Sword of the Gods - Bruce R. Cordell [98]
“Jett!” Chant said.
The genasi looked up. The cultist’s eyes slipped right past the shade of the deva slinking around the room periphery and found Chant’s.
“Well done,” Jett said in a bored voice. “I didn’t expect you to make it. Where’s your friend with the hole in his brain where his life should be?”
“Give up,” Riltana said. “Murmur’s dead! Your whole sad enterprise is finished.”
Jett’s eyes narrowed. A phantom light preceded dual bolts of silvery energy, one aimed at Chant, one at Riltana.
Chant dropped to the floor and simultaneously fired. Two quarrels stuck into the doorframe, and one punched into the wall over the cultist’s left shoulder. The silvery bolt only grazed Chant, but the touch snapped his brain so hard he saw only gray for a moment.
He rolled to his left, out of the doorway. Riltana rushed past him into the office. More crashing came from inside the room. “Sharkbite!” he hissed and hauled himself to his feet, shaking his head to clear it.
He launched himself through the door, hoping he was moving quickly enough to avoid another mind-twisting attack by the genasi.
Riltana fenced with Jett, who had produced a dull black length of iron. He seemed at least as capable with a blade as she was. And where was Demascus?
For all Riltana’s facility, Jett’s strokes seemed surer and more practiced. Still, she forced him back, pace after pace, to the corner. The peal of blade on blade echoed off the stone walls.
Chant loaded his crossbow, but instead of firing he said, “Jett, why’d you join Murmur and swear yourself to the Elemental Eye?”
The genasi’s lip curled. He beat Riltana’s sword out of line and executed a counterstroke that would have disemboweled her if she hadn’t jumped back. He said, “Murmur presumed it was my master, and I, its servitor. The demon had it exactly backward. I was the one who coaxed its stony fragments back to life, who provided the distraction it needed to implant itself in Leheren, and who told it where to find the shrine west of Airspur.”
Demascus appeared on the periphery of Chant’s vision, as if he’d been there all along, but suddenly deigned to be noticed.
“Ah!” said Jett, a smile on his face. “I figured that might draw you out.”
Demascus said, his tone puzzled, “Murmur said it was Kalkan who discovered the shrine where I woke.”
Jett grinned. His teeth elongated until his mouth was a sea of blackened, bloodstained fangs. His ears budded until they were demonic flaps, and horns leaped askew from his head. His hands twisted around, becoming clawed digits that were jointed backward. In a twinkling, Jett had gone from genasi to … What? A predator, that was certain.
“That’s because I am Kalkan, you simpleton,” said the creature.
Demascus gaped. His lips worked. Finally he managed, “You’re the creature from my vision! You stabbed me in the stomach!”
“To think, I once feared you so!” replied Kalkan. “But I must admit, I’m glad you only recall the least fraction of what you once were. And without your precious ring, you’ll remain exactly where I want you.”
“R-ring?”
Riltana, apparently unimpressed by the transformation, thrust the tip of her short sword at Kalkan’s neck so swiftly he was forced to shuffle back in turn. She said, “You tried to kill me, you damned leech-kisser. You’re going to answer for that right now!”
“Am I? I think you’re wrong.”
“You’re cornered,” Chant said. “Give up.”
Kalkan was literally backed into the office where both walls came together. But instead of looking the least bit ruffled, the beast actually smiled a toothy grin.
I don’t like this, Chant thought. The beast is up to something.
“He’s …” Chant began, but it was too late. The entire corner pivoted as if on a spring, carrying the grinning Kalkan around on the swiveling floor. The sharp report of an alchemical detonation accompanied the trick door’s activation, and black smoke spewed everywhere.
Chant fired his weapon blindly into the smoke.
Demascus bellowed something about lords and dominions, and Riltana put together