'I don't care,' Egil said, worrying at his arm.
'I do,' Nix said, and stood. 'Let's go see.'
Egil considered, sighed, stood, and joined his friend.
They picked their way through the moonlit ruins until they reached one of the highest parts that ringed the glass expanse. Both of them were skilled climbers, and even without gear they reached the peak.
Nix spotted Rakon out on the glass, walking among the reflected moon and stars. The sorcerer incanted a spell, touched a hand to the glass, and thin veins of green light snaked out from his touch and wormed deeply into the translucent surface of the glass before fading out.
'Look like feelers almost,' Egil said. He was still breathing heavily.
Rakon rose, moved off twenty paces, and repeated the process. Again jagged lines of sickly green lit up the subsurface of the glass sea.
'He's searching for something,' Nix said. 'Something under the glass.'
'Gods,' Egil said. His voice sounded tense.
'I know, it's-'
'Not that,' Egil said, putting a hand on Nix's shoulder and turning him around. ' That.'
Behind them, lit eerily in the green light of the Mages' Moon, the ruins-dotted ground outside the ring that bordered the sea of glass crawled with so many Vwynn it looked as if the landscape itself was undulating. They prowled through the ruins, lithe, inhuman forms picking their way through the megaliths, their slit eyes always on the circular border of ruins that encircled the mirror. There were thousands of them, a horde of fangs and teeth and scales.
'Gods,' Nix echoed.
'Indeed,' Egil said. 'Why do they wait, I wonder?'
'Rakon said this was a holy place,' Nix said. 'Maybe they fear it?'
'They don't seem the religious type.'
Nix chuckled. 'Neither do you, and yet your head wears the eye of a god.'
'A dead god,' Egil said.
'Your words, not mine. I'll not blaspheme in this place. That many Vwynn is going to make leaving here a complicated affair.'
'Aye. I need to get down, Nix.'
'Well enough.'
They picked their way back down the mountain of stones, Egil struggling far more than Nix would have expected.
'What's wrong with you?' Nix asked, when they reached the bottom. 'Egil?'
He took his friend by the arm and recoiled at the febrile heat he felt.
Egil opened his mouth to speak, but instead sagged to the ground.
'Egil!' Nix said.
The priest's eyes rolled in his head and he sagged. Nix caught him to prevent a hard fall, and lowered the priest's limp weight to the ground.
'Baras!' he called. 'Up! Everyone up!'
CHAPTER TWELVE
Nix rolled Egil over onto his back. The priest's eyes were closed, his breathing rapid and shallow. He looked pale. Nix cursed. How had he missed it before? The stumbles, the breathing.
'Are you sick? Wounded? What?'
No answer. He tried to imagine his life without Egil and couldn't, no more than he could imagine it without Mamabird.
Baras, Jyme, and the other guards rushed over, blades drawn.
'What is it?' Baras asked. 'Oh, shite.'
'What happened?' Jyme asked.
Nix gently tapped his friend's face.
'Egil? Egil?'
Egil's eyelids fluttered open. Glassy eyes fixed on Nix and the priest smiled.
'Bit,' the priest said, and tried to lift his left arm. 'Like Derg.'
'Shite, shite, shite,' Nix said, and pushed up the sleeves of Egil's cloak and shirt. His forearm was black, as big around as Nix's calf. The guards gasped.
'Why didn't you say something? Godsdammit, Egil!' The priest must have been bitten by the same Vwynn that bit Derg. 'We could've used the jasper on you.'
He felt the eyes of Baras and the guards on him but he didn't care. If he'd had to choose between one of them and Egil, it would've been no choice at all.
The big priest raised his right arm and patted Nix on the shoulder, the gesture sloppy, fading. 'That peasant needed the coin more than us.'
At first Nix did not understand Egil's point, and then he remembered the wagon driver outside of the Slick Tunnel, the silver pieces Nix had given him.
Grace, Egil had said. Alms.
'You fakking idiot. You godsdamned idiot. You're not even a real priest!'
Egil smiled, closed his eyes. 'Do you think I'll see Gretta and Misa?'
Nix could not bring himself to reply. He sat over his friend, head bowed, mind racing. He had nothing left in his bag of tricks. For once, it'd come up empty. He'd come up empty.
'Maybe we should move him to the fire?' Jyme offered.
'The fire won't help, you fakkin' whoreson,' Nix spat. But maybe the sorcerer could. 'Get Rakon, Baras!'
'What?' Baras asked.
'Rakon!' Nix shouted. 'Get over here right now!'
The sorcerer was still out on the glass, but not too far from them.
'Gods, mind your tongue, Nix,' Baras whispered.
'Fak that and fak you! Rakon! Get over here! Now!'
'My lord!' Baras shouted. 'We need assistance!'
Rakon left off what he'd been doing on the glass and made his way to the gathered men. His face looked drawn, strained. He stared down at Egil.
'He's wounded?' Rakon asked.
'He's poisoned,' Nix said. 'Same as your man, Derg. I used the enspelled jasper on your man and I don't have another. What can you do?'
Rakon looked taken aback by Nix's directness. 'What can I do?'
'Am I unclear? What can you do to help him?'
For a time, Rakon did not answer. Again those turning gears behind his eyes.
'You won't like what I can do.'
'Try me.'
'There's a price.'
'Name it.'
'He's nearly gone. For him to live, someone else must die.'
'A transference,' Nix said. He'd heard of such magic.
'Yes,' Rakon said. 'A transference. One life for another.'
The guards shifted from foot to foot. Jyme cursed softly.
Rakon looked meaningfully back to the campsite, a question in his raised eyebrows.
Nix, too, looked back to the campsite, licked his thin lips.
Rakon put a voice to Nix's thoughts.
