‘Right, then,’ he said to the empty air. ‘If it runs from me, then I must hunt it down. Nothing has changed.’ He was a good hunter, and chasing down the evil things that ran from him… this was familiar territory.
It is too fast, Master, said Ootapi. Even you cannot hope to catch it.
He might be right, curse it all. Konrad thought…
…and a new idea flickered to life in his mind, and took root. Perhaps, after all, there was one thing he could do; for even the worst of curses might be turned to a blessing, given the right circumstances. And had not Konrad curses enough?
Letting his awareness of the external world go, Konrad sought inside himself instead, dug deep into his grubby soul in search of that seed of ugliness. The malefic had planted it there, the touch of its rending talons sufficient to poison the spirit. He’d striven to suppress it, ignore it, pretend he was unchanged; but to no real avail. There it still was, unfurling greedy, unclean petals deep in Konrad’s soul.
It had not grown much, in the past few hours. Scarcely at all. What did that mean? The foul taint had taken Talin much faster, conquered her with unseemly ease. Was she less resilient than Konrad? Or had it been Nanda’s intervention after all? She could not save him, but perhaps she had been able to give him time.
Shame to waste that, now.
Konrad caught hold of that blackened, burnt space in his heart and pulled. Careful, careful. A delicate balance, for this: he did not want the malefic’s curse to overwhelm his will, not the way it had with Talin. He could never, then, have the strength to slay it.
But to make himself enough like it to attract its notice? Yes. That could be productive enough. He opened up a window, and invited the malefic to come in…
Master? Eetapi’s high tones, as he had never heard them before. Shrill with distress, a thin whine of fear. What are you doing?
I rely upon you, serpents, said Konrad. If I should blunder, and lose myself, you two must put it right.
And… how are we to do that, Master?
You must kill me. And quickly.
The expected shrill of delight did not come. Eetapi said nothing, nor did Ootapi, and the silence stretched.
Can you? Konrad prompted. You must. Do not let me down.
But… said Ootapi. But you do not want to die, Master.
Few people do, Ootapi. But we must.
I could kill you if you wanted it, said Ootapi.
Very well, then, believe me to be eager to hasten my journey into the beyond, if it will make you happy. Only do as I say.
He felt a palpable wave of misery emanating from the pair of them, engulfing him in shades of their twin despair. Never tell me you do not want me to die? he asked them, in some surprise.
You are a good Master, said Ootapi at length.
Nonsense. Half the time you have despised me.
But there was also the other half, said Eetapi.
Konrad sighed; what a moment for a display of loyalty. All of this is neither here nor there, he said firmly. Shall you perform this last duty or not?
Reluctantly, the words came. We shall, Master.
Thank you.
No use letting himself feel warmed by this unlooked-for reluctance. If he judged right, he had, at best, minutes to live…
Master, said Eetapi, turning shrill again with panic. It—
She vanished in a waft of despair, melding into the shadows, drawing Ootapi with her.
Good, Konrad thought as disaster approached. Well, then.
He stood, very still, knife in hand, watching for the malefic’s appearance. There: a patch of shadows beneath a trio of craggy trees, deeper and darker than the rest, every other pale and wan in comparison. A roiling, boiling disturbance there, and a palpable malevolence; Konrad felt it touch his skin, reach grasping fingers into his thoughts. Nausea crept over him.
Now. It would have to be now.
He leapt, blade flashing in the moonlight, leapt into those roiling nightmares and stabbed down with all his strength—
Wait, whispered a dark voice.
And Konrad stopped, stopped dead, the wicked blade of his blessed knife halted inches from its target. He did not know why he stopped. The one word had penetrated his heart, frozen his limbs, robbed him of his will. He knew despair, but so distant a sense was it that it could have no power to influence him.
‘Why,’ he managed to spit out, ‘am I waiting?’
You wish to destroy me?
‘I had thought about it, yes.’ Blood leaked from Konrad’s lips with every word, for he had to tear each one free from some deep part of himself, some place the malefic had yet to conquer. Pain lanced through him with every breath.
