The Golden Shield of IBF (17 page)

This was an elevator shaft, Garrison realized, and he was the secret agent. He wasn’t getting out...

Swan heard the sound of the firespitter, twice. She twisted round to look back from her saddle, saw what was about to happen to Al’An. Pain gripped her soul so tightly that she felt that her heart would surely die. “Sweet fool, Al’An!” Swan cried out to her Champion. How could a man of Al’An’s world know that only a magical weapon could be used to combat a magical beast? She should have thought of it, used some of the magic she’d so stupidly hoarded, saved as a weapon against the unthinkable.

The unthinkable was upon them. Al’An was about to die.

Swan reined back her animal almost too quickly, drawing the magical energy into her. Her horse reared and bucked beneath her, energy more violent than she had ever before experienced crackling around her in the night air.

There was no time...

Erg’Ran got his peg leg into the cup that was used in place of a stirrup on the off side of his saddle. He looked about him, his panicked horse difficult to control beneath him. A host of nightmarish creatures advanced along the plateau, the nearest of the beasts only warblades from the ragged line of horses and men forming the remounting column. A few of the extra horses had bolted.

Erg’Ran felt his face twist into a grimace. A lizard-headed monster the height of a Ka’B’Oo flicked its forked tongue, snaked its neck downward, and snapped one of the horses into its slathering jaws. A hideous cry issued from the doomed animal. The cry was silenced in the next instant, the horse’s blood drooling from the monster’s incisors.

Erg’Ran looked for the Enchantress. Was she in immediate peril? He saw the Champion, instead.

A horrible winged beast of awesome proportion swooped down out of the night toward the Champion, jaws open, ranks of huge, spear-shaped teeth glinting wickedly in the starlight.

A sick feeling seized Erg’Ran. Aside from the fact that he genuinely liked this lad from the other realm, if the Champion were to perish so too would vanish all hope of fulfilling the prophecy made by Mir, and so too would the future of Creath fade into an eternity of dark magic and death.

The Champion was going to die...

The winged beasts breath was a searing, fetid wind, washing over Alan Garrison, the monsters jaws poised to clamp closed around him.

Garrison’s horse tripped, the animal’s off-front hoof catching on a fissured rock slab hidden beneath a ghostly thin layer of snow. The animal began to cartwheel forward.

Alan Garrison spilled from the saddle, forward along the horse’s neck, rolling head first over the horse’s head. His left hand still grasped the reins, a torn hank of mane bunched with them in his fist. The horse shrieked agony. Garrison rolled, still clutching his pistol. The downdraft in the wake of the monster’s now frantically beating wings pummeled Garrison. The instant of slipstream, nearly cyclonic in strength, slapped him brutally to the rock floor. As Garrison’s horse careened forward, Garrison clambered to his feet. The horse crashed against the plateau’s unremitting stone, a cracking sound as its neck broke. Its body bounced, and there was a thud as flesh struck rock, the horse unmoving, dead.

Every bone in Garrison’s body ached. His head pounded almost as hard as the knot of pumping muscle in his chest.

Garrison still clutched the pistol. Clearly, against this supernatural winged beast a firearm was useless. Stabbing the handgun into his trouser band, Garrison dragged himself to his feet. The axe that was still thong-strung to his saddle was the focus of his attention.

Garrison jumped toward it, tearing it free.

He recalled Erg’Ran’s admonition, not to over-extend the swing, not to lose balance.

The monster banked on its left wing, soared through a perfect, almost sensually beautiful arc, flapped both wings once, then once again, then started into its dive.

Garrison’s fists throttled the axe shaft, trembling as he focused every ounce of strength through his arms.

Perhaps Creath was the place for epiphanies, because Alan Garrison had the sudden realization that the axe would do no better than his pistol had done. A bullet or two from his pistol should have had noticeable effect on a living enemy of reasonable size, at least should have been noticed, if as nothing more than a flea bite, by something this large.

The winged monster was magical, summoned out of the fossil record in stone. The one, single thing that Alan Garrison had which had been created from magic was the hooded greatcape which still clung to his shoulders.

