Peter Brett – The Skull Throne (страница 32)

It was easy to see why the greenlanders thought him the Deliverer. Every inch of his visible flesh was covered with wards. Some were large and powerful. Impact wards. Forbiddings. Pressure wards. Like Jardir, a demon could not touch the Par’chin, but that he willed it, and his punches, elbows, and kicks would strike the alagai like scorpion bolts.

Other wards, like those than ran around his eyes, ears, and mouth, were almost too small to read, conveying more subtle powers. Midsized ones ran up and down his limbs. Thousands in all.

That in itself was enough to amaze, but the Par’chin had always been an artist with warding. His patterns, simple and efficient, were rendered with such beauty they put Evejan illuminators to shame. Dama who had spent a lifetime copying and illustrating sacred text in ink made from the blood of heroes.

The wards Inevera had cut into Jardir’s flesh were crude by comparison. She would have needed to flay him alive to approach what the Par’chin had done.

Magic ran along the surface of those wards, crackling like static on a thick carpet. They pulsed and throbbed, brightening and dimming in a hypnotizing rhythm. Even one without wardsight could see it. He didn’t look like a man any more. He looked like one of Everam’s seraphs.

The field demons were close now, racing hard at the sight of prey. They stretched out in a long line, a few loping strides apart. Too long spent fighting the first would have the second upon him, and on and on, till he was fighting all of them. Jardir tensed, ready to race to his friend’s aid the moment he began to be overwhelmed.

The Par’chin walked boldly to meet them, but it was warrior’s bravado. No man could fight so many alone.

But again his friend surprised him, slipping in smoothly to grab the lead demon and turn its own momentum against it in a perfect sharusahk circle throw. Cracked like a whip, the field demon’s neck snapped a split second before the Par’chin let go. His aim was precise, crashing the dead alagai into the next in line, sending both tumbling to the ground.

The Par’chin glowed brightly now. In the seconds of contact, he had drained considerable magic from the first demon. He charged in, stomping down on the living demon’s head with an impact-warded heel. There was a flare of magic, and when the Par’chin turned to meet the next in line, Jardir could see its skull had been crushed like a melon.

A crash and shriek stole Jardir’s attention. While he had been focused on the Par’chin, a wind demon had dived at him, hitting hard against the warding field that surrounded Jardir’s crown for several paces in every direction. Including up.

Everam take me for a fool, Jardir scolded himself. In his younger days, he would never have been so reckless as to lose track of his surroundings. The Par’chin feared that the spear had made him lax – and perhaps it had – but the crown was more insidious. He’d begun to drop his guard. Something that would cost him in Anoch Sun. The demon princelings had shown at Waning there were still ways they could strike at him.

Jardir collapsed the field, dropping the wind demon heavily to the ground. It struggled to rise, more dazed than harmed, but as Drillmaster Qeran had taught so many years before, wind demons were slow and clumsy on the ground. The thin bone that stretched the membrane of its wings bowed, not meant to support the demon’s full weight, and at rest the creature’s hind legs were bent fully at the knee, unable to straighten fully.

Before it could manage to right itself, Jardir was on the demon, kicking its limbs out and using his own weight to knock the breath from it once more. The wards scarred onto Jardir’s hands were not as intricate as the Par’chin’s, but they were strong. He sat on the demon’s chest, too high for it to bring its hind talons to bear, and pinned its wings with his knees. He held its throat with his left hand and the pressure ward cut into his palm glowed, building in power as he punched it repeatedly in the vulnerable bone of its eye socket, just above the toothed beak. Impact wards on his knuckles flashed, and he felt the bone crack and finally shatter.

Then, as the Par’chin had shown him, he Drew, feeling the alagai’s magic, absorbed deep in the centre of Ala, flood into him, filling him with power.

Another wind demon dove for him while he was engaged, but this time Jardir was ready. He had learned in lessons long ago that wind demons led their dive with the long, hooked talons at the bend in their wings. They could sever a head with those talons, then spread their wings wide, arresting their downward momentum as they snatched their prey in their hind talons and launched back skyward with a great wingstroke.

