Demascus closed with the oni … then stumbled. Uh oh. He couldn’t feel his feet. And his fingers were going numb. And why was everything suddenly all misty? He realized the Hells-spawned spider had poisoned him!
He dropped to his knees. Exorcessum was nearly jarred from his grip. Nausea wrenched his stomach with a gruesome green claw and pulled. His battle élan slipped away. It couldn’t compete with the urge to sickup all over the floor.
“Demascus!” yelled Riltana. The oni turned its back on the deva and tried to divide the windsoul in two with a swift downward stroke. She deflected the blade with her short sword. The stroke’s force sent her staggering back into the throng of spiders.
Merciful lords, he thought, give me the strength to ignore his insult. He gagged, and drooled a line of spittle. Breakfast was about to make an encore appearance—
A white rune on Exorcessum flared. When it washed across him his nausea vanished. Feeling returned to his hands and feet, and a little strength. The rune dimmed, becoming more a scar than a design. Still on his knees, he drew a gaping wound diagonally up the oni’s back with Exorcessum’s tip. Blood poured from the wound. It was the oni’s turn to collapse.
“Demascus!” yelled Riltana. “Get these things off me!” Spiders mobbed her entire lower body. The windsoul’s eyes were wide with terror as she swatted and rolled, but the insects continued to pile on.
He came to his feet and stepped around the motionless and bleeding oni. Riltana was hyperventilating. How was he going to extract her before they chewed her to the bone or poisoned her to death? Heartbeats counted!
He let Exorcessum clatter to the floor. He ripped the Veil from his neck and whipped the end so that it swirled around Riltana, spiders and all, wrapping them in an embrace of the Veil of Wrath and Knowledge.
The oni’s shadow beneath the door had given him entry into the office, a shadow forged by the wavering office lantern. That same light, and the shadow of a dead spider the size of a wheelbarrow, would provide his next stepping-stone. The question was, could he bring Riltana along but not the spiders?
He stepped, willing his friend to accompany him across the gap of nothingness that lay beneath the world’s facade and to leave mandibles and web-shrouds behind. He flashed into a fell echo of the room, where surfaces were uncertain and shadows writhed like centipedes up the walls.
A weight like a thousand-pound anchor yanked him up short. It tried to drag him down into the darkness from which there was no escape. Soul-draining cold sucked at his determination to retain his grip. His mind and body ached to let go of the weight and escape. But he didn’t let go, because the burden was Riltana, and to abandon her here would be the death of her. Or worse.
He screamed into the void of gloom, straining his entire spirit. He shuffled, bent-backed and head down, pulling on the stretching fabric of his scarf …
And stepped back into the warehouse office, only three paces from his origin, with Riltana in tow. Sans spiders. They’d made half the trip, though, but he’d shed them in the Shadowfell, where he’d nearly lost the windsoul, too.
“Shank me with a dull spoon,” she murmured. “Don’t ever do that again.” She sat down hard.
Demascus tugged the Veil from Riltana as he wheeled to face the wounded oni.
Pashra was gone. He’d left behind only a slick of spilled blood.
“The bastard got out while the getting was good,” muttered Riltana.
“What happened?” he asked. “Even for someone with your talent for angering the natives, I’d expect you would have thought better of mouthing off to an oni.” He helped Riltana to her feet.
The windsoul shook her head. “As if I know what the Hells an oni is. When Pashra caught me going through his desk, he looked like a watersoul. Then when I saw his shadow didn’t match his guise, I called him on it.”
“So he had no choice but to attack you?”
“Um … yeah. I know, I know. Sometimes I can be a little too, um … impulsive.” She rubbed at her eyes.
“That, or maybe you just have special needs. You know, like some nobles’ children?”
“Which nobles’ children?”
“The inbred ones they ship off to those special manors in the country …” He took a step back so when Riltana tried to swat him he was out of range. Or he tried to; he actually caught his foot on a dead spider and only just managed not to fall on his face.
It was Riltana’s turn to steady him. “You all right?”
“A spider bit me. One with a … a woman’s head.”
