“Oh, hell,” Trent said. “Here comes the finale.”
The thunder reached a crescendo, then a brilliant flash lit up the countryside.
All Hell came at them. Incarnadine looked out across the meadow and saw the Hosts of Hell in full battle regalia, arrayed to meet the foe. There were fiends, demons, hobgoblins, imps, and incubi of every description. Some sat astride great horned beasts of battle, some rode fantastic metal engines. Most charged on foot, screaming bloody mayhem.
Incarnadine flamed the first wave. They went down easily enough, but there were simply too many of them. He prepared himself for death, reciting the first lines of the Prayer of Leave-taking.
He looked up and saw a burnished curving blade poised to strike. The scaled horror that wielded it regarded him with molten red eyes.
“Now you will die, Haplodite scum,” the thing said to him.
“You send me to a better place, tiresome one,” the King replied.
“You — you.…!” The thing was beside itself with rage. But it did not strike.
“What seems to be the matter, O Fearful One?”
“You …shit! ”
Incarnadine laughed. He laid his palms on the thing’s horny chest and pushed. There was almost nothing to push against. The matinee monster fell over like a papier-mâché dummy.
He materialized a sword and swung at another bugaboo. It split down the middle, revealing its chintzy hollowness.
“Spell exhaustion!” he heard Trent yell. “Inky! They’ve shot their wad! They’re just buying time.”
“The house is about to go!” he shouted back. “Let’s get up there!”
It was easier said than done. They were flapped, batted, and swatted at by hosts of bogus fiends, all about as substantial as paper dolls, and as dangerous. But there were thousands of them, and they succeeded in getting in the way.
Trent and Incarnadine hedge-hopped through the formal gardens, then encountered more ersatz boogeymen on the croquet court. They pushed, kicked, and bulled their way forward, finally reaching the outer perimeter of the auroralike phenomenon. Once inside it, the cheapjack monsters disappeared.
Invisible fists pummeled them, jostling them this way and that. Fierce gusts of wind arose and tore at them. Leaning into the wind, they staggered forward. After fighting their way across a brick patio, they reached the back door.
Incarnadine began waving his hands. Trent tried the handle. The door opened. Trent grinned at his brother.
“You probably still can’t spell ‘magician.’“
“I was always an overachiever.”
At that moment, the bottom dropped out of everything.
Thirty-one
House Over the Borderline
“BARNABY?”
“Huh?”
“Wake up.”
“I’m up. Whaddya want?”
“What do I want? We were kissin’, and then you go and fall asleep on me!”
“I didn’t fall asleep.”
“Yes, you did!”
“I’m sorry. I feel like I haven’t slept in a thousand years.”
“Yeah, me, too. But I was beginning to like what we were doin’. A whole lot.”
“You mean this stuff?”
After they parted, she said, “Yeah, that stuff. And a couple of other things you were startin’ to do.”
A strange flickering light suddenly dawned through the window.
“Uh-oh,” Deena said.
“That was quick. Sun just popped up, I guess.”
“The sun don’t pop up, never.”
“Look out the window.”
“You look out the window!”
“I’m tired, Deena honey.”
“And I ain’t? Oh, damn it, all right.”
Deena got to her knees and leaned out over the nightstand and peeked out the window. Then she dove back into bed.
“What was out there?” he asked.
“Don’t ask!” she said.
The bedroom door burst open and the demon they had encountered in the closet came scampering in. It went directly to the window and threw up the sash.
“Excuse me, folks, but it’s time to bail out,” the fiend said as it clambered up onto the sill. “So long!” It jumped off and was gone.
“Don’t that beat everything,” Deena said.
“You know, he wasn’t such a bad sort, once you got to know him.”
“Kiss me again, fool.”
The demons were dead. Very dead. In fact, they stank badly enough to have succumbed days ago, and looked it as well.
“This one just crumpled up and died, all of a sudden like,” Snowclaw said (in his own language, but everyone seemed to understand him).
“Mine, too,” Gene said. “Jesus. There were only two of them.”
“There may be others,” Kwip said.
“Nope,” Sheila said. “Those are the two who were causing all the trouble. The rest was magic.”
“What in the world is going on outside?” Linda asked.
They all went to the window.
“Now this is extremely interesting,” Gene said.
Outside, the sun was a golden arch across the sky, the moon a pale silver bow. The landscape was alive. Saplings grew into giant trees, died, decayed, and fell in a matter of seconds. The seasons went by, one after another, in a flickering blur.
“We’re traveling through time,” Gene decided. “I guess.”
“That’s absolutely correct,” came a voice from the far end of the living room.
Gene and his companions turned to regard the two men who had entered the room.
“Hello again,” said the tall, handsome man with the beard.
“Lord Incarnadine!” Linda said.
“Yes. You remembered. I believe we met only once.”
“Certainly I remember … uh, Your Majesty.” Linda did a quick curtsey.
“And I believe this is … Mr. Ferraro?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And …?”
“Kwip of Dunwiddin, Your Majesty.”
“No need to kneel. Arise, Kwip of Dunwiddin!”
“His Majesty is too kind.”
“And, let me see … ”
“They call me Snowclaw.”
“Aptly yclept. Stout fellow. And this charming young lady?”
“Sheila Jankowski, sir.”
“Ah, it was you. You were doing quite a good deal of spellcasting in here, weren’t you?”
Sheila blushed. “Yes, sir.”
“Excellent work! You saved the lives of your friends, and quite possibly mine and my brother’s. I’m sorry — ladies and gentlemen, may I present His Royal Highness Trent, Prince of the House of Haplodie, Protector of Zilonesia, Vice-regent of Ulontha, Beloved of the Gods, Holy Warrior, Keeper of the Stone of Truth-telling … and so forth and so on.”
Trent said, “Those honorifics and fifty cents will get me a cup of decaffeinated coffee. Howdy, folks.”
Gene said, “Uh … sir? May I ask a question?”
“Sure,” Incarnadine said.
“What the hell has been going on?”
Incarnadine laughed. “That’s going to take some explaining.”
Linda said, “I want to know where those things came from.” She pointed to the cadavers.
“From a very mysterious aspect, the nature of which we might never fully understand.”
“Are they real demons? I mean — well, it’s kind of hard to ask the right questions.”
“I know what you mean. Are they truly supernatural? I don’t know. I suspect the physical laws that govern their universe are radically different from most. They do have physical bodies, however, so, as I see it, the question is moot. I’m sorry I don’t have many of the right answers.”
“That’s okay.”
Incarnadine went to the window. “Don’t let all this nonsense out the window faze you. Too much magic in one place tends to be a little destabilizing. Not to worry. We thought the trajectory might turn out to be hyperbolic, but it isn’t. The effect will start to rebound momentarily. There we go.”