a curse, and now I understand. When my wife died many years ago, that was one thing, but this . . .” Pug wept for a while. Then he composed himself and said, “I knew William was at risk, for he chose a soldier’s life. But Gamina . . .” His voice faltered, and again he wept.
Time passed, and the demon creature said, “We must hurry, magician. I can feel my control slipping.”
Pug nodded as he stood up, and they left the cave.
Macros and Miranda should be in place.
Pug incanted, and suddenly they were invisible. He understood Macros’s difficulty, for to do two things at once was always a problem, but coupled with the stress of expecting attack at any minute and the worry associated with achieving the goal, it was proving to be more than one of the most difficult things Pug had done.
Pug levitated and discovered that once over the initial strain of rising into the air, it was actually easier to float along toward the city of Ahsart than it was to walk.
Out of the air the voice of the demon said, “Fliers!”
A half-dozen winged creatures sped across the sky to the south, and Pug knew that if he and the Saaur Loremaster hadn’t been invisible, the creatures would have swooped down and attacked. As foretold, life on this world was rapidly being devoured. The once-lush grasslands were now withered and brown; this was an absence of life so obvious that no one would have confused it with the sleeping dormancy of winter, where the plants would reawaken with spring’s rain.
Trees, blackened and gnarled, dotted the landscape, and the waters ran with a clarity so profound that Pug knew not even algae lived in the pools. No insect buzz filled the air, and no bird call could be heard. The only sound was the wind.
“It is worse here,” said Hanam, as if reading Pug’s thoughts. “Here is where the creatures first came into our world.”
“But soon it will all be like this?”
“Soon.”
“Now I see why they are anxious to find new worlds.” Pug said, “How is it they could reach this world, yet not ours?”
With what Pug had come to understand as a laugh, a barking sound came, followed by Hanam’s voice: “In their rush into this world to feed, the demons destroyed the priests of Ahsart, the only ones on this world able to control the portal. I believe that what you’ve said about the Pantathians on your world means the demons have no allies on your world willing to bring them over.”
As they approached the city of Ahsart, Pug said, “Nothing we’ve seen of Jakan says he’s anxious to open the way for his brothers.”
“Then let me give you this warning, Pug of Midkemia. Knowledge comes with the capture and devouring of souls.
This would-be Demon King may know of the Hall and the ability of some of your people to make controllable rifts. If so, when he’s captured enough of your land to feel firmly in control, he may start invading other worlds.”
Pug said, “I deduced as much.”
“Then you know that even if we win here, you must return and defeat Jakan.”
Pug
said, “If I don’t, Tomas will.”
They entered the burned-out city and started looking for the great temple, the entrance through which the demons had originally entered. Inside they found Saaur bones, dead priests torn limb from limb by the invading demons years before.
“It’s not here!” said Pug.
“What?”
“The portal. The rift into this world from the demon realm. It’s not here.”
Pug let them become visible. “Where is it?”
Hanam said, “There can be only one answer.”
“What?”
“They have moved the portal by magic means, somehow, to be near the rift into your world. That means they’re preparing the way to your world for Maarg! He must be close to coming through!”
“Where is that?”
“On the other side of the world.”
“I cannot fly us around the world and keep us invisible!” said Pug. “I can’t transport us to a place I’ve never seen.”
The demon with the Loremaster’s mind said, “Then we must fly, quickly, and fight whoever gets in our way.” He leaped to the air with what sounded like a war cry, and Pug followed.
19
Catastrophe
Roo grimaced.
His shoulder hurt to the touch, but Luis assured him it was without infection. When the bandage was changed, Luis said, “That should do it for now. We’ll clean it again tomorrow night when we reach Wilhelmsburg.”
Roo said, “A bed!” He grinned at Karli, Helen, and the children. For the first few days on the road the children had treated the journey like an adventure, but since this morning Abigail had been asking when they were going home. Karli had tried to explain that it would be a long time, but a “long time” more than five minutes was lost on the three-year-old.
Camp was relatively calm, though the mercenaries Roo had hired looked more and more nervous as the days wore on. Roo and Luis had spent enough time around soldiers to know these were men used to sitting quietly, scaring off bandits, and rarely having to pull sword or bowstring.
Krondor had fallen. That had become apparent from the incredible tower of black smoke that appeared in the west, two days after they left, and from the increase in traffic on the road east. More and more Roo spied the hired guards engaged in quiet conversation, and he suspected they were ready to bolt at the first sign of serious trouble.
Roo had talked to Luis in private about his doubts as to the reliability of the mercenaries, and Luis agreed. Luis saw to it he spent enough time around them both to bolster their resolve and to make it clear he was ready to deal harshly with anyone who didn’t earn his pay. Roo knew that he had a better chance of keeping his little caravan intact once they reached Wilhelmsburg. They would rest, leave after a night in one of the inns Roo owned, then make for Ravensburg. Roo had promised the men a partial payment of their wages, and a little gold in their pockets would keep them in line.
If Erik’s family and Milo’s were still at Ravensburg, Roo would take them to Darkmoor. He knew that eventually Erik would end up there. Roo had thought about where he had been shipping arms and supplies for the last year, and where his wagons had taken tools and equipment, and the one thing Erik had said to him, “Nightmare Ridge.”
