Chapter 28

Bright blue water spread everywhere, under a uniform white sky. The heat and humidity were phenomenal, enough to make an impression upon his senses even as McAllister fell through space toward the gentle waves. There was scarcely time for a rapid knotting of the stuff of sorcery before getting wet. McAllister landed on his feet heavily on a disk of air riding the surface of the waves.

Slowly, he turned around to scan the horizon. There was nothing to break the expanse of blue-under-white as far as he could see, and no breaks in the cloud. He could not find a lighter patch in the cover indicating a sun. He had the strange sensation the world had become flat, though McAllister discounted it, choosing to believe instead that this world was larger than the one he had just left. Something was wrong about the light, also, giving the white cloud a strange luminescence, a fullness that struck McAllister as different. Somehow, the blue water seemed more vivid, too.

There was no visible clue to where the Greater Demon went, and McAllister's shoulders sagged as he realized the demon may not have had any destination in this plane in mind at all. It was likely he merely used the plane for it's proximity to another, as a form of stepping-stone from one world to another. If that were the case, then the demon would have left no track...

McAllister remembered the twenty-ton horse of steel racing across the water of a bay, and recalled the chiding the same horse of steel had given him for forgetting he possessed an ability. Quickly, he made that shift of vision into the heat-light all things gave off, and swore in frustration. Around him he saw only a near-uniform whiteness as he turned, with no small spots of heat or coolness. The air and water surroundings were warmer than McAllister, though he had no idea how much heat a demon fleeing battle could shed.

Worst was that his sense of Sable was gone.

Azer stood on the hillside, surveying the damage. In front of him, a small square, about three inches on a side, opened. Blue light, too intense to look at even in the bright sunlight on the hillside, spilled out.

"Demon," a hard voice spoke Mabrahoring through the tunnel-like opening. "Where will the older demon go?"

"My uncle?" Azer asked, surprised. "Home, to Hell, probably to his study."

"How do I find it?"

Azer gave consideration to whose voice must be coming through the opening and its owner's state of mind, and answered promptly. "It's Gehenna Place, Avenue of the Salamander, Hell."

"Thank you," the voice said, politely. "We'll talk more later."

The brilliant square faded out, and Azer was left, standing on the hillside, blinking across the space the rent had occupied at a man he didn't know.

"Who are you?" Azer asked, bluntly, in Mabrahoring, of the man carefully bandaging burns on his skin. The man grimaced as the burns on his hand interfered with his ability to knot cloth.

"I am Carus," the man said, through teeth gritted for the pain. "If you're not going to smite me on the spot, would you mind tying this for me?"

Azer pointedly looked at the source of the man's burns, the black demon-blood spattered across the snow, and sniffed.

"Azer, you'd have spilled that same blood," Shan Hu reminded him, reproachfully, and the young demon relented.

"How is it this didn't kill you?" Azer asked Carus then, while examining the man's burned hand, burned when he had tried to hamstring the demon's uncle with a metal-hilted dagger.

"I am undead," Carus answered, and Azer nodded, while moving some of the cloth Carus had tied over the burns on his leg.

Shan Hu started to say something then, but almost visibly changed the words he was about to utter in mid stream. "Why did you help McAllister?" he asked, curiously, pointing with a toe at the corpse of Karsu on the ground.

Carus looked down at the dead man, and shuddered, delicately. Meeting Shan Hu's eye, he replied, "Because I chose to. Because I could. Who are you two?"

"Well," Azer said, "I suppose you could say we're two who got here in the nick of time," and Shan Hu groaned aloud. "Come back to the library, I can heal you there."

"Library," Carus repeated, then turned to wonder at the two walls and the bookcases atop the hill. "What exploded?"

"His trap," Shan Hu said, sourly, indicating the demon. "I found it in my way, and started to unravel its spell when a strong magician from outside had begun the same. Together ... you see the effect."

Azer laughed, then, long and hard. "I should say we've managed to pass the eighteenth level through our unorthodox study," he wheezed, and Shan Hu grinned fiercely.

The grin slid off Shan Hu's face after a moment. "Who was the other mage?" he wondered aloud. "McAllister's not a mage."

Carus started, then. "He's not?"

