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Cashel pushed the tapestry out of the way and stepped into a throne room stinking of fire and old death. Sharina stood with her back against the opposite wall, holding the hermit's heavy knife. She faced a long-armed demon with a mottled red body.
Cashel stepped forward, circled his left arm around the demon's throat, and threw the creature backward over his braced left knee. It crashed to the floor so hard the impact cracked the terrazzo.
Sharina stepped forward, raising the big knife. "Get away with that, girl!" Cashel said. "You'll hurt no one but me or yourself with a knife!"
His words surprised him, maybe more than they surprised Sharina. Still, when Cashel saw a straight path to completing a task he'd always taken it, and he didn't have time for folks who got in his way. He didn't know as much about fighting demons as he did about sheep, but it was a thing he'd done.
If he'd had any doubt that the same rules applied to this creature as had to Derg, the wreckage of this room and the hall beyond would have convinced him. Score of liches and their varied weaponry lay strewn and shattered across the polished floors. The demon's ruddy skin was unmarked.
Sharina backed into the angle of the wall and the black throne dominating the room. It was an ugly thing that looked like it was formed by the twined bodies of living snakes instead of being carved out of stone.
But it wasn't Cashel's concern just now.
The demon got to its feet. It was taller than Derg but not nearly as heavily built. The exceptional length of its arms reminded Cashel of a crab, or a crab spider.
"I will kill you now, peasant," the creature said in the voice of Meder, the procurator's wizard.
Cashel tossed his head like a bull clearing his horns. "Better men have tried," he said. "Better demons, too."
They stepped together. Cashel gripped Meder's forearms because his own arms didn't have the span to catch the demon's wrists.
There were no lights in the throne room and only a candle or two burning in the great hall beyond, but the light of a full moon streamed through windows just below the vaulted ceiling. Wall hangings, one of them the tapestry Cashel had emerged behind, fluttered in the violence of the combat. Each woven scene was a distant world depicted with the realism of a death mask.
Cashel butted Meder in the chest. The demon wasn't any heavier than Cashel or at any rate not by much, but he was ungodly strong. Meder's toes scratched for traction, digging furrows in the marble chips and black mortar.
Meder bent his arms, bringing his hands toward the youth's temples like clawed pincers. Cashel didn't have the leverage to prevent him. An instant before his elbows folded and the claws met in his brain, Cashel twisted his torso and flung the demon over his right knee again, this time sideways.
Meder crashed down, skidding on the slick surface. Cashel bent forward, resting his fingertips on the floor as he breathed in great gasps.
The only thing that had saved him thus far was that Meder didn't know how to use his advantages—didn't know how to fight. He wasn't greatly stronger than Cashel, but he didn't tire and he wasn't harmed by being slammed down hard enough to crush stone.
The demon had a scarecrow build and a supple spine. Cashel couldn't bend Meder's back far enough over his knee to break the spine.
Meder stood up. He gave a screeching, angry laugh and started for Cashel.
The only option Cashel saw was going to be fatal to him even if it succeeded, because the demon would have time to claw him apart. Survival—even Sharina's survival—wasn't the most important thing right now. Winning this fight was the most important thing.
Winning was the only thing.
Cashel gave a roar from deep in his throat and lunged toward Meder, catching the demon off-guard. Cashel had his left forearm under Meder's chin and his right forearm around the demon's back for a fulcrum before the red hands closed on his bare back.
Cashel levered his left arm upward with all his strength, ignoring the claws that raked him. Meder resisted, trying to force his chin down. He twisted his head in an attempt to escape the pressure.
Blood streamed down Cashel's back. He'd do all that human strength could do; he'd press his arm into Meder's throat for as long as he could. And then he would die.
A flicker of fierce, red light, a figure only inches high, sprang from one of the tapestries. It bounded toward the combatants like a wolf running and set its jaws above Meder's heel where the Achilles tendon would be in a man.
Meder screamed so loud in startled pain that weapons lying on the stone quivered in sympathy. The scream ended in a crack! as sharp as lighting when Cashel broke the demon's neck.
Cashel hurled the body away from him with a cry less of triumph than relief. Meder's gangling form sprawled half on, half beside the black throne. His foreclaws dripped blood on the terrazzo.
"I owed you nothing, human!" Derg cried, his dog-faced form as small as when Cashel first glimpsed him in the strongbox. "This was my gift to a friend!"
He leaped back onto, into the tapestry from which he'd come.
Sharina knelt beside Cashel. She began slicing her cloak into bandages with the Pewle knife. "There's a fountain in the main hall, Cashel," she said. "Can you walk that far or shall I bring a helmetful to you here?"
He hadn't thought he'd ever hear Sharina's voice again. Her face had firmer lines than that of the girl he'd known in Barca's Hamlet, and she was even more beautiful.
"I can walk," Cashel said. He took another deep breath, gathering his strength to rise. He'd said the words, so now all that remained was to make them so.
The tapestry he'd come from behind was an almost perfect duplicate of the one in the ruined tower where he'd left Derg and Mellie. In it a bridge crossed a broad river toward a forest and a city of fairy glass.
Two tiny figures stood at the center span of the bridge. They waved toward Cashel. One was a dog-faced demon, and the other was a sprite with rich red hair.