by Dave Gross
“He shall be,” said Kazyah. “If he can destroy the book and ensure that Runelord Zutha never returns to rule our lands, the Skoan-Quah will sing of his deeds.”
The boss might like the singing-his-praises part, but I wasn’t sold. “I don’t like the idea. I’m his goddamned bodyguard! The whole point of my job is not to let him die.”
“Only long enough to break the curse,” said Illyria.
“Fine. Tell it to him.”
“He won’t hear it from us.”
“You think I can talk him into letting you kill him?”
Suddenly, none of them could look me in the eye, and I realized what they were saying.
“You want me to kill him?”
“It would be quicker,” said Eando. “Easier for him.”
“I would do it myself,” said Svannostel. “But it would be kinder and, frankly, less destructive to his corpse if you did it.”
“You think you can take him now?” I snapped. “You said yourself, he’s powered the rings and stones. I’m thinking maybe you’re afraid of him.”
“I am not afraid,” said Svannostel. “I am only sorry that a man who seemed noble has fallen to such a dreadful curse. When I kill him, it will be with regret. It is a kindness to offer you the opportunity to do it yourself.”
“You can all go straight to hell.”
“Indeed,” said an eerie voice even higher than the dragon’s head. “And if you seek to harm me, I shall speed you on your way.”
The boss came into view as he let go of his invisibility spell. He glided down from the gallery ceiling, clutching the Gluttonous Tome to his chest. Rings glowed on every finger. The Azlanti stones spun faster and wider around his head. Some threw rippling fields of energy around his body. Others twitched like war dogs eager to slip the leash.
Eando put a hand on his sword and stepped back. “Jeggare, be reasonable.”
“You entreat me to reason while conspiring to assassinate me?”
“We only want to free you from the curse,” said Illyria. “Kazyah was going to restore you to life.”
“Is that what she is preparing to do?”
Kazyah spun on her heel, dragging her earth breaker in a circle around herself. Pebbles and dust jumped from the rock beneath her feet.
“Drop the book, Count,” said Svannostel. “Remove the rings and stones. Then we can discuss our options.”
“I will never bow my head for execution.”
Arni came running from the library, hackles raised. He stopped beneath the boss, looking up at him and back at the rest of us, confused.
“There may be another way—” said Eando.
“I heard it all,” the boss said. “I heard you implore my henchman to betray me.”
“Now, boss…”
“Fear not, Radovan. I also heard your refusal. Let us deal with these betrayers so I can return to my preparations.”
“Stay back, Radovan.” Illyria pointed at the boss. “I’m sorry, Varian.”
The next words out of her mouth were magic, but the boss was quicker. Before Illyria could finish the spell, a red tendril burst from her cheek and sewed her lips shut.
“I see now why you favor that spell,” said the boss. His mouth twisted in a sneer.
Janneke raised her crossbow.
“Back off!” I put myself between her the boss. “We don’t need a fight.”
Eando feinted to one side before dashing in on the other side. He hissed, “Radovan, help us with—” before I put my heel in his breadbasket.
The boss started casting a spell of his own, one I’d never heard before. Before he was done, Kazyah finished casting hers.
A huge lump of bone-filled earth and stone rose up beneath Kazyah, bigger than any of the statues. Its eyes glowed like molten amber. Kazyah balanced on its shoulders, raised her earth breaker, and pointed at the boss. “Take him!”
Svannostel opened her mouth. Lightning blinded us all. When I could see again, a statue behind the boss was scorched black—except for a circle where he’d been hovering. One of his Azlanti stones skittered like a drop of water across a hot skillet, but it kept circling his head.
Svannostel roared. Inside the cavern, the sound was so loud I expected to feel blood trickling from my ears.
Amaranthine squawked in sympathy as Illyria used a sharp knife to cut the stitches that bound her mouth shut. She sputtered blood and gasped for breath.
Janneke’s bow snapped. The cylinder flew toward the boss. A shimmering field deflected it. The cylinder broke open, spilling an empty net to the floor. Without missing a beat, Janneke fired two bolts. They bounced off the boss’s magic shield.
