The look on his face was a mask of fear and disappointment.
A single, clear thought shot through Alashar's brain like a crystal arrow: He's the only one who can get me back.
Rushing to his defense, she felt hands and tentacles and tendrils and other things her language had no name for reaching shadow fingers from the grass to caress her legs with agonizing cold. Her body felt as if it would shake itself apart. Reaching the huge creature that charged Shadow, she attacked as if her life depended on it… because it did.
The shadow things-smaller ones-were still converging on Shadow, but he was keeping them at bay with flashes of light-for now.
Alashar sent her whip-rapier into a spinning spiral. The sound of it whistling through the air pierced her eardrums and drowned out Shadow's constant, unintelligible muttering. When the giant shadow thing touched her, her knees gave out; she fought from the ground. She had to shred the thing, swing the whirling blade back and forth through it.
Whistle. Silence. Resistance. Whistle. Silence. Resistance… Finally she just closed her eyes and let her arms do their work.
Then the resistance was gone, and she wanted to believe the giant thing was dead.
She felt a hand on her arm, warm and real, and forced her eyes open to see that it was Shadow. He was saying something, but he must not have been talking to her because she couldn't understand a word of it. Another of the smaller things, this one the shadow of a sort of monster goat, touched her again, but the cold wasn't quite as bad and didn't last as long.
Her body gave out. Though she was already sitting sprawled on the cold ground, she started falling. She took a sharp breath, surprised.
By the time she hit the floor, the cold was gone, the wind was gone, and she saw the pillars and the warmth and light of the spherical laboratory. She lay on her back. Her neck went limp, and her head rolled to one side. Her eyes met the eyes of her simulacrum, also lying flat on its back. As she slipped into black unconsciousness, she couldn't help noticing how green her double's eyes looked.
She didn't remember their being that green.
The bedcovers were oppressively heavy, but Alashar was still shivering when she awoke. The first thing she saw was a carved wooden post-a corner of the bed- and a molded plaster ceiling scarred black from a fire. Movement made her turn her head, light flashed in her eyes, and there was pain. When her vision cleared, she saw a young woman, barely more than a girl. The woman wore a simple white shift, her dark hair in an almost comically girlish bob, her face an expressionless mask of ambivalence. A servant. The girl glanced at her, peered over her shoulder at someone or something, and then walked away, holding a bucket of water that didn't seem heavy enough.
"Don't try to move just yet," Shadow's voice echoed slightly from across the room.
She moved anyway, and regretted it. The pain in her head was almost overwhelming, almost made her pass out again. She didn't have the energy to fight it. She could and did accept it, sitting up slowly in the opulent bed, shivering, working at breathing.
"Anyone else would be dead," Shadow continued. "You're quite something."
She tried to speak, but her voice came out as a harsh squeak.
"Do you still want to kill me?" he asked her.
She opened her eyes, only then realizing they had been closed, and she could see him sitting in an armchair across the room. The servant girl she'd seen before was kneeling on the scarred wooden floor, still mopping up the rest of the thick, black-red naga blood.
Shadow looked terrible. There were gray-black bags under his dull eyes, and his face was pale. The startling color of his cheeks and lips was gone. He, too, was wrapped in a thick blanket, shivering.
It hurt when she cleared her throat, and she blushed when a single tear rolled down her cheek. "Yes," she almost grunted, then cleared her throat again, and her voice was almost back. "Yes, I have to kill you."
He smiled and nodded.
"Aren't you going to kill me?" she asked him, not having the energy to fight, and getting the idea that he didn't have the energy to fight either. "Now's your chance. I can hardly move."
It took him some effort to look serious and threatening, and the look didn't really come off. "Honestly, I just don't have the energy to kill you."
Without looking at either of them, the maid stood up and walked out of the room. The water in the bucket was a sickly pink.
"What was that place?" she had to ask.
"Long story," was all he could offer just then. "Suffice it to say, it's the reason your employer wants me dead. One of the reasons."
