Nightblade

by Liane Merciel

  "Have you got them all?" Ena called, brushing off her knees.

  That was the signal that she'd finished placing her bombs. "Not yet," Kyril called back, signifying that she had not spotted the qlippoth or Teglias.

  "I think there's one more, maybe two," Isiem said. He hadn't seen them either.

  It worried him. This was their only gambit. If they couldn't lure the qlippoth out of hiding, or at least into sending Teglias as its puppet to confront them, then their choices became much starker and much worse: brave the labyrinth of Abyss-touched madness, or turn back and accept defeat without ever having laid eyes on their lost companion.

  But then he heard the click and drag of something strange approaching, and hope flared along with apprehension in his chest.

  "Kyril. Kyyyyrrriilll." The reedy warble came from a hunched silhouette at the outer edge of Isiem's floating light. It was a distorted mockery of Teglias's true voice, scarcely recognizable. "You came back for me, Kyril. You came baaacckk. Come with me now. Come into the dark."

  Instead, Isiem waved his light forward.

  Like Ganoven before him, the cleric had become a creature out of a ghastly dream. The Sarenite's skin sagged from his skull in a green-gray mask. Wisps of white fungus grew from his temples, twining into his hair. Patches of scabby skin covered his knuckles, and his fingers alternated between long yellow claws and withered stumps with no nails at all.

  But he was still undeniably alive. He was no collection of bones, or even as infested as Ganoven. If Kyril could drive out the contagion with her magic, she might yet save him.

  Behind the fungal thrall that Teglias had become, the puppetmaster lurked.

  It emerged slowly, hovering at the edge of Isiem's light. The qlippoth was a pale, smooth lozenge of flesh, eight feet long and perhaps four across, with a toothy rift in the center. Damp green fungus stained its uneven, continually gnashing teeth, and more fungus streaked the soft slimy blue-pink of its hide. Its eyes were covered in a slick of shimmering, impossible colors, like misshapen soap bubbles that had floated up from a drug-induced nightmare. Long, sinuous tentacles groped the air around it, their sphincterlike suckers flaring obscenely.

  Two of the qlippoth's four tentacles were decked with oversized rings or slim bracelets, and a third held a wand of spiraling clear crystal in its pincer. The fiend jabbed its wand into the air in short, sharp thrusts as it approached, and although it was too far for Isiem to have any chance of recognizing the wand's purpose, he saw no reason to risk it.

  "It's here!" he shouted to his companions. Kyril had already seen it, and was striding toward Teglias and the qlippoth even before he'd called. Ena skittered back around the dome for cover, raising her crossbow.

  One of the qlippoth's horrible shimmering eyes rolled to look in the wizard's direction as he shouted. A second later, its wand followed, swaying in the grip of the glistening black pincer.

  Isiem dove to the side, scattering a sparkling spray of pulverized glass, and retaliated with his own spell back at the monster. Flames flew between them: copper and gold from the wizard's hands, a violent swirl of clashing colors from the qlippoth's wand. The fiend's slimy skin bubbled and blistered under Isiem's spell; one of its globby eyes burst. Heat from its own fiery blast washed over the wizard, crisping his ivory hair and sucking the breath from his lungs. The cloth of his robes burned over his back, sweeping agony across his spine.

  Caught in the crossfire between them, Teglias went up like a human torch. Fungal spores popped and sparked in the air around him. Yet still he refused to fall, staggering forward, arms outstretched and fingers curled into knobby-knuckled claws.

  Despite his own blinding pain, Isiem winced to see the cleric reduced to a shambling zombie. All the man's intelligence and learning, all his morals and lived experience ...all were swept away under the crush of the qlippoth's control. And that seemed a greater devastation than the fire consuming his mortal shell.

  There was only one way to end it. Rolling onto his back to put out his smoldering robes, Isiem tried another spell. His fire hadn't hurt the fiend as badly as he'd hoped; he needed something else. Fishing out a chunk of coal, he crushed it between his fingers and threw a tumult of slashing diamond shards at the tentacled horror.

  Before he could tell how effective the attack had been, however, Kyril stepped between him, the fiend, and Teglias in his halo of green-tipped fire. Blessed blue light limned the paladin's sword. Like an avenging angel—more an embodiment of Iomedae's divine wrath than a living woman—she closed on him.

