Spinner of Lies

Jaul gave ground, but only grudgingly. Demascus smashed the flat of his sword on the kid’s head. He didn’t want to kill Chant’s son, only stun him. The impact vibrated up the hilt, and he worried that even though he’d turned the blade, it’d still been too hard. That blow had probably brained the-

“Is that all you’ve got?” said Jaul. “I’m not going down. The mask’s given me resilience and speed-I’m as powerful as the angel it once was! You’ll have to call up the echo of the Sword, Demascus. Then we’ll discover if he agrees with your decision!”

Was Jaul correct? If I take on the visage of his old office, will my choice be overturned? The Sword knew little of remorse and hardly cared for repercussions. It might decide to join with Fossil and Kalkan. Demascus recognized the incipient glimmer of the Sword’s abilities trying to subsume his thoughts. He clamped down on the feeling. No, you’re not getting out.

Jaul advanced, calm as a snake. Blood dribbled from his scalp into one eye, staining it scarlet. But it didn’t seem to bother him. Demascus backed up, blade raised in guard. Jaul followed. A wall touched Demascus’s shoulder. Jaul slashed with the dagger in his left hand at the same instant. Demascus ducked into what he hoped was a blind spot of blurred vision caused by the pooling blood in the youth’s eye. Exorcessum cut into the meat of Jaul’s left arm. The hand holding that dagger spasmed and a red-handled dagger clattered to the floor. More blood flowed. Demascus used the moment to sidle away from the wall.

“That one’s going to leave a scar!” crowed Fossil. “Not that I care. You’re going to have to kill this body, Demascus.”

“Wait, what?” came Jaul’s near instantaneous response from the same mouth. “That’s going a little too far, Fossil.”

Fossil replied, “Don’t worry, it won’t come to that. With my help, you can defeat the deva, if he doesn’t call his office.”

“Yeah, the way I feel, I doubt anything can stop me. But what were you saying about Demascus having ‘to kill this body?’ ”

“If Demascus does not raise the Sword, you’ll kill him with the power I’ve given you,” explained Fossil. “If he does raise the Sword, the Sword can probably kill you … but the Sword will decide to join us instead. Do you see?”

Jaul slowly nodded. “I do, Fossil. Let’s end this!”

Gods of shadow, thought Demascus, Jaul and Fossil had him by the privates!

If he could just-

Jaul head-butted him. The sharp mask edge gouged Demascus’s forehead. His heel caught a chair leg. He cursed his ineptitude as he toppled, reflexively letting go of his weapon to catch himself. He came down like a collapsing accordion, ducked a knife swing, and reached for the hilt of his sword-

Jaul stamped on his hand. Pain swarmed up his nerves like fire ants. The boot ground his palm into the floor, fixing him in place. The masked face regarded him. “Where’s the Sword? He wouldn’t put up with this sort of nonsense.”

Demascus flinched as something terrible beat at the gates of his mind, trying to emerge. Fossil was right. The Sword of the Gods didn’t like being humbled. He grunted with the pressure of holding the figurative door shut.

“Are you keeping him bottled?” came the dead angel’s voice. “Yes? That means I’ll just have to cut your throat and bleed you like a pig. When you see me next, it’ll be through different eyes. But you’ll remember me. Keep that in mind when you come into your true power, Demascus. I was the one who birthed you!”

“Fossil, Jaul, over here,” came Madri’s voice. She stood on the earth heap, which was disturbed as if a human-sized gopher had been digging in it. Something lay revealed there, like matted fur …

Madri waved a dirt-encrusted metallic disk that dangled from a leather strap.

The boot’s pressure eased. “Put that down,” Fossil said, its voice emotionless.

“Let Demascus go,” she replied. “Or I’ll flicker to the middle of the Sea of Fallen Stars and drop the damos into its depths.”

Damos? thought Demascus.

“You’ve one chance, Madri,” said Fossil. “Do as I say.”

“You better do what it says,” Jaul agreed. “Fossil’s not messing around.”

Demascus tried to snatch his hand from under the boot. But the mask continued to lend Jaul’s mortal sinews angelic strength. Strength he couldn’t hope to match without calling up the power clinging to his soul.

“Not happening, Fossil. Let Demascus go. Now.”

“You should have listened,” said Fossil. “I release you, spirit. Be gone. The binding I summoned you with is dissolved!”

“Wait,” said Madri. “I don’t …”

The woman shuddered. She reached a hand to Demascus, as if in supplication or a plea for aid. Then she blew away like smoke from a snuffed candle.

The damos thunked onto the mound.

Jaul laughed. “That was easy. Stupid woman. I warned her.”

“You killed her,” Demascus said, the words mushy in his mouth.

Madri was gone. Sorrow like a glacier pinned him on its face. He gasped, trying to catch his breath. He forgot the pain in his hand; the cold despair that engulfed him was heavier, and threatened to crush him.

Jaul’s throat chuckled with Fossil’s glee. “She was already dead. Though I admit, she had more agency than I expected for a ghost. Something to do with Exorcessum, I expect. Ah, well. She’s out of the picture. As you’re about to be. I look forward to dealing with the incarnation that follows this one.”

Demascus wasn’t really listening. The forlorn way Madri had reached for help … It tore at him, pulling him out of the numbing regret.

And something cracked. Through that fracture flowed a scream for vengeance.

The lantern light turned red as blood. Jaul’s voice slowed to a bass rumble.

The Sword of the Gods jerked his bruised hand from beneath the trapping heel, ignoring the scraped flesh that resulted. Jaul didn’t react. He couldn’t; he was caught in the regular flow of time. The deva retrieved Exorcessum and stood as shadows congealed around him, drawing close like a second skin, highlighting older, crueler lines in his face. The Veil of Wrath and Knowledge flared behind him like angel wings. Exorcessum’s runes lifted a quarter inch from the blade. The Sword was well past tired of Fossil’s charade. As time tottered toward its resumption, he used the sword’s point to scribe a mark of divine radiance on the mask’s forehead. His oath to destroy Fossil.

The half-mask burned suddenly blue as Jaul flashed into movement. He sidestepped the deva’s blade and circled out to the left. The Sword pivoted, but one of Jaul’s daggers was already arrowing at his kidney. Fossil had sped up Jaul’s reactions, beyond anything the boy should’ve-

The dagger punched through the Sword’s camouflaging shadow, through his coat and leather armor, and scraped across his ribs. It would’ve punctured an organ if one end of the Veil hadn’t whipped forward and slapped Jaul across the face. The kid rocked back and the deva used the distraction to step through shadow to appear on Jaul’s right flank.

But Fossil had already turned his host to face the Sword’s attack, as if it could see into the Shadowfell fringe where the deva could usually evade notice.

Fossil beat aside a disemboweling lunge by Exorcessum. With the same movement, Fossil skimmed one of Jaul’s daggers along the outside of the rune sword and caught the deva’s arm in a twisting lock. The deva reversed his grip and forced Jaul to abandon his ploy.

Fossil was good! The Sword loved it when his foes forced him to walk along that knife’s edge between victory and defeat-it happened all too little. In fact, the Sword couldn’t ever remember losing. Because when he did, the Whorl of Ioun never recorded it.

He laughed. The sound echoed through the room and into the Shadowfell fringe, too, creating a spooky resonance that would usually make mortals gasp in alarm. Jaul just smirked and kept attacking. The young man’s body had become a mere tool, a possessed husk in the angel’s control, windmilling daggers and hurtling back and forth through the air so quickly his clothing threatened to smoke with the friction.

The easiest way to hurt the mask would be to obliterate its host.