Paul Kemp: The Hammer and the Blade

In the end, Rakon didn't know and didn't care. He only knew that, if the secret histories he'd read were correct, he could use the horn to free Abrak-Thyss and save his house.

Pressure built in his mind as they neared the center of the Wastes — his sisters' growing fear laying siege to his mental defenses. The drugs he'd given them must have been wearing off. Rusilla and Merelda had proven enormously resistant to his alchemy. Their terror gnawed at the edges of his mind, haunting his consciousness.

They floated beside him, arms and legs limp, their hair and dresses spread out gently on the invisible bed of the sylph's winds. They looked like spirits, archons descending from the Three Heavens.

He regretted the sufferings his sisters must endure, but he knew they would accept them in time, as his mother had. He'd enter into a false marriage with the more fertile of the two, and soon the Norristru line would be renewed, and his position, and that of his house, would be secure for another generation.

The sylph gusted over the Wastes, covering miles in moments. The setting sun reddened the sky to the west. Minnear would rise full soon after sunset. The Veil between worlds would thin to a wafer.

Ruins dotted the landscape below him, the gravestones of the dead civilization that no histories named. Ahead he saw the ring of ruins encircling the sea of glass. It glistened red in the setting sun, an ocean of blood.

Vwynn coated the ring of ruins like flies on a corpse, thousands of them, lurking in what shade they could find among the jagged bones of stone. They must have crept forward to occupy the ruins after the caravan had left. And yet none dared touch the glass. Yet.

They looked up, eyes glittering, and let out a collective snarl as the sylph descended onto the sea of glass. The winds of the sylph faded and Rakon put his feet down on the smooth surface. He felt the pressure of the Vwynn's regard like a physical thing. It was all around him, thick in the air, their anger a weight on his person.

The fear projected by his sisters grew to panic, infected him, sped his heart. The Vwynn, too, seemed to feel it. It, too, was thick in the air. Motion in the dark places in which they sheltered spoke of their agitation: growls, snarls, the scrabble of claw on stone.

"We'll need to leave immediately after freeing Abrak-Thyss," Rakon said to the sylph.

The wind whispered the sylph's agreement.

Rusilla's voice sounded in his head, penetrating his defense, a desperate plea from far off. Don't… Rakon.

He turned to look down on Rusilla. Tears leaked from the corners of her wide eyes. Her forefinger lifted, as if she were trying to point at him accusingly.

He kneeled, took her hand in his. "I must. You'll forgive me in time."

She replied with nothing but fear.

"You tried to use those tomb robbers to help you. Did you think I didn't know? They're dead now, Rusilla, killed by the eater. No one can help you now."

The tears flowed unchecked down his sister's face. Again the raised finger.

He stood, his expression hard. "You lost this chess match, sister. And now you'll do what you were born to do. Both of you."

He took the Horn of Alyyk in his hands and turned away from his sisters. The magic in the horn caused his hands to tingle. He walked toward the location on the glass where his spells had located the prison, his tread loud on the glass.

The Vwynn fell silent. The winds died completely, even the sylph overwhelmed by the moment.

As he walked, Rakon intoned a phrase of awakening in the Language of Creation. In answer, the horn vibrated in his hands.

The Vwynn moaned.

Rakon put the horn to his lips, aimed its bell at the glass surface before him, and blew. Shimmering air poured from the horn in a swirling column, the recoil pushing him back a step. The long, low note emitted into the charged air made his teeth ache. The vibratory energy struck the glass, cracked it, shattered it, and put a furrow in it deep enough for a burial. The impact threw millions of tiny glass shards into the air and they fell in a tinkling, musical rain. Scores fell on Rakon, cutting his hands, his face, his scalp. He cursed, shielded himself as best he could with his cloak.

"Sylph!" Rakon called.

"Yes, master," the sylph said, surmising his command.

The wind swirled around Rakon, formed into dozens of vortices that collected the shards and expelled them away from Rakon.

Rakon ignored the pain of his flesh wounds, ignored the warm blood dripping down his face, braced himself against the recoil, and blew another note. The magic of the horn deepened the gash in the glass. The air around him filled with more shards, filled with his sisters' fear, with the pensive terror and anger of the Vwynn. The sylph protected him from the rain of glass and he blew another note, another, digging deeper into the strata of the dead civilization, putting a deep scar on Ellerth's face. Another note, another shower of shards, and he saw what he sought, what his researches had told him he would find.

A metal cylinder lay revealed at the bottom of the gash. Engraved glyphs covered it entirely, the straight lines of the characters a script Rakon did not recognize. Staring at the characters made his head ache.

Movement in the hills around him, all around him: the Vwynn edging closer. He had to hurry.

His sisters' terror grew incoherent, a cloud of fear polluting the air of the ruins.

He stared at the cylinder, the contents within it the hope of his house. He put the horn to his lips and blew another blast. The energy slammed into the cylinder, sparking, sizzling, a shower of magical pyrotechnics that left Rakon blinking in its wake. When the note subsided and the sparks died, the prison remained sealed, but many of the glyphs were effaced. The horn was warm in his hands. He blew another note, effacing more of the glyphs in a storm of energy, another, and when the echoes of the final blast were nothing more than echoes, the cylinder lay blank.

"Abrak-Thyss," Rakon shouted in Infernal, a dialect of the Language of Creation. "Come forth! Emerge and honor the ancient pact between your house and mine."

The Vwynn watched in pensive silence.

His sisters were reduced to animal terror.

For a long moment nothing happened, but then two dots appeared on the smooth surface of the cylinder. The dots moved, leaving lines in their wake, seams, cracks in an egg that would soon birth a devil. Rakon watched it unfold with terrified fascination.

A deep, bestial roar sounded from within the cylinder, the sound as pregnant with power as had been notes from the horn.

The Vwynn moaned, snarled.

Another growl from within the cylinder quieted them, awed them perhaps. A ferocious blow from within the cylinder buckled it outward. A roar, the pent-up rage of centuries, sounded from within.

The Vwynn snarled, their terror turning to anger, their anger to action. Two or three took a reluctant step forward, breaking the border of the glass.

Rakon's sisters' terror reached a climax, momentarily catching Rakon up in its flow, then diminished altogether. Perhaps they'd fainted.

Another blow widened the cracks in the cylinder. The capsule rocked back and forth and frenetic snarls filled the air. The Vwynn echoed them.

"Emerge, Abrak-Thyss!" Rakon said.

A final, forceful blow exploded the cylinder outward. Dust and chunks of bent and broken metal flew into the air, crashed against the glass of the ground. A scaled, serpentine arm as thick as a man's leg emerged from the cylinder, gripped one of its edges. Instead of a hand, the arm ended in a fang-filled rictus. Two small black eyes above the mouth blinked in the light of the setting sun. A second hand joined it, a third, a fourth.

The bulk of Abrak-Thyss shifted within the prison that had held him for millennia. He roared, the sound like an avalanche, and heaved his thick, scaled trunk out of the confines of the cylinder.