Thasha had stopped to help Cayer Vispek fight his double. It grappled with him, strangling, howling in Vispek’s own voice, and it barely seemed to feel her club. But when she landed a sound blow she felt its arm buckle slightly, and then Vispek, wriggling free, cried out in rage and slashed it to pieces with his sword. Thasha pulled him to his feet. Vispek, shocked, pointed past her. She whirled-and saw Pazel strike the river’s surface, forty feet from shore.
Gods! Was he even conscious, after a fall like that? Thasha broke for the river. There was his hand, thank the Blessed Tree, but the river was violent, he was sucked under again, it would be the hardest swim of her life to reach him.
Then she saw that Ibjen was well ahead of her, boots off already, and like a diving cormorant he shot into the Ansyndra. Thasha’s heart was torn. Pazel needed her, but the battle needed everyone. Still praying for her lover she charged back up the stairs.
The tol-chenni’s giant hand was still smashing and flailing, but now it was an armored fist. Up it soared above her; down it came with a rending crash. She leaped; stone stairs were pulverized. Now she was falling, scrabbling to stop herself. She caught the black silhouette of the fist against the moon, it was plummeting again, she could not dodge it With a roar, Ramachni leaped above her, braced his bear’s form against the blow. She raised her hands into his fur. There: oh Gods, the blow was crippling, lethal. The bear toppled onto its side, and with a shout of pain Ramachni abandoned it, leaped out as his old, mink self. The ghost-creature tumbled from the staircase, and vanished before it touched the ground.
Ramachni was dazed. Thasha grabbed him and leaped again, and the mailed fist struck where they had lain a moment before.
All of them had been driven to ground; the stones above them were now more rubble than staircase. With his left hand still on the idiot’s neck, Arunis flexed the fingers of his right, and the mailed fist did the same. He was gaining control, and he leered, enjoying it. He spread his fingers wide; the idiot’s ghastly hand did the same. Then the fingers started to grow, slithering down the ruined staircase, each one a serpent as thick as a man’s body.
Hercol did not wait for them to close. He charged forward with Ildraquin, right into their jaws, and Vispek was beside him, sword held high. The snakes proved clumsier than they looked: caught between serpent reflexes and Arunis’ conscious control. Hercol danced among them; Ildraquin swept a figure eight, and two heads fell. Vispek’s blade tore the throat of another. But the wound began to close almost before it could bleed, and already new heads were forming on the gushing necks.
Then Ramachni shook himself and sprang from Thasha’s arms. A stinging, furious word left his mouth. The remaining snakes caught fire. The whole conjured arm jerked back and shrank away to nothing, and far above them Arunis cried in awful pain, cradling his own hand.
So there were costs for the power he’d seized.
Then Arunis stood again, and his gaunt face was mad with fury. He took hold of the idiot once more. This time nothing sudden happened; the sorcerer’s face became quiet; the tol-chenni stopped his gestures and held still.
“On guard, on guard!” cried Ramachni suddenly. “He is preparing something worse than all that has come before! I cannot tell what it will be, but-Ah Mathrok! Scatter, run!”
It was too late to run. Around them, a circular pit suddenly opened, deep and sheer. Bristling at the base of the pit were spikes-no, needles, needles of burnished steel, five or six feet long. The party huddled together; the space they occupied was barely large enough for them all. And then the rim of the pit-the inner rim, beside their feet-began to crumble.
Ramachni closed his eyes. At once the cracks in the earth stopped growing, and there were sighs of relief. But the mage remained very still and tense. Above them, Arunis and his slave tilted their heads together, in perfect synchrony, as if one brain were directing them both. Thasha saw Ramachni wince, and then the cracks once more began to spread.
The instant he struck the river Pazel knew that something was wrong. He kicked and flailed. He was a strong swimmer, but his wildest efforts barely lifted him to the surface; it was as if the water were partly air. There was a roaring below him, and a sense of infinite, rushing space.
He looked down into the Ansyndra, and thought the madness of the spores was infecting him anew: beneath his feet he saw a black tunnel, twisting down and away, a tunnel enclosing a cyclone. It was no illusion, he realized, horrified. He was seeing the River of Shadows, treading water above a hole in the world.
