Gaits' eyes left her figure and traveled to her right hand. His jaw dropped. "She's got a—"
She sprung from the tub. Water whisked from the blade of the bone sword as she swung it toward the feverish nethermancer. Shadows jumped to the man's hands. Before he had the chance to use them, the sword ripped through him, sending his two halves crashing to the stone floor in a storm of blood.
Raxa tensed, ready to swing a backhand through the big man, but he was already crashing into her side, driving her across the bathroom. His arm wrapped around hers, clamping the sword to her hip. She staggered sideways, fighting to keep her footing.
Wasn't going to happen. He outweighed her by eighty pounds and she was already on the brink of falling. Rather than fighting it, she dropped away from him, her sudsy skin slipping from his grasp. She hit the ground. He stumbled past. She popped to her feet, wheeled her sword, and slammed it through his back.
She whirled. Gaits was charging her, dagger in hand. Seeing the black sword between them, blood flowing down the curve of its blade, he stopped mid-stride.
Raxa rushed sideways to put herself between Gaits and the door. "Drop the knife."
His throat worked. He looked ready to retch. He opened his hand. The dagger fell to the floor with an off-key clang.
"Thought there was something funny about that sword." His voice was strained. "Where'd you pick that up? The Citadel?"
"It looked useful." Raxa's voice was as flat as the floor. "Where are the kids?"
"I'd like to tell you that. Really, I would. However, if I do so, I have the strangest suspicion you'll kill me."
"It'll be fast."
"What a generous offer! With such finely honed diplomatic abilities, it's no wonder the Order saw fit to crown you."
She shuffled half a step closer. "Tell me where they are."
Gaits laughed, crow-like. "Or what? You'll kill me? Do you see why this isn't much of a deal for me?"
"You want a deal? You tell me where they are. And I'll tell everyone that, in your last moments, you turned away from the monster you'd become."
"Yes, yes, you want me dead. Have I taught you nothing, Raxa? In negotiations, you always have to give up something. You don't get to hear where they are and kill me. We're going to have to strike a bargain."
She didn't move a muscle. "You've crossed over. Bargain with a demon, and you trade away your soul."
He sighed, ragged and exasperated. "So now you're the saint ready to judge the devils? How righteous were you when you were carving your way through the city for a pile of silver? And after you murder me—by the way, if any gods are watching, let me remind them I'm unarmed—are you going to walk away from this life? Renounce our years of fell deeds? Or are you going to return to lead a band of thugs, thieves, and killers against those who live within the law?"
"That one," Raxa said. "But first, I'm going to shut you up."
She cocked back her arm. The shadow of the sword swept over his face.
"Wait!" He cringed, barring his arms above his head. "I can take you there! I can get you inside!"
Her mouth twitched. "You forget, Gaits. I've already found a way inside the Citadel."
It was just a gambit, seizing on a potential slip. But the way his eyes went wide, she knew she'd found the truth. As her bare biceps tightened, a stark and childlike fear flooded Gaits' face.
Her stroke fell. So did his head. It rolled against the wall, expression frozen in place.
Her breathing rasped from the stone walls. She wiped her blade on Gaits' motionless chest, then ran to her room, not bothering to towel off before she tugged on her clothes. As soon as she had her boots on, she ran downstairs into the street.
Gaits had done her one favor. The house he'd talked her into buying was on the north end of the city, only a mile and a half from the cemetery on the hill. Ten minutes later, she entered the grassy field. A couple walked hand in hand along the path to the doorway carved into the hill's base. Their faces were shocked, bereft. As if they'd lost their only child.
Gaits had claimed that, if he didn't return in time, her kids would be put to death. Raxa didn't think he was bluffing. He'd known what she could do. The only way to keep her on a leash was to make her truly believe the kids' lives were on the line.
She blanked into the shadows and sprinted toward the cavern. She knew they were in the Citadel, but the Citadel was the size of a small town. How long did she have? Nightfall? Midnight? Surely no more than that.
