The Heavenly Host (Demons of Astlan Book 2) (56 page)

“Oh, indeed, indeed they were. However, the battle was only one of two things the Council found interesting.”

“Oh, yes?” Exador was getting impatient; the whining imbecile would not get to the point.

“Well, by pure happenstance, Alexandros Mien noticed something in the background at one point and drew the Council’s attention to it,” Randolf said hesitantly.

“Yes, already. Spit it out.”

“We zoomed in to discover a flying carpet watching the battle,” Randolf said.

Exador felt his eyes hardening in their sockets. He twitched his mouth into a small, tight smile. “A flying carpet?”

“Yes.” Randolf grimaced again. “There seemed to be something of tea party going on between the three occupants as they watched the battle.”

“Do go on,” Exador said through clenched teeth.

“Yes, it appeared, at least, to everyone other than myself, of course”—Randolf gave Exador one of his sickly grins —“that you were one of the occupants, along with a woman of Natooran descent and a gentleman who looked remarkably like the portraits of the Anilord Time Warrior, Ramses the Damned.”

“Indeed, I did have a nice viewpoint for the battle,” Exador said, forcing himself to be calm. “I take it that the Council found it unusual that I might have chosen to watch the battle from outside the city walls?”

Randolf gulped and looked around, clearly hoping for a cup of tea or some other object to allow a mild distraction. “Well, as you may recall, the Knight Rampant, Talarius, had claimed that there were three archdemons in the palace.”

“I do seem to recall that,” Exador said tightly.

“I know it’s ridiculous and I assured everyone on the Council that it was completely impossible…”

“But?” Exador prompted.

“But they seem to have this silly notion that the three individuals on the flying carpet were the three archdemons who had been expelled by Lenamare’s pentacles,” Randolf finished rather timidly.

Exador sat there staring at Randolf for several long moments. Several very long, very uncomfortable moments as Exador watched Randolf sweat. Finally, when it looked like Randolf could take it no more, Exador suddenly burst out laughing, slapping his thighs and bending over in his chair in a completely uncharacteristic display of mirth.

“Gods above and below!” Exador wheezed when he had finally stopped laughing hard enough to breathe in some air. “Me? An archdemon? That is incredibly rich! Oh, I cannot believe it! I have never been so flattered in my entire life!”

Randolf stared at his magi. Clearly, this was not the response the archimage had been expecting. Exador got up, still bent over from laughter, and moved closer to the archimage, clasping him on the shoulder. Randolf could see the tears of laughter running down Exador’s cheeks.

“Truly, my friend, you have made my day!” Exador hugged him. “You have no idea how funny this is! I think this has to be one of the best moments of my life.” Exador stood up, wincing as he placed his hand on his side, obviously tending a stitch from laughter. “To think the entire Council of Wizardry, including that fool Lenamare, thinks that I, Exador of Turelane, am an archdemon!” He shook his head. “This is just too rich! No wonder everyone was looking at me so oddly.”

The mage started pacing to work off his laughter, his smile wider than Randolf had ever seen it. “I think I shall enjoy their tiptoeing and fearful gazes a bit longer before disabusing them of this ludicrous notion!” Exador turned and grinned quite broadly at the stunned Randolf.

DOF +6

Late Afternoon (Murgatroy Time) 16-03-440

Tal Gor El Crooked Stick trudged down to the stream to fill his leather water bag. His scrying exercises were using up a lot of water, and this meant he had to spend an inordinate amount of time trudging back and forth from his small tent to the stream. This in turn meant he was spending quite a bit of time in pain. The weight of the water basket on the end of his carrying staff put quite a bit of strain on his bad leg. Once again he cursed the fates for allowing him to live after he had failed to kill the wyvern that had mangled his left leg. If he had died like Dar Oth Non, Sep Tar On and Fer Bar Seth, at least he would not have to live with being a crippled apprentice shaman to a dying shaman of a less than sober bearing.

He had dreamed his whole life of being a great hunter and warrior like his father, Sal Gor El Crooked Stick; his mother, Mar An Crooked Stick; his sister, Soo An Crooked Stick; and his two older brothers, Bor Tal El Crooked Stick and Fel Nor El Crooked Stick. Okay, to be fair, he had dreamed of being a greater warrior than his older siblings. Instead, on his second hunting expedition they had encountered a wyvern that had managed to kill the rest of the hunting party before his father, who had been trailing half a league behind the young hunters for just such emergencies, had arrived to finish off the wyvern.

Horrgus Trifeather, the shaman, had been off at a trading post in Murgatroy and only the healing woman, Fesha No Al, had been around to tend him for the first two days. By the time the shaman had returned, his wounds had set in and while between the two of them, his life had been spared, he would never be truly fit for battle again.

That had been four years ago, shortly after he turned thirteen. If not for the shaman detecting a spark of spirit magic within him, he would have been reduced to being a cook’s assistant or some similarly ignoble fate. As it was, he had become apprentice to Horrgus.