"Those things were killing you, too."
"Yes," he whispered, "I wasn't ready. You shouldn't drag someone into a demiplane like that, you know, when he's not ready."
He smiled, realizing he had been about to do just that to her. She smiled, realizing he knew she'd beaten him at his own game.
"If I hadn't had a link to your simulacrum, the shadows would be feeding on us by now." Something about the smile on his face warmed her, and she suddenly felt ridiculous, lying in the bed of the man she'd been hired to kill, whom she'd thought she'd decapitated earlier that morning.
"So," she said, "you needed me to get back here."
"Yes, as much as you needed me." He sighed deeply and forced a smile. "Does that make us even?"
She peeled back the heavy blankets and managed to move herself up to a sitting position. Warmth and movement were returning quickly. She had always been able to recover quickly, and it had saved her life at least once that day. Her leathers were gone. She was wearing the same plain white shift the maid wore, and she was embarrassed for no good reason at all.
"The maid changed you," he said. "I was unconscious, myself."
She looked at him and nodded, swinging her legs slowly over the side of the high bed. She heard a metallic twang and looked at him again. He was holding her whip-rapier.
"Interesting weapon," he said, looking at it appreciatively, curiously.
The maid came back in, and there was something wrong. The look on her face made Alashar stand, her knees threatening to give way again but holding firm after a split second. There was a ripping, crunching sound, and the maid's body shook. Something big was in the hallway behind her, filling the door with an amorphous black silhouette. Something thick and green and covered in the girl's thin running blood burst through the maid's chest. Blood exploded out of her mouth, and Alashar couldn't help screaming as the maid was ripped apart in front of her.
Shadow shouted Alashar's name, and she put out her hand, not consciously aware of seeing him throw the whip-rapier. She caught it in one hand and was up and swinging before she even got a good look at the thing coming fast now through the door.
The only way she knew it was covered with hundreds of tentacles was that every time her flashing, shrieking whip-rapier met any resistance, one of the thick, twitching things ended up squirming at her feet. She was aware of its blood, too, hot and yellow-green, sticky and everywhere. The creature was at least twice her size, a wall of writhing green tentacles and dozens of gaping, fang-lined mouths, themselves full of smaller tentacles.
She was shredding it, but stepping back at the same time as it continued to advance on her. She was a blur of motion, her muscles warming and growing looser, more responsive for the exercise.
The fact that the thing made no sound even as she dismembered it actually disturbed her; then she saw that the tentacles were already growing back.
She had no idea what Shadow was doing and had no time to find out. The monster was backing her slowly into the room, and she was cornered. Something wrapped around her foot-something warm and rough like an elephant's hide-and before she could react, the tentacle withdrew into the beast with a snap and pulled her foot out from under her. The force of the fall onto her behind made her teeth bite painfully into-maybe through-her tongue. She tasted blood at the same time she reversed the spin of her whip-rapier to cut the tentacle off her foot.
Her leg cam
e free, dowsed with the beast's hot yellow blood, and she saw it come down toward her. She rolled out of the way fast enough not to be trapped completely under it, but it fell most of the way along her left side. Her right hand hit the floor, and the whip-rapier bounced loose, clattering on the burned wood floorboards.
The weight of the thing was painful enough, but when one of its mouths found her left hip and bit in, she screamed and forced her left hand farther under the writhing, heavy mass. In panic, pain, and desperation, she rolled to her left and forced her hand into the slimy corner of the mouth. She looked up and saw another mouth falling at her from above. It meant to bite her head off. With a grunt, she pulled-ripped, really-her left leg out of the first mouth and kicked up with it. The pain helped her get out from under the thing.
She rolled, leaving a wide trail of her own blood on the floor as she went for her rapier. A hand came under her arm, and she let Shadow pull her up and away from the green thing, which was already drawing itself up and advancing on them again.
"This way," Shadow breathed heavily.
Alashar remembered the secret door.
