Heirs of the Demon King: Uprising (28 page)

Weaver snarled in rage and snatched one of the remaining phials he wore at his waist. He flung it between the prince and the demon with a bellow of fury. A gout of alchemical fire halted the prince in his tracks, the demon obviously unwilling to risk her prize, and Melusine hissed again before she retreated from the flames. Evidently, the alchemical fire was a threat to her.

The air was still filled with gunshots and the bright flash of weapons discharge, but they paled into insignificance beside the roar of the
Lionheart
as one of her fore cannons spat flame. Fire belched in a spreading cloud toward the demon and the magi. Mathias felt the tremendous wash of heat roll over him, singeing the hairs on the back of his arm. He ducked and rolled just as Tagan turned from the group. With a simple wave she turned the flames aside and the cannon guttered and died.

Mathias looked to the woman he loved and did not recognise her. A corona of yellow and orange light was boiling off her and her eyes had become smouldering pits, bright with power.

There was a clank from the
Lionheart
as a different cannon was engaged and a deafening boom thundered from its maw. The cannonball sped across the circle directly at the demon. Melusine snapped her fingers with apparent disdain and the projectile shattered into shards of spinning iron. She finally turned her attention from the prince, whirling to face the
Lionheart
. King Richard’s pale face was just barely visible through the aperture that looked out from the vehicle’s prow.

‘You dare defy me now, worm?’ The liquid allure of her voice was gone, replaced with an awful, echoing roar. The Royal Guard stopped shooting and screamed, some of them turning their guns on themselves. With a screeching noise of buckling metal, the cannon that had just fired on her crumpled in on itself.

The true voice of the demon scrabbled at Mathias’s mind and he felt blood drip from his nose, but something warded him from its full horror, allowing him to stagger drunkenly to his feet. He turned in time to see the Inquisitor’s gun coming up, and for a second he imagined this must have been what it was like for Wyn.

Time stood still.

‘You must release us,’ four very different voices said in unison. The sudden silence was shockingly loud. Mathias looked into the fatal darkness of the Inquisitor’s pistol, but nothing happened. ‘There is no time left,’ the voices said again. ‘You must release us, Mathias Eynon.’

Mathias turned away from the Inquisitor to see Tagan and the magi looking at him. They were all haloed with light, their eyes burning with barely contained power. Eyja took a single step forward. Her white gown billowed in a nonexistent breeze, and Mathias felt cool air wash over him. A tumble of thoughts and sensations rushed through him; the sirocco that races across the desert, the gale that drives the snow around high peaks, the fury of the storm at sea. It was like standing in a silent hurricane.

‘I am Nimbus,’ Eyja declared, in a voice most decidedly not her own. Snow gusted from her mouth and lightning crackled at her fingertips. ‘And this magic will not last long. You must unbind us, so that we may drive out the evil that threatens the world.’ ‘I don’t understand.’ Mathias stared at the magi. ‘You... you are all like her, aren’t you?’

Giraldo came forward, though he did not step, but
glided
. The smell of brine and the crash of waves rolled from him and water bubbled up from the earth beneath his feet. ‘I am Lunus. And you are right, Mathias, but we are also nothing like her.’ A translucent finger jabbed towards Melusine. ‘Have you ever thought us evil?’ Mathias shook his head. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the perfect visage of the demon twitch in fury. Whatever enchantment Eyja had woven, the creature was fighting it. ‘No,’ he said, and he did not feel any malevolence in the entities before him, simply a wild energy struggling to be free. ‘But... why didn’t you tell me?’ Warin approached and his tread was like boulders falling from a mountain. He reeked of rock dust, and when he spoke it was like the grinding of millstones. ‘Would you have listened to a demon, boy?’

There was still something of the Shapeshifter in that voice, but it was hard to make out. ‘I am Dolus. While we are very different in nature, we are kin to the creature you call Melusine.’

Mathias didn’t want to accept what that meant. He didn’t want to see the fourth figure that approached and all that it meant to him. His very existence was in pieces, and all he knew was gone. Despite his agony, both physical and mental, he turned to Tagan. She was looking back at him, but not with the eyes that he knew and loved. She looked at him through the smoking orbs of something otherworldly. Heat poured from her flesh and blackened the ground beneath her feet. The ethereal magic did not touch Mathias. ‘I am Ignus,’ she said. ‘The living flame. Tagan has become my vessel. I am sorry, Mathias Eynon. I am sorry there was not more time to prepare you for this.’

