I waited until the others were long gone before grinning. "Very melodramatic," I congratulated Kit.
She smiled and rolled her eyes. "Did you all really think I was dead? Why would Asjanel come after me if I was already dead?"
I laughed. "So that's why he's attacking Calsa. He's not. He's after you."
She leaned forward, her eyes suddenly urgent. "Where's the little boy who survived Niyuu?"
"Elu?" I shrugged. "Back at the castle."
Kit stared at me. "How would you like to be my assistant?"
I blinked. "What? But that would be betraying everyone!"
"You wouldn't be betraying me." She smiled. "You like the power, Meg. Don't deny it. Your power is raw, untamed. I can show you how to really use it. All I want...is the boy. Everyone says he has something, something powerful. I have to get to him before Asjanel!" There was a dangerous gleam in her blue eyes, something power-mad and frightening. I sort of liked it.
"Well," I said, pretending to think about it. "I am the best person for the job, since no one else has the strength to stop me..."
She grinned, but something was different. She seemed exhausted, paler. "You okay?" I asked.
"Oh, yeah. Magic tires me out," she explained. "I'm mostly burned out at the moment. I did...a lot...the other day." She leaned forward. "Don't tell anyone this. I'm not there."
I didn't get it, so she repeated, "I'm not there. Over there. On Earth. I brought Camryn back here and all our stuff. I have the only CD player on the entire planet." She grinned weakly. "It wasn't easy. That's why I wasn't full-out attacking before. Didn't have the strength. Well, and the fact that I don't want to hurt anybody, but mostly lack of strength."
And then she said something that made me cold all over. The icy tone that she spoke in still haunts me. Often I wake screaming, just from hearing those words ringing in my mind.
"I am strong now, the most powerful mage on the continent. Asjanel killed Ghidoli for her power. If he takes my power, Meg, we are lost to the demons. For he brings them. He brings the fallen angels of hell to combat me. They are here - I feel them. Many will die, screaming and falling to the demons, but I will not. If I have to, I will kill you to stay alive. You understand me? I will gladly sacrifice you to the obscene torment of Asjanel. I must stay alive." She smiled, still speaking words that dripped with coldness. "I'm not evil, Meg. I'm not insane. If Asjanel kills me, he will have my power, and all he wants is to kill everyone who isn't a barbarian. He's the Hitler of Avrien, Meg. I need to be an Empress to stop him. I need to be alive." She coughed. "If Elu falls into his hands, I am dead. Will you protect me, Meg?"
I felt it - the power in her, seething, wrapping around me. The part of my brain that protested was shoved away as I came under her spell. The real Meg was locked away, a thin silver lock, the key held by pale, slender hands. "What do you want me to do?"
Kit smiled brightly. "Be my servant. Jared will kill Asjanel, but he can't hope to get past the demons. I command you to get him past them - help me to destroy them."
"Yes," I said. Part of me screamed, No! No! You're going to get me killed! Let him take you! But that part was locked away, ineffectual. My real self pounded on the door, but the holder of the key just laughed, a dark, sardonic laugh. I continued, "I will do as you wish. I will fight the demons."
The entire Tower seemed to shake. She pointed at the door. "Go, Meg. Run. Your friends are in danger. Get into the castle, but follow me back to Naeco. Bring the boy."
I ran. What could I do? I took the stairs four at a time, burst out the door, ran toward the south gate.
My friends were frozen in front of the army of Asjanel. Ashton had gone wolf and snarled, keeping them at bay. I looked at them, saw the demons, but the final command of my new master rang in my head. Bring the boy. Bring Elu to Naeco.
I jumped, jumped right straight up to the top of the wall, landed, scraped my knee, jumped down. Fire! In the streets, licking at the houses. I ran to the castle, outran the fire. My friends? They'd be okay.
Bring the boy.
The fleetness of a deer pounded through my legs, my magic, still operating even in my spellbound state. I halted at the castle for a minute, looked up, tried to break free, just to see if I could.
No. I was stronger than Kit physically, easily, but mentally, her power overwhelmed me. Here was a lock I could not break. I tried - the real Meg did try - but the spellbound, physical body kicked open a door and dashed in.
I found Elu easily, too easily, standing in the throne room with Hedaris and Amidan. The royal pair looked at me solemnly. Should I save them? They were next in line to be the rulers of Telaia. No, Kit was going to be Empress. They had to die in the fires that consumed Calsa.
