Viper's Kiss - Lisa Smedman [120]
Arvin smiled grimly. "A rogue tried to entice me with a similar offer a few days ago," he said. "He's dead now."
The demon clenched its fist-causing the swords to reappear-and pointed one of them at Arvin. "Unbind me!" it roared.
Arvin gripped the gauntlet with sweaty hands. "No."
"We seem to have reached an impasse," the demon hissed.
Outside the chapel, just beyond the spot where one of the soldier's bodies lay, Arvin saw a flash of silver: light, glinting off a polished breastplate. Marasa stepped into view in the doorway, her lips moving as she whispered a spell, her left hand-clad in a silver gauntlet whose palm was set with an enormous, glittering sapphire- extended toward the demon.
"Yes," Arvin answered. "It seems we have." He shrugged, a gesture that removed his hands for no more than a fraction of a heartbeat from the gauntlet. It had the desired effect; the demon lashed out with a sword, but before the blade connected, Arvin's hands were back on the gauntlet.
The demon glared at him, oblivious to Karrell, who had risen to her hands and knees and was crawling away, her wounded hand leaving a smear of blood on the floor, and to Marasa, who was casting her spell. Marasa swept her hand down toward the demon, the sapphire in her gauntlet glinting. "By Helm's all-seeing might, I order you, demon, back to the place from whence you came!" she shouted.
The demon rose from the floor, roaring, slashing wildly with its swords. A rent appeared in the air next to it; an angry boil that burst open, emitting a sulfurous stench. Dark shapes writhed inside the tear in the fabric of the planes, howling and thrashing. The demon tumbled toward them.
Karrell fell onto her side-had she slipped on her own blood? As she rose again, blood from her wounded hand streamed toward the hole in a thin red ribbon-a ribbon the demon grabbed in one clawed hand.
Arvin reeled, realizing he'd seen this once before: in the vision at Naneth's home.
Still roaring, the demon disappeared through the gap between the planes. Karrell was yanked after it, screaming.
The gap closed.
For a heartbeat, Arvin stood rooted to the spot, Karrell's scream echoing in his mind. Then he hurled himself across the chapel toward the spot where she'd disappeared. "Karrell!" he cried desperately. Tears streaming down his face, he clutched at empty air. He sagged to the ground and beat his fists against the floor. A fate link wasn't supposed to work that way; it transferred pain, wounds, even fatal injury from one individual to the next, but that was all.
What had gone wrong?
He felt a hand on his shoulder. He looked up and saw Marasa staring down at him. Her face was deeply lined and streaked with tears; her hair seemed even grayer than it had been before. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I didn't realize…"
Arvin looked up at her through tear-blurred eyes. "Karrell was still alive when she went into the Abyss. Is there any way she could still be-"
Marasa shook her head grimly. "No. She would never survive."
Arvin's shoulders slumped.
"She was pregnant," he whispered, "with my child." He shook his head and corrected himself. "With my children. They're all…" His throat caught, preventing him from speaking further.
Marasa nodded but seemed too weary to offer any further comfort. Her hand fell away from his shoulder.
Outside, the skies darkened and a wet snow began to fall. A chill wind blew flakes of white in through the shattered window. A shard of blue-all that remained of Helm's eye-fell to the floor like a tear and broke, tinkling.
Arvin spotted Karrell's ring, lying on the floor in a pool of blood. Two severed fingers lay next to it. He picked the ring up and wiped it clean on his shirt, then stared for a long