Why?
The question interested him, in spite of himself. Why did he wish to destroy it, considering the cost to himself of doing so?
‘You… destroy others,’ he managed.
So do you.
‘The— only those who deserve it.’
Who is to say that my victims do not?
Konrad, bewildered, tried to fix his thoughts upon Talin, lost in the worst way to this monster’s predations. A faithful warden, she’d spent long years guarding the spiritlands from just such a menace as this — and what a reward for her labours. She could not possibly have deserved it.
Then again, what did Konrad know? He had never met Talin before yesterday. He did not know what else she had done with her life, what crimes she might have committed.
And he knew nothing about the malefic’s other victims, either.
Except — himself.
‘Are you— telling me you prey upon the guilty?’
We are alike, you and I. The malefic drifted closer, a foul wind to choke Konrad’s breath. He gasped for air, retching up blood — and black bile.
‘We are — not,’ he ground out.
You have felt it, whispered the malefic. You know it to be true.
Konrad felt his resolve disintegrate, tattered shreds of it melting away like snow in the sun. What if the thing was right? If he, Konrad Savast, Malykant and serial killer, deserved to exist, why not this extension of his essential darkness? Why not?
His right arm shook with the effort of holding it, and the knife he held, aloft. And then it fell, the knife tumbling from his grip. He had not the strength to speak, barely enough to breathe; he sat, dazed and befuddled, conscious of a terrible despair opening up within him but powerless to respond to it.
The malefic smiled. Not with its face, for it had none. It smiled with its soul, supposing it had one. Konrad felt the waves of its horrid satisfaction bathe him in something like… peace. The peace that comes of total surrender.
‘Konrad.’
Nanda’s voice, sharp as a whiplash, and as sudden. His head came up, eyes straining for a glimpse of her. Where was she? He saw nothing, nothing but darkness and a thick white mist boiling up from the ground.
A hallucination, then. Fitting that he should experience her contempt as well, here at the failure of everything he was.
Tasha’s words came then, lacerating. ‘Told you he couldn’t do it.’
‘He can,’ said Nanda, grim as winter. ‘He will.’
And something shifted. Only the slightest lessening of the black despair that had swallowed him, a crack in the mockery of peace he had been so ready to embrace. But it was enough. One swift, hard-won motion, muscles shaking with the effort: he reached into the dank mist, and his fingers closed around the hilt of the discarded knife.
And now, to kill. Just one more death, one more stab of a sharpened blade, one more soul — if such it was — sent shrieking into the darkness.
One more, and he could rest.
The malefic sensed the weakening of its terrible grip; it would not sit quietly as it was ushered out of the world, could not accept the prospect of its destruction as meekly as Konrad had. And Konrad discovered the truth of the spirit-witches’ bleak pronouncement: nobody survives a fight with a malefic. As he stabbed down, completing the m
erciless motion he’d begun a scant few minutes before, the malefic thrashed and shrieked, the sound splitting his mind apart. Those unearthly, lightning-bright talons raked lines of black fire across his face, his neck, his torso; Konrad screamed, too, ablaze with agony.
But his own knife flashed bright, twice, thrice, and a searing light tore the malefic into pieces. Tattered ribbons of shadow thrashed, groping for him, lashing him with fresh pain—
—and then, with a final, blinding flash of the Shandrigal’s light, the malefic sank into nothingness and was gone.
Chapter Nine
‘Konrad.’
The hallucinations were not gone, then. How sweet of them to linger, and keep him company as he died. He did not know that dreams could be so kind.
Konrad managed to smile at it, this vision of Nanda bending over him as he lay in a puddle of black bile. He felt it seeping through his coat, burning the fabric away, searing his skin, its foul smell assaulting his nostrils.
None of that mattered now.
‘I love you,’ he said to the dream-face, and tried to touch it. His arms wouldn’t work.
Ah, well.
