Chapter Seven
Alan Garrison stretched in his saddle, scanning the plain of Arba’Il’Tac stretched out before them. He said to Swan, mounted on a black mare beside him, “This is like a lunar landscape, like nothing I’ve ever experienced.”
Swan took a moment before responding, and he realized that it was probably the word “lunar” which she was working back and forth between the two languages, perhaps because of its Latin root. But, as he looked skyward, he understood another problem. The snow had stopped and the sky above them was clear. Visible along a horizon so vast that the very curvature of the planet was apparent were two yellow moons, one half-full, the other three-quarters.
Despite the glow of moonlight, there was a vast array of stars, as abundant and diverse in size and luminescence as a depiction in a planetarium, more brilliant than he had ever seen on any other night of his life. Alan Garrison had no astronomical training, but he was convinced that none of the constellations were in the slightest way familiar. Yet, wherever he was, wherever Creath was, the stellar display was beyond magnificent.
“My world is somewhere out there,” Garrison told Swan, taking her gloved hand in his, holding it tightly. “At least, I think so. But don’t ask me where.” He turned around in his saddle to look at Swan’s face. The words he wanted to say were the kind of thing that any red-blooded American ten-year-old boy hearing it in a movie would have retched at the thought of. Garrison said them anyway. “The stars, the sky, they don’t compare with the beauty of your face, the brilliance in your eyes.” Garrison swallowed hard. “Mushy” stuff was always hard for him to say.
Swan squeezed his hand and “Al’An,” was all she said in reply.
Erg’Ran rode up beside them. “We’d best be moving, Enchantress, Champion. Second-sight for us when you can, Enchantress, if you will.”
“I will,” she promised.
Erg’Ran thumped his fingers against the head of the Ra’U’Ba battleaxe which was lashed to Garrison’s saddle. “Don’t overextend on the swing, Champion, if use it you must. Balance is the name of the game.”
“I’ll remember,” Garrison vowed.
Erg’Ran raised up in his saddle, calling back along their column. “Remember to keep a good pace, but don’t wind your horses. If we’re attacked, we’ll be needing everything they’ve got. Gar’Ath, pick another man, then the two of you ride a few lancethrows out along our flanks.”
“Right!” Gar’Ath called back. Then, “Bin’Ah? Your bump on the head better now, you can ride the watch.”
“That I’ll do, Gar’Ath!” Bin’Ah responded, thwacking his heels against the flanks of his chestnut mare.
“We ride, then!” Erg’Ran announced, taking the point.
Garrison gave Swan’s hand a final squeeze, then released it.
Although the snow had ceased to fall, there was a wind, bitingly cold beneath the clearness of the star-filled sky. Garrison huddled deeper into his cloak, tugged the cowl of his hood more closely about his face.
The combination of moons and stars illuminated the plateau so brightly that Garrison could almost make out the small print below the words “Sea-Dweller” on the black face of his Rolex wristwatch. Why he’d bothered to look at it was a mystery to him. Time in the conventional sense he had come to know since his first awareness of such things as a child was meaningless here.
Judging from the positions of the moons on the horizon—and he had no backlog of experience on which to base an opinion of any sort—he thought that the time here was more or less the equivalent of two in the morning. That disagreed totally with his wrist-watch.
Garrison s watch did, however, remind him that he needed to ask Swan about the clock which she had built. Or did she whisk it together with magic? Even so, that the concept of a gear-driven mechanical clock was not alien to her was heartening.
Gar’Ath and Bin’Ah were clearly visible as they took up their outrider positions. Garrison twisted round in the saddle, the leather creaking comfortingly. The others of their company rode in a column of twos, the prisoner Sword of Koth at the approximate center, his still-masked face held high, a blanket tied around his upper body for added warmth. The shackles of Garrisons Model 100s had been taken from the Sword of Koth’s wrists exactly three times so that, under close guard, the fellow could urinate. Not a word had left the prisoners lips, however, no request for water, not even an insult to his captors.
Despite the fact that their prisoner had provided them with no willing intelligence, Garrison and the others had learned some things from the few personal items carried on the man’s person and from items found in his saddlebags and the saddlebags of the other mounts they’d seized. What data Garrison and the others accumulated largely consisted of various Sword of Koth tactical maps, many of these maps’ duplicates, and items akin to notebooks, with various points concerning past battle plans written in them. Interestingly, these included the most recent entries, which called for the death of Swan by whatever means necessary. Found among the belongings of the Ra’U’Ba were maps, more crudely drawn and less informative. There was also a diary kept by one of the Ra’U’Ba. Erg’Ran could read their language, as he perused it (Swan out of earshot) informing Garrison, Gar’Ath and some of the others that it seemed like the diary’s author was obsessed with rather bizarre fantasies concerning human, rather than Ra’U’Ba, females.
