Nightblade

by Liane Merciel

  But Kyril's attention snapped away from him as soon as the smoke appeared. After a second, she thrust the compass back at him, scowling.

  Isiem took it. "Do you believe me now?"

  "Maybe. It could be a trick. And he might have good reasons for hiding from your spells." She turned on her heel, striding back across the field of bloody glass toward the bone-littered entry hall and the seraptis door beyond it. "But I've seen enough that I'm going to check on Ena. You can come with me if you like."

  He did, readying the last of the wands he'd recovered from the case in the experimentation room. Magic hummed through its sky-blue quartz, and he took reassurance from its strength. The muted crunch of glass underfoot told him that Ascaros was following, too, invisibly and at a measured distance. Isiem took heart from that. The shadowcaller was still with them.

  But so was something else.

  All of you will die.

  Isiem froze, the hair on the back of his neck prickling. That wasn't Kyril's voice, or Ascaros's. It wasn't any spoken voice.

  He whipped around to see a sinuous tentacle flicker away, vanishing around the glass dome behind them. Suckers dotted it, and a glossy black pincer capped its end. Something long and thin extended from the pincer. He didn't have time to see more; as soon as he'd registered that much, it was gone.

  Ascaros reacted faster. A fireball bloomed between the shadowcaller's hands, outlining his suddenly visible body in a stark silhouette. Blue-kissed orange fire streaked across the chamber to explode where the pincer had vanished, blasting apart the cracked remains of a demon's empty glass cage and sending a thousand splintered reflections sparkling around the room.

  "What was that?" Kyril demanded, whirling. Her sword was out, its edge alight in blue flame.

  "A qlippoth," the shadowcaller answered tersely, scanning the smoke and cooling globs of molten glass for signs of his target. "Probably the same one that's influencing Teglias."

  "How do you know that?"

  "I don't. I'm hoping. We hardly need more than one of these things on our trail." Turning away from the smoke, Ascaros shook his head in vexation and tightened the hidden straps in his sleeve that held the wand Isiem had given him. "Whether it was alone or not, though, I've lost it. I wonder if it only intended to flush me out of hiding."

  "If it did, it succeeded," Isiem said. "We should check on Ena."

  Kyril nodded, taking the lead once more. The faltering wisps of white smoke that had leaked from the ruined plates in the entry hall were completely extinguished, and the sheer stillness of the corridor added to Isiem's powerful sense of unease. The apprentices' heaped bones bore a few streaks and spatters of fresher blood, shockingly garish in the white glow of Isiem's light spell, that marked Kyril's initial retreat with Ena.

  As they crossed between the piles of ancient, pulverized bones, Isiem could see the steel door ahead. Bloody handprints—Kyril's?—tattooed its rim. A crescent of darkness showed the way to the chamber of demonflesh doors, and with it their escape from Fiendslair.

  Quickening his step, Isiem sent his floating light forward to illumine the seraptis door. The trapped demon's face scrunched into a familiar, flattened snarl as they approached, but there seemed to be something more than hatred in her glare.

  Fear? Defiance? Isiem couldn't guess. Whatever it was, it soon vanished under a muted scream and a mist of sprayed blood as the whirling blade emerged from the door's perimeter and began its gruesome work.

  The three of them gathered before it, watching tensely as the silver blade sheared through bone and hair and muscle. Ascaros glanced back at the shadowed hall and the great steel door that still lay ajar behind them. "We should close that," he muttered.

  "Then do it," Kyril said, her own attention focused intently forward. "I'm not stopping you."

  But the shadowcaller made no move to do so, and Isiem thought he understood why. Child of Nidal he might be, but the darkness of Fiendslair frightened him, too. Something deep and atavistic in his soul was afraid of those unnatural, layered shadows.

  There were monsters lurking in those lightless depths, and things that would happily drag them off into the dark ...and it felt so much safer to stand here, in the fragile bubbles of their illumination spells and the comfort of each other's presences, and say that there really was no reason to venture into that terror. There were no threats in view. No need to brave the shapeless horrors of the night and close that gaping door, even if it was only thirty feet away.