My eyes focused on Elu. He looked back, his blind eyes calm, blind to the darkness in me. "Meg," he acknowledged. "So, you have fallen." Oh, he knew, he knew! But he made no move to stop me. He stepped forward, stretched out his hands. I took them, crouched down.
"You know what I have been commanded to do," I said.
He nodded. "I am sorry," he whispered. "Even the strongest will fall to Kitana. She is not evil - not as evil as Asjanel - but all will fall to her power. Perhaps she will fall as well. Time will tell. I do not blame you, Meg." He shuddered, tremors coursing through his body. "If I die, my blood is not on your hands, for I should not go to Naeco...but I will."
I nodded, tears gathering in my eyes. "I'm so sorry," I whispered. "I'm so sorry, Elu."
Then the spellbound me took over, roughly dragged him up, swung him onto my back. "I'll carry you," I snapped. "Let's go."
Hedaris and Amidan watched, their eyes strangely calm. I looked closer before Elu said, "Don't bother. They are in my power, and through me, the power of the Oracles. They will survive, but they will not stand in your way now."
Good. I didn't want to hurt them.
I ran, Elu on my back, outside. Heard horses screaming in agony. No, the stables! But wait - the stables were on the other side of Calsa, the side that wasn't burning.
I turned and looked back. Demons. Of course. They smoldered with the flames of hell. Several buildings were aflame.
"What about my friends?" I asked Elu.
I felt him shake his head. "Take me to the Tower. They will join us presently - in Naeco."
We hurried, hurried as fast as I could run with him on my back. Out the south gate, past the barbarians, who seemed quite busy slaughtering the army. Where was the general? Where were they? I looked, saw the horses, both dead.
"Dakota!" Elu cried suddenly, sitting up straighter, thin arms wrapped around my neck. "We left Dakota!"
"Forget him!" I tried to say. Words wouldn't come. Dakota. He was an essential part of the team.
Then a wet nose pressed into my ankle. I looked down and saw the wolf. He looked back, straight into my eyes, his golden ones worried. Somehow, I understood.
"Jared's not here," I said. "Follow me. I'll keep you safe till we find him again."
Everyone ignored us, we three - the spellbound young woman, the blind prophet, the concerned hunting wolf. We reached the Tower unharmed.
All the mages had gathered in the lobby. Imarath found us. "The wolf is a surprise," he remarked. "We're going to pick the Tower up and fly back to Naeco. Would you like to help?"
"Sorry, not my kind of magic," I replied, setting Elu down. "Go ahead and fly us to Naeco."
*Jared*
Captured. We were captured.
Ashton? Trapped in wolf form, bound in such a way that something would break if she became human. She whimpered, blue eyes pleading to be set free.
Meg? Well, she wasn't there. I hadn't seen her. Was she safe at the Tower? Hopefully. Wait, safe? At the Tower? I could only hope that she had escaped the demons and the mages both.
Shannon? Weapons taken away, black sorcerer robe torn up from the fierce, short battle with the magician's apprentice, Ryac. She was unconscious, dangling from a tree, wrists tied to a branch, toes touching the ground.
Mary? The general. Special treatment for her. She hadn't been tied up, was taken away by the doe-eyed Plainswomen. Can't call them barbarians, they seemd nice enough.
Allison? Mary's personal advisor wasn't special, I guess. Someone had punched her, knocked out a tooth, split her lip. She hadn't screamed, so they had considered hanging her, but eventually just tied her up and left her there, whimpering in pain, blood dripping from her lip.
Kitana? No, she's not one of us anymore. She's evil now.
Me? I'm an assassin and a thief. I'd managed to keep my knife hidden and had torn up both my sleeves and myself trying to cut through the bindings that held me against the tree. The rope frayed slowly, I felt it, moved carefully, dizzy from the blow to the head I'd taken.
Shannon groaned, started to come around, no, shut up, you'll have them come and I'm not ready! I slashed through the last knot and the ropes slid down around my ankles. I inspected my wrists, cut and bleeding from my struggles with the knife. It looked like I'd tried to commit suicide.