Putting the horses once belonging to the Sword of Koth together with the animals ridden by the three dead Ra’U’Ba, plus the extra horses the men who’d remained as a rear guard behind the Falls of Mir had kept, their column included quite a decent-sized small herd. Garrison had solved the problem of how to keep the animals in check, based on something he’d seen in a western movie. Using lengths of rope, loops were tied about the necks of each animal, the horses then teamed in fours, tethered to a single, stout lead.
Besides the maps, tactical notebooks and horses, their so-far minor military victories netted their company an abundance of saddles, spare swords, battleaxes and the like.
When Garrison had inquired about what field rations the Sword of Koth or Ra’U’Ba might have stashed in their saddlebags, on the first occasion Erg’Ran told him, “What the Sword of Koth carry is edible, but only if you are desperate.” As concerned the Ra’U’Ba’s food supply, Gar’Ath simply said, “No man or woman would eat their vile slop, usually dried and salted human flesh.”
So far, Garrison reflected, the stew he’d consumed so quickly that it was more like inhaling than eating was his only taste of Creath cuisine. If that stew were at all typical, to say that the population of Creath’s tastes were—gastronomically speaking—a bit Spartan was putting it mildly. He’d wait to be impressed at the summer palace, as promised.
Ahead of the column, the plateau called Arba’Il’Tac seemed to stretch on to infinity. If anything grew here at all, it was too microscopic to be seen by the human eye. There was some snow, but it was rapidly being blown clear, just sticking in the deeper cracks and crevices of the rock floor. Few actual large rocks, even fewer which might qualify for boulder classification, dotted the landscape. Garrison’s immediate impression that Arba’Il’Tac appeared almost lunar was premature; the plateau was most unmoonlike due to its total lack of craters or any major surface impressions. It was, as Swan had told him, as if something had lopped off the top of a mountain and the plateau remaining was merely the stump.
Garrison’s meager mastery of equestrian-related parlance was easily strained, but if memory served he thought that the gait at which their horses moved over the plateau would best be described as a canter. It was somewhere between a slow lope and a fast gallop.
So far, nothing had arisen out of the ordinary and they were making good time. His horse, fresh from several hours of rest, seemed eager still and straining to run. “Easy, girl,” Garrison murmured to her.
Moc’Dar cowered beneath the chart table, near the Queen’s feet, feebly attempting once again to hide his disgusting body beneath his meager cloak, just as she had decreed him to do. He was amusing, but Eran felt that she would soon tire of him this way, perhaps spellchange him to something even more repulsive, more torturous for him to endure.
But there was no time for that now.
Eran focused her attention, instead, on the maps spread before her. The Horde was scattered to the six winds, searching for Swan and her vile companions.
The snows had changed everything, and very rapidly. Had her attentions not been elsewhere, or had she anticipated that her daughter’s magic would be strong enough to escape the Mist of Oblivion, she could have altered the weather, prevented the snows from blocking the mountain passes giving access to the sea.
The sea, Woroc’Il’Lod, was beyond doubt her daughter’s destination, the route by which her daughter would come to Edge Land and Barad’Il’Koth.
With the passes heavily snow covered, Swan would have no choice but to cross Arba’Il’Tac. Eran focused her second-sight as she stared at the map. She’d have to be quick, because her daughter’s magical abilities might have reached a level where the girl could feel that she was being second-sighted.
Eran concentrated, saw them, many men with horses, one of the men at the center of the column garbed as Sword of Koth; but he was a prisoner. The riders made good speed across the plateau, at the head of them the oldest of her enemies, Erg’Ran—curse him! Riding in his wake, Eran saw her daughter. Riding beside Swan, there was a man. His face was hidden deep within the cowl of a hood and she could not see it. But, that this man was the one, the one whom Swan brought back with her from the other realm, Eran was certain.
It was certain, too, that Swan could not have him; each instant that Swan and he were together was incredibly dangerous.
Eran’s own magic not yet fully restored from controlling the Mist of Oblivion, she had not the power to magically transport an army of any adequate size to the plateau, nor could she create some great cataclysm which would rent the plateau and destroy the riders coursing Arba’Il’Tac.
Once they crossed Arba’Il’Tac, they would go to the old summer palace, and because of Eran’s own spellworking, Eran could not harm them there, nor could the Horde of Koth molest them.
Eran blinked and the second-sight vision was gone. “Think!” Eran urged herself, screaming the admonition. She heard Moc’Dar groveling beneath the chart table, thinking perhaps that her wrath was directed against him rather than herself.
There were so many spells to keep in work that, if she used too much magical energy before she were fully restored, some of the crucial spells which she maintained might become broken. Except the one that she wished that she could break. Eran controlled it not.