With frail, liver-spotted hands, Grenway clutched the sides of the palantir. His back jerked with the little coughs that had come to replace his cold, cackling laugh.
Alashar, his paid assassin, his unwitting decoy, had done her job well. She had infiltrated Shadow's inner sanctum, foiled some still unknown rival's own assassination attempt by killing the naga, destroyed the damnable simulacrum that had confused his informants in Karsus for so long, and even seemed to have built some sort of strange bond with the archwizard. She and her victim had become partners of a sort now, and she seemed strangely determined not to let Shadow out of her sight. Since her sight was also Grenway's, things were working well.
The mutant that he'd sent as the real assassin had no ability to think for itself. It had to be guided, and so he had sent Alashar in first. Grenway coughed out a chuckle at the thought that Alashar probably still expected to kill Shadow and collect Grenway's price.
His victory was at hand, and Grenway closed his eyes and prepared his final spell.
The thing barely fit into the snug passageway, but it came at them fast just the same. It was spitting some viscous liquid from dozens of mouths. The spittle let it slide through. Neither Alashar nor Shadow could see past it. Its tentacles seemed to lengthen.
"The lab," Shadow panted.
He was still too weak to really run. He hadn't cast a single spell, and Alashar knew he was completely exhausted. If he had any tricks up his sleeve, he was playing it dangerously close.
The huge bleeding bite in Alashar's left thigh slowed her down, too, and her joints were popping from the cold weakness of the shadow world. She wanted to tell him they wouldn't make it to the lab and opened her mouth to do just that when a sound came from the thing now only a few paces behind them. It sounded like a cough.
Alashar stopped and looked back at it. Shadow stumbled to a stop just behind her and followed her gaze to the front of the mass of green tentacles. Though it hadn't been there only seconds before, the creature now had a face.
"Grenway," Alashar said.
The green, mucous-covered face smiled, and its features stretched like rubber and twitched. The mutant's body was obviously not used to the experience, and if it was capable of not liking something, it was obvious it didn't like the sensation. The face was Grenway's, but even uglier.
"Aaaaaah, Alashar," Grenway's voice whisper-echoed at them through the passageway, like water thrown from a bucket. The face's lips didn't quite move in sync with the voice. The monster was still advancing slowly, and Alashar stepped back, not noticing that Shadow didn't.
"Grenway," Shadow breathed, "I'll blast you to-"
The archwizard's words were cut off when a tentacle shot like a spear from under the green mass and wrapped around Shadow's head. Alashar whimpered when it brushed her temple and pulled slightly at her hair. Shadow's hands came up to claw ineffectually at the tentacle, and only a tuft of jet black hair was visible through the thick limb.
Alashar's heart jumped and she instinctively backed up farther.
"Running, child?" the Grenway face hissed. She brought her whip-rapier to guard position, and Shadow's knees collapsed. The thing was pulling him in slowly, and Alashar could see deep, passionate hatred on Grenway's face.
She heard herself say, "You didn't give me time!"
Grenway laughed. The sound rumbled through the passageway and became a gurgling cough. Shadow was flailing madly on the floor. It was killing him.
Alashar realized she had her chance to run, let Grenway kill Shadow himself. She could get out clean, if she got out now, but Grenway would win. She suddenly realized what had to happen next.
Her fingers tightened around the hilt of her whip-rapier and she slid her feet apart on the rough stone floor. "No, Grenway," she said through gritted teeth. "This time, I win."
The coughing laugh sounded again, and a new mouth, the biggest one yet, opened on the lower side of the great beast. The thing had stopped a few paces from where Alashar stood, and though it spoke to her, Grenway's eyes were fixed lustfully on Shadow. "Grow up, girl," it growled. "You could never kill him."
Her whip-rapier flashed, and she shot forward and down. The Grenway face screamed in frustration and hatred, but not in pain when the tentacle holding Shadow split and fell away under the singing bite of the razor-sharp sword. The tentacle fell away from Shadow's face, and he sucked in a single huge, gurgling breath, his eyes bulging from their sockets, even as Alashar grabbed the collar of his blood-encrusted silk robe and pulled him harshly away.
