Especially with that milky potion Davoren dangled teasingly before her eyes-exactly the same way she had dangled her poison vial what seemed so long ago.
'Death is yet a ways off,' he said redundantly. 'We shall enjoy its process, no?'
He must have misinterpreted the undying rage in her eyes as terror-Davoren had never been good at reading others-for he continued. 'Do not fear, filliken-it isn't for your flesh I have reserved you, but for a higher purpose.' His eyes roved her body. 'Though, if my will overcame your decrepitude, I might reconsider…'
Silently, Twilight wondered if she truly looked so old and decayed, or Davoren meant something different. Somehow, it didn't seem like something she should point out.
'You always thought yourself better than me, but no more,' the warlock said. 'Perhaps I will leave you, as you would have left me-food or prey, or worse. Perhaps you'll be lucky-perhaps the troll won't be the first to find you.'
Twilight's throat contorted with fury.
'How does it feel now, Shrew-at-Twilight? To be helpless before me? To know that there is nothing- absolutely nothing you can do to stay my hand?'
The edge of Twilight's lip twitched. Then she brought her good knee up between his legs. Hard.
'Except that,' she said.
With a soprano moan, Davoren crumpled into a quivering heap. Twilight fell on him, unable to stand on her broken leg. She slapped away his feeble hands and took the healing potion he had taunted her with. She jabbed an elbow into his face, stunning him once more.
Twilight crawled away and uncorked the flask. She drained the sweet liquor, letting it spread to her broken limbs and ribs. It did not heal her entirely, but the pain receded. With a little exertion, she could stand again.
And as soon as she did, she kicked the warlock in the gut, just to stifle any spells, curses, or whatever else he might have mustered.
'H-how?' Davoren managed as he pawed at her without strength.
'Typical Davoren,' Twilight said brokenly. 'You may be strong… you may be crafty, and you may be powerful… but you don't know the first rule of poison. Never carry one that can harm you.'
The warlock's face twisted in a mixture of agony and fury. Dark, perverse words started to form on his lips.
Twilight put a stop to that with her boot. 'You'd be surprised the tolerance a wench can build with a century on her hands.'
In reply, Davoren spat a pair of incisors.
'What biting wit,' Twilight noted. Then she coughed and almost fell. The healing helped, but there was little enough a single potion could do for ribs as broken as hers.
Without the fear of the warlock striking her down from behind, she limped toward Betrayal. Where it lay, shadows flickered along its edge, and she remembered its former wielder. Her eyes grew bleary for a heartbeat, but only for a heartbeat.
'Thtop!' Davoren commanded, with Asmodeus's authority.
But Twilight was unmoved. Of her own will, she stopped and turned halfway to look.
'You neeth me,' he said through blood and spittle, his voice slurred without some of his teeth. 'My power-to ethcape thith plathe. You'll never make it witho'w help!'
'A good point.' She pulled the amulet over her head-so it could find her. 'Ruukthalmuramaxamin!' she called. 'Hear me! I have a new bargain for you.'
As gold energy began to circle around her, Davoren's face sank. 'Whore!' he spat. 'You had beth watch over your thoulder-my mathter never forgeth a foe! I'll take pleathure in watching you die, like I did with that gold weathel and her corpth of a mate.'
Twilight paused. 'Hold, Ruuk,' she said, dropping the chain back to her neck. The magic faded, and Davoren chuckled-with a cough.
As the elf limped to where Davoren's stiletto lay, gripping her bleeding side, she listened to Davoren laying out his plans for her humiliating demise. She was amused.
As she crossed into the hall, her shadow broke from its spell and hissed back around her, its touch like a chilling caress. Twilight almost took comfort in it.
'Filliken! Trollop! Thuccubuth!' he roared. 'I'll thow you! I'll burn a hole in your thull-an keep you alive, begging! Athmodeuth will have hith due tribute by my hand! Your trickery ith nothing to my art!'
Twilight slipped the bloody stiletto up the sleeve of her good arm. Then she tipped up Betrayal with her toe. Tilted, it sparkled hotly in the torchlight. She thought about running him through, but every way she looked at it, it just seemed too honorable.
She settled for stabbing him in the gut.
Davoren's jabbering turned frantic. 'Juth like them. Juth like them all! I'm better than you!' Twilight heard the madness in his voice. Blood poured from his lips and his arm reached for her. 'I'll kill you-I'll kill you-kill you!'
Then she bent, not without effort, and selected a nice, heavy rock. She smiled. 'Not if I crush all your fingers first.'
Surrounded by candles of human fat, kneeling on blankets of skin, Lord Divergence prayed to the demon prince. He demanded power rather than begged. Demogorgon would give nothing to the weak.
And the fiend was pleased with its servant, granting greater powers than it had before. A new skill, a new talent came into Gestal's mind, and his jaw dropped. It was a complex ritual, calling upon his patron in a lengthy invocation, but when it was done…
If Twilight did not respond as he wished by her own will, certain powers could be brought into play from which not even her trivial trickster god could save her.
Some time later, sharn magic deposited Twilight just outside the temple of Amauntor, Netherese god of the sun. Once Twilight had found it odd that a sharn would make its home in such a place-in order and in the dark-but now she found it fitting.
Golden light sparked and hissed around her, matrices and lattices of Art that served their purpose, then were gone. She felt the touch of order, so foreign to her free spirit, sliding away from her. The light flickered off the sapphire pendant hanging from her fist, then left her in darkness-not a barrier to her darksight.
She slipped her amulet back on, settling into its false security.
Twilight shivered, but would not allow something tiny like discomfort to stay her. Too many had died-too many friends had left her, stolen by Gestal.
And yet within that murderer, that horrible monster, she had glimpsed a spirit like hers. Abused, hated, and confused, surviving by lies. Like her, and like Davoren, too.
Seemingly of one mind, the doors to the temple ground open, scraping against the cavern floor as over bones. They thundered against the walls like the tolling of doom. As hesitant as if she were signing a death warrant, Twilight walked through that mighty portal.
As she did, she casually wiped Davoren's blood from Betrayal. A gleam of white shone through the gray, as though the troll's burning blood had eaten away a casing of rust, revealing a pure heart.
Twilight found that amusing. It certainly would not describe her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Twilight went quickly through the caverns, her only companion the shadow she had summoned. They moved as one, silent as death, fleeting as the darkness itself.
To avoid the fiendish lizards and other perils of the depths, Twilight did not hesitate to call upon the powers
