CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

AIRSPUR
THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

BURNING DOMINIONS!” DEMASCUS YELLED INTO THE tatters of the dissolving vision. His shout bounced between the close walls of the mausoleum. His mausoleum, according to the fragment memory of Oghma’s charm. In the years since Demascus had come to Faerûn, more than one incarnation’s body had apparently washed up in this silent tomb.

“What?” said Chant, his voice tight with concern. The man was a few steps farther away than when Demascus had taken up the sword.

An image of himself stripping his hair of all the godly tokens came unbidden, and an unsettling thought chilled him: Serial killers keep trophies. What were all those tokens of payment from the gods if not that?

He bent over, afraid he might suddenly be sick.

Riltana said, “What … what do you remember?” Her voice trembled with as much anxiety as the pawnbroker’s. Or perhaps it was fear, that he’d become someone different upon discovering his previous self. But he wasn’t any different. He’d only recovered a shard, albeit a large one …

Demascus straightened and rubbed his eyes. He said, “I remember Kalkan. He truly is my nemesis. He’s killed me many times over. I’m the first to realize it, thanks to Oghma.” He rubbed the scroll charm between his thumb and forefinger. It flashed yellow in the magical candlelight.

“The first?” asked Chant.

“The first incarnation of myself. Apparently, I stored my … continuity in a relic called the Whorl of Ioun. Except every time Kalkan killed me, that particular memory failed to be specifically imprinted. None of the previous versions of myself knew anyone was stalking them. Despite that they possessed the strength of lifetimes worth of knowledge and god-given relics …”

“Sharkbite,” commented Chant.

“The last me managed to turn the tables and kill Kalkan four years ago, but one of his underlings murdered me before I’d gotten my bearings.”

“Wait, you killed Kalkan?” said Riltana. “I don’t think so, because—”

“He’s like me,” Demascus interrupted. “He reincarnates. But he’s a twisted monster, corrupt beyond description, surpassing even a devil in his depravity.” He shuddered. “And he never forgets his previous lives. A … rakshasa cannot be washed of its sins by forgetting them.” As I can, he thought. Though the Whorl provides continuity, it apparently did so only for selectively chosen memories. Which had to have been a mercy for his incarnations who took it up fresh each time.

So, where was the skull-carved strongbox? He peered around the chamber with narrowed eyes.

“Hey, tell us what you’re looking for, and we’ll help,” said Chant. He leaned over the sarcophagus and gave the body in it a closer look.

“You won’t find your box,” a new voice called from the tunnel exit opposite the shallow pool. “I’ve already looked for it.”

Kalkan stepped into the room. The flickering candles threw his shape like a nightmare across the wall, and the stomach-curdling odor of rotting flesh assaulted Demascus’s nostrils.

His fingers felt suddenly nerveless. Just as when his last incarnation faced the rakshasa at the shrine, his muscles froze up. And he was so much less than his former self. Merciful lords, Kalkan was going to kill him again!

His friends seemed equally paralyzed by the intruder’s appearance.

Kalkan said, “Do you know what I am, Sword?”

“You’re Kalkan,” Demascus finally forced out. “Why have you hunted me? And why didn’t you just kill me in front of Chant’s shop when I showed up to retrieve the scarf—why manipulate me through this convoluted path?”

The rakshasa cocked his head. The curling horns threw obscene shadows on the wall. He said, “How do you know I’ve hunted you?”

“The pictures on the wall,” Riltana blurted. Demascus glanced at the thief. “Only a crazy person would pay such homage to one person. Or a killer studying his mark.”

“Ah. I suppose that was sloppy of me. Or not—since you still don’t have your ring, do you? Not that you probably even know what I mean. Of all the times I’ve killed you, Demascus, this is the first time you’ve been so uniquely vulnerable.”

The rakshasa slithered forward a pace.

Demascus brought Exorcessum in line with Kalkan, despite the fact that the creature was still across the pool. He said, “Vulnerable for what? And you didn’t answer my question—you’ve predicted everything I’ve done; you could have killed me the moment I appeared. Why didn’t you? What’s your game?”

“I could tell you, but then I’d have to eat you,” said Kalkan, and cackled. He came closer, sidling around the pool.

Desperate, Demascus tried again, “How have you been able to predict the future so well? Who is the Voice of Tomorrow?”

Kalkan glanced at some kind of contrivance he wore on the palm of his left hand. Demascus recognized it from the recollection vouchsafed him by Oghma’s token. Then the rakshasa stiffened and jerked his gaze back to Damascus. He snarled, “You … you remember me! How?”

Demascus raised the charm. “My retainer from the god of knowing. Because you’ve mixed yourself up in Oghma’s domain, you’ve become the one I must kill to fulfill my contract to the Lord of Knowledge.”

It was hard to tell in the candlelight and on a face that was more beast than human, but Demascus thought a flicker of uncertainty swept the rakshasa’s features.

He wasn’t going to find a better opportunity to survive. So he let the charm fall as his causal perception accelerated, rendering everything else as slow as dripping molasses. He gathered a length of shadow like a shroud. Just as he’d done below the Motherhouse, he extended a waving end of the immaterial shroud across the space between himself and Kalkan. It undulated like a black ribbon in a cold wind, then settled across the rakshasa’s form.

Through it, he saw Kalkan redefined as a series of bright nodes, each one blazing with power so strong Demascus almost had to look away. The point of light on the crown of his head, between his horns and twitching ears, was like a lotus flower of a thousand petals and plots folding open. The bluish pulse on his brow was like a third eye.

A sphere of light blazed on Kalkan’s right hand, where the odd device was strapped. Its light outshone all the others. It was almost like an awareness in itself, or the channel for one that led away in a direction he had no name for. Could it be what allowed Kalkan to see the future? It would explain much.

And other gleams shone too, across the silhouette of Kalkan’s body like stars. So strong. So bright.

But even stars eventually go out.

Demascus glided forward, one with the gloom of the mausoleum.

Kalkan’s third eye, blazing through the filter of his shroud, blinked, and time snapped back to its normal flow. The rakshasa reared back and swept an oddly curved blade from the air itself, and parried Exorcessum even as it descended out of shadow.

Demascus tried to salvage the motion of the deflected blow by cutting at his foe’s stomach. Kalkan twisted aside, and brought his own blade round in deadly response.

Only the tatters of his fading temporal acceleration saved him from being disemboweled in turn.

A flight of crossbow bolts screamed through the air at Kalkan, forcing the rakshasa to take a step back. One grazed the creature and drew blood. Not that Kalkan paid any mind.

Then Riltana dropped out of the air behind Kalkan and shoved her short sword into the creature’s back. Or would have, if the rakshasa hadn’t suddenly become as shadowy as Demascus himself, and slipped to the side like a dark breeze.

Burning dominions, Demascus thought, turning just in time to lift Exorcessum in defense. He only partially deflected Kalkan’s sword strike that would have otherwise split his head in two. As it was, the blow sent him spinning.

His free hand snagged the Veil. He pulled it loose from where it wrapped his opposite arm, but his foot caught the lip of the pool and he toppled in. Damn it!

The ice-cold water was only a foot deep, but he got a mouthful anyway. He convulsively coughed as he tried to surge back out of the water.

Kalkan flung himself atop Demascus, mouth wide and hot with saliva and teeth. The creature landed on him, almost forcing his head underwater a second time. Demascus thrust his hand holding the Veil toward the beast, but Kalkan batted it aside and brought his mouth down to tear out Demascus’s throat.

He released Exorcessum—it was too large a weapon to use in close quarters—and caught the rakshasa’s horns