"I'm not done," she hissed at both of them, "with either of you bastards."
Grenway pulled away from the link with the mutant and screamed his frustrated wrath at the tin-plated ceiling of his laboratory. He grabbed again at the sides of the palantir and watched through Alashar's eyes as she tore his mutant to ribbons. Shadow was still alive, and she now knew her true place in the game.
Yes, he thought, quite a specimen.
"Damn her," he growled.
Alashar's whole body was trembling as she stood knee-deep in twitching pieces of the huge green monster. She didn't remember exactly when it had stopped trying to fight back, but she was aware of that blurry point at which it seemed to resign itself to its fate and let her kill it. She was breathing hard and could barely move her feet.
Behind her, Shadow was panting and coughing, still trying to pull himself together after having been dragged by the head fifteen feet along the rough stone floor. When she turned to look at him, her foot slipped, and she ended up sitting in a pile of dead tentacles and rubbery things.
Their eyes met, and Shadow forced a smile.
"You weren't supposed to be able to do that," he said cryptically.
Anger flared through her, and without willing it, she lunged at him. She grabbed him by the neck. His eyes told her it hurt.
"Damn you," she huffed, "I should kill you after all, you son of a-"
She stopped herself, released his neck, and brought her whip-rapier over her head. Her eyes never wavered from his, but her arm was shaking now almost uncontrollably.
"You were both using me," she accused, "weren't you? Damn archwizards." The contempt in her voice actually seemed to affect him. "Great, petty lords of Netheril," she pressed. "Sitting in the muck and guts and filth of your own little…" She let her words trail off, not having any idea how to express this much outrage.
"Was it me?" he said. His voice was even, ironically so coming from a man half dead, sitting in a pool of stinking yellow-green gore. "You were going to kill me, Alashar. For money. Was it me? Or was it him?"
She let her arm drop, more out of exhaustion than any sudden desire not to slice his arrogant head off. "I woke up in your bed, and it could just as easily have been your prison world. Grenway's… whatever it was… was going to swallow you whole. You could have killed me. I could have let him kill you."
>
"So that makes us even?" he asked. "You can kill me now if you want to."
"That naga thing wasn't Grenway's, was it?"
He shook his head slowly in reply.
"Then Grenway's not the only one who wants you dead?"
He laughed this time, but with a hint of sadness.
"I might kill you later," she said, smiling, "if somebody actually pays me to. But right now, I think we both have a debt to collect."
The look on his face was the same one she'd seen in the demiplane of shadow. And yes, it was admiration.
Only after making absolutely certain the necessary safeguards were in place did Grenway speak the word that drew the big doors to his sitting room open.
Alashar came in slowly, each step deliberate and careful. Her big green eyes surveyed the dusty, cluttered room. The sack in her hand was soaked in blood the color of a human's. Grenway smirked at the thought that the weaver mage who sold it to him had promised it wouldn't do that. The archmage thought he might have to have someone pay the weaver a visit in the morning.
Alashar stopped a few paces from where Grenway was sitting. The archmage sprawled casually on pillows and cushions spread over a thick rug made from the dark brown fur of a cave bear.
"Well, Alashar, dear girl," he said, "what have you got for me today?" His voice was calm because he knew she couldn't kill him. The fact that she didn't have her strange sword didn't even matter. The room itself would protect him.
He forgave the sneer that preceded her flat answer.
"Something that finishes us, Grenway."
He watched every movement of her lithe body as she reached a slender arm into the blood-soaked bag. When she pulled out the head of the archwizard Shadow, Grenway fell into a fit of laughing, coughing, laughing, and coughing until the cushions were sprinkled with spittle and his nose had started to run. His clawlike hands played absentmindedly with the few tufts of white hair hanging in patches to his withered, spotted scalp.
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