by Sam Sykes
“That’s still a resource stretched,” one of the women said. “And there is much work to do in the city.”
“I imagine that it will be much more manageable once they finish with the ‘Prophet.’ Let them break themselves on her. When the last of their ragged assault runs over the remains of her broken army, we shall find them easy to—”
She was interrupted by the sound of metal groaning. A great wall of force blew the doors from their hinges, sent them flying across the room. Dreadaeleon strode into a chamber of wide eyes.
That wasn’t how he had wanted to enter.
He had wanted to come in calmly, to hand down his judgment of her insidious plot and then, over the course of a battle laden with perfectly timed witticisms, show her the error of her treasonous ways.
He had savored too long, listened too much. His hands burned. His face felt hot, twisted by the snarl of his lips. His eyes were burning bright as he came stalking into the room, radiating so much power it almost made his own head hurt. And when he spoke, no witticism came out.
“Traitor.”
The words they spoke in exchange were those of power. One of the female Librarians leapt forward, exhaling a thick cloud of frost. A patch of ice formed on the floor. She stomped once and a wall of ice grew before her.
He thrust his fingers out. Electricity sang a single, thunderous note as lightning leapt from his hand. It punched through the ice, leaving a smoking hole. In frigid fragments, it shattered and fell apart. The female Librarian stared numbly forward, one hand reaching for the smoldering hole in her chest before collapsing.
Shinka leapt from her chair, speaking a word and thrusting her hands out. The chair behind her—along with every other one in the room—flew at Dreadaeleon in a flurry of wood. He roared, raising his palms and letting the cackle of flames join his anger. Fire washed over the chairs, sent them falling to the ground into cinders.
The male and female Librarians leapt forward, their movements mirrored as their fingers thrust out and shot twin bolts of lightning at him. They converged in the center, forming a great electric serpent that lashed out at Dreadaeleon. He threw a hand up, the air rippling as a shield formed.
The lightning struck him, intensified. He was forced back a step, forced to raise another hand. Inside him, he could feel something begin to burn, a furnace stoked hotter than it should be. He shut his eyes. He roared. He clenched his hands into fists.
The electricity dissipated in a burst of blue sparks. He drew a sharp breath, exhaled a cloud of white. It raced across the floor, coiling around the Librarians’ feet. They managed to look down, the beginnings of a spell on their lips, before great spears of ice shot up beneath them. They were pulled off their feet, writhing and screaming on glistening white pikes before they hung limp, slowly sliding downward, their blood freezing upon the ice.
Whatever discipline Shinka had shattered at the sight of it. She took a step back, staring horrified at her impaled minions. When her eyes found Dreadaeleon, when her mind found a spell, his hand was already up.
And closing.
The air rippled around her throat. Her voice died beneath it as a great power suddenly clenched her by the neck and hauled her from her feet. Dreadaeleon whipped his arm across the room, hurling her away. She flew, choking on her shriek, before she struck the wall and tumbled to the floor.
Now’s the time, old man. He stalked toward her, eyes ablaze. She would betray Asper, sentence her to death. But not anymore. She’ll see what you’ve done. She’ll see how you saved her. And then she’ll know she was wrong about you. He loomed over Shinka. Now, when you tell her the story of how it happened, make sure you say something witty at this part. Listen to Shinka beg for mercy. Try to say something in response.
Shinka made a noise as she staggered to her feet.
But it was not begging.
It was laughter. Cold and bleak as the first dead tree of autumn. And though a thick trail of blood marred her face, her grin was unmistakably haughty.
Even as he so easily bested her, she laughed. Even as he lorded over her, she looked down on him.
“I should have known.” She coughed. Blood fell from her mouth. “I should have fucking known you’d be back. The moment I found out your body wasn’t where it should be …” She shook her head. “I can only guess at what made me think you would be smart enough to stay the fuck away.”
“There’s a lot of things you should have done,” Dreadaeleon said. “You should have decided not to betray my friend.”
