Demon Lord (42 page)

The sound of footsteps made her
sit up in alarm, then she spotted Bane walking towards her and
slumped with relief. He unclipped his cloak and threw it down,
settling on the grass. Mirra thought it odd that he should seek her
company, and wondered what he wanted. He sighed and looked up at
the monolith, then back at her.

"So this one is supposed to kill
me."

"You think it will not?"

He shrugged, ignoring her tone.
"It might."

"Do you really think you can
destroy that?"

He smiled, but his eyes were
hostile. "You have not really seen my power. The only time I used
more than a little was when I tore open the clouds so you could
heal yourself."

"You were exhausted after the
ward at the waterfall."

"Yes, that was air walking, very
strenuous, as is rock walking. But during neither of those
disciplines can I perform a Gather at the same time, so I run out
of stored power." He touched his chest, where the runes scarred his
skin under his shirt. "When these start to burn, I need to draw
power, but I cannot always oblige. That is when it really
hurts."

Mirra shook her head, emboldened
by desperation, for this was likely to be her last chance to
persuade him. "No. The evil power is killing you. You are human,
not a demon or the Black Lord, who is no longer human. Only a human
can touch the wards, and no one ever thought a man would be able to
wield such power, never mind want to. You cannot stand the power
you hold. It is evil, unnatural, and your body rejects it."

Bane gazed at the sky as if he
was ignoring her, but she knew that he was listening. The moonlight
shadowed his face, throwing its lines into sharp relief. He looked
truly demonic, the angel washed from him by the night.

"Even if I die breaking this
ward," he murmured, "it will not matter, because my father will
gather my soul to him and clothe me in a dark form like his, then I
will be immortal."

Mirra's eyes burnt, and she
bowed her head, unable to bear the thought of him dying, lost to
the world, and to her. His faith in the Black Lord was unshakeable,
built upon a lifetime of ill treatment by all but the Lord of the
Underworld. She could not undermine that in such a short time. He
had barely grown to tolerate her, and she was trying to turn him
against the only being he had ever trusted. How could Elder Mother
be so cruel? She was trying to tear him apart, and being torn apart
herself. How could she convince him that the Black Lord was evil,
when evil was all he had ever known? To him the Black Lord was his
father, his idol, and a dark god of immense power who had entrusted
him with a monumental task.

Bane was not fickle; he did not
turn every time the wind changed. He remained faithful, an
admirable, but rare quality. How could she convince him that he was
loyal to the wrong side? Mirra looked up at the huge mountain of
stone and knew that he would break this ward or die trying. Then
the Black Lord would reward him by stripping away his handsome
human body and endowing him with a foul dark form. This he would
welcome, believing it to be his destiny, as he believed that the
Black Lord was his father. Warm tears ran down her cheeks, and Bane
turned to look at her.

"Why do you weep?"

She sighed. "For all of us, but
especially for you."

"I do not need your pity." His
voice hardened.

"It is not pity, but sorrow. You
destroy a world you never really knew, and were not able to
appreciate, because you were poisoned against it. If only you had
seen the beauty in it, instead of only ugliness and death. It is
your world, or it would have been, if the Black Lord had not stolen
you from it. I weep for my sisters, who pray for us all, and soon
will perish. I mourn for all the unborn children who will not see
this world, but most of all I grieve for you, who will destroy it
unwittingly."

In the silence that followed,
Bane sat as still as a statue.

Mirra whispered, "Last of all, I
weep for myself, for tomorrow I will die, and I do not want to. I
am only sixteen, just starting out, but I cannot live in the world
the Black Lord will create."

Bane turned to her, and she
tried to read his face, but it was a mask. "You will die only if I
let you."

Mirra looked
away, letting her tears flow, her throat too tight to speak the
words that echoed in her mind.
You cannot
stop me dying, Bane. You may be able to control the stars, but you
cannot stop me dying.

Bane rose to his feet and stared
down at her, then walked away. His cloak lay where he had left it,
and, after a little while, Mirra curled up in its soft folds.