She entered the hallways of the carneterium and split to the right. Distantly, someone was sobbing. Raxa came to the tunnel toward the Citadel. Inside it, she let herself fall from the netherworld, continuing forward in darkness until her outstretched fingers tapped into the tunnel's dead end.
There, she walked through the stone wall and into a dungeon cell. Empty. Rather than returning to reality, which would only have drunk up more of her juice, she crossed through the cell's wall into the hallway that ran down the middle of the dungeon.
Someone was crying from one of the other cells. Not that remarkable. It was a dungeon, after all. But the pitch of that crying was as high as a sparrow's cheeps.
"It's okay," a voice whispered, hardly any deeper than the one that had been crying. "She'll come for us. You'll see."
Raxa shut her eyes and breathed out in relief. Of course they were in the dungeon. Whoever was keeping them in the Citadel couldn't let their peers see them menacing a bunch of scared children.
She opened her eyes and dropped out of the shadows. "Fedd?"
"Raxa?" Fedd's voice bounced from the end of the hallway. A small, pale hand thrust through the bars of the window set in a cell door. "Is it really you?"
"You were right," she said. "I'm here."
She grabbed the lantern from the wall and jogged to the cell. Fedd drew his hand inside the window. The door was bolted from the outside. Raxa wrenched it open. Inside the cell, six pairs of big bright eyes stared up at her.
Her voice went hoarse. "Is everyone okay?"
Fedd raced toward her. She scooped him up in a hug. The others dashed over, clinging to her legs and hips. They smelled sweaty and fearful, but they looked intact.
She wanted to hold tight to them until her arms gave out. Instead, she gave them each a squeeze, then detached herself and stood. "I need you to follow me. We're going to go down a few tunnels. They'll be dark. They'll smell even worse than this place. But we'll be outside in a few minutes, okay? So no matter what happens, stay quiet and follow me. Got it?"
She looked to each of them in turn, making sure they all nodded their understanding. She stood, lantern in hand, and moved back into the hallway, meaning to return to the cell she'd entered the jail through.
A footstep scraped from the stairwell.
Raxa froze. She'd taken the only lantern in the dungeon. Its light barely reached the far end of the hall, silhouetting a woman whose build looked more than capable of handling the sword that hung from her hand.
Her voice was as clear as the glass in a prince's window. "You're Raxa, aren't you?"
"He told you about me?"
"Warned, more like."
"That must make you the Black Star." Raxa reached for her sword.
The woman twitched up the end of her blade. "Don't move another inch."
"If you think you can hurt me, he must not have told you much."
Cee laughed brightly. "Can I hurt you? Maybe not. But right above our heads, there are four hundred elite soldiers. Sixty trained nethermancers. If I turn and run, do you think you can catch up to me before they catch up to us?"
"Let's find out." Raxa lurched forward. Quick as a minnow, Cee turned and raced up the steps, shoes echoing in the tight space. Raxa turned back to her kids. "Come on now. Don't stop for a second."
She led them into the cell she'd come in through. The wall was blank, solid rock.
"Stay back." She walked to the wall, raised her sword, and whispered a quick prayer to Carvahal. Just in case, she repeat
ed it to Urt.
She smashed her sword into the wall.
Hitting the stone was the first time she'd felt the blade face real resistance. Even so, it cut cleanly, chips of stone spattering the ground. With one blow after another, she cut a doorway through to the other side. The faint smell of death wafted from the tunnel.
She sheathed the sword and hoisted the lantern. "Don't be afraid. I know the way."
She jogged forward. The six children followed her through the tunnel and into the passages of the carneterium. She didn't slow until they reached the foyer. There, an old man blinked at her and the procession of youngsters. Raxa nodded significantly. He cocked his head but let her pass without a word.
Outside, the sun waned. Summer was gone. Soon, the nights of the northern winter would stretch twice as long as the daylight.
Raxa didn't care for the cold, but she didn't mind the darkness. For people like her, the night was home.
