Jaul stamped on his hand. Pain swarmed up his nerves like fire ants. The boot ground his palm into the floor, fixing him in place. The masked face regarded him. “Where’s the Sword? He wouldn’t put up with this sort of nonsense.”
Demascus flinched as something terrible beat at the gates of his mind, trying to emerge. Fossil was right. The Sword of the Gods didn’t like being humbled. He grunted with the pressure of holding the figurative door shut.
“Are you keeping him bottled?” came the dead angel’s voice. “Yes? That means I’ll just have to cut your throat and bleed you like a pig. When you see me next, it’ll be through different eyes. But you’ll remember me. Keep that in mind when you come into your true power, Demascus. I was the one who birthed you!”
“Fossil, Jaul, over here,” came Madri’s voice. She stood on the earth heap, which was disturbed as if a human-sized gopher had been digging in it. Something lay revealed there, like matted fur …
Madri waved a dirt-encrusted metallic disk that dangled from a leather strap.
The boot’s pressure eased. “Put that down,” Fossil said, its voice emotionless.
“Let Demascus go,” she replied. “Or I’ll flicker to the middle of the Sea of Fallen Stars and drop the damos into its depths.”
Damos? thought Demascus.
“You’ve one chance, Madri,” said Fossil. “Do as I say.”
“You better do what it says,” Jaul agreed. “Fossil’s not messing around.”
Demascus tried to snatch his hand from under the boot. But the mask continued to lend Jaul’s mortal sinews angelic strength. Strength he couldn’t hope to match without calling up the power clinging to his soul.
“Not happening, Fossil. Let Demascus go. Now.”
“You should have listened,” said Fossil. “I release you, spirit. Be gone. The binding I summoned you with is dissolved!”
“Wait,” said Madri. “I don’t …”
The woman shuddered. She reached a hand to Demascus, as if in supplication or a plea for aid. Then she blew away like smoke from a snuffed candle.
The damos thunked onto the mound.
Jaul laughed. “That was easy. Stupid woman. I warned her.”
“You killed her,” Demascus said, the words mushy in his mouth.
Madri was gone. Sorrow like a glacier pinned him on its face. He gasped, trying to catch his breath. He forgot the pain in his hand; the cold despair that engulfed him was heavier, and threatened to crush him.
Jaul’s throat chuckled with Fossil’s glee. “She was already dead. Though I admit, she had more agency than I expected for a ghost. Something to do with Exorcessum, I expect. Ah, well. She’s out of the picture. As you’re about to be. I look forward to dealing with the incarnation that follows this one.”
Demascus wasn’t really listening. The forlorn way Madri had reached for help … It tore at him, pulling him out of the numbing regret.
And something cracked. Through that fracture flowed a scream for vengeance.
The lantern light turned red as blood. Jaul’s voice slowed to a bass rumble.
The Sword of the Gods jerked his bruised hand from beneath the trapping heel, ignoring the scraped flesh that resulted. Jaul didn’t react. He couldn’t; he was caught in the regular flow of time. The deva retrieved Exorcessum and stood as shadows congealed around him, drawing close like a second skin, highlighting older, crueler lines in his face. The Veil of Wrath and Knowledge flared behind him like angel wings. Exorcessum’s runes lifted a quarter inch from the blade. The Sword was well past tired of Fossil’s charade. As time tottered toward its resumption, he used the sword’s point to scribe a mark of divine radiance on the mask’s forehead. His oath to destroy Fossil.
The half-mask burned suddenly blue as Jaul flashed into movement. He sidestepped the deva’s blade and circled out to the left. The Sword pivoted, but one of Jaul’s daggers was already arrowing at his kidney. Fossil had sped up Jaul’s reactions, beyond anything the boy should’ve—
The dagger punched through the Sword’s camouflaging shadow, through his coat and leather armor, and scraped across his ribs. It would’ve punctured an organ if one end of the Veil hadn’t whipped forward and slapped Jaul across the face. The kid rocked back and the deva used the distraction to step through shadow to appear on Jaul’s right flank.
But Fossil had already turned his host to face the Sword’s attack, as if it could see into the Shadowfell fringe where the deva could usually evade notice.
