two hands. The acid-laden edge slashed Tlork's thin arm in two, and the great hammer did not rise.
The troll staggered, but the goliath turned. His chance had come for a deathblow, but he ran for the chasm instead, hoping he would make it to Foxdaughter in time.
Twilight struck the waiting cleaver, but it would not budge. The blades screamed and she tumbled over the demonist's head, landing flat on her back. She tried to rise, but her legs failed her. Betrayal clattered to the stone and slid against the wall.
'What's the matter?' he asked, his voice husky. 'Do you not recognize me?'
Gestal dropped his blade and threw off his cloak, revealing his bare arms and chest. Grotesque scars crisscrossed the black, scaly flesh over his biceps and forearms, stopping at his shoulders and hands. As she watched, rapt, blackness rippled across his body, painting the bronzed flesh with inky corruption. In a heartbeat, it spread to all parts of him, half shrouding his face in putrid sores. Clean on one side, oozing on the other, it was as though he had two faces.
As the scaly, festering skin covered his left cheek, a scorching brand depicting a two-headed snake wrapped around a serrated blade lit upon his right face-a face that remained hideously recognizable.
'No…' said Twilight. 'It-it can't be.'
'I'm afraid it can,' said Liet in a perverse rasp, 'my love.' Then his distorted arms extended like putty and clawed at her, one hand glowing with blood, the other with ink. Twilight could not bring herself to dodge.
Gargan ran for the crevasse lip, pushing his legs as he had in races with his clan brothers and sisters. Tlork swung his claws wildly and Gargan's shoulder opened in its wake. He realized his axe was gone, but it was irrelevant. He hit the edge and jumped, his mighty legs pulsing. A weightless heartbeat later, he slammed down on the other side.
His weight and the strength of his jump were too much for the brittle edge, however. The stone broke under his feet, and he began a groaning, inevitable slide into the jagged abyss.
Gargan leaped again and again, dancing across falling stones toward Gestal. The priest wore the face of Liet, but the goliath ignored the implications. He saw only the Foxdaughter, frozen in terror, and the demon priest's impossibly long arms reaching for her. He also saw Slip, seeping pits of black and red where her eyes had once been, crawling feebly away.
The distance between them was slowly increasing, so he couldn't reach them both. But he could save one of them, perhaps. Slip, his friend, or… He might have cried out, but it would do no good, he sensed. He just had to get there in time.
In time, horribly, to watch Gestal jab a red-glowing hand into the elf's breast while his black hand went for her face. She arched and screamed, blood and vomit gushing from her mouth. Horrid as her reaction was, it probably saved her from a worse fate. The black hand only brushed her shoulder instead of her cheek.
The world froze for an instant and reality shifted. Gargan thought he heard a faint mirthful sound, as of a mocking wind. It unnerved him. He had heard tales of travelers wandering leagues in the desert, following just such whispers.
Then the world flowed as normal, and Twilight went white as a corpse. She collapsed to the ground, limp as an empty cloak.
Gargan made no sound, but Gestal sensed him anyway and spun, bringing up his burning claws. The hunter plied his training against giants, with their exceptional reach, and rolled under the deadly claws, still arrowing straight for the limp elf.
Unlike the arms of any real creature, however, Gestal's hands twisted back, still bearing down on the goliath. Gargan thought himself lost.
The priest had miscalculated, though, and the elongated arms jerked to a halt, a finger's breadth from Gargan's foot. Both priest and goliath looked in the same instant, only to find Gestal's distorted arms hooked at the elbows. The priest cursed foully and snapped a word of pure chaos. Gargan felt power flare, but his soul went unscathed. Was this why the sharn had chosen them? Gestal's magic seemed to have little effect on the goliath.
Gargan dived for his prize: the still form beside the sputtering demonist. He stooped over her and his hands went to her feet. At his touch, the elf made a gurgling, gasping noise. Gestal was in the midst of another spell and the goliath knew his time was short. He had one boot off, then the other, and yanked them on.
Sure enough, they fit him perfectly, as their magic allowed. Another goliath might have thought this witchcraft, but Gargan had seen enough of the world to know good from evil.
He stood over Twilight then, clad in her boots, and hefted her limp form under one arm. In the other hand, he raised the giant sword and turned to face his attacker.
'No escape!' screamed Gestal, and fanned out his hand, from which sprang five darts of blackness-darts that had been his fingers. Somehow, the goliath ducked all but two, which wriggled and tore, locking his muscles and freezing his flesh.
Then the demonist charged him, his remaining fingers glowing green.
The eyeless Slip whimpered.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Her eyes flicked open. The tent was silent. The air tasted rough and dry, like bone worn hollow by the wind. And flowers-she smelled something sweet. An herbal tang.
Twilight looked around. Vertical black hides bounded her dry world, and leather tapestries adorned with reds, greens, and blues. Skulls and various bones hung around the tent, on chains that would have clattered had there been a breeze.
She lay on a heap of soft animal skins, most of which still had fur on one side. Twilight ran her fingers slowly through the coarse hair and wondered, dimly, what could make her think rothe hide soft. She also wondered if she had always existed, in this place of supreme comfort. She had the sense that something terrible had happened, but her memory seemed more a series of dreams, not events.
Just about the time she became thirsty, Twilight noticed a clay bowl on the sandy floor beside her, containing what she soon found to be the most delicious water she had ever tasted. She drank it all without pause. Her stomach felt hollow and tight.
She stood from the bed and a chill breeze raised gooseflesh over her back. Only then did she notice her nakedness. For warmth more than modesty, she found a blanket of sackcloth and drew it over her shoulders before she pushed her way out of the tent flap.
Twilight emerged in a land that was mercilessly bright, but discomfort was far away. She stopped, and her eyes fell to the cliff edge just under her bare toes. Flecks of sand hissed down through empty air, falling what seemed a league. She vaguely noticed a circle of runes drawn in salt below the sole of her foot, smudged by her movement.
Her tent stood on the edge of a plateau that rose out of a gray-white desert like a graveyard. She looked out over the vastness of dusty death before her. Then, drawn by sounds from behind, she looked the other way, across the plateau.
Atop the crags, life bloomed like a garden. Tents of many colors stood before her, and muscular forms moved amongst them, fleshed in tones of grays and browns, oranges and purples. These were shades of stone, both exotic and mundane. The figures wore almost no clothing-the better to reveal the zigzagging patterns of color that crisscrossed their stony skin. Goliaths, she realized.
Parents and children worked in the shade of tents and boulders, while brawny youths carved arrows and spears for hunting. The tiny community bustled with daily business, yet a certain serenity enveloped all.