‘Never mind that now,’ said Nanda, which was too like her, and Konrad felt a momentary pique. Could not this dream of his behave like a dream, just for a moment? While he died? Could it not say something soothing to his rended soul, for example I love you too, maybe even shed a sparkling tear?
Nanda was Nanda to the end, even in his imagination. Irascible in the face of sentiment, ruthless in pursuit of her goals, brisk and practical and allergic to wasted time.
‘It isn’t a waste of time,’ he told her. ‘Not now. There isn’t any anyway.’
‘Exactly,’ said the Nanda-dream, and then Tasha was there, too, her small, pale face coolly professional as she looked him over.
‘Mortal wounds, most likely,’ said she with a clinical air. ‘But better not depend upon it.’
Nanda’s attention had slipped from him for a moment, she’d turned away. A glimmer of clear light flickered at the edges of his vision: the Shandral-knife, retrieved, secreted somewhere among her clothes.
Why did he have to bother with that detail? Who cared what became of the knife? He was dying.
‘You don’t have to watch,’ said Tasha. ‘If you don’t want.’
Konrad floundered, grasping at the edges of this peculiar dream, and failing to restore his flagging grip upon it. The two characters in it continued to talk as though he were not even there, chatting amongst themselves on incomprehensible topics while his life’s blood slowly drained away.
Tasha’s face again. He thought she would say something more, but she did not.
A knife flashed. The knife again? Not again. Hadn’t the Nanda-dream—
—pain tore his torso apart, a new, fresh pain, a searing agony that tore another scream from his raw throat. Blood spurted and spilled — his blood, spirits above, had he actually had any of it left?
‘Wasn’t,’ he gasped, ‘a dream, was it?’
His heart pulsed once, twice more and then — stilled.
He heard, dimly and distantly as he faded, one final word from his loved ones.
Tasha’s voice.
‘Idiot.’
***
Nanda, alone suddenly with Konrad’s murderer and his corpse, felt less than she had expected to feel. Numbness, primarily. Shock? Denial?
What had they done, the two of them? The enormity of it hovered just beyond the range of her comprehension, comfortably distant. A dark cloud on her horizon, preparing to strike her down but not yet. Not yet.
‘He is an idiot, I grant you,’ she said dispassionately, staring blank-eyed at Konrad’s bloodied, still face. ‘But did that have to be the last word he heard in life?’
‘I knew you were going to be weird about it,’ said Tasha, sitting back on her heels. She squatted there, next to the remains of Konrad, like some oversized crow with the delectable stench of carrion in its nostrils. Its… beak. Did crows have nostrils? No. Beak.
With an effort, Nanda collected her scattered wits. ‘I knew you would not be,’ she said. ‘Did you enjoy it?’
Tasha stared at her, her eyes dark hollows in her white, white face. ‘That is hardly a helpful question to ask, is it?’
‘But did you?’
‘I will admit to feeling an urge to stab Konrad on more than one occasion, but no. Monstrous I may be, but stabbing my friends to death doesn’t number among my favourite amusements.’
Monstrous. Konrad had said that of himself, numerous times, and not without justice.
Tasha, though. Tasha was something else.
‘You are sure about this?’ said Nanda.
‘It’s a bit late to change my mind.’ In answer to Nanda’s questioning look, she made a small sound of annoyance and shook her head. ‘I am sure. And speaking of that, I had better get on with it, hadn’t—’ She broke off, looking down with distaste at the thing that had appeared at her knee. ‘What do you want?’
Stev. Nanda had forgotten the sixth pact. ‘My price,’ said Stev, and looked pointedly at the dead body of the one who had pledged himself to pay it.
‘I’ll pay it,’ said Tasha.
‘You are unsuitable.’
‘Right. Lamaeni. Sorry, Nanda.’
Nanda resigned herself. Some part of the fae’s blood-price it had already taken from Konrad, she judged, for this new burden did not weigh her down as much as she had expected. Hardly noticeable, really, on top of so many ingrained layers of exhaustion.
Regaining her feet cost her a bit more. She stood, head swimming, breathing deeply until she steadied, and her vision cleared.