Fossil beat aside a disemboweling lunge by Exorcessum. With the same movement, Fossil skimmed one of Jaul’s daggers along the outside of the rune sword and caught the deva’s arm in a twisting lock. The deva reversed his grip and forced Jaul to abandon his ploy.
Fossil was good! The Sword loved it when his foes forced him to walk along that knife’s edge between victory and defeat—it happened all too little. In fact, the Sword couldn’t ever remember losing. Because when he did, the Whorl of Ioun never recorded it.
He laughed. The sound echoed through the room and into the Shadowfell fringe, too, creating a spooky resonance that would usually make mortals gasp in alarm. Jaul just smirked and kept attacking. The young man’s body had become a mere tool, a possessed husk in the angel’s control, windmilling daggers and hurtling back and forth through the air so quickly his clothing threatened to smoke with the friction.
The easiest way to hurt the mask would be to obliterate its host.
The Sword wondered why he hadn’t already slain the young man. Why was he holding back? Because he, the deva … knew Jaul? And … valued him? His father, at least. Hard to believe—an assassin should never form attachments. Better to keep others distant and unimportant. And besides, the little bastard had lied about returning the painting to House Norjah. No, he’d come to betray the deva and his own father and hijack the Whispering Child for Master Raneger. On top of everything else, Jaul had stupidly put on the mask, and when given the chance to take it off, refused. Really, it’d be doing Faerûn a favor to eradicate Jaul.
Except …
Except he’d received no divine contract to slay the possessed youth. Certainly he’d killed those who’d tried to prevent him from fulfilling past contracts. But something about his current situation was different, making him hold back even though he’d already decided it wasn’t in his interest to do so.
“Burning dominions, you vex me!” the Sword said. He addressed himself—that annoying part that’d gained a little too much of its own agency lately, the part that thought of itself as Demascus, even though that was the Sword’s name, too. Like Madri, the Demascus part of him didn’t seem to know its role.
He took a single step through a writhing shadow to the top of the stairs. Jaul was already after him. The deva grabbed a fleck of shadow and hurled it at the mask. Jaul flinched back, much farther than the Sword had expected, so much so that the swing he’d planned to intersect the distracted mask wearer at the neckline just whiffed through empty air.
Right. He already knew Fossil could see the echo plane of Shadow, with its twisted, dark swirls of gray and black murk that beat like rain from a leaden sky. Which meant Jaul could, too …
Argent light flashed from the mask’s eyeholes, sweeping the chamber and stairwell. It incinerated the deva’s protective shadows to dust, burned him, and dazzled his sight. He clamped his eyes shut.
“Guide me, Veil,” he muttered, and charged blind down the stairs. His scarf settled across his eyes. The chamber’s dimensions returned to him in smudges of gray and white.
Jaul was visible, but in the fate-strained vision of the Veil he appeared only as a vague outline superimposed on an eight-foot-tall humanoid with metallic black wings. The creature swept across the entire chamber, wearing armor like crusted ice dipped in tar and a face like a blank tombstone.
No wonder I’m getting my ass handed to me, thought the Sword. Jaul’s channeling the revenant of an angel of vengeance, or something worse.
He rolled under anothe
r discharge of radiant energy from the mask’s slit eyeholes, holding Exorcessum parallel to the floor in one hand so he didn’t snag himself on its lethal length.
Then he gathered up the swirling umbra of the Shadowfell in his free hand. He’d used shadow as a weapon many times, forming it into implements of death able to cut or sever. But he couldn’t recall ever using it as a distraction.
He loosed the gathered shadow as if shaking out a rug. A wave of gloom rippled toward Fossil, a wave invisible in the world.
But Jaul saw it. He flinched away, uncertain what the discontinuity represented.
The deva was ready. Behind the cover of the collapsing wave front, he stepped between shadow mouths. He heaved Exorcessum around in an arc so swift the air screamed its protest. He began the stroke across the room from Jaul but completed it a few paces from his foe. Already retreating before the gloom wave, the kid still managed to jerk back again, away from the deva’s surprise sword stroke. He flinched just far enough so that instead of taking off Jaul’s head, Exorcessum’s sword tip dragged along the half-mask, snagging it and then stripping it from the young man’s head. The mask smashed against the damp brick wall of the cellar. Fragments exploded across the chamber like shrapnel.