Eran had forced the renewal twice already since learning of Swan’s survival. Time was her enemy, time having to elapse before she could take the renewal unto herself again, and time that Swan and her man from the other realm would be together.
“Think!” Eran shrieked again. Moc’Dar whimpered little frightened animal sounds from the flagstones near her feet.
“Animals,” Eran murmured. “Moc’Dar, you still aid me!” Eran gathered her skirts and raced across the chamber, toward the shelves where she kept her books and scrolls, only faintly aware of the sounds of Moc’Dar scurrying along at her heels.
Eran second-sighted the shelves, skimming over each item there, at last locating what she sought.
Raising her skirts still higher, Eran stepped up onto the three-legged stool which allowed her to reach the upper shelves, her fingers reaching unerringly to the one scroll she required. Stepping down, Eran dropped to her knees on the flagstones, skirts billowing around her. Unrolling the scroll, her eyes flickered down over the Old Tongue runes. “Yes,” Eran purred, smiling.
Erg’Ran called in the outriders, dispatching two other riders to take up sentry positions while the company stopped so that the horses could be rested. The portion of the plateau which they chose was no different than any other, topographically identical to what lay behind and what lay ahead. It would have been terribly easy to become lost here, to wander the same ground over and over again unendingly. With the enormity of the sky and the vast expanse of Arba’Il’Tac seeming to continue infinitely in all directions, the mere act of standing still was dizzyingly disorienting.
Garrison focused on his horse, rubbing down his own mount, telling Swan, “I’ll take care of yours in just a minute.”
But Swan was already seeing to her animal and told him so. “Al’An. I am perfectly capable of caring for my mount all by myself. Before the Mist devoured my home, after all, I alone cared for my wonderful white horse.”
“Not magically?”
“She was a fine and wonderful creature, my white horse, and she liked to be touched. The magic cannot do that, Al’An.”
He started to speak, but said nothing. In perfect silence, Garrison and Swan stood almost back to back, tending their horses.
Gar’Ath was changing his saddle to a fresh mount. His animal and Bin’Ah’s were getting the greatest workouts. “Enchantress, a question if I may?”
“Of course,” Swan replied.
“I know that the Champion speaks always of food, but I’ll confess that I’m more than a bit hungry myself. At the old summer palace, what will we eat?”
Garrison chuckled under his breath. It was the classic male to female question: “What’s for dinner?”
“Well, what would you like, Gar’Ath?”
“Meat and fowl—we’ll have plenty of fish to choose from when we take ship on Woroc’Il’Lod—and breads and vegetables and—”
Swan laughed, telling him, “I will produce whatever you and the other men wish, but it will be unprepared. The taste is better when food is cooked rather than magic worked. Do you agree?”
“Nothing like home cooking, Enchantress!”
Garrison laughed again.
Swan continued, saying, “The other women and I will see to it that the finest meal ever eaten is prepared, just the way you and Al’An and Erg’Ran and all the others would like it. There will be such abundance that you, Gar’Ath, will be too exhausted from lifting a spoon or knife to lift your sword, too full, too uncaring to raise yourself into your saddle, even if the most beautiful girl of Creath beckoned to you!”
Gar’Ath tightened his cinch and swung up into the saddle, winking as he told Swan, “I doubt, Enchantress, that I could ever be that satisfied by food alone.” He glanced at Garrison, nodding as he said, “Champion,” then heeled his horse’s flanks and was off.
“So, you actually cook?”
“If I eat because I must eat, the magic will do. If I eat because I truly wish to eat for the taste, then I cook.”
Garrison understood the difference better than Swan probably supposed, he guessed. He supposed the magic kind of cooking was like heating something up in a microwave, the good kind of cooking like the good kind of cooking anywhere, slow and patient.
Swan was finished with her horse, started to come over to stand beside him when she stopped, said, “Here is what I meant when we spoke about Arba’Il’Tac, Al’An. Look!”
She drew off her left glove, flicked her wrist, closed, then opened the palm of her hand and, from within her hand, the same light that had guided them toward the boundary with the wood now shone, bluish white. Swan passed the light over the rock near their feet. Garrison blinked, then realized what it was that she was illuminating for him.
Etched in the stone like lines finely drawn by an exacting artist was the outline of a fully articulated bird wing, only vastly larger than any which Garrison had ever seen. From root to tip, as his eyes followed the light, it seemed to extend thirty feet or better in length. “Holy—”
“Shit?”
“Yes, holy shit,” Garrison agreed. “What do you call this thing, the creature that left these markings in the stone?”
“They bear no names of which I am aware. Here! Here is part of another one, Al’An.”
