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 soon be paid. And Jaul’s safety could no longer be held over Chant’s head.

But what did it matter now? Imprisoned in the iron cage, he’d seen true evil in the form of a demon who animated nightmares. The inner contents of people’s deepest fears scraped out of their brains and clothed in flesh. It was an unthinkable violation. Then he’d watched the demon throw screaming, living people into the pit, where they were consumed alive.

He closed his eyes.

“Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

Demascus was standing over him. The man had learned—or probably remembered—how to move with the silent tread that would do an assassin proud. Which was no surprise.

The deva reached out his hand, and Chant flinched.

“Whoa, sorry!” said Demascus. The deva jerked his hand back.

Chant immediately felt ashamed of his reaction. He said, “Not your fault. I just can’t get the images of Murmur out of my head. Or what he did to those people.” And, he didn’t say, I’m unnerved by your newfound facility with darkness and light. The light, so merciless in its radiance, the dark so all-encompassing …

Demascus studied him a moment, his brow creased with concern, and looking not at all like an assassin or divine killer. He gave a slow nod. “Yeah. Same here. But remember, we destroyed Murmur; threw him in his own torture pit.”

Chant gazed at the edge of pit. The awful droning that had accompanied Murmur’s death spasm had died down to a light buzz, and the firefly lights were back to their original, still ghastly, flickering. A smell, like attar of roaches times one hundred, was growing. He wrinkled his nose.

“What did Murmur mean when it said you had defeated it once before?” Chant asked.

Demascus frowned. He said, “I wish to the gods I could remember. I asked the Veil, but it’s decided to make like an ordinary scarf again. I suppose the demon was talking about one of my, uh, previous incarnations. A long time ago. Which I suppose means Murmur was my nemesis the Veil described. Except …”

“What?”

“Murmur learned about the shrine from Kalkan. Otherwise the demon wouldn’t have sent servitors up there to try and collect the excess energy for its own use, and I wouldn’t have found their bodies and tracked down their origin. And I wouldn’t have ended up nearly becoming food for the pit.”

Demascus rubbed his temple.

Chant added, “And Kalkan was the one who hired Riltana to steal your scarf in the first place. And he’s still out there.”

“He’s not the only one,” said Demascus. “Jett was standing by the exit right before that last wave of cultists attacked. I imagine he ordered them to delay us. And he’s probably, right now, preparing an even bigger force to make sure we never escape.”

Chant swallowed. “Sharkbite. That means every moment we delay, the worse our chances.”

“Yeah. Otherwise I’d suggest we deal with the pit. But we’ll have to come back and figure out what to do about it later.”

Demascus helped Chant to his feet. They collected Riltana, then moved to stand by Carmenere, who was tending to the wounds and hurts of the survivors.

“Time to go. We might be facing some resistance out in the halls. The sooner we make a break for it, the less time they’ll have to prepare.”

Riltana said, “First good suggestion I’ve heard today.” Her words were light, but Chant noticed how she gazed anxiously at Carmenere, who studiously ignored the thief.

Demascus said, “Good. Let’s get the survivors out of here too. And keep an eye out for Jett in particular.”

It took a fair amount of time before they actually left the chamber of the pit. A few of the freed captives wouldn’t do anything but rock back and forth and stare, until each in turn had received the silverstar’s healing touch, which was enough of a balm to get them moving.

Two of the captives regained their wits relatively quickly, and helped Carmenere round up the rest. One was a watersoul named Ushen, an Airpsur peacemaker, the other a dwarf trader called Redanvil.

They also had three captured cultists to marshal, products of Carmenere’s merciful mace blows. They bound the cultists’s feet together with rope, but gave them enough slack to hobble. Chant scowled at them, putting all the menace he could in his expression. But they didn’t have any fight left in them. It was more like they were waking from a bad dream. A few openly wept.

He didn’t feel sorry for them, though he stopped Redanvil from kicking them when no one else was paying attention. Maybe the cultists had been compelled or fooled. But maybe they were acting; before anything else, they had been sworn members of the Firestorm Cabal.

