Nils had not kept his “third eye” closed. Early on, mind still, he’d peeked. And found the ogre—the “troll” as he thought of it—with its own third eye closed. Smoothly, like a stealthy tendril, he’d slipped an awareness unit into its mind and discovered what kind of entity he had to deal with. For hours the awareness unit had lain quietly, absorbing what there was to learn. He’d come to know the child, the jungle cult leader, and the demon of the Sigma Field, as well as the beingness of the elemental ogre, Maamo.
He also sensed the power the demon would command with its third eye open, far more than he himself could overcome in any simple duel. For even outside the Sigma Field, the demon—the master and his merged acolytes—had the skills it had gained there, and the power of its own composite nature.
Thus as his horse carried him up the hill, Nils had no plan at all.
Demon-Maamo peered uphill. In darkness his eyesight was more penetrating than a human’s, though in daylight its resolution was no better, if as good. The hint of dawn in the sky had scarcely influenced visibility, but he could see the gomba plainly enough, up the moderate slope across night-shadowed gardens. The broad graveled path he walked curved, and would come little nearer to it than it was then.
He spoke, and the other ogres stopped the two horses. Demon-Maamo stepped to one of them. With his great ogre hands, he grasped the blind man and lifted him from the saddle, then hoisted him across one shoulder and left the gravel path, uphill toward the temple.
He was more tired than he’d realized, and the blind man was heavy. It might have been better after all, he thought, to have stayed with the horses and approached from above. The older human was soon puffing, and Demon-Maamo growled an order. With a slight grunt, one of the other ogres picked Jampa up and carried him too. Three times they encountered low stone walls, built for aesthetics, not defense. They lifted their long legs over them without setting down their burdens.
At the gomba, the yeti guards on the encircling porch watched them come. When Demon-Maamo was thirty meters away, their sergeant called firmly to him to halt. Demon-Maamo looked at the half-drawn bows, then at the sword in the sergeant’s fist. Then, especially, he looked the sergeant in the eye. But he did not stop till he was two strides from the steps.
“The emperor is threatened by the monks!” he said quietly. “I have come to save him from them.”
“The emperor says you are not allowed to enter this place,” the sergeant countered. His voice was not as firm now. The warrior he faced, he’d grown up with, and even as a cub had recognized him as the pack leader, so to speak. Not long since, there’d been a change in Maamo; his dominance then had grown beyond challenge. Now it seemed he’d changed again; his dominance intensified, grown threatening.
Demon-Maamo swung the blind man off his shoulder and flopped him roughly to the ground, then drew his sword. The ogre carrying Jampa put the older master down on his feet. Then both of Demon-Maamo’s ogres drew their swords; though less decisively than Maamo had. All of this felt uncanny to them, this uncertainty of duty and counter-duty, this threatening other yeti guards with weapons.
“Would you prevent me from saving our emperor?” Demon-Maamo demanded, then started up the steps.
The sergeant gave way. The contradictions troubled him, but he was reluctant to disbelieve Maamo; Yunnan ogres do not easily lie.
Also, his orders had been to avoid fighting Maamo, to delay him only. The emperor’s strategy, unstated, was to keep the demon in the body and occupied until the Circle of Power had closed to him the fabric of the Tao.
Then he’d want him killed.
In two strides, Demon-Maamo was on the porch. Behind him came the other two, one pushing the blind man ahead of him. The other brought Jampa Lodro. Demon-Maamo thrust open the door to the hallway, and entered. Six ogres of the night watch followed, and his own two with the humans. Others, he sensed, were in the Sanctuary with the Circle and the emperor. Oil lamps lit the hall. He strode down it to the far end and pushed the door open.
Two ogres stood just inside. They made no move to stop him. The emperor stood beside the Circle, between it and the door, with four more yeti guards arrayed beside him. The demon sensed more than the emperor’s lack of fear; he sensed his readiness, his confidence. And while he, as Maamo, was physically stronger, the emperor, he thought, had the Circle to help him. He, on the other hand, was not in the place of power given him by the Great God. And to go to it would lose him the great ogre, the physical tool he needed to destroy the Circle.
Tenzin and the Circle sat as if alone, as if none of this was taking place. For them there was no gomba, no sanctuary, no danger. There was only the Field. They hadn’t yet gotten it closed to the demon, nor could the work be hurried. They worked with total attention, total intention, divorced from all else. If they died now, the demon could not be stopped.
As motionless as they were, as vulnerable, it seemed to the demon that they somehow endangered him; at any rate it was time. He gathered himself to leap, to attack.
The emperor sensed it, and moved to distract him. “You are a reasonable demon,” he said. “Let us bargain. Tell me what you most would like.”
Demon-Maamo gestured at the Circle. “These, dead.”
“I understand. But let us look at alternatives.”
