by Rachel Aaron
You’re only having this problem because you refuse to accept yourself, the Master said with a sigh. How many times have you carried the swordsman’s unconscious carcass? Fifty? A hundred? More? You never had problems helping him then. Now look at you, ready to fall over after a quarter mile.
Nico tightened her grip. Unfortunately, it only made her hand itch worse as she pressed it into the flesh of Josef’s calf.
If you would only accept reality, everything would be so much simpler. For the first time that she could remember, the Master’s voice sounded earnest. I can help you control the hunger. I can even help you remember what you’ve forgotten. I can make you a god among insects, Nico. A power Eli Monpress would treasure above all others and a companion Josef Liechten would never abandon. I can make you everything you want to become. All you have to do is stop being stubborn. You are my child, my dearest daughter. I know more than anyone what it is like to be outcast. You don’t have to struggle on alone. Let me help you.
The words were so sweet, so sincere, that for a stumbling moment, Nico almost gave in. But then Nivel’s words, words, she realized with a stab of sadness, she would never hear her speak again, sounded loud and clear in her mind.
Never trust the voice.
What? The voice was sneering now, all sincerity gone. You’re still listening to that woman? That pathetic creature? Did you know she died without lifting a finger to save herself? Defeated by Sted, the one-armed, spirit-deaf, League reject? She died like a dog, whimpering and crying for her precious bear-headed freak of a husband. Is that the kind of strength you want?
The voice began to laugh, but Nico cut it off.
“You said she died without a fight,” she whispered fiercely. “But you said nothing about her giving in. She didn’t, did she? She died with her soul intact.”
I ate her soul and gave her seed to Sted, the Master said.
“No,” Nico said, eyes wide as the revelations tumbled through her mind, snapping into place one by one. “That would make her less powerful. You would never accept a weaker servant when you could have a stronger one. She beat you, didn’t she? Nivel died human. That’s why you had to give Sted her seed.” She stopped midstep, causing Eli to stumble.
“Nico?” Eli said, looking back. “What’s wrong? What are you muttering about?”
“She was the master of herself,” Nico said, her voice trembling with wonder. “You couldn’t take her.”
Eli gave her a nervous look. “Take who where?”
Don’t get cocky, the Master snarled. I’ve been very, very patient with you, Nico, but this is your last chance. An image invaded her mind, a long-fingered hand outstretched in the dark. Take it. Take it now and I promise you’ll never feel pain again.
Nico stared at the outstretched palm and, slowly and deliberately, spoke one word.
“No.”
The image vanished.
That is the last mistake you’ll ever make.
“Nico?” Eli put Josef’s shoulders down and hurried to her side. “What in the world are you—”
Before he could get the last word out, a figure stepped out of the shadows behind him and clubbed Eli across the back of his head. It happened so quickly Nico didn’t even have time to drop Josef’s legs before Eli was knocked sprawling onto the leaf-covered ground.
“Eli!” Nico rushed to his side, but before she’d taken two steps, the figure from the shadows grabbed her arms and wrenched them behind her. She screamed in pain and twisted her neck back to see a tall man with pale skin holding her down, his eyes glowing with that horrible light.
“Excellent work, Sezri.”
Nico turned to see Izo, his lordly silks torn and filthy, step out of the trees. The Bandit King didn’t even look at her. He walked over to where Eli was groaning on the ground and jerked the thief to his feet.
“Do you mind?” Eli said. “I’m getting pretty tired of being dragged around like a prize at the fair.”
“Too bad,” Izo said, sliding a long knife against Eli’s throat. “That’s what you are. What you made yourself when you decided to court your bounty rather than mitigate it like any sensible criminal. But you shouldn’t complain. It’s precisely because you’re the prize everyone wants that you’re still alive. Though how long you’ll stay that way is entirely up to you. The posters do say ‘Dead or Alive.’ ”
Eli leaned nonchalantly against the knife’s edge. “I’m worth more alive.”
“That may be, but the extra gold is offset by the trouble you cause. Corpses are far less of a liability.” Izo lowered his knife. “Don’t forget that.”
