Lackey, Mercedes & Flint, Eric & Freer, Dave - [Heirs of Alexandria 01] (106 page)

Erik saw that Sister Ursula was ordering the monks to lower the casket to the ground. As they drew closer, he could see that the casket no longer carried its heavy chains and securing locks. Nothing held the lid down beyond its own weight.

They were ten yards away, now. Ursula stood next to the casket at the center of the circle she had scrawled, her staff held upright in one hand, with the four monks standing like guardian statues at the cardinal points. The circle seemed to sparkle.

The nun's wimple had fallen and her hair was revealed: a great mane of it, in a dark corona around her white face. The face itself seemed to bear no expression at all. It might have been the face of a statue, if marble could blink its eyes and move its lips.

"You cannot prevail, Vessel of Chernobog!" said Lopez. "Repent and save your soul. I am Eneko Lopez, Legate of the Grand Metropolitan and master of Holy magic. You cannot prevail. Let your darkness begone!
Fiat lux!
"

Light leapt even from the stones... Except inside the circle.

Ursula laughed. The sound was mocking, but empty�as if an actress were feigning an emotion she had never understood, or had forgotten. "I might even be afraid, Lopez. Lucrezia told me that she failed to find the chink that most men have in their armor. Foolish woman. She thought she was as powerful as I. Impossible, when she refused to join herself fully with the Great Lord."

Erik's flesh crawled. Everything about the way the woman spoke was
empty.
The nun's habit fell aside. The body that was revealed wore clinging black silk. The half-transparent silk hid little; in fact, it seemed designed to tantalize rather than to conceal. But, again, the display was empty
.
There was no
woman
there to give the shapely flesh any real allure. Erik finally understood how completely Chernobog had consumed the creature.

She reached forward, and tapped the casket. "And I have my little friend here."

"Servants of the Holy Trinity, see what you have in your midst!" shouted Lopez.

The monks didn't move. They stood like statues, arms outstretched, warding.

"They are mine, body and soul," said Ursula. "Unlike Lucrezia I insist on total control."

"She stinks of ice and Chernobog," said Pierre.

It was true, thought Erik. That was what the smell reminded him of. Breaking sea ice, with a sickly sweetness over it. It was very strong now.

Suddenly, the Savoyard priest clutched at his crucifix and sat down, gasping. A moment later his eyes rolled back and he slumped on his side, unconscious.

Manfred ignored Pierre's collapse. He glanced at Erik and said lazily, "I heard she was fat as a sow when she joined the order. Sold her soul for a pair of tits."

Erik realized what Manfred was doing: Exactly what the Venetian swordmaster, Giuliano, had taught them.
Unbalance your enemy, make them angry
. It was a dangerous game. Erik was not prepared to leave him to play it alone. "She got cheated," he sneered. "She's still too ugly to get customers anywhere except the docks."

But the gibes seemed to have no effect on Ursula at all. Erik caught the tiny, tell-tale signs of Manfred tensing. When he lunged forward, so did Erik. So did Von Gherens and Etten.

Erik's sword struck the air above the circle. It was like hitting a wall. He caught a glimpse of Ursula swinging her staff. A huge and shadowy hand swung towards him. It didn't actually make contact, but fear and pain washed though Erik. He wanted to scream, to turn and run. Von Gherens stumbled and fell; Etten whimpered; Manfred grunted and tried to press forward�but was driven back.

Ursula shrieked words Erik did not recognize. Small biting, pinching imps leapt out of the air. They turned to ashes as they struck armor, but there were so many it impossible to see or move.

Then Lopez shouted: "Reverse your swords! Hold them like a crucifix! And ground the tips in the honest earth."

Erik and Manfred immediately obeyed. Staggering back onto his feet, so did Von Gherens. Etten tried, but the sword slipped out of his hands. Lopez began to chant in Latin. Immediately, the imps were immobilized in the air, then began to shrink, then vanish into wisps of smoke. The monk guardians began to crumple.

Ursula shrieked again. Another command of some sort. The four monks seemed to summon their fading strength and began scuffing the soil with their sandals. Within a moment, the circle which Ursula had scratched was broken at the four cardinal points. At the broken points, hot air seemed to eddy out of the circle and wash over Erik and Manfred and the others. The same hot air, swirling at the four compass points like miniature cyclones, sucked the monks dry in an instant; four skin-bags full of bones collapsed to the ground. The heated air seemed to glow and darken simultaneously, as if drawing power and form from its consumption of the monks.