Flush with magic, Jardir moved impossibly fast, catching the demon’s wing bone just under the lead talon. He pivoted and threw himself forward, preventing the demon from spreading its wings and throwing it to the ground with the full force of its dive. Bones shattered, and the demon shrieked, twitching in agony. He finished it quickly.

Looking up, he saw the Par’chin fully engaged now. He had killed five of the field demons, but the rest, more than three times that number, surrounded him.

But for all that, he did not appear to be in danger. A demon leapt at him and he collapsed into mist. The alagai passed through him and crashed into one of its fellows, the two going down in a tangle of tooth and claw.

An instant later he reformed behind another of the beasts, catching it under the forelegs and locking his fingers behind its neck in a sharusahk hold. There was an audible snap, and then another demon came at him. He misted away once more, reforming a few feet away, in place to kick a demon in the belly. Impact wards on his instep flashed, launching the alagai several feet through the air.

Jardir was the greatest living sharusahk master, and even he could barely hold his own against the Par’chin’s mist-fighting. Against the alagai, with their powerful bodies and tiny brains, it was devastating.

‘You cheat, Par’chin!’ Jardir called. ‘Your new powers have made you lax!’

The son of Jeph had caught an alagai’s jaws in his hands, and was in the process of forcing them open well past their limit. The demon let out a high-pitched squeal, thrashing madly, but it could not break his hold. He looked over to Jardir, amusement on his aura. ‘Says the man hiding behind his crown’s warding field. Come and show me how it’s done, if you’ve had your rest.’

Jardir laughed, pulling open his robe. The Par’chin’s body was wiry and corded like cable, a sharp contrast to the heavy bulk of Jardir’s muscles, a broad canvas Inevera had painted with her knife. He pulled the crown’s warding field in close and strode into the press. A field demon leapt at him, but he caught its foreleg and snapped it with an effortless twist, dropping it in time for a spin-kick that took the next demon at the base of its skull. The impact ward on his instep was enough to break its spine, killing it instantly.

The other demons, their ravenous fury turned to a more cautious aggression after their battle with the Par’chin, circled, issuing low, threatening growls as they looked for an opening. Jardir glanced at the Par’chin, who had stepped back to observe. His wards of forbiddance glowed fiercely, and Jardir could see the edge of the warding field they formed. It bordered several feet in every direction around the Par’chin, like an invisible bubble of impenetrable glass.

His own warriors had been ready to name the Par’chin Deliverer that night in the Maze. Jardir had thought it due only to the Spear of Kaji at the time, but it seemed the Par’chin was destined to power. It was inevera.

But destined to power did not mean he was Shar’Dama Ka. The Par’chin baulked at the final price of power, refusing to take the reins his people thrust at him. There was still much he had to learn.

‘Observe, Par’chin,’ Jardir said, making a show of setting his feet as he took one of the most basic dama sharusahk stances. He breathed in, taking in all his surroundings, all his thoughts and emotions, embracing them and letting them fall away. He looked at the demons with calm, relaxed focus, ready to react in an instant.

He lowered his guard, pretending distraction, and the alagai took the bait. The ring around him burst into motion as all the field demons moved at him together with all the precision of a push guard.

Jardir never moved his feet, but his waist, supple as a palm frond, twisted and bent as he dodged the attacks and turned them away. He seldom needed more than the flat of his hand to redirect tooth or talon, slapping at paws or the side of a field demon’s head just enough to keep them from touching him. The creatures landed in confused tumbles, dazed, but unharmed.

‘You fighting, or just playing with them?’ the Par’chin asked.

‘I am teaching, Par’chin,’ he replied, ‘and you would be wise to attend the lesson. You may have skill with magic, but the dama would laugh at your sharusahk. There is more than dogma taught in the catacombs beneath Sharik Hora. Gaisahk has merit, but you have much to learn.’