Rage of a Demon King (45 page)

“Is that wise?” asked Pug.

“Necessary. If I am to face Tugor or Maarg, and hold them at bay even for a few minutes, I must gather as much strength as possible. If I prayed for a
chance of victory, I would lie in wait for months, killing as many demons as possible, until they became aware of my hunt and sought me out. After I battled the hunters and survived, I would then come and announce myself to the one whom I challenged. At that point I would be granted single combat.

“But I have no desire to win. I wish release from this prison.” He tapped the crystal vial hanging from a chain around his neck. “This is a favor I must ask of you, magician.” He removed the vial and handed it to Pug. “When the battle is high, release my soul by smashing the vial.”

“What will happen?”

“I will be free, and the demon whose body I control will be destroyed. But if that vial isn’t broken, any demon who found it would be able to continue my captivity.”

Pug nodded and took the vial, placing it inside his robe.

“Time is short,” said the Loremaster. “Come.”

They hurried through several halls to a large chamber, where several other demons gathered. Two rifts hung in the air, only a few meters apart, while strange cloaked figures, hunched over and shambling, moved between them. The demons didn’t notice them.

“What are they?” asked Hanam.

“I recognize them,” said Pug. “They are Shangri, also called
Panath-Tiandn,
creatures I have faced once before. They live on a world called Timiri, where magic is a solid matter, manipulated by machine and will. They may be related to the Pantathians. I still don’t know their part in all this.”

“What are they doing?”

“They’ve moved both rifts!” Pug exclaimed. “They mean to create a direct path from the demon realm to Midkemia!”

“Then Maarg is soon to come through.”

A demon turned and saw them, and screeched an alarm. Hanam didn’t hesitate, but launched himself at the creature. Rather than engage the first creature, who crouched, claws extended in anticipation of the attack, he leaped past, slashing its throat with a talon.

One demon, larger than Pug could have imagined possible, turned and shouted, “Hold!”

Hanam screamed, “Tugor! I challenge! Meet me and die!”

The other demons fell back. Pug didn’t know if they ignored him because of the challenge, but he rendered himself invisible.

Hanam and Maarg’s captain squared off. Pug saw at once that Hanam had been right, for in a fair fight, Tugor would quickly destroy the lesser demon. But what the captain didn’t understand was that the Loremaster of the Saaur faced him, not another lesser demon, and that being was prepared to die.

Pug hurried to the two rifts and attempted to make some sense of them. The two shambling creatures ignored the demons, working like automatons on the two rifts. When Pug had first encountered these creatures, years before, he had found them nearly mindless servants of an unknown dark power, technicians of magic, clever in their ability to work the solid form of what was an invisible force on Midkemia, but without a strong intellect. They had been servants of others then, and here again they were servants.

Once more Pug confronted the knowledge locked away in his own mind, and he intuited that these creatures
were serving whatever the greater power behind this madness might be. He knew that to dwell further on their part in this would be to risk distraction.

He quietly stunned both creatures, letting them fall to the floor.

He quickly studied the rift to the demon realm, and realized it was readily opened at any time. He decided Maarg, their great ruler, was waiting safely in his own realm until his captain opened the rift to Midkemia. Then he could easily cross into the lush, life-filled world without long pause in Shila.

Pug turned to study the other rift with the thought that should Maarg reach Midkemia, he might be in for a rude surprise should Jakan reach the Lifestone.

Screams of pain and rage filled the hall as Tugor fought Hanam. The demon lord was injured, because rather than keep his distance, the smaller demon closed and accepted wounds in exchange for giving them.

Pug tried to ignore the combat, knowing seconds counted. He looked at the Midkemian rift and saw the Shangri were on the verge of punching through whatever barriers had been erected on the other side. His intervention had forestalled that.

Then a chilling presence behind Pug caused him to cease moving. A voice that ground his bones together said, “What have we here?”

Pug turned and looked into the face of horror.

A face the size of a dragon’s leered at him through the rift.

For a brief instant Pug was astonished to witness a rift that was as transparent as a window, that looked like a hole in the wall between two worlds, but that
fascination lasted less than a second, for it was what confronted him through that transparent rift that demanded his undivided attention.

