25
The sun was black in a red sky. The heat was the worst Garric had felt since haying last August, but with this difference: there was no moisture in the air. No moisture at all.
Garric touched the hilt of the borrowed sword. The grip was a dowel of hazelwood with shallow finger grooves. That was well enough, but the filbert-shaped pommel and the crossguard were silvered bronze that would soon grow hot enough to burn in this black light. With a reflex not his own, Garric tugged an additional fold of tunic up over his belt and let it flop to cover the metal parts of the hilt. Otherwise he might flinch when he gripped the weapon at a time when there was no room for mistakes.
The figure in the back of Garric's mind knew swords; oh, yes, he knew swords.
"Is it always like this, mistress?" Garric said. He looked around at desolation in shades of red and black alone. There was no wind, and his voice was the only sound in this world. "Is this where demons live?"
"This is where Strasedon lives," Tenoctris said. "As for planes inhabited by other demons—Garric, nobody's ever done this before. Not and come back to leave a record, at least."
"Oh," said Garric. "Well, I don't guess it matters."
Tenoctris settled to the ground with her legs crossed beneath her and began to draw symbols with her boxwood twig. The soil had the texture of sandy loam. When the heat seeped through his callused soles Garric reflexively moved into a dark patch that past experience told him was shadow.
It was like stepping on live coals. He hopped instantly back to ground that shimmered red.
Reflex could hurt him here. Reflex could kill him.
Tenoctris had drawn the stick figure of a man and placed unfamiliar symbols between the four limbs and head. Now she was encircling the image with words in the Old Script.
Garric resumed surveying the landscape. It looked unappealing but not bizarre if he allowed for the reversal of light and darkness. This was a place of weathered badlands, banks that climbed hundreds of feet in a series of eroded steps. Cones and plateaus stood out against the red sky.
There was no vegetation. Whenever Garric turned his head he sensed tiny, scampering motion just beyond the range of his vision. His fingertips lay on the covered pommel of his sword.
Tenoctris finished writing on the soil and looked up with a kind of smile. "I need to wait a few minutes before I read the spell," she said. "Noon will be the best time and that's almost on us."
Garric fluffed the sweat-soaked tunic away from his chest and tried to echo the old woman's smile. I wish I'd worn a hat against this sun. He supposed he was thinking about that to keep his mind off real problems.
"The spell is to take us to Strasedon?" he asked, wondering how much it hurt to die the way Benlo had. The broken landscape would give no warning of the demon's presence. Runnels of earth reached into this valley from a dozen places in either direction; a seawolf or a demon could be waiting behind any one of them. Ravines crosscut the ground, bright red streaks of shadow that were yards across, shelter for monsters to hide.
Benlo had screamed, but not for very long.
Tenoctris shook her head. "Strasedon is the whole plane that we see," she said. She picked up a pinch of gritty soil and let it trickle away again. "I'm going to find Liane because she's the only variation in perfect uniformity."
She looked around her. "This is . . ." She smiled ruefully at her own foolishness. "I find this a wonderful experience, something I never dreamed I'd see. So much power is resident here that it's solid."
She waggled her hand at the air as if patting an invisible wall. "It's pure, not the mix of forces one finds on our plane, what you call the real world," she went on. "The very intensity is what may save us: Strasedon's own strength limits its ability to work through itself."
The back of Garric's throat was dry from breathing and his lips were already beginning to crack. "Do you mean there isn't a demon here like the one that met Benlo?" he said. Killed Benlo. "We just find Liane and take her back with us?"
"There's a demon," Tenoctris said. "And until it dies, it won't release Liane."
She lifted her free hand to end the conversation. "It's time now," she said. Ignoring Garric, the old woman dipped her twig wand and began murmuring the words of her spell.
Garric nodded, and touched his sword hilt, and wondered.
The center of Tenoctris' crude circle popped with a sound like a knot cracking in the fire. A streak of white light extended: at first slowly, then with the gathering momentum of a stone dropping from a sheer cliff toward the sea. The line rippled across the soil and finally raced up the side of a flat-topped knoll to vanish. Remembrance of the light's purity settled Garric's nerves and warned him how keyed up he'd been an instant before.
"That way, then," he said aloud. He offered Tenoctris his left hand to help her rise. The sides of knoll were steep, but cracks and gullies formed paths in the friable soil.
A thought struck Garric. He looked around again and said, "Mistress? The doorway we came by doesn't show from this side. How do we get back?"
"Time enough to worry about that after we've killed Strasedon, Garric," Tenoctris said. "Otherwise it really won't matter."