CHAPTER TEN

AIRSPUR
THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

DEMASCUS GAPED. THE MOTHERHOUSE WAS A SHELL OF smoking cinders. Gone, like his expectation that his questions would be answered. The black vapors meandering up into the sky might as well be flags flown at the funeral for his hopes.

Who was responsible for this travesty?

Anger, hot and bitter like a slug of coffee fresh from the pot, kindled. He did not like being denied. Those who crossed him learned the error of their ways, or they died. Died in a—

He blinked, and the anger collapsed before his surprise at his own reaction. Where the Hells had that come from? Demascus pulled at the hem of his coat and swallowed. The intractable fury of a moment earlier was like a residual taste of iron in his mouth. For a moment, he’d been so furious, he could have throttled someone …

Merciful gods, he thought. Is my temper the reason I killed a priest?

A woman interrupted his reverie. He only half heard what she said, but he gratefully seized on the interruption of his own fruitless reverie. Something about …

“Rilta?” he blurted. “Who’s that?”

The genasi glanced at him, looked him up and down, then replied, “It’s Riltana. I used to call her Rilta for short. Why’re you looking for her?” She returned her regard to the pawnbroker.

Chant shook his head. “I don’t know anyone named Riltana,” he said in a weary voice.

The woman—she’d claimed her name was Carmenere—frowned. She said, “You’re Chant Morven? The one asking around about someone answering to Rilta’s description, right?”

Understanding dawned. “The scarf thief!” Demascus said. “You know her?”

Carmenere gave a diffident shrug. “Maybe.”

“Is Riltana a windsoul genasi with a black mask and formfitting leather armor?” Chant asked.

“She’s been known to wear a getup like that,” said Carmenere. “You called her a scarf thief. Did she take—?”

“Yes! My scarf! She yanked it right out of my hands. That scarf was very important to me!”

Demascus glared at the woman. He knew his manner was accusatory. He knew that he should take care not to scare her off. But he couldn’t muster the control to soften his stance.

The lines around Carmenere’s mouth deepened into a frown. She murmured in a voice stripped of emotion, “Rilta has been known to take things that don’t belong to her. Usually things that aren’t of so much value that their absence would be missed too much. Usually.”

“Value?” yelled Demascus. A few people from the crowd of onlookers glanced at him. He didn’t care. “What does that matter? She’s a thief, and—”

Chant heaved himself to his feet and put a hand on Demascus’s shoulder.

Demascus glared at the pawnbroker, but shut up.

The human cleared his throat and said, “Pardon my friend, Demascus; that wrap has significant sentimental value to him. Maybe you could tell your friend Riltana we’d like it back? That we’d even be willing to pay to have it returned?” Chant’s voice was a model of friendly sincerity.

Demascus finally managed to leash his outrage, but he didn’t trust himself to speak. It was all he could do to stop frowning.

Carmenere said, “I would tell her but … she’s missing. And I’m worried.”

“What do you mean, she’s missing?” said Chant.

“I went by her place yesterday when I heard you were looking for her,” said Carmenere. Her expression wavered, as if much lay behind that simple statement.

“And?” Demascus said.

The woman pulled out a ragged piece of parchment. “I found this message.”

Chant took the scrap and squinted at it. Then he pulled a pair of reading lenses from his pocket and perched them on his nose, and perused the paper.

“What’s it say?” asked Demascus.

“It’s addressed to Carmenere; Riltana says she’s going to meet a client in the Sepulcher to receive payment for services rendered. So?”

Carmenere said, “Rilta should have been back already! She never returned last night, or this morning. I’m afraid something’s happened to her in the Sepulcher.”

“What’s the Sepulcher?” said Demascus.

“A place where crooked deals are made,” said Chant thoughtfully.

Carmenere looked at the ground.

Demascus said, “Let’s go. I need that scarf to help me remember—”

Chant elbowed him, and moved his head slightly in Carmenere’s direction.

Right, Demascus thought. Probably better not to announce his incapacity to every single person in Airspur.

“Carmenere,” said Chant. “We’re heading to the Sepulcher. Will you accompany us to look for your friend?”

“I don’t want …” The woman shook her head. She looked up from studying the ground. “No, I’m out of her life. If you find her, and she’s all right, please don’t tell her I’m the one who sent you after her.”

