“Father, please, no,” he said in a guttural voice. “These are my friends. Don’t make me.”
“Don’t make you what?” Dymas asked, indignant. “Harm them? Taste their blood. You know you want to.”
“Please,” Alden begged.
“Make your decision,” the flayed man said as he started to dance, his movements deliciously slow at first, then gaining in speed and complexity. “It’s them or us.”
The dance Magistrate Dymas performed held surprising beauty for the humans who suddenly found themselves unable to stay on their feet. Ord’s head lolled back as he fell to the ground, trying to ward off the intense vertigo that gripped him. Krystin had looked away, catching Dymas’s movements with only her peripheral vision. The sight had dropped her to her knees, but she regained her balance.
Alden was barely affected by his father’s display, though his anger was causing his body to vibrate so quickly that he appeared to be in several places at once. Ghost images, blurs, remained in the spots he had vacated.
“You’re no faster than I am,” Alden said.
“I’m not, am I?” Dymas said as he raced forward.
Krystin was barely able to glance to her left, where Ord lay, before it was over. From the corner of her eye, however, she saw everything. The flayed man moved in a blur, crossing the distance between Ord and himself, dancing past his son in the process. He took Ord’s grasping hand and yanked the nineteen-year-old into the air, hoisting him above his head as if he were a rag doll. With blinding speed, Dymas snatched the Harper’s short sword from his scabbard and impaled the young man. Ord choked and flailed, a cloud of blood exiting his mouth as Dymas held him high. Suddenly, the Harper stiffened and went limp.
The sound of steel piercing flesh came to Dymas from somewhere close and suddenly he did not have the strength to hold the Harper’s body aloft. He registered the slight shove he had felt and looked down to see the hilt of a weapon jutting from his own chest. As he crumpled to his knees, Ord’s dead weight collapsed upon him. The Harper’s body snagged on the weapon in the flayed man’s chest, inadvertently yanking the blade downward to slice again at his delicate organs. Dymas felt a cold, cruel delirium wash over him, and he caught sight of his killer: Krystin.
Dymas sank to the ground, his body tangled with the Harper’s. The girl screamed and Alden helped to extricate Ord from his father’s twitching form. Krystin shoved Alden out of the way and pressed her head against Ord’s chest. There was no heartbeat. He was dead. Tears fell from her eyes as she wailed in grief and clutched at him.
Behind her, Alden’s animal senses had been inflamed by the nearness of the blood, but his cherished humanity forced his growing feral nature to remain under control.
Finally, Krystin sat up. The part of her that had been a frustrated schoolgirl felt light-headed with shock. Ord’s face was relaxed in death. Struggling to force away the emotions that crowded in on her, Krystin realized that the last of the Harpers to journey to Calimport was either dead or gone. By the time Reisz came back, provided he was not killed or grounded ashore by the storm, the morning would have come, and the Night Parade’s Festival of Renewal would be at an end. The word renewal thundered in her mind.
“Have to find her,” Krystin murmured. “The children, I understand about the children!”
Alden reached out, his claws coming inches from her flesh before he said, “Before you go, there is something you must know, something about Tamara and Zeal.”
Krystin listened intently as Alden relayed what he had learned when he had spied on them in Shandower’s lair. She looked away from him and glanced down at Ord’s body. Krystin touched Ord’s dead lips, then leaned down and kissed him. Then she whispered, “Alden—”
“I won’t leave him in the open,” Alden promised. “I’ll take care of it, then join you. Go!”
Krystin took one last look at Ord, then ran off, her boots splashing through deep puddles as the storm grew more intense, a wall of rain quickly obscuring her retreating form. Alden looked back to Ord’s body, then froze as he saw that Dymas’s no longer lay beside it.
“Good-bye,” a voice whispered from behind.
Alden tried to run, but he was too slow. A pair of hands gripped his wrists from behind and thrust Alden’s claws deep into his own chest.
“Thank you, my son,” Dymas whispered. “For what you’ve revealed, I’ll make your death quick.”
