‘This is different from the first. This must be closed the way one would sew a wound.’
He sat a long moment, then took a deep breath. He waved his hands, and faint energies left his fingers, snaking out toward the rift. Around the edges they flew, and as Miranda found her strength starting to return along with warmth, she saw Pug’s energies forming a lattice work around the edges of the rift.
Then Pug changed the spell, and the binding energies he had cast around the edges of the rift began to contract. Miranda watched for a minute, then said, ‘I see.’
She gathered together her strength, watching in fascination as the rift closed slowly. While she rested she considered what she had just witnessed. She had known her father briefly, having spent most of her life tracing him through his legend. He had not visited her since she had turned sixteen or seventeen, she couldn’t remember which, and she had spent most of her life holding the man in contempt.
But as she had discovered her mother’s part in the destruction of hundreds of thousands of lives, she reassessed her father’s role in things. She was discovering that even at her advanced age, she still felt like a child in some ways.
She thought she would have grown to like her father, perhaps even love him someday, but now that day would never come. For that she felt regret.
But for the loss of his life compared to the deaths of thousands she had already seen, she couldn’t find a means to compare; perhaps someday she’d mourn him, or at least mourn the loss of an opportunity, later, when she had time. If she had time.
Suddenly a face appeared on the other side of the rift, looking like a cow’s skull stretched over with black hide, topped by a stag’s rack of antlers. Coals for eyes burned in it, and they regarded the two humans.
With a howl of glee the demon, obviously the final victor in the carnage that had just finished in the great chamber in Cibul, flushed with a feeding of tremendous scope, started to leap through the rift.
‘Stop it!’ shouted Pug, and Miranda lashed out with all her remaining strength. It was enough to knock the demon back into the other world, and stun it.
Miranda almost fainted from the effort. In a hoarse voice she said, ‘Hurry. I have nothing left.’
Pug concentrated his entire focus on continuing to close the rift. Miranda could see that as the rift became smaller the rate of closing was accelerating.
Then the demon was back, cautious in its approach. It feinted toward the rift, then ducked back, pausing a moment.
When no further attack came from Miranda, it tried to climb through, much as a human climbs through a window.
First the creature’s head poked through, then one arm. It reached for Pug, but found him still too far away. The creature turned sideways, and started to put one leg through, but found its large wings a hindrance. It shifted position, and tried another angle, not noticing that the aperture was closing by the second.
Unable to pass, the creature became enraged with frustration, and tried to force its way through the rift. A headlong dive managed to get it wedged within the rift.
Then pressure began to exert as Pug continued closing the rift.
Rage turned to panic, then to pain and terror as the rift closed on the creature. Howling as it was being cut in two, the demon thrashed like a fish on the deck of a boat.
Miranda took a breath, tried to add her energy to Pug’s and felt the rift dosing even more quickly. The demon’s cries echoed through the Pantathian halls, resounding off the rocks and shaking the very mountains.
Dust rained down on Miranda and Pug as the creature’s thrashing increased, then suddenly it went limp. A moment later, the rift closed, and the upper half of the demon fell into the cave.
Miranda looked at it and said, ‘We did it?’ Then she passed out.
Pug said, ‘Yes,’ and he too collapsed on the floor, unconscious as the last reserve of his strength was paid out.
TWENTY-ONE - Escalation
Erik watched.
In the fields below the foothills, a huge mobilization was beginning. He had just enjoyed a week of relative calm, but now that was obviously coming to an end.
For a month they had been relatively successful in forcing the invaders along the route they had designed for them. There had been reports of hard fighting to the north and south, but the Kingdom lines had held on both flanks as the middle had slowly retreated, drawing the invaders after.