Garrison’s eyes followed the light, Swan casting it over the outline of a gargantuan spinal column. Its width at the narrowest part appeared to be almost six inches, appreciably wider where the vertebrae emerged. The light from Swan’s hand wasn’t strong enough to reveal where the skeletal outline ended or began. He was about ask if she could increase the light’s intensity—go to high beam—when Swan’s light went out. “Mother has found us,” she whispered, her voice trembling when she spoke.
“Erg’Ran!” Garrison called out, letting his cloak fall open, to grasp the butt of one of his pistols, ready to draw. The old man came toward them in a limping run. Garrison’s left arm curled around Swan’s shoulders, drawing her close against him, to shield her. “What do you see, Swan?”
“What is it, Enchantress? Tell us if you can,” Erg’Ran urged.
“I have never felt a spellworking like this. I thought that—that I felt my mother second-sighting us before, before we dismounted, but I was uncertain.”
“Then, she’s second-sighting us?” Erg’Ran prodded.
“More than that, different than that.” Garrison felt Swan’s body shudder against him, the paroxysm rolling through her like a wave, as if a seizure. Her knees seemed to buckle and Garrison held her more tightly. Swan’s voice was soft, low, fighting for control, but building in intensity. “I feel my mother’s power rising from the rock beneath us, coming. Coming for us!” Swan finally shrieked. “What magic is this?”
In the next instant, they all knew.
The rock beneath their feet began to tremble, tiny fissures spiderwebbing along the length and breadth of Arba’Il’Tac. “Earthquake!” Garrison called out over the cracking and smashing of the rock. Would they understand the word?
“It is not what you say, Al’An!” Swan shouted back to him. “It is far worse. Look!”
Garrison looked at Swan, then turned to gaze toward whatever it was which her eyes seemed to be riveted upon. As Garrison saw what she saw, one part of his brain began telling another part of his brain that this was impossible, and then ordering his mind to reject what was clearly recognizable as immediate, impending doom. He was seized with the idea that he should be laughing, his mind death-gripped onto the thought that this would be the perfect time for him to verbalize a reference to that very special kind of shit which Swan always asked him about. Somewhere, somehow, it crossed Garrison’s mind that he was crazy just to be seeing this, wildly, egregiously funny farm nuts.
Rising from the plateau, nearly transparent but of obvious substance, like photographic negatives, but alive, rose the monsters which had perished here within the rock of Arba’Il’Tac millennia ago, animated in all their horrific glory and power.
The creatures snarled, they snapped at each other, they reeled with life. They discovered prey, waiting to be devoured, consumed into stomachs which no longer had flesh and substance.
Garrison started laughing, laughing so hard that tears rolled from his eyes and down his cheeks. But he grabbed Swan closer to him still, half lifting her off her feet, spinning around. Letting go of her for an instant, Garrison snugged tight the cinch strap of her saddle. He swept Swan up into his arms, the horse already going wild-eyed with terror. One fist locked on the animal’s bridle. The laughter gone, the tears still filling his eyes, Garrison commanded girl and horse, “Ride! That way! Now!” Garrison smacked Swan’s horse across the rump and the animal leaped away. Alan Garrison didn’t know what direction “that way” was, but none of the nightmare beasts were in that direction—yet.
Erg’Ran was shouting orders.
Garrison snugged the cinch for his own saddle, vaulting up, wrenching the animal around bodily by its reins, then digging in his heels, his feet not yet in the stirrups.
Swan’s mount was already a hundred yards ahead of him. Garrison found the stirrups and leaned low over his horse’s neck, its mane lashing so mercilessly against his face that the tears began anew. He glanced back. “Mistake, lamebrain!” Garrison chided himself. Everywhere he looked, more of the beasts were rising from the rock, towering into the night sky, slobber dripping from enormous fanged jaws. These things didn’t just look alive, Garrison realized; they were alive. “That’s good,” he tried convincing himself, talking to himself again. “If they aren’t alive, you can’t kill ’em!”
The test of that theory was upon him Garrison realized with his next breath. There was either a shadow obscuring both moons, or—
It was the thing with the thirty-foot-long wing. With both wings spread wide to swoop down upon him and a body the length and girth of a Cadillac in between them, airborne it spanned more than seventy feet. The head, blunt faced and at least a yard wide, terminated in jaws which nearly obscured the rest of the skull. Set within the jaws were row after row of pointed, shark-like teeth, each as large as Garrison’s hand.
Garrison knotted his left fist into the reins and his animal’s mane. He drew one of the SIG .45s from its shoulder holster. “230-grain Hydra-Shok don’t fail me now!” His target was so big, Garrison rationalized, that it would be impossible to miss, even from the wildly careening back of a moving horse.
Garrison fired. He fired again.
A clammy feeling like nausea rose from the depths of Alan Garrison’s stomach, swept over him, but he knew that it was fear. He couldn’t have missed the creature, but there was no effect on this thing which was about to snatch him up into its jaws and kill him.
