Sword of the Gods - Bruce R. Cordell [95]
Demascus tried to summon up a path through shadow to safety, but the fire in his arms was too much.
Then Riltana’s hand gripped his, and pulled him into the cage. Such an enormous surge of relief swept through him that he felt giddy. “Thank you, Riltana.”
“We need to get out of here,” she told him. Her eyes were on the conflict near the exit.
He said, “I lost my sword in the pit.”
She said, “Carmenere just brained a cultist who dropped his sword. Take that one.”
She patted his shoulder, then leaped from the cage, executing an amazing spiral through the air as she flew much farther than a simple jump could have possibly propelled her. She unsheathed her short sword while still aloft. Her booted heels came down on the silverstar’s left, and she immediately stabbed a cultist in the kidney.
Demascus heaved himself to his feet, spared one final glance into the pit—Murmur remained a twitching shape sleeted with bugs—and pulled the Veil. The secured end came loose and wrapped of its own accord around and around his left arm, partly covering the ashen designs marking his deva heritage.
He tried once more to mentally step through space, aiming for the silverstar’s shadow formed by the light of her own mace.
Nothing happened.
“Gods!” he yelled, and leaped for safe ground, beyond the pit’s voracious edge.
He came down awkwardly, but kept to his feet. He sprinted to the skirmish line, picked up a long sword dropped by one of the cultists, and joined the fight.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
AIRSPUR
THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)
CHANT TOOK HIS EASE ON THE CHEST RILTANA HAD DRAGGED into the chamber. He wanted nothing more than to leave the cult-infested subterranean hole and never think about it again.
They’d quelled the handful who had rushed into the chamber only to realize Murmur was no more. That had taken the fight out of most of them. It was an advantage that he and the survivors had taken brutal advantage of.
He accounted himself pretty good with his crossbow. Riltana had shown him a whole new meaning to the word fierce. And Demascus … well, put a sword in his hand and point him at an enemy, and he was simply lethal. Carmenere had struck the cultists to subdue. But not the others. Not even him …
“You didn’t even try to save them!” Carmenere said. “They were just duped, they didn’t know their cult was a sham …”
Riltana put a comradely hand on the woman’s elbow. “It’s all right,” Riltana said. “It doesn’t matter how they came to their beliefs; what matters is that they were trying to kill us. But we stopped them.”
Carmenere shrugged the thief’s hand off, and walked to the handful of released captives who’d survived their ordeal.
Ouch, thought Chant.
Riltana looked at Demascus, her eyes imploring.
“She’s just exhausted, like all of us,” said Demascus. But to Chant’s ears, the deva’s voice was uncertain.
Chant tended to side with Riltana, but he could see Carmenere’s point. Still, in the heat of a fight, you had to defend yourself as fiercely as possible. Even from hoodwinked cultists.
He wondered what it had been like for Lieutenant Leheren. The cult had grown right beneath her nose. Worse, actually—she’d hosted the demon that walked her body around at night creating the cult. Talk about dangerous sleepwalking. He hoped the genasi had never truly come to understand her role. Not that it mattered; her body had been completely transformed into Murmur … only to be eaten by bugs, which still buzzed and roiled in their pit.
He shook his head.
It was funny, Chant thought. I was so excited when I decided to befriend Demascus. I was going to ride his coattails to fresh knowledge, coin, and notoriety in the city. And indeed, we enjoyed a conference with Queen Arathane herself! I doubt Raneger could say the same, despite all the man’s underhanded influence.
After that rendezvous, he’d been exhilarated. Surely, as a confidant of the queen, he was on the verge of earning enough influence and coin that the debt he owed to the crime lord would