  The sight of Kyril's holy grace seemed to drive the corrupted cleric to new heights of fury. His face contorted in rage, Teglias raised his hands and clawed at her with wild rakes of his talonlike hands. The paladin raised her shield to catch them, but she did not return his attacks.

  "Pull back," Isiem gasped to her, scrabbling backward on his rump and elbows. Glass splintered under his weight, slashing his palms. The heat coming off Teglias scorched his cheeks and dried his throat. It hurt to breathe too close to the cleric. "Ena's laid the path for us."

  Kyril nodded, never taking her eyes off their foes, and began a steady, defensive retreat as Isiem scrambled to stay behind her. Sweat dripped into her eyes and her shield shuddered with every blow she caught, but the half-elf never faltered. She altered her course slightly as she moved backward, angling toward the trail of traps Ena had set.

  The tentacled fiend hung back, raising its bejeweled appendages, but the burning Teglias stumbled mindlessly after the paladin. Kyril kept the same measured pace as she gave ground, stepping over loose bones and rolling chunks of glass with sure-footed deftness. As easily as if they were dancing, she led the cleric toward the entryway. Behind her, Ena's crossbow twanged as the dwarf shot repeatedly into the gloom. Each of her alchemically treated bolts exploded with a muted thunderclap on impact, although Isiem couldn't see much of them beyond flashes of silvery blue past the limits of his light spell.

  Twenty feet from the doorway, Teglias stepped onto one of Ena's traps. The delicate globe shattered underfoot, spraying blessed water. The holy water hissed into steam as it hit Teglias's wreath of flames, scalding the cleric. He rocked to the left, dropping his fists, and Kyril seized the opportunity. Her fiery sword came around in a blazing blue arc, cleaving a diagonal trail through the steam.

  The blade should have buried itself between the Sarenite's neck and his shoulder—a wound that would have been fatal to any living man—but to Isiem's astonishment, it did not. Somehow the impact seemed to be muted. The sword's holy aura diffused around its keen steel edge, blunting what should have been a mortal wound into one that merely incapacitated.

  Teglias dropped like a felled tree. Immediately Kyril sheathed her sword and grabbed the cleric by the back of his collar, hauling him with her as she broke into an all-out run for the door. "Go!"

  Isiem rolled back to his feet and hurried after her. They didn't need to kill the qlippoth. They only needed to seal it behind the steel barrier door to cement their victory.

  But the fiend knew that too.

  It raised a braceleted tentacle. Isiem saw the movement, and glimpsed a flash of blue-white light coruscating around whatever ornament the qlippoth wore. He had nowhere to hide, though, and there was nowhere to run.

  A crushing wave of cold slammed into him from behind. It forced tears to his eyes and froze them on his lashes, seared the inside of his throat with freezing air, and sent him sprawling into a heap of ice-glazed bones. His concentration disrupted, Isiem lost his secondary illusion. It was all he could do to hold on to the spell that veiled his belt knife.

  Across the room, Ena lifted her crossbow again. Even as she pulled its trigger, the qlippoth sent a second blast of elemental frost to swallow the dwarf. The bolt vanished into the blinding cone of ice, and so did Ena. When the haze of frosty mist and snow fell to the ground, the dwarf fell with it. Red-streaked ice encased the top of her head and ran down the sides of her face like a rippled helm. Her cross
bow, frozen solid, tumbled from her hands and broke into pieces on the floor.

  Teglias was down as well, and Kyril was close to collapse. The half-elf had managed to push herself up to a sitting position on the ice-slick ground near Teglias, who looked like a three-day-old corpse with his greenish pallor. Blood ran from Kyril's nose and the corner of her lips, and frost crackled in her dark red hair, but she held the strength to summon a spark of healing magic to her hand. It flowed into Teglias, pulling the Sarenite back from the brink of oblivion.

  It wouldn't keep him safe for long. The one-eyed qlippoth, seeing its enemies laid low, slithered toward them with horribly liquid ripples of its tentacles. It was badly wounded, its pulpy flesh shredded by the wizard's diamond burst and pocked with fist-sized holes from Ena's bolts. The jewels on its frosty bracelet glimmered, blue and white and colder than a winter moon ...but the fiend did not call upon its magic again. Not yet.