I hacked at Shannon's ropes, let her fall to the grass. She woke up, almost screamed, clutched at her obviously broken wrist. I shushed her, dug a throwing star out of my boot, handed it to her. Scant protection, but something.
I was hungry. Put it aside, Jared, you're in danger here.
Not a barbarian in sight - they were all off murdering Calsa's army, waiting for the fires to burn out.
I went for Ashton next, cut off her ropes. She immediately changed back, rubbed at her swollen wrists and ankles, regained feeling in her limbs, and followed us - three quiet Wisconsinites in a barbarian camp.
Last we came to Allison, cut her free. She dug up a handkerchief from somewhere, pressed it to her mouth, half-sobbing in agony.
Ashton suddenly grabbed my arms, looking at my wrists. "Don't you know how to handle a knife?" she asked scathingly. I shook my head cheefully, and she groaned, turning away. "I'm trapped by barbarians in an alternate universe with a bunch of morons," she muttered. That remark was edited for language, by the way...
We went looking for Mary then and found her in one of the tents with ten of the Plainswomen. They fussed with her short hair and had dressed her in something vaguely Native American. They looked at us as we entered. One of them held out her hands, palms up, and said something in the language of the barbarians. It didn't sound harsh when it was a female - it sounded liquid, quick and lithe.
Allison took her bloody handkerchief from her mouth to translate. "We welcome to you the camp of the People of the Wind," she said, lisping from her missing tooth. "Be our guests for a time."
"Ask about the demons," I said, poking her. "We need to know how to combat them."
So Allison asked. The women stopped what they were doing and stared at us. Then the woman who had spoken before murmured something. Allison said, "They are the evil creatures. Everyone loathes them, but Asjanel is mad with power and raised them. He - he absorbed Ghidoli's power." She listened for a moment and then said, voice haunted, "He wants to sacrifice Kitana and have her power as well. Then he will have the power to bring the god of hell - Satan himself - into physical form." She gulped and added, "I think - I think Asjanel will have Kitana's power. I mean, the whole gateway thing. He'll let Satan onto Earth..."
I just froze up. The end of the world. Could it come like that - without all the signs of Revelation? But that was a strange book - maybe we hadn't seen the signs...maybe they'd happened while we were here, on Avrien...
Ashton snarled, sounding like a wolf for a moment. "Disgusting," she hissed. "We're going to have to be on Kitana's side, after all. We can't let Asjanel kill her or..."
She didn't say the "or." She didn't have to. We knew, all of us, the power of Satan. We had seen him at work on Earth, but not physically. If he took physical form, no one could stop him, ever. He would be the Antichrist. He would rise up, take power. But he was an angel, a fallen angel. With his angelic powers, he would kill the people of faith. The end would not be the right end. I'd never thought about it before - what the end would be like if evil won out. God had told us that Satan would rule, but physically? That wasn't the way it was supposed to be. I don't presume to know the mind of God, but I don't think he would ever let Satan come into a physical body. Revelation spoke of evil, but...ultimate evil...
"Just another reason to kill Asjanel," I said, laughing nervously.
In that instant, everything had changed. The battle had gone from being whatever it had been to being a war of theology.
We spent maybe three hours with the women. We told them about God, about Earth, about the god of hell - Satan. Only we corrected them. Satan was not a god, he was a...a king. The king of hell. It took three hours, but we turned ten atheists into believers.
Then Mary stood up, took charge. "Look," she said softly. "We can't stay here. We have to find Kitana, protect her until Asjanel can be killed. I don't want to do it, but we have to. Even being on her side is better than sentencing Earth and Avrien both to the rule of Satan."
The woman who was apparently the spokesman said something to Allison. "Her name is Kyretholle," the blonde girl translated. "She wants to go with us."
So Kyretholle joined our little party.
As we left, Mary clad in her new American Indian-type clothes, we started to see demons. They had taken human forms, but their skin was charred, peeled off on some. Their eyes burned with fire. Kyretholle whispered something. Allison muttered, "These are normal demons. Asjanel raised up four demon lords, the most powerful of their kind. We're dead if they catch up."
But how would we escape? Naeco, Mary said, was thirty miles west of Calsa. Our horses? Dead. Ashton could shapeshift and fly, Mary understood the rudimentary basics of changing shape, but the rest of us? The People of the Wind didn't ride horses. They sacrificed them for power. No way were we entering Calsa; it burned and teemed with barbarians and demons.
