Sword of the Gods - Bruce R. Cordell [119]
“So, Demascus, was this shit all part of your last incarnation’s plan?” she asked. Her voice was stronger too.
“Hardly,” he said. “The only reason Kalkan didn’t kill me is … because I had the help of you and Chant. And Oghma’s charm, with its snippet of memory to guide me. Sorry you were hurt. I—”
She punched his shoulder, not hard. “Stop it. I knew the risks. And look, we’re alive, and the rakshasa is gone.”
“What did the rakshasa mean,” said Chant suddenly. “When it said that you would return like it?”
Demascus let his breath out. His mouth went dry, and his palms clammy. He debated whether he should claim ignorance. But he spoke his shame, “To accomplish my last contract, I had to convince a sect of Oghmanyte betrayers I was one of them. I had to do that so convincingly that they’d take me into their confidences without question. I …” He shook his head. “I may have exceeded the limits of my code.”
“Which means what, exactly?” pressed Chant.
“If I cannot find absolution for what I did, there’s a chance my next incarnation will wake in flesh as twisted as Kalkan’s,” he said, his voice matter-of-fact.
Riltana put a hand to her mouth and her eyes narrowed.
“But Kalkan’s a liar, a fiend, and every word it spoke was probably a deception,” Chant replied. “Right?”
“Sure, but—”
“But nothing,” Chant said, and clapped him on the back. “We’ve just met, but I feel like I’ve got your measure. Yes, I was rattled when I realized you drew a portion of your strength from shadow. Yet you obviously draw the balance from light—I saw the radiance blaze from your sword. I don’t know about devas or fallen angels, but I sincerely doubt your soul is in danger of tipping over into unredeemable evil.”
Riltana gave a hopeful nod of encouragement.
“What if I’ve made many such choices over my career as an executioner for the gods? Maybe I’ve always walked the edge.” For instance, something about that woman who had appeared when he claimed Exorcessum …
“Leech-piss,” said the thief. “You sure know how to push the river, don’t you?”
“I …” He laughed. “I guess I do.”
They met the queen again a day later. Rather than assembling in her bower, they joined Arathane and her forces beneath the ruined Motherhouse. The queen was personally overseeing a sweep of the surviving substructure, commanding a sortie of elite peacemakers and Firestorm Cabal regulars that were free of contamination by Murmur’s abortive cult.
The day before, they’d sent a courier to the queen describing what they’d found beneath the Motherhouse. Of how they’d rooted out the cult of the Elder Elemental Eye, and destroyed the oddly manipulative nightmare demon that had used Leheren’s body as a host. They’d included in the report their inference that most Cabal members brought into the cult were tricked, and thus were hopefully not irredeemably compromised.
Demascus gawked at the queen when he saw her standing at the edge of the droning pit.
The gown of their first meeting was gone. Today Arathane wore sturdy leather armor scuffed and scarred from past action. Only the fragile silver circlet flashing at her brow bespoke her queenly station. A cloak flared on her back, half-alive with defensive enchantments, and a crystalline spear nestled in the crook of her arm with easy familiarity. You only carry a spear like that, thought Demascus, if you know how to use it.
Here we go again, he thought, mooning over a queen.
He told himself the woman was a monarch, untouchable in her role as leader of her people, and probably trothed to marry some foreign king or prince. But that didn’t lessen his reaction to her. He imagined that his original angelic self, that being lost behind so many reincarnations that the personality was long gone, would find Arathane equally divine.
She was directing one of the peacemakers as they came into the subterranean chamber. Arathane continue speaking, even as she became aware of their presence. She raised an amiable eyebrow at his single-minded regard,