by Ari Marmell
Still, she’d spent many of the following hours in rest and meditation. The waters of the lake and nearby shores overflowed with mana, but it was a mana rich with life, ill-suited for her own necromantic magic. She drew what she could from the marshy patches scattered here and there about the shoreline, and even from the fungal patches in Favarial’s sewage pipes, and then cast her concentration further still, drawing from Avaric, from other domains much farther distant. She swore it had been enough, but Kallist thought she looked tired even now, though several days had come and gone.
Kallist had pretended to make full use of the time. He’d acquired them new clothes, so they might blend more effectively with the middle-class population.
And then, with that chore done, he’d fretted until Liliana recovered. But however difficult it had been, it had proved absolutely worthwhile.
Semner was indeed using Albin’s corrupt guards for more than impeding his rivals; he was using them to conduct his own search. With the aid of Albin’s despairing, wailing ghost, Liliana and Kallist had identified most of the lieutenant’s crooked operatives, tracking them down at their favorite taverns and gambling halls and brothels. Between their knowledge of the guards’ dishonest activities and threats of mystical retribution, they’d convinced the lot of them to continue the hunt, but to report their findings to them, rather than to Semner.
Those findings, delivered by a nervous guard who wasted far too much time begging them not to turn him into something viscous, had finally drawn them to this cramped and malodorous alleyway, across the street from an old tenement building in the district’s poorest quarter. The aquamarine walls were cobwebbed with cracks, the arched and peaked windows covered with moldy shutters, the doors bulging from within doorways that had long since shifted several degrees off plumb. For several minutes, now, the pair had watched from the concealing shadows, and had seen nobody—Jace or otherwise—enter or leave the decrepit structure.
“If this isn’t just another false sighting,” Liliana muttered, “then Jace’s standards of living have taken a substantial downturn in the past six months.”
Kallist merely shrugged. “Hard to stay unnoticed if you’re living it up like a king with no heir.”
“Kallist,” she asked seriously, “are we even on the right trail? I mean, would Jace even look like himself anymore?”
“I think he would.” Kallist furrowed his brow in thought. “Jace is about a hundred times the illusionist I am; he could probably make a mother leonin mistake him for one of her own cubs. But even he can’t make himself look like someone else every day, all day. He might use a false image on occasion, if he feels he’s in danger, but otherwise—”
A horrible shriek shattered the relative stillness of the evening. From behind the shutters of a top floor window shone a sudden burst of a brilliant and ugly firelight. And then it, and the scream, faded just as swiftly, and the alleyway plunged once more into darkened silence.
“Like now, perhaps.” Liliana and Kallist exchanged brief, shocked glances, and then both were charging across the road.
Kallist had just long enough to regret the loss of his broadsword. He missed its solid, comforting weight; the guard-issued longsword with which he’d absconded during their escape just didn’t have the same heft. Then there was no time for thinking at all as his shoulder collided with the tenement’s outer door. The flimsy planks disintegrated before him, and he found himself pounding up multiple flights of shaky, mold-ridden stairs.
The first story disappeared beneath him, then the second, then more; even the tenements in this damned place were taller than they’d any right to be! The thundering of his footsteps echoed in the stairwell, as though an entire host of trolls followed him up. Doors slammed shut, and he heard the sounds of bolts sliding home, as the people who dwelt within decided it would be wiser to hide from whatever was happening than to step out and investigate it.
As he neared the upper floor, he saw a woman he recognized as one of Semner’s thugs. Precisely what had happened to her, Kallist couldn’t say, but she lay sprawled across the topmost steps and was only now rousing herself from unconsciousness. Kallist wondered briefly how Semner had tracked Jace here without the aid of the corrupt watchmen, but wasn’t about to take the time to inquire. Without so much as breaking stride, he ran his blade through the back of the woman’s head as he passed. There would be others to question at a more appropriate time.