He should not complain; shaman was an honored position. Even if the tribe’s own shaman was a bit—well,
drunk
was the only word he could come up with. He might have said “shabby,” but to be fair, the entire Crooked Stick tribe was a bit shabby and poor these days. The tribe was down to only three bands, totaling no more than 150 warriors and another forty or so children and others, including one shaman and his apprentice.

Tal Gor trudged along, waving to Feth Bar, the lad currently tasked with bringing dinner to the warg camp. The boy was pulling the meat cart, which was currently filled with several large, squirming and roiling sacks. Tal Gor smiled; the wargs were getting live meat tonight. They would be happy. They really only had the resources to capture live game for the wargs a few times a week. Most of the time they fed wargs from the scraps and entrails from the band’s primary kills. It just took too much time and effort to catch and preserve live game for them every day.

Not that there were that many wargs. They did not even have enough for every warrior in the tribe. Certainly not one for Tal Gor to ride regularly. Only on migrations did he get to ride. On those long journeys, his leg had proven to slow him and thus the tribe down. In the old days, he would probably have been left to die or given the coup; but in this day and age, the tribe needed every semi-able hand they could get.

Tal Gor eventually made it back to his tent with his water bucket. He hung it on its small tripod and sat down on his pillow to massage his aching leg. He peered into the empty copper bowl he had been using for scrying. He had not been getting much in the way of results. Today he had worked with chemical components to effect a Viewing; five attempts and nothing. He really was not much of a shaman. He sighed as he rubbed his leg to ease the pain. He would never even be as good sober as Horrgus was drunk.

Tal Gor liked to think all this was not just him. His entire tribe was not what it used to be. He snorted, remembering two years ago on the western plains when the tribe had passed by one of the abandoned fortresses raised by Ferundy thousands of year ago to defend the land from the Orc Hordes. Horrgus had told them that the Ferunds had built multiple lines of defense, fortresses behind fortresses to hold back the tribes. Today the Ferunds only garrisoned the inner fortresses, and barely those. The tribes had not been able to mount a credible force in hundreds of years, and even that last one had been nothing compared to the great days thousands of years ago.

He shook his head and bent over to rummage through the loose pile of mementos that he held on to for no good reason. He grabbed the one that had captured his imagination the most when he first found it buried deep in one of Horrgus’s trunks. It was a roundish stone with two protrusions on the sides near the top, like horns, or so Tal Gor imagined. The worn and barely recognizable face of some orc-like creature was carved on the front of the stone. Horrgus had laughed and said that it was the scrying stone of a long-dead god. The thought of such a god had resonated with him. It seemed to perfectly symbolize the fortunes of his tribe, and his own dreams. He had pestered Horrgus for details of the god, but the shaman had put him off time and again. Only slowly over the years had he learned the tales that Horrgus knew regarding the dead god. Only slowly had he been able to connect the long-dead god to myths told by storytellers.

The tales had been fantastic; at every feast or gathering of the tribes he would ply other shamans and history tellers, as well as storytellers, with questions about the long-dead god. Eventually, he became a sort of resident expert. No one particularly cared about the long-dead god anymore. Even though all remembered his name, and the warriors and history tellers told stories of him now and then, they all considered the god and any related tales fictitious. This was why it took Tal Gor nearly a year to put together the myth of the storytellers with the talisman of the long-dead god. Once he had started to know more, he had enjoyed pretending that he was the last shaman dedicated to the long-dead god.

DOF +6

Evening (Murgatroy Time) 16-03-440

Tal Gor returned to his tent, ready for bed. Tonight had been his night to help with cleanup and he had spent the pot-scrubbing ordeal listening to his brothers and their friends discussing their last hunting trip and their bravery. He wished so much that he could go hunting again, but he was too much of a burden on the others. It was an old complaint of his; he should get over it. Most nights when he did not have to be out by the main fires, he would return to his tent to study or practice.

He really should work more on his scrying, but he was tired and really did not feel like making another useless attempt. His agitation was enough, though, that he would probably have trouble sleeping if he went to bed immediately. He frowned and then smiled on seeing his dead god’s talisman.

He quickly filled his copper bowl from the water bag. He lit two candles on small wooden stands on each side of the bowl. He then sprinkled scrying herbs in the water. He was the priest of the Lord of the Underworld, the mighty demon lord Orcus! He needed to summon his deity to advise him on a matter of great import.

He grabbed his dagger and pulled it from his sheath. He cut the palm of his left hand and, laying the dagger aside as blood lightly filled his palm from the cut, he picked up the talisman and placed it facedown in his palm to feed the god’s mouth his blood.

“
Orgnath falgon, zartoth Orcus!
” Tal Gor chanted softly. He did not want others hearing his games. He was basically ad libbing, putting together normal chants to the spirits with what he imagined he would need to contact a deity. “
Anoboth, trigoshlog, nargh fal doth toman. Graghl foth zartoth!
”

He thrust his fist with the talisman into the water… and screeched as the cut in his hand burned with pain. The herbs were apparently painful against the open wound, or so Tal Gor thought until he started getting woozy and the room started to swirl around him. He glanced worriedly down at the bowl. Had he cut too deep? Was his life’s blood overfilling the basin?