They aren't called People of the Wind for nothing.
Kyretholle led us to an airplane. It was made of glass and looked so fragile, but Kyretholle pulled out some pipes. She blew into them and live music floated out, a ghostly mist that rang like bells in the air. The mist entered the plane, infused it. The glass frosted over and the plane rose up, expanding until it could fit all six of us.
Kyretholle got into the pilot's seat, and we jumped in, touching the glass, so breakable, so delicate. Music again, sweet, uplifting, and there was wind. The plane came to life, rose into the air, hovered magically.
Impossible. Gravity wouldn't allow it. No way can music make wind spring up. But we were airborne, and if we got to Kitana before Asjanel did, it was worth it, and more than worth it.
The music of Kyretholle's pipes lulled me to sleep. I don't know how, my mind was overflowing with images of fire and demons, but I slept, safe and calm in an airplane made of glass and powered by music.
*Allison*
I must have fallen asleep. I don't know how, my mouth hurt. One of my teeth had been knocked out and my lip had been bleeding. I couldn't talk right. When I awoke, I touched my swollen lip, winced in pain, and sat up.
Someone's head was on my foot. I resisted the urge to kick and extracted myself. Kyretholle sat in the front of the glass plane, still playing her pipes. I crawled over my friends to sit beside her. I licked my lips, winced again, that hurt.
I knew now, about my magic. Language. That's how I knew exactly what naphtha was. It took me a moment to attune my mind to the nuances of the Plains language, but then I got it. In Kyretholle's own language, I said, "How much longer?"
She looked back, pulled the pipes away from her mouth for a moment. The music played on - magic - as she said, "Perhaps an hour. We will be there at dawn."
The cold wind stung my face as I looked out at the darkness. The moon had set, the stars cast no light. I shivered. Where was a warm cloak when you really needed it?
Kyretholle went back to her pipes. I twisted around to look back. Thirty miles away, I still saw Calsa, a burning orange speck on the horizon. I sighed.
Mary rolled over and woke up, accidentally smacked Shannon, who mumbled something in her sleep. "What time is it? Mary asked, yawning.
"An hour to dawn," I said.
Mary sat up, looked back at the still-burning city. "Hedaris and Amidan," she whispered. "Elu and Dakota...and what of Camryn and Meg?"
I shivered again, this time in fear. Tears gathered in my eyes. Hedaris...the perfect prince...dead? Elu, the innocent little blind boy, burned to death. Had he escaped one fire to plunge into another?
"Mary?" I asked.
"Yeh?"
"If the demons kill Camryn...does that count as Asjanel killing her?"
"I hope not," Mary whispered. Her fists clenched. "I wouldn't mind her dead. It scares me, but we'd all be better off if she died and all the evil with her. But I don't want him to kill her."
"Yeah," I murmured.
One by one, the others awoke, so that at dawn, it was the six of us - five Earthlings and a Plainswomen. The tone of the pipes altered, the uplifting song going suddenly low, dipping down. The plane tipped forward, sending us crashing into each other.
We landed roughly, but the glass didn't break. Kyretholle climbed out, as we did. She pointed at a wall that rose up out of the gray dawn. "Naeco," she said. Everyone understood that.
Naeco was like Halico, a dead city. We wandered through the streets, completely alone. In the center was a wide, flat area where the Tower had been - but the Tower was gone, back at Calsa.
"The Tower will return," Kyretholle said. "The mages will bring it back."
I sighed and repeated her words in English. The five of us, the five remaining Earthlings, huddled up. No reason, I guess; the city was dead, the mages away on a business trip, Kyretholle didn't speak English. No reason to have a private conversation.
"What now?" Mary asked. The wind whipped her short hair around, into her eyes, fluttered her leathery skirt. She shivered, looked enviously at Shannon and Jared. Their robes were torn, but still mostly warm. Shannon had taken strips from her hem to make a sling for her broken wrist; Jared had used the same principle for bandages.
"What now?" Ashton repeated. "Well, it's obvious what now. We kill Asjanel. Send the demons back to hell. And then, excuse my language, get the hell back to Earth."
Jared grinned fiercely. "The mages are coming back, right? Asjanel will follow. I'll kill him."