Crying out with pain, Alden shuddered as his claws were ripped to either side of his body, tearing the cavity of his chest to pieces as blood sprayed upward, mixing with the rain. He fell facedown in a puddle that soon turned crimson. Ord’s body was beside him. For a moment he thought he saw Ord move. The boy couldn’t have survived a wound such as that, Alden thought. Or could he?
Alden was about to train his animal senses on the Harper when death came for him. He did not hear the slap of his father’s bare feet on the pavement as the wounded man left to seek his master.
In the courtyard of the Chosen Plaza, Myrmeen shook off two of the creatures that had overwhelmed her. One had stalks rising from its flesh, with either tiny, piranhalike jaws protruding from the stalks or rapidly blinking eyes. The other had been a snake-woman she first had seen at Shandower’s retreat. Myrmeen’s grip on her sword had been tested, but she had not released the weapon. With a grunt, Myrmeen sliced off the top of the snake-woman’s head. Then she turned and ran her blade through the monster with more eyes and teeth than it ever would need again. She screamed as she hacked away at another monster, a bony, balding man with a closed knot of flesh for a face, who was gripping her thigh. Whirling, she gutted an old man with pulsating gaps of flesh throughout his head.
The creatures that had brought her down had acted as a cohesive whole at first, exercising their great strength of numbers. After Myrmeen had dispatched several of them, the creatures stumbled over one another in their attempts to escape Myrmeen’s wrath. They were not protectors, she realized, merely adoring worshipers of the globular monstrosity behind her. She killed two more, then let the others flee. Myrmeen turned after she watched the last of the creatures escape and saw that both of Vizier Bellophat’s egg-shaped crimson eyes were open and following her.
“You ugly bastard,” she said as she raised her blood-drenched sword and tripped over one of her victims’ bodies. Her own body trembled as she giggled and rose once again, stepping onto the first tier of the massive altar where Bellophat had been deposited. “How did they haul your fat, disgusting bloat of a body in here, anyway?”
Bellophat’s music became more chaotic, the rhythm suddenly frantic, the notes off-key. Myrmeen thought of the god whose temple had been violated, and she prayed fervently that Bhaelros would help her destroy this monstrosity. They blamed it all on you, she thought. The great storm, the deaths and devastation, everything!
But even as the thunder rolled and the lightning crackled, striking close enough to light up the plaza, Myrmeen knew she was on her own. Bhaelros was ignoring the affront.
Myrmeen raised her sword as Bellophat swatted at her with the harp it had formed from its pink, sweaty mass. The fighter was swept from her feet, her head striking the marble altar when she fell. As she tried to ward off the lancing pain she felt behind her eyes, Myrmeen heard Bellophat’s music resume its original patterns, the lovely composition a stark contrast to the disgusting mass that was performing the piece. Then she heard flesh tearing, bones cracking, and looked down to see Bellophat altering his body once again, this time creating hands that clamped down on her legs and arms and hauled her into the air as the creature’s jaws snapped in accompaniment to the music it was creating.
Swinging blindly with her sword arm, Myrmeen was stunned to hear a scream that appeared to have been torn from a howling whirlwind. Her body was unceremoniously dumped at the foot of the altar. The music had stopped.
Myrmeen saw that she had severed the fleshy strands that made up the harp’s strings.
Even as Bellophat roared in pain,
its pink, rolling skin turning red with anger, she registered that the strands were reaching back and soon would meld together once more. Trying to stand, Myrmeen felt a coldness on her ankle and tried to pull away. She was too late. One of Bellophat’s hands still gripped her. It yanked her forward, tipping her from her feet once again. A jolt of pain raced up through her back as she struck the edge of the altar’s first step. She pulled herself to a sitting position and hacked the limb from the creature.