“Your friend?” Shinka chuckled. “Oh. Are you and the Prophet friends now? All your words against her, all the impotent glares you shot at her back, were merely concealing a beating heart of friendship? How admirable.” She spit blood onto the floor. “How fucking admirable.”
“She’s arrogant, and a fool, but she deserves better than what you were going to do to her.”
“Oh?” Shinka’s smirk, despite the blood leaking from the corner of her mouth, was insufferably smug. “Whatever did that poor girl do to deserve what you’re going to do to her?”
Dreadaeleon’s hand shot out. He seized her in an invisible grip and hurled her across the room. She struck the floor, skidded across it, and lay still for only a moment. And when she rose up, leaning on her hands, her back turned to him, she was laughing.
“You’re stronger, concomitant. It’s starting to make me believe in gods. Who else could be so cruel as to give you life again and send you to ruin my plans?”
“It’s not the gods. It’s me, Shinka.” Dreadaeleon advanced upon her, his hands smoldering with flame. “I am limitless. I am forever burning. I will save Asper. I will save this entire city from all its evils, starting with you.”
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, still chuckling. His face twisted with rage.
“I will entomb you in ice,” he snarled. “I will shake you to pieces with a thought. I will burn the grotesque remains of you to ash and scatter them to every wind. I will wipe you from the earth, Shinka, and tear the very memory of you out of the skulls of your minions.”
She tried to rise, but fell. Her laughter grew loud and shrieking.
“I will do this, all of this”—he roared to be heard over her—“without so much as breaking a sweat. Power like you’ve never seen, that would shatter your mind to simply gaze upon, that I can channel with a thought, and I will use it to make you, your life, your entire legacy into nothing, Shinka.”
She threw her head back. Her smile all but split her face apart. The fires in his hands became infernos. His eyes erupted with red light. His voice shook the chamber.
“SO WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU LAUGHING?”
“All this time, I thought Annis a simple-minded buffoon, out of touch and dedicated to backward laws that helped no one. Now I see how perceptive he was. Why am I laughing?” She looked over her shoulder, grinning. “Why aren’t you?”
“Annis was a fool.”
“And even a fool could see what you were.”
“There are no words that he, that you, that all your fucking libraries in all your fucking towers could find to describe me. I bested a Lector. Twice. I came back from death. I hold a power you cannot even comprehend.”
“And despite all those things, you are still so frightfully common.” She leaned over, her laughter interrupted by a groan of pain. “Obsessed with making loud noises and watching things burn, hungry for the sound of your own voice, taking all the time in the world to lord yourself over a woman …”
She turned on him suddenly. Her arm lashed out. From her hand, an icicle the size of a dagger flew. He blinked, raising a hand just by instinct, with no spell behind it. It was by sheer dumb luck that his flailing caused him to stumble to the side. The icicle tore a deep furrow in his cheek, drawing blood. He let out a scream, shrill and weak.
“Pity,” Shinka said, giggling.
He snarled, reaching out for her. The magic pulled her forward, into his grasp. He wrapped his hands around her thro
at. His eyes burned so brightly she had to squint. And through it all, she smiled, she laughed.
“You dare,” he snarled. “The powers I hold, the strength I command, and you dare think to—”
“Are you hoping I’ll beg?” She laughed in his face. “I don’t give enough of a shit, concomitant. You can kill me, you can burn this tower to the ground. You could hold the powers of a god and it doesn’t change a damn thing. It’ll all be nothing more than bright lights and loud noises to you. And you’ll still be nothing more than a tiny, selfish, cruel little boy.”
She kept laughing. He kept hearing her.
Through the sound of his scream, loud and angry, he heard her. Over the sound of her neck snapping, he heard her. Through the sizzle of flesh and hiss of smoke and the sound of a body breaking itself down into something insubstantial and airy, he could hear her.
“I am not a boy,” he said.