In high school, Alan Garrison had a friend named Morry, who, like Garrison, had always wanted to be a writer, taught himself to type at age ten, wrote novella-length short stories for English class assignments. Morry even had a continuing character whom he wrote about, a secret agent. Once, Morry had his fictional creation trapped inside a burning building, clinging from one arm to a cable in an elevator shaft filling with smoke, a lusciously beautiful girl unconscious in the other. The last time that Alan Garrison saw Morry, Morry still hadn’t figured out how to get the secret agent out of the elevator shaft.
This was an elevator shaft, Garrison realized, and he was the secret agent. He wasn’t getting out...
Swan heard the sound of the firespitter, twice. She twisted round to look back from her saddle, saw what was about to happen to Al’An. Pain gripped her soul so tightly that she felt that her heart would surely die. “Sweet fool, Al’An!” Swan cried out to her Champion. How could a man of Al’An’s world know that only a magical weapon could be used to combat a magical beast? She should have thought of it, used some of the magic she’d so stupidly hoarded, saved as a weapon against the unthinkable.
The unthinkable was upon them. Al’An was about to die.
Swan reined back her animal almost too quickly, drawing the magical energy into her. Her horse reared and bucked beneath her, energy more violent than she had ever before experienced crackling around her in the night air.
There was no time...
Erg’Ran got his peg leg into the cup that was used in place of a stirrup on the off side of his saddle. He looked about him, his panicked horse difficult to control beneath him. A host of nightmarish creatures advanced along the plateau, the nearest of the beasts only warblades from the ragged line of horses and men forming the remounting column. A few of the extra horses had bolted.
Erg’Ran felt his face twist into a grimace. A lizard-headed monster the height of a Ka’B’Oo flicked its forked tongue, snaked its neck downward, and snapped one of the horses into its slathering jaws. A hideous cry issued from the doomed animal. The cry was silenced in the next instant, the horse’s blood drooling from the monster’s incisors.
Erg’Ran looked for the Enchantress. Was she in immediate peril? He saw the Champion, instead.
A horrible winged beast of awesome proportion swooped down out of the night toward the Champion, jaws open, ranks of huge, spear-shaped teeth glinting wickedly in the starlight.
A sick feeling seized Erg’Ran. Aside from the fact that he genuinely liked this lad from the other realm, if the Champion were to perish so too would vanish all hope of fulfilling the prophecy made by Mir, and so too would the future of Creath fade into an eternity of dark magic and death.
The Champion was going to die...
The winged beasts breath was a searing, fetid wind, washing over Alan Garrison, the monsters jaws poised to clamp closed around him.
Garrison’s horse tripped, the animal’s off-front hoof catching on a fissured rock slab hidden beneath a ghostly thin layer of snow. The animal began to cartwheel forward.
Alan Garrison spilled from the saddle, forward along the horse’s neck, rolling head first over the horse’s head. His left hand still grasped the reins, a torn hank of mane bunched with them in his fist. The horse shrieked agony. Garrison rolled, still clutching his pistol. The downdraft in the wake of the monster’s now frantically beating wings pummeled Garrison. The instant of slipstream, nearly cyclonic in strength, slapped him brutally to the rock floor. As Garrison’s horse careened forward, Garrison clambered to his feet. The horse crashed against the plateau’s unremitting stone, a cracking sound as its neck broke. Its body bounced, and there was a thud as flesh struck rock, the horse unmoving, dead.
Every bone in Garrison’s body ached. His head pounded almost as hard as the knot of pumping muscle in his chest.
Garrison still clutched the pistol. Clearly, against this supernatural winged beast a firearm was useless. Stabbing the handgun into his trouser band, Garrison dragged himself to his feet. The axe that was still thong-strung to his saddle was the focus of his attention.
Garrison jumped toward it, tearing it free.
He recalled Erg’Ran’s admonition, not to over-extend the swing, not to lose balance.
The monster banked on its left wing, soared through a perfect, almost sensually beautiful arc, flapped both wings once, then once again, then started into its dive.
Garrison’s fists throttled the axe shaft, trembling as he focused every ounce of strength through his arms.
Perhaps Creath was the place for epiphanies, because Alan Garrison had the sudden realization that the axe would do no better than his pistol had done. A bullet or two from his pistol should have had noticeable effect on a living enemy of reasonable size, at least should have been noticed, if as nothing more than a flea bite, by something this large.
The winged monster was magical, summoned out of the fossil record in stone. The one, single thing that Alan Garrison had which had been created from magic was the hooded greatcape which still clung to his shoulders.
The beast tore down for him from the sky. Garrison flung the axe aside at the last possible moment, in the same motion grasping his cloak, swirling it before him. He waited the eternal microsecond, poised, cape in hand, like a matador refusing to give ground before the charge of a raging arena bull.