Jaul collapsed. The deva remained poised for a long moment in the quiet cellar, his Veil-enhanced senses alert to every possible threat. But none remained, save maybe for the painting …
He flipped the cover over the fractured visage. The shards of Fossil were devoid of any lingering power. Jaul was halfdead with the strain imposed by the angel’s supernatural strength being ripped away, though the deva judged he’d probably live. The heap of earth glimmered with a threat returning to full strength. And Madri …
Well, she was gone. Back to the dust she’d been for a century or more. The guise of the Sword whispered away.
Demascus cried out and shuddered. He removed the scarf from his eyes and glanced around the room lit by failing lamplight.
“Oh,” he whispered. “Madri.” She’d saved him. She’d sacrificed herself and saved him. “I didn’t deserve you,” he told the blank spot of earth where she’d last stood. Misery reached for him. He pushed it away as best he could. There’d be time for that. First …
Demascus retrieved the damos. His lip curled at a hint of something vile smelling. He secured it to his belt.
He turned his attention to the pile of dirt. With bare hands he began uncovering a corpse. A corpse that was becoming a bit less dead each day.
CITY OF AIRSPUR
25 LEAFFALL, THE YEAR OF AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)
SO I QUIT,” SAID CHANT, FINISHING HIS STORY. HE HELD out his mug to Riltana for a refill.
The thief poured ale from a clay jug. She and Chant had appeared at Demascus’s door at dusk. She’d wanted to celebrate. Chant wanted to air some grievances. Both were concerned about how he was doing.
Demascus sipped his own ale. It was lighter than he preferred. But drinking beer-flavored water with friends was a damn sight better than what he’d originally planned for the evening—morbidly watching the pile of dirt he’d transferred from Kalkan’s manor anddumped in a hastily constructed vault beneath his home.
“I’m going to reopen the pawnshop,” said Chant. “That, and disentangle my secrets network from Master Raneger’s. And make certain that crazy fire mage Chevesh has forgotten all about—”
“And what about Jaul?” prompted Riltana.
Chant paused, then shook his head. “I don’t know. The reason I took up at Raneger’s in the first place was so I could pry that bastard’s hooks out of my son. But I did exactly the opposite. I need to try a different tack.”
“Jaul lied to you—to all of us—and tried to steal the Necromancer for that fat watersoul,” said Riltana.
The human pinched the arch of his nose.
Demascus hadn’t wanted to tell Chant about finding Jaul with the Whispering Child. But he owed his friend the truth. He had refrained from explaining how Jaul had apparently relished his betrayal, how he’d seized on the strength offered by Fossil as an excuse. Instead, Demascus had spun the truth and explained that Jaul had hosted a possessing spirit named Fossil. He’d said that Jaul couldn’t help doing the things he did while he wore the mask.
Demascus wondered if he should tell the whole story. But when the kid regained consciousness, he claimed ignorance of the previous twenty-four hours. Perhaps Fossil’s presence proved so traumatic Jaul’s memory failed. It must be true, because Demascus’s lie-sensing charm hadn’t indicated otherwise. On the other hand, the angel had been a servant of the Prince of Lies, and Jaul had borrowed that power. If anyone could lie well enough to befuddle Oghma’s charm, it was someone touched by Cyric’s power.
Chant shook his head, bewildered. “Jaul’s wild. The more I try to build bridges, the farther I push him away. I think the best I can do is to leave him alone and let him find his own way.”
“He’ll come around,” said Demascus. Or he might not, he didn’t say. He knew families sometimes came apart at the seams for less. Whatever happened …
Demascus realized he’d never trust Jaul again. He decided not to tell Chant that, either. Instead, he reached out and scratched Fable under the ears. The cat responded by redoubling its contented purr. He wondered if Chant would ask for his pet back once his shop opened. Probably. The thought of losing his house companion wasn’t a happy one.