“Um. Sure,” said Chant, obviously nonplussed.

It’s probably not politic, thought Demascus, to tell the genasi what he intended to do if they found Riltana. Instead he said, “Where do we need to go?”

The pawnbroker pointed west, toward the crevice where the two cliff faces of Airspur came together beneath a veil of roiling white water.

“Did you hear that?” said Chant.

All Demascus could hear was a crashing roar. The rumble of the nearby falls had found its perfect resonance in the tunnel, and the sound was trying to vibrate its way to the center of his skull.

Demascus shook his head. Reaching the Sepulcher had turned out to require a trip into the labyrinths beneath Airspur. The pawnbroker had known which way to go; he said he’d visited the out-of-the-way “drop point” on a couple previous occasions. They’d already traveled nearly half an hour through passages, some of which were make-do sewers for Airspur, and he was ready for the trip to be over.

Chant paused and looked back along the tunnel. Demascus copied the pawnbroker, and studied the apparently empty passage.

“What?” said Demascus, his voice low.

The man shrugged. “Not sure. It sounded like something in the tunnel behind us.”

“I can’t hear anything but the falls.”

“The Akanawater is impressive, eh?”

“Impressively deafening.”

The pawnbroker chuckled. Demascus swallowed a twitch of irritation. The noise was working on his fraying temper, but that didn’t mean he had to give in to it.

They moved forward. The odor of rotting fish grew stronger. The smell finally succeeded in blotting out the fecal oppression of the sewer flow, though that was hardly a relief.

Chant raised his hand and pointed at a faint glimmer of light ahead.

“That’s it,” whispered the shop owner. Demascus nodded and put his hand on his sword hilt.

They entered a sizeable chamber sporting one, two, three … a total of seven exits. One of which was sealed with a rusted iron valve on the ceiling.

The misted air was humid with fish stink. Light emanated from a coating of fungi on the walls and ceiling. A series of overlapping tidemarks on the wall made it clear the cavern periodically flooded. Even then, water pooled in low spots on the floor. A few contained desperately darting fish, indicating the last influx must have been very recent.

A woman in black leather lay limp and unmoving near a side wall. Not far from her was a smaller body, stretched out so that it lay partly submerged in a pool.

“That’s her!” said Demascus. Chant grabbed at his arm, but he twisted loose and splashed across the Sepulcher. If this was some kind of elaborate ambush, he was ready.

Demascus crouched at the thief’s side and … she did not have the scarf. He wanted to scream and shake the body. He mastered that impulse and instead felt for a pulse along her neck.

A regular but faint throb was his reward.

“She’s alive.”

Chant joined him, but his gaze swung around the cavern in anxious arcs.

“Can you wake her?” said Demascus. “We need to find out what she did with my scarf.”

The human pursed his lips as if weighing options. He finally pulled a glass vial of healing elixir from his belt.

Demascus had used such potions hundreds of times. Thousands maybe … He blinked, momentarily overcome with a cavalcade of images and sensations of treating bleeding stomach cuts, head wounds, broken legs, stabbings, beatings … He rubbed his eyes to clear the montage.

Chant was supporting the woman’s head as he poured the curative balm down her throat. In the span of a heartbeat, color returned to the genasi’s pale skin. She choked, and her eyes shuttered open.

She blinked. Her regard switched from Demascus to Chant and back. She was confused.

Demascus cleared his throat.

Riltana’s eyes widened and she said, “You!”

“Yes, me,” said Demascus. “Where’s my scarf?”

The thief raised a shaky hand to her head. The cloud-colored crystal strands of her hair were pulled back in a braid.

“Pus-faced goblin ambushed me, hit me on the head. I don’t know …”

Demascus gaped at the other form lying half beneath the surface of a pool just a few paces from Riltana. He leaned over, grabbed it by the filthy rags that served as its footwear, and pulled it out of the water.

It was a goblin. Its eyes bulged. The goblin’s hands were locked with rigor mortis at its throat, trying to claw away the pale scarf that wound around its neck so tightly the creature had strangled.

