Sword of the Gods - Bruce R. Cordell [87]
“The molting is complete!” it crowed.
Then it said, “Things will go differently this time, Demascus.”
This time? It didn’t matter. Murmur was obviously some kind of demon, and trying to play with his mind. Either way, I should kill it, he thought. Now.
He grasped the shadow of the Veil and let its trailing end drape across Murmur. Through the shroud of gloom that apparently only he could see, Demascus studied the demon.
“Gods,” he whispered, as his certainty withered. “I can’t fight this!”
Seven points of energy blazed through the creature’s partly insubstantial, changeable form. It was equal parts flesh and illusion, but the liquid crystal that was its blood and life-force was wrong in every way. It did not belong on Faerûn. Or even … in this universe.
Murmur, larger than it had been, reached a red-veined black limb into the cells on either side of it. Quick as stooping eagles, each taloned hand plunged into the head of a captive. When they emerged, each one gripped a writhing, incorporeal nightmare.
Demascus stepped back. It was all too much. He was out of his depth. He had to—
Murmur released the entities it had just ripped from the minds of the captives. They inflated as they writhed, and took on demonic shapes. One was a hybrid between a scorpion and a ram. The other some kind of squealing, bubbling mass of slime. Each was a foul monstrosity. Each apparently wanted to eat Demascus.
The slime mass slid straight for him. The scorpion demon jumped then skittered along the ceiling, faster than its sibling, and threw itself down on him.
Demascus deflected the first monster with his sword. But he couldn’t evade the second. It engulfed him with its wet, cold embrace. The venom of its body numbed his skin on contact.
Demascus yelled, “Run!” to his friends as he lost feeling in his legs and arms. He heard Murmur laughing.
He screamed one more time. He tried to tell Chant, Riltana, and Carmenere to save themselves before it was …
Too late.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
AIRSPUR
THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)
SOMEONE HAD KICKED HER IN THE HEAD, RILTANA thought, then dragged her, scratching and bumping, across broken rock. She tasted blood in her mouth.
She groaned and opened her eyes. Flickering, greenish light stung her eyes. She tried to rub her head, but a manacle clanked tight. Chains bound her wrists, securing her to the front of her cell. The memory of the cultists flanking her and beating her senseless came to her in blunt echoes communicated by her ribs, her back, and her aching head.
She was in a cage, one of a dozen or so around the periphery of a subterranean chamber. Some cells were sunk into the stone, others hung from the ceiling like aviaries. Many contained ill-used captives.
A man she didn’t recognize was manacled next to her. His clothing was mere tatters, his eyes were wide, and a constant babble of mumbles fell from his lips.
“Be quiet, you leech-licking lunatic,” she hissed. But the man wouldn’t shut up.
Beneath his mad stream-of-consciousness she detected a clicking, buzzing drone.
Riltana bent her head to a painful angle to see what was behind and below the cage.
The cell overlooked a cavity in the chamber’s center that was the source of the droning noise.
The cavity churned with insects! Bees, ants, moths, scorpions, and scurrying beetles. And cockroaches! She hated roaches. Especially ones as large as Chant’s cat, Fable. Fireflies, or something like them but with mandibles, pulsed with pale greenish radiance, bright enough to light the entire chamber.
Bones littered the pit’s edge, each one pocked as if scoured clean by thousands of insect mandibles.
You’ve got to be kidding me, Riltana thought, her gorge rising.
She jerked her