Xet pealed a strangely familiar tone. . when had she last heard it? An image of the dark halls of an Imaskaran ruin to the southeast came to her, with Xet's cry echoing on stone. In that dark tower she had wielded Angul against creatures that deserved the Blade Cerulean's righteous bite …
Xet was sounding a warning.
'Gage-'
He turned to regard her, and the black-fletched arrow only tagged his shoulder instead of finding his heart. He grimaced, flipping backward off the log. He landed on his back behind the fallen tree.
Xet flew up as Kiril spun around. She stared into the thickets of wavering daylight. The dark trunks of pines multiplied in all directions in numbers beyond counting. Where was the archer? There. .
A pulse of dimness, like nights clasp when the sun dipped below the horizon, oozed from every shadow. But darker yet, a squirming ball of gloom bounded across the forest floor, ricocheting between the unmoving pine boles.. . aimed right at her. Kiril dropped and the shadowy missile struck the log. A burst of fire with flames the color of coal arced in all directions. Kiril cried out in relief, until she spied several more shadows racing toward her.
'Blood!' she swore, rolling to her feet.
From behind the log, she heard Gage mutter, 'Sathra! Why would she. .?'
Her head jerked around. Too bad-no time to ask the thief how Sathra could be attacking if she were dead, as he had told her in Laothkund. If they both survived, she would skin the truth out of him.
The racing shadows resolved into humanoid silhouettes, each merely a dark outline cast on reality.
Kiril drew Angul.
Truth's clarity burned away the darkness all around her. searing her consciousness in the bargain. Doubts, worries, and pains of mind and body were cauterized in the absolute conviction of Angul's steel. The Blade Cerulean flamed triumphantly in her welcoming grip, its star blue fire belling out and banishing shadows in every direction.
The three silhouettes resolved into charging men wielding daggers and slender swords. She held back Angul's sure retributive strike; she retained hold of her mind by the barest of threads, enough to ask the sword, 'Nangulis? Are you in there?'
The blade answered only by wrenching itself around in her grip, shearing off the crown of the man who charged her. Certainty of purpose beat up from the blade through her skin as it always had, like heat. Whether or not Nangulis walked again, Angul remained as he always had been: judge, jury, and executioner of what he knew to be right.
A dagger sprouted in the throat of a second attacker. He burbled and fell at her feet. Gage was flinging daggers from behind the log. The last attacker was turning, an expression of uncertainty breaking to fear, even as she strode forward and swept Angul through him from neck to navel.
From nowhere, the air cracked, louder than anything she'd ever heard.
The breath was drawn from Kiril's lungs, and Gage fell to one knee, gasping. Halos of shadow spun around both of them, off kilter and wobbling like a swarm of ethereal wagon wheels. A voice, far-off and airy, was audible over the ringing in Kiril's ears. An arcane voice. A voice in the midst of calling down more destruction.
She leaped just as the air convulsed again, even louder. She landed face-first in muddy snow, but her legs churned for purchase and her left hand groped for Angul's hilt. The blade pulled her to her feet despite the absolute silence that had descended. Blood seeped from her ears. The sword did not comprehend failure. The weakness of her flesh was something he would not tolerate.
Ahead, a clearing in the woods surrounded a bare hillock, mostly free of the night's snow. Upon the bald hill's crown was a woman. She was sheathed in black fabric and obsidian jewelry that pierced ears, nose, and eyebrows. Even in the full light of day, shadows curled and scampered around her like negative flames in a stiff wind. The darkness whispered, but the words were too faint for Kiril to make out.
The woman gestured to Kiril, inviting her into the open. Kiril accepted the challenge.
Gage saw Sathra of the Shadow Tongue appear on the bald hill. 'Queen of Air, why doesn't she give it up?'
The crime lord of Laothkund apparently valued a prize as potent as the Blade Cerulean too much to allow it to slip away. Gage could understand that. But he wouldn't have guessed the woman would track them into the wilderness.
'Bitch of Dark Corners!' he hissed when he saw Kiril charge toward the slope. He'd told Kiril he'd already dispatched the crime lord. . now she'd know he'd lied.
A branch snapped, then two more. Something lacking grace lumbered through the trees, heading directly for him.
He was running low on blades! Gage pulled a throwing knife from the felled attacker lying across the log, simultaneously drawing a dagger. He tensed, seeing a dark figure moving closer through the trees.
It was … a man sustained by shadow. Not a man hiding in shadow, like the three who'd first attacked. No, this one was dead, but animated by tendrils of darkness that clawed and writhed across his body. It was someone he'd met before.
Stolsin, Grinder of Tribes. The Rashemi barbarian he'd killed in Sathra's lair. Back from the dead with a little push from Sathra's necromancy. The barbarian carried his maul, but dusk dripped from the gray stone cudgel as if it were dipped in ink. The tattoos scrawled across the man's flesh now writhed and twisted, as if ready to animate with tiny, nasty lives all their own.
Gage flipped the dagger, grasped it by the blade, and threw. His aim was true. The blade punched straight into Stolsin's left eye.
The beshadowed barbarian opened his mouth to yell or scream, but all that emerged was dripping night. He didn't cease his relentless march across the forest floor.
The thief jumped up onto the log, then ran along it to the great root ball that had come free when the tree crashed over in whatever wind or rain had ended its days.
Stolsin the Reanimated altered his trajectory like a lode-stone. He moved unerringly toward Gage. The thief grimaced with sudden realization; Sathra had used Stolsin's death to track him into the Yuirwood. When one person kills another, a terrible linkage forms-a linkage a skilled necromancer can follow. Finding him meant finding Kiril, and the sword Sathra apparently desired above all else.
On the other hand, all Stolsin sought was vengeance.
Gage transferred his dagger from gloved hand to bare.
'Today our linkage doubles, Stolsin, because I'm going to kill you again!' His demon gauntlet would win the day and defeat the walking corpse. He hoped. Although he did carry a few vials of alchemical acid particularly good at disrupting leather. .
A dark pulse on the hill caught Gage's attention-black lightning from clear skies smote Kiril, once, twice, then again. The elf was hurled down the slope, a net of gibbering shadow entangling her thrashing limbs.
Stolsin swung his maul while Gage was distracted. Gage slipped back, but the blow caught him on the left shoulder. Agony seized his arm and the dagger dropped from his nerveless hand.
Gage lunged forward with his right hand, the demonic mouth on his gauntleted palm gaping. The revivified corpse backstepped, avoiding the slap. Gage overreached and stumbled to one knee. The maul whistled down, catching the thief on his left leg as he tried to roll clear.
Then he was back on his feet. He winced when he tried to put weight on the left leg. He had retrieved his short blade, this time firmly held in his gauntlet. The demon mumbled curses around the hilt. Gage ignored the vile suggestions.
His foe stood a good chance of flattening him with the maul if Gage moved inside its reach. It would be less risky if his left hand could properly grasp the dagger, but until feeling returned to it, he had to hold the blade right- handed to stay outside Stolsin's sweep. To bring his gauntlet to bear against Stolsin, he'd have to do so from a distance.
The reanimated barbarian groaned something, its swollen and dry tongue rasping ineffectually within its gaping mouth. Indecipherable.
'You have seen better days, my friend,' Gage observed, wondering if he could bait a creature whose brain was probably maggot food. More inscrutable groans and grunts followed, with a swipe from the maul that nearly removed the thief's head.
