To see if I really could fool Rami, I chose the face of a Yengishman and added the black ai’tendar of an enjarta. Once this was done, I climbed up onto the top of the wall and looked down to where Rami and my skeletons were waiting. She glanced up, expecting the figure silhouetted against the full moon to be me—which it was—but what she saw was a male Yengishman in the ai’tendar of an enjarta.
“Who the hell are you?” she hissed. “And who is the grandmaster of your sect?”
“That doesn’t matter,” I growled. “I killed your friend Vance, and now, I’m going to do the same to you.”
I sprang down from the wall, landing with an acrobatic roll, and when I came up from it, Rami had her sais out, and a murderous look gleamed like hard iron in her dark eyes.
“Then you will die,” she said, “slowly and painfully.”
She charged at me with a shriek, and in that moment, I knew that she truly believed that I was some rival enjarta who had just killed, well, me. I whipped out Grave Oath and traded a couple of blows with her in a flurry of frantic movements. This was interesting; so this was what it was like to go up against Rami in battle. She was fast, I knew that much, not as fast as me though.
“Is that the best you’ve got?” I taunted. “Your grandmaster must have been a worthless teacher.”
She screamed out a howl of rage and flew at me like a feral cat. Again, we traded a series of lightning-fast blows, sparks flying from her sais and my dagger as we danced in combat. Rami, in her eagerness to get at me, came in a little too close, and I was able to hook her arm in the crook of my elbow and disarm her of one of her sais. She tried to stab the other through my eyeball, but I caught her wrist and gave it a twist until she dropped the weapon. I then threw her onto the ground and pinned her down.
“Just kill me,” she gasped, tears filling her eyes. “If Vance is dead, I don’t want to live anymore.”
I figured the experiment had gone far enough. I pulled the Beauty Mirror out of my belt and tossed it onto the dew-damp grass. The moment I did, Rami’s eyes almost popped out of their sockets.
“Vance?”
“Sorry Rami,” I said, releasing her from my vice-like hold. “I guess I shouldn’t have done that. I just wanted to see how effective the Beauty Mirror’s magic was.”
“Effective enough to make me want to kill you,” she said with a sly smile, “and think that you were a Yengish enjarta.”
“That’s really what you saw?”
She nodded before laughing. “That was. . . the mirror. . . it’s incredible!”
“I know, right?” I smiled back at her before we got up and dusted ourselves off.
I picked up the Beauty Mirror, but this time, I wrapped it up in a rag before tucking it into my belt.
“Let’s get back to the camp,” I said. “We have preparations to make, while I’ve a ‘vampire’ to catch, a lordship to take back, and an uncle to kill.”
“And a goddess to resurrect,” Rami added.
“Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about Xayon,” I said. “And resurrecting her will be the first thing I do after I take care of my uncle. You have my word on that.”
With that, we slipped into the shadows of the woods, heading back to our camp. I had one last task to complete tonight, and then tomorrow, my invasion of Brakith would begin.
Chapter Thirty-One
When we got back to the camp, I decided to try the Beauty Mirror on someone who was Fated, just to see what sort of effect it would have on someone who had a natural resistance to magic. Elyse was bound by her magic to the Lord of Light, so I figured she’d make a good candidate for the experiment.
Once again, I held the mirror in my hands and saw a thousand different faces flickering ghost-like over mine. This time, I wanted to try something even wilder, so I picked a woman’s face. And not just any woman, an Arch-nun of the Church of Light. They were ranked higher than even bishops, the rank Elyse had become only recently.
I looked at my new hag-like reflection in the mirror and snickered. If this worked, it would be a bunch of fun.
I walked up to Elyse, who was sitting beside a small campfire and reading a Church of Light book. Ugh, I certainly didn’t support burning books at all, if but there was any literature in the world that deserved to become kindling for a bonfire, it was their books. For the act of deception I was about to perform, however, I had to pretend that I was as interested in it as Elyse was.
I walked over to her, changing my usual swagger to a limping shuffle. She looked up when she heard the sound and stared at me, her beautiful face scrunched into an expression of utter confusion.
“S-sister?” she stammered. “Wh-who are you, and what are you doing here? And why do I feel like I know you?”
“Is that any way to greet a fellow sister of the Lord of Light’s church? Where are you manners?”
“F-forgive me, sister,” she said uncertainly, her frown deepening. She was confused as hell; unlike Rami, Elyse could obviously tell that there was something off about me, but her immunity to magic wasn’t strong enough that she could see completely through the illusion. “It’s just that I feel like I know you so well, but I cannot