Mathias shook his head, tears forming in his eyes. ‘Why her?’ he croaked weakly. ‘Why would you take her from me?’

‘There is no time,’ Lunus said urgently. Melusine twitched again, and her form shivered unnaturally.

‘I have not taken her. That is not what we are, or what we do.

Tagan understood the nature of what we must do and she gave her body to me, but only you can unbind us to fight the evil of the sixth.’

‘The sixth?’

Sound began to intrude on the silence once again. The echoes of screams as the Royal Guard lost their minds. The groan of metal from the
Lionheart
. The crack of a gunshot.

‘The creature you call Melusine is only sixth among eight great powers that seek dominion. But we cannot explain now. You must release us, quickly!’

‘I don’t know what you mean. What do you want me to do?’

Tears streaked Mathias’s face as he looked at the woman he loved.

She was still as he had always known her, but she was no longer Tagan.

‘Tagan is still here,’ the crackling voice declared. ‘She always will be. But a part of her still clings to you, to the life you wanted, and I cannot force her to let that go. Only you can do that.’

Mathias nodded slowly, and then again more firmly. There was every chance that he would die within the next few minutes; the pain of loss would be fleeting. Suddenly, he welcomed death. The hereafter would be free from this terrible agony.

He raised Tagan’s hand to his lips and gave it a last, gentle kiss. ‘I understand,’ he said sadly. ‘I release you from your promise to me, Tagan. We are no longer betrothed, you and I. You are bound to another now, more surely than you could ever be to me. Do what you must do.’

Tagan smiled at him gently and reached out a hand to stroke his cheek. His heart felt as though it were tearing itself apart with the pain and knowledge of what he had done. She was no longer his.
But then,
a voice in his mind asked,
was she ever yours to begin with?

Mathias closed his eyes and reality snapped back into place.

There was a shot, but no stab of pain, no sudden oblivion. Mathias opened his eyes to see a fist clenched in front of his face: Tagan’s hand. As he watched, it opened, to reveal a small, lead ball. The metal hissed and spat and ran between her fingers, and the woman he knew became something else entirely. She doubled in size and her reddish skin cracked to reveal molten veins webbing her entire body. Her legs became back-jointed and cloven, and a crown of horns sprouted from her brow. Her dark hair became a mane of fire that spilled down her broad back and Mathias, for all his grief, found the creature oddly beautiful.

Warin was gone and in his place stood a wolf larger than any bear.

Its flesh was stone that flexed and bulged as it moved, and its fur was slivers of shining crystal. A pair of yellow gemstones served as eyes, and obsidian fangs filled its cavernous maw. The wolf of the earth snarled, a sound like an avalanche, and sprang toward the demon.

‘Don’t look at her,’ the voice of Eyja said in his mind. She was now an avatar of living lightning. A gale whipped around her, and a skin of ice formed on the ground beneath her as she followed the others toward the swelling form of Melusine. The lower half of Giraldo had become a raging tidal vortex and what could be seen of him was blue-skinned and fluid. ‘We can ward you from her presence and her voice, but the sight of her can shatter even the strongest mind.’

Mathias turned away and caught only a glimpse of something both serpentine and chiropteran. It was enough to freeze the blood in his veins The terrible sounds of battle thundering from behind him were unlike anything he had ever heard, but he had no time to dwell upon them. Weaver had cast aside his pistol and, heedless of the chaos unfolding nearby, lunged for Mathias. The Inquisitor’s meaty fist sent Mathias sprawling into the prince, who was still dreamily shuffling toward the conflict, oblivious to the danger around him, and knocked them both to the ground.

Mathias shook his head to clear the ringing and looked up to see the Inquisitor towering over him, yet another blade in his hands.

