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Light, he thought. The white runes on the sword blazed in answer, as glorious as sunrise.

Kalkan writhed near the wall, scrabbling desperately to get his oddly jointed claws beneath the self-tightening coils of the Veil.

Perfect! Demascus charged the rakshasa; but Riltana was faster.

She spun out of the air like a whirlwind, slashing with her blade. She landed a few telling blows, painting lines of blood on Kalkan’s arms and chest.

The rakshasa abandoned the noose tightening around his neck and grabbed the thief with swiftness far quicker than a cat’s. He hugged the windsoul, and she screamed, more in rage than fear. Then his mouth went wide and he took a savage bite out of the side of the woman’s neck.

“No!” Demascus yelled. Riltana’s body jerked as if in seizure before going limp.

Kalkan grinned, his mouth covered in gore. He let the woman’s body fall to the ground.

Demascus hurled himself at the rakshasa.

But Kalkan’s legs buckled before Demascus arrived. The fiend reflexively put one hand back to the Veil still wound around his neck, but it was far too late. The relic fabric had twisted itself so tightly around the creature’s neck that it was a wonder the head hadn’t popped off.

Like the suicide warriors who screamed across the Elf-harrow, pledging their life’s end to the spirit tree Cuivanu, Kalkan had deliberately allowed the Veil to kill him in order to savage Riltana.

But no, Demascus realized, there had been no sacrifice. Even as the light of life faded from the rakshasa’s eyes, he understood the all-important difference.

No matter how many times Kalkan was killed, he would never, ever die.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

AIRSPUR

THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

THANKS TO CHANT’S LAST VIAL OF LIQUID GRACE, THE TERRIBLE wound on Riltana’s neck closed over, and the unconscious windsoul breathed easier. Demascus closed his eyes in relief. She was out of the worst danger. If she’d died, no reparation would have been enough.

The pawnbroker said, “She’ll require further tending or clerical magic.”

Demascus rubbed Oghma’s charm between his thumb and forefinger. He mused, “My former self had dozens of these divine tokens, given for services rendered. I bet one of those would heal her to full health with a thought.”

“But they’re in some kind of strongbox, along with the, what’d you call it, the Whorl of Ioun? Which has your …?”

“Which contains the lion’s share of my memories I thought important enough to fix forever into it, yeah. Apparently, it’ll eventually appear out of nowhere, a gift from myself.” Although, based on what Oghma’s charm had revealed, he was surprised the skull-decorated coffer hadn’t already turned up.

“When?”

“It’s overdue,” he admitted.

“I’m sure I don’t know what constitutes as overdue for a magically time-traveling strongbox,” said Chant.

“Yeah. Me either.”

Demascus looked at Kalkan’s mounded gray remains for the hundredth time. The rakshasa’s body had just sort of fallen in on itself, collapsing to ash in moments, as if the weight of a thousand years had descended on the body in one go. Except for the hood and the odd disk, which had disappeared in a brief blaze of blue light.

He supposed that meant the hood and disk had been pulled to some hidden resting place akin to his own—

Riltana gasped and opened her eyes. “The rakshasa!” she said, her voice thin.

“Easy,” Chant said. “He’s dead. And you’re hurt, but you’ll be fine if you take it easy.”

Riltana tried to say something else, but all that came out was a rasp. She raised a trembling gloved hand and managed to work her fingers in a weak approximation of a snap. A healing draft appeared in her palm.

“You’ve been holding out on us!” said Chant, laughing.

A fragile smile lifted Riltana’s mouth. Demascus popped the cork on Riltana’s vial, and she drank.

Silvery vitality chased away her dull gray pallor, and she propped herself up. She was still weak, and a ragged, half-healed scar yet marred her throat, but Demascus