Realms of the Arcane - Brian M. Thomsen [75]
"What a rness," Shadow said, stepping carefully into the room. The figure behind him followed, and if Alashar had been able to do anything but breathe shallowly, she might have screamed.
It was her. She was looking at herself, long auburn hair, crystal green eyes, dark green leathers, bare feet, whip-rapier, and all.
* * * * *
The room he brought her to was pure Karsus enclave. This insane city was full of buildings with floors on the walls and bridges where people walked on the top and bottom at the same time. Anyone not actually from there was always dizzy. "Down" seemed to be whatever the bottoms of your feet were touching.
This room must have been hewn from the solid rock of the inverted floating mountain. Four ornately carved pillars looked like spokes holding the whole thing together, but they didn't meet in the center. Each was about forty feet high, leaving a good twenty feet between the top of one and the top of the next.
Floating in the center of the huge chamber was a yellow-green crystal fully eight feet in diameter. It gave off a gentle, somehow disturbing glow.
Alashar's double had carried her here from Shadow's bedchamber. The true Alashar was still frozen in the crouched position, still almost touching the hilt of her whip-rapier, still unable to do or say anything. She rode along in a state of stunned awe at the perfection of the double, the attention to detail in what had to be an illusion.
On some level, she was embarrassed. Shadow must know her, and know her well, though she was sure he had never seen her before.
"You," Shadow told her conversationally after having her rigid form placed gently on the floor near the room's only piece of furniture, a well-organized desk, "are going to help me today. Help me with a bit of an experiment."
He stood behind the desk, shifting absentmindedly through a stack of parchment and paper sheets while he spoke. His voice was lively, as if he was really excited about whatever he was going to do to kill her. Of course he would kill her. She had already killed him, after all, for money. Revenge was actually a more laudable motive for murder than money.
"Usually when I catch an assassin alive, I send him into the demiplane of imprisonment."
She touched her whip-rapier. She felt the warm leather-wrapped hilt against the insides of her fingers. She tried to stand or stretch, but couldn't yet.
"But it never occurred to me," he continued, "to arrange some method for their retrieval. It was always a sort of… life sentence."
She could get her jaw to open just a little wider now. She made each small move as slowly as she could, so as not to attract his attention.
"I knew you were coming, of course," he said, turning away from her now to walk gingerly over to one of the huge pillars. "I have at least as many spies in Grenway's employ as he has in mine. Still, I must admit you are quite good. That simulacrum has… had successfully fended off seventeen major assassination attempts. Bravo."
She could finally bend her elbow a good three degrees, and now that he had his back to her, she started to strain, her sluggish muscles bunching, pushing hard against nothing, but a nothing that was still effectively paralyzing her. He had to know the spell was wearing off, or would be wearing off soon. Certainly, she hadn't much time.
Otherwise engrossed in tracing the pattern of one of the pillar's cryptic carvings, Shadow continued, "Anyway, I made up a simulacrum of you. Or, well, had one made at any rate. This way I can leave you imprisoned for a few years and use the simulacrum's link with you to pull you back out. Well, if the last few components are finished by then."
He glanced back at her. She stopped, but felt a bit of a teeter. She'd almost thrown herself off-balance, but it didn't look as if he noticed.