Spinner of Lies

mist.

Not nearly far enough down that slope, Demascus fought. Golden light leaked from the Whorl of Ioun on Demascus’s left thumb. Exorcessum flashed in his grip. The Veil wrapped his left forearm, and a dozen god-given charms dangled from his braided hair. He was the Sword of the Gods. His role was to terminate those who had been selected by gods and fate to die.

However, that day his burden was not to slay; it was to save.

Demascus stood beneath the lintel of a silver gate that opened into the mountain’s heart. The gate trembled with the domain’s turmoil. But while he stood in its mouth, the gate could not collapse. The arch-shaped charm he wore in his hair prevented it. The gate had already suffered a dozen voracious assaults from lesser cataclysm dragons roused by devilish pacts. And he had broken each new attack on the length of his blade.

Terrified souls streamed from the gate’s mouth. Dressed in sheer robes of white and gold, and having spent uncounted years in the warm embrace of their divine benefactor, they were unprepared for cataclysm. Yet they grasped at even the smallest chance for survival. Demascus was providing that opportunity. As the refugees reached the gate, they were pulled up into the sky by servitor angels and ferried away like a cloud of dandelion seeds in the wind. Most would escape. But only if Demascus proved his worth.

A louder roar pierced all the others. The deva’s eyes rose to the tumbling line high above. The distant avalanche was approaching with alarming speed, for it contained another cataclysm dragon-on an order of magnitude more dangerous than those he’d so far reduced to rubble. It writhed within the mountainside on the move, a part of the greater disaster surrounding it. Its wings were the vanguard of pounding stone, its voice the bellow of suffocating rock, and its lashing tail the enveloping pall of dust that would eventually settle on the defeated. Draconic only in broad outline, it was an animate collection of jagged stone, snow, and packed ash. The dragon’s eyes, fangs, and claws were diamond crystals, flashing with static discharge.

“Lords of light and shadow!” said Demascus. Even for one such as him, who had seen so much, this enemy was something unique. Despite the fact that he stood half in light and half in shadow, completely wrapped in his power, the deva knew a moment of disquiet. The creature was more than cataclysm-it was final apocalypse. The Veil of Wrath and Knowledge revealed its name: Nebiru the Falling Star. The Whorl of Ioun provided the rest in windings of quick recollection. Nebiru was an apocalypse dragon-a catastrophic wyrm who’d lived too long and grown too powerful.

Somehow Nebiru had been persuaded to leave its lair of lightless hollows that composed creation’s debris. Which meant that no matter what he did, Demascus was fated to lose this fight. And the god whose subjects the deva was charged to protect … were as good as dead.

“Whorl of Ioun,” he said. “Remember.” The ring on his finger became like ice as it pulled in fragments of moods, scenes, and, most important, abilities that Demascus had unlocked in his latest incarnation. It was an imperfect vessel of all his previous selves. Nearly half of his personal memories were lost in each transfer. But the rest survived. The ring was the bridge to becoming himself again.

“Exorcessum, find me when I fall so we’re reunited again in a future far from here.” Though he didn’t have to command his sword-his implements would find him again regardless-he had flashes of recollection of other objects that had occasionally turned up every few incarnations: a silver belt, a cape of shade, and sometimes a dull metal strongbox with a relief of skulls and flower petals. Those hadn’t appeared this time. Why? Impossible to know. Just like he didn’t know how, or even remember who had first given him his panoply of weapons and items, or why he’d been selected to receive them. They were simply part of him. They came with his office: Sword of the Gods.

The runes of his blade glimmered as the avalanche of the apocalypse above thundered closer. Each time he took a divine commission, the runes were renewed. Which was convenient-at least, it would be to the version of himself that would next wield Exorcessum.

The evacuation was half complete when Nebiru fell on Demascus. He accepted his lot-his task had been to try, not to succeed. The refugees exiting the silver gate screamed as they, their angel porters, and Demascus their protector were covered in a mountain’s worth of glacier, crushed rock, and ash exhaled from the maw of an apocalypse dragon.