“Yeah, I saw that one. Pashra was talking to it earlier. It said something about, um, demonwebs? You know about those, too?”
“Demonwebs …” The phrase was familiar, but its meaning danced just out of reach. He shook his head and continued, “The spider’s bite was poison. I neutralized it, but a little venom is still in my blood. I probably wouldn’t have noticed, except that dragging you clear of those spiders really taxed me. I’m not sure I could do it again.”
Riltana said, her tone suddenly serious, “Thank you for that. I nearly lost my head when those things started crawling on me. If you hadn’t … anyhow, thanks.”
He nodded. “Happy to help. Let’s see what kinds of secrets Pashra and his little woman-headed spider were so desperate to keep.” Demascus retrieved his sword, then remembered he’d dropped Exorcessum’s scabbard just outside in the rain. He sighed, and leaned the blade against the desk.
“I was trying to be circumspect last time,” the windsoul said. “Trying to make it look like no one had been here. I guess we don’t have to worry about that anymore.” She opened a drawer and pulled out sheafs of parchment. She scanned each one, then tossed them, one at a time, over her shoulder.
He joined her. Each parchment, tracking grain density, pay, and the fluctuating rates of exchange rates in Cormyr versus Impiltur, and so on, went fluttering behind him to land in a growing drift. Lone spiders occasionally crawled aimlessly across the desk, but they were squashed nicely with a swat. He’d developed a real hatred of crawling, many-legged things during his time in Akanûl.
“Look,” Riltana said. She pointed down into an open drawer.
“What?” He leaned over.
“False bottom.”
Then he saw it—faint seams outlined the shape of a rectangle.
The windsoul reached into the cavity and pressed along one side. The panel popped out. Inside the narrow space rested a thin leather ledger and a tiny chest.
“Pashra, Pashra, Pashra,” said the windsoul as she retrieved the curio chest. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to hide your valuables in false-bottom drawers? It’s the first place any good thief looks!”
Demascus grabbed the ledger. It was a record of cargo originating from an island just off the coast referred to as “the burial site.” He was disappointed to find no mention of the name of the ship responsible for providing transport. Odd. He doubted the cargo was just floating down from the sky into the warehouse. He paged forward. The cargo started appearing only a tenday ago. Which was about how long ago communication with the mine had ceased. According to the ledger, the cargo had been routed through this warehouse, a stopover on its way to “the new nexus.” No address for the nexus, either. But it was someplace in Akanûl, if not Airspur itself.
“I bet this is the real deal,” Riltana said, interrupting his perusal. She held the palm-sized chest in her hand, and the lid gaped open. It was mostly empty, except for a sprinkle of iron-hued grains.
“Arambarium?” he said.
“Gotta be.” She removed a glove, wet a finger, and carefully pressed down on a grain.
“Careful,” he said.
“Yeah, yeah.” She retracted her hand and held out her finger so they could both inspect the silvery grain adhered there.
“Doesn’t look particularly special,” he said.
“It … I can’t tell what temperature it is. One moment it’s warm, the next it’s cool as ice.” Her eyes were wide as s
he stared with rapt attention at the arambarium chip.
“Maybe you should research the effects of raw arambarium contamination before you hold that too much longer.”
She said, “This is research, Demascus. Why don’t you get back to the ledger?”
He snorted, but did as she suggested.
Paging forward, he discovered that the arambarium routing through the warehouse had stopped the day before. Apparently, new arrangements were going to be made for “the final excavation.” No clues were forthcoming on what that might mean. The document disgorged two final pieces of information. A name, penned into the margin of the first page, read “Master Raneger.” With the name was the note, “May prove amenable.” Another note, written in a different hand, said, “The Gatekeeper has been enticed to guard the new nexus.”
