Sword of the Gods - Bruce R. Cordell [116]
“Wait, you killed Kalkan?” said Riltana. “I don’t think so, because—”
“He’s like me,” Demascus interrupted. “He reincarnates. But he’s a twisted monster, corrupt beyond description, surpassing even a devil in his depravity.” He shuddered. “And he never forgets his previous lives. A … rakshasa cannot be washed of its sins by forgetting them.” As I can, he thought. Though the Whorl provides continuity, it apparently did so only for selectively chosen memories. Which had to have been a mercy for his incarnations who took it up fresh each time.
So, where was the skull-carved strongbox? He peered around the chamber with narrowed eyes.
“Hey, tell us what you’re looking for, and we’ll help,” said Chant. He leaned over the sarcophagus and gave the body in it a closer look.
“You won’t find your box,” a new voice called from the tunnel exit opposite the shallow pool. “I’ve already looked for it.”
Kalkan stepped into the room. The flickering candles threw his shape like a nightmare across the wall, and the stomach-curdling odor of rotting flesh assaulted Demascus’s nostrils.
His fingers felt suddenly nerveless. Just as when his last incarnation faced the rakshasa at the shrine, his muscles froze up. And he was so much less than his former self. Merciful lords, Kalkan was going to kill him again!
His friends seemed equally paralyzed by the intruder’s appearance.
Kalkan said, “Do you know what I am, Sword?”
“You’re Kalkan,” Demascus finally forced out. “Why have you hunted me? And why didn’t you just kill me in front of Chant’s shop when I showed up to retrieve the scarf—why manipulate me through this convoluted path?”
The rakshasa cocked his head. The curling horns threw obscene shadows on the wall. He said, “How do you know I’ve hunted you?”
“The pictures on the wall,” Riltana blurted. Demascus glanced at the thief. “Only a crazy person would pay such homage to one person. Or a killer studying his mark.”
“Ah. I suppose that was sloppy of me. Or not—since you still don’t have your ring, do you? Not that you probably even know what I mean. Of all the times I’ve killed you, Demascus, this is the first time you’ve been so uniquely vulnerable.”
The rakshasa slithered forward a pace.
Demascus brought Exorcessum in line with Kalkan, despite the fact that the creature was still across the pool. He said, “Vulnerable for what? And you didn’t answer my question—you’ve predicted everything I’ve done; you could have killed me the moment I appeared. Why didn’t you? What’s your game?”
“I could tell you, but then I’d have to eat you,” said Kalkan, and cackled. He came closer, sidling around the pool.
Desperate, Demascus tried again, “How have you been able to predict the future so well? Who is the Voice of Tomorrow?”
Kalkan glanced at some kind of contrivance he wore on the palm of his left hand. Demascus recognized it from the recollection vouchsafed him by Oghma’s token. Then the rakshasa stiffened and jerked his gaze back to Damascus. He snarled, “You … you remember me! How?”
Demascus raised the charm. “My retainer from the god of knowing. Because you’ve mixed yourself up in Oghma’s domain, you’ve become the one I must kill to fulfill my contract to the Lord of Knowledge.”
It was hard to tell in the candlelight and on a face that was more beast than human, but Demascus thought a flicker of uncertainty swept the rakshasa’s features.
He wasn’t going to find a better opportunity to survive. So he let the charm fall as his causal perception accelerated, rendering everything else as slow as dripping molasses. He gathered a length of shadow like a shroud. Just as he’d done below the Motherhouse, he extended a waving end of the immaterial shroud across the space between himself and Kalkan. It undulated like a black ribbon in a cold wind, then settled across the rakshasa’s form.
Through it, he saw Kalkan redefined as a series of bright nodes, each one blazing with power so strong Demascus almost had to look away. The point of light on the crown of his head, between his horns and twitching ears, was like a lotus flower