28
Gladdic watched with keen annoyance as the ambush unfolded on the plain.
"Horstad," he said. "Bring me General Billings."
Horstad bobbed his head and hustled away. Gladdic bit his teeth together. It wasn't that he was especially surprised by the attack. He had expected to face difficulties keeping the purification process concealed from the outlying towns. If and when they began to piece together the rumors, he'd had no doubt they would mount an offensive on the city, no matter how desperate their chances. Due to this inevitability, he had, in fact, planned to let slip what was happening, both to control the timing of the attack, and to justify counterstrikes against the remainder of the basin.
But that was not supposed to have happened until the city's population had been significantly reduced. Today was quite possibly the worst possible timing.
Even so, having anticipated the event, he was merely annoyed rather than panicked or shocked. For one thing, he already knew exactly how to proceed.
Billings had been stationed in a cave a few switches up from the Cavern of Blessings and was thus able to arrive in less than two minutes. He was the fourth son of the king's brother Lionel, and knowing this, Gladdic had expected him to be surly and resentful of a lifetime of being assigned to tasks such as a (what should have been hopeless) invasion of the Collen Basin. But the man was the opposite. Dedicated to his duty, no matter how low-status it compared to the endeavors of his cousins and older brothers.
"General Billings," Gladdic said. "Our soldiers below are outnumbered. We will send the second garrison to aid them. The second garrison will be accompanied by four of my priests."
Billings, as usual, was far more direct with Gladdic than most dared. "Sir, that may be unwise. There's been heavy movement in the streets. We're expecting a revolt."
"And?"
The general's jaw bulged; he stared as if Gladdic had just ordered him to draw his sword and gut himself. "Am I missing the obvious, Ordon? If we send out the second garrison, most of our soldiers will be committed to the field. With that many priests with them, if the citizens revolt, we may lose Collen."
"The rebels below," Gladdic said. "I've seen no evidence of nethermancers. Have you?"
"I have not."
"Then with the aid of our priests, our army will surely be victorious."
The general nodded stiffly. "If Collen falls in the meantime?"
Gladdic was silent, allowing the man another moment to think this through.
Billings' face went carefully blank. "The demons."
Gladdic offered him a tight smile. "They can rebel, if they wish. But they will have no answer to the Andrac. As this unfolds, our forces below will defeat the Colleners with minimal loss to ourselves, then return to restore order. Move quickly now."
Billings saluted and turned on his heel. With admirable swiftness, he had the soldiers and their attachment of priests heading down the slopes. Gladdic withdrew painted bones from the satchel slung over his shoulder and arranged them on the road in a hexagon with a bent arm extending from one of its vertices.
The symbol was obscene. Like an old man with his pants down. Gladdic had spent the last nine years of his life searching for configurations of bones that would reach into the opposite realm—the ether—but he'd never felt the faintest trace of its presence. At times, his heart's core had feared he couldn't find it because it wasn't there. Because the netherworld was all that awaited the souls of the dead.
Yet this doubt was what Arawn wanted. The poisonousness of the black god's mind was why he'd been locked behind the starry vault. To give in to such doubt was to lay the path for the foul god to return to the world he'd been purged from.
Gladdic closed his eyes and plunged his mind into the abyss of shadows. The Andrac stood still, but he could feel its impatient strength, like the snows of a mountain waiting to tumble down and engulf everything beneath them.
Come, Gladdic told it.
Its eyes blazed with heatless, colorless fire. As if the ether itself burned within its eyes and throat. Gladdic opened his eyes. The demon crossed into the world of the living. Rather than emerging as if it were stepping through a doorway, in defiance of the gods' laws, it unfurled upward, banner-like. A thrill coursed up Gladdic's spine. It was an abomination, yes. But it was his to wield. If he spent it destroying other crimes against the Celeset, the gods could never fault him.
The demon loomed above him. Gladdic refused to step back. Wait. Soon, my enemies will come—and you will consume them all.
