Azure bonds - Kate Novak [180]
Alias rose without taking her eyes from the head, brandishing her bloody dagger. Dragonbait's sword lay on her right. She spoke, trying to cover her movement as she edged slowly toward it.
"You're awfully quiet now, Phalse. Run out of threats and taunts?" She noticed that her kick had dimpled its side.
"I'm listening-to the portal. Can't you hear it calling to you? Don't you feel drawn into it?"
"You wish, Phalse," Alias said with a laugh. "You don't think my sisters out there can do it, so you want me to believe I'm expendable. None of them ever received the mark of Moander, did they? They can't get to Moander the way I can, can they?"
"Not as easily as you, One, but they will try. I will send them, one at a time, until one of them succeeds. You could spare them all of that pain and agony. How can you resist the challenge?"
"Forget it, Phalse. You're not going to talk me into it."
Phalse's words, though, managed to split her attention between the beholder and the portal, so she didn't notice Phalse's ebony body behind her until it was too late. It struck her with a hard, powerful swing of its handless arm.
Alias fell to the ground like a sack, only a few feet from Dragonbait's sword. The giant torso loomed over her with Akabar dangling from its claw like a rag doll. Dragonbait lay motionless on the floor. Olive was still out cold.
Phalse's head laughed as it drifted until it fitted itself securely in the depression between the ebony form's shoulders. "This torso was also a prototype of sorts, both part and not part of me, useful as a carrier and warrior. But not as good as you."
The united Phalse, body and head, bent over her, the sucker mouths opening and closing in anticipation. Alias reached for Dragonbait's sword, grasped its hilt in both hands, and swung it low, near the floor. The sword passed cleanly through one of Phalse's ankles and chopped into the other. The body toppled over, and Alias rolled away as Phalse separated himself from the fallen ebony torso.
"You spoil all my fun," said the huge, bloated head. 'Now we must end this." He charged at her.
Alias faked a stumble to one knee, and the head swooped lower, still moving quickly. Alias leaped to her feet, stabbing with Dragonbait's sword as if it were a dagger-right into the central blue eye.
Phalse hissed from all his remaining mouths, and Alias thought she had beaten him, when suddenly several more mouth-stalks sprang from the head and engulfed her. The large, lower mouth tried to bite her. She placed her free arm in the space between the skewered eye and the mouth, try ing to remove Dragonbait's sword, but the blade was stuck. She succeeded only in keeping the awful main maw from snapping at her flesh.
*****
Dragonbait recovered his senses as Alias was grappling with Phalse's head. This was her battle; she had asked him not to interfere.
The saurial staggered from the courtyard and into the former feast hall to stand between the rows of bodies. He agreed with Alias that her copies should not he destroyed.
The saurial thought back to the evening when he and Alias had been branded, when his soul had been stretched and torn until Alias had suddenly become possessed of life and a soul, and, unexpectedly, a spirit.
Just how did I do it? he asked himself. Was it my prayers, my stubborn defiance of the evil around me, my acceptance that death was near?
*****
The forest of mouths encircled Alias, blocking her vision, and she and Phalse spun about dizzily. Alias became suddenly aware that they stood on the balcony.
Catching her foot against the wall, Alias twisted at the waist, slinging the head about by Dragonbait's sword. She let go of the sword's hilt.
The torque created by her spin was enough to rip the mouths from her