rattled off a spell, and an earsplitting howl roiled the creature’s liquid body. It didn’t kill it, though.
Pincers stabbed and snapped, trying to shear her to pieces, then flowed together and became a set of gaping jaws big enough to swallow her whole. She cried Umberlee’s name, praying for rage and the power it brought, and lashed out with all her strength. The green coral tines of her weapon plunged deep into the roof of the elemental’s mouth. She reached inside herself, evoked another measure of the pure raw essence of soul and faith, and sent it blazing up the shaft. The spirit exploded into harmless water.
Once the threat disappeared, she realized Yzil was declaiming the rhyming words of a spell. His shadowy shield was gone. An elemental in the guise of a moray had him in its gnashing jaws and was chewing him to bloody shreds but without disrupting his concentration
The eel-thing wavered. Holes burst open at various points along its form as though several unseen blades had stabbed it all at once. It screamed and flew apart, and across the vault, its kindred suffered the same fate.
All but one. “Wearing the guise of a porpoise, it fled for the exit. Yzil called the trigger word, activating the magic pent in the arch. Seething with a hint of gnashing jaws, darkness bloomed in the opening.
Trapped, the elemental wheeled to face its foes. Yzil rattled off the opening words of another banishment. His body was a patchwork of gory wounds, but thanks to his vampirism, they’d already started to close.
“No!” said Tu’ala’keth. “Do not!”
Yzil abandoned the spell uncompleted. The spirit rushed him. Fortunately, the disembodied trident Tu’ala’keth had conjured remained in existence and, at her silent command, hurtled through the water to interpose itself between the porpoise-thing and its target. The elemental veered off to avoid being impaled.
“Why shouldn’t I kill it?” Yzil demanded.
“Because,” she replied, “it is unlikely the elementals found their way from their world to ours by themselves or would have cared about smashing the eggs even if they had. Someone conjured them, and if we break this one to our will, it can tell us who.”
“You have a point,’ said Yzil. “What about the V’greshtan binding?”
“If you carry it ready for the casting, I can supply the responses.”
They began the intricate contrapuntal incantation. The gathering magic turned the water hot one moment, chill the next. The elemental lunged at them repeatedly but couldn’t slip past the darting trident of force.
As Tu’ala’keth declaimed the final syllable, a complex symmetrical structure of glowing red lines and angles sizzled into existence around the elemental. It looked like a geometer’s model of an essential three-dimensional form rendered in light. Additional strands of power passed through the center of the cage, connecting the vertices defining one face with corresponding points elsewhere. Suddenly transfixed by dozens of the needle-thin scarlet beams, the spirit howled and thrashed.
“Submit,” said Yzil, “and I will lessen the pain.”
“I submit,” groaned the elemental, its voice like the hiss and rumble of the surf. Its porpoise body melted into shapelessness.
“Who sent you?” the devitan asked.
The spirit hesitated. “Master, you bound me, I acknowledge it, but I still bear another’s yoke as well. I cannot” Tu’ala’keth felt Yzil assert his will, bidding the magical cage to hurt its prisoner. The elemental broke off speaking to scream and flail anew.
When the paroxysm passed, Yzil said, “I control you now. I have the power to torture and kill you. I and no one else. Answer my question.”
The spirit shuddered as incompatible compulsions fought for dominance. Finally, it whispered, “Wraxzala.” Its liquid substance churned with agony.
“Wraxzala,” Yzil echoed, surprise in his voice.
“Who is that?” asked Tu’ala’keth. Her torn lips throbbed, and she evoked a small pulse of healing energy to blunt the discomfort.
“The vitan of one of the temples here in the city,” Yzil said. “She’s ambitious, like all of them, so it makes perfect sense that she’d try to discredit me. If His Holiness strips me of my offices, it makes room in the hierarchy for her to move up. I’m only surprised because I imagined Shex responsible for this particular treachery.”
“Because, being the Vitanar’s envoy, he seemed by far the greater threat.”
“Yes.”
“Well, then,” said Tu’ala’keth, “let us consider our options.”
CHAPTER 10
Shex glided back and forth in the comfortable suite of chambers Yzil hadno doubt grudginglyassigned him, while a half-grown locathah male cowered in a cranny in the coral. Shex had sent for the slave to be his supper then realized he felt too restless to eat.
His creed taught that self-possession was a fundamental virtue, for without it, calculation and guile were impossible. But he supposed that in his present circumstances, even a vitan could forgive himself a measure of excitement. For in a few hours, the Vitanar’s enemy would capitulate to him then His Holiness would reward Shex with Yzil’s offices and chattels.
Unless Yzil managed to end the threat to the eggs.
But that was impossible, surely. The devitan had tried repeatedly and failed. He wouldn’t fare any better now just because a shalarin, of all things, had pounced out of nowhere to assist him. At first, Tu’ala’keth’s intrusion had rattled Shex, but only because it was so unexpected. She was just a slave creature and the servant of an inferior power. It was preposterous to imagine her playing any sort of decisive role in the affairs of ixitxachitls.
Shex’s belly gurgled, and he wondered if perhaps he could bring himself to drink something after all. He rounded on the locathah, advanced on it in leisurely fashion, and savored its wide-eyed, cringing dread.
Maybe after he slaked his thirst, he should give some thought to what might be causing the city’s problem and what a more resourceful devitan might do to solve it. For after all, it would be his puzzle to unravel soon enough.
He opened his jaws. The locathah whimpered and shuddered but offered no resistance. It understood its only chance of survival lay in capitulation. In the hope that its master, if not annoyed with it, might stop short of draining all its blood.
Then, outside the apartments, voices sounded. Shex pivoted toward the doorway.
A water elemental in the wavering, translucent semblance of a porpoise raced through the opening. Alarmed, the vitan retreated and rattled off the first line of a prayer of protection.
But the spirit made no effort to attack. Instead, it sank lower in the water, abasing itself before him. “Save me, Master!” it cried.
Plainly in furious pursuit of the elemental, Tu’ala’keth, Yzil, and a dozen of the latter’s guards burst into the suite. “By the Great Ray!” the devitan cried. “I should have suspected you, Shex, but I never guessed.”
Shex felt a flutter of incipient fear in his belly and struggled to quash the emotion before it could shake his composure. “Suspected me of what, Devitan? I don’t understand what’s happening here, but I know I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“You can’t lie your way out of it,” Yzil said, “not with your familiar groveling before you. I’m pleased to report the waveservant and I exterminated all the others, before they could destroy more of the eggs, but this one escaped and fled to its master for protection. That worked out nicely, for it led us right to you.”
“This is some sort of misunderstanding,” said Shex. Or, more likely, it was a trick! “I didn’t conjure this elemental or any other.”
His body riddled with half-healed puncture wounds, Yzil swam closer. “Give it up, Vitan. Everyone understands you had abundant reason to make a covert attack on Exzethlix. You coveted my domain for yourself and believed that if you made me appear incapable of defending it, the Vitanar would award it to you.”
“I’m glad,” said Shex, “you recall my relationship with His Holiness. As his envoy, I’m untouchable.”
“In most circumstances, yes.” Yzil glided nearer. “After committing treason of this magnitude, no.”
“The allegation is absurd. But if you believe otherwise, I demand a trial.”
