The sounds had come from either side of her. Myrmeen's vision cleared and she saw a man who was not human standing several feet before her. The creature winked and smiled. She could only see the other man from the periphery of her vision, but she felt him touch her shoulder. His hand glowed and a vibrating current ran through her arm.
"Krystin, run!" she screamed as she spun and described an arc with her blade that caught the closest of the two men off guard, grazing the side of his head and sending him back, staggering, with his hand to his bloody scalp. She had no idea what had happened to her daughter. With a prayer that the girl was not buried beneath the rubble from the ceiling, Myrmeen looked at the face of the remaining member of the Night Parade. Its face was incredibly pale, with skin as withered as ancient parchment. It had a long, hooked nose and soft blue eyes. Ducking beneath her blade, the creature touched the floor, which instantly transmuted into liquid.
Myrmeen shouted as the floor gave out and she found herself falling into the darkened chamber below, along with everything else that had been in her childhood home. The impact when she struck bottom knocked the wind from her and she fell on something that bruised her ribs. Her free arm twisted behind her back and she felt a tearing in her shoulder, along with a sudden stab of red-hot liquid. Debris crashed around her, but somehow she had managed to hold onto her sword. She used the weapon as a crutch, digging into the settling wreckage, using its strength to help her climb to a kneeling position. Everything surrounding her was soggy. A sheet of harsh white light came in from the collapsed second story wall. The roof itself was still intact; it was the floor of the attic that had been destroyed.
"Hello, hello!" a figure said as it sprang up before her. Myrmeen found herself looking into the delighted face of the wrinkled, white-skinned member of the Night Parade who had changed the floor into water. His features ran like candle wax.
The creature reached toward her with dripping hands. "Tell me how you want to be immortalized. Glass? Steel? Porcelain? I'm an artist, but I like to be accommodating." The wax-man giggled insanely.
Myrmeen knew that by the time she drew her sword, the creature would be upon her. She wondered if Lucius or Burke had survived the fall, and if her daughter had made it out alive.
Suddenly there was a groan from above and the pale man looked up in surprise. "No," he said, "it's spreading. It wasn't supposed to spread!"
His power was causing the wall beside them to disintegrate, along with the floor upon which Varina was trapped by the ten-tacled creature. As the wall beside them turned to liquid, Myrmeen saw that heavy support beams had been placed in the next room to help manage the tremendous weight of the monstrosity above. She could not help but wonder why they did not simply allow the creature to stay on the first floor. Then there was no more time for thought. The floor beneath the creature transmuted, sending Varina plunging into the darkness as her massive enemy sank like a weighty sponge. It made no sound as it was impaled on the many support beams, its body and tentacles writhing madly as it lashed out in pain, then surrendered to death.
Myrmeen had not stood by as a spectator. While the waxlike man had watched the scene in horror, Myrmeen had withdrawn her sword, scrambled back over the debris to put some distance between herself and the creature, and thrown her sword at the pale man's head. He threw his hands up in alarm, his body twitching as the sword pierced his skull, the weight dragging him down to lie on his side in convulsions.
She heard a moaning sound, then the pounding of sword hilts on glass from the first floor. Myrmeen looked around and saw something moving within the wreckage. A man.
"Lucius?" she called as she walked closer.
The figure rose unsteadily and turned to her. It was the second man who had leapt down from the collapsed floor of the attic. The man had long black hair, azure eyes, and a tremendously well-developed body. He was tall and handsome. His expensive clothing was cut to reveal his washboard stomach, thick arms, and powerful legs. Bright, bluish white energy crackling with green flames engulfed his hand.
She was unprepared for his speed as he grabbed her arm and yanked her toward him, pulling his hand behind him for an instant, then shoving it forward. The pain she had anticipated never arrived. She heard a scream behind her.
Looking over her shoulder, Myrmeen saw that the man's hand was buried deep in the chest of the man with the waxen face. There was no indication that her sword had ever touched him, though she had seen it buried in his skull. The creature writhed for a moment, then fell back in a heap and did not rise again.