Shan Hu looked at Carus curiously. "No. You seem surprised?"

Carus merely pointed at the remains of Karsu and the small patch of burned grass stark against the snow. "I've seen him do these and similar feats, and knew they weren't the sorcery he also commands."

Now it was Shan Hu's turn to alternate staring perplexedly, first at the burned patches where the charms had been, and then at Carus.

"Maybe," Azer suggested, "we ought to go have a seat in the library?"

Sable was aching and angry. The Greater Demon had forced her to take her human form, as they'd moved overland on a plane where she was much heavier than she'd been accustomed to. They'd moved through five Gates since the demon had torn space asunder leaving the fight, and Sable had refused to carry him on her back in her equine form despite the pain he inflicted when she did. When they'd found ground transportation, a lizard-drawn sled, on some nameless world of sand and sun, she'd blatantly Healed herself of the bruises she received when he had smashed her with his fist.

He said nothing, though he had finally retaken his aristocratic-human form. Still, the local lizard-men avoided him, speeding him through their plane as fast as possible.

"He will follow," she told him, testing to see if she could rattle him further.

"I do not sense him following. If he does, at the next Gate we should receive word from those who watch the other Gates."

Sable would not despair again, though the words the demon spoke offered her little comfort.

"Welcome home, dragon-ling," the demon taunted as they stepped up to the Gate to Hell.

"Welcome home, Demon," McAllister said as they stepped into the demon's richly-appointed study, his saber-point at the demon's throat.

As contests go, it was a surprisingly abbreviated one. The Greater Demon had drawn on the True Fire, as much as he was able. McAllister drew on the True Fire so close by, and was still drawing the aether to him when the demon cleared his throat, the Adam's apple just touching the saber point.

"That's more than I can draw," the demon allowed, resignedly, hands spread wide. "I'd rather live than fight, and I don't want to fight in my home." He dropped his end of the leash on Sable's ankle onto the dark mahogany floor, where it faded into nothingness.

McAllister simply stared at him, while Sable gave a bitter laugh.

Still laughing, she crossed the room to take McAllister's arm. "It won't work," she told the demon. "We won't work for you."

"Your household is locked in the storeroom in the kitchen," McAllister told the demon, and watched him leave.

"We need to go," Sable warned him. "Staying would be suicidal."

Frustrated, McAllister gave consideration to their return. It was plain they would not be able to return directly, the gods at the congruence would see to that. He began to pull forth on the True Fire so close by, and so marvelously external. He had just raised his hands to draw the square before him, when a familiar voice sounded from behind.

"You should let me do that," and McAllister spun to see the pear-faced four-armed god he had met in Bhangda, the same he had met again in the moment outside of time at the Basilica when McAllister was fetching black powder from Sea's Home. Floating, cross-legged, face serene, the other regarded him from eyes at the same level as McAllister's. "I doubt you would be able to re-enter unopposed just yet, though we now go to a place where we may remedy that. Hell is not barred to the Destroyer," the four-armed one answered his unvoiced thought, as the mahogany panels faded into an inky void.

An uncountable number of bright points of light were scattered about, above, below, all around. Before the three of them was an object, at first rectangular in appearance. As it seemed to tumble before him in a stately, unhurried manner, they could see it was cylindrical.

McAllister turned toward the god that brought them here. "This is a space where all the worlds are contained?"

"Close, McAllister. It is a space where at least one point of every plane projects."

Sable sighed. "It is a beautiful place, and much like I had dared imagine the space where planets and the stars live."

The other gave a soft laugh, then, startling McAllister with his answer. "That space within a plane is real also, though it would kill you quickly if you were unprepared. The stars in a plane are far from whatever sun happens to be illuminating the world you stand upon, though they will respond to individuals if the combination of aether in the world and the individual is high enough."

"Why did you bring us here?"

"For one thing, it is beautiful. If you could see what I see, in the colors that humans cannot..." the other trailed off then, as Sable sighed, staring in the direction of a particularly thick dusting of light. "Apparently, you can see what I see," and the humorous tone of the observation brought McAllister's attention back to the god floating beside him. "I show you so you may return, someday. You both need to learn much, for, while I mean you to return to the world of the Mother as a home, it will not be your home for stretches of any length. Our only agreement is that you act in a manner that furthers my interest where you can and when you can, otherwise, I have no guidance or requirement for you."