The violation gnashed its jaws. It held its place. Keeping one eye on the demon, Gladdic turned to watch the field beneath the butte, where the presence of Billings' reinforcements had forced the two rebel columns to stop their pursuit of Gladdic's disguised soldiers. As the rebels attempted to regroup into a single unit, Billings led a charge. Ether sparked from his front lines, visible even in the full light of day.
The two sides clashed. Shouts and the ring of steel on steel floated from below. With the ether blinking on and off like fireflies, the Colleners broke, retreating toward a nearby hill. The bodies they left behind were dark specks against the sun-faded gray of the plain. Gladdic kept watch for the arrival of a third column of rebels. Without further reinforcements, the Collenese rebellion would be smashed within the hour.
A soldier called from the top of the plateau. Gladdic swiveled his head. Five figures broke the heights above. Distant though they were, he knew their shape.
He met eyes with the demon, then returned his eyes to the heights and nodded once, slowly and deeply. My enemies.
The Andrac surged toward them, eschewing the switchbacks to bound straight up the hill, as if weightless. During the fighting below, Horstad had returned to stand almost but not quite at Gladdic's side. Watching the demon leap from rock to rock, the secretary did his best to hide his shudder.
Gladdic's mouth twitched. "Does it trouble you?"
Horstad folded his lip between his teeth. "It's not my place to question your methods, lord."
"That's not what I asked."
"I am troubled by its strength. And its…origins."
"Would it surprise you to hear that it troubles me as well?" Gladdic didn't bother to wait for Horstad to find the combination of words the secretary believed wouldn't offend him. "But there is satisfaction from crushing Galand with a weapon every bit as profane as himself. Do you know what troubles me far worse than the Andrac? The vision of remaining mired in an endless war with Collen while Narashtovik continues to corrupt one land after another, until the daylight is gone, and Bressel is no more than a lone fire in the night."
A frown crept over Horstad's face. Above, the Andrac neared the crown of the butte. Galand and Blays Buckler, his pet swordsman, stood in front of their three allies. Yet why were they standing at all? Had Gladdic's strategy in the basin rendered them that desperate? A beguiling thought. But the more beguiling a thought, the less it could be trusted.
Gladdic began to jog up the switchbacked road.
Horstad fell in behind him. Above,
the swordsman bent his knees, preparing to meet the demon. Ether flared from the hands of an old woman. Light streamed to Buckler's weapons, shining upon the steel. Gladdic's chest tightened. Where had the ethermancer come from? The Andrac leaped onto the final leg of road and slowed to a confident walk, arms flexed from its sides, clawed fingers contracting and expanding.
Buckler spouted words. No doubt they were the height of wit. Gladdic couldn't hear them above the crunch of gravel under his feet. The Andrac lunged toward the swordsman. Gleaming blades whirled forth, ripping into the demon's outstretched arms. The demon yanked back its limbs. Shadows sprayed from its wounds, dispersing into the air.
The Andrac swiped a second time. Again, the bright blade cleaved into its arm. This time, the demon dropped back several steps, head cocked in confusion. Untroubled, the swordsman skipped forward.
Gladdic's chest clasped on itself until it felt like his heart would squeeze through his ribs, but he refused to let his pace slacken. Buckler jabbed at the demon. It slipped the thrust and clawed at his face. Buckler reeled back with preternatural quickness, clipping the Andrac's arm with a backhand strike. As Gladdic ran on, man and demon exchanged a flurry of blows. Each time the Andrac was cut open, the shadows congealed on the wound, but pieces of its body were looking thinner. A white dart flew from Dante's hands and pierced the Andrac's chest, opening a hole straight to the other side.
Gladdic's mind split three ways. One mind was curious. The attacks and maneuvers of his foes appeared thoughtful and coordinated. Furthermore, they'd stood their ground as if expecting the confrontation to unfold in this manner. Where had they learned to battle the demons? This tactic of quenching the swordsman's weapons in ether—what tome had that come from? Had they discovered a method to somehow annihilate the Andrac altogether?
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