For the first time she truly paid attention to the number of instruments Bellophat had created from its elastic body. There were more than a dozen in all. The music suddenly resumed and Myrmeen darted out of the way as a thin, rapierlike bow shot out toward her face. She felt the breeze as it passed her. With a hollow scream, Myrmeen leapt at Bellophat, her boot catching in the triangle it held. She used it as she would the first step in a ladder. She kicked herself higher, her blade whipping around to thrust directly toward Bellophat’s right eye.
Myrmeen drove the sword through the creature’s head. Her body slammed against the monster with a soft, sickening noise, then she lost her grip on the borrowed weapon and fell back into Bellophat’s huge lap, stopping inches from his wildly snapping jaws, which slowed, then stopped. The music died with its creator.
Then there was no more time to think. Bellophat’s body began to dissolve, changing into a dripping mass. Myrmeen felt as if she were being sucked into a mountain of gelatinous flesh, about to be drowned in an ocean of muck and gore. Her flesh sizzled as the heat of the monster’s body rose substantially and turned acidic.
“Take my hand!” a familiar voice called.
The fighter looked up and saw Krystin standing on the remains of Bhaelros’s idol, which had been hidden behind and beneath Bellophat’s immense form. Myrmeen snatched Krystin’s hand and allowed the child to yank her out of the boiling mass that had been the creature’s body. In seconds they crouched on the storm god’s chest and clutched at each other as the rain washed the blood and gore from them.
Around them, the storm raged on, indifferent to their suffering.
Twenty-Two
Some time earlier, Tamara had dutifully taken her place beside her husband in the procession. Her scheme to take vengeance on Lord Sixx called for both conspirators to remain in full view of the monstrous throng who would be their followers once Sixx was dead, thus erasing any possible accusations of guilt.
As they walked through the streets, Tamara stared at the emerald locket she had retrieved from the pit of Shandower’s cavernous lair, finally understanding the fascination the object held for the girl: The locket was not a magical item. The mage, Cardoc, had proved this. It was, however, magic sensitive. With no real power of its own, it could assimilate the power of its owner and fulfill whatever need the mage holding it required. The locket responded to desire, an alien emotion to the mage while he was in the course of performing his duties, thus, despite his great power, for him it had remained a useless lump of metal with a shining emerald surface.
Krystin had needed to know her past, and the locket had revealed it to her. Tamara wanted to know only her future, and the images that she saw within its emerald depths confused and disturbed her. With time and effort she knew she could force the locket to show her the future in such detail that the meaning of the glimpses would come clear, but it did not appear that she would have such time, not tonight, in any case.
“Stop looking at that thing,” Zeal whispered.
Tamara tore her gaze from the locket and smiled as she waved to the entranced humans on either side of the street. She felt slightly embarrassed that she, the originator of the plan to depose Lord Sixx, had to be reminded to follow their script. Sixx walked directly before them, holding the box containing the apparatus high over his head. Bellophat’s music eased through the streets, carried to all parts of the city by his will.
As the procession wore on, the music changed, becoming heated and out of control. Then it ceased altogether. Tamara forced back a smile of triumph. Myrmeen had succeeded in her task. Bellophat was dead.
Lord Sixx slowed, looking around in anger and surprise. He drew the box to his breast and stopped in the middle of the street. The procession, moving in perfect time with him, also stopped.
“Tamara,” Lord Sixx said with a nervous edge in his voice, “Find Bellophat. Make him begin again.”
She hesitated. This had not been according to plan. Tamara had been certain that Sixx would send her husband away to check on Bellophat. As they both were aware of what had happened to the monstrosity, Zeal instead would have secretly followed Lord Sixx and remained hidden until Sixx opened the box containing the apparatus. Then he would have performed the task they had discussed; Tamara had wanted to be near Lord Sixx, to see the look of surprise on his face, to laugh as he died. Instead, she would have to watch from a distance and Zeal would have to look his victim in the eye—an ironic turn of phrase considering their leader’s many-eyed condition—when he dispatched the man.
Lord Sixx shouted orders, reminding all of his followers that the matter of paramount importance was the children. They were to search the city and bring him the living bodies of any babies that had been born tonight. He took Zeal and a handful of others as private guards and prepared to go on to the predetermined end of the parade, the shrine to Sharess on the docks overlooking the Shining Sea.