At the top of the stairs, Kallist took a heartbeat to orient himself, to determine which of the various doors should lead to the chamber from which he saw the flash of balefire. Then, as with the portal below, Kallist set his shoulder to that door, and the door went away.
And Kallist froze. No matter the urgency, he could not tear his gaze from the room around him. Jace hadn’t abandoned his standard of living; he’d simply hidden it.
The chamber beyond occupied a majority of the top floor, someone having knocked out the interior walls that separated one apartment from the next. The remaining walls were pristine, polished to a gleaming oceanic blue; there was no trace inside of the cracks that ran through the old stone without. The carpets were thick, the furniture comfortable and well maintained. A small dining table lay on its side, the tablecloth and dishware scattered about the floor. Even amid the signs of struggle, the scent of incense hung in the air, overpowering the odors of the city.
At the sound of a dull thump, possibly that of a body hitting the floor, Kallist finally shook off his amazement. Striding toward the room from which he had heard that familiar sound, he covered perhaps half the distance when the door was thrown open from within.
For the first time in half a year, Kallist stood face to face with Jace Beleren, the man who had once been his best friend.
They could have been brothers, and in fact had passed as such on one or two occasions during their service with the Infinite Consortium. Less than two inches separated them in height, less than twenty pounds in weight. Perhaps Jace was more clean shaven, Kallist’s hair half a shade lighter; not identical, certainly, but very much alike.
Jace, clad in a heavy blue cloak he’d thrown over his bedclothes when first attacked, froze in the doorway, his own eyes as wide as the saucers that had spilled from atop the table.
“You!” Never before had Kallist heard so mundane a word loaded so heavily with bile. “It wasn’t enough to steal her from me? Now you want me dead, too?”
Kallist, a small part of whom had briefly been glad to see his old friend, found himself scowling with rekindled rage. “Damn it, Jace, you know better than that! We came to warn you! Not,” he added, with a quick glance at the trio of fallen bodies visible through the bedroom doorway, “that you seem to have needed it.”
“After all this time, I’m supposed to believe that?” Jace demanded.
“Yes.” Kallist squeezed the hilt of his sword until he felt the leather wrappings start to fold. “Now, if you—”
He couldn’t breathe; couldn’t talk; couldn’t think. Kallist froze as though struck by a basilisk’s gaze. He felt a fist around his mind, keeping him from moving, from reacting, holding him firmly in place while Jace took the extra few moments he needed. Kallist felt the faintest touch, the legs of skittering spiders across the surface of his dreams.
Kallist gasped in shock and found himself slumped to the floor.
“Damn it, Jace!” Kallist couldn’t decide if he wanted to kill or to cry, and settled for an enraged shout. “You swore never to read—”
“We both of us made promises back then, didn’t we?” Jace snapped in turn. But the lines of his face had softened. As though forcing himself through rising water, he stepped slowly across the room and extended a hand to help Kallist off the floor.
“I’m sorry.” The words were little more than a mutter, and Jace’s mouth twisted as though they’d turned sour on his tongue. But still, he said it. “And I believe you,” he added, as Kallist hauled himself to his feet on Jace’s arm. “But I had to be sure.”
“And?”
“I didn’t let them.”
“Was one of them Semner?”
Jace’s jaw clenched. “Semner’s here?”
“These are his people.” Kallist frowned. “If he’s not here, there’s another attack coming.”
“The Consortium send him?”
“I’d imagine so, but I can’t be sure. You know Semner’s reputation. He’d hire himself out to a warthog if the money was right. We need to get out of here, find someplace a little more secure to figure out our next step.”
“And Liliana?” Jace asked softly.
Kallist cried out, cursing himself for ten kinds of idiot. She’d been only a few steps behind him when they left the alleyway. But so distracted had he been by his encounter with Jace, he’d not taken a moment to wonder why she hadn’t followed him through the door.
Perfectly on cue, a sudden scream, terrified and clearly feminine, echoed through the stairway.
