29

Garric had the shepherd's trick of keeping his head raised while walking uphill when the reflex is to look down at your feet. He scanned the crest ahead of them and the stark emptiness of their surroundings.

The ground was grit rather than gravel, apt to crumble out from underfoot when any weight was put on it. The slopes were steep, the sun fiercely hot, and the texture wrong because the reversed light and dark image tricked Garric's eyes into expecting something subtly different from what his feet touched. For all that he slid rarely, dabbed his hand down to hold himself only once, and never fell.

Tenoctris bounced like a pinecone being kicked by a circle of children. "Shall I—" Garric offered for the third or fourth time.

"Your task is to keep us alive when Strasedon appears," the old woman snapped. "Trying to carry me and getting us both killed won't make the situation better."

"Yes, mistress," Garric said submissively.

He'd have traveled much faster if he hadn't had to suit his pace to Tenoctris, but he couldn't very well leave her behind. They knew where Liane had been; not necessarily where she was, and not certainly where the demon itself was. Garric couldn't locate Strasedon again if the demon wasn't waiting over the ridge.

The black sun would kill before long if Strasedon's claws did not.

"I never expected to be doing anything like this," Tenoctris said, panting but surprisingly cheerful. "I don't mean that I didn't want to visit another plane myself: it's just that I knew I didn't have the power to do anything of the sort. As well wish I could fly."

She chuckled. "When Yole sank, the tower roof and I lifted into the air. I really did fly. And now I'm on a demon plane. Tenoctris the scholar, Tenoctris who read about wondrous explorations and the researches of other folk, who had the power to cleave time and space."

The plateau up which the pointer of light had streaked was three-leveled; the hillsides between sloped at about one foot in four, maybe a little steeper. From below, the top of each next step looked like the top of the plateau itself. This time Garric thought that the edge above them was the real peak.

He walked at a slant, his left side to the higher ground. His left hand rested on the fold of his tunic, ready to snatch it away from the sword hilt for his right hand to grip.

"All those books that were my life," Tenoctris mused. "Sunken for a thousand years. And here I am, doing what—"

Strasedon came over the crest twenty feet above Garric.

The demon walked like a man, but its legs were short and bowed while its arms were so long that the clawed fingers could almost brush the ground. The big toes carried particularly large hooked claws: Strasedon's right leg was still covered with Benlo's black crusted blood.

Strasedon held Liane around the waist in its left hand. The girl was alive. She gripped the demon's upper arm to take some of the weight off her abdomen while her feet dangled in the air.

When Liane saw Garric her face froze. She didn't call out.

Strasedon's skin was the dark translucent red of fine garnets. The creature's face was flat and noseless; the lower jaw rose and fell vertically instead of pivoting at the back. The upper and lower teeth slid past each other as close as scissor blades; the jagged points clicked softly as the demon advanced.

Garric drew his borrowed sword and felt King Carus fill his flesh the way a man shrugs into a tunic. He began to sidle left and away from the demon to gain the advantage of height or at least parity. If Strasedon went for Tenoctris, so much the better: that would open the demon's back to Garric's leaping, slashing attack.

The part of Garric's mind that still was Garric felt horrified at the cold calculation that the old woman's danger was his own opportunity. And yet—Garric had culled herds for the winter. A farmer who saved more animals than he could feed until spring lost all of them, not just the ones he should have slaughtered. If Tenoctris could distract the demon long enough for Garric's sword to thrust home, it might save both of them and Liane as well.

Strasedon tossed Liane to the side and shambled toward Garric. The creature called "Hoo! Hoo! Hoo!" as it advanced.

Laughing demonically himself, Garric lifted his point for a sweeping blow and charged. Dirt sprayed beneath his thrusting toes.

He cut. The swordblade glittered black in the still, dry air. Strasedon snatched at the weapon. The edge sheared off the thumb of the demon's three-fingered hand, but its touch deflected the stroke to glance off the side of Strasedon's hairless skull instead chopping into it squarely.

Rald's sword was good steel. The blade rang like a giant tuning fork in Garric's hand.

Garric leaped sideways—uphill—to avoid Strasedon's grasp. The soil gave way underfoot. He slashed sidearm at the demon. He was falling away and the blow lacked its full force.

The demon's blood was the color of fire. Droplets showered from the sword edge.

Strasedon gripped Garric's right forearm with its injured hand and reached for his throat with the other. Garric's left hand caught the demon's wrist. It was like trying to hold back an ox one-handed. Garric's muscles bulged. Strasedon's clawed fingers clenched and unclenched, but they didn't quite reach his flesh.

The demon bent toward Garric, its jaws sliding open wide enough to shear off the youth's face. Garric half-thrust, half-twisted the swordpoint into the open mouth.

The demon's teeth clamped on the steel, holding the last three inches of the tip like a vise. Garric tried to work the blade deeper the inch or less it would take him to slash through the back of Strasedon's throat, but the jaws held as if the blade had been cast in rock.

Both of them put all their strength into their upper bodies and lost their footing, rolling down the slope together in a whirlwind of sand and rock. The demon was heavy even for its great size, but when it was on top Garric could always twist so that they went over again.

Garric arched his back and clamped his legs around Strasedon's waist. Not a moment too soon: the demon's right leg slashed upward, trying to duplicate the stroke that left Benlo and his guts spread across separate portions of the tomb floor. The talons raked Garric's back, shredding his tunic and tearing his skin, but the demon couldn't get the point of its great hook under the youth's rib cage.

They hit the floor of the valley. Garric's frame was so tensed that the shock didn't drive out his breath, but Strasedon was nonetheless on top of him. Garric tried to lever the demon sideways by using the point of his right shoulder for a fulcrum. He might as profitably have tried to move the mill at Barca's Hamlet.

Strasedon shuddered, then lurched upright so suddenly that Garric lost his death grip on the hilt of his sword. He sprawled on the ground; his back and hips felt cool from the coating of his own drying blood.

The demon spat the sword out. Its teeth had left deep gouges in the steel. Garric tried to get up; his muscles were liquid with exhaustion, unable to obey.

Strasedon turned its face to the red sky and screamed like all the winds of winter. The hilt of Benlo's iron athame projected from the base of the demon's skull.

Tenoctris rested on her hands and knees beside Strasedon where she'd fallen when the demon straightened. Liane stood on the creature's other flank, holding a stone that all the strength of both her arms couldn't raise high enough to strike the demon now that it was upright.

Strasedon turned slowly. The black sun was paler and it seemed to Garric that the whole landscape was crumbling. He couldn't move; most likely what he saw was a fantasy as his brain dissociated from the intense pain.

The world was white light and he was falling. King Carus laughed triumphantly, and somewhere Garric saw the Hooded One clenching his fists in fury.