When he lowered his hands, nothing but a few traces of ash fell to the ground.
“I am invincible.”
What remained of Shinka lingered in a fine gray cloud, roiling in front of him. So proud, so cunning, and now just like the rest of them.
He closed his eyes. He breathed deeply. The great hunger inside him opened itself eagerly, its jaws stretching wide to take what he had consumed. He felt her power coursing through him, filling him to the very brim, like a glass overflowing with rich, red wine. His body felt ablaze with the power. His heart raced. The wound on his cheek sealed itself shut.
His mind suddenly burned with the knowledge of new thoughts, secrets he had never heard, ideas he had never considered.
That’s never happened before. He blinked, the sensation uncomfortable, like a centipede crawling across his brain on a thousand skittering legs. Is this … her? Her thoughts? Her ideas?
He shook his head.
Don’t worry about it, old man. You saved Asper, you saved everyone. You destroyed the Venarium. What else could this world offer you? Who else could stand in your …
His thoughts continued, of course. But he couldn’t feel them anymore. He couldn’t hear them.
As he turned and stalked out of the room, down the stairs, through the carnage, all he could hear was the sound of Shinka’s laughing.
It followed him out of the tower and into the night.
THIRTY-FOUR
AN ECHO OF STARLIGHT
She had seen him before.
When she had been held prisoner, back at Shekune’s camp, he had been there. His ears were aloft and listening when they accused her of lying with a human. The scowl he had given her had been particularly full of hate.
What was his name?
Kenki. The word came to Kataria.
An echo of his Howling hung over his glassy eyes staring skyward, the last thing that had been torn from his skull. It had cried out in the night, reaching out for anyone who could have heard him, who could have helped him.
She stared down at the khoshict’s throat, severed almost perfectly in half, and frowned.
Not like he could scream any other way, she thought.
The story of his death was painted across the sand in red, smeared words and broken wood notes.
The fragments of his bow lay three feet away. His quiver was empty—what few arrows could be scavenged, Kataria had taken for hers. Where the rest of them had gone, she didn’t have to look far.
The Sainite lay not too far away, facedown in the earth. Three arrows jutted from his back, but it was clear that the fall had been what had done him in—he lay in a shallow grave of his own making, pounded into the earth from when he had fallen.
The battle had been brief. The dying hadn’t.
Kenki’s chest was smeared with what little blood hadn’t spilled out on the sand. His hand, frozen in rigor, forever reached for the fragments of a bow he would never get to. The Sainite had died quicker, but the dust on his hands told her he had still tried to crawl his way out of his grave.
“So, what happened?”
Lenk stood behind her, seeing the same thing. Or rather, the same scene—he could see two dead bodies and a lot of blood, but there were things that he missed.
Things such as the countless tracks of sandaled feet, half-lost to the wind. In death, Kenki had been alone—but he hadn’t been that way for long.
Six, maybe seven of them. Though ten would be closer to the average qithband. They had gathered here, at this spot in the dunes between the shore of the Lyre River and the high hills that surrounded the Green Belt. They had lingered for some time before setting out. Kenki had stayed behind.
She stared intently at the tracks in the earth. They all looked the same to her—sandaled feet that had stepped lightly, leaving little behind. But she was tempted to stare, tempted to see if she could tell the difference between them.
Tempted to wonder if one of those tracks belonged to someone she knew.
“Khoshicts.” She sighed deeply. “They were here earlier. Probably last night.” She looked out over the river; now and then, she could see the shape of a scraw appearing over the dunes and disappearing. “They were spotted, though.”
She pointed to the dead Sainite, then to Kenki.
“This one stayed behind to shoot down the pursuer,” she said. “He succeeded, but …” She frowned at the gash in Kenki’s throat. “I’m guessing the scraw got him.”
“And where’s the scraw?” Lenk asked.
“Flown off, maybe.”
“I see.” He paused. “And where are the khoshicts?”