"It was 'your collective interests'," McAllister quoted then, mildly, watching Sable.

"Specifically on that plane you were birthed upon," the other agreed amicably. "Though, I think that changed slightly when you accepted my help. Even now, some of it courses through you."

McAllister waited until Sable nodded at him. He tasted the faint green tint in the fire within himself, and turned back to the cylindrical object turning sedately end-over-end as it approached, or they approached it. "We accept the position. What now?"

"Now I enforce a decree of equity upon the gods of that world, and the stars witness. You understand your actions have set in train a long series that will result in, not quite monotheism, but a very definite reduction in the gods allowed on that plane?"

McAllister nodded, once, slowly.

"The others will fight being displaced. They will have to find new planes, new worlds, or live within a niche in this one. If they leave, they could worm their way into an established world. Else they begin with nothing, or very little. Keeping such gods as they would become out is very much the vocation of many of those on that world," and the left fore arm pointed daintily at the cylinder.

"It is not a cylinder," McAllister muttered, "but the projection in this ... space between worlds is. Travel between them is possible here. Must they be seen in this way? Others, possibly, see them differently ... what do we appear to be to another viewer in this place?"

"Very good, McAllister," came the reply. "The child-Goddess of Han would like entry into that world, and not because she needs a home. Her interest is in guiding her people, as is your patron, though the Mother decided her path was through expansion and revolution. Others tried to adulterate her first Church, and the gods of that world saw the very creation of that Church as an affront to them, the first step on the path to monotheism. Thus, they will be inimical to every action and every position you and she take in the debate."

"Debate?" Sable asked, surprised.

"Debate," the other answered, and the cylindrical projection of the world rushed toward them against the rich velvet backdrop, with no other sense of movement.

"Well, now, isn't that interesting," Stilbe said aloud. "Come here, boys," she beckoned to Emile and Nasic, calling to them in Denarian.

Both men traded uneasy glances, and then walked forward from where they bivouacked the troop, after their captain had fought ... something on the hill, and then followed it ... somewhere.

"Your Captain's been called to answer to a congress of the gods," she told them bluntly. "Another will be along here to help guard this place, until we can be certain any hazards are gone." She gestured to the left side of the clearing around the hill, and both men saw the figure which had been there was gone. "Wait here for her, and be polite to her."

Emile traded looks with Nasic again. "Yes, Ma'am," they chorused, and Stilbe favored them with a smile as she blinked from view.

"Hello, Sergeant," Arianne said, and Nasic jumped an inch, as her touch on the back of his thigh coincided with her words. Quickly he looked at Emile, who was likewise red in the face from an overly-familiar touch. "I've been asked to keep you occupied. I brought along four of my girls. If you could count your men off in groups of five, just for them, I'd appreciate it ever so much."

She allowed the point of her tongue to escape the corner of her mouth slightly. "I can be very appreciative," she purred.

"Some of the men are married," Emile sighed, "their wives and children are back in that last city we came through."

"Pity for them, don't you think?" Arianne asked ingenuously. "I'll talk with their wives tonight or tomorrow, and see how we can reward them for their fidelity. Meanwhile, shouldn't you be setting up tents and cots?"

"So that's what the horn was," Azer said in Early Denarian out of consideration for Carus. "When Karsu called and said he had an ally with a thing of importance, I expected another like him, some human with a weak will and great aspirations who had gotten his hands on another charm. I didn't expect one such as you," and he dipped his head briefly in Carus' direction.

Carus finished his recount of the events since Shan Hu had been separated from McAllister quickly, and in turn listened to Shan Hu tell his tale, complete with interjections and corrections from Azer.

"Here," Shan Hu said, after a moment's rummaging through the library desk's contents. "This used to take me a long time ... there, and ... there, and ... there." He handed Carus three small objects, copper coins crudely struck, the faces on the irregular bits of metal off-center. "They're language charms, but I don't need them any more. These will only last a few weeks for one language each. Try to use them when you're surrounded by people speaking the language, so you learn it while you speak it."

Carus nodded. "If McAllister allows me to go, I will follow."