  Instead, with surprising delicacy, the qlippoth reached forward with a pincered tentacle and snipped the false nightblade from Isiem's belt. Gurgling covetously, it cradled the black knife in the slimy curls of its tentacle, drawing it close to its body for protection.

  Then, its precious treasure secured from accidental destruction, the qlippoth gathered itself to withdraw. Ichor dripped from its many wounds, leaving a slug's trail of slime when it pulled back. The tentacle with the icy-gemmed bracelet came toward the injured adventurers again, its enchanted jewels glowing as magic built within.

  None of them could withstand another blast. Isiem knew that to a certainty. He wouldn't, and he was the strongest among them—which meant he was their best chance at survival.

  He loosened the ruby-studded ring from his finger and slipped it into his palm. In his other hand, he readied the wand Ascaros had given him.

  Just as the qlippoth pointed its frost-jeweled tentacle at them, Isiem tossed the ring toward Kyril. It skittered noisily across the icy floor, bouncing and clattering against the apprentices' bones, and rolled to a stop a few feet from the half-elf.

  "Take it," Isiem shouted hoarsely, leveling his wand at the qlippoth as he spoke. He didn't have to feign his desperation, nor did Kyril have to feign the confusion that furrowed her brow when she turned, painfully, to direct a questioning look at him. The injured fiend paused as well, evidently nonplussed by the wizard's actions, and Isiem filled the breathless gap as quickly as he could. If the qlippoth was in fear of its life, if it was desperate not to spend more uncountable years trapped in Fiendslair, if luck smiled upon him, then maybe ...

  "There's a teleportation spell stored in that ring. Use it to escape this place. You'll never make it out of the Umbral Basin on foot, not with the Splinter Men and the shadowstorms clouding the valley. Your only chance is to take the ring and teleport yourself to safety. I'll follow if I can. Go!"

  Uncertainly, Kyril reached for the ruby ring. But before she could close her fingers around it, the qlippoth snatched it away. A triumphant snarl contorted its enormous mouth as it slid Isiem's ring onto the one tentacle that didn't already bear a bauble. Gurgling in ugly laughter, it drew upon the magic he'd stored in that band of platinum and small, dark rubies—

  —and a fountain of pulverized flesh rained down in the space where it had been.

  Mangled tentacles and ribbons of slime, fragments of bone and a few twisted bits of metal—that was all that remained of the qlippoth.

  Isiem smiled. Ascaros had been right. Teleportation was a lethal mistake in Fiendslair.

  Pushing himself back up to his feet, Isiem hobbled over to Ena. Miraculously, under her icy mask and frost-dusted cloak, the dwarf was breathing. He went through her pockets until he found a bottle marked with the little scribble that Ena scratched on the corks of her healing potions; when he did, he opened it and carefully tipped its contents down her throat.

  A moment later, the dwarf's eyelids fluttered open. She groaned. "You again?"

  "If it bothers you so much, stop dying." Isiem tucked the empty bottle under one of Ena's unresisting hands and moved away, looking at Kyril. "Will he live?"

  "I don't know yet," the paladin admitted. "We need to get him out of here. We all need to get out of here. Do you have the key for the barrier door?"

  "Yes." He held it up, letting the plain steel glint in the shadows—then paused. "Kyril ...Teglias is infected. We don't know how badly. If we take him out of Fiendslair, we risk releasing whatever's inside him into the world."

  "What other option do we have?" Kyril looked up at him, her face reddening. "Would you just leave him here to die?"

  Isiem said nothing. The paladin was letting emotion cloud her judgment, putting a single man's life above the lives of thousands. Teglias was his friend, but it was simple arithmetic—even a child of Nidal could have made the decision. When a finger was infected, you cut it off before you lost the arm.

  This was the weakness the Nidalese had burned out of themselves. Isiem had been away from that nation's shadows a long time, but he still had that much. Kyril and Ena needed him to operate the runes that would let them exit Fiendslair. He could refuse to take Teglias, and in so doing remove the burden of guilt from them. The betrayal would be his, not theirs. A mercy.

  Isiem stared down at the paladin, at those bright eyes boring into his own.

  And decided.