Sixx looked at Tamara and growled, “What are you waiting for? Go now!”
Tamara broke from the procession, wading into the stream of slowly waking humans. She smiled broadly as she heard the first shrieks of terror from the men and women who had been the Night Parade’s adoring audience.
The people of Calimport were waking up.
Across the city, in the basement of a school that had been ravaged by two members of the Night Parade, the survivors of the attack were huddled in the semidarkness as one of the tutors, a dark-skinned woman from the south, wailed in agony as she gave birth. The music drifted even here, keeping the handful of men and women and the dozens of children, all in their midteens, happily at bay. The people waited for their new masters to debase them sexually, or simply kill them outright, feasting on their flesh while their still living bodies twitched. They would die as hapless idiots, entranced by the sounds.
“This is good,” the first creature said. He stood slightly over seven feet and all of his appendages were greatly exaggerated in length. His flesh was orange and as hard and dry as an elephant’s hide. His long, thin fingers, each a foot long, were caked in human blood. “I know it isn’t safe to wake so many of them, but I prefer to taste their fear and hear their screams, don’t you?”
“Of course,” his companion said as he held up his own hand. The man was a sickly, pale color, almost ivory. His flesh consisted of maggots that wriggled obscenely on his bones. “I think I broke a couple of nails, though. I’d hate to break any more.”
They laughed together as the child’s head suddenly showed and the midwife grasped it.
“Be very careful,” the first creature said, “We need—” Suddenly the music died.
“That’s not supposed to happen,” the maggot-infested man said warily. The humans who were now waking up were bunched at the foot of the stairs, blocking the only route of escape.
The baby’s scream broke their temporary paralysis. The monsters looked at each other, understanding that the only way to make it from the basement alive was to use the child as a hostage. The carrot-skinned man darted toward the baby, his claws poised to sever the cord attaching the infant to its mother’s body.
Neither creature reached the baby. A swarm of children engulfed them and dragged them down, paying them back in blood for the pain and the nightmares they had caused.
A mile away, a young actress named Kohrin-dahr reached up and caressed the sides of her lover’s face. The man moved over her, leaning down to cover her mouth greedily with his own. Their hearts thundered in synch and their bodies strained in passion. She was dimly aware of the hard
wood of the stage beneath her bare form and the laughs and applause of an audience, but she did not care. She was with the most beautiful man she had ever seen, a stagehand she had barely noticed until this night. The storm’s violent sounds spurred on her passion as she raked at his sides.
The music that had been their accompaniment suddenly ended. For the first time, the young actress saw the true nature of the monstrosity above her. Shocked and repulsed, she bucked wildly, trying desperately to free her body, but the creature held on tightly, its own pleasure increased by her squirming. She struck out blindly, her fingers curled into claws, and dug her hands into the golden, honey-combed chambers of his soft, glowing eyes. A rain of ichor splattered her naked body as the creature rose, screaming in pain. It was stunned by the sudden onslaught of darkness. She scrambled back, detaching herself from the monster. The actress grabbed at the first object that came into range, a heavy lamp that had not been mounted.
Kohrin-dahr smashed at the creature’s buglike head, driving it to its knees. She struck it again and again until she was covered in its blood and the monstrosity finally stopped moving. Then she looked out into the theater and saw close to a dozen monsters watching her in surprise. Before any of them could vault toward her, the actress turned and ran.
In the glass counting house of the financial district, the rainbow woman had come to make a withdrawal of pain and suffering, torment and blood. She had not bothered to disguise her appearance; the rapidly changing colors of her flesh always proved to be an ample enticement to men of any species—along with her stunning beauty and magnificently proportioned body.
“Gentlemen,” she said to the entourage that had followed her through the streets and broken open the doors to this building, simply because it had intrigued her. “I would like each of you to find something to cut with, preferably a dull knife. When each of you has found such an object, I wish for you to line up against that far wall.”
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