The disgusting, hot breath of doom enveloped Garrison once again.
He snapped the greatcape up, interposing its magical fabric between his life and the monster’s gaping jaws. If magic could not work to combat magic, Alan Garrison was about to find out. Garrison flung his body onto Arba’Il’Tac’s frigid grey stone and rolled.
There was a hideous shriek and the rock pulsed beneath him. Garrison remembered to open his eyes. The monster skittered along over the plateau, like an out-of-control aircraft crash landing, the greatcape which clung to its head blinding it. As the monster struck at last with full impact, the intermittent pulsing of the rock floor transformed into a single, violent shudder. The monster skidded, stopped suddenly, shrieked again, then gave a mighty shake of its terrible head. The cape fell from the beasts eyes.
The monster stood, swayed on ridiculously skinny legs. Its talons scraped at the stone, sparks flying in their wake. It flexed its wings, then soared skyward.
Garrison didn’t lie to himself. He was fresh out of magical greatcapes. On its next pass, the beast would kill him...
Swan’s heart skipped a beat when Al’An, braver than brave, blinded the winged monster and sent it crashing into the plateau. But her heart sank when the creature shrugged the greatcape from its eyes and once again took flight.
Swan still didn’t know if there would be time enough.
The other beasts magically resurrected by her mother, none of them so far displaying any evidence that they could fly, were advancing across Arba’Il’Tac. In the space of time that it would take to draw but a few breaths, they would close with Erg’Ran, Gar’Ath and the others.
The magical energy filled Swan, but she did not yet know how she could use it in order to defeat this terrible enemy.
Dismounting less than gracefully from her terrified horse, she glanced at the animal, magically commanding it, “You will stay beside me. Do not be afraid.” Her mount immediately quieted, lowered its head.
Commanding what was natural was always easier than commanding the unnatural.
Swan knew in that instant what she must do.
These gargantuan beasts, mere moments away from their unspeakable triumph, were vicious, creatures formidable beyond her imagining. But Al’An’s fires pitters and axe, the swords and axes and spears and crossbows of the others, would kill living beasts. The monsters could be slaughtered only if they lived, were of flesh which could be rent, blood which could be spilled, bone which could be crushed.
Swan had joked with herself when she was briefly angry with Erg’Ran, that she had to quit their interview lest she lose her temper and turn him into a frog. She knew the transmuting spells, but had never commanded them—until she raised her voice in a scream which echoed like thunder over the plateau that was Arba’Il’Tac.
Swan felt the power. Everything stopped, men and horses and nightmare beasts focusing their eyes upon her.
Swan’s arms extended toward the night, her hands grasping at the starlight. Magical energy flowed in lightning bolts from her fingertips as the ancient words spilled forth from her lips into the fabric of the sky.
The Old Tongue words wove one with the other, the spell casting chain begun. The power of the lightning magnified beyond that of any magical energy she had ever known. Swan turned her open hands to the stars, great luminescent balls of magical energy—gold and crimson and brilliant white—born from her outstretched palms, floating, pulsating, alive.
Her voice throaty, guttural sounding to her, primal, frightening, Swan cried out the final incantation, commanding the balls of light to her bidding. “The undead beast which flies and those which stalk the plateau, all to devour both man and horse their sole reason to exist!—transmute them so that they will be living beings of flesh as once they were! Obey me, force of magic! Transmute them into living creatures so that they can be returned to the dead!”
There was a rumble, louder than any thunder, her command louder still. “Heed me, force of magic! Heed well the Enchantress’s desire! Obey me now!” Swan tossed her head, energy swirling round her in a wind that was not a wind, her hair, her skirts caught up in it. Her back arched, hands and arms stretched to their greatest reach. The magic flowed...
As if they were alive, the balls of energy flew from Swan’s hands, sailed through the night with effortless ease, engulfing first one, then another and another and another of the translucent beasts. At the very instant in which the light touched them, the nightmare creatures began to transform.
Awestruck, Alan Garrison could do nothing but watch.
Solid bone emerged from magic shadow, cells growing, dividing, growing, dividing again, multiplying into matter in the blink of an eye. Where there had been only magical illusion, there was life. Garrison watched nerve endings fire, tissue grow, blood vessels and capillaries fill, the blood flowing through them visible in the brief instant during which they remained partially transparent. Garrison witnessed oxygenation in the space of a heartbeat. Flesh and muscle took shape. Masking the circulation beneath, skin—wet and raw and slick and new—formed, encasing all within.
The mesmerizing effect Swan’s incantation held over all life on Arba’Il’Tac faded as did the light.
Garrison scanned the ground for his lost axe, took it up. Real, magical no longer, the creatures were as dangerous as before. But now they could be killed.
Swan’s voice rang out to him across the plateau. “Raise your axe, Al’An! Raise it high!”