The boss finished his spell. Even as the stone spirit marched toward him, a bony arm broke out of its body to clutch Kazyah’s leg. The fleshless dead began climbing out. One after another, they fell like new-foaled calves or clambered up toward the shaman. Hunks of earth and stone fell away, but that didn’t stop the elemental. It moved toward the boss.
“Radovan, look out!”
I dodged aside, but Zora had already tripped Eando with her flagstaff. He stumbled across the place where I’d just been. I hooked his ankle, and he went down again.
Arnisant barked and jumped against the earth spirit. “Don’t hurt the dog,” said Kazyah. “Grab his master.”
I moved toward the boss, but my first step went right out from under me. I slid across a slick mess on the floor.
“Stay down, Radovan,” said Eando. Still on the floor, he’d just finished some magic gesture creating the greasy stuff. “Stay out of this, if you won’t help us.”
Kazyah’s earth spirit loomed over the boss, but it stopped about five feet short of grabbing him. The rocky thing had no face, but it still looked confused.
The boss clenched a fist, and a yellow gem flared on one of his rings. The spirit shuddered, clouds of dust pouring off of its limbs. The orange glow of its eyes turned bloody red.
The boss pointed at Kazyah, who was still standing on top of the elemental. “Crush her!”
Now obeying the boss, the elemental grabbed Kazyah by the leg. Surprised, she swung her earth breaker a moment too late. The spirit threw her across the room. She hit the wall. We all heard the sharp crack of her bear hat.
“Boss, don’t!”
I stayed low to keep from slipping on Eando’s grease, but I had the big knife in one hand and a couple darts in the other. Illyria was casting another spell. I threw the darts, but I held back at the last instant. None of them even went close to hitting her.
“Are you with me, Radovan? Or are you against me?”
“We don’t need to kill anybody.”
“With or against?!”
“Desna weeps!” I choked. “I’m with you.”
Another blast of lightning hit the boss, and this time his shield didn’t hold. He fell to the ground, and for a second his halo of stones sagged. He stood up from a crouch, his clothes singed and his hair smoking, his face scorched red and black. Still holding the Tome, he drew the Shadowless Sword and looked up at Svannostel. His purple eyes gleamed dark as hers blazed bright.
They both called out spells.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Janneke raise her double crossbow. I threw a few stars her way. They missed the bow string, but they sank into the wood. I pointed at her and said, “Don’t!”
The dragon finished her spell. A magical weight settled on me. Arni wobbled as he felt it too. My limbs moved like I was floating in molasses. Svannostel had slowed me and the dog, but the boss didn’t seem the least bit bothered.
He gestured with his sword, and a black ray shot into the dragon’s breast. She trumpeted in pain and surprise. Her wings slumped, like the ray had ripped something out of her.
Thrusting his sword forward, he screamed a magic word. Everybody else screamed with him. Their bodies twitched and folded in pain.
Kazyah screamed too, but her voice sounded like a rockslide. I caught a glimpse of her bear cloak vanishing
as she transformed herself into an earth spirit to fight the one the boss turned against her.
Illyria shook a wand at the boss. Blue-black bolts shot toward him. With a wave of his hand and a flash from one of his rings, he threw them back at her. She cried out as they sank into her chest. She stumbled back and fell over a stone bench.
Amaranthine flew at the boss. Arni jumped up and woofed, but he stopped short of biting the drake.
With a casual swipe, the boss slapped the drake out of the air.
“Don’t hurt her!” choked Illyria, still doubled over in pain.
“Boss, let’s get out of here,” I said. “You’ve got the book. We don’t need anything else here. You’ve won. It’s over.”
“Nothing is over until I am satisfied.” He took a step toward Amaranthine and raised his blade.
Arnisant stood over the drake. He whimpered, but he didn’t budge.
“Arnisant, move away!” The boss raised his sword.