Then there was a crack of displaced air and Weaver was flung across the circle to smash into one of the standing stones. He hit it with such force that Mathias was briefly sure the impact must have killed him, but the masked man groaned and struggled to rise. Mathias didn’t know whether one of his former companions had just saved him or whether it was a happy accident, but the fury of the conflict that he could not see continued to escalate. The scorch of fire from Ignus’s flames, the gust of ice winds from Nimbus as she passed... the scents of the sea and the forests... every sense was being assailed by the mighty battle occurring. He concentrated on keeping the young prince pinned beneath him, conscious that he was Melusine’s prize and that she could not be allowed to take him. Beneath his weight, Prince Richard squirmed and twisted, trying to break free from Mathias, but to no avail. Everything was so frenetic that Mathias’s head was spinning. Something huge rushed past and went sprawling into the stones. Dolus got to his feet and shook himself from head to tail, then, with a howl of fury, the wolf of the earth bounded back towards Melusine.

Weaver struggled to his feet and retrieved his sword. It seemed to Mathias that nothing could stop the Inquisitor. He seemed invincible, implacable, something more than human. Not for the first time, Mathias wondered how it was that he had managed to hunt them so relentlessly and so successfully. The Inquisition was said to have spies everywhere, but it had to be something more than that.

He had killed Wyn. He had tried to kill Mathias and had nearly killed Tagan. He had spent the lives of his knights in order to make his way through Akhgar’s camp and it seemed that he absolutely would not stop until all of them were dead.

Mathias had had enough.

He climbed to his feet; roots sprouted from the earth in his wake and bound the struggling prince to the ground. Then he became the wolf. Not the small, sleek animal that he had been before, but a feral hunter, a predator to match a predator. He gathered his powerful legs beneath him and charged at the Inquisitor. A shot rang out and scored a bloody line down Mathias’s hide, but then the huge, shaggy animal forced the Inquisitor to the ground and Mathias’s wolf body stood atop the fallen man like a conqueror at the top of a fort. The animal growled furiously and long jaws snapped at Weaver’s throat.

The Lord Inquisitor thrust his arm into the wolf’s maw and grunted as it drew blood, savaging his flesh. It was too close to stab with his sword, but he pummelled the creature with the hilt of the weapon until it released him and sprang away. A titanic maelstrom was beginning to engulf the henge. Hurricane winds roared about the stones, lifting bodies into the air and rocking the
Lionheart
in which the King cowered. Rain slashed down and the bellow of thunder had become a constant background sound.

Fire fell from the heavens and lit up the night with an infernal orange glow.

The next time the wolf sprang, Weaver was ready. He turned on his heel and dragged his blade across the hind leg of the animal. The shock of the wound forced Mathias back into his own body and he stumbled, streaked with blood from his injuries. The pain was excruciating, whichever form he took. He dropped to his hands and knees and gritted his teeth against the agony.

Weaver came at him again, a ragged, masked monster trailing blood, but refusing to die or surrender to human frailties. The blade came up and Mathias, on his hands and knees, suddenly imagined his father lying upon the block. The thought struck him like a blow and his pain, fear, loss and anger crystallised in that instant. The blade came down in a beheading arc.

Mathias caught the sword in a fist suddenly as hard as diamond.

He squeezed and the blade shattered. Then, with a bellowed cry of pure rage, his other fist crashed into Weaver’s jaw. The impact lifted the big man off his feet, tore the mask from his face and flipped it into the air.

Weaver fell to the ground with an unearthly shriek that pierced the din of battle. He thrashed and rolled as if he were in the grip of a seizure, clutching at his exposed face. Mathias glimpsed cold, cold eyes between the scrabbling fingers and then, in front of him, the man began to age. His hair went white and his face became lined and weathered. In the space of a few seconds, Charles Weaver gained decades.

The mask arced through the air, an innocuous, inanimate thing that bounced a few times before rolling to a stop before Melusine.

Something more terrible even than the demoness burned within its simple design and sick, greenish light burst from it. Made weary from her struggle with the otherworldly magi, Melusine was hurled against the stone perimeter of the henge; the softly glowing stones pulsed and repelled her, the world beyond still anathema and unattainable to her unbound form. The hurricane winds drove her back into the crackling pillar of light that spilled from the mask’s inner face.

Melusine’s shrieking roar shook the earth and one of the ancient warding stones around the henge cracked from top to bottom. The sound grew in pitch and Mathias began to scream, sure that his mind would break under the onslaught. A single, sibilant voice spoke a word in his mind. Then there was a great rushing of wind, like the inhalation of something impossibly vast, and then sudden, shocking silence.