She shut her eyes. It was harder to summon the words than she thought it would be.
“They left toward the Green Belt,” she said. “I couldn’t be sure if they made it without following them.”
Her ears quivered. She could hear his heart beat a little quicker. She could hear his breath catch in his throat. She could almost hear his thoughts.
But in another moment, he voiced them.
“Was Kwar with them?”
She remained silent for a moment. “I don’t know.”
“Do you think she might have been?”
A shorter moment, this time. “I don’t know.”
“But if she was, wouldn’t you—”
“Lenk.” She looked hard at him. “Enough.”
He looked back at her with a frown. Something had changed in him. His wrinkles seemed a little deeper. His scars seemed a little softer. It was as though he had melted just a little and re-formed into something a little more brittle; not weak, not slow, just … warmer.
“I know.” He shook his head. “I just … back there, I was ready to …”
He didn’t have the words to finish that thought. She didn’t want to hear them, anyway.
He turned to go. Her hand shot out, caught his. She squeezed him, pulled him closer. He looked at her again. The rest of him might have gotten a bit softer, but his eyes were still clear and cold as winter. They looked into a part of her she wasn’t ready to allow to be seen.
But she didn’t turn away.
She held his hand in hers. His fingers wrapped around hers. She felt the calluses on his palms. She traced a scar on the heel of his hand with her finger. She smiled softly.
Right where it always was.
“I know,” she said. “But there are bigger problems.”
He nodded briefly. He managed a smile as she let his hand drop.
“Right.” He looked away. “Right.” His gaze drifted toward the high hills. “Oerboros said Teneir was up to something in the city.” He looked over his shoulder, toward some far-off point. “Something to do with Khoth-Kapira’s return. Any chance we have of stopping him comes from stopping her.”
“Assuming you can trust Oerboros,” she said.
“He wouldn’t lie.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Because I heard his voice.”
“Oh, good. For a moment there, I thought you were going to say something useless and stupid.”
Lenk shook his head. �
��I can’t explain it. Not right now. And it’s not like we’ve got any better leads to go off. Gariath and Asper won’t help.”
“No, they won’t,” Kataria grunted. “And they won’t stop to let us pass the road, either. Which reminds me … how did you plan to get back into the city, anyway?”
“Well.” He scratched his head, looking out toward the distant Lyre River. “I was hoping to make for the shore. From there, I hoped we could find a fishing boat or something and use it to get into the Green Belt.”
She blinked. “You hoped we could find a fishing boat.”
“Yeah.”
“What, like it would just be lying around? Just waiting for us?”
“Right. Maybe someone abandoned it.”
“That doesn’t sound a little, I don’t know … convenient to hinge an entire plan for stopping a demon king on?”
“We’ve done plenty of shit like this before and I don’t remember you complaining then!” Lenk threw his hands up, turning away from her. “Fuck it, though. I don’t even know what’s happening on the Lyre right now.”
They had both seen it earlier that morning when they had reached the shore. Great barges brimming with swords and dark flesh had plied their way down the river, pulled by long oars. Scraws swooped high overhead, painting black shadows and fire on the water. Both were too far away for him to hear.
But she could.
Even now, she could hear traces, ghosts of noises on the breeze. Avian shrieks as the beasts flew through the air. The crack of glass and the roar of flames as fireflasks exploded. The splash of bodies falling into the river and plunging below. The howls of dying men and beasts. The whimpering wail of something wounded.
Wait.
Her ears twitched, rotating on her head as she sought to pick up the sound. It was faint against the distant din of battle, but it was clear, sharp.
Close.
She started to follow it. And Lenk followed her. She waved him back—the sand crunching under his feet was too loud. She could feel his eyes on her, feel his concern, but chose to ignore it.
He had to be used to that by now.
The sound grew louder in her ears as she followed it across the sand—a low, guttural sound, born of some dark and tender place in a body. A pained whimper that slid into a long, slow cooing noise.