When she opened her eyes again, Tasha and Stev were gone. She was truly alone with Konrad, now; could feast her eyes on their handiwork without either interruption or judgement.
He made an ugly corpse. She had seen some blessed, privileged souls, the ones who had passed away while they slept. In death, at least at first, they looked serene and composed, with a strange kind of beauty about them.
Not so Konrad. It wasn’t just the mess the malefic’s wounds made of his body, or the quantities of crimson blood and dark bile that covered his cooling skin. He’d died with a grimace upon his face, almost a snarl, a rictus of pain perhaps. His staring eyes held all the ferocity he’d shown, again and again, in his life as the Malykant. He had been torn from the living against his will, and it showed.
Nanda bent, and gently closed those eyes. It did not help.
A moment’s work summoned all of her five — no, six — fae friends to her side. Friends? Could they be called such? No, but it was a pleasant word.
‘Friends,’ she said aloud. ‘I have one last boon to ask of you.’
Six small faces gazed up at her — or down, in the case of Hreejur, winged and wispy and upside down just out of her line of sight. ‘There is a dead man here,’ said Kulu.
‘Yes. I need you to keep him alive.’
‘But he is dead,’ Kulu said.
‘His spirit is gone,’ added Hreejur in his icy whisper.
‘I need you to keep his body alive. Inkubal, mend what you can of his wounds. All of you, please, keep his heart beating and his blood flowing, for as long as you can.’
‘What shall be our reward?’ Nanda did not know which of them had said it, but the question came from them all. Six bright, avaricious pairs of eyes asked it of her.
‘That shall be arranged,’ she said. ‘Trust me. You know I shall not cheat you.’
They accepted this, for while no one answered her, they gathered around Konrad’s corpse, half a dozen bright-dark little shapes, hands and eyes and senses taking possession of him. Nanda caught one more glimpse of his dear face before he faded from view, whisked away by her friends to some safer spot. So she hoped.
Well, then. Only one task remained before her, the hardest she had ever faced, but only the one. And when it was done…
No use thinking about that, yet.
; She drew a slender gold ring from a pocket in her skirt, and slipped it onto her finger. A simple piece, she had inherited it from her grandmother some years ago. The elegant swirl of metal bore but one adornment: a tiny, clear diamond, faintly aglow now in that chill, eerie fashion Nanda had seen once before. Not long ago, either, a matter of a pipe with a hidden resource.
Nanda touched one finger lightly to the jewel, and it pulsed.
The only way Nanda knew of to travel into the Deathlands was to die — at least, supposing one chose to do so from the mundane world, from one’s own home, for example. The spiritlands, though, were different. Some said they were the space between: a hazy middle ground, with the cities and towns and forests of ordinary mortality below, and the enigmatic stretches of the Deathlands somewhere above. To a mortal deranged enough, desperate enough, a shorter series of steps might carry her from the spiritlands into that misty grey space, and all the dangers it held.
‘Well,’ said Nanda aloud. ‘And am I mad enough?’
The question was rhetorical. Of course she was. Gathering what was left of her strength, she took hold of The Shandrigal’s knife, and carved a brutal slice across the fabric of the world.
A door opened in keening tatters, and a dark mist wafted through, carrying with it the stench of… flowers.
‘Curious,’ said Nanda, and stepped through.
***
The Temple of The Malykt was deserted.
Tasha had hoped for just that, though hardly dared to expect it. When was so populous and so important a space ever empty? Even in the small hours of the morning, some devotee of The Dark Master lingered there, either in performance of some leftover duty, or in search of the serenity only the Temple of Death could bring.
Today was different. Today, every member of The Malykt’s Order was either at The Temple of the Shandrigal, or spread out across the city, seeking the malefic. They did not yet know that the creature was destroyed. Tasha’s first task was to dispatch letters to that effect, one each to Katya of The Shandral and Diana Valentina. Thus they would be informed that the knife had been stolen to good effect, the deed performed, and the realms safe once more.
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