While the other demons looked muscular and powerful, Maarg looked gross. Jowls hung down from a face eight feet from brow to chin. Fire burned in the pits of its eyes, and evil emanated from it like a visible miasma of black smoke. The creature’s face seemed fashioned from the skins of living beings, which still moved and twitched in agony. A face contorted in torment was stretched across Maarg’s right cheek, mouthing silent screams while a clawed hand moved feebly along his right jawline. Details of the various bodies devoured and incorporated into the Demon King became evident as the creature moved closer to the other side of the rift to inspect Pug.

The figure behind the face was immense. Maarg must have stood thirty-five feet tall when upright. His body was likewise covered with other beings, twitching and undulating in the faint red light of the demon home world. Wings to hide the sun spread out behind him, and a long tail with the head of a serpent at the tip writhed behind him, hissing and spitting at Pug from over Maarg’s shoulder.

Pug didn’t hesitate. He knew instantly he was over-matched. He turned and with all the power he could muster, he blasted open the rift to Midkemia.

“Tugor!” came the cry from the other side of the demon rift as the room rang with the explosion of powers Pug unleashed. The rift to Midkemia seemed to contract, then expand, then rush forward with a tremendous ripping sound.

Then Pug was staring at Macros and Miranda.

Macros returned from his bath and a meal. “That was delightful. I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed Sorcerer’s Isle.”

Miranda said, “Has it changed much?”

“A great deal. Pug has it crawling with students, some rather interesting ones, I must say. Gathis is the same as always. It’s as if I had left yesterday.” Macros sighed. “I’m afraid he’s become something of a fixture there. It would be a shame to ask him to leave with all the good work he’s doing for Pug. Why—”

Suddenly he looked wide-eyed and distracted.

“What?” asked Miranda.

“I don’t know. Something—”

Before he could finish, the silence in the cave was shattered by a tremendous keening sound. Abruptly, the rift before them ripped open and Pug stood on the other side of a window between worlds, looking at them. Behind him a vision of horror reared up into view.

Miranda raised a mystic shield to protect herself, reflexively, but her father reacted by leaping forward, landing on the other side of the rift beside Pug. He unleashed a furious blast of mystic energy, which tore through the opened rift into the demons’ realm, striking the Demon King in the face. The horror that was Maarg reared back, shrieking in pain.

Miranda followed her father and shouted, “What is going on?”

Pug said, “They’ve moved the rift. We arrived just as Maarg was preparing to come across!”

Macros said, “You must close both rifts, now!”

Pug looked at Miranda’s father and said, “What are you going to do?”

“Distract that thing,” he said, and he leaped through the rift into the demon realm.

“Father!” shouted Miranda. “No!”

Pug spared a glance to the other struggle, and saw that Hanam had managed to sink his fangs into Tugor’s neck. Pug was no judge of such things, but it appeared to him the Loremaster might take his foe with him into death. The other demons in the room shrank back, for to them there would emerge a victor, Tugor whom they feared, or another who had destroyed Tugor, making him one to fear even more.

At the other side of the demon rift, Maarg fell back as Macros’s flames seared his face. Then he raised an arm, to shield his face, and screamed in pain. Macros kept the blast of blue flame directed at the Demon King’s head.

Pug quickly examined the rift. He said, “This one is much like that created by the Tsurani Great Ones, to reach Midkemia. It is vulnerable, from within.”

“From within?” said Miranda in astonishment. “How do we get inside a rift?”

Pug looked around it one last time, and said, “By attacking it from the void.”

They risked a glance at Macros as he continued to press his attack against the Demon King, who backed away. Perhaps it was that a relatively small creature dared to confront him, or that he had not been forced to face a challenger in years, but Maarg was on the defensive. He now used his great wings as a cloak, keeping Macros’s flames from his eyes.

Macros’s spell ended, and the flames vanished. Maarg regarded the intruder and reached forward, as if to seize Macros in his huge hand. Macros raised both arms above his head and brought them down in a quick gesture, and yellow flames seemed to explode from within his body. The Demon King
seized him around the waist, and screamed in pain and fury as the sorcerer withstood his direct attack.