  Epilogue

  They tell me I owe you my life," Teglias said, gazing out over the sparkling waters of Gemcrown Bay. He sat in a wheeled wicker chair, a white blanket folded over his lap. Sea birds, tiny as snowflakes from this distance, spun and sparred over the glittering green water. Occasionally one dove toward the waves, skimming over the spray, before spiraling back up to vanish against the sun. "That without your courage and quick thinking, I might have died in Fiendslair. Or, worse, survived as a monster's thrall."

  Isiem shrugged uncomfortably, standing behind the cleric's chair. He, too, watched the birds' dance over the sea. Their effortless ease in the air made a painful contrast to Teglias's immobility, but he supposed that was why the Sarenite spent so much time on this balcony. Perhaps it was freeing, in a way, to watch them. "I don't deserve the credit. Kyril and Ena had as much to do with that as I did."

  "No doubt," Teglias agreed, wheeling his chair around on the yellow sandstone to face Isiem, "but without you, they would have failed."

  "Maybe," Isiem said. He kept his eyes on the white-crowned waves a moment longer before finally, reluctantly, meeting the older man's gaze.

  Looking at the chairbound cleric, it was hard for Isiem to feel that their rescue had been much of a triumph. That was profoundly unfair, he knew; certainly the Sarenite had told them, often and honestly, how grateful he was to be alive. Even knowing that, however, he couldn't shake the thought.

  Because Teglias had not escaped unscathed. The qlippoth's partial possession—or transformation, or whatever it had been—had exacted a terrible toll from him. Parts of his own flesh had been transmuted into demonic matter, and when the Iomedaeans had purified his body, those portions had vanished along with the rest of the qlippoth's taint.

  What could be healed had been, but there was much that no spell could restore. Teglias survived with a sag to the left side of his face, a patchwork of sunken scars on his scalp like ghostly spider webs that stretched from ear to ear, and a persistent inability to use his legs.

  It was not that his legs were missing, or even damaged. The muscle was there, the cartilage and bone. But whatever part of his mind or will controlled those limbs was gone. It confounded the healers, who could find nothing amiss with his body, and it puzzled the clerics, who had invoked every divine blessing they had.

  After the Iomedaeans had exhausted their spells, and the lay healers had gone through their repertoires of herbs and poultices, Kyril had taken him to the country estate of a wealthy sympathizer in Cheliax. There, Teglias could recuperate in comfort, far enough from the outposts of Thrune power to avoid drawing unwanted attention. He could take as long as he needed to regain
his strength.

  Nothing helped. Nearly a month later, Teglias remained in his chair.

  Until now, Isiem had been loath to visit. They had exchanged letters, but as the weeks rolled past, it became even harder for him to muster the courage to see the man. The wait itself had become its own admission of failure. Finally, Kyril had pushed him into coming ...but he still felt guilty, and then ashamed of that guilt.

  "I wish we'd been able to do more," Isiem said, meaning it.

  The yellow-robed cleric smiled tiredly down at the blanket in his lap. "I consider it no small miracle that you achieved as much as you did." The setting sun cast the bad side of his face into shadow, letting him look almost whole again.

  "It talked to me, you know." Teglias's was thoughtful, almost musing, although a subdued grimness shadowed each word. "The qlippoth. Even before you opened the steel door, it was whispering in my thoughts. I didn't know what it was, or how it was reaching me, but I knew what it wanted. It wanted freedom. It wanted to come into our world. With the nightblade. And it did everything it could to ensure that I'd open that door. Knowing that I was the leader. That the rest of you would do as I said."

  The cleric took a breath and closed his eyes, visibly struggling to relax before his control cracked. Wind flapped at the corners of his blanket and rattled the pink-petaled flowers in the vase that the servants had set on a tea table next to the balcony door. Climbing wisteria framed the balcony and hung in fragrant drapes from the latticed arch over their heads; its dappled shade and soft perfume vanished, then returned, as the breezes played around them.

  Teglias flattened the blanket under his palms. Gradually, the tension leached from him. "It almost worked. I was arrogant, trusting to my faith in the goddess to protect me. But not even the Dawnflower can protect a fool for himself. Kyril and Ena trusted me. They would have followed anywhere without question, until it was too late. Ganoven was venal, stupid, easily led by his fears and greeds. If you hadn't been there ...it might have worked."