Demon-Maamo brandished his sword, and instantly the ogres by the emperor stepped between them. He growled. “Out of my way!” he said.
They faltered. It was Nils who broke the situation. He had opened his third eye fully when they’d entered the Sanctuary and the demon-troll’s attention had become fully occupied. As was the emperor’s. Psychically, commandingly, the Yngling spoke.
“Arnoldo Kkechuwa!”
Demon-Maamo stopped, spun around. “Who calls me that?”
“Your father.”
“What!?” The word burst from him.
“And your mother. She who suckled you, who defended you from your father and the others. She came to call you Kkechuwa.”
Demon-Maamo stared at the Northman. “Who are you?”
“I am he who knows.” He paused, using time. “I am he who dwelt within you. I know your soul. I am he—” Another pause. “I am he who saw you steal from your mother. Who saw you rape your little sister, then strangle her so she could not tell. I am he—I am he who saw you weep miserably in a corner of the church, unable to confess to the priest, unable to find solace in solitary confession to the Virgin. I am . . . ”
Demon-Maamo howled his pain, drowning out the Yngling, drowning out the patient droning of the Circle and its leader, who sat oblivious. The ogres stared. None were telepathic, but it was clear to them that something powerful was happening, something uncanny between Maamo and the blind man. The fur stood stiffly along their spines, and the one who’s held Nils’s arm had let go and backed away half a step, staring not at his emperor or his leader now, but at the captive.
“I am he who saw you sacrifice to a god who was not God, saw him devour you all and give you nothing. Saw this would-be ruler of the world, this emperor and his geshe, save you unwittingly. I am he . . . ”
Hans watched through a window. Clearly Nils was in danger. He’d nocked an arrow and half drawn his bowstring, surprised at how stiff the blacksmith’s bow was. The largest troll, the one who was clearly chief, was the one who threatened Nils, but others were in the way. Hans had no decent shot at him, and didn’t dare move to some other window; that might be when the attack came.
This time the troll chief didn’t howl; he roared! Raising his sword, he took a first step toward Nils, and Hans shot. Shot the troll who’d held Nils’s arm, for he still had no clear shot at the troll chief. The arrow struck deeply, for the yeti guards wore no mail, only a breastplate. It severed the spine, slashed through the heart, penetrated the cartilaginous sternum and stopped against the breastplate. The troll collapsed while its chief paused to stare. At the same time Hans shouted, “Run, Nils, run!”
The ogre nearest Hans’s window turned and leaped toward it as if catapulted. Despite himself the boy jumped back. The railing behind him was buttocks high to his long frame; he toppled backward over it and fell to the ground, a meter and a half below the porch. The first ogre through didn’t see him at first, then did, and hopped over the railing, sword in hand.
There was the sharp “blam!” of a pistol from a corner of the porch, and another. The ogre jerked, turned, and came back over the railing like a leopard. The pistol fired again, once, twice. The ogre faltered, slapping at its chest. Another came through behind it, and others through other windows, windows with both glass and shutters closed. The pistol banged again, then again, and was silent, empty.
Inside, Demon-Maamo had turned to the window and the shout, the source of the arrow. Then realized that the ogres were moving toward the windows as if in relief at having something they could attack unquestioningly. Ignoring the blind man now, he spun and pounced to the Circle, striking with his sword. As he killed the first monk, the shared trance was broken, but before the others could react and scatter, he’d killed three more. Tenzin fled toward a window and the ogre rushed after him, cleaving the geshe diagonally from shoulder to waist.
Outside, gunfire snarled, the racketing noise of an automatic rifle. He didn’t notice. He turned toward Songtsan Gampo, who’d drawn his own sword. The only ogres who’d stood firm through the confusion were the four beside the ruler. The emperor was pointing, shouting: “Kill him! Kill him! Kill the traitor!”
Through the windows came roars of pain, screams of terror, confusing them further. One ogre who’d gone out a window climbed back in, yammering loudly in the ogre speech, then ran across the Sanctuary, jumping corpses, slipped in a pool of blood and nearly fell, catching himself with one hand, before bounding headfirst through a window on the other side, bursting out its glass.
The four beside the emperor neither left nor obeyed him. Now the giant ogre turned to him and attacked. Only one of the guards stepped to meet him, and Demon-Maamo overwhelmed him, cut him down. The other three stepped back. Demon-Maamo struck, smashing down the emperor’s futile parry, splitting him from crown to pelvis, snapping bones like twigs.
Then he turned to Nils, snarling, big fangs bared, and took one step. Gunfire hammered from a window, and the great ogre body went down. In the interface dimension between reality as we know it and the Sigma Field, there was a terrible psychic scream of frustration and anger that seemed to go on for a long time, though objectively it lasted for perhaps five seconds. Then it cut off abruptly. Before it died, the Circle had done enough, accomplished its work.