Ursula shrieked again. Another command of some sort. The four monks seemed to summon their fading strength and began scuffing the soil with their sandals. Within a moment, the circle which Ursula had scratched was broken at the four cardinal points. At the broken points, hot air seemed to eddy out of the circle and wash over Erik and Manfred and the others. The same hot air, swirling at the four compass points like miniature cyclones, sucked the monks dry in an instant; four skin-bags full of bones collapsed to the ground. The heated air seemed to glow and darken simultaneously, as if drawing power and form from its consumption of the monks.
'No closer!' warned Ursula. She laid a hand on the casket's lid. 'No closer or I will release the Woden.'
Lopez walked forward, coming to stand next to Erik. He held a very small crucifix in his hand. 'This is a fragment of the true cross, witch. Evil cannot prevail against it.'
Lopez's words seemed to have no effect. Ursula's lips curled in what Erik would have called a sneer, had it not been for the emptiness of the face which framed it. A woman can sneer; a vessel cannot.
'Besides, if you open that casket,' said Manfred, 'your plot is at naught.'
At that moment, Ursula's face underwent a transformation. A horrid one. The face thickened, grew heavy; the shapely cheeks sagged into jowls; the fair brow swelled, looming now over sunken eye sockets. Inside the orbs, a woman's dark eyes became slits of pure black. And now, for the first time, emotion filled the face. Anger and cruelty, overlaid by triumph.
Erik understood that the vessel was now filled to the brim, and overflowing. This was not Ursula; this was Chernobog himself, lurking inside her flesh.
The horrible face--half-man; half-woman--bared white teeth turning yellow as Erik watched. 'Do not presume to instruct your betters, stripling. There are plots and plots. If the Woden cannot accomplish one task, it can certainly succeed in another.'
Erik's mind seemed to be working much faster than his body. He understood Chernobog's new purpose, and desperately tried to reach Manfred--to seize the prince and hurl him back, out of danger. But some magic was causing his flesh to move like soft lead. The same magic seemed to have frozen Manfred and Von Gherens completely. Etten was no longer standing at all. The knight had crumpled to his knees, his head lolling.
Chernobog/Ursula's voice rolled on. 'Here, fool boy--uncontrolled and unwarded--the Woden will kill and kill and kill. You will be dead, and your precious Empire left with one heir the less.'
Ursula's hand had remained female. Now, even more suddenly than her face, the hand changed. Grew, swelled, became first the hand of a large man and then the hand--the paw, rather--of something still larger. The claws plunged into the wood of the casket lid and began to raise it. Heat and darkness spilled out of the crack like a flood. A horrible stench came with it.
Lopez stepped forward and met the surge of darkness from the casket with the tiny cross. He shouted some words Erik did not understand. In Greek, he thought, not Latin. Neither the action nor the words seemed to have any effect on the swelling darkness, but Erik felt the paralysis which had kept him almost immobile suddenly lift.
He could see the Chernobog/Ursula face open its mouth. The thick lips began to twist, began to utter words of their own--words which, Erik had no doubt at all, would counter those of Lopez. The Basque priest was still shouting Greek phrases.
But the paralysis was completely gone, now. Erik moved faster than he ever had in his life. The Algonquian war hatchet sailed across the distance and buried itself up to the wirebound hilt in his/her skull. Blood gushed. The obsidian eyes seemed to flame black fire for an instant, before the body toppled back and fell to the ground. As it fell, all traces of Chernobog left the face and then, more slowly, the hand. But the talons remained longest of all-- long enough to draw the lid of the casket open as Ursula fell.
The hot, stinking blackness poured out like lava from a volcano, sweeping over Erik and Manfred and all the others. Erik could hear the gleeful shriek of a monster somewhere.
That shriek was immediately overridden by another. Etten's voice, that was, howling in agony. Erik turned toward the sound, his eyes tearing from the heat and the stench. The Woden monster had seized upon Etten, he knew. Etten, the weakest of them, was being consumed by fire from within.
Suddenly, Lopez's voice rang out more loudly than Erik would have believed possible, coming from such a small man. In an instant, the darkness vanished and Erik could see clearly again.
Etten was writhing on the ground, his fingers clawing at the straps of his helmet. Smoke was pouring up through the visor. Von Gherens, nearest to him, leaned over and began to help. A flash of flame seemed to leap through the visor and smite the Prussian knight in the face.
Now it was Von Gherens' turn to writhe on the ground, screaming in agony.
'Quick!' shouted Lopez. 'Use your swords!'
Moving together, Erik and Manfred grabbed their swords by the hilts and held them up like great crucifixes.