“Boss, you don’t want to do that.” I let a riffle scroll slip from my sleeve into my hand. Thumbing the edge, I felt the cold magic run up one arm and down the other. On the way across, it left a chill in my heart. I stepped in front of Arni.
The boss pushed me aside.
“Boss.” I put a hand on his shoulder, steady as a rock. My grip shifted on the big knife.
He turned, eyes wide in anger. “How dare you?”
Guided by the magic of the riffle scroll, my hand drove the big knife straight into his heart.
The boss opened his mouth, but only a dark red bubble came out. For a second his eyes locked onto mine. Then they shifted focus to something much farther away.
He dropped his sword. I held him up until he dropped the book. His blood poured over us both. I held him until the stones circling his head clattered on the stone floor. His head fell back. I lay him down on the floor, and then I lay myself down beside him.
15
The River of Souls
Varian
After sight left my eyes, I could still hear Arnisant barking and Radovan shouting useless apologies. After sound faded, I could still smell the sour odor of my body, soon to become the stench of corruption. Scent dwindled to nothing, but I could still taste the flatbread of my recent meal—my last meal—until all that remained was the tang of blood in my mouth. Taste dissipated, and all I could feel was the blood overflowing my lips. As that final sensation trailed away, some intangible miasma released me from its grip, and I knew I had escaped the gluttonous curse.
I had died.
Several times before I had lain close to death before medicine or magic revived me. Once I had even stood on death’s threshold before a miracle repaired my cloven heart.
While I could not see, hear, smell, taste, or touch, my consciousness endured. I could think. I could wonder.
Perhaps, I prayed, I could dream.
In bleaker moments I had imagined death as a blank oblivion, despite my hope that the Tender of Dreams would clasp me to her bosom in the afterlife. I wondered whether Desna would preserve the fancies that had buoyed me through the darkest years of my long life. I prayed she could forgive my fealty to House Thrune and, by extension, Asmodeus, the Prince of Law. I feared damnation because I knew I deserved it.
Bereft of dimension and time, my thoughts drifted upon a void. Some indeterminate later, a sensation returned not to my body but to my soul. I experienced a buoyancy without temperature. Motion carried me, but by what vehicle or toward what destination I could not fathom. A thought of cold tickled at my consciousness. It collapsed into an abstraction of smell, of many absent bodies huddled against a formidable expanse. My soul passed among a host of others.
A silent panic disrupted the unseen herd. I felt a cacophonous terror. Soon after, countless gray vagaries appeared all around me. Sensing them without benefit of eyes, I “saw” that I was one of them, a speck among a vast throng.
The motion I had previously sensed became apparent. We spirits were like schools of fish swept up in a current. No mark indicated our trajectory, much less our destination, only a blank immensity in all directions. Gradually I perceived disturbances at the boundaries of our swarm.
Shapes, by turns black and blinding, moved to intercept predators diving into the stream. I yearned to see the intruders more clearly. By my yearning my perception honed in on the site.
A white-winged devil thrust a spear through the breast of an ashen-skinned hag. Her black claws snapped just short of a translucent blot before she flew away, screeching in frustration.
Intuition told me her prey was an untethered spirit, a dead soul—one such as I. We passed from the material world through the Astral Plane. Eventually, we would arrive at our deserved reward, but not before Pharasma judged us.
With that thought, my perception broadened further. Behind us I sensed innumerable tributaries feeding our stream, souls escaping a multitude of worlds. Before us, the channel of spirits terminated at the tip of a distant pinnacle. Slender as a needle, it rose from a distant city of golden walls surrounding streets and edifices of perfect arrangement. The tower could only be Pharasma’s Spire rising up from Axis. Upon its infinite height rested the Boneyard, where the goddess of death held court.
Another disturbance broke into the torrent of souls. Focusing on the intruder, I saw an attenuated figure, human in frame but with tendrils flowing from its shoulders like a cape, and a long tail waving behind its path. Its piscine jaws snapped at a brown-skinned angel wielding a sunlight sword. It snatched up a soul and flew away. The angel pursued, leaving its place unguarded for a moment.