Red blood swirled in the water, casting a red tint to the reflected candle light. The bowl was oddly bright and shimmering. What was that in the bowl? Tal Gor wondered woozily. It was not his reflection. The young shaman suddenly passed out.

“Well, that was faster than I would have expected,” a craggy baritone voice crackled. It sounded like that of an elder warrior.

“What are you talking about?” another deep but female voice asked.

An extremely bass and darkly disturbing voice said, “Use your demon sight. We have an insubstantial visitor that has just joined us.”
Demon sight?
Tal Gor wondered groggily, trying to open his suddenly sleep-heavy eyelids.

“Over by the calling stone with Astlan’s symbol on it,” a third craggy voice stated. “A dream walker has come to us.”

“Ahh, I see. He looks rather young,” the woman’s voice said.

“Interesting in that we had not actually tried calling to him; yet he shows up on his own shortly after the temple’s runes were reactivated,” the disturbing deep voice said.

Tal Gor finally managed to get his eyes open and stared in awe at the room around him. He was sitting on the floor hugging a large silver talisman that looked very much like his stone talisman, yet unworn. He was in a large, carved-stone chamber with a number of large pillars around the edges. He himself was seated between two of the pillars. The voices were coming from the other side of the room, about twenty feet away. There were five very large, very odd-looking orcs and an even larger something else.

The odd-looking orcs were impressively massive, yet had cloven hooves and wings. The orcs were of widely varying colors. The giant creature was truly frightening; it had a lower body like that of a satyr, but instead of being hairy, this being was scaly and had a long tail with a spade on the end. The being’s upper torso was very orc-like, but hugely massive, with far better defined musculature than any orc he had ever seen. The being had huge bat-like wings, not unlike the weird orcs, just a lot bigger. His arms were huge with massive claws. His muzzle was more snout-like than that of an orc, more bestial with huge fangs rather than tusks, and very sharp teeth. The demon, for clearly it could be nothing else, also had huge horns, much like on the talisman.

Tal Gor gulped as he stared at the creatures, who were staring back at him as well. Finally, Tal Gor stammered, “M- My Lord God Orcus?” It was probably hard to hear, but he was feeling rather stunned.

“Well, at least the boy knows where he is,” the woman, who was standing next to the large demon, said.

The large demon, or so Orcus Tal Gor supposed it was, grinned. At least, Tal Gor hoped that that horrifying visage was a grin. “I am Tommus,” it said, “the new Master of Mount Doom. What is your name?”

“Tal Gor El Crooked Stick, son of Sal Gor El and Mar An Crooked Stick. I am apprentice shaman for the Crooked Stick tribe.”

“Vespa will be pleased that one of her tribe was the first to actually contact us,” the woman said.

A man who had not spoken before said, “I must admit, the Crooked Stick bloodline must be strong if an apprentice shaman can seek out and find this temple on his own after all this time. I had expected that locating any shaman still capable of hearing us would have been a task, and here an apprentice comes to us before we call.”

The giant demon stood; it had been seated on a low-backed throne behind an altar. It was huge, twice the height of Tal Gor. It pulled a huge mace with a metal version of the talisman as the ball of the mace. It walked over and stood before Tal Gor. “Rise, shaman,” it commanded.

Tal Gor gulped and stood up. Surprisingly, he felt no pain as he stood. He glanced down at his leg to see it as it always was, yet it did not hurt.

The demon lord noticed his glance. “So you’ve been wounded?”

“Yes, My Lord. I am sorry for my weakness,” Tal Gor said, looking to the ground ashamed.

The demon lord chuckled. “Strength comes in many forms. Do not belittle yourself. You have come here today, uncalled when we were about to look for you. Your strength as a shaman has impressed the commanders of the D’Orcs, and it has impressed me. You have chosen to come to me, and I could use your assistance. Will you swear to be my shaman?”

Still in shock, Tal Gor nodded.

“Grasp the head of my mace and swear by your name and tribe that you shall serve me faithfully as my shaman,” Dark Lord Tommus commanded.

Tal Gor reached out and grasped the head of the mace with his cut hand. “I, Tal Gor El Crooked Stick, son of Sal Gor El Crooked Stick and Mar An Crooked Stick, Apprentice of Horrgus Trifeather, do hereby solemnly swear to be shaman of Lord Tommus, Master of Mount Doom, with all the duties and responsibilities that ensue.” Tal Gor was improvising based on other oath-taking ceremonies he knew of; specifically, the shamanic oaths of service.

“I, Tommus, Master of Mount Doom, do hereby take thee, Tal Gor El Crooked Stick, to be my shaman with all the duties and responsibilities that ensue.”

Suddenly, Tal Gor felt himself overwhelmed by the presence of Tommus. Strange visions and things he did not understand swept through him and he felt weak and dizzy and lost, and then suddenly he felt a warmth and an embracing that was unlike anything he’d felt before.

Tal Gor, return to your sleep now. My commanders and I shall have work for you. We will need to hunt, a great deal, and will need your assistance to come into your realm. I shall contact you when the time is right
, Lord Tommus boomed inside Tal Gor’s mind.