Miranda said, “Can we help him?”

Pug said, “No. We must close this rift.”

“We can’t. Father will be stranded in the demon realm.”

Pug calmly said, “He knew that.”

Miranda stared at her lover a long moment, then nodded once.

Pug said, “We also may not survive this closure.”

Miranda said, “Tell me what to do.”

“First, keep them off our backs.” He pointed to two demons who had left the spectacle to investigate what was occurring between the two rifts.

Miranda said, “Gladly,” and sent out a bolt of mystic energy, a blue light that engulfed the two demons and left them writhing in agony, while Pug finished his examination of the rift.

Pug turned his attention from the rift to the struggle beyond it, as the Demon King attempted to crush Macros with his bare hands. The sorcerer was held in the demon’s grip, but he had his hands free, and he cast another spell while the mystic yellow flames kept him from being crushed. Sparkling white lights appeared around the Demon King and started spinning. Each looked like a diamond, reflecting light off myriad facets, and as they spun, they took on a sinister aspect. As they moved, they swooped in and out in a weaving pattern, and when they touched Maarg, he shrieked in agony.

“Kelton’s knives,” said Pug.

Miranda said, “That’s a particularly nasty spell.”

The mystic blades continued to pick up speed, buzzing around the Demon King, but while he was
being cut over most of his body, he still held fast to Macros. “Human!” he shrieked. “You shall reside in a soul jar for eternity, to be tormented every instant for this!”

Macros managed to shout, “First you have to kill me.”

Pug said, “It’s time. Come with me.”

He took Miranda’s hand and they jumped into the rift, but rather than continue through, he halted their flight in the void.

Miranda waited to be told what to do. Pug had cautioned her that some rifts could be closed only from inside, and that was what her father and he had had to do during the Riftwar. The difference then was that Pug had been able to return to Midkemia from the void because of a staff Macros had given him, one that was linked with another that Pug’s old teacher, Kulgan, had kept tightly bound to Midkemian soil.

Pug prayed that his advanced skills over the last fifty years would allow him to get home by force of will.

Miranda’s thoughts came to him in the void.
I love you.

Pug replied,
And I you. Let us begin.

Cold unlike anything Miranda had experienced gripped both of them. Their lungs cried for air. But their magic gave them minutes where lesser beings would have perished in seconds.

Pug wove powerful magic. Miranda aided him where she could, taking instructions from him, and in this place without time it seemed to take forever for the great spell to form. When it seemed the task would never finish, it was done.

Pug said,
Now!

Miranda gave him all her power and felt her body drain of strength.

Pug shattered the rift.

In a moment they saw the grey fabric of the void splinter into shards, and behind those shards they glimpsed another reality. Pug recognized it from his fever dream, when injured, and knew behind the void lay the realm of the gods.

Then they saw, as through a window, the struggle in the demon realm. Maarg gripped Macros and burned in flames that were running up his arms from the sorcerer, causing the demon’s flesh to ripple and crisp, but Maarg continued to crush Macros’s defenses, and the sorcerer screamed in pain as his will weakened. The Demon King dropped to his knees, as the sorcerer’s attacks took their toll, but he refused to relinquish his grip on the Black One.

“Die!” he roared, and he attempted to bite Macros’s head from his shoulders. But the legendary sorcerer’s defenses held, and the font-long fangs couldn’t close on Macros.

Then the demon’s tail appeared over his shoulder and the serpent head hissed, revealing long, poison-dripping fangs. The thing struck, but with an unbelievable display of will and strength, Macros seized the thing and turned it so that its fangs plunged into Maarg’s wrist.

The Demon King cried out and released Macros, letting the sorcerer fall to the hot stone floor of his den.

Then the window seemed to close, to grow smaller or more distant, they couldn’t tell which. Miranda shouted,
Father!

Macros seemed aware of them, stealing a glance in their direction. He sent one thought,
They are creatures of fire,
then he redoubled his attack on the demon, one that was met by more fury.