"No closer!" warned Ursula. She laid a hand on the casket's lid. "No closer or I will release the Woden."

Lopez walked forward, coming to stand next to Erik. He held a very small crucifix in his hand. "This is a fragment of the true cross, witch. Evil cannot prevail against it."

Lopez's words seemed to have no effect. Ursula's lips curled in what Erik would have called a sneer, had it not been for the emptiness of the face which framed it. A woman can sneer; a vessel cannot.

"Besides, if you open that casket," said Manfred, "your plot is at naught."

At that moment, Ursula's face underwent a transformation. A horrid one. The face thickened, grew heavy; the shapely cheeks sagged into jowls; the fair brow swelled, looming now over sunken eye sockets. Inside the orbs, a woman's dark eyes became slits of pure black. And now, for the first time,
emotion
filled the face. Anger and cruelty, overlaid by triumph.

Erik understood that the vessel was now filled to the brim, and overflowing. This was not Ursula; this was Chernobog himself, lurking inside her flesh.

The horrible face�half-man; half-woman�bared white teeth turning yellow as Erik watched. "Do not presume to instruct your betters, stripling. There are plots and plots. If the Woden cannot accomplish one task, it can certainly succeed in another."

Erik's mind seemed to be working much faster than his body. He understood Chernobog's new purpose, and desperately tried to reach Manfred�to seize the prince and hurl him back, out of danger. But some magic was causing his flesh to move like soft lead. The same magic seemed to have frozen Manfred and Von Gherens completely. Etten was no longer standing at all. The knight had crumpled to his knees, his head lolling.

Chernobog/Ursula's voice rolled on. "Here, fool boy�uncontrolled and unwarded�the Woden will kill and kill and kill. You will be dead, and your precious Empire left with one heir the less."

Ursula's hand had remained female. Now, even more suddenly than her face, the hand changed. Grew, swelled, became first the hand of a large man and then the hand�the paw, rather�of something still larger. The claws plunged into the wood of the casket lid and began to raise it. Heat and darkness spilled out of the crack like a flood. A horrible stench came with it.

Lopez stepped forward and met the surge of darkness from the casket with the tiny cross. He shouted some words Erik did not understand. In Greek, he thought, not Latin. Neither the action nor the words seemed to have any effect on the swelling darkness, but Erik felt the paralysis which had kept him almost immobile suddenly lift.

He could see the Chernobog/Ursula face open its mouth. The thick lips began to twist, began to utter words of their own�words which, Erik had no doubt at all, would counter those of Lopez. The Basque priest was still shouting Greek phrases.

But the paralysis was completely gone, now. Erik moved faster than he ever had in his life. The Algonquian war hatchet sailed across the distance and buried itself up to the wirebound hilt in his/her skull. Blood gushed. The obsidian eyes seemed to flame black fire for an instant, before the body toppled back and fell to the ground. As it fell, all traces of Chernobog left the face and then, more slowly, the hand. But the talons remained longest of all�long enough to draw the lid of the casket open as Ursula fell.

The hot, stinking blackness poured out like lava from a volcano, sweeping over Erik and Manfred and all the others. Erik could hear the gleeful shriek of a monster somewhere.

That shriek was immediately overridden by another. Etten's voice, that was, howling in agony. Erik turned toward the sound, his eyes tearing from the heat and the stench. The Woden monster had seized upon Etten, he knew. Etten, the weakest of them, was being consumed by fire from within.

Suddenly, Lopez's voice rang out more loudly than Erik would have believed possible, coming from such a small man. In an instant, the darkness vanished and Erik could see clearly again.

Etten was writhing on the ground, his fingers clawing at the straps of his helmet. Smoke was pouring up through the visor. Von Gherens, nearest to him, leaned over and began to help. A flash of flame seemed to leap through the visor and smite the Prussian knight in the face.

Now it was Von Gherens' turn to writhe on the ground, screaming in agony.

"Quick!" shouted Lopez. "Use your swords!"

Moving together, Erik and Manfred grabbed their swords by the hilts and held them up like great crucifixes.

"One over each," panted Lopez. Manfred stooped over Von Gherens, Erik over Etten. After a moment, the smell of burning flesh seem to ebb.