Shannon clenched her fists, hand twitching toward her knife. "Then we make Cam do whatever she has to do and we go home. Forever." She sighed, then straightened up. "All of us. Cam too."
I laughed at that. "Yeah, right. She's evil. She wants to rule this world - why come back to Earth?"
"She'll come, or I'll beat her up," Shannon snapped. "All of us, or none of us."
No one believed that she was right. Maybe, maybe we could make Camryn be a good person again, but she would never come with us. She might open the gate and let us through, but then she would slam it and keep herself inside.
The Tower returned at noon, six hours later. The moment it landed, Meg and Dakota came rushing out, Meg leading Elu by the hand. Dakota ran up to Jared and licked his hand, then jumped up to lick his face, knocking them both over backwards. Elu detached himself from Meg and ran to Shannon, crashing into her and hiding his face in the folds of her black robe. Meg grinned.
"How did you all get here?"
"We flew," I said. "This is Kyretholle. She's a barbarian. A Plainswoman. She has a plane."
"Really?" Meg asked, eyes sparkling. "A plane?" Then she switched gears. "The barbarians will be here in about a week, but the demons will be here long before that," she announced. "Maybe tonight. Maybe earlier. They don't approve of sunlight..."
We filed silently into the Tower, which was quiet chaos. Black-robed mages dashed around, slamming windows shut and then waving their hands around, making the windows disappear. Preparing for war.
Meg led us up to Kitana's room, the one with the couch. We sat down, nervous, but Kitana didn't show up. Elu clambered up onto Shannon's lap and snuggled against her, obviously frightened of something. Dakota rested his head on Jared's knee.
I accompanied Meg to find Kitana when the sun went down. She stood with Imarath on the roof of the Tower, looking out. I squinted and saw a very interesting thing I'd missed in the dark.
Perhaps three miles outside the walls, there was a long stretch of low ground, a canyon or a valley. But plateaus rose up out of the ground. Wordlessly, Kitana handed me a rough pair of binoculars. I peered through them.
Demons. On the plateaus. They came across the bridges at a run; some burst into flame, others held. They were led by a dragon, oh God, a dragon. Like the Oracles, but this dragon was black, eyes burning. This dragon breathed not fire, but wind. A gust of wind that, three miles away, knocked us all over, almost off the roof.
"The Demon Lord of the Wind," Kitana said, quite calmly. "We'd best go inside."
So we did. Meg and I returned to the room. After half an hour of worry, Shannon leapt up. "I can't take this!" she exclaimed. "I'm so out of here..."
Kyretholle murmured something. I had to strain to hear it. "Perhaps the plane will help."
I turned to offer this suggestion, but Shannon had already gone.
Then another gust of wind hit the Tower, knocking us all over. I slammed into a wall and sank rapidly into darkness.
*Shannon*
I stumbled when the wind hit the tower, stumbled but didn't fall. I put my hand out reflexively and smothered a cry of pain, having managed to send a flash of agony to my wrist. Muttering a curse, I went on, crashed into a mage. "Where's Kitana?" I asked. I had to yell to be heard over the gale outside.
He pointed back the way he had come, back and up. I continued down the stairs, found another staircase, and ascended.
Kitana was alone when I found her. She stood in a carpeted room with floor-to-ceiling windows. "Is that safe?" I asked. She shook her head and pointed. I looked.
The Demon Lord.
A dragon, a black dragon breathing icy wind. His eyes burned with the fires of hell. I screamed, leapt back as he flew closer. He didn't try to fly in. He watched me, turned those hideous eyes on Kitana, screamed in fury and rocketed upward, out of sight.
The wind died down, leaving only a ringing silence. "Kitana?" I whispered. "Where is he?"
She pointed at the window. "The glass. It's spelled by the People of the Winds, long ago. He can't touch it, it's his only weakness. It keeps him out."
She gave a sudden startled cry, reached out to me. My eyesight darkened and I screamed, falling to my knees and pressing my hands against my ears. Magic, power, pressed in against me, shattered from Kitana's spell, returned again. I was wrapped up in cotton, locked away, leaving me a blank shell, no thoughts, no feelings. I tried to scream, no!
"Listen to me, Shannon," Kitana said, sounding far away. "Asjanel has you spellbound. Don't move, I'll try to fight it..."
