The Maelstrom

bolga, David seized his other hand as he had on Madam Petra’s balloon.

Torrents of energy suddenly rippled through Max, screaming through every blood vessel as though David had flipped a circuit breaker. His broken leg kicked and he tried to tear free of David’s grasp, but the sorcerer would not let go.

Strange things were happening to Max. He beheld not only David crying out in Latin, but also himself wreathed in a nimbus of golden light and slumped against the wagon. It seemed as though he were also seeing the world from David’s perspective, their visions overlapping. As David turned, Max’s view shifted. He was now gazing out at the dreadnoughts as they began to clamber and climb over Rowan’s broken walls.

Max caught his breath as the dreadnoughts came to a sudden, inexplicable halt. Huge golden pentacles were forming around each, their intricate symbols reflected in the monster’s shiny underbellies. The circles trapped the creatures where they stood. Once the pentacles were complete, the abominations could not even twitch without David’s permission.

David’s voice was growing ever stronger as his mind locked on to each of the spirits that were controlling the gargantuan bodies. Max could sense a mounting desperation as the imps fought against David’s will.

They fought in vain.

The sorcerer possessed all nine dreadnoughts, simultaneously shattering all resistance with terrifying strength and dominance. The imps were utterly overwhelmed. Still connected to David, Max became aware of these new presences on the periphery of his consciousness. Whenever he let his mind drift toward one of them, he found himself staring through a dreadnought’s many eyes. Through those fragmented, hazy lenses, he glimpsed Old Tom and Maggie within Old College. At first glance, they appeared undamaged, but it was too disorienting and painful to inhabit the dreadnought for long.

David Menlo had no such difficulties.

The boy did not merely command each dreadnought; he was each dreadnought. The sorcerer’s extraordinary mind controlled the bodies as if they were merely huge extensions of his own intelligence and will. At his silent urging, the creatures now turned slowly about and fixed their attention upon Prusias’s army.

The demon’s troops were beginning to cross Max’s chasm, marching over giant battering rams that had been laid across to form causeways. When the dreadnoughts wheeled upon them, those in front frantically tried to retreat, crashing into those coming up behind them. Many were thrust aside, toppling into the gorge and triggering a general panic as every vye and ogre tried to scramble back.

Sweat was coursing down David’s pale face as he followed the dreadnoughts’ earthshaking advance. Within seconds, they strode over Trench Nineteen and reached the chasm, obliterating the bridges with their tentacles. Striding over the gorge, the dreadnoughts now loomed directly over thousands of vyes, ogres, deathknights, and demons like smoldering mountains.

The ensuing onslaught was horrific. Whole companies were trampled in seconds; others were destroyed by the sweeping, flailing tentacles that pulverized everything in their path. David showed no mercy as the dreadnoughts began walling the army off and hemming them in against the gorge and the cliffs.

Some escaped, of course. Some vyes managed to flee beneath the dreadnoughts like mice darting beneath a cat. Several rakshasa transformed into spirits of fiery smoke and escaped through the air. But the rest were less fortunate as the dreadnoughts crushed, lashed, and drove them toward the steep cliffs and chasm. Thousands were sent hurtling over the ledges, plunging hundreds of feet to the sharp rocks and wild waves.

Throughout, Max had focused almost all his attention on the golden palanquin. Two dreadnoughts had seized it and were pushing the massive thing toward the cliffs, digging their tentacles beneath and slamming their bodies against it. As the monsters gained leverage, the litter flipped and began to tumble as though the creatures were rolling a gargantuan boulder. With a final frenzied effort, they heaved it and themselves over the edge, clinging to the carriage like hideous octopi as it plunged down to the sea.

The seven remaining dreadnoughts followed their example, charging the cliffs and sweeping along everything in their path as they threw themselves like lemmings over the ledge. More geysers came screaming up once they crashed, their mist floating across the landscape like shimmering veils of silver.

Max heard himself gasp when the dreadnoughts struck the water. A peripheral part of his mind and consciousness had been with them and experienced firsthand the tumbling blur of sky and sea, the awful glimpse of rocks and ocean rushing up to meet them.

Thankfully, David had released the psychic connection right before the monsters had struck. With a groan, Max leaned back against the wagon, feeling as weak and helpless as a newborn. He clutched hopefully at the gae bolga, but the spear lay dark and dormant in the mud. Rowan’s sorcerer was also apparently spent, for he doubled over coughing and wheezing for breath as steam rose off his body in ghostly wisps.

An eerie quiet settled over the battlefield. There were no more drums, no more horns or the terrible shaking of dreadnoughts. There was only the distant crash of the sea and the sound of their hoarse breathing.

“I’m sorry,” David gasped, finding his voice at last. “I didn’t have enough power on my own. I had to borrow yours. Can you stand?”

With a grimace, Max took David’s hand and pushed himself up on his uninjured leg. Leaning heavily on the spear, he turned to survey the ruin upon the battlefield and the crumbling foundations of Rowan’s walls and towers. People were reemerging, streaming out from the remains of the Northgate arch and a hundred other openings to see what had happened. They fanned out to survey the destruction. Some cheered; others fell to their knees in prayer. Most simply stared at the surrounding miles of burning, smoking devastation. Even the earth was trembling and shivering with aftershocks.

It was a minute before Max heard the first scream.

Another followed it and then another. Soon hundreds and thousands of voices cried out as people backed away and then fled from the cliffs.

Prusias was rising from the sea.

The demon had shed his human guise as a serpent sheds its skin. It was no barbarian king that rose above the cliffs, but a great red dragon with seven crowns set atop seven human heads, each slavering with wrath and fury. Max and David were sixty yards from the cliffs, yet the heat that radiated from the demon’s red-scaled body scorched their lungs. Prusias had grown since Walpurgisnacht, gorging and glutting himself on the bodies and spirits of his own kind. Each of his crowned, gnashing heads was swaying far above the battlefield, and yet Max could hear his serpentine coils lashing the waves hundreds of feet below.

The heads leered out at all assembled. Blood was coursing from black, festering slashes across several of the faces and throats, grisly legacies of Max’s last encounter with the demon. Max had not managed to slay Prusias, but wounds from the gae bolga would never heal and so the cuts continued to bleed, dribbling and hissing down braided beards to patter on the scaly necks and the ground below. But despite these injuries and despite the utter ruin of his army, the King of Blys gave a savage smile.

“You think you’ve defeated Prusias?” he roared, looming monstrously over the battlefield. “Ha! I don’t need those insects or machines. I don’t need an army to crush this den of fools and tricksters.” The demon’s eyes settled on Max and David. “I see the faithless Hound and Rowan’s cowering sorcerer, but where is Bram? Bring me the Archmage and Richter, too. Pile them all onto a great pyre and beg my forgiveness!”

The heads swayed lower, thrusting forward like great serpents to loom over the battlefield and its huddling hordes of people. All seven spoke in grinning, leering unison.

“You’ll bow down and raise my flag, you groveling little maggots,” they growled. “You’ll bow down and worship Great Prusias or he’ll devour every last one of you!” The central head whipped savagely about to glare in the direction of Old College.

“Where is the Archmage?” it roared. “BRING ME BRAM!”

As soon as the demon cried out these last words, there was a blinding flash and the sharp crack of thunder. Something had appeared instantly before Prusias, a radiant white figure amid a cloud of pearly, dissipating mist. But it was not Elias Bram who walked toward the demon.

It was Mina.

Prusias recoiled the instant he saw her, as though she were something grotesque and poisonous. The King of Blys swayed back and forth like an enormous cobra. Each of the demon’s seven heads appraised the little girl with a mixture of fear and wonder.