Eli’s smile faltered just a hair. “Consider it remembered. So, what now? Are you going to chop me into bits and mail me to the Council?”
“Not yet,” Izo said. “First, I regroup my army, administer some needed discipline, and then I’m going to hold the Council to its bargain.”
“Oh, yes,” Eli said. “Me for a throne. It’s a bad deal, you know. I’m worth more than—”
The knife returned to his throat, cutting Eli off midsentence.
“That’s better,” Izo said. He gave the thief a push, and they began walking northward, into the woods, away from Nico and Sezri.
“You know, Monpress,” Izo said, “I can see now why my bounty is higher than yours. You’re nothing but a fraud, a little thief with a pathological need for attention. You don’t know what it means to have real ambition.”
Eli gave him a nasty look, but kept his mouth shut. Izo just smiled and looked back over his shoulder. “Sezri,” he said, “now that we’ve found the thief, we’ve no need for the girl. Kill her, and the swordsman. I don’t want any more liabilities.”
Nico’s eyes went wide, and Eli started to protest, but Sezri didn’t move. He just stood there, holding Nico’s arms in a lock against her back, staring into the distance like he was listening to something.
“Sezri!” Izo shouted, shutting Eli up with another jerk of his knife.
The demonseed ignored him. He tilted his head down to stare at Nico, his free hand moving up to grip her jaw.
“Did you think you could run?” he whispered. “The Master always knows where his children are.” The hand on her jaw tightened. “You don’t deserve this,” Sezri hissed. “He gave you everything and you threw it in his face. But I serve the Master in life and death with all my soul. I will show you what it means to be a child of the Mountain.”
“Sezri!” Izo roared, but the name was lost in Nico’s scream. With incredible strength, the demonseed forced her jaw open and pressed his mouth to hers. Nico’s eyes went wide as the connection exploded open, and Sezri began to pour into her. She writhed against him, beating him with her fists while her mind recoiled from the wrongness of the man’s flowing into her. This couldn’t be happening. Demonseeds couldn’t eat other seeds.
No. The Master’s voice was hard as iron. But you’re not eating him. He’s feeding you every spirit I told him to eat into you. The Master chuckled. Such a good, obedient child.
A look of bliss spread over Sezri’s face as the Master praised him, and the flow of devoured spirits sped up. Nico choked and gasped, trying to pull away, but her transformed arm shot up of its own accord, ripping into Sezri’s chest to gorge on the spirits inside him. The flow of spirits doubled, and blackness washed over her mind. Nico felt her control slipping as the tide of power poured into her. She fought to hold on, to close her mind, but it was too late. The blackness was everywhere, eating her thoughts, her fear, her control until there was nothing left to hold on to.
I told you, the Master said, I always win.
And then even his voice vanished as Nico fell into the dark.
A piercing scream ripped through the air above Izo’s destroyed city, followed by a pulse of fear that sent Miranda to her knees. She gasped for breath, clutching her rings as her spirits began to panic. Gin was on the ground beside her, whimpering, and even Mellinor was shaking. One by one, she got control again, calming her spirits wit
h an iron will. When they were as steady as she could hope to make them, Miranda looked around. She was clearly not the only one who’d been caught off-guard. The League men had stopped in their tracks, and even Slorn was on his feet, staring into the distance. Alric stood beside him, his calm, severe face distorted in a look very close to sheer terror.
“No,” Alric said. “Not now.”
Realizing she would probably regret it, Miranda turned to look as well. There, past the northern edge of the bandit city, something horrible and black was rising above the trees. As she saw it, Miranda felt her spirits start to panic again. She wanted to join them. The thing was like nothing she’d ever seen, awake or asleep. As she watched, two more enormous black things rose beside the first, unfolding in hideous slow motion. After a terrible moment, she realized they were wings. Enormous wings, taller than the trees, reaching up with their hideous clawed talons toward the sky.