Spellbound? Oh, no, no way, he couldn't have me spellbound, not me. I struggled, but against my will I stood up, muscles working, no! Kitana held her hands out and made a motion like turning a key.
In my mind, Asjanel whispered, "The glass keeps me from her. Get her outside."
Over and over, he gave me those instructions. I stepped forward, pulled out a knife, pointed it at Kitana. She backed away from me, motioned again, silence, horrible silence. She shouted something, I couldn't hear, nothing but Asjanel.
Break the glass? With what?
I grabbed Kitana and hit her, hard, against my will, screamed inside as my body shoved her toward the window. She backed away, screamed, I didn't hear it, didn't feel the pain in my wrist.
Someone else entered my mind, a familiar touch that I couldn't place. This magic was different, raw, untamed power that shattered the hold Asjanel had on me.
Shattered it too late.
I couldn't stop the motion I had begun while spellbound, pushing Kitana. I could hear again, hear the scream as the glass shattered, the wild, joyous cry of the Demon Lord outside. "No!" I cried, my voice hoarse from the screaming I'd been doing silently before. I ran to the broken window, fell to my hands and knees, stared as the falling black-robed form was snatched up in the claws of the Demon Lord. The pain, the pain in my broken wrist, it all came back, I screamed again.
A soft touch on my shoulder. I stood up, looked at Kyretholle as she raised her hands and made a swooshing gesture. "The plane!" I cried. She smiled, pulled out her pipes, and blew into them. The plane rose and rushed toward us, so fast, almost invisible. I jumped in, stumbled, sat down. Kyretholle hopped into the front and we flew away, away from the Tower, away from the broken window, toward the dragon.
The dragon-demon flew almost lazily back, in the direction of Calsa. Of course, he would deliver Kitana to Asjanel, who would...no! All my fault...all my fault...
Tears stung my eyes as we came level with the demon lord. Kitana hung limply in his claws. For a wild minute I thought she was dead or unconscious, but then her eyes fluttered open. She waved feebly at me.
"How do we stop the dragon?" I cried, shouting to be heard over the howling wind brought up by the dragon's wings.
She rotated her wrist, vanished, and reappeared in the plane wearing only her harem-girl outfit. The black robes fluttered uselessly in the dragon's claws.
Without those thick robes, I could plainly see the ravages of glass and claws on her body. Scars that hadn't been there before. Blood. I turned quickly away, tried not to throw up.
Suddenly the plane rocked as Kitana stood up. She flicked her wrist and a CD appeared in her hand, black, pure black. It sucked all the light out of the air immediately around it. Kitana spun it, let it hang in midair, following us as we flew after the dragon-demon, who hadn't noticed that Kitana was gone.
The spinning CD made a whistling noise as a tornado of black and silver light swirled up out of it. Kyretholle, responding to some strange sense she seemed to have, flew directly in front of the dragon, who screeched to a stop. Impossible, nothing that big could stop that fast, but it did. Kit grabbed the disk and turned it to face the dragon.
He screamed, a wild, wailing scream, as the tornado drew him in. Kitana laughed. "With all due respect, sir, please go to hell!" she shouted. The dragon vanished, the CD stopped twirling. Kitana caught it, laughed again, and sat down. "Nice piloting," she said, winking at Kyretholle.
"What just happened here?" I asked.
Kitana shrugged. "I opened the portal and sent him back to hell," she said. "Not hard at all. Just remember that, Shannon - I can do it. I can send you to Earth. I am the way home."
I stared at my shoes. "Um, I'm sorry, about the - the window thing..."
"It gave me a chance to defeat one of the demon lords," she replied. "Think nothing of it - but don't get spellbound again." She gave me a weird look. "How did you get out of Asjanel's grasp?"
I shrugged. "Something with more power just broke the spell."
The effect my simple statement had on Kitana startled me. She went pale and half-collapsed. "More power? That means unbound magic..."
"What?" I asked.
"Unbound magic. Creatures with unbound magic want to kill humans with real magic." She shivered. "Demons, the Oracles, they have unbound magic."
"The Oracles don't want to kill us."
Kitana grinned. "They've been bound. God himself bound them to His will long ago. They're in the nature of angelic beings, but if they ever got free..." Her smile vanished. "If something with unbound magic is out there, I'm in danger." She sighed. "Again."
Ain't that the damn truth?