She brought the axe around and buried it in Toytere’s chest. The halfling gagged. Sithe wrenched the blade free in a rain of blood, then calmly raised it over Myrin.
Myrin screamed-for Toy or for herself, Kalen couldn’t say.
None of this made any sense. Kalen didn’t know what was going on, but he saw Myrin in danger and he had to move. Yet he simply could not. He was so tired.
He heard a faint melody-a haunting siren’s song-leading him back from darkness. At first, he thought it Toytere, but the halfling was thrashing his way into death not five paces distant. Who …?
Strength flowed into Kalen and he could move again. It hurt, but he ignored the pain. Myrin needed him. Weaponless, spitting blood, he forced himself to his feet.
He lunged and raised his hand to stop the deadly blow even as it fell.
Sithe’s axe struck his arm. He expected searing pain as it cleaved his limb in two. Instead, the axe met resistance-a gray radiance that surrounded his forearm like a vambrace. The genasi looked as shocked as he felt.
Kalen had not won a thousand fights in a thousand stinking alleys by hesitating. He brought his other fist around with all his strength into Sithe’s face. The warrior staggered back, her deadly axe falling wide.
Instantly, he fell to the floor, groping for Myrin. “Gods,” he said. “Are you-?”
Myrin’s eyes glowed blue in the depths of her blood-smeared face. Toytere’s blood, he realized. Gods …
She looked up, past his shoulder, and he realized Sithe stood over them once again. “Destroyers
Kalen had no strength left. He tried to put as much of himself as possible between that brutal axe and Myrin, hoping to buy her a heartbeat to escape.
Myrin, as it happened, had other plans.
“Give it to me!” From under Kalen, she grasped Sithe’s leg. Runes raced up her arms as she drew the genasi’s power into herself. “Give me your darkness! Give it all!”
Sithe’s mouth opened, but she could not speak. She fell to one knee, weakened by Myrin’s spellscar, and the wizard easily pulled her to floor and clambered atop her.
“This isn’t your fate,” Myrin said to the exhausted genasi. “You can change. You can-” The air sucked in and Myrin vanished as though she’d never existed.
Kalen’s heart stopped for two whole beats before he realized what had happened: Myrin had taken whatever power Sithe used to vanish and reappear.
Sithe lay unmoving, seemingly stunned. Kalen breathed again.
“Little Dren …”
Two paces distant, Toytere wheezed. The halfling lay in a spreading pool of blood, torn and broken. His face had elongated-his beard growing thicker. It was the infamous wererat blood he bore-that all leaders of the Dead Rats carried. His right arm, where before Kalen had seen a bandage, sprouted thick crystalline patches.
The Fury.
Now Kalen understood. Toytere had nearly lost himself in the depths of the plague, but he’d fought free. He’d saved Myrin, simply by demanding Sithe cut him down instead.
“Did I-” Toytere said, his eyes rolling. “Little Dren … did I do it?”
Kalen nodded.
“Fancy,” Toytere whispered. “Thief like me, passing up that much coin. Must be something the matter with me, no?”
“Who was it?” Kalen asked. “Who hunts her?”
“Eden.” Toytere shook his head. “But someone hired her. Don’t know who.”
“Of course.” Kalen had suspected as much. “What you did was very brave, Toytere-worthy of Cellica.”
“Pah,” the halfling said. “Me sister would have brained me as soon as let me consider it. But then, she be better than both of us, no?”
Kalen smiled weakly.
“Lady Darkdance?” Toytere said. “Where be she?”
“She’ll be back.” Even as he said it, Kalen felt the hint of fear clinging to his fingers-like a phantom sensation he wanted to ignore but could not.
If Myrin had taken Sithe’s power, shouldn’t she have returned by now?
“Hold, Toytere,” Kalen said. “Don’t expire just yet.”
“Easy to say for a body that don’t feel pain or fear.”
Kalen’s anxiety belied those words, however. Where was Myrin?
As if prompted by that thought, the wall of fire collapsed. On the other side, Vindicator burned a swath through the Dead Rats. Rhett, lathered in sweat, fought in a shrinking circle of the thieves. Distracted, they turned their attention to the middle of the room. The fighting died away.
Seeing Toytere in a pool of his own blood silenced the Rats. Seeing Kalen so grievously wounded brought Rhett running. He reached for Kalen, but the man waved him away. “Help Toytere,” he said. “He needs it more than I.”
Kalen looked to Sithe, who lay motionless on the floor. “Where is she?”
The genasi was staring blankly at the ceiling, but he saw her chest rising and falling regularly. “She is lost,” Sithe said.
“Lost where?” Kalen asked. “Bring her back.”
“The void.” Sithe shook her head. Tears leaked from her eyes. “I-”
Kalen grasped Sithe’s wrists. “Send me there,” he said. “I’ll bring her back.”
The genasi looked to him, as though noticing him for the first time. “You cannot.”
“Do it.” Kalen pulled Toytere’s jagged carving knife from Sithe’s leg and put it to her throat. “Or I’ll send you there myself.”
Sithe searched his face for a moment, then nodded. Silently, she pressed her hand to his chest. At first, he felt only a niggling tingle all along his skin. Then the world drew in upon itself and blackness fell.
Nothing.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
26 KYTHORN (NIGHT)
In the void, there was nothing. No light.
No sound.
Nothing.
It was exactly as his mantra said.
“A darkness where there is only me,” he said, but his words vanished without reaching his ears. He repeated them in his head, just to assure himself he existed.
This was, he realized, the end result of his sickness. One day, he would feel nothing-would
Madness closed in around him in the sucking dark. He could not feel his heart racing, but he imagined it. He saw himself breaking into countless figments and dispersing into the endless abyss. Never existing-never being.
The anger, he thought. The anger was still there. He grasped it and clung to it. His rage gave him form and sense.
He searched for Myrin. She had to be here somewhere, he thought-she had taken Sithe’s power, but she couldn’t control it. He remembered well when she had absorbed the slaying spells of a wizard far her superior- how the spell had gone wild and nearly slain him and countless bystanders.
Just like that, as though thinking of her brought them closer, Kalen sensed her. Blue fire filled the void, reaching out from him like tendrils toward something-someone. Someone alone, afraid, and despairing of a way out.