He knew Royal Engineers had bolstered old roads or cut new ones along the rear side of the ridge, hundreds of miles long, that ran along the entirety of the eastern half of the Calastius Mountains. The range looked like a squashed, inverted Y, with one long leg and a short one. The long leg ran from just east of Krondor to the Teeth of the World, the great range that ran across the north of the Kingdom. The short, eastern leg ran from Darkmoor to north of the town of Tannerus, where the legs met. Roo had figured that with Sethanon as the aliens’ ultimate goal, crossing the mountains north of Tannerus took them too far from their goal. Anywhere to the south of that point, they’d have to best Nightmare Ridge, and Roo knew that if the bulk of the Kingdom Army was waiting along that granite wall, there was a chance they’d survive. If the enemy could be kept on this side of the ridge until the snows fell, the Kingdom would be victorious.
But it was only three weeks after Midsummer’s Day and the snows of winter seemed ages away in the warm evening. Raised in Ravensburg, Roo knew that the snows could come early, but he also knew they could come late, and that only an oracle would know which would be the case this year. In any event, the earliest they could see snow would be in six weeks, and ten or twelve was more likely. Perhaps heavy rains, they were common, but snow was months away.
Roo went to the fires and chatted with Karli and Helen and tried to talk to the children. Children were still a mystery to him, though their mere presence didn’t inspire the great discomfort it once had. He even found little Helmut’s insistence on putting everything in his mouth amusing, though it seemed to wear Karli to a thin edge. Jason spent time with the children, keeping them diverted, a talent for which Roo was greatly thankful.
Helen’s children were older, and he could talk to Nataly and Willem, though the things they found interesting were a mystery to him. Helen was a calm in a sea of chaos, her ready smile and soft voice soothing to those around her. In the firelight, Roo realized he was staring at her as the children prattled, and he looked away. He saw Karli was watching him, and smiled at her. She smiled back, in a tentative way, and he winked and mouthed, “Everything is fine.”
He sat back, trying to keep from putting pressure on his wounded shoulder, and let his gaze wander back to Helen. He yawned and closed his eyes, the impression of her burned on his memory. She wasn’t pretty, though she was far from “raw-boned” as that bitch Sylvia had called her. She was what some men might call handsome. But her two most appealing features were large brown eyes and a broad, ready smile. And she had a firm, still-slender body.
Roo then wondered if Luis could be anything but mad to think this woman, this wonderful caring mother, could love a gutter rat like himself. Sighing, Roo let his body give in to a comfortable doze, as the chatter of the camp faded away, and the soothing warmth of the evening and the sound of Helen’s voice lulled him.
Suddenly Roo was awake, as shouts from the distance turned the camp into bedlam. Men ran, and for a moment Roo blinked in disorientation as he tried to assess the situation. The children were lying under blankets, so some time must have passed since he dozed off.
After a moment, Roo had his bearings and his battle training came to the fore. Calmly, so as not to alarm the children, he said, “Karli, Helen, get up!”
Helen came awake and said, “What?”
“Get the children into that wagon!” He pointed to one nearby. “The coach won’t last on these roads if we must run.”
Luis ran up and said, “Riders, heading this way, fast.”
He had his dagger in his hand. Since his right hand had been injured, Luis never wore a sword anymore, but with his left he was still a deadly knife fighter.
Roo and Luis quickly doused the low-burning fire, in the hope the riders hadn’t caught sight of the weak flames in the distance. Had they come hours earlier, they would have spotted the camp without difficulty.
Some of the mercenaries were now running for their horses, and Roo shouted, “Get the wagons going!” It was still two hours or more before dawn, but the horses had benefited from resting most of the night. With luck, they could be away before whoever approached saw them, and continue on, arriving at Wilhelmsburg earlier than anticipated.
Drivers ran to get the horses into traces, and Roo tried to help as well as he could with the injured shoulder. Jason knew nothing about weapons or wagons, but he carried whatever he was told to fetch, and Luis was a rock. But the mercenaries were Roo’s biggest concern. Now they were being asked to stand steadfast against hard, vicious men who had been fighting for years.
The wagons began to get under way, and Roo got into the saddle for the first time. He felt stiffness in his right shoulder as he moved his sword, but he knew that his own was one of the few swords he could
count on.
Roo hovered at the rear of the caravan, watching the west anxiously, to see the approaching riders. As the wagons rumbled toward the highway, Roo glimpsed figures in the west, darker silhouettes against the murk. He could only pray they would be cautious, fearing they were approaching some of the Kingdom’s army, rather than a desperate band of civilians fleeing before them.
For long, terror-filled minutes, they moved over the grass, until they were back on the compacted dirt of the highway. As soon as the metal-bound rims of the wheels began to turn over the dirt and gravel of the road, Roo felt his tension lessen. The farther along they were, the closer to Wilhemsburg, the better their chances of survival.
Then a half hour later a man ahead shouted, while another screamed. Shouts from the south side of the road told Roo the riders he had glimpsed had crossed the highway, ridden up on a parallel course until they were certain this was no army column they shadowed, then ridden ahead to spring an ambush.
Roo shouted, “Turn north!” and drew his sword. Ignoring the pain in his arm, he pushed his horse forward to engage the first enemy fighter he could find.
It didn’t take him long to find a ragged-looking rider hacking at the guard on a wagon six ahead of Roo’s own. The mercenary guard was defending himself well enough, but other riders were coming fast.
Roo didn’t try anything fancy. He slammed his heels hard into his horse’s sides, forcing the animal into doing something it didn’t want to do: crash into the other horse. The rider from the Queen’s army was thrown to the ground as his mount reared unexpectedly, and Roo shouted to his guard, “Kill him!”
Roo urged his horse forward, toward the riders, who were only a wagon’s length ahead. Then Luis was at his side, reins tied around his right wrist, dagger in his left hand. Roo wanted to tell him to get back and defend the women, but he was too busy trying to stay alive.