  "We should close it," Isiem forced himself to say. "I'll come with you."

  Together they walked back into the darkness. Behind them, Isiem heard the seraptis door slide free.

  And then Kyril swore, and something hurtled past them in a blur of yellow cloth, hitting Isiem in the back with what felt like an elbow on the way. The wizard stumbled, and by the time he righted himself to a crouch, the figure had disappeared past the steel door and into the darkness beyond.

  He knew who it was, though. Who it had to be. "Teglias?"

  "Yes." Kyril's answer was brittle with surprise and defeat. "He just ...ran. As soon as the door opened. Didn't say a word."

  "Excellent," Ascaros said. "Isiem, seal the door. Neither he nor his accursed master will be able to escape once you do."

  Uncomfortably aware of Kyril's eyes on his back, but unable to deny the shadowcaller's logic, Isiem pressed the key to the pinhole at the center of the partly recessed steel door. Once again, the hole spiraled wide to accept the key, then poured back in to enclose it as if the steel were smooth-flowing mercury. With a gentle click, the key released, and the door rolled back into its sealed position.

  Isiem let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. Tension drained from his muscles. The blank solidity of that massive steel door was immeasurably reassuring, and with it in place behind him, he finally turned to see what lay beyond the seraptis door.

  Ena was on the ground in the brass-walled entry chamber. Kyril knelt by her side. The dwarf bore no fresh injuries, as far as Isiem could see, but she didn't look good.

  Her face had a chalky, grayish pallor. There might have been a hint of green to it, or Isiem might have imagined that, remembering the monsters that the Aspis agents had become. He didn't imagine the shallowness of her breathing, though, or the feverish flutter of her eyelids. Thin white strands of fungus, fine as cat's whiskers, sprouted from what looked like an acid burn across her abdomen.

  "She didn't have these before," Kyril muttered, yanking out the fungal filaments and throwing them aside in disgust. She scrubbed her hand against an armored thigh. "What did he do to her? How? And how do we get rid of it?"

  "It is a disease of the qlippoth," Ascaros answered, joining her and kneeling on the dwarf's opposite side. "At least some of them, anyway. I believe Eledwyn, in trying to devise a plague that might eliminate demons altogether, enhanced or distilled the ability. Perhaps they can pass it to their servants as well."

  "Can we cure it?" the half-elf asked.

  "We can try. Does your goddess grant you any dominion over disease?"

  "Some."

  The shadowcaller nodded in acknowledgment, beckoning for Isiem to join them. "Then that is what we'll use. Your prayers against disease, mine against the more ordinary sufferings of the flesh. Isiem, hold her. There may be a struggle."

  Gingerly, the wizard held Ena's shoulders down. She was cold under his hands, even through the dirty blue wool of her cloak, and rigid as a corpse. Where the fungus grew, however, her flesh felt disconcertingly soft and mushy, like a peach succumbing to rot.

  Kyril pressed a hand to the dwarf's breastbone, beginning her prayer. Radiance spilled from between her fingers and poured into Ena's body, driving back the unnatural chill. The whiskers of fungus withered and collapsed, although the acid-eaten flesh beneath them remained unhealed until Ascaros added his own prayer to Kyril's. The paladin stiffened visibly at the sound of the unholy invocation, but she did not interrupt or object.

  Color returned to E
na's cheeks. Groggily, she opened her eyes.

  "Gods above," she croaked, focusing unsteadily on Isiem, "but yours is not the first face I want to see when waking up." The dwarf struggled into a sitting position, wincing heavily and putting a hand to her abdomen. Despite Ascaros's magic, a palpable bruise remained. "I'd ask what happened, but somehow I'm guessing there's a long version of the story that I don't want to hear, and a short version that goes ‘monsters attacked us and we're all that survived.' Am I right?"

  "More or less," Isiem allowed. "Depending on your definition of ‘survived.'"

  "The simple definition," Ena said. She spat on the floor, then sucked in a careful breath and stood up, leaning against the wall for support. "I always like the simple definitions. So. We're all that's left. What's our goal? Getting out alive?"

  "Yes," Ascaros said, at the same time that Kyril answered, "No."