The beast tore down for him from the sky. Garrison flung the axe aside at the last possible moment, in the same motion grasping his cloak, swirling it before him. He waited the eternal microsecond, poised, cape in hand, like a matador refusing to give ground before the charge of a raging arena bull.

The disgusting, hot breath of doom enveloped Garrison once again.

He snapped the greatcape up, interposing its magical fabric between his life and the monster’s gaping jaws. If magic could not work to combat magic, Alan Garrison was about to find out. Garrison flung his body onto Arba’Il’Tac’s frigid grey stone and rolled.

There was a hideous shriek and the rock pulsed beneath him. Garrison remembered to open his eyes. The monster skittered along over the plateau, like an out-of-control aircraft crash landing, the greatcape which clung to its head blinding it. As the monster struck at last with full impact, the intermittent pulsing of the rock floor transformed into a single, violent shudder. The monster skidded, stopped suddenly, shrieked again, then gave a mighty shake of its terrible head. The cape fell from the beasts eyes.

The monster stood, swayed on ridiculously skinny legs. Its talons scraped at the stone, sparks flying in their wake. It flexed its wings, then soared skyward.

Garrison didn’t lie to himself. He was fresh out of magical greatcapes. On its next pass, the beast would kill him...

Swan’s heart skipped a beat when Al’An, braver than brave, blinded the winged monster and sent it crashing into the plateau. But her heart sank when the creature shrugged the greatcape from its eyes and once again took flight.

Swan still didn’t know if there would be time enough.

The other beasts magically resurrected by her mother, none of them so far displaying any evidence that they could fly, were advancing across Arba’Il’Tac. In the space of time that it would take to draw but a few breaths, they would close with Erg’Ran, Gar’Ath and the others.

The magical energy filled Swan, but she did not yet know how she could use it in order to defeat this terrible enemy.

Dismounting less than gracefully from her terrified horse, she glanced at the animal, magically commanding it, “You will stay beside me. Do not be afraid.” Her mount immediately quieted, lowered its head.

Commanding what was natural was always easier than commanding the unnatural.

Swan knew in that instant what she must do.

These gargantuan beasts, mere moments away from their unspeakable triumph, were vicious, creatures formidable beyond her imagining. But Al’An’s fires pitters and axe, the swords and axes and spears and crossbows of the others, would kill living beasts. The monsters could be slaughtered only if they lived, were of flesh which could be rent, blood which could be spilled, bone which could be crushed.

Swan had joked with herself when she was briefly angry with Erg’Ran, that she had to quit their interview lest she lose her temper and turn him into a frog. She knew the transmuting spells, but had never commanded them—until she raised her voice in a scream which echoed like thunder over the plateau that was Arba’Il’Tac.

Swan felt the power. Everything stopped, men and horses and nightmare beasts focusing their eyes upon her.

Swan’s arms extended toward the night, her hands grasping at the starlight. Magical energy flowed in lightning bolts from her fingertips as the ancient words spilled forth from her lips into the fabric of the sky.

The Old Tongue words wove one with the other, the spell casting chain begun. The power of the lightning magnified beyond that of any magical energy she had ever known. Swan turned her open hands to the stars, great luminescent balls of magical energy—gold and crimson and brilliant white—born from her outstretched palms, floating, pulsating, alive.

Her voice throaty, guttural sounding to her, primal, frightening, Swan cried out the final incantation, commanding the balls of light to her bidding. “The undead beast which flies and those which stalk the plateau, all to devour both man and horse their sole reason to exist!—transmute them so that they will be living beings of flesh as once they were! Obey me, force of magic! Transmute them into living creatures so that they can be returned to the dead!”

There was a rumble, louder than any thunder, her command louder still. “Heed me, force of magic! Heed well the Enchantress’s desire! Obey me now!” Swan tossed her head, energy swirling round her in a wind that was not a wind, her hair, her skirts caught up in it. Her back arched, hands and arms stretched to their greatest reach. The magic flowed...

As if they were alive, the balls of energy flew from Swan’s hands, sailed through the night with effortless ease, engulfing first one, then another and another and another of the translucent beasts. At the very instant in which the light touched them, the nightmare creatures began to transform.

Awestruck, Alan Garrison could do nothing but watch.

