dagger-shaped hole in its abdomen.
Demascus raised Exorcessum, intent on decapitating the oni with one perfect stroke-
“Pashra, behind you!” came a woman’s voice. Demascus flinched, because the voice came from just above and behind him.
The oni ducked beneath the deva’s swing and shuffled a quarter turn out from its original position. Instead of standing directly between Demascus and Riltana, the oni now formed one point of a triangle made up of Demascus, Riltana, and an oni apparently named Pashra. The oni was going to be trouble. Not to mention all the spiders trying to swarm over the windsoul. As well as whoever had warned the oni, someone he’d failed to-
He slapped at a burning sting on his neck. A spider fell away. No, not a spider; its tiny head wasn’t arachnid. It was a woman’s head with white hair!
“Gods!” Disgust pulled his face into a grimace.
Pashra laughed. The spider scuttled, but Demascus stomped on the tiny hybrid abomination. It popped under his boot like a rotten egg and squirted a messy green fluid everywhere. The tiny head spoke once more in a dying wheeze, “You’ve earned the enmity of the Queen of the Demonweb Pits, subcreature …”
That’s probably not good, Demascus thought.
“Chenraya!” the oni exclaimed, his delight transmuted to consternation.
Demascus took the opportunity to draw a deep line of blood down the creature’s right arm with Exorcessum’s rune-carved edge.
The oni howled and retreated a halfstep, parrying Demascus’s follow-up swing with a clang of iron.
“What’s a Demonweb queen?” asked Riltana, who’d taken advantage of Demascus’s attack to slip up close to the oni. She planted a dagger into Pashra’s left kidney.
The oni howled.
A familiar joy infused the deva, as the rhythm of conflict beat in his blood.
Demascus closed with the oni … then stumbled. Uh oh. He couldn’t feel his feet. And his fingers were going numb. And why was everything suddenly all misty? He realized the Hells-spawned spider had poisoned him!
He dropped to his knees. Exorcessum was nearly jarred from his grip. Nausea wrenched his stomach with a gruesome green claw and pulled. His battle elan slipped away. It couldn’t compete with the urge to sickup all over the floor.
“Demascus!” yelled Riltana. The oni turned its back on the deva and tried to divide the windsoul in two with a swift downward stroke. She deflected the blade with her short sword. The stroke’s force sent her staggering back into the throng of spiders.
Merciful lords, he thought, give me the strength to ignore his insult. He gagged, and drooled a line of spittle. Breakfast was about to make an encore appearance-
A white rune on Exorcessum flared. When it washed across him his nausea vanished. Feeling returned to his hands and feet, and a little strength. The rune dimmed, becoming more a scar than a design. Still on his knees, he drew a gaping wound diagonally up the oni’s back with Exorcessum’s tip. Blood poured from the wound. It was the oni’s turn to collapse.
“Demascus!” yelled Riltana. “Get these things off me!” Spiders mobbed her entire lower body. The windsoul’s eyes were wide with terror as she swatted and rolled, but the insects continued to pile on.
He came to his feet and stepped around the motionless and bleeding oni. Riltana was hyperventilating. How was he going to extract her before they chewed her to the bone or poisoned her to death? Heartbeats counted!
He let Exorcessum clatter to the floor. He ripped the Veil from his neck and whipped the end so that it swirled around Riltana, spiders and all, wrapping them in an embrace of the Veil of Wrath and Knowledge.
The oni’s shadow beneath the door had given him entry into the office, a shadow forged by the wavering office lantern. That same light, and the shadow of a dead spider the size of a wheelbarrow, would provide his next stepping-stone. The question was, could he bring Riltana along but not the spiders?
He stepped, willing his friend to accompany him across the gap of nothingness that lay beneath the world’s facade and to leave mandibles and web-shrouds behind. He flashed into a fell echo of the room, where surfaces were uncertain and shadows writhed like centipedes up the walls.
A weight like a thousand-pound anchor yanked him up short. It tried to drag him down into the darkness from which there was no escape. Soul-draining cold sucked at his determination to retain his grip. His mind and body ached to let go of the weight and escape. But he didn’t let go, because the burden was Riltana, and to abandon her here would be the death of her. Or worse.
He screamed into the void of gloom, straining his entire spirit. He shuffled, bent-backed and head down, pulling on the stretching fabric of his scarf …
And stepped back into the warehouse office, only three paces from his origin, with Riltana in tow. Sans spiders. They’d made half the trip, though, but he’d shed them in the Shadowfell, where he’d nearly lost the windsoul, too.
“Shank me with a dull spoon,” she murmured. “Don’t
Demascus tugged the Veil from Riltana as he wheeled to face the wounded oni.
Pashra was gone. He’d left behind only a slick of spilled blood.
“The bastard got out while the getting was good,” muttered Riltana.
“What happened?” he asked. “Even for someone with your talent for angering the natives, I’d expect you would have thought better of mouthing off to an oni.” He helped Riltana to her feet.
The windsoul shook her head. “As if I know what the Hells an oni is. When Pashra caught me going through his desk, he looked like a watersoul. Then when I saw his shadow didn’t match his guise, I called him on it.”
“So he had no choice but to attack you?”
“Um … yeah. I know, I know. Sometimes I can be a little too, um … impulsive.” She rubbed at her eyes.
“That, or maybe you just have special needs. You know, like some nobles’ children?”
“Which nobles’ children?”
“The inbred ones they ship off to those special manors in the country …” He took a step back so when Riltana tried to swat him he was out of range. Or he tried to; he actually caught his foot on a dead spider and only just managed not to fall on his face.
It was Riltana’s turn to steady him. “You all right?”
“A spider bit me. One with a … a woman’s head.”
“Yeah, I saw that one. Pashra was talking to it earlier. It said something about, um, demonwebs? You know about those, too?”
“Demonwebs …” The phrase was familiar, but its meaning danced just out of reach. He shook his head and continued, “The spider’s bite was poison. I neutralized it, but a little venom is still in my blood. I probably wouldn’t have noticed, except that dragging you clear of those spiders really taxed me. I’m not sure I could do it again.”
Riltana said, her tone suddenly serious, “Thank you for that. I nearly lost my head when those things started crawling on me. If you hadn’t … anyhow, thanks.”
He nodded. “Happy to help. Let’s see what kinds of secrets Pashra and his little woman-headed spider were so desperate to keep.” Demascus retrieved his sword, then remembered he’d dropped Exorcessum’s scabbard just outside in the rain. He sighed, and leaned the blade against the desk.
“I was trying to be circumspect last time,” the windsoul said. “Trying to make it look like no one had been here. I guess we don’t have to worry about that anymore.” She opened a drawer and pulled out sheafs of parchment. She scanned each one, then tossed them, one at a time, over her shoulder.
He joined her. Each parchment, tracking grain density, pay, and the fluctuating rates of exchange rates in Cormyr versus Impiltur, and so on, went fluttering behind him to land in a growing drift. Lone spiders occasionally crawled aimlessly across the desk, but they were squashed nicely with a swat. He’d developed a real hatred of crawling, many-legged things during his time in Akanul.
“Look,” Riltana said. She pointed down into an open drawer.
“What?” He leaned over.
“False bottom.”
Then he saw it-faint seams outlined the shape of a rectangle.
The windsoul reached into the cavity and pressed along one side. The panel popped out. Inside the narrow
