The sounds of the dying and the screams of metal on metal filled the air like a crying symphony. Blind, nearly deafened, Jaeriko felt something fly by her ear, and a stinging wetness screamed for her attention an instant later. Dropping to the ground, she felt around for a tree, a body, anything to hide behind, when a brilliant radiance blossomed again. A helmet studded the tree behind her, limned with her blood; near her feet was the head it had belonged to.
Maze screamed-a sound lost in the clamor of battle-and Jaeriko looked up. A white-fleshed ghoul scrambled up Maze's prone form. Her red-streaked hands, somehow bereft of blades, reached back toward Jaeriko, and their eyes met, equally hor shy;rified.
Jaeriko felt around for her knife and recovered it, gripping it with hands sore from unexpected use. Back to back, Jaeriko and Maze huddled together, blades out, striking at anything that came near without radiating warmth. Once, twice, three times she struck at things she hoped to the gods were undead, before the clammy fingers stopped pawing in her direction. Still she crouched, blade trembling, listening for attackers so hard it hurt.
But no more came. The clashes of steel diminished until the only sounds came from a single pair of combatants. Then she felt something fly by her head, heard it thump to the ground, and all sound of combat ceased. The eerie silence was broken only by feet shuffling through leaves, and Jaeriko's heart pounding in her ears. She hoped against hope it didn't mean she and Maze were the only living things left.
Then Jaeriko gasped as a brilliant nova boomed out from Reth's general, bathing the combatants in unnatural light. The shadowy man's bare hands were wrapped around the leonine general's face, fingertips cupping the slackening flesh. Weaponless, the paladin clawed at the hands that lay almost reverently upon his cheeks, drawing blood but not moving them. Sweat glistened on the dark general's arms, and veins rose up in bruising hues under his victim's skin. They stood, locked that way, for as long as Jaeriko could hold her breath.
Then the General of Arrabar's eyes rolled back in his head, his flesh drawn and gray, and he cried out. 'Mercy!' And the General of Reth removed his hands.
Upon release, Dominic of Arrabar collapsed to his knees and bowed his head. Thais put a hand on a nearby tree to steady himself, and his ribs heaved and shook. The blinding light and darkness faded, until only the eerie glow of the storm remained.
Pale corpses, weapons, and dismembered limbs littered the ground in a grotesque garden, blooming with arrows and blood. Not a single ghoul had survived the battle, and only a handful of Reth's soldiers lay fallen. They hadn't even had to kill the General of Arrabar to get his compliance-only the men he'd stolen from death's domain.
'Friend, forgive me,' Dominic said, staring up into his friend's eyes. Thais looked down with pity, but the paladin's gaze had ascended farther, into the heavens. 'Ilmater, for shy;give …' A bolt of lightning split the sky with a crack and coursed down straight onto the head of the kneeling general. Smoke leaked from his helmet, and his eyes stared vacantly upward. Then a second bolt struck where the first one had, and Dominic fell backward, his skin crisping inside his metal shell. A third bolt hit, and a fourth, and a fifth, shattering the sky with thunder and light and causing the little metal figure to dance, prone on the ground.
When the smoke finally cleared, a charred skeleton leered out from the General of Arrabar's helmet, and his metal armor was twisted beyond recognition of having ever belonged to Ilmater.
'Look!' said Maze, pointing to the entrance to the citadel. Standing in the doorway, wand still extended, was Kalmia. A wisp of smoke trailed from the tip of the twisted ivory. Jaeriko's wand. Thais looked up, his heavy gaze hanging on the woman in the door.
'Seize her,' commanded Thais. He gestured to two of his men. The soldiers charged forward, one taking hold of her arms and the other relieving her of her wand. She did not struggle, but stared at the smoking body of her former master with hunger burning in her eyes. Thais watched his men take her.
Then two coins flashed into Thais's hands. Kneeling, he placed one in each blackened eye socket of the dead general.
'Good-bye, my friend,' Thais said, and he stood. 'You strived to starve out the darkness in you, but in the end, it consumed you instead.' Thais shook his head and looked up from the grinning corpse. 'A poor death for the last paladin of Ilmater.'
Jaeriko stared at Kalmia.
'Oh, Kalmia,' Jaeriko said. The woman had said she couldn't even use it for self defense. Had that all been a lie? Kalmia fixed her with a look that chilled her to the bone.
'You saw what he did to his son,' Kalmia said. She lowered her gaze to the ghoulish corpses that littered the ground, then looked up again, resolution steeling her eyes. 'If Reth intended on killing him, you two would have done it before we met. I could not risk him escaping justice.'
Jaeriko stared at Kalmia as the soldiers bound the herbalist's hands behind her and led her off in the direction of the soldiers' caravans. The herbalist held her gaze, looking over her shoulder, until they could no longer see each other through the weave of the forest. A tug on her arm tore her attention away from the path the soldiers had taken.
'Never empathize with the enemy,' Maze said softly. She pushed a pouch filled with coins into Jaeriko's hand. 'Your half of the fee.'
'Right,' Jaeriko said. Maze looked at her for a moment, then put an arm around her shoulder and began guiding her back through the woods.
'Come on. Let's go home.'
The first night on the road, the General of Reth let Kalmia go. He told her that under law he could not sanction her actions, but that he had long understood war-and justice-to be above the law. Then a strange cast had come over his storm gray eyes and he told her he was sorry to hear of her brother.
That strange look almost made her confess everything. If there was anyone who would understand her actions, surely it was he. But her fear of him kept her words in check, and she mumbled her thanks and left, heading straight back for the crumbling citadel cradled deep in the Chondalwood.
Morning had come and gone by the time she arrived back at the citadel, but she did not stop walking until she arrived at the door at the top of the white tower. Removing the shiny brass key from her pocket, she unlocked the door and stepped back. The door crashed open and the pale form of the ghoul she had trapped in the boy's bedroom scrambled toward her. Its yellow nails were filed sharp from clawing at the wood, and its body was ragged from pounding against the door, but it was ani shy;mate, which was more than could be said for its fellows.
When it reached her it halted and stood too still in front of her. Then its nostrils-ragged tears in its sunken flesh-flexed. Starting with her feet, it snuffled up the length of her, pausing longest at her neck, behind her ear, where it tasted the scent of her hair without touching her. Her skin crawled, but she held still, searching its dead eyes when she could see them for some sign of the paladin's taint. She found the ghoul's eyes empty. It was free- uncontrolled by man or god.
The General of Reth must have finally managed with magic what she hadn't been able to with herbs and cured the paladin's son. Purging Talona's plague from the boy's body broke the Lady's bargain. Had he not, the ghoul she faced would still be clawing to get to his fallen master's side, as per his last orders. Orders she had prevented him from carrying out.
'Brother,' Kalmia whispered. She reached her hands out but did not touch him. The ghoul regarded her, expressionless as always. Talona had warned her it would be this way. Her hands fell to her side. It was still worth it to extract her revenge. 'Come with me.' She could never forgive the General of Arrabar for what he had done. But neither could she destroy what he had created. Instead, she would make for herself a new life-one that included her dead sibling. 'We're going home.'