Solid bone emerged from magic shadow, cells growing, dividing, growing, dividing again, multiplying into matter in the blink of an eye. Where there had been only magical illusion, there was life. Garrison watched nerve endings fire, tissue grow, blood vessels and capillaries fill, the blood flowing through them visible in the brief instant during which they remained partially transparent. Garrison witnessed oxygenation in the space of a heartbeat. Flesh and muscle took shape. Masking the circulation beneath, skin—wet and raw and slick and new—formed, encasing all within.

The mesmerizing effect Swan’s incantation held over all life on Arba’Il’Tac faded as did the light.

Garrison scanned the ground for his lost axe, took it up. Real, magical no longer, the creatures were as dangerous as before. But now they could be killed.

Swan’s voice rang out to him across the plateau. “Raise your axe, Al’An! Raise it high!”

Garrison did as bidden.

A bolt of lightning flew from Swan’s fingertips, struck the blade of his axe, blue-white electricity arcing along its edge. “Now, brave Al’An! Now wield your axe in triumph!”

Evidently, the winged creature did not like him. The beast flapped its enormous wings and took flight, circling above Garrison. He was tempted to shout to Swan, “Slip some magic to my .45s!” There was no time for that. The axe or nothing stood between him and the monster as it banked its wings and started to dive.

At the back of his mind, he decided that he would just as soon forego the opportunity to encounter a fire-breathing ice dragon once—if—they reached Woroc’Il’Lod.

This was a logic problem, Garrison convinced himself. All he had to do was figure out exactly where to strike the beast. The obvious target would be the reeking hole of its mouth, but was that the best choice?

In the last second, Garrison thought not and tried something else. The beast nearly upon him—Garrison remembered that it couldn’t change direction all that rapidly—he ran forward with all his speed, dropping into a crouch and swinging the axe against the creature’s underbelly as it overflew him. Blood and gore and intestines rained down on Garrison, as his axe twisted in the creature’s guts.

Before Garrison could think or act, the beast’s wings thrummed harder, and it was climbing. There was no time to let go, Garrison still grasping the imbedded shaft, tightening his grip as the monster strained for all the altitude it could attain.

Definitely the proper moment for a reference to g’urg, Garrison thought desperately as he looked at the ground racing below. To what he mentally ascribed as the “North,” the plateau dropped abruptly toward a vast sea; Woroc’Il’Lod, great icesheets and towering icebergs stood well out from the shore.

The blood and gore washed from the winged beast’s insides, covering Garrison in slime, and oozed down along the axe shaft. Despite his gloves, Garrison’s hands were slipping. Even had the axe handle’s surface remained clean, Garrison’s grip would not hold out much longer.

The creature shuddered, let out a cry, and Garrison realized that it died in the same instant.

Garrison trembled. Fear, of course, but much more than fear, he shook with rage. He was going to die for sure this time, die and abandon the most wonderful, craziest, most perfect woman he’d ever known or ever dreamed of knowing. Had he been at all uncertain before this moment, now Garrison realized how much he loved her, that he loved Swan more than the life that he was about to lose.

It seemed there was to be a pause between the winged beast’s death and Garrison’s own. The creature’s body floated along peacefully through the night sky, drifting on and supported by the wind currents. These precious few seconds passed. The wings, still outstretched but no longer flapping at the monsters volition, were beaten instead, an assault begun by the very air which had kept the beast aloft.

There had been a perfect stillness, during which Garrison heard nothing but the soft keening of the wind. But, that whispering began to increase, subtly at first, then became a roar, louder and louder, the monster’s body starting to plummet.

Death was inevitable for him, but that was no reason just to take it, accept it. That he would die, he was sure, but that he would fight death to the last, of that he was also certain. He let go of the axe shaft with one hand and grasped for the stem of the nearest wing...

Erg’Ran’s axe blade bit deep into the throat of the beast. One mighty claw lashed downward, but Erg’Ran, despite his peg leg, was able to dodge aside.

Erg’Ran’s horse reared, whinnied, and the beast was distracted and wheeled round to silence it. Erg’Ran shifted the axe to his left hand, drew his sword, charged the monster, hacking and slashing along its flank.