Rage of a Demon King (19 page)

Suddenly an explosion in the air rent the image before them. The sound of a thousand cymbals clashing rang, deafening the senses. Light exploded outward, and Miranda saw something, for only an instant: the eyes of Macros opened, regarding them.

Into darkness they plunged, and the last thing she heard was a faint, plaintive “No!”

Pug’s mind reached out to touch her own. “This is difficult. I will attempt to follow him to where he flees. Our bodies will appear wherever we wish them to be, so follow me as I follow Macros.”

“I know how,” she answered, and sensed him leave.

Suddenly the blackness was everywhere, and for an instant Miranda felt fear, for she had no point of reference.

Then she opened her eyes.

She was cold. The stone floor of the room seemed to drain the warmth from her body, and she sat up, shivering. She was in Pug’s study at Stardock! She knew what the elven Spellweavers had told them, that their bodies would appear wherever they were needed when they returned from their spiritual journey, but she had expected to be still in Elvandar. Now she was hundreds of miles distant. Pug lay unconscious next to her, barely breathing. She had no idea how long they had been gone from Acaila and Tathar’s care, but it was clear to her that Pug was only minutes from death if he did not revive. Miranda tried to focus a spell of location to cast upon him; he might vanish at any second, and if she didn’t have the spell ready, finding him might be more difficult.

Forcing herself to clarity, she was about to chant the spell when Pug sat up. He took a gasping, painful breath, and then another.

Aborting the spell, she said, “What?”

Pug blinked and took more deep breaths. “I don’t know. The line that bound Macros to Sarig was severed, and that which recoiled flew back toward Midkemia. I followed Macros’s mind and suddenly I was here.”

Miranda stood up, and Pug did likewise. Both of them were cold and stiff, and movement was difficult at first. Pug paced a little to restore circulation. “That’s the second time I’ve done this, and it was no more pleasant than the first.”

“Where is Macros?” asked Miranda.

“He must be close by. That’s the only answer.”

He moved to the door of the study and opened it, hurrying down the stairs of the tower. He pushed open the lower door and almost knocked over a young student, whose eyes widened. “Master Pug!” he exclaimed.

Pug and Miranda ignored the startled student and moved toward the main entrance to the Academy. As they passed, students and teachers both turned to stare, and by the time they reached the main entrance to Stardock, the calling of his name had almost become a chant: “Pug! Pug!”

Pug was breathless from excitement. “I can feel him! He’s close by.”

Miranda said, “I can, too.”

They went outside and looked around. Pug pointed. “There!”

At the edge of the lake a knot of excited students had gathered, and Pug could hear Nakor’s voice shouting, “Stand back!”

A man hung in the air, and Pug could sense the energies that danced around him. He was a beggar by his look, filthy, wearing only a dirty loincloth, his hair and beard a dirty mat, but he exuded power. The air sparkled as he seemed to be drawn up in the air, along the thread of energy that Pug had followed from the Celestial City.

Pug and Miranda hurried to where the students were assembled, and Pug ordered, “Stand aside.”

One looked over his shoulder. “Master Pug!” At the sound of his name, others backed away.

Sitting at the edge of the water were Nakor and Sho Pi, watching in rapt attention as the man hovered in the air.

“Do you see?” said Nakor as Pug came up to him. “He attempts to rise, but that other force, that thing in the air, it’s falling back here, toward the water.”

If Nakor felt any surprise at Pug’s appearance at Stardock, he did not show it. “Something marvelous has happened,” said Nakor, “and soon we shall know a truth.” He glanced at Pug. “Or maybe you know it already.”

The beggar floated down into the water, where he sat, waist deep. Pug watched as the thread of energy coiled down from the sky and at last seemed to vanish into the water around the man. He was weeping.

Pug moved into the water and knelt next to the man. “Macros?”

After a moment, the slender man turned to regard Pug. In a hoarse whisper he said, “Do you know what you’ve done? I was on the verge of godhood.” He closed his eyes for a moment and a sob shook his shoulders. Then he took a deep breath. “The knowledge, the understanding—it’s leaving, like water
spilling from a vessel too shallow to hold it.” He pointed to his own head and closed his eyes, as if trying to hold on to some image. At last he went on, “It’s as if I saw the universe in its entirety, but was looking through a hole in a fence, and as you pull me back from the fence I see less and less by the second. . . . Moments ago I could have told you the secrets of the universe! Now, even as I try to remember, concepts fall away from me, and all I’m left with is the knowledge of what I’ve lost! Years of work undone.”