"I am Erin Shandower," the man who'd grabbed her said. "I am human, like you." He held out his glowing hand, the talons of energy quickly fading. "This gauntlet is my weapon against them. With it, I can kill almost any-"
"My daughter," Myrmeen said. "Help me find her. She was up there when the floor gave out."
Shandower nodded, and together they began the search. Across the room, Myrmeen registered that the pounding at the window had stopped. She had assumed that it was Reisz and Ord, trying to get in and free them. Something had made them stop, and that frightened Myrmeen.
"I've found someone. A man," Shandower said.
Myrmeen went to his side and helped him to drag Lucius from the waterlogged wreckage. The mage was dazed, barely conscious. She heard the sloshing of footsteps and turned, worried that she would find another enemy. Varina walked past her, desperately plunging her gloved hands into the debris, trying to find her husband's body. The lithe blonde was frantic. She ignored the gaping cuts lining her legs and back.
The desperate search went on until Varina gave a single, grief-filled cry. She had found her husband. Miraculously, he was still alive. His eyes flickered open at her touch and he reached up to caress the side of her face. "So beautiful," he whispered hoarsely.
Varina lowered her face to his, kissing him gently.
Myrmeen raised another chunk of debris and realized with disgust that it was a severed wing from one of the dragonfly-children. She dropped it immediately. Krystin had not been trapped below the heavy wings. The tall, beautiful brunette tried to fight off her growing hysteria. She could not have come all this way to find her daughter, only to lose the girl so quickly.
"I have only one question," a voice called from the darkened corner of the room. " 'My daughter'?"
Myrmeen spun around in surprise. Straining her eyes, she was able to see Krystin sitting on a pile of wreckage a dozen feet away. She heard footsteps above. The sections of the floor that once had held the dining and kitchen area of Myrmeen's former dwelling were still intact. Something fell from the crumbling ledge above. Two lengths of rope.
Reisz and Ord leaned down over the edge. The older man gestured wildly. "Everyone out of there, quickly. There may be more of those things!"
"Why didn't you just break through the window on this floor?" Myrmeen asked as her daughter left her perch and joined the others.
"We couldn't. The walls, the glass, they've all been changed to steel. Something didn't want us getting in."
Myrmeen thought of the creature with the power of transmutation. It had nearly succeeded in trapping them.
Shandower grasped one of the ropes and tugged. The rope was secure. "I can take the tall one over my shoulder. Then I'll come back for the one who was hurt."
"Good plan," Reisz said. "Who was hurt and who in Cyric's hell are you?"
Ord suddenly noticed Burke's twisted body and screamed the man's name. The teenager grabbed one of the ropes and was about to slide down when Reisz threw his arms around the boy and held him back.
"Ord!" Bujrke shouted, somehow raising his hand in a fist.
"Listen."
The boy stopped fighting the older man long enough to shift his gaze back to the pit of wreckage below.
"I want you to prepare the horses for our escape," Burke said. "Now." ›
"I'll come down, I'll help you-"
"No. Go outside. I'll be along."
Desperation flashed in the boy'
s eyes. His true father had been horrible to him. Burke was the only man who had showed him kindness and discipline.
"Go on," Burke said. "I'll not have my only son disobeying my orders in front of all my friends."
For a brief instant, Myrmeen was certain that she saw a face looking in on them through the first floor window, which may have had the consistency of steel but was still translucent. Then the face was gone.
Above, Reisz clamped his hand on Ord's shoulder. "He'll be fine."
"Go, Ord," ^forina said, wiping away the tears that were suddenly streaming down her face. "We'll be with you soon."
Ord nodded sharply, then turned and vanished. They heard his footsteps recede and forina said, "We'll be with you always."
Burke stared into her eyes. "You know, don't you?"
"I do," she said, her chest heaving with grief. Burke took her hand. He was not going to last much longer. His injuries were too severe.
Suddenly a chorus of high-pitched squeals erupted from where the dead tentacled creature rested. Myrmeen looked on in horror as hundreds of fist-sized black pearls cracked open and a swarm of yellow-and-black dragonflies rose in the air. One of the creature's many layers of skin had fallen away in death, freeing the black eggs.