Slightly. Not much. Erik glanced at Lopez. The Basque priest's face was drawn and haggard.

"It is too strong," he murmured. "Too strong�and too attached to Etten." Lopez's eyes seemed hollow under the solid eyebrows.

But whatever weakness the priest might be feeling, none of it was apparent in his next words.

"Kill Etten. Do it now, while there is still time."

Erik stared at him. The Basque shook his head. "He is dead anyway, Erik. The burning has already destroyed too much of his body. But we can still rescue his soul, if we release him from the Woden in time."

Still, Erik hesitated. He glanced at Von Gherens. The Prussian knight seemed unconscious. Erik could see enough of his face through the visor to see that there was still a face there. Whereas Etten�

He looked through the visor of the knight below him. Through that visor he could see nothing but... burnt flesh. Like a piece of meat charred in a fire.

Still, he hesitated. "And then what? Do the same for Von Gherens? And
then
what? Cut our own throats?"

Lopez shook his head wearily. "I cannot fight this monster in salamander form. If Pierre were still with us�or, better yet,
Dottore
Marina�"

Again, he shook his head. "I can hold it at bay, for a time, but not combat it directly. You will have to do it, Erik�you and Manfred."

Manfred had said nothing, but he had apparently been following the discussion. "Fat chance of that, Lopez! What Erik and I know about magic wouldn't fill half a manuscript page. And all of it would be gibberish."

Lopez's laugh was more of a crow's caw than anything else. "Have no fear of that! I cannot
fight
the thing, but I
can
transform it into something which you can fight. But I warn you�it will be monstrous."

Erik's hands tightened on the sword hilt. "Something flesh and blood, you mean?"

"Heh. In a manner of speaking, yes. A particularly horrid form of it, you understand."

"Flesh and blood is flesh and blood," growled Manfred. He hefted the sword higher. "And steel is steel.
Do it.
"

The last two words were spoken by a prince, and no one could mistake it. Erik hissed his own agreement, and Lopez bowed his head for a moment.

When the Basque's head came back up, however, there was not a trace of obeisance in his face. His was the face of a man born to command himself.

"Obey me, then. Erik, kill Etten. Manfred, stand back from Von Gherens."

Erik hesitated no longer. Using the hilt to drive the sword, he plunged the blade through the gaps in the armor into Etten's throat. Then, twisted it to open the wound before withdrawing the sword. Arterial blood fountained, for a moment. Not long. That wound would have killed an elephant.

He stepped back. Manfred had already done the same. Von Gherens began to writhe again as smoke, again, began to rise through his visor.

Lopez shouted something�again, in that odd language which Erik had thought was Greek but now suspected was something else entirely�and held the crucifix high. What seemed like a clap of thunder struck the world all around. Erik flinched; so did Manfred.

Von Gherens screamed and arched his back. A stream of black
something
spewed out of his gaping mouth and spilled onto the ground several yards away.

Another clap of thunder; a wave of darkness.

Then, for the first time since the battle had begun, Erik felt all traces of magic vanish. The sunlight was clean again, with no obscuring darkness. He felt enormous relief pouring through him and took a deep breath.

And... deeply regretted it. The stench was worse than ever.

But at least now the source of the stench was clear and obvious. On the spot where the black
something
had spilled, a monster rose on its haunches.

It was huge; half again Manfred's size. Somewhere in its misshapen and hideous form Erik could detect the remnants of something which had once been human�or close to it. Mostly in the upper face, which still had a recognizable aspect. The one eye possessed by the monster�the other was scarred over, as if the eye had been torn out sometime long ago�was quite human in appearance. Bright blue; piercingly blue. The eyebrows were as blond as Erik's own.

The rest...

The lower face protruded in apelike jaws; though they bore a closer resemblance to those of an eel than those of an ape when the monster bared its teeth and roared its fury. A thick tongue writhed purple behind teeth that were not even remotely mammalian. They reminded Erik of shark's teeth more than anything else.

Everything about the monster had that bizarre, horrible half-and-half quality. The hind legs were those of a land animal of some kind. A giant wolf's, perhaps�except the skin was naked, almost scaly. The arched heavy spine was also that of a mammal, with a straggly mane that resembled human hair more than animal fur. But the heavy tail was purely reptilian.