“We had need,” said Pug softly.

“My time here was done!” insisted Macros, standing and looking at his successor. His knees were wobbly. “It was not your place to call me back. My next mission was beyond your understanding.”

“Obviously not,” said Miranda.

Macros looked to the woman without recognition. Then his eyes narrowed. “Miranda?”

“Hello, Daddy,” said the woman. “It’s been a while.”

Pug turned, his face showing surprise.

Nakor laughed as he echoed, “ ‘Daddy’?”

Macros the Black, sorcerer of legend, glanced from Pug to Miranda and said, “We need to talk.” He took a deep breath and said, “I think I’ve regained my composure.”

“Good,” said Miranda, “because we’re about to hand you another shock.”

Macros paused and seemed to brace himself. “All right, what is it?”

“It’s Mother,” answered Miranda. “She’s trying to destroy the world.”

Even Nakor could barely contain his astonishment at that remark. Finally Macros said, “I need a drink.”

Miranda wrinkled her nose. “First you need a bath.”

While Macros bathed, Miranda, Pug, and Nakor sat in Pug’s study. Sho Pi was attending the needs of the sorcerer, and Pug was opening a bottle of particularly good wine from Darkmoor.

“You need to share something with me,” said Miranda.

Pug looked at his lover and said, “Seems we both need to do some sharing. ‘Daddy’?”

Nakor grinned. “I think that would make me your stepfather, except I was Jorna’s first husband, and Macros her second.”

“She called herself Jania when I was born,” said Miranda. She seemed oblivious to the little man’s delight in all this, and instead revealed what looked to be barely controlled fury. To Pug she said, “That stunt of yours in the Celestial City, when you removed Macros from the consciousness of Sarig—”

“What!” said Nakor, his eyes wide. “I must hear of this.”

“What about it?” said Pug.

“I could feel what you were doing.”

“And?”

“The power, the sheer scope of the energies you used . . . you could have destroyed the Emerald Queen and her pitiful band of Pantathians as I could step on an anthill! Why has this war gone on so long, Pug? Why haven’t you acted to stop it?”

Pug sighed. “Because, like ants, those that survived would only scurry off into the dark and begin again. And there’s more.”

“What?” asked Miranda.

From the door, Macros said, “Nothing we can speak of here, not yet. Pug, it’s too dangerous.”

Pug indicated an empty chair and the freshly bathed sorcerer sat and took the cup that was waiting for him. Macros wore a borrowed robe, black instead of his usual brown. After a long sip he said, “Excellent. There are advantages, after all, to being alive.”

Nakor said, “I’m Nakor.”

Macros’s eyes narrowed. He studied Nakor’s face a moment before the recognition dawned. “The Isalani! I know you. You cheated me at cards once.”

“I’m the one.” With enough emotion to almost bring tears to his eyes, Nakor admitted, “You were my greatest challenge.” He turned to Pug. “I was wrong when I said Macros wouldn’t remember me.”

Macros pointed at Nakor. “That scoundrel did the only thing he could: he made me think he was using magic so when I erected my defenses he could manipulate the cards with simple sleight of hand.”

“Sleight of hand?” said Pug.

“He stacked the deck!” Macros said with a laugh.

“Not really,” said Nakor modestly. “I switched the cards and slipped in a cold deck.”

“Will you stop it!” exclaimed Miranda, slamming her hand on the table. “This is not some reunion of dear friends. This is . . .”

“What?” asked Pug.

“I don’t know. We’re trying to save the world, and you’re reminiscing about card games.”

Pug saw Sho Pi in the doorway, and he motioned for the young man to close the door, leaving the four of them in privacy. Sho Pi nodded, shut the door, and left.

Pug said, “First, I’d like to ask about this relationship. Seems you all have ties I knew nothing about.”

Macros said, “To all of you.”

Pug suddenly looked alarmed. “Don’t tell me I’m your unacknowledged son.” He glanced at Miranda and saw his concern mirrored on her face.

“You can relax,” said Macros. “You’re not her brother.” He sighed. “But when I said you were as much a son to me as any I have fathered, I meant it.” He sipped his wine and remembered. “When you were born, I sensed greatness in you, lad. You were the son of a maid in Crydee, and a wandering soldier. But as the Tsurani sense power in children and train them to the Assembly, I saw you had greatness, perhaps more than any living magician on this world.”