There was no escaping it. He had not yet begun to sink, but his terrified paddling had not moved him an inch toward shore-and suddenly there was no shore, for the Ansyndra had swept him downstream, to where the sheer stone wall jutted out into the river’s path. Pazel threw out his hands as the current slapped him against the stone. For twenty feet he scraped along its slimy edge. Then, miraculously, his hands found something to grip.
It was only a thin vine, reaching down from a crack in the wall, and its tendrils began to break as soon as he seized it. But for a moment it stopped him. He gulped a breath, furious. A ridiculous death. Not even in the fight. And damn his stupidity, he was carrying lead! Mr. Fiffengurt’s blackjack was still there in his breeches, sewn into its special pocket. He couldn’t spare either hand to cast it away.
Then he saw a dark streak below the surface. It was a dlomu, shooting toward him. A moment later Ibjen rose, treading water in a frenzy.
“This water’s unnatural!” he cried. “Even I can barely swim!”
“The vine’s going to break,” Pazel shouted.
Ibjen turned in place, splashing desperately to hold still. “We’ll swim back together,” he said.
Pazel shook his head. “I’m not strong enough. I’ll have to go around the tower, downstream.”
But there was no more hope in that idea than in Ibjen’s. Even if he managed to keep his head above water, the river would simply peel him away from the wall once he rounded the curve.
“You can still make it,” he shouted to Ibjen. “Go on! Take care of Neeps and Thasha!”
Ibjen was staring at him strangely. “I failed the prince,” he said, just audible over the water’s roar.
“Ibjen, the vine-”
“I broke my oath to him. And to my mother. I’m paying now, like Vadu did.”
Ibjen’s eyes, like those of the woman in Vasparhaven, were jet-black. In nuhzat again. Was he aware of things around him, or in a different world altogether?
“Pazel,” he shouted suddenly, “you’re going to have to climb that wall.”
“Climb? You’re mad! Sorry, I-”
The vine snapped like a shoelace. Pazel clawed at the stone, but already the current was whirling him on. He felt Ibjen seize him by the shoulders. “Down, then,” gasped the boy. “Hold your breath. Are you ready?”
Before Pazel could say No! the boy pushed him under. Kicking hard, he drove them both down the side of the wall. Descent was swift and easy; it was staying up that had been close to impossible. But with every inch they dropped there was less water, more black air, and now Pazel could feel the roaring cyclone, tearing along the side of the tower. It would lift them, bear them away like leaves. But Ibjen fought on, kicking with astonishing determination and strength, clawing at the water with his free arm, down and down.
And suddenly Pazel saw his goal. The river had undercut the tower’s foundation; two or three of the mammoth stones had been torn completely away, and dim moonlight shone through the gap. It was a way through the wall, into the center of the ruin.
But they would never make it. They were sliding past the gap already, and now the River of Shadows had replaced the Ansyndra almost entirely: the water felt as thin as spray. Beneath his feet, Pazel caught another glimpse of that vast windy cavern, winding away into eternity. There were walls, doors, windows. Lights in some of them. He saw a mountainscape at sunset; he saw two children with their noses pressed to glass, watching their struggle. He saw himself and Ibjen van
ishing into that maelstrom, forever.
Then, from somewhere, Ibjen found even greater strength. His limbs were a blur; his teeth were gritted, and with another blast of clarity Pazel found some last reserve of his own strength. For two or three yards, no more, they managed to move upstream. And just when Pazel knew that he could go no farther, Ibjen shoved him bodily into the gap.
Pazel clung to the stone, found purchase, dragged himself forward. The wind fought him terribly, wild surges of air tried to pull him back into the river. Howling inside, limbs straining beyond any effort in his life, he gained another inch, another foot, then turned and reached for Ibjen The dlomic boy was a speck, whirling away down the tunnel. A black leaf, a shade in a river of shades-dwindling, dissolving, gone.
“Hercol,” said Ramachni, “can you leap over the pit?”