"We have to get out, now!" Shandower screamed as he hauled Lucius over his shoulder and began to climb.
Myrmeen watched Varina, who stared at the swarm as if its arrival had been inevitable.
"We have to go," Myrmeen said.
"I'm not leaving him," she said. "I won't leave him to them."
Burke touched her hand. "You know what to do."
"You be quiet," she said, her hands trembling.
"Please," he said, though he would not beg. "I love you, my wife."
"Don't make me," she cried.
Krystin ran for the ropes. Both were free. Reisz already had helped Shandower and Lucius over the side. Without a look back, she started climbing. The swarm buzzed angrily and had started to drift in their direction.
"Myrmeen, go. This is private," Varina said solemnly. "I'll be right behind you."
Nodding, Myrmeen crossed to the ropes and took hold of the one that Krystin was not using. Then she hauled herself upward.
Below, Varina took her husband's head in her hands and said, "I love you."
"Forever," Burke replied.
Behind her, Myrmeen heard the sharp crack of bones snapping. She hurried up the rope and felt hands upon her, helping her over the edge, and suddenly she was facing a blinding white curtain of midday sunlight.
"Varina, come on!" Myrmeen shouted as she heard the swarm's flapping wings and high-pitched squeals. She pictured their razor-sharp mouths and talonlike claws; they would be like piranhas.
In the near darkness below, Varina rose from the body of her husband and quickly disrobed. She took her knife and opened several cuts in her flesh, then began walking in the direction of the swarm, diverting its attention from the Harpers who waited above.
On the second floor, Myrmeen saw this and had to be dragged from the edge of the ruined floor. Her last sight of her friend had been as the swarm descended upon her, covering her instantly. Varina never screamed.
Reisz shoved Myrmeen outside, to the gallery. "Don't make her sacrifice count for nothing. Come on!"
Something in the kitchen caught her attention. She broke from him, tipped over a large oil lantern, and struck a piece of flint. In seconds the fire she had started began to bloom. Reisz dragged her outside and together they swung over the side and slid down the ropes that had been anchored by the fountain below. The others were already waiting.
"Where-where are they?" Ord stammered, looking back to the building, which already belched clouds of black smoke.
"They loved you very much," Myrmeen said. Then she struck him in the solar plexus, just beneath the rib cage, with the stiffened fingers of her right hand. He collapsed in a heap, and Reisz loaded him onto his mount, securing him quickly as he eyed the burning building, expecting a new host of monstrosities to erupt at any time. Shandower took the first of two mounts that had been left behind by the deaths of Myrmeen's friends, and said, "I know a place."
"Show us," Myrmeen said.
The Harpers rode out, Myrmeen taking one last look at the remains of her childhood quarters before she quietly followed the others to safety.
Nine
Alden McGregor had not anticipated a journey of discovery when he first began to shadow the Lhal woman and her companions. Their detour to the Knight's Kitchen for a last meal in the city before their long journey had not seemed out of line. Even the stopover at the Tower Arms had appeared innocuous enough at the outset; after all, they were pointed in the correct direction, riding toward the city gates. Then he heard the sounds of battle. From the vantages he secretly had taken, including a position outside the steellike glass of the east wing's first floor window, Alden had received his first taste of a world completely alien to his own, a world that apparently had existed side by side with his for a frighteningly long time. When the building was left a flaming ruin, Alden was relieved. There were monsters in Calimport, entire lairs of nightmarish creatures unlike anything he had seen except in his dreams. The past week he had dreamt that eyes were watching him, hard, flat eyes that stared at him as if he were nothing more than carrion. The eyes had grown from the walls in his dreams, burst from his flesh, and hung before him in the mists and shadows that pervaded his nightmares. They always appeared in sets of three pairs, a total of six eyes each time. A voice had accompanied his most recent dreams, a finely cultured voice that reverberated with power.
"You know," the voice said enigmatically, "don't you?"
