Стивен Браст - Tiassa

“First, let me explain your position.”

I looked around elaborately. “You mean, lost in the past, unsure if I can find my way home, and with a batch of angry Dragonlords chasing me? I’m kinda used to that.”

I took a step closer. The issue wasn’t killing him; I was pretty sure I could do that. The issue was how to get information out of him.

“No,” he said. “I mean the shield that’s gone up around us, so your friends can’t help you.”

I gotta give the bastard credit for good timing. As he finished saying that, there was a scream in my mind.

“Loiosh?”

Nothing.

“Loiosh!”

“What did you do to him?”

“Easy, little man. I doubt he’s harmed. He just flew headfirst into the shield. I’m sure he’s only stunned. And he won’t come to any further harm, as long as you behave yourself.”

“As long as I—Discaru, or whatever your true name is, you are really stupid.”

“Your pet is surrounded by magical energies, and I can pour as much energy into it as I wish, or collapse it. So, if you care about its life at all, you’ll be very polite to me, and do precisely as I say.”

Even in the dimness, I could see Rocza, about ten feet away, trying to get closer to Discaru, unable to, as if there were a sort of invisible bubble around him.

“This demonic plane you’re from,” I said. “Is everyone there a complete idiot, or is it only you?”

“Curb your tongue. You can’t harm me.”

“Oh?”

“I exist here, in the past, in another form. Do you know what would happen if you were to kill me here?”

“No, but I’m really close to finding out.”

“Two of me cannot exist at the same time. My existence here is already causing necromantic disruptions. Sooner or later, probably sooner, the platform that permits this access will collapse on itself. At best, you will be trapped here in this time. More likely, you will be caught in the collapse and destroyed.”

“Sounds grim,” I said, and took another step forward. “Is that what happened when you brought Her Ladyship to the Halls of Judgment?”

“One more step, and I destroy your pet.”

I stopped.

“Do you understand what I’m telling you? Destroy me, and you destroy yourself.”

“Yeah, yeah. I get it. But you haven’t answered my question. I know you brought her to the Halls, and she gave birth there. But was she already pregnant at the time? Did you know it? Did you bring her daughter back out? How did that all work?”

“If I were you, I’d forget about—”

“You are so very, very much not me. You are nowhere near being me. I can’t even begin. Now, are you going to answer my questions?”

“Of course not. If you care to get out of here alive, you have one chance.”

“Oh, good. I was getting worried.”

“Here is what you’re going to do. I suggest you listen, and quickly, because I can already feel the pressures building, and I honestly do not know how much time there is.”

“All right, tell me,” I said. “This is bound to be good.”

There were two long steps between us.

“I’ll create an opening to your own time, to the road outside of Precipice Manor. You’ll go through it, after giving me your word that you won’t try to come back or interfere in any way. Then I’ll let your pet go through.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “Can I make a counter-proposal?”

“You’re in no position to—”

I drew and moved, as fast as I ever have. From fully relaxed, to draw and move and strike; to be honest, I wasn’t sure I could pull it off until I felt the contact. Lady Teldra came up under his chin and into his head.

Yeah. Feed, Lady Teldra. Take it. Take whatever grotesque ugliness he uses for a soul and chew it up and digest it and make him gone gone gone—

His scream was a thing of agony and despair and I relished every lingering note, and it continued in my ears after that and I didn’t mind a bit. At one point, his eyes met mine, and past the hate I felt a jarring contact that formed into the words I will remember this, and you will regret it. I have to admit, as dying words go, they aren’t bad. I was not, however, excessively impressed. The last thing he did was start transforming, but he didn’t get very far, so he was a sort of strange misshapen mostly-human partly-demon object. Students of sorcery may draw whatever conclusions they wish from the fact that, on death, he didn’t return to his native form.

Rocza settled on the ground. I jumped over what remained of Discaru and found Loiosh. I picked him up; he didn’t seem colder than usual. Rocza fluttered and flapped and half flew and settled again, and eventually landed on my shoulder.

I felt for a connection to Loiosh. “Hey? You there? Hello? Loiosh?”

There was something; not a conscious thought, but something, and my knees almost gave out with relief. Now all I had to worry about was the minor issue of, what if the demon had been telling the truth? I looked around. Everything seemed normal. Not that I had any idea what to look for.

I tucked Loiosh carefully into my cloak, then grabbed hold of Discaru’s legs and began pulling in what I hoped was the right direction. That was my clever plan, you see: if I could get his body back to the other time before everything collapsed or he met himself, then, even if the bastard had been telling the truth, it wouldn’t matter because they’d never meet.

Pretty smart, huh?

The question is, how can a guy make a living as an assassin for the better part of a decade without ever learning how bloody heavy a Dragaeran is? I managed about a foot, then stopped, panting.

Well, I could always hope he’d been lying—that’s what I’d sort of counted on in the first place. I mean, he was a demon, right? Being a demon meant being able to manifest in two places at once, which ought to mean that two of him could exist at the same time without everything collapsing. Maybe. And for the hundredth time, I wished I could consult with the Necromancer. I wondered if I could bury him, or maybe sink him in the river, when the air sort of shimmered in front of me—getting wavy, like how on a hot day you see waves go up from the water, only it wasn’t hot, it wasn’t day, and there was no water. My stomach dropped, and my first thought was Oh, crap, it’s happening. But no: a figure came through the shimmering, and for the second time in as many minutes, my knees got weak with relief. Or maybe I’m just getting old.

“Hello, Devera,” I managed.

“Hello, Uncle Vlad. We shouldn’t be here.”

“I know. Can you get us out?”

She nodded and held her hand out. “Come with me.”

“What about him?” I said.

She looked at the remains of the demon, her expression, from as much of it as I could see, mostly one of curiosity.

“He doesn’t belong here either,” she announced.

“Yeah. What do we—”

She reached out, and he began to dissolve. I don’t mean, like, melted, or turned into something; it was more like the whole area he was in turned two-dimensional and wavered, became indistinct, and faded. Or it might be that my mind filled in a lot of that. It seemed like I saw, at the last moment, a vaguely human shape kneeling over him, holding a sword or a wand, but it was just for an instant, and may not have been real, and then that, too, was gone.

“Can you teach me that?”

She gave me a look I can’t possibly describe.

“Never mind,” I said. “I suppose we should get out of here. Tell me though, the Halls of Judgment, that’s where you were born, right?”

She nodded.

“And would someone else who was born there be able to do what you do?”