“And you did what?” asked Nakor.

“I unlocked that magic. Else how could Pug have come to the Greater Magic?”

“Sarig?” asked Pug.

Macros nodded. “I am his creature.”

“Sarig?” said Nakor. “I thought he was a legend.”

“He is,” said Miranda, “and a dead god, to boot. But he’s obviously not as dead as some think.”

Pug said, “Why don’t you start at the beginning.”

“And this time, the truth,” added Miranda.

Macros shrugged. “The story I told you and Tomas, to wile away the time we spent in the Garden of the City Forever, was a far more entertaining one than the truth, Pug.

“I was nothing as a child. A city boy from a distant land—”

“Stop it!” said Miranda. “You’re doing it again, Father!”

Macros sighed. “Very well, I was born in the city of Kesh. My father was a tailor and my mother a wonderful person, a woman who managed my father’s accounts, kept an orderly house, and raised a willful and disobedient son. My father had many rich merchants among his clientele and we lived well enough. Satisfied?” he asked his daughter.

She nodded.

“But I developed a taste for adventure, or at least for rough company. When I was little more than a lad, I went on a trip with some of my friends, without the knowledge or blessings of my parents. We bought a map, one reputed to show the location of a lost treasure.”

Nakor nodded. “Slavers.”

Macros said, “Yes. It was a trap to lure foolish boys who would end up on the Durbin slave block.”

“How long ago was this?” asked Pug.

“Nearly five hundred years ago,” said Macros. “At the height of the Empire’s power.

“I escaped the slavers and hid in the mountains, but I got lost. Almost dead from starvation, I found an ancient, abandoned temple. Half delirious, I collapsed on the altar and prayed to whatever god ruled that shrine to save me, in exchange for which I’d serve him.”

Macros blinked, as if trying to remember. “I don’t remember exactly what occurred next. But I think I spoke to Sarig, and either I died and he took me before I went to the Hall of Lims-Kragma, or he got me just before my death; but from that moment on, I was Sarig’s creature.

“It may be my prayer was the first to him since the Chaos Wars, though someone had to have built that shrine. Maybe someday I’ll know. But whatever
else, that dying prayer opened an avenue, a conduit if you will, and from that ruined temple I emerged no longer a boy but a man of magic. I knew things as if I possessed memories of them, yet I know they weren’t my memories. Sarig was within me, and part of me was within Sarig.”

“No wonder you had such power,” said Pug.

Macros looked from face to face. “To understand what I’m about to tell you, you need put aside all prejudices and preconceptions.

“The gods are both real and illusion. They are real in that they exist and exert force over this world and our lives. They are illusions in that they are nothing like what we perceive them to be.”

Nakor laughed his cackling laugh. “This is wonderful!”

Pug nodded.

Macros said, “Forces exist in nature, and we interact with them. As we think of them, some of them become what we think.”

“Wait a minute,” said Miranda. “You’ve lost me.”

“Think of ancient humans, huddled in a cave and contemplating the wonder of fire. On a cold, wet night, it’s their friend and a source of life. They give to that fire a personality, and after a while they worship it. Then that evolves into the worship of the spirit of fire, which in turn becomes the god of fire.”

“Prandur,” said Pug.

“Exactly,” said Macros. “And when enough people worship, the energy that we call Prandur begins to manifest certain aspects, certain attributes that match the expectations of the worshippers.”

Nakor was almost beside himself with glee. “Man creates the gods!” he exclaimed.

“In a manner of speaking,” said Macros. His eyes reflected a deep pain. “For most of my life I’ve been a part of Sarig, his agent on Midkemia and elsewhere, his eyes and ears, and I thought my ultimate fate was to merge with him, to assume his mantle and return magic in all its glory to Midkemia.” Glancing at Pug, he said, “You were one of my better experiments. You returned the Greater Magic to Midkemia.”

“This is all very interesting,” said Miranda, “but what about Mother?”

Nakor lost his grin. “I think Jorna is dead.”

Miranda said, “What? How do you know?”

“When I last saw her, I sensed that another inhabited her body, and that which we knew as your mother was absent. I can only assume she is dead, or hidden away someplace.”