The thing jerked, and the scream sounded again, bringing with it a blast of fear even stronger than the first that turned her bones to jelly. When Miranda could move again, she looked frantically for Alric. Whatever that thing was, it was surely a demon. That meant the League could make it stop. But Alric wasn’t there anymore. The spot where he’d been standing seconds before was now empty, save for the telltale glimmer of a cut in the air as it vanished.
“He abandoned us!” Gin howled.
Miranda didn’t think that was the case, but she couldn’t even get the words out. All she could do was hang on as the waves of fear broke over her.
Izo had dropped his hold on Eli when Nico’s transformed arm had ripped through Sezri’s chest, but neither the thief nor the bandit had moved. They just stood there, frozen, unable to look away.
For a few seconds, the two demonseeds stood as close as lovers, and then Nico pushed him away. The thin man fell like a tree. His body shattered when it hit the ground, and he turned to black dust that seemed to vanish even as Eli watched. When it was finished, all that was left of Sezri was a small, black seed, about the size of Eli’s middle finger, that fell to the ground like a stone.
Nico, however, stayed perfectly still. Eli began to fidget. The way she was standing, he couldn’t see her face, but it couldn’t be good. He took a hesitant step forward.
“Nico—”
Nico threw back her head, and a scream like he had never heard blasted through the air. Eli slammed his hands over his ears, but it was no use. The scream went straight to his soul. But worse, far worse, was the wave of fear that followed. For a moment, Eli was drowning in pure, abject terror before he got his mind back under control. Behind him he heard Izo screaming, and then a loud crash as the Bandit King fell, but he didn’t turn to see where or why. His eyes were trapped by what was happening in front of him.
Still screaming, Nico threw out her arms, human and demon claw. The manacles on her wrists were going mad, beating themselves against her skin. With a horrible wrenching of flesh, toothed mouths appeared on Nico’s arms. They gnashed their horrible, spiny teeth and bit deep into the manacles. The metal screamed and shattered, wailing as the demon mouths ate the pieces. The same thing happened to the collar at her neck and the shackles on her ankles.
When the last shred of metal vanished into the hideous mouths, Nico’s coat, which had clung faithfully to her the entire time, tore down the middle. The cloth cried as it ripped, the threads still reaching out for one another even as they snapped, but it wasn’t enough. The coat fell in a shredded pile at Nico’s feet. Without the coat, Eli could see that her skin was now the same horrible black shell as Sted’s, but even as he wrapped his brain around what that meant, the shell began to crack. Liquid black oozed from the lesions, and Nico began to grow.
At that moment, all trace of humanity vanished. Blackness ripped from Nico’s body, forming long, clawed arms reaching out from a shape that was like nothing he’d ever seen. It was long and spindly and full of sharp angles, or that was the impression he got. He couldn’t look at it for very long before the terror overwhelmed his mind. He caught glimpses of eyes in the blackness, great glowing yellow orbs, and not just two. There were hundreds scattered across the unspeakable expanse of the demon’s body. They clustered on the demon’s long head, gathering at the edges of its great, fanged jaw, which opened slowly, dripping black bile as it screamed again. Its black body convulsed as a pair of wings, black as coal and as sharp as knives, burst from its back. The creature stumbled forward at the impact, and the new wings flapped awkwardly, stretching for the sky with clawed talons. Its enormous, clawed feet ripped into the forest floor for balance, tearing up great mounds of roots and stone in the process. These turned to black dust as Eli watched, their souls devoured by the creature’s touch.
Unable to tear his eyes away, Eli would have watched until he too was eaten. But then, just before Nico’s deadly skin reached him, a rough hand grabbed him by the collar and tugged him sideways. Eli felt the strange whooshing sensation that came with traveling through a cut in the world before landing on his face on the ground twenty feet from where he’d been standing. Izo was there too, still staring dumbly into the distance, but that was all Eli could make out before the hand on his collar dragged him up until he was inches from Alric’s enraged face. Even so, it took Eli a few seconds to realize that the vibrations coming from Alric’s frantically moving mouth were words.
