Vengeance

creature. A jagged grey clot shot forth, though it only shattered against the facinore’s chest like mushy ice.

‘Your gift’s there!’ yelled Rannilt. ‘I can see it.’

Rannilt flung a golden globe at the facinore, which ducked and shot out a chitinous fist, striking her a glancing blow to the left temple and sending her tumbling. She took a shuddering breath and rolled over, holding her head with both hands and trying not to cry.

‘Rannilt, stay down!’ Tali blasted again and again but her feeble gift could only produce harmless, rotten ice.

‘Out of the way,’ said Rix.

Tobry yanked him back by the shoulder. ‘The facinore was created by magery, and only magery can finish it.’

His arm was trembling, his voice thick. Fear of the shifter was choking him and Rix knew he couldn’t do it. If Tobry took on the facinore he would die.

‘I can deal with it, Tobe,’ said Rix.

‘I let you down last time,’ Tobry said bitterly. ‘I’m not doing it again.’

Rix knocked him aside and extended the titane blade, gauging his foe. It did not retreat. It was leaning towards Tali, a humanoid core with those eerily shifting limbs and the fluttering shadows surrounding it that made it nine feet tall. It reeked of blood and sweat and the carrion it had been feeding on.

It was a creature of the magery he had always feared, and powerful magery at that, stronger than anything he had come across outside these caverns. But Rannilt had hurt it out in the Seethings and surely he could do as much here. Rix lunged and struck at its back.

It whirled, the left fist clubbed and shot out like a Cythonian war rocket. Rix tried to parry it but the air clung to his blade like tar and he barely got it up in time to protect his face from a blow that would have pulped it. The facinore’s fist struck the flat of the blade, driving it against his forehead so hard that Rix saw coloured lights. He staggered, momentarily dazed, went to one knee then recovered as the other fist came looping around, shifting and opening like lobster pincers.

Instinct jerked the edge of his blade into its path. The pincers split down the limb and the left half shot past his head. The right half struck him a skidding blow on the cheek that knocked him sideways and almost tore his ear off. Defence was going to be fatal. His only option was to attack.

The severed pincers withdrew, shifted to the serrated blade of a sawfish and the muscles behind it swelled as it prepared for a killing blow. Rix settled into the warrior’s mindset where his sword became an extension of his arm and he simply reacted. The sawfish blade swung. Rix did too, hacking it off, and when it clattered to the floor it sizzled into a black, glutinous stain.

The facinore shifted its other arm to a narwhal’s tusk and tried to spear him through the groin. He leapt onto the six-foot tusk, swung low and clove it off at the shoulder. The facinore shrieked and stumbled, and its enveloping shadow shrank, retreating into flesh. The shifter seemed smaller than before, though it was still bigger than he was. He was only one lucky blow away from death, but luck was an unreliable ally.

His own warrior’s heart was not; attack was the only defence worth pursuing. He lunged, weaving between the blows, and struck at its chest, turning the sword tip in a circle as if to cut out its heart. Fire seared up the blade, the facinore reared and the sword withdrew. He’d hurt it.

A rhino’s foot struck his kneecap, numbing the whole leg. He staggered sideways and the blow that would have smashed his pelvis glanced off his hip and spun him around. He went with it, whirling and putting the momentum into his swing, and was aiming for its neck when an icy needle blast pierced his shoulder.

Before Rix could check behind him the facinore attacked with a pile-driving flurry of blows, driving him backwards, and suddenly he was fighting for his life. A dozen chisel-shaped protrusions shot at him. He severed three, then another two, and ducked the rest. The facinore shrank and withdrew a step.

Ha! Rix thought.

Before he could strike a fatal blow, another rain of cold needles spiked into the back of his shoulder. He was under attack with magery. The ice set alight his nerve fibres, spread to his heart and it began to race and burn as it had done when he had been attacked by Mijl the pothecky, by the lake. When he had nearly died …

There was no one behind him save Tobry. Rix turned, free hand pressed to his heart, the other hand fighting the titane blade which had begun to shudder as though thirsting to drink the blood of his dearest friend.

A friend with someone else glaring out of his eyes.

Lyf had returned, and in the chaos he had slipped into Tobry’s unprotected mind like a key into a lock.

CHAPTER 84

‘What’s the matter with Tobry?’ Rannilt whispered, probing the huge bruise where the facinore had struck her.

Tali swayed, struggling to take in all that had happened. Her magery had been pathetic; she had done more with it as a little girl. And Rix, who had driven the facinore back in that furious attack, was gaping at Tobry, his free hand clutched to his heart and the titane sword shuddering so violently that he could barely hold it.

The mixture of horror and revulsion in Tobry’s eyes chilled her, but worse was the familiar yellow growing in their centres. Tobry’s right hand pointed the elbrot at Rix as if to blast him apart. Tobry’s left arm kept jerking upwards, his hooked fingers clawing at his own eyes as if to tear them out, but it was forced down again. He was fighting Lyf with everything he had, but that was not enough.

‘Lyf’s possessed him,’ said Tali.

‘What do that mean?’ said Rannilt.

Tongues of fire sizzled from the elbrot, crimson and jagged. Rix deflected most of them with the sword and they shot upwards, striking a red-haired king in Lyf’s ancestor gallery and dissolving him in an instant. A single flame caught on Rix’s left ear and flared, singeing hair. He yelped and smashed it out but it flared again, and again until Rannilt directed a wobbling little globe at it. It splattered on the side of Rix’s head, drenching him and extinguishing the flare.

‘Thanks!’ he said without looking around.

‘Tali?’ said Rannilt.

‘Lyf has got into Tobry’s mind and is making him attack Rix.’

‘But … that’s horrible.’

Rix’s eyes were locked on the yellow eyes as if he could drive Lyf out by sheer force of will. The facinore stood to one side, statue-still now. Awaiting Lyf’s command? Or an opportunity to break free of him?

‘Possession is an enemy you can never escape,’ said Tali. ‘He can take you over at any time, make you do terrible things, and you know that even your friends are afraid to trust you.’

‘I’ll always trust Tobry, same as I trust you,’ Rannilt said fiercely. ‘No one’s stoppin’ me.’

Tali hugged the child, overcome by her loyalty and her simple faith. Tobry and Rix had risked their lives to return to this terrible place, to help her. Rannilt had done the same, and what greater gift could anyone give?

‘Can’t we drive Lyf out?’ said Rannilt.

‘I don’t know how.’

‘Get her out of sight,’ Rix said from the corner of his mouth. ‘Don’t let her use her gift.’

Tali jerked Rannilt behind her. ‘Stay there. Don’t move. Don’t try and help.’

‘But no one else can stop the beast,’ said Rannilt.

‘Rix can. Just do what I say.’

Tobry’s elbrot fired a spray of tiny emerald shot. Again Rix’s sword deflected the attack, seemingly of its own accord, the little balls pattering against the walls and eating fuming holes where they touched. If one touched Rix, presumably it would eat into him, too.

A shudder wracked him. Once more the sword leapt in his hand and he dragged it back only inches before it spitted Tobry’s throat. Lyf threw Tobry backwards, away from the blade, but Tobry drove himself forwards again. Tali pressed her hands to her cheeks. What if Rix could not stop it next time?