Elora caught sight of a brace of figures engaged in the deadliest of measures, many against one, the one immediately recognized.
“Anakerie,” she bellowed, to let the Angwyn Princess know relief was at hand. The other woman paid her gesture not the slightest heed. It nearly cost Elora everything.
A shape rose before her like a mountain, all crags and shadows with a broad, flat-brimmed hat trimmed with bells, each one representing the soul of a victim. Facing the Caliban, Elora didn’t stop to think; she swung her sword across the creature’s midsection and used the momentum of that attack to spin herself out of his reach. In that same sequence of moves, she slipped her knife back into its scabbard and took her sword hilt in both hands, ready to parry or attack as circumstances demanded.
The Caliban didn’t seem to notice.
Then, so quickly she didn’t even register the blow, an open-handed slap connected with the side of her head where the Barontës had struck her. Beyond that coincidence of location, there was no comparison between the two blows. The first had been a punch, this was a pile driver, so terrible a shock Elora was sure her skull had been split open as she cartwheeled to a landing like a boneless rag doll. She still had tight hold of her sword but she hadn’t a clue what to do with it as her vision splintered, stubbornly refusing to focus.
The street trembled at the Caliban’s approach, or was it Elora herself who was trembling, she wasn’t sure. She struggled to raise her sword only to discover that it was a hopeless effort. Her only comfort was the rude thought that since she hurt so much already how could death be anything worse?
That blow never fell.
Elora heard a second banshee wail and the feather tread of a pair of boots straddling her body. Mace and ax clattered to the street and the next sound was the hiss of Khory’s broadsword being drawn from its scabbard. There was a rumble from the Caliban that might have been recognition, a tension to Khory’s legs (which was all of her that Elora could coherently see) that surely was.
Elora waited for the clash of steel, held her breath against the moment when she’d see her companion fall. Instead, there was only the sound of the Caliban’s bells, fading in the distance.
Then, blessed silence.
Elora levered herself to hands and knees, then almost found herself pitching forward onto her face as the street went all topsy-turvy beneath her. She couldn’t tell if any of her senses were working, the only thing she was aware of was a great mass of pain that wrapped itself around her skull like a corset, pressing in hard on every side. She panted like a spent dog, but it was so hard to draw a decent breath she feared her tongue had swollen into a gag; then, another phantom flip of the ground ignited a rebellion in her gut. She convulsed and was wretchedly, noisily sick.
She coughed the last of the filth from her mouth and heaved herself to the side, so she wouldn’t collapse into her own vomit. Spasms wracked her midsection and from there it turned out to be the shortest of steps to sobs of mingled shame and hurt and a terror that struck deeper than any tangible weapon. She hated the moans she made, and the way her body curled in on itself like a child’s, because she didn’t understand its cause. She’d faced her share of battles and, she thought, of evil. She didn’t think of herself as particularly brave—although she was, to the point of being too headstrong for her own good—but she also knew she was no coward.
She dimly felt Khory start to lift and turn her, but that proved a mistake as it set off another seizure. Fortunately for the warrior there was nothing left in Elora’s stomach to be expelled; the heaves this time were dry, producing only a bit of bile and spittle. Unfortunately for Elora, that didn’t make the experience hurt any the less. If anything, the shame she felt was greater than before.
Elora sprawled on her back, possessing the aspect of a broken and boneless rag doll. She clutched both hands to her head as though they were the jaws of a vise. Her face turned ugly with effort, and the cost of that effort, as she extended planes of energy from her palms, following through on the vise image by pressing inward with all her might. She had an image of herself in the peak of health, that was the template she used to remind her injured body of what was required.
Her skin flushed rose and grew hot to the touch as the healing energies she summoned in turn tapped into the element she was bound most closely to, that of fire. She drew on the molten heart of the earth to sustain her and in a growing circle around where the two women lay the street began to hiss and an occasional cobblestone popped into the air like a cork from a boiling bottle, leaving behind a modest geyser of blistering steam. Pops and cracks sounded through the midnight air as the heat Elora generated spread outward to the nearer canals and river channels, attacking the ice that lay thickly on the water’s surface. A great boom was heard as a floe broke loose and crashed into the supports of a bridge.
As suddenly as it had begun the roar of venting steam faded and a measure of stillness returned to the evening.
“I’m sorry,” Elora said over and over and over, almost as a kind of incantation.
“Naught needs forgiving, girl,” Rool told her matter-of-factly. “How d’you feel?”
“Ready for another fight.”
Franjean snorted with disgust from the other side of her.
“Fine,” she conceded. “Physically, I’m fine. All healed. Good as new. Please now, may I make like a bear and hibernate away the rest of my life?”
“With our blessing.”
“That isn’t funny, Rool.” She rolled to a sitting position, back to the rail of the bridge where it humped over the canal, fixed her eyes on Franjean. “What are you doing here, why aren’t you with Khory? Where is Khory?”
“Saw you were healing,” Rool told her.
“Left you in our charge,” Franjean said, picking up the cue.
“First sensible decision she ever made.”
“Probably never be so smart again.”