Months of anger and recrimination vanished. Kallist and Jace stood side by side, the one raising his sword in expert grip, the other focusing his will to deceive the sight or burn the mind of any who would bar his path. Neither could imagine what might draw such a reaction from Liliana, but whatever it was, Kallist intended to visit it thrice over on Semner’s beaten corpse.
Kallist reached the open doorway first—and simply folded, falling back into the main room of the apartment, sword tumbling from his fingers. He hadn’t seen what hit him, but whatever it was struck hard. His jaw ached, his head pounded, and he could scarcely even see, let alone consider rising to his feet. He spotted a small streak of blood staining the carpet and realized it was his own.
Footsteps behind him, but he could not turn. He saw two pairs of worn and dirty boots, doubtless belonging to more of Semner’s thugs, but he couldn’t even raise his head. Across the room, he saw Jace retreat several steps, ready to cast any of a score of devastating spells. From the hall beyond the doorway, he heard Liliana’s voice cry out his name and then begin to intone another of her dark chants. He gave thanks that she still lived, but still he could not turn.
The pounding in his head grew heavier; the blood rushed in his ears, the lights of the room blinked and flickered. Everything was unfocused, spastic, moving in slow-motion fits and starts.
Semner’s men stepped forward, naked blades extended, closing in on Jace.
The first man fell, screaming until his throat bled at the nightmares the mage’s spell seared into his conscious mind.
The second was within reach before Jace lashed out. From his outstretched hand, a sky-blue eel wiggled and writhed its way through the air to wrap about the torso and neck of his attacker. Serrated fins sliced into flesh while the beast’s jagged maw clamped hard upon the bandit’s face, shredding skin and bone, blood and ocular fluids, into a slippery stew that flowed smoothly down its winding throat.
For just a moment, as his vision continued to fade in and out, Kallist dared to hope it might be over.
Jace’s eyes grew wide at the sight of some fresh danger in the hall beyond Kallist’s fallen form. Kallist saw the mage’s mouth moving; saw, as well, a new hesitation, even fear, in his face. Jace took a step back, retreating from whatever was approaching.
The shutters over the window behind him exploded inward at the impact of Semner’s boots. Dropping from the roof, the gorillalike mercenary wasn’t slowed by the thin planks. He slammed hard into Jace’s back, drawing a pained gasp even as the mage fell sprawling.
Kallist struggled to crawl forward, fingers digging into the carpet, but he couldn’t make himself move. He heard feet on the floor beside him, recognized Liliana’s ankles and her sharp intake of breath.
Jace rolled, coming back to his feet as Semner’s dagger cleared its sheath. The first slash barely penetrated Jace’s robe. Only the very tip of the blade connected, etching a line of blood across his chest; he gasped and went pale, but his stance never faltered.
Yet in the chaos, Jace allowed the pain of the wound to distract him. Catching Jace off-guard, Semner spun, hauling back his arm as though preparing for another strike, while a second dagger dropped into his left hand from his sleeve. It came up in a short, brutal thrust that his victim never saw coming. Flesh and bone parted, and beneath the merciless edge, a man’s heart burst.
For what seemed an infinite instant, silence reigned. Then the room burst with a blinding flash, a blue so blazing it was nearly white. It hovered in the air between the fallen Kallist and the dying Jace, and despite its intensity, it cast no shadow from either.
Kallist screamed; no mere cry of grief or rage, but a terrible, primal yell that drew stunned looks from Semner and Liliana both. Long after his voice should have given out, or his lungs exhausted themselves of breath, he screamed.
He no longer saw the chamber at all. Images, feelings, notions, and dreams that were not his own flooded his mind until it came nigh to bursting, until he could see nothing at all of the world around him. Like an animal driven by pure instinct, he rose from the floor and fled through the gaping doorway, all prior weaknesses and wounds forgotten in a torrent of madness.
