City of Towers_ The Dreaming Dark - Keith Baker [59]
“Assist the others!” Pierce called out to Lei. He struggled with the crone, and slowly brought her hands together. She hissed in fury and redoubled her struggle. He brought his massive metal foot down on one of her rag-wrapped feet. She gasped, her eyes widening in pain—and he forced her left palm up to her face. The old woman turned to stone, frozen forever as she stared at her own third eye.
Daine couldn’t bring himself to strike a fellow Cyran, no matter how strange these people seemed to be. Monan had no such scruples, and he slashed at Daine with his long knife. Daine parried the blade, but even as he did so a raking pain blazed across his back. He side-stepped away from Monan and turned. A filthy dwarf with a vicious light in his eyes was right behind him. There was blood on his hands, and vicious talons protruded from his fingertips and the strange, twisted musculature of his arms.
“Flame!” Daine cursed, dodging another of Monan’s blows. “What are you people?”
Monan laughed, and both enemies charged. Gritting his teeth against the pain in his back, Daine held the dwarf at bay while lashing out with a powerful kick. He caught Monan in the chest and the twin staggered back, giving Daine a moment to focus on the dwarf. His foe moved with unnatural speed, smashing Daine’s hand and knocking his sword from his hand. The dwarf pressed forward, lashing at Daine’s legs with his claws.
Daine gasped and fell to one knee. While he hated the thought of striking one of his own, there was no choice. The dwarf would tear him apart. With his free hand, Daine reached out and grabbed the first thing he could—the beard of the feral dwarf. He yanked forward as hard as he could, and the unexpected indignity caught his foe off balance. Even as the dwarf slipped forward, Daine brought up his dagger and buried it in the dwarf’s throat. With a gurgle, the dwarf staggered back, claws scrabbling ineffectively at the knife buried in his neck.
Even as Daine rose to his feet, Monan was upon him, and now Daine was completely disarmed. He leaped out of the path of Monan’s blade and tried to spot his fallen sword. Monan continued to laugh, and the sound seemed to echo in Daine’s head, an unnatural reverberation that drowned out all natural thought. His vision blurred, and it seemed as though there were a dozen Monans dancing before him.
A blade lashed out, and it was all he could do to catch it with his forearm, pain lancing through him. The blade flashed in the light of the cold fire, and through the drowning laughter Daine knew the end was near.
A shadow flew past. The statue of the old woman smashed into Monan, slamming him down to the ground with a crunch of bone. Struggling to stay on his feet, Daine saw Pierce approaching. The warforged had hurled his petrified foe at Monan.
As Daine’s head began to clear, he grabbed Monan’s fallen knife and put his foot on the twin’s chest. Lei, Pierce, and Jode spread out around him.
“It’s over, Monan,” Daine said. “Tell me what this is about, and I’ll get you to a healer.”
Monan continued to cackle, but his mouth was full of blood. Daine slapped the man, hard. He grabbed Monan by the throat and brought the dagger into view. “Don’t make me hurt you, Monan.”
The twin laughed again, his voice a little weaker this time. “It’s Hugal,” he whispered, and then Daine’s mind exploded.
Daine staggered back. Wave upon wave of alien thoughts assailed his mind. A lifetime of memories, an overwhelming flood of images and sensations were trying to burrow their way into his brain. He fell to his knees, trying to raise his own memories as a defense—his grandfather shouting at his father, that last time he’d seen Alina ten years ago, the attack at Whitehearth.
“I know my name!” he said, and for a moment he believed it.
He was lying on a