He didn’t know who the Gatekeeper was. But Raneger … he was the criminal who Chant had once described as the most successful malefactor in all of Airspur and owner of the infamous Den of Games. His power lay in the fact that the peacemakers had never traced anything back to him. And perhaps he’d made an ally of one of the Stewards, though which one was debatable. Chant once owed a debt to Raneger so steep that the pawnbroker’s life had been forfeit. But that was water under the bridge. Despite at least one serious attempt on his life by Raneger, Chant had paid off his debt. Then, in what seemed like a feat of idiocy, Chant had taken a position with his former enemy at the Den of Games. Working for Raneger. Demascus still couldn’t figure out how that had come about. Chant’s shop was only open now by special appointment, which was why Fable, the finicky cat, was Demascus’s house guest.
The deva snapped the ledger shut. Riltana flicked the arambarium grain from her finger into the chest, closed it, and replaced her glove. She closed her hand over the chest, and it vanished from her palm. “A down payment for services rendered,” she decreed.
Demascus doubted there was anything the woman wouldn’t steal. Part of her appeal, he supposed, was that brashness. Besides, it might be handy to have some arambarium of their own. He’d ask her not to dispose of the material in the chest to the highest bidder—maybe they could find a use for it. A discussion for later, though.
“Let’s get out here,” he said. “We’ve got an appointment.”
“Did you charter a ship?”
“Yeah. But the storm’s got them all stuck in the harbor. But that doesn’t mean we’ve got nothing to do.”
“What?”
He pointed to the ledger that contained Raneger’s name. “What say we pay a little visit to the Den of Games?”
THE CITY OF AIRSPUR, AKANÛL
17 LEAFFALL, THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)
IT AMAZED HER EVERY TIME. AND TERRIFIED HER, BECAUSE of what her new ability probably meant. Nothing natural could do what she could. Simply … appearing where she wanted to go. Or else, almost as often, in some random market or water pipe lounge around Airspur. Sometimes, she’d find herself standing on an earthmote high over Akanûl or on the lip of the North Wall gazing into the wasteland of Halruaa.
Halruaa had once been a vibrant land of high magic. Back when …
Back when I was still alive, she thought. Admit it, Madri. You’re a gods-abandoned ghost. Stop lying to yourself. You’re nothing more than a haunt with delusions of carrying on.
She shook her head. The rain made her hair a sodden tangle that wrapped her neck like seaweed. She shivered. A dead person couldn’t feel cold, could she? A dead person couldn’t feel at all!
When Madri had watched Demascus board the ship, the familiar rage shook her, but with it came a nugget of hope. No shell of life could feel such a pure rage, surely! Please, Kelemvor, Lord of the Dead, grant that I’m not a wraith just going through the motions, looking for peace denied me by an untimely death. Unfortunately, other clues also suggested she’d left the realm of the living. Usually she didn’t dwell on them. But with Demascus now out of sight in the shadow of the ship’s forecastle, and the relentless rain coming down like a shroud, her mind wandered.
The signs perched on her shoulders like crows. She never seemed hungry. Or thirsty. Gone were the headaches that once assailed her if she didn’t indulge with a bowl of exotically blended tabac each day, even though she hadn’t smoked in months. But the most damning evidence of all was that sometimes hours or even days would pass in a dark dream of nothingness, as if she was simply gone from the world, without form, or substance, or mind. If that wasn’t the affliction suffered by a disembodied spirit—and she was going to hold fiercely to the opposite of that proposition—then what was she, exactly?
A different answer had occurred to Madri a few days ago, when she’d lured Demascus’s windsoul friend to the Norjah manor. The items of power in the vampires’ secret gallery were exceptionally potent examples of divine craftsmanship, and she needed one. As she’d waited for the windsoul to create the distraction Madri counted on, her mind flashed to an image of Exorcessum. The sword possessed as much divine power as any one of the paintings, though that strength slumbered. Was it possible that damned assassin’s tool had … What? Plucked a guilty image from the memory scraps still blowing through Demascus’s mind of Madri and … breathed life into it? Well, pseudo-life, anyway.
Exorcessum was the very first thing she could recall after her death. He’d just found the sword, after misplacing it in some mausoleum called Khalusk. Her first recent memory was of standing there, glaring at Demascus, who’d stared dumbly back as if he’d never seen her before.