How he kept his balance on the unsteady stairs, how many corners he turned, how many passersby he shoved from his path to leave cursing in the streets behind him, he could never have recounted. He ran until the sounds of Favarial subsided, until the walls of another alleyway pinned him from taking one more step.
Still the memories swirled in his head, but finally they began to order themselves, to settle into their proper places, and he could see, and feel, and think—and remember.
Jace Beleren, who had long ago stolen the mind of a man he called friend, who had lived for half a year as Kallist Rhoka, fell to his knees in the refuse of the alley and wept.
For the span of several deep breaths, the enmity between them seemed forgotten as Semner and Liliana both stared through the open doorway, long after the running fellow was well beyond seeing or hearing. And then Semner raised an eyebrow as the necromancer turned to face him, a black blaze of flickering shadows dancing behind her eyes.
“I wouldn’t recommend it,” he told her, idly flipping the bloody dagger between his fingers. “Not a lot you can do for him now. And me, contract’s done. Got no reason to kill you unless you make me.” As before, his gaze slid like glistening slugs across her body. “And it’d be such a waste.”
Liliana merely glared back at him, any revulsion she felt subsumed by a growing eruption of fury.
Despite himself, Semner began to grow nervous. “I suppose,” he continued with a bit less confidence, “I probably ought to cut you down for what you did to my boys. But fact is,” and he paused here, long enough to glance around, to be certain that all his men were either dead or at least unconscious, “it just means fewer ways I have to split my fee. I—”
“You idiot!” Liliana finally exploded, jabbing her finger at the thug and murderer as though lecturing a child. “You utter halfwit! What in all the worlds is wrong with you?”
“I—um, what?”
“‘She can go, but kill him’?” Liliana parroted back his order from days ago. “What were you thinking?”
“Um, what?” Semner said again, apparently believing it a point worth repeating.
“You were expressly ordered to let both of us live!” She took a single step toward him, and Semner found himself recoiling. “You could have ruined everything!”
“Look, bitch, I know Rhoka’s rep! The man’s an assassin! I wasn’t about to leave him alive to come after …” Slowly, comprehension dawned across his brutish face as his brain finally caught up to his ears, panting and wheezing from the unaccustomed exertion.
“How the burning, steaming hell do you know what my instructions were?”
Lil
iana could only roll her eyes heavenward, as though beseeching the patience of a higher power. “Wow, you really are that stupid.”
“Listen here, Vess …”
“No, I mean it. It would take two of you to be any dumber.”
Any reluctance Semner had to killing her outside the bounds of his contract was evaporating like morning dew. “You’ve just got a smart comment for everything, don’t you? If I walk over there and shove this dagger through your skull, you think you’ll have a clever answer for that?”
“In this scenario, I’d pretty much be dead, wouldn’t I? So unless there’s a necromancer hiding in your pocket, that’s a really stupid question.”
And that, finally, was that. Semner ceased spinning the dagger, allowing it to come to rest pointing directly at Liliana’s face. “What I said about killing you being a waste? Nah. I’m going to cut the best parts off of you and take them with me. You think you can summon something up before I start cutting?”
“Now why would I need to summon anything,” she asked with a sudden, vicious grin, “when I’ve got so many friends right here?”
Behind him, the dead bodies of both his victim and one of his own men had dragged themselves forward on bloodless hands. Brittle fingernails snapped against the weight of the corpses; twin trails of blood, already dried and blackened by the touch of Liliana’s animating magic, matted and stiffened the shag of what had recently been a clean carpet.
And as Semner finally got wise enough to realize that he should probably be afraid, each of the corpses reached out a hand and clamped a deathless clutch on his calves.
Beneath the implacable strength of the risen dead, cloth and skin parted. Semner screamed, a high-pitched shriek of agony such as he had never known. So tightly did those fingers squeeze, so hard did they press, flesh peeled back from bone, muscle tore from clinging ligaments. For the dead, who feel no pain, it mattered little; to Semner, it mattered a great deal.