“I said you have to do something!” Alric shouted, shaking Eli until the thief saw spots. “The Lord of Storms is missing and I can’t contact the Shepherdess on my own. She’ll listen to you. You have to make her do something or our world will be devoured!”
Eli’s poor brain had a hard time keeping up with that. “What do you mean?”
Alric’s grip on his collar tightened until Eli thought he was going to choke. “Look at it!” the League man shouted, forcing Eli’s head until the thief had no choice but to look where Alric wanted. “This isn’t some errant seed grown out of control. It’s the Daughter of the Dead Mountain!”
The demon was nearly twenty feet tall now. It reached out, dragging its hands along the ground, leaving great, blackened rents in the forest wherever it touched. Its enormous mouth devoured the trees whole, and the air was full of the screams of dying spirits.
“I can’t stop it,” Alric said. “The whole League can’t stop it, not without the Lord of Storms. Even then, he took its head off last time and it still didn’t die.”
“What do you want me to do?” Eli shouted. “The Shepherdess is the guardian of all spirits. If she won’t leave her little white world for this”—he pointed at the demon—“what’s my opinion matter?”
Alric jerked him. “Oh, come off it! You’re her favorite little pet. She’ll do anything you want, even her job.”
Eli started trying to pry Alric’s fingers off his collar. “That’s a low blow,” he muttered. “Even for you.”
Alric’s eyes narrowed. “I do what I have to, favorite. Now, will you do it, or do I have to kill you to get her attention?” He dropped Eli and drew his sword, pressing the ruined edge against Eli’s chest.
Eli swallowed, eyes flicking from sword to swordsman. He did not doubt for a moment that the League man would do it. Alric had never been the idle-threat type. But…
“Forget it,” Eli said, crossing his arms over his chest. “Groveling to Benehime for help is on the same level as dying, so far as I’m concerned. You’ll have to think up a better threat.”
Alric stared at him for a moment, and then he drew his fist back and punched Eli square across the jaw. Eli fell backward, flailing to catch himself, but Alric was there first, grabbing him around the throat.
“Do you think this is a game?” Alric’s fingers pressed tighter on Eli’s windpipe with every word. “Do you have any idea what is at stake?”
“More than you do,” Eli choked out. He wrenched himself from Alric’s grasp, rubbing his bruised throat. “You think the Shepherdess isn’t watching this right now? She could fix everything with a single word, but s
he won’t. Not while there’s a chance of forcing me to ask for it. That’s what she’s like. It’s all a game to her. She’s trying to corner me, to make me act how she wants me to act. But I’m no one’s dog, Alric. Not hers, and not yours.”
Alric screamed his answer, but the words were lost as the ground began to erupt. Great shards of stone shot from the ground as the great sleeping spirits of the mountains woke and began trying to fight the threat. Eli, Alric, and the still-staring Izo fell as the ground rolled like a bucking bull beneath them. Alric was back on his feet at once, bracing his legs against the moving ground like a sailor on a storm-pitched ship. Eli stood more slowly, gripping a screaming tree for support, watching wide-eyed as the valley began to tear itself apart.
The spirit’s fight was over as soon as it had begun. The demon ate the stone spikes even as they struck home, absorbing the screaming spirits into its growing body until there was nothing left but black dust falling down on the valley like snow. Even so, blind and desperate with panic, the spirits kept attacking. With nothing left to lose, the ground tore itself open beneath the demon’s feet, screaming vengeance as great stone hands reached out to pull it down and crush it beneath the bedrock. The creature stumbled, grabbing hold of the fissure with its long claws. Scenting victory, another fissure opened in the other direction, trying to spoil the demon’s hold. The creature screamed and began kicking with its claws, cracking the fissures and collapsing them in on themselves even as it ate the stone. Eli watched in horrified silence, unable to speak until he saw something horribly familiar on the edge of the collapsing cliff. After everything he’d just seen, it took him a few seconds to realize he was looking at Josef’s unconscious body, still lying where they’d left it when Alric had pulled them to safety.