Garrison did as bidden.
A bolt of lightning flew from Swan’s fingertips, struck the blade of his axe, blue-white electricity arcing along its edge. “Now, brave Al’An! Now wield your axe in triumph!”
Evidently, the winged creature did not like him. The beast flapped its enormous wings and took flight, circling above Garrison. He was tempted to shout to Swan, “Slip some magic to my .45s!” There was no time for that. The axe or nothing stood between him and the monster as it banked its wings and started to dive.
At the back of his mind, he decided that he would just as soon forego the opportunity to encounter a fire-breathing ice dragon once—if—they reached Woroc’Il’Lod.
This was a logic problem, Garrison convinced himself. All he had to do was figure out exactly where to strike the beast. The obvious target would be the reeking hole of its mouth, but was that the best choice?
In the last second, Garrison thought not and tried something else. The beast nearly upon him—Garrison remembered that it couldn’t change direction all that rapidly—he ran forward with all his speed, dropping into a crouch and swinging the axe against the creature’s underbelly as it overflew him. Blood and gore and intestines rained down on Garrison, as his axe twisted in the creature’s guts.
Before Garrison could think or act, the beast’s wings thrummed harder, and it was climbing. There was no time to let go, Garrison still grasping the imbedded shaft, tightening his grip as the monster strained for all the altitude it could attain.
Definitely the proper moment for a reference to g’urg, Garrison thought desperately as he looked at the ground racing below. To what he mentally ascribed as the “North,” the plateau dropped abruptly toward a vast sea; Woroc’Il’Lod, great icesheets and towering icebergs stood well out from the shore.
The blood and gore washed from the winged beast’s insides, covering Garrison in slime, and oozed down along the axe shaft. Despite his gloves, Garrison’s hands were slipping. Even had the axe handle’s surface remained clean, Garrison’s grip would not hold out much longer.
The creature shuddered, let out a cry, and Garrison realized that it died in the same instant.
Garrison trembled. Fear, of course, but much more than fear, he shook with rage. He was going to die for sure this time, die and abandon the most wonderful, craziest, most perfect woman he’d ever known or ever dreamed of knowing. Had he been at all uncertain before this moment, now Garrison realized how much he loved her, that he loved Swan more than the life that he was about to lose.
It seemed there was to be a pause between the winged beast’s death and Garrison’s own. The creature’s body floated along peacefully through the night sky, drifting on and supported by the wind currents. These precious few seconds passed. The wings, still outstretched but no longer flapping at the monsters volition, were beaten instead, an assault begun by the very air which had kept the beast aloft.
There had been a perfect stillness, during which Garrison heard nothing but the soft keening of the wind. But, that whispering began to increase, subtly at first, then became a roar, louder and louder, the monster’s body starting to plummet.
Death was inevitable for him, but that was no reason just to take it, accept it. That he would die, he was sure, but that he would fight death to the last, of that he was also certain. He let go of the axe shaft with one hand and grasped for the stem of the nearest wing...
Erg’Ran’s axe blade bit deep into the throat of the beast. One mighty claw lashed downward, but Erg’Ran, despite his peg leg, was able to dodge aside.
Erg’Ran’s horse reared, whinnied, and the beast was distracted and wheeled round to silence it. Erg’Ran shifted the axe to his left hand, drew his sword, charged the monster, hacking and slashing along its flank.
The creature shrank back for an instant, as if pausing before its next attack, then flicked its massive tail and swatted Erg’Ran’s horse to the rock floor. Recoiling again for a moment, it sprang toward Erg’Ran, gargantuan head reared, fangs bared.
Erg’Ran half-swung, half-flung his axe, into the juncture of head and throat. The monster screamed torment and bloodlust: the axe head was buried to half its depth, blood spewing from the gaping wound.
Erg’Ran nearly lost his balance, moving too fast for his peg leg. Lunging, he pierced the creature’s abdomen with the point of his sword. He drew out the blade with both hands. Erg’Ran swung the sword as he would an axe, opening a ragged gash a warblade’s length at least along the monster’s midsection.
The beast, blood pouring from its wounds, staggered, fell.
Erg’Ran wrestled his axe from its body, his eyes scanning the plateau. Well out from the column, still mounted, sword in hand, Gar’Ath did battle with another of the beasts. Riding his horse between the creature’s hind legs, Gar’Ath reined back, sprang from his mount and neutered the monster with one mighty swing. Gar’Ath, smeared with blood and gore from head to foot, raised his sword in triumph, the body of his kill collapsing before him.
As Erg’Ran made to see how the others fared, he heard the Enchantress scream. Sword in one hand, axe in the other, Erg’Ran craned his neck, searching for her, ready to charge toward the sound. No monster molested her. She stared, instead, into the night sky. Was there another of the winged beasts like the one which the Champion—“The Champion, Enchantress! The Champion?”