Thasha was aghast at the strain in his voice. The two mages were fighting to the death, and Arunis, it seemed, was the stronger. The edge of the pit was now just inches from their toes.
“Not that far, Master,” answered Hercol.
“Never mind, then, I will-”
Ramachni broke off, and his eyes opened. Then Thasha heard it: a whirling, whistling sound. Five feet above their heads, blades had appeared: long, heavy scimitar-blades, parallel to the ground, spinning at unholy speed. Thasha could not count them: maybe a dozen, maybe more. Everyone crouched down, horrified. To reach for one of those blades would be to lose a hand. And now, as she had known that they would, the blades began to descend.
“Well,” said Ramachni, “he has certainly mastered the Stone.”
His limbs were rigid, and his small body shook, and Thasha knew that he was trying to arrest both the blades and the advance of the pit. And yet the blades were still lowering, very gradually. “You had best get to your knees,” said Ramachni.
They got to their knees, but the blades kept coming. They were almost invisible with speed, and through them Thasha saw Arunis gesturing at something beneath his feet, and then “Look out!”
Several large fragments of the staircase were moving toward them. Not quickly, not with aim or force; it was as if Arunis had reached the limits of the horrors he could control at once. The first stone dropped motionless before it had traveled halfway; two others fell and slid along the ground, toppling at last into the pit. Then a larger fragment rose, wobbling, teetering, like a stage magician’s clumsy prop. Above, they heard Arunis groan with effort.
The stone flew at them-flew directly at her, Thasha realized. She raised her arms-but there was Hercol, pushing in front of her, absorbing the blow. The chunk of stone must have weighed more than he did, and it struck him dead-on. The top edge nicked one of the whirling blades; fragments of stone and steel flew among them; there were cries and sick sounds of impact. And before they knew what harm had come to whom, the blades dropped lower still.
Hercol was unconscious, the stone upon his arm, Ildraquin loose in his hand. Lunja was bleeding from her mouth. Earth crumbled into the pit, a little here, a little there. Among the crouched and bleeding bodies Thasha could no longer see Ramachni. But then she heard his voice in her mind.
I cannot stop him, Mistress. If you would help me, do it now.
Mistress? Help him? What could she do? He was mistaken; Arunis had fooled him like he had fooled everyone else at one point or another. She was not Erithusme and never had been. She was a mortal girl in a trap. Weepy, weak, besotted with a boy who might already be dead, caught up in a fight that was never her own. Why had they lavished their love on her, their efforts, their belief? She heard the Mother Prohibitor’s voice from her old, detested school, and knew that the ancient woman had, after all, known her better than she’d known herself. Failure is not an accident. Not a thug who grabs you in an alley. It is an assignation in a darkened house. It is a choice.
They were all pressed flat. Thasha suddenly found Neda gripping her hand, saw that she and Cayer Vispek had reached for others as well. They were praying, praying in Mzithrini. Why hadn’t she studied the language harder? Pazel would laugh. It was a farewell, wasn’t it? Something about knowledge in the last hour, peace when the fight was done.
Some of them had been cut; a mist of blood haloed the blades. Neda turned her head to Thasha. “I am glad to die with you, warrior,” she said. “I am glad you loved him, while you could.”
Something in Neda’s voice changed Thasha forever. There was no sign of daybreak, yet she was flooded with light, with certainty. She knew who she was, and who she had been; and she knew that Arunis had been right to fear her. She could have swept him away like dust from her hands. She could have seized the Stone before he lifted a finger, pounded his body a mile into the earth, hurled him into the clouds and let him fall. She could feel the edges of that power, almost taste it on her tongue. It had slumbered inside her, untapped for years, laid away like firewood against the winter, this winter, this moment of need.
Thasha’s eyes streamed with tears. All that power was waiting, but not for her. Yes, she had been Erithusme. And Thasha Isiq-that girl had been an invention, a disguise, a hiding place when the sorceress stood cornered by her foes, expecting to be killed. Cornered (it must have been) very close to the big house on Maj Hill, in Etherhorde, where lived one admiral’s wife, Clorisuela Isiq, longing for children she could never have. Thasha could picture the bargain: a daughter born sound and healthy, in exchange for one chamber of her mind in which to hide my soul. A pact between mage and mother, both desperate in their way. Had they known, even then, that they were creating a hollow shell, a child whom Erithusme would slowly replace?
