The Dark Remains - Mark Anthony [239]
Grace spun a thread toward the slender witch. A spell?
Yes, sister, a spell of binding. Although I do not know if it can hold him. Do you feel it? The scarab pulls apart the threads even as I try to weave them together.
Let me help.
It was hard to work with her eyes open, but they couldn’t let Xemeth know what they were doing.
“… and the demon came upon us,” Sareth was saying. “I made it to the passage, then turned around and reached for you. Only then I felt a coldness in my leg. The shadow seemed to swallow you, and you were gone.”
Xemeth stroked the scarab with a finger. “What you saw was not quite what happened, friend. The demon did come upon me. I felt it surround me, and as you described with your leg, I felt my face go cold. Then the ground shook, and a crack opened beneath me. I fell.”
“So that’s why it seemed to me the demon had consumed you. I could not know you were still alive.”
Xemeth made a strangled, snarling sound. “Do you think that absolves you of your crime? If you had remained, then you would have heard my cries of agony. For a full five fathoms I fell. When I hit the bottom I know not how many bones were shattered. And as I lay there, the numbness in my face faded, and the pain came.”
Grace could not even imagine the horror and the agony. In a way, she could not blame Xemeth for his rage.
“Then what?” Sareth said.
“How long I lay there, broken upon the rocks, I do not know. A day, perhaps more. There was no light, nothing with which to measure the passage of time. I was dying, slowly but steadily. I tried to crawl, but to move inches took me hours. Finally I felt myself weakening, and I knew the end was close. One more time I heaved my body forward over sharp stones—and that was when I found it.”
Another laugh escaped him. “Ironic, I know, but had I not been injured I never would have found the means of my escape. In the dark it looked just like all the other stones. But I had cut my hands, and when my blood fell upon the thing, it … awakened at the taste.”
Xemeth slipped the scarab into his robes, then drew forth something else: a triangular object of black stone.
“The second artifact!” Sareth said.
Xemeth’s ruined lips twitched upward in a smirk. “So, you know that was how we were doing it, how we were sacrificing the gods to the demon. But I am not displeased. Indeed, I had hoped the Mournish would surmise what was happening, and that they would interfere with the Scirathi. I was counting on it, really. That was all part of my plan for getting both the demon and the sorcerers out of my way.”
“You mean you haven’t joined them?”
“Join those va’keths? I may have been homely, I may have been clumsy, but I have never been stupid.” Xemeth touched the gold mask, which now hung from a cord around his neck. “True, their costume has suited me. It has allowed me to keep my face and form concealed as I move about the city.”
“You!” Lirith gasped, and Grace felt the witch’s attention slip away from the spell they were weaving. “You were the one who tried to murder me!”
Xemeth let go of the mask. “Once I saw her arrive in the city, I knew that meddling bitch Melindora Nightsilver wouldn’t be able to keep her nose out of things. I tried to kill you while wearing this garb because I wanted her to believe that the Scirathi were behind the deaths of the gods. I knew that, once she suspected the Scirathi, she would do everything she could to impede them. Just as she is doing now. And I would indeed have killed you had not my dear old friend arrived to save you.”
Lirith lifted a hand to her heart and gazed at Sareth. “It was you who saved me?”
His eyes were solemn. “It was I, beshala.”
“Beshala?” Xemeth repeated in a mocking voice. “Oh, Sareth, this is too marvelous. It makes it only sweeter that you have brought her with you, and your other friends as well. Although I must say, the garb of our people does not suit them as it suits her.”
Sareth ran a hand through his hair, his eyes wild. “What