“Merciful gods!” said Demascus. It was his scarf. But … his hand caught midway in the act of reaching for it. The goblin had died, just like the priest in his memory, struggling for breath. It couldn’t be a coincidence. Which meant the fabric was an enchanted instrument of death; not a scarf at all, but a garrote!

Maybe losing it, and knowledge of his past self, had been a blessing. Maybe it was something he’d even arranged to occur. Yet here he was, on the brink of retrieving it, and maybe a life he’d wanted to run from.

“Is that it then?” said Chant.

“Yes. But, I don’t …” The layered wrap of the scarf, the way it snugged so tight to the dead creature’s neck … he felt sick. An echoing, roaring sound clogged his brain, getting louder.

Wait. The roaring was real.

Chant and Riltana both glanced at the tunnel where they’d entered as an even louder roar reverberated across the damp chamber.

A monster crouched there. Its cat-slit red crystal eyes were fastened in hungry anticipation on Demascus.

“Pig-straddler!” cursed Riltana. Then, “Why didn’t you leave me unconscious? I can’t handle any more of this shit!”

The monster was humanoid, but its extra set of arms, its stooped-forward posture, and the shoulders—almost deformed with muscle—gave it something of the aspect of a hunting feline. Its mouth was a forest of teeth, and red crystalline spikes burst from its head and upper back like a primordial crown.

Demascus recognized it. It was kin to the demon he’d faced in the shrine. But this one was far more powerful than the dretch he’d dispatched. It looked like it was bred expressly for efficient evisceration.

The beast burst out of the tunnel and pounced, claws extended in a fourfold embrace.

It touched down in the center of the chamber, having covered ten paces in a single leap. Then it was in the air again, moving so fast Demascus could hardly focus on it.

He thrust his sword before him, holding the hilt higher than the point to create a momentary shield. Time seemed to slow from frenetic to merely swift as translucent runes slicked the blade. The eviscerator’s momentum hurtled it onto the transient incline of his sword even as he imparted additional force with a shove.

The demonic thing flipped over him, its roar becoming a confused squeal as its limbs windmilled without finding purchase. It crashed into the far fungus-coated wall. The regular temporal flow reasserted itself as the thing scrabbled to right itself.

Demascus heard boots scraping on the cave floor, then two crossbow bolts struck the beast. One was deflected by the crust of reddish crystal, but the other caught it where an arm emerged from its torso. The eviscerator yowled, but more in fury than pain.

“Demascus!” Chant called, “Watch—”

The demon flung itself right back at Demascus. The arm Chant had hit with his bolt hung limp, but the monster’s speed seemed unimpeded.

Demascus tried the same roof technique, but the creature had learned from its last manic charge and stopped short. One set of claws raked at his stomach, forcing him to drop his sword to guard it. The second set of claws went for his suddenly unprotected eyes.

He threw his free arm over his face. The armor on his forearm caught the claws, but the force of the blow wrenched his arm, sparking a pain so fierce that tears sprang to his eyes. He shuffled back, and his boot heel caught on the soft form of the dead goblin.

He stumbled. How ironic, he thought as he caught his balance. I’m going to die here, just as the most significant relic of my memory returns to me.

He yelled his frustration in the thing’s face. “What do you want? Why are you trying to kill me?”

The creature paused, then croaked, “You have displeased a disciple of the Elder Elemental Eye. Your skin is forfeit.”

What the—? “I don’t know anything about your Elder Eye!” yelled Demascus. “It’s all some kind of mix-up. I just want to know who I am!”

Suddenly Riltana was behind the demonic beast. She plunged a dagger into its side with vicious accuracy, then danced away. Demascus was certain the same attack on him would have put him facedown. The creature barked in pain, but ignored the woman. It focused its gaze on Demascus again and said, “For my service, I get to eat your heart.” The monster obviously wasn’t going to be satisfied until Demascus was dead, and apparently dismembered.

He jumped when something touched his leg.

The scarf had partly unwound from the goblin. One end was poised in the air like a cobra. Words formed along the hovering length of fabric:

The beast hurled itself back across the cavern.

As if from a distance, Demascus saw his hand grab the scarf.

Like a banner in a strong breeze, the coiled end of the wrap unfurled into the air. The free end reached across the space separating Demascus from the charging creature. He thought it would try to wrap around the beast’s neck, but instead it caught the beast around one ankle and pulled. The eviscerator, still advancing, bumbled its footing and sprawled at Demascus’s feet.