  "Good, good, I love when everything's unanimous," Ena croaked. The ghost of a smile creased Ena's face. Dried blood cracked and flaked off her chin. "Makes life so much easier. Does anyone want to tell me why it's both ‘yes' and ‘no'?"

  Ascaros's answer seemed to be directed more at Kyril than the dwarf. He delivered it with his black eyes fixed, unblinking, on the paladin. "We can escape Fiendslair now. We have all three nightblades in our possession. Teglias and the qlippoth are both on the far side of the steel door, which effectively bars them from leaving this place. We have achieved a greater degree of victory than any of us should reasonably have expected. We've won. What possible reason could you have to linger?"

  "I won't leave Teglias." Kyril said it quietly, but there was steel in her voice. "I won't abandon him to that monster."

  "You didn't see what happened to Ganoven," Isiem said. The memory of the Aspis agent's transformation was one that he did not expect ever to be able to forget. "It was like he'd been ...hollowed. Like his skin had been stretched over a framework of horror. I don't know if there was anything of him left inside at all."

  Kyril frowned at him, fingering the engraved pommel of her sword. "So it's true, then, what Teglias said. You killed him."

  "We killed the thing wearing his skin. I'm not convinced it was truly him. I know little of these qlippoth, but whatever their ability to seize and corrupt human hosts, I fear Eledwyn's experiments may have increased them, or blended them with those of demons. What the qlippoth did to Ganoven and Copple ...that was no ordinary possession."

  The paladin's frown deepened. She turned on her left heel, gazing at the demons trapped in their miserable doors. The seraptis's injuries were beginning to knit; congealed blood was giving way to raw pink flesh as the door gradually grew back into place. "All the more reason we must rescue Teglias."

  "All the more reason we must leave," Ascaros said. "Are you mad? Do you realize what will happen if you fall to the qlippoth in there? If they take the nightblades from us and free themselves from Fiendslair? You would doom the world for the sake of one cleric who's probably dead already."

  Kyril set her jaw. "It isn't irrevocable. I purified the disease from Ena. I have to try for Teglias."

  Faced with the paladin's determination, Ascaros could only gape in astonished contempt. "You're an idiot."

  "So am I, then," Ena murmured, "because I'll be going with her." Brushing away the last strands of fungus from her clothing, the dwarf fished around inside the hidden pockets of her cloak. One of her potion bottles had been smashed somewhere in the fighting; she dumped the glass shards from her sodden pocket with a sigh. Another was intact, however, and she drank it with evident relief. A bit more color returned to her face, although she remained unsteady on her feet. "There. Now I'm ready."

  "Isiem?" Kyril asked.

  The wizard hesitated. At the crossroads of loyalty and self-preservation, he didn't know which way to turn. He liked Teglias, had enjoyed traveling with the man, respected his courage and learning ...but if the decision was measured on the scales of pragmatism, there could be no question. Ascaros was right. The chance of saving one man's life—however good and worthy that man might be—was not worth the risk.

  But looking at Kyril and Ena, he understood that what was practical didn't matter. Not to them. Loyalty did, and their sense of what was right.

  And he was drawn to that, as he had been in the warehouse in Pezzack and a hundred times since. Isiem admired their bravery and their conviction, and in a way, envied it. His own life had no such clear compass.

  He was not like them. But he wanted to be.

  "I'll go," he said.

  "I don't believe this." Ascaros threw up his hands. "Your brains must have boiled away in that desert. Don't ask me to come with you."

  "I wasn't planning to. It's better for you to go, anyway," Isiem said. "Take the nightblades away from here. If the qlippoth overwhelm us and escape, at least they won't be able to use those to cut a rift between the planes. We won't risk the world if we fail. We'll only risk ourselves."

  A hint of surprise widened the shadowcaller's dark eyes. Ena and Kyril echoed his expression, but neither of them spoke. Only Ascaros voiced the thought all three of them shared: "You'd give the nightblades to the Umbral Court? That easily?"

  "No," Isiem said, holding his old friend's gaze. "I am giving them to you. You know what the nightblades are, and you know they must be destroyed. They're useless to anyone, including the Umbral Court. There's no profit to be had from them, no meaningful power. They are a failed creation, and they need to be broken before they spill more evil into the world. I can trust you to do that, surely."