“Told us to wait till you’re good an’ rested, then wake you.”
“She never did! In the middle of a damn fight?”
“Said you’d be grumpy as hell, and looking for someone to take it out on—the perfect mood to face the Deceiver.”
“That’s vicious.”
“She’s a demon.”
“Bollocks.” Thought and action were surprisingly one as Elora rolled easily to her feet and took inventory of her condition. Her flip remark to the brownies had been right on the money: she felt as fit as ever. The ground stayed obediently beneath her feet and the shocks to her skull had been banished, along with any possibility of a concussion. No aches to speak of and she sensed without looking that her skin was perfect, without a scrape or laceration to be found.
Pity the same couldn’t be said for the street.
“What a mess,” she said as she surveyed the damage, with cobblestones scattered about like chunks of leftover hail.
“Wasn’t a moment for subtlety.”
“I’ve never been so afraid, Franjean.”
“That’s why it’s called the Caliban.”
“It’s the living incarnation of all the ugliness, the foulness, in the living soul,” Rool said with uncharacteristic seriousness.
“Look into its eyes,” Franjean followed. “You see the worst that can be imagined behind your own.”
“I don’t feel that way about the Deceiver.”
“That’s because she follows the oldest road to hell.”
“Paved with good intentions. Am I following in her footsteps?”
“We have no gift of prophecy, Elora,” said Rool.
“Best we can offer is faith,” said Franjean.
“In me?” Elora was astounded. The young woman felt chastened, at a loss for words in the face of such an absolute declaration.
“My wits,” she exclaimed, followed by a snarled “Hellsteeth! My body may be fine, I’ve simply mis
laid my entire brain! Where’s Khory?”
“Told you,” said Franjean.
“Left us to mind you,” said Rool.
“Where’d she go? Where’s Anakerie? Where’s the Caliban?”
Elora stretched to her full height and beyond, seeking the slightest scrap of sight or sound that would tell which way to follow. She cursed the night and the weather. This kind of fog had a malicious streak to it, playing artfully and arbitrarily with sounds so that distant ones might be heard clearly while those close by went wholly unnoticed.
“Think, Elora, think,” she told herself. “Work this through. But take your time,” she cautioned. “Stay calm and in control. Speed is of the essence, not panic.”
First question, she asked herself, who benefits from the Caliban’s attack?
Easy answer: its masters, presumably the Chengwei.
She looked around and realized that Anakerie and Khory had been busy. Near a double handful of bodies lay scattered about the approach to the bridge, where they must have set their ambush. A dozen wore the livery of the Constabulary or the ebony leather of the Maizan but thankfully Renny Garedo wasn’t among them. The rest were Barontës, the Caliban’s servants. The bells on the creature’s hat represented the souls of his victims. The Barontës were those he had corrupted. Facing death at his hands, they had surrendered all morality, broken every faith, betrayed every ideal and trust.
The Caliban had existed since almost the beginning of recorded history, the first mention in ballads came roughly a long generation after the fall of the Malevoiy. In a parody of the structure of the Great Realms, there were always twelve Barontës, with the Caliban himself as the yoke that bound them all.
There’d only been time for the most fleeting glimpse of the scene before the Caliban’s fist connected with Elora’s skull. She recollected the bodies of the Daikini slain. Constables and Maizan, they had fallen quickly and to a man, most before they’d managed to draw their blades. Only Anakerie had bare steel and as Elora had called out, she’d slain the first of her foes. Khory helped finish the job.
There were only five Barontës bodies, Elora realized with a start, because there were only five foes.
“Where are the others?” she asked aloud. And the thought came to her, things of value.
Before she made the conscious connection, her feet were on the move. She scooped up both brownies, trusting them to scramble safely to their seat on her shoulders as she raced through the silent, fearfully deserted streets, back toward University.
She found the first bodies just inside the gate to the close where Giles lived: a pair of the University nightwatch, a pair of Barontës. She saw another watchman in the gutter, head and body separate, his life splashed liberally across the stone frontage of the house. Shouts and outcries made themselves heard from the surrounding courtyards and at last a distant cadence heralded the approach of a squad of constables. She heard hoofbeats as well, the mounted cavalry of the Civic Guard.
Swords crossed high above, followed by a terrific crash as something smashed the skylight. Elora cast caution and common sense aside and hurled herself into the parlor. She didn’t waste time with the rooms as she passed quickly through them; she trusted the brownies to watch her flanks and back. They could either warn her of a threat or deal with it themselves. Her goal was the library and the top-floor loft, as quickly as she could reach it.
More bodies, and she choked back a snarl as she passed a clutch of students whose sole fault was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The house was silent, save for her harsh breathing, caused by a stench of brimstone twisting through the air.
Elora went quickly up the stairs, keeping her back always to the wall, her sword in front and angled across her body. Whatever the prize, the Caliban had paid dearly for it. On every landing she found more of the Barontës, most she assumed slain by Khory’s hand, or Anakerie’s. But a couple had fallen to Giles’s apprentices, who’d lived to tell the tale. They said nothing as she slipped by. What they’d faced tonight was the kind of thing they’d spend their lifetimes trying to forget.