Her voice was a lament, ringing out over Arba’Il’Tac and across the sky to the stars overhead. “Al’An plunges to his death!” the Enchantress cried. The fabric of the air around her contorted, vibrated. There was a burst of light. The Enchantress vanished within it...
Garrison clambered up from the wing and onto the dead creature’s back. With each time that his blood-slicked gloved hands shifted, Garrison risked losing his balance, that he would lose his grip, fall away.
The slipstream viciously tore at him. He felt his face contorting with its force.
The ground was getting closer and closer, faster and faster.
So far, the dead monster’s wings had not yet collapsed. Rather than dropping like a stone, its body followed an erratic glide path, accelerating by the microsecond. Blood pounded in Garrisons temples and the rush of air was so great that his lungs ached. He was losing consciousness, he knew.
“Gotta hold on!” Garrison formed the words, said them he knew, heard nothing but the roaring of the air around him. His eyes were squinted so tightly against the wind’s pressure that he could not make out whether their bodies were about to crash against the unremitting rock of Arba’Il’Tac or into the icy waters of Woroc’Il’Lod beyond.
Garrison’s arms were not long enough to go around the creature’s neck; no human’s arms would have been. But he gripped it as best he could.
“Special Agent Alan Garrison killed in the line of duty,” Garrison thought or may have said aloud. He could no longer be sure. His ears ached and the sound of the wind was becoming progressively duller, like something far away, becoming fainter and fainter. “Cause of death: splattered while clinging to the dead body of a winged monster in some alternate universe place called Creath.”
Garrison thought that he laughed, but he couldn’t be certain. If, somehow, word concerning the manner of and circumstances surrounding Special Agent Alan Garrison’s bizarre death could be gotten to Matt Wisnewski, Special Agent in Charge Wisnewski would be stuck writing paperwork on this until mandatory retirement sneaked up and bit him in the ass!
It was definite now. Alan Garrison was laughing, even though he couldn’t hear it.
Garrison was instantly certain of one thing, however. He could hear Swan telling him that he would be all right. Talk about denial! “Nuts!” Garrison said, describing his own mental condition.
And then he saw this bird, land of pretty really, about the size of a crow, but brown with a red breast like a robin. Its wingspan was pretty substantial. Garrison felt something shudder within him, blinked his eyes the rest of the way shut, then opened them. He tried to say “Crazy!” but Garrison realized that he could no longer talk. Everything had slowed down around him. Even though he still felt the rush of wind, it was somehow more normal seeming, almost pleasant.
That was it, he realized. He was dead already.
There was a light, but it looked more like one of the two moons this place had than some glow of eternal peace. Definitely dead, though, Garrison realized. Because, when he looked below, he could see the great winged creature spiraling downward in the last few seconds before it would go splat all over Arba’Il’Tac. And he could see himself still clinging to the dead monster’s back.
Good-bye, body! He definitely could not make words anymore. This death thing, however, wasn’t as bad as he’d thought it would be, at least not yet. He was actually enjoying this soaring around in the air routine.
And he wasn’t alone. There was something with him, but he couldn’t communicate with whatever it was.
Oh, well, Garrison tried to say. He would definitely miss Swan; he loved her so much. He just hoped that she’d be able to defeat her mother’s evil forces, and that good old Erg’Ran and Gar’Ath the hotshot would protect her, take care of her.
All the happiness was suddenly gone from him. To make matters worse, Garrison looked below him again and saw the monster strike the stone floor of Arba’Il’Tac. He witnessed his own body being flung from its back, bouncing on the rock a few times—Whoa, that would’ve hurt!—and rolling over twice.
Garrison was coming down, very gently. He could see in much greater detail. The monster’s wings were torn from its body during impact.
Garrison was trying to see his own body, but afraid to see it. Evidently, he had no choice in the matter. He kept going down and down, but easily, controlled, gently.
He crossed over a broad expanse of Arba’Il’Tac, then came to rest on his own chest. There was a lot of blood. His eyes were staring up at the stars, wide open in death.
He thought he saw Swan, but he couldn’t change the direction in which he looked, as if something else controlled his eyes. What eyes?
Yeah, it was Swan. She was looking at him, tears flowing from her big, gorgeous eyes. Everything about her seemed big, tall, very tall, but just as beautiful. Somehow, he felt as if he sat in the palm of her hand. This was interesting. Was this a fantasy, he wondered, that Swan was with him?
Garrison tried forming words again, but could not.
He was looking at her eyes, at her tears, simultaneously wanting to tell her not to cry but that he felt like crying, too.
Swan’s right hand passed over his field of vision. After that, Alan Garrison felt nothing at all but a warm, pleasant darkness.