  "I suppose you can," Ascaros answered. He hesitated, then reached into his sleeve and took out the ivory wand Isiem had given him. Its jacinths glittered under their light spells, their red-orange hues deepened to a sullen, hellish crimson like devils' burning blood. "You might need this."

  "I might," Isiem agreed, accepting the gold-chased wand. "Thank you."

  "Good luck. Perhaps we'll meet again, although I don't hold much hope for it." The shadowcaller moved to the center of the room, where a faint circle of runes marked the exit. As he focused magic into them, the runes began to radiate a muted golden light, and Ascaros's outline softened in their midst like sea-mist burning away at dawn.

  Within moments, he was gone, and the light died softly behind him.

  "Well, that was touching," Ena said. She cracked her knuckles and turned to the seraptis door. "Are we ready?"

  "Almost." Isiem unsheathed his belt knife and plucked a bit of fleece from his pouch of spell components. He passed the fleece over his knife, and in its wake the cool gray steel of his blade darkened to glossy black with a flicker of scarlet flame at its edge. Its shape lengthened and thinned to a perfect replica of the largest nightblade they'd found, and when the illusion was complete, he tied it to his belt so that the false nightblade swung openly over his hip.

  "Bait?" Ena asked, jerking a thumb at the magic-veiled knife.

  Isiem nodded. "Past that experimentation chamber, Fiendslair turns into a labyrinth of madness. We'll never find Teglias or the qlippoth in there. Our only chance is to lure them out. And what does the qlippoth want? The nightblade."

  "Which it can't get," Ena finished approvingly. "Excellent. So all we're really risking will be our lives. And possibly our immortal souls. Well, that's of no account. Let's go."

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  One Last Time

  One last time, they walked into the darkness beyond the scratched steel door. One last time, Isiem faced the depthless dread of Fiendslair.

  They crossed the piled apprentices' bones in single file, Kyril in front with her shield and holy sword, Ena behind her, Isiem in the rear. Along with his false nightblade, the wizard had added a second illusion to their procession: a slight shimmer in the air, suggestive of an invisible fourth person walking alongside them.

  The qlippoth had unveiled Ascaros's invisibility once before, and Isiem hoped that the fiend might think they were trying the same trick again. If they were lucky,
it might waste its energy trying to attack a man who wasn't there.

  If not ...

  He refused to dwell on it. When they reached the experimentation chamber, the three of them fanned out, as they had agreed while forming their hasty plan.

  The three of them traced separate, overlapping courses across the smashed bones and glass of the experimentation room. As they walked, each of them stooped to pick through the rubble. Kyril had said that while all the demons' cages had been broken in the fighting, not all of their gems had been recovered. Even for Ganoven and his ill-fated comrades, greed had fallen by the wayside while they were desperate to survive.

  But now they were safer—or wanted to create the impression that they thought they were safer—and greed might be extremely useful.

  Isiem jostled the apprentices' bones with deliberate roughness, tossing them aside as he mimed searching for fallen valuables.

  From across the room, Kyril scowled at him. "Must you do that?"

  It hadn't been rehearsed, but Isiem was inwardly pleased at her improvisation. Being scolded by a paladin only reinforced their guise as looters and tomb robbers. He stood, shrugged at her with theatrical indifference, and kicked a toothless skull in her direction before returning to his looting.

  The joy of that momentary teamwork lightened the clammy chill of his dread, but it was all too fleeting. As Isiem came around the curve of the cracked central dome, he glimpsed Ena out of the corner of his eye, and his mood shifted back to tense, silent calculation.

  While Kyril and Isiem made a show of robbing the dead, Ena was using her circuit of the room as cover to plant the last of her bombs. She used the apprentices' robes and skeletons to hide her silver-pinned globes, and while that was no doubt a desecration in its own way, it was not one that they meant for the qlippoth to notice. Isiem watched her carefully, alert to the smallest sign that might betray what she was really doing, but the dwarf was as nimble as a Chelish pickpocket, and he never saw a thing.