Something else had been waiting for that moment.
A serpent-woman dove into the stream. Her many-colored feathers stirred souls as she passed. She made no move to steal them. Instead, she flew directly toward me, her glabrous hands reaching for my—not my face, for I remained bodiless. For me. She gathered me to her face and brushed me with her lips.
Her fleeting kiss felt as delightful as the brush of a butterfly’s wings. Her reptilian eyes stared through me while her semi-human face remained a mask of indifference.
A thunderclap shook me. Like startled minnows, the nearest souls fled from me. Only the snake-woman remained. She twisted to either side, looking for the source of the disturbance.
“Return, Count Varian Jeggare,” said an aching voice, like the yawn of a distant landslide. “Take up your bones, resume your mantle of flesh, and walk your mortal path again.”
After a moment’s hesitation, I recognized the distorted voice as that of the earth-shaman Kazyah, called the Night Bear. We had spoken seldom since the oracle’s death. In matters arcane, I had been content to consult Kline and Lady Illyria, leaving Kazyah to act as guide and guardian on our journey to the Sleeper. Radovan knew her better, I suspected.
Radovan. Ironic that I should meet my demise by his hand. In the earliest days of our acquaintance, I remained ever on guard against treachery. In the end, his was the only soul I entrusted with my life.
Kazyah’s voice echoed across the Astral Plane. She meant to guide me back to the material world, no doubt by casting a spell the oracle had inscribed for her. I paused to consider whether I wished to obey her summons. In the passage of souls I felt no suffering. My sensations were purely metaphysical. The uncertainty of my destination planted no vexation in my thoughts, only a mild and abstract curiosity.
“Varian.” The snake-woman’s lips did not move, but as her eyes gazed at me, I heard a voice far more familiar than the shaman’s. Although I had not heard it in three-quarters of a century, there was no mistaking it.
The snake-woman flew away. I heard—or perhaps felt—the voice call again. “Varian, come to me.”
The snake-woman vanished into the astral expanse. None but my fellow astral travelers remained near. I thought of closing eyes I no longer had. Then I saw:
Sunlight on a green meadow dappled in the shadows of summer leaves.
Fireflies dancing in the twilight above a blue
meadow.
Midnight stars sifting silver through bare branches, a dead bird moldering in the snow.
Dawn dispelling the murk with rosy light glistening on the dew.
The meadow green again and filled with fluttering blue swallowtails.
“Varian.”
Cool grass tickled my bare feet. Songbirds called from the boughs, and a scent of wildflowers dizzied my head. Pollen sweetened my lips. The morning sun blinded me as I turned, and then I saw my mother.
She appeared as I best remembered her, barefoot and grass-stained, the way we returned from our excursions at the summer house. She wore her ambling dress and the denim apron filled with pockets for our discoveries. A sprig of wild rosemary peeked out of one pocket. Another pouch bulged, overfilled with almonds.
Countess Pontia Jeggare appeared far younger than she had on the day of her death. With her black hair pinned loose behind her neck, she looked exactly as she had in my youth, when she was not only my mother but my teacher, my mentor, and my best friend.
“Begone, figment.” My skepticism demanded proof, or at least evidence.
“Varian,” she said. It was the voice I had known for the first few decades of my life. In life, magic can falsify such things. But after life? Only a god’s power would suffice. All at once I abandoned skepticism for faith and believed: before me stood the true image of my departed mother, delivered to me by Desna, the Tender of Dreams.
I went to her. She stood still yet somehow remained just out of reach.
“We are in different places,” she said. The morning light gave way to the vertical rays of noon. “This here exists only to let us speak.”
“Is it a dream?”
She nodded. “Everywhere Desna’s reach extends is at least part dream. You were full of dreams when I lived. I pray you remained so all of your life.”
“Tell me you are somewhere…” I sought a word to describe what I wished for her. “You are happy?”
She nodded. Her violet eyes glistened, but not with sorrow. “Happier still to see you.”
