“ That, I presume, is a devil?”
The Bloody Sword’s voice was calm, almost detached, but his sword had appeared in his hand as if by magic.
“Aye,” Bahzell said grimly. “Mind, I’ve not seen one of them before this my own self, but trust a well read lad such as yourself to get it right. Sometimes, any road.”
The monster raised its head, ghouls and bits and pieces of ghoul dripping from its horns, running down its grotesque face, and those flaming eyes glared across the bodies and the blood between it and Bahzell.
“ Bahzell! ” The horrendous voice rolled like thunder over all the other sounds of battle, all the other shrieks, all the other screams. “Face me, Bahzell! Face me and die, coward!”
“Well, at least it has a more extensive vocabulary than a demon,” Brandark observed, but Bahzell wasn’t listening.
‹ Are you ready, Brother?› he asked silently.
‹ Take what you need,› Walsharno replied simply, and once more, Bahzell Bahnakson reached deep. Deep into the core of who and what he was. Deep into the determination and the unyielding will of a champion of Tomanak. Deep into the focusing and purifying power of the summoned Rage, and his own anger, and his own rejection of all that creature was and stood for. And as he reached into that great, mysterious well, his hand met another. Walsharno reached back to him, melding his own unique strength and dauntless purpose with Bahzell’s. They fitted together, becoming a single alloy, an amalgam that fused seamlessly and reached out to another, even greater fountain of power.
‹ I am here, my Swords, › a hurricane voice rumbled deep, deep within them both, and a gate opened. Energy flamed into them in a universe-spanning flood of azure fire. It pulsed through their veins, frothed in their blood, and every possible color flashed at its heart like coiled lightning.
“ Tomanak! ”
Walsharno’s shrill, high whistle of defiance and rejection matched his chosen brother’s bull-throated bellow, and Bahzell Bahnakson drew his bow at last. No human arm could have bent that bow, and precious few hradani ones. Four hundred pounds-that was the draw of Bahzell’s bow-and his shaft was sized to his stature, the next best thing to four feet in length.
He drew the string to the angle of his jaw, gazing down that long, straight shaft at the horned devil ripping its way through its own terror-maddened army to reach him. And as he gazed, the bladed steel arrowhead began to change. Blue lightning crackled from Bahzell’s right hand. It ran down the string, dripped from the fletching, danced down the shaft, coalesced in a seething corona around the arrowhead. And as it coalesced, it changed, taking on other colors. All the colors-the colors of Wencit of Rum’s witchfire eyes.
Brandark shrank away from his friend, eyes wide as he recognized the sizzling, hissing fury of the wild magic. He stared at Bahzell, and his ears went flat as he saw the same incandescent light glitter in the pupils of the Horse Stealer’s brown eyes.
And then Bahzell Bahnakson released his string.
Over the years, he’d been ribbed mercilessly by his closest friends as he learned to master the mysteries of the bow. It wasn’t as simple as an arbalest, and his accuracy with it remained considerably than the sort of pinpoint performance he routinely turned in with the weapon he’d favored for so long. But there was no sign of that now-not in that shot.
The arrow leapt from the string. It shrilled through the air, no longer an arrow but a lightning bolt, and it rode a flat, explosive concussion of thunder. It flashed across the wounded ranks of infantry holding back the tide of ghouls, and the creatures beyond that hard-held line screamed, cowering down, their bodies bursting into flame as that fist of fury streaked over their heads. It slammed into the center of the mammoth devil’s stupendous chest, and the creature’s flame-shot eyes flew wide in astonishment.
Fresh thunder rolled. A blast of energy blew back from the point of impact, spreading in a cone-shaped fan, and the ghouls caught within it had no time to shriek as they flashed instantly into charred bone and drifting flecks of ash. At least fifty of the creatures vanished in that instant, but it was only the back blast, only the echo.
A holocaust enveloped Bahzell’s towering enemy. It exploded up out of the monster’s ruptured chest. It wrapped about him in a corona like a python of wild magic, and unlike the ghouls, he did have time to shriek.
He staggered back. He dropped his glowing mace, crushing another dozen ghouls to death. He clutched at the light-gouting wound in his chest, taloned hands etched against the brilliance as they tried vainly to staunch that deadly gash. He stared at Bahzell, but this time there was no rage, no hunger in his eyes-only disbelief, shock…and fear.
Bahzell lowered his bow, half-reeling in the saddle, feeling even Walsharno’s immense vitality sag under him, but he never looked away from his foe, and his brown eyes were harder than flint and colder than the dark side of the moon.
The horned monstrosity sagged, still clutching at his chest, going to his knees. Ghouls scattered in every direction, clawing their way up and over one another in their panic. At least a score were unable to escape, and his massive body crashed down across them. He landed on his back, spine arched in agony, and that same holocaust of light gushed from his opened mouth as he screamed.
Then there was a final, earsplitting crash of thunder, a flash of brilliance that blinded every eye that looked upon it…and when the blindness cleared, there was only a crater blasted into the muddy, bloody trampled grass of the Ghoul Moor. Twenty yards across, that crater, its lip crowned with seared and tattered charcoal scarecrows which had once been ghouls, and smoke and steam poured up out of its depths.
Chapter Forty-One
The ghoul shaman pounding the enormous drum directly in front of Anshakar looked up as his new and terrible god halted abruptly. Looked up-then wailed in terror as the devil’s head snapped erect, his nostrils flared, and a horrific bellow erupted from him.
That wail was the last sound the shaman ever made. It was still bursting from him when Anshakar brought both massive fists crashing down upon the earth. They hit wrapped in haloes of green fire, like whirlpools of poison that gyred out in all directions, and smashed the shaman and the drum-bearers into bloody ruin. Half a score of other ghouls were sucked into those whirling vortexes with squeals of despair, their bones licked clean of flesh in the single heartbeat before the bones themselves dissolved into dancing ash, and at least fifty more scrambled desperately away from the yard-deep craters those fists punched into the muddy ground.
How? How? The question hammered Anshakar’s brain as furiously as his fists had pounded the Ghoul Moor. He’d felt Kimazh’s destruction-not simply his death; his destruction. Nothing of the horned devil remained. Not a trace of his physical being, not a scrap of his essence-not in this universe or any other. He was gone, blotted away even more utterly than any soul Anshakar himself had ever consumed!
He straightened slowly, glaring around at the cowering ghouls who surrounded him. They quailed before his flaming eyes and turned away, surging towards their enemies once more under the lash of his will, and he scowled, feeling the empty place where Kimazh had once dwelt.
He’d never liked Kimazh. The horned devil had believed brute strength on the physical plane was all that really mattered, and while he’d possessed that in abundance, he’d never been noted for his intelligence or any other sort of strength. Of all the trio Anshakar’s Master had sent into this world to serve his purposes, Kimazh had been the stupidest and-physical strength aside-the weakest. Anshakar would shed no tears for Kimazh, and when he returned to his own place, he would cheerfully seize all the power and all the slaves which had once been Kimazh’s. Yet his companion’s obliteration suggested that perhaps he himself had underestimated the opposition of this Bahzell Bahnakson.