“So you finally returned the painting to House Norjah?” said Riltana, turning to Demascus. By her tone, he knew she was feigning disinterest.
“Yeah. I’m no genius, but why make a clan of vampires mad at you. Better they owe us a favor.”
“That seems at odds with your normal approach,” said Riltana.
“What’s that?”
“Falling face-first into the shit, making it worse by doing exactly the wrong thing, then getting out of it by swinging around your stupidly large sword. Well, right after a nap, of course.”
He laughed. Good friends were a treasure, and Riltana and Chant were worth more than gold. He was lucky they were part of his life. Though the painting was still on his mind, despite the fact that he’d returned it to Kasdrian Norjah. He couldn’t untangle the significance between the Whispering Children, Oghma, Cyric, and himself. He knew he probably wouldn’t like it if he ever managed to figure it out. But so far Oghma remained mute and unreachable on that topic, and every other.
He supposed it could be a coincidence. People tended to remember unlikely co-occurrences and forget every other moment of their lives, which were far more numerous but didn’t involve any kind of coincidence. But as Sword of the Gods and an “agent of fate,” he’d come to see nearly everything as having some sort of deeper connection. Maybe that outlook was a liability he’d have to overcome. Sometimes bad things just happened in life. What was important was what you did next.
“And what about your friend, the one you had the queen write to?” Chant asked the windsoul. “Good news?” He waggled his eyebrows.
Riltana’s skin reddened and the corners of her mouth lifted ever so slightly. “Something like that,” she said. She brushed back the crystalline strands of her hair, looking embarrassed.
“Oh-ho, come on, you’re holding out on us!” accused Chant.
“Carmenere wrote me. She said she got the queen’s letter and that she’s been doing some thinking. And she said … that she missed me.” Riltana smiled, and Demascus couldn’t help echoing her expression.
“Good for you!” he said. “This time, amaze her with a whole new you, one that doesn’t steal every interesting painting she sees.” The moment the words left his mouth, Demascus regretted them. If anyone could take some ribbing, it was Riltana. Under normal circumstances. But by the way her eyes narrowed and her nose pinched, he knew he’d hit her where she was still vulnerable.
“Sorry,” he said, “That was meant to be funny.”
Riltana shrugged it off and took another drink. “I know. Sorry. You’d think I could l
earn a lesson. First, the queen mother’s portrait. Then a talking burglar that led to a piece that looked like it was painted with a torturer’s cast-off scraps. If you hear me start talking about portraits again in any context, slap me.”
Demascus nodded. “Count on it.”
They all chuckled.
“And promise you’ll do the same for me if I suddenly start telling you about some new heinous crime I only just remembered.”
“Deal,” said Chant. They all toasted.
The beer was tasting better, he noted. Maybe he’d been too harsh. The watered-down flavor had a certain familiarity to it that was almost friendly.
“What’re you going to do about that thing in your new vault?” said Riltana.
“Study it,” he replied. “It’s Kalkan. He’s returning to life—though it looks like he’s actually got a fair bit to go.”
He wrinkled his nose, recalling the smell and the half-formed body reknitting itself. If he hadn’t known otherwise, he’d have thought it was about a two-month-old corpse.
“Burn it, why don’t you?” said Riltana.
“I may. But if I do, Kalkan will still come back somewhere—and I’ll have lost him. This way, I’ll know when and where he returns to the world. And then I can ask him about Cyric.”
“Hey!” said Chant, “I know—why not trap him? Put the remains into some sort of sealed chamber, one only large enough for you to drop down food and water. He’ll never get out …” The pawnbroker trailed off. Then he shook his head, “Nope, he could just kill himself, then reincarnate somewhere else. Sharkbite, I thought I—”
“Strap him down tight as a drum,” interrupted Riltana. “He won’t even be able to snap his fingers, let alone kill himself. Maybe have him committed to the asylum. Keep him blurred out on drugs and ‘restrained for his own safety.’ ”
Demascus scratched his chin, “You know, you might be on to something.”
She grinned and offered another toast. “To me! The smartest!” He and Chant obliged.
Sword of the Gods: Spinner of Lies Page 26