She radiated anger. Her wet hair steamed with the heat of it. Which was more infuriating? she wondered. To meditate on the treacherous lunatic who’d snapped your neck while you were gazing at him like a love-struck idiot? Or to wonder if your entire current existence was nothing more than a part of someone’s fragmented memory? Am I a recollection given a sham existence by an errant pulse of divine energy from a mishandled magical artifact?
It was her new fear. When she wasn’t nervous that she might be an unquiet spirit, she worried she was something even less real. At least if she was a ghost, she possessed a splinter of her former life. But if she was only a memory inflated like a festival balloon and let go over the city, then she couldn’t trust anything in her own head. It was all just borrowed; it was all just her as he had thought of her.
Madness lay down that path. She knew it. If she continued on, trying to learn her exact status, she would probably be sorry. Just drop it, Madri!
Unfortunately, it wasn’t in her nature to let questions remain unanswered. As a plenipotentiary of Halruaa, the hand-selected emissary—and spy—of Zalathorm himself, the eldest of the Council of Elders who ruled Halruaa, it had been her job to find information … And she’d been shattered to discover Halruaa had dissolved in the Spellplague, not long after her own death. Decades upon decades earlier. She’d been gone from the world for close to a hundred years …
Madri gritted her teeth. She couldn’t let herself get distracted by the minutia of the past. She tried to focus on any interesting activity aboard the ship with the siren-decorated prow. Keeping an eye on Demascus was the most important thing now. She had to wait for her chance to collect the last ingredient for the ritual. The ritual that would ensure her revenge, and more.
An accomplished eavesdropper, Madri was fully cognizant of Demascus’s commission from the queen of Akanûl. She’d seen the whole meeting that morning in the deva’s home. Demascus would likely find himself in a dangerous spot if the queen’s story about losing contact with her secret mine was accurate. And it would give Madri an opportunity to grab what she needed much sooner than she’d expected.
The weather, however, had other plans. Demascus wouldn’t be going to sea today, she judged. The storm was too fierce. No ship captain would risk a vessel in such waters. So why keep watching? Foolish to remain out in the worsening downpour like a jilted stalker. After all, she could be—
Flicker.
She was standing in a shadowed corner of the Copperhe
ad, an Airspur water pipe lounge she’d appeared in several times this month. As usual, when she made such transitions, no one noticed. The patrons continued to lounge about the comfortable chamber, drawing in water-cooled smoke and releasing it with the grandeur of exhaling dragons. The Copperhead reminded her of a place she’d frequented in her old life. The odor of a dozen special blends of tabac, the sound of bubbling smoke through water, and the relaxed demeanor of the customers were so familiar. If she closed her eyes, she might well be in that other place and time. Closing her eyes also helped because, in Halruaa, there’d been no genasi.
She’d become used to the elemental people of Akanûl the last few months. All except for that queen who’d given Demascus his commission. Arathane. Her mouth tightened. Even though the woman had probably handed Madri the opportunity she required to advance her own plan, she’d taken an instant dislike to the monarch. The genasi was too familiar with Demascus.
What, are you jealous? Of someone competing for the affections of your killer? She smirked at her own foolishness. The mind is a tangled thing. Did the queen truly have an interest in Demascus? It was improbable, though not impossible. Madri recalled how she herself had been intrigued by him, despite her lofty responsibilities. Queen Arathane, regardless of her station, might be similarly impressed with the deva, even though he seemed only an echo of what he’d been.
She didn’t like to consider it. She should return to the crypt and see if any new instructions were forthcoming from the single entity that knew she walked in the world. Instead, she lingered in her corner, watching patrons drift in and out of the rain.
Madri and Demascus had met in a water pipe lounge. Zalathorm had arranged for her to meet the visiting “champion” of epic repute, the mysterious deva who’d rid Halruaa of a secret menace, to see what she might learn. No one knew the details, not even Zalathorm. It had been enough that Mystra, the patron goddess of Halruaa, had let it be known through her servitors that Demascus had done Zalathorm a great service. Madri’s job was to learn more in the guise of genteel companionship.
Sword of the Gods: Spinner of Lies Page 6