Demascus opened his eyes on darkness. Images of animate stone and sliding snow chased around his mind like maddened gnats. Without connection, without context, and without any clear relationship to anything, the images accumulated and drifted across his consciousness …

He coughed up grit. He tried to spit, but his mouth was too dry. Why was it so dark? He shook his head to clear his brain fog. Where was he? More important, when and who was he? He remembered fighting a drow matron and … an unbeatable end-of-days dragon. Both had dropped a death-dealing amount of rock on his head. But … which one was most recent? In which incarnation was he? His heart thudded as he wrestled with the fear of being unmoored from himself. He couldn’t see anything. Something pinned his legs. The air was thick, not just with dust, and each breath felt like a foot on his chest. It was going bad, he realized. If he didn’t escape, it would be academic which incarnation he was …

The fact that he was still alive told him a great deal, actually. And the nature of the stone around him was revealing; it wasn’t rearing up, animate and hungry to smother him. Which argued that his memory of the mountaintop was a fragment recollection only. Memories of Akanul unfolded in his mind’s eye. Chant, Riltana, the city of Airpsur and its stormy queen … Yes. He sighed in relief, then coughed. No wonder he was confused; Chenraya had dropped a cavern roof on him! His subconscious had matched it up with an earlier incarnation’s similar experience. He pushed away the unwanted memories of trying to save flashing, angelic beings blowing into a silver sky. It wasn’t him. It happened a long time ago. Just a dusty recollection. And one where he’d died in a rock fall.

That’s not going to happen here, he thought. I’m going to live.

He tried to move his legs again. Nothing doing. Merciful lords, please don’t let that be what happens here. Demascus concentrated on his heartbeat. Still too fast, but it was proof that life still clung to this shell. And he wasn’t helpless. Far from it. And …

“Veil of Wrath and Knowledge,” he said, his voice cracking with thirst. “Are you with me?” A glimmer ran through the threads of fabric wrapped around his left forearm. “More,” he urged it. The wrap brightened like a turned-up lamp wick, until golden light spilled across Demascus.

He was in a cramped space. The ceiling was a mass of boulders. They were lodged against a massive stalagmite that’d fallen next to him. The entire cavity was probably only five feet in diameter, and half that tall. One of Exorcessum’s hilts was just visible, protruding from a drift of gravel, just beyond his reach. And …

His legs were caught under the same stalagmite that had partially shielded him. But he had light. Which meant even the shadow of his own reaching hand could serve him.

He slipped into the crack of dimness the shadow offered. Quick as blinking and he’d shifted a half pace. His legs were free! But he still couldn’t feel them. He thrashed, and they moved. He bent down in the cramped space and slapped his thighs, hard. He imagined curling and uncurling his toes. A faint tingle came first, which heralded the onslaught of tiny daggers. He smiled, not minding the pain. It meant his legs had only gone to sleep under the weight of the fall, not been crushed to pulp.

“Now … lords of shadow, how am I going to get out of here?” He pulled himself over uneven rubble, staying clear of an ettercap’s splayed arm. The greater part of the creature’s body was beneath an oblong boulder. He didn’t feel sorry for it. He might soon be joining the thing. At least it had died quickly, probably instantly. He might linger for hours, gasping at the bad air, until he passed on.

Demascus assumed Chenraya had stayed well clear of the collapse. If she triggered it, then she’d undoubtedly done so only to trap him. She’d known they were coming, or that someone like them would investigate. More important-was he close enough to the edge of the fall to dig himself free? He couldn’t use shadow to escape; he had to see where he was going to travel between discontinuities of light. His bubble of stale air was completely sheathed in stone.

He probed the boulders making up the boundary of his confinement, looking for anything promising and hoping the prodding wouldn’t bring the whole thing down. He made a complete circuit of the tiny enclosure but located nothing. Worse, he was having a harder time catching his breath. He was quickly losing air. Better not think about that. Yes, if he died, he’d return in a few years-but everything he’d learned in this life would be gone.