Azure bonds - Kate Novak [175]
Dragonbait, already standing in the center of the room, spun about in obvious confusion. A brimstone stench emanated from his body.
"Brandobas's Beard!" Olive exclaimed, already near enough to see what useful things might be left on the corpses. "They're you!"
Uneasily, Alias walked closer to the bodies. They were all as similar as a batch of bowls a potter might throw in a day. Each face had the same features, some were thinner some wider, but they all had her features. Each face was framed with hair some shade of red, from reddish black to strawberry blonde. Their skin tones covered the spectrum from the pale flesh of the north to the swarthy complexions of the south.
Their dress was more varied. A body in the heavy armor of Mulhorand lay beside one in wolfhide robes and the headpiece of the far north. The sultry slitted dress of a Waterdeep courtesan-something perhaps from Cassana's closet-adorned a body one bier over from another dressed in the conservative robes of a Moonshae druid. A weapon lay beside each, a mace or sword or sickle or dagger. One figure, wrapped in black, was equipped with eastern weapons whose uses were unfamiliar to Alias.
Yet thev were all her. Earlier models? Alias wondered.
Then she shook her head grimly. No, later improvements. How foolish to think that they would stop at just one. A few minutes ago, when she'd thought herself unique, she'd been certain she could prove her worth, justify her own existence. But what if she was just one of a pack, a herd of Aliases to be unleashed on the unsuspecting worlds?
She forced herself to stand closer to one of the bodies- one dressed as a cleric of Tymora in robes of white trimmed with blue, with her holy symbol-a silver disk-hanging on a chain about her neck. Alias fought back the queasiness in her stomach and touched the body, grabbing the right wrist and turning it to reveal the underside of the arm.
The pattern of serpents and waves was there, as motionless as a tattoo placed on a piece of dead flesh. The only sigil in the pattern was the bull's eve of Phalse's master. There was no blank spot at the wrist for Nameless. The flesh was clammy, like clay.
Akabar came up behind her and put a hand on her shoulder. "Dead?" he asked.
"Dead," she echoed, "or at least not alive. Or less alive than me." She shook with anger. "This is all I was to them. A thing to be copied over and over."
"Easy now," Akabar said, squeezing her shoulder gently. "They're no more like you than a painting of you would be. If you want, we can destroy them."
"No!" Alias snapped. "Whatever they are, I will not see them destroyed. They're no more… evil than I am. I'm going to kill the last master and lay them to rest that way."
Akabar stood silent for a moment, then nodded. "As you wish."
Alias could tell he was trying to determine if her reaction was a natural one or another pattern, like her obsession to reach Yulash had been.
Olive shook her head, disapproving of Akabar's tone. Just like a mage. Thinking too much with the head, not enough with the heart. Wonder how he'd feel if we offered to burn up his brothers?
Dragonbait snapped out of his shen state. He could not understand what his senses were telling him about the women laid out before him. Each body possessed a living soul, but the saurial could not sense a trace of a spirit in any of them. Is that all that separates them from death-or birth? he wondered.
"Is the courtyard over there, Dragonbait?" Alias asked, pointing to a second pair of crystal doors at the far end of the hall.
The saurial nodded.
Alias approached these doors and inspected them. They glowed in the same fashion, but there was something different about them. They made her uneasy. Then she realized why.
They drew her. As with the elven wall in Yulash, she could not resist moving toward them. She wanted to open them. What she sought lay beyond them in the courtyard.
She glanced at the others. Akabar pulled a small bundle from his belt, fishing out