After far more time than it should have taken, they finally escorted the freed captives and cultists from the chamber of the pit.

The exit tunnel opened onto the cell-lined corridor where Murmur and the cultists had trapped them. The way was completely clear. If an ambush had been planned, the narrow corridor would have been the place to bottle them up. Chant breathed easier, thinking they were finally on their way.

“This way!” he yelled, pointing at the smashed doors at the end of the corridor.

“Not until I’ve made sure Jett isn’t still down here,” said Demascus, pointing the opposite way, which continued on past the entrance to the pit chamber.

“We’ve got to get these people out of here,” said Carmenere. “The captives need more tending, and the cultists must face justice.”

“You go ahead, then,” said Demascus. “You two, stay with Carmenere, will you?” He gestured to the freed watersoul and dwarf.

Redanvil, who’d helped himself to a cultist’s sword, said, “Wouldn’t think of leaving her. We owe her, and you, our lives.” He executed a smart salute with his blade.

“Hold on,” said Riltana, glancing between the silverstar and the deva. “We shouldn’t split up. Carmenere, just keep everyone here until—”

“These people have spent enough time in this cellar of horrors,” the earthsoul said.

“But we need to make sure the cult is completely eradicated,” Riltana replied.

Carmenere nodded and said, “Rilta, go with Demascus and Chant. I’ll make sure nothing else happens to these poor people. Redanvil and Ushen will help me. All right? We’ll talk later. I promise.”

“I’ll hold you to that.”

Carmenere nodded, distractedly, Chant thought, and directed her newly deputized aides on how to best herd the crowd down the corridor.

Chant watched them, vacillating between leaving with the silverstar and staying to help Demascus. The last thing he wanted to do was find and fight more cultists.

Riltana turned her angry regard on him, and said, “Are you coming?”

“Of course,” he replied, forcing lightness into his tone.

She stalked after Demascus, who’d already taken off down the corridor in the direction opposite the way out. Chant forced the thought out of his head.

They passed another bank of cells, all empty.

Demascus entered a foyerlike space with three doors on the opposite side. The floor was carved with the omnipresent jagged spiral, and guttering green fire burned in ornate braziers.

A corpse with the sign of the cult on his sleeve was facedown on the floor. Blood overflowed the symbol of the Elder Elemental Eye.

Demascus rolled the body over. No one recognized the earthsoul revealed.

“That’s one down,” said Chant.

Demascus said, “Some kind of falling-out in cult land.” He examined the body. “This fellow didn’t know he was in peril. He was stabbed from behind and without warning.”

“Like he was assassinated,” Chant said.

Demascus met the pawnbroker’s eyes, and gave a curt nod. “Yes. It’s what I would have done, if I didn’t have a garrote …” Demascus frowned.

Something clattered behind the middle door. Riltana whispered, “Listen! Someone’s still here.”

Chant drew his crossbow. The stock’s cool touch in his palm calmed his jangled nerves.

Demascus crept to the door. A glimmer of yellow light spilled out when he cracked it. The deva peered in.

Something bulky crashed to the floor in the room.

Demascus’s own shadow rolled up across his body. A silhouette of gloom, not Demascus, pushed the door open and slipped inside.

A bronze-skinned genasi with a jagged spiral tattoo on his neck stood in the center of a ransacked office. He clutched a disk in one hand—no, the disk was strapped to his palm.

“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 a string of curses so foul they would have pushed Chant back on his heels under other circumstances.

He got another quarrel from his calf quiver, but the oily smoke got into his lungs. He backed away coughing, trying to get clear.

After his last hacking cough, the dying hiss of the alchemical vents was the only sound in the room, and they were already petering out.

A shape moved in the dispersing cloud. Chant snapped the bolt into the crossbow and took aim.

Demascus appeared, his eyes red and his cheeks tear-streaked from the black fog.

“By all that’s holy and sovereign!” Demascus yelled. “He’s gone!”

Chant blinked. Sure enough, the corner was empty. Jett—no, Kalkan the tiger-headed beast—was gone.

And so was Riltana.