The floor below the loft had been the site of a last stand. Book- cases close by had been upended and reduced to kindling, under the impact of weapons and bodies both. Many of the titles themselves had been damaged, crushed, and torn, their spines and bindings broken under the impact of hobnailed boots, their pages sodden with blood and worse. There wasn’t room for maneuvering in these close confines; the stairs were as natural a choke point in their way as Fort Tregare and the battle here had much in common with what happened out on the Frontier. The only applicable tactic was brute force, the only way to the top was through the bodies of the defenders. The same held true in reverse. Neither side could afford to retreat a single step and the room bore eloquent witness to the brutality of the combat.
The last of the Barontës spent their lives on this stairway and a broken sword told Elora who was responsible. Its blade was curved in the style favored by the Maizan, but the hilt had come from Angwyn.
Elora found the point of the sword embedded in the wall, which looked like it had taken a stout blow from a battering ram, plaster and wood shattered to bits, revealing the curtain-wall masonry of the house itself.
Only one creature could have caused that kind of damage, and Elora’s hand went reflexively to her head in sympathetic remembrance of being on the receiving end of such a blow. There was no body, no sign of blood, and she took comfort in the hope that Anakerie had managed to duck.
Even so, that meant the Caliban had reached the top of the stairs.
Giles was alive, she saw, as she lifted her head above the floor of the loft, and the books were safe. For both, she breathed a sigh of relief. Khory stood framed by the broken skylight, shoulders bent, clenched hands resting on the sill, oblivious to the threat of the broken glass or the fact that she was a perfect target for any sniper.
Of the Caliban, there was no sign. Nor any of Anakerie.
“How is it below?” Giles asked wearily.
“A butcher’s boneyard,” Rool answered before Elora could find her own voice.
“Be needing new slaveys, though,” Franjean announced with some satisfaction. “More bodies belong to his than yours.”
“It was Anakerie, held them back,” Giles told them, as he levered himself shakily to his feet, Elora offering her shoulder for support as she levered him into a chair and sought for something he could drink. He held his left arm close to his side and her own hand came away scarlet from their embrace. He’d taken a nasty wound early in the fight, facing the Barontës on the main floor. He’d have fallen right there had not some of his students and apprentices hustled him up to the loft. Elora busied herself unfastening his gown and tunic, to examine the wound and begin its healing.
“She and Khory came through the skylight,” he went on, impressed by their foolhardy daring, “up the walls of University itself and over the rooftops.”
“Your school only looks like a fortress,” Khory told him quietly, without moving from the window. “Child’s play compared to the real thing.”
“I’m still grateful. Anakerie was first to the stairway,” he said to Elora, determined to finish his story despite her repeated injunctions that he hush and allow her to work. “There wasn’t room for the both of them. She didn’t need the help”—here, Giles took as deep a breath as he could manage, welcoming the stab of pain from his injury, as though these purely physical sensations could somehow lessen the anguish of memory—“until the Caliban came.
“When he swung at her that first time, and struck the wall, the whole house shook. It was like we’d been hit by a wrecking ball from a siege engine. I thought the stone itself would crumble. He dragged her after him by the scruff of the neck. She was alive, of that I’m sure, but her fight was done. She was what he wanted—until he saw the Malevoiy books. He made to take them as well—he seemed almo
st ready to abandon Anakerie to do so.
“But Khory Bannefin stopped him.”
Elora rolled back on her heels where she knelt beside him and looked Giles full in the face, aware of the brownies turning their attention to the warrior, who still had not moved.
“How?” she asked the Professor.
“She blocked his path and he turned away.” Even as Giles spoke it was clear to him and Elora both that he still didn’t believe what he’d seen. “Not a word passed between them, not a crossed sword, nothing. She stood her ground and the Caliban turned away.” He jutted his chin toward the skylight. “Out there, taking Anakerie with him.”
“You didn’t follow?” Elora asked of Khory.
“Nothing to follow,” the warrior said simply. “He walked to the edge of the roof and vanished. No sign, not a ghost of a trail, there isn’t even a scent of him.”
“Magic? In Sandeni?”
Khory sighed. “There are martial disciplines that have nothing to do with sorcery, they just appear so. We follow, we put ourselves on his ground.”
“When the Caliban struck me down, Khory, it wouldn’t fight you then, either.”
“No.”
Agitated voices rose from the courtyard, a growing clatter from the surrounding lanes as constables and cavalry converged on Giles’s house.
“Someone had better tell them the crisis is past,” Elora noted, as she straightened up to do precisely that.
Though brownies and Khory together turned to object, it was Giles who caught her by the arm, and told her, “No.”
“What?” she stammered.
“You’ve closed my wound, cleansed it of any infection, I’ll be fine now. There’s no more need to stay.”
“Why should I go?”
“Think, Elora. The Maizan Warlord is attacked on a visit to you. Slain, perhaps. But of a certes, she’s been abducted. There are more stories of ill will between you and her than of friendship. Given all that’s happened, some will blame you for this.”
Shadow Star Page 29