Demascus plunged his sword at the thing’s head.

The creature raised one of its arms and took the blade in the palm instead of the temple. Then it leaped off the floor with inhuman strength, and onto Demascus.

The mass of the monster hammered him to the ground and his head cracked against the stone. The demon clutched him with its two good arms, while the third remained tangled with his blade.

Demascus retained his sword and threw his other arm up to protect his neck from the thing’s claws. “I took you up,” he grunted to the Veil. But the white length of material seemed played out. Great.

The creature decided to live up to the name Demascus had given it by attempting to burrow into Demascus’s stomach. It had to scratch through a layer of jacket and leather armor before it could reach soft skin. Probably because its normal complement of arms was reduced by half, it didn’t immediately succeed. But Demascus was lying on his back with one wrenched arm. He knew he only had a moment before his armor wore through and it gutted him.

He yelled a wordless challenge into the thing’s face, released the sword that wasn’t really helping him, and transferred both hands to the scarf. He whipped the cream-hued Veil up and around, trying to swirl it around the demon’s throat.

The wrap twitched to life once more!

But the monster recognized the threat. It bounded off Demascus, straight up and away from the animated Veil.

Three crossbow bolts caught the beast, two in the back and one along the side of its face. A dagger hurtled through the air and stuck in the hollow of the demon’s throat.

The creature made a funny gasping sound, snapped at Demascus reflexively, then tried to rip the scarf out of Demascus’s hand, even as a clear gelatinous fluid became a torrent down its chest, adding to the gore already spattering out of the monster and pooling at its feet.

It was a tug of war.

“Let go, demon!” yelled Demascus. He hauled back on his end.

The demonic thing did the same, and in so doing, pulled Demascus to his feet.

Before he quite knew what he was doing, he twisted, put his hip into the creature’s stomach, then pulled on the scarf with all his strength. If the creature had let go its end, Demascus would have put himself in a very bad spot. But the beast held on, and paid for its perseverance by being flipped over Demascus’s extended leg. The creature flew ten paces across the chamber.

It came down badly. The cracking sound of several bones snapping ricocheted on the stone walls.

This time the monster did not get up.

Demascus leaned forward, put his hands on his knees, and just breathed. He kept his eyes on the body a little longer before glancing around. Chant was poised to fire his crossbow again. Riltana stood with bent knees, ready to charge or flee. Her face was set in an angry scowl, and she held another dagger ready.

“I think it’s dead,” said Riltana.

Demascus nodded and straightened.

“You went hand-to-hand with that thing and lived,” said Chant, as he slowly lowered his hand. “Impressive.”

“Are you kidding?” said Demascus. “I was an inch from losing my intestines. Got any of those for sale in your shop?”

The pawnbroker chuckled. He said, “What the Hells was it?”

“The same kind of beast that ambushed me at the shrine. But this one was bigger and stronger.”

“A demon then,” mused Chant.

“It seems so.” His imperfect memory wasn’t up to the task of precisely identifying it, but the scarlet crystal encrustations seemed distinctly wrong. Focusing on them for long made his eyes sting.…

“It was tracking us,” said Chant. “How wonderful for you.”

The creature’s body slumped as it lost color and shape. It ran and boiled to nothingness. Even the vapor of its passing faded, all in the space of a dozen heartbeats.

“Easy cleanup, at least,” said the pawnbroker.

Riltana palmed her dagger and said, “All right. What’s going on?”

Instead of answering, Demascus let one end of the scarf dangle to the floor. Since the creature was defeated, the wrap had returned to acting just like a normal piece of fabric. He twirled it for effect and looked at her with a raised eyebrow.

“Oh, right,” she said. “Your scarf. I guess you wanted it back.” The woman had the grace to look embarrassed. “But how’d you find me? And why did you save me? And what was that thing?”

Chant said, “We don’t know what that was or why it was following us. But we came to find you because we wanted—”

“Why did you steal my scarf?” interrupted Demascus.

Riltana studied the tunnel exit a moment, then returned her gaze to him. A tension seemed to melt out of her.

She sighed and said, “Because someone promised to pay me if I took it. But instead, he tried to kill me.”