Alden never thought much about his dreams, but after witnessing the battle at the Tower Arms, he had begun to wonder if demons could escape the dream world.
The blond teenager had followed Lhal and her people from the burning building. They had ridden for close to an hour, snaking through forgotten paths in the city, until they came to a one-story stone edifice. The building once had been a sewing shop, where dozens of women had sweated out the day to weave cheap imitations of fine clothing. One day the authorities had learned of the shop and closed it down. The place also had been a warehouse for a time, until fire had destroyed the contents several times over. Currently it sat vacant, the locals claiming that it was accursed. Alden smiled. A little bad luck and any location would be proclaimed as such. His mentor, Pieraccinni, had taught him that, and also that men make their own luck.
The long-haired man with the strange, arcane gauntlet had led Myrmeen and her companions through a side entrance to the building. Alden had sat in the darkening alley for a time, waiting for them to come out. When they did not, he decided it was time to return to the Gentleman's Hall and give a full report.
Before nightfall he was back on the docks, indulging himself at the expense of the many guards Pieraccinni employed as he circumvented their best efforts to keep out intruders. Distracting the forty-year-old mercenary at the kitchen entrance by preying upon his sole weakness, a fondness for cats, Alden watched the tabby he had lifted from a gutter several blocks away mewl piteously as the man bent down and fed it some kitchen scraps. He had slipped past the man and was inside the building so easily that the game was losing its allure.
Alden weaved through the service hallways and tunnels until he reached the private door that only he and Pieraccinni's ladies of the moment were allowed to use. He heard voices from inside Pieraccinni's rooms and was about to turn around when he recognized one of the voices. "You know," it said, "don't you?"
Alden froze. The voice was the one from his nightmares. A part of him wished to turn and run from the Gentleman's Hall, but another more curious and insistent voice within him urged the young man to carefully open the marble door a crack and peak inside.
He saw Pieraccinni kneeling before a tall man with a black widow's peak, angular features, and a trim, athletic body. The man was cloaked in black leather and gray
steel. There were three sets of eyes in his head, one set above and below the natural pair, allowing him to look to the front and each side at all times. Clusters of six eyes appeared throughout his body. He had three sets of eyes on each arm and leg, three on each breast, and six on his back. His clothing had been designed to protect his many eyes, with holes cut out to allow the eyes vision and hard crystal of many colors protecting the vulnerable orbs.
Alden wondered if the man had been born with so many eyes or if he had acquired them from his victims. His curiosity made him ponder what function each of the various sets of eyes performed.
He watched as the tall man reached for one of the strange, edged weapons at his waist and drew the blade slowly, the metal scraping its scabbard. Pieraccinni looked up, sweat exploding on his bald head as he stared at the jagged, curved knife. His master touched one of the three gems on the hilt, causing the two flat metal surfaces that made up the knife to separate. A thin strand of wire sprang upward from between the deadly blades.
Alden tried to imagine the damage such a weapon could perform if it were already inside a victim.
"You know, don't you?" the man repeated as he gestured with the knife. "What dreams may come? Dreams of darkness and death from which you may never wake, or prosperous dreams of wealth, power, and women of such great beauty and talent that you would never wish to wake. The latter is what I have given you. I could take it away in an instant."
"Please, Lord Sixx. I meant no disrespect."
"Pieraccinni," the one called Sixx said with a knowing smile. "How long do you think this life of yours would last if everyone were able to look through my eyes? If they could see past your illusions and know you for what you truly are?"
Lord Sixx waved the knife. From his hiding place Alden winced and felt a sudden wave of nausea as the scene before him suddenly changed. Pieraccinni was no longer a man. His skin was dark blue, with red and green veins visible beneath the surface. The merchant's head was oblong, with tiny, heavily hooded eyes, a small mouth, and pulsating openings along his neck to allow for the intake of air. The man's body had a roughly human shape, but his flesh quivered like a jellyfish under tremendous pressure beneath the ocean. Alden clamped his hand over his mouth as Lord Sixx waved his knife a second time and Pieraccinni changed back to a man.
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