But like most desperate schemes, this one had failed. For the shell had wanted her life, wanted to breathe and dance and learn and love, and Erithusme had been powerless to stop her. Year by year the mortal girl’s mind had grown stronger, bolder, and the great mage had retreated. As with the Waking Spell, Erithusme had misjudged the riotous strength of life, its habit of mutiny, its defiance. Thasha’s mind called out to Ramachni, vicious with despair. If only I had withered, died inside, the way you wanted. Then you’d have your champion, then you’d win.
He answered fiercely: No, Thasha! That was never the plan!
But of course it was. Erithusme would have had a new body, just as Arunis had once seized the body of a prison guard. And the whole, pointless shadow-play of Thasha’s life, from her first breath in the midwife’s hands to her shudder of joy in Pazel’s arms-would have been expunged, spat out, blackened and unmade.
I’m so sorry, Ramachni. I can die for this fight. I can’t go back and not have lived.
Thasha, you have felt her power; it is yours and yours alone, if only you No!
She blotted out his voice-and that other voice, that woman’s. They were trying to take everything from her. Past, future, lovers, life. Worse, they were trying to make her renounce it. Maybe she could wish that her soul had died, leaving her body for Erithusme. But she hadn’t. She was here, a woken animal called human, and she would live until those blades struck her down.
“Hold fast!” cried Vispek suddenly. “Neda and I are going to stand up. Our bodies may stop the blades, or deflect them-”
“No!” cried the others, trying to restrain them.
“Do not interfere! There is no other-”
“Wait, Cayer,” said Ramachni.
Atop the wall, behind Arunis and the idiot, a third figure appeared. It was Pazel, crawling up from the inside of the wall, rising unsteadily to his feet. Stealth in his movements, Fiffengurt’s blackjack in his hand; and just as Thasha felt the first nick of the whirling blades he stepped forward and struck the idiot a crushing blow to the head.
The blades were gone. The pit was gone. On the wall, the idiot crumpled, and the Nilstone slipped from his fingers. Arunis whirled and lunged at Pazel, lifted him by the neck-then tossed him down again as he saw his prize rolling slowly, inexorably, toward the edge of the wall.
Thasha gasped: her despair was gone as well. Everything had slowed except her
mind, her hammering heart. She saw Arunis diving for the Nilstone; saw her hand groping along Hercol’s twisted arm, saw the mage seize the Stone and topple with it over the wall, saw herself sprint forward to meet him, weightless, almost laughing. She saw his lips move, his hands blackening where they gripped the Stone; saw a dark hole open in the river and something leap like a fish into the sky; saw the perfection in herself as she swung Ildraquin and severed Arunis’ head from his body before he struck the ground.
A Fighting Chance
When they gathered around her she said nothing. Daybreak was nearing after all; the sky over the tower glowed, lamplight through musky wine. The corpse of the mage looked like any other. The Nilstone looked like a hole in the world, lying there on the grass between her knees. She could feel its draw, its invitation. Once before it had been her servant, and it would be so again. For a price.
Hercol was helped to her side; he bent down stiffly and kissed her on the brow. The others murmured, praised her deed. All save Pazel, who was still atop the wall, shooting glances at her, then looking quickly away.
Ramachni came next. His tongue flicked her arm like a tiny paintbrush. “Dearest,” he said, “can you have believed that I would join any scheme to make you wither and die?”
She gave him no answer, not even a glance.
“Mind you,” he said, “what I did agree to gave me no joy. And the only person in all this world who could have persuaded me was you. I think you understand, now. We were minutes from death. Arunis had killed nearly everyone who opposed him, and wounded us terribly. His foul servants had chased us over land and sea, and cornered us at last in Etherhorde-on Maj Hill, to be exact. They were moving door to door, sniffing like bloodhounds, and he was there among them at the height of his powers. We had to think quickly, Mistress, and our options were few.”
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