Realms of the Arcane - Brian M. Thomsen [81]
"Was it me?" he said. His voice was even, ironically so coming from a man half dead, sitting in a pool of stinking yellow-green gore. "You were going to kill me, Alashar. For money. Was it me? Or was it him?"
She let her arm drop, more out of exhaustion than any sudden desire not to slice his arrogant head off. "I woke up in your bed, and it could just as easily have been your prison world. Grenway's… whatever it was… was going to swallow you whole. You could have killed me. I could have let him kill you."
"So that makes us even?" he asked. "You can kill me now if you want to."
"That naga thing wasn't Grenway's, was it?"
He shook his head slowly in reply.
"Then Grenway's not the only one who wants you dead?"
He laughed this time, but with a hint of sadness.
"I might kill you later," she said, smiling, "if somebody actually pays me to. But right now, I think we both have a debt to collect."
The look on his face was the same one she'd seen in the demiplane of shadow. And yes, it was admiration.
* * * * *
Only after making absolutely certain the necessary safeguards were in place did Grenway speak the word that drew the big doors to his sitting room open.
Alashar came in slowly, each step deliberate and careful. Her big green eyes surveyed the dusty, cluttered room. The sack in her hand was soaked in blood the color of a human's. Grenway smirked at the thought that the weaver mage who sold it to him had promised it wouldn't do that. The archmage thought he might have to have someone pay the weaver a visit in the morning.
Alashar stopped a few paces from where Grenway was sitting. The archmage sprawled casually on pillows and cushions spread over a thick rug made from the dark brown fur of a cave bear.
"Well, Alashar, dear girl," he said, "what have you got for me today?" His voice was calm because he knew she couldn't kill him. The fact that she didn't have her strange sword didn't even matter. The room itself would protect him.
He forgave the sneer that preceded her flat answer.
"Something that finishes us, Grenway."
He watched every movement of her lithe body as she reached a slender arm into the blood-soaked bag. When she pulled out the head of the archwizard Shadow, Grenway fell into a fit of laughing, coughing, laughing, and coughing until the cushions were sprinkled with spittle and his nose had started to run. His clawlike hands played absentmindedly with the few tufts of white hair hanging in patches to his withered, spotted scalp.
"The gems," Alashar said sternly, and Grenway laughed again.
Even Alashar couldn't react fast enough to dodge the hand that burst out of the floor behind her, trailing an arm the color and texture of the sitting-room floor. It shot up behind her, up over her head, and came down to palm her scalp and continue pulling back. Her neck snapped, the sound echoing sickeningly in the big stone room. The force of it almost ripped her head off her shoulders. Her body fell backward. The hand followed the arm back into the floor and was gone before Alashar's body stopped its death spasms.
Grenway finally stopped coughing. The ancient arch-wizard stood weakly and spared a happy glance at the head on the floor, not bothering to acknowledge the corpse of his own assassin. He turned, whistling a little tune from his youth, and shuffled to the door to his private bedchamber and opened it.
"Good evening," Alashar said.
Grenway stopped and looked up as fast as his brittle neck would allow. They were there, alive, both of them.
The simulacrums…
He opened his mouth to begin an incantation, but no sound came out. Shadow smiled, and Alashar drew her rapier and stepped forward.
Shadows Of The Past
Brian M. Thomsen
The first thing I can remember is the face of an angel, the real-world variety, with an expression of satisfaction that usually follows a night's satiation.
I quickly returned her smile, sat up to kiss her… and immediately felt a thunderous headache that shattered my focus. I quickly blacked out, not conscious even long