The morning dawned grey and
cold, a chill wind whipping the grass. Mirra woke in the soft
warmth of Bane's cloak, and pulled it close around her as she sat
up to gaze about. The grey horse grazed a short distance away,
while the demon steed stood like a statue in the distance, the wind
swirling its burning mane and tail. She untied the water skin from
her belt and sipped from it, then ate some roots she had cooked at
Mord's fire the day before. Birds sailed upon the icy wind with
shrill, wind-torn cries, and the grass rustled as small creatures
foraged in it. She wondered if this was the last day for the
Overworld and all its creatures, her heart heavy with sorrow.

Dorel ran errands between Bane's
tent and the army, then the trolls, goblins and rock howlers rose
and trudged away. They retreated until they were a black mass in
the distance, when the smoke of campfires rose once more.

Bane emerged from the tent,
stripped to the waist, his jet hair whipped by the wind. He gazed
at her for a moment before turning to Dorel. Mirra's throat
tightened when he drew his dagger and pressed it to his skin. Blood
streaked his chest as he carved five runes, opening a long-healed
scar. Mirra wanted to scream at him to stop, save himself, save the
world, but she knew that it was futile, and sat hugging the cloak
about her as he completed the ritual of the Gather, drawing the
foul magic into his flesh.

The droge wiped off the blood,
and he dressed in a fresh black shirt patterned with silver,
pinning on his spare cloak. He drank from the flask, then faced the
monolith and raised his arms, summoning the dark power. Rising on
the column of fire, he ascended to the summit and settled before
the massive crystal. Mirra knelt and prayed that he would live.

Bane stood before the crystal
and studied the ward glimmering deep within its translucent depths.
A thousand facets held a thousand wards, each a reflection of the
real one, or each other. To find the real ward, it seemed that he
would have to enter the crystal, an unexpected problem. Rainbows of
refracted light filled it with glorious, delicate colours, shining
in the watery sunlight's pale radiance. Bane stepped forward. As he
touched the crystal, he spoke two words of power. His hands sank
into it, the sensation much like cold water, only it was within his
flesh. Slowly he pushed his arms in, then advanced, moving now with
mind and body to enter the resisting stone.

Within the crystal, a fantasy
world of light and reflections awaited him, with no hint of what
lay outside. Aware that his power was being used up rapidly, he
pushed on, the crystal flowing coldly through him. Blue pentagrams
glimmered all around him, ethereal, beckoning, reflections of
reflections, illusive and unreal.

Bane reached for one, his hand
passing through it with no sting of power, and he reached for
another with frustrating torpor, his flesh creeping through the
stone. Flaws leapt at him, filled with ward reflections, mirrors
within the crystal. Clear passages opened before him maddeningly,
trapping him in illusory paths, guiding him in circles, and using
up his power in useless searching. He was lost in a maze of
twisting crystal pathways, turned aside by flaws, led on by images,
side-tracked by reflections.

A sense of hopelessness came
over him. There was no way to find the real ward, perhaps there was
none, or perhaps it had been split into a thousand so he would die
trying to find the right one. Pain pounded at his temples as his
power drained from him like water down a hole. He had to do
something soon, or he would die as Mirra had predicted. Bane turned
to look behind him, finding only more twisting, facetted paths and
endless reflections.

The crystal had trapped him like
a fly in a web, with no way out. He stopped moving, holding back
the remnants of his power, the cold crystal melding with him,
becoming a part of him. Slowly, against the stone's resistance, he
raised his arms. The runes on his chest ignited as he called for
more power, and it welled from within him, sucked from his
bones.

A word of power echoed in his
mind, and he flung the magic forth, every last shred of it, in a
wave of dark force. The crystal cracked with a sharp report, and
pain lanced through him as flaws appeared, radiating out from him
in corridors of darkness, filled with images of the ward,
multiplying, dividing, smashing into fragments, splitting into
shards. A thousand wards became a million; splintering, fracturing,
countless mirrors shattering, filling his head with the chiming,
tinkling, crystalline pealing of a trillion tiny bells. His vision
dimmed as the last of his power left him, and the crystal exploded,
flying through him, out of him, ice through his flesh.

