The Dark Remains - Mark Anthony [237]
Travis felt a pang in his chest. The sorcerer had sacrificed himself to undo his own magic and save the world. He clenched his right hand into a fist.
“Sareth,” Durge rumbled, “you say the scarab was not consumed by the sorcerer’s magic, but was rather the focus of it.”
“That’s right.”
“Then I think you should look at this.”
The knight brushed dust from the top of the altar. On one side the stone was melted and deformed, but on the other it was unmarred. On this side, set into the surface of the stone, was a shallow round depression.
“It looks like something is supposed to fit in there,” Grace said.
Travis swallowed hard. He brushed away more dust, revealing eight grooves radiating from the circular depression. “Something with eight legs.…”
They gazed at each other, eyes wide in the flickering green-and-silver light. A faint sound echoed on the air, like a small stone skittering before falling into endless dark.
Dread solidified Travis’s heart. “Lirith, Grace, can you sense any sign of the Scirathi nearby?”
Lirith’s eyes were shut; she was already working. “No, there’s no one else here but us. I—” She drew in a hissing breath.
“Something’s coming toward us,” Grace said, her eyes flying open. “Something—”
Part of the darkness swirled, separated, and drifted toward them: a figure clad in a billowing black robe. Silver runelight and green witchlight glinted off a motionless, serenely smiling face made out of gold.
“Scirathi!” Sareth spat, drawing his sword.
Durge stepped forward, his greatsword raised.
“The mask!” Grace said. “It’s the source of his power.”
Lirith pressed close against her, already weaving her fingers in a spell. Travis swallowed, waiting for the attack of the gorleths. Surely the sorcerer had his slaves with him.
The Scirathi came to a halt a dozen feet away.
“Come on, you va’keth!” Sareth hissed. “Come on so we can kill you.”
Low at first, then rising eerily, a sound emanated from behind the gold mask. It was the sound of laughter.
“Really, Sareth.” The sorcerer spoke in a strangely lisping voice. “Is that the only greeting you have for your oldest and dearest friend?”
The Scirathi lifted black-gloved hands to the gold mask. There was a faint click. Then the sorcerer lowered the mask, revealing the face beneath.
Or what was left of his face.
Travis’s gorge rose in his throat. On the left, the man’s visage was normal, the skin coppery, the eye dark brown. In a way he looked not unlike Sareth, although dull and plain where Sareth was sharply handsome. But it was to the right side of the man’s face that Travis’s gaze was drawn—or rather, where the right side of his face should have been. Travis could see bone, and teeth, and leathery skin that had been stretched tight in an effort to conceal the deep concavity. However, without the mask, there was no hiding it: the right side of the man’s face was eaten away.
“By the Blood of Orú!” Sareth swore. “It cannot be you. You are dead!”
The Scirathi’s words were slurred yet cutting. “And it’s so good to see you as well, old friend.”
Sareth sputtered. “I only meant … the demon … I saw it take you!”
“Did you, Sareth?” the other said, moving closer. “Perhaps that was only what you wished to see. For here I am before you—alive if not exactly whole.” The left side of the man’s mouth curled up in a sneer, and he nodded toward Sareth’s wooden leg. “But then, neither are you. Yet I would say you are still the lucky one.” His fingers fluttered across the ruined side of his face, and a shudder coursed through him. Pain.
Sareth licked his lips. “Xemeth.”
“Yes, it is I—the friend you brought with you to the demon’s lair, the one you left to die while you fled.”
“But you didn’t die.”
“Obviously. You always were an idiot, Sareth. Evidently your parents had but one brain