Bane fell to his knees as the
huge crystal disintegrated around him with a massive thunderclap,
sucking in air as he became solid once more. Crystals fell all
around him, smashing against the rock, flying outward to vanish
into the void, plunging down to a final shattering far below. The
thunder rolled away across the plains, and he sagged as agony
filled him, opening his eyes. He knelt in the centre of the ward,
the glowing blue lines of the pentagram surrounding him, a trap set
for a mage. He placed his hand against the invisible barrier above
the ward, as solid as glass and as cold as ice, impervious to the
Gather. He was trapped again, powerless.

Two traps so far, how many more?
Bane rested, hot slivers of pain sliding through his head. He
sipped from the flask to dull it. Now he could not Gather dark
power from the world, the ward barrier shut it off. A mage would
have been doomed, but Bane was no mere mage. He possessed the Black
Lord's power, abilities forbidden to lesser men.

Bane placed his hands against
the rock on which he knelt and began to Gather. The runes on his
chest flared, five glowing blood red. Dark magic seeped slowly
upwards through the rock, the terrible power of his call drawing
it. Sweat beaded his brow and streaked his cheeks to gather on his
chin, the icy wind chilling it. His father must sense his struggle,
for surely they would feel the drain in the Underworld. Droges
would fade and demons shrink, perhaps even the inner fire would
dim.

There was no lack of power
below, but it was locked within the rock, as difficult to extract
as water from desert sand, especially in such vast quantities as he
required. His eyes bulged with the effort, and burning tears
streaked his cheeks. He strained, pulling, calling, Gathering with
all his strength. The runes glowed brighter, a sixth beginning to
shine. Then the power dammed in the stone flowed into him, released
from its bonds. Bane gasped and shuddered, his flesh burning as the
power soaked into it, his stomach clenched with the familiar
revulsion the dark power engendered.

Bane slowed the flood of magic,
controlling it before it gathered too much momentum and overflowed
him, but drawing on it until he had accumulated a sufficient amount
to complete his task. It eased, and he relaxed, the runes darkening
as the flow ebbed under his hands. As it stopped, he sat back, his
flesh burning as the dark fire seethed within it, trapped by the
skill he had learnt below. Sickness crawled in his belly like a
writhing snake, and he swallowed hard to prevent stinging bile from
creeping into his throat. When he had regained control, he summoned
the power. It surged at his command, and he flung it at the ward
with a striking motion of his hands.

The pentagram brightened under
his attack, resisting him, forcing him to increase the power
manifold. Its shimmering lines became incandescent, almost too
bright to look at. Black fire fought with blue, striving to
overcome it and quench its brilliance with shadows. The ward pulsed
as its power weakened, unable to sustain so prolonged a defence. It
flared one last time, then shattered in an explosion of crackling,
vivid blue magic that hurled him, arms flailing, into the air.

The monstrous thunderclap that
accompanied the explosion stunned him, then he fell. Three traps.
Air rushed past him, sucking the breath from his lungs, slashing
his eyes with icy knives. He plucked at its cushioning force, which
grew stronger as he fell faster and faster towards the earth. The
brown and gold ground rushed up at him, and he shouted a word of
power.

Black fire burst from him,
igniting the runes on his chest, and he directed it downwards.
Instants before he slammed into the unforgiving earth, he slowed.
The fire cushioned his impact, but still he hit the ground with
stunning force, the last dregs of air punched from his aching lungs
with a soft grunt. A cloud of dust billowed around him.

Bane rolled onto his back, his
mouth open as he strained to draw air into his burning lungs. The
world spun and dimmed, and he closed his eyes, becoming aware of
someone thumping his chest. At last air rushed in with a whooping
gasp, and he opened his eyes. The girl knelt beside him, stroking
the hair from his brow, her worried countenance streaked with
tears. Annoyed by her unwanted ministrations, he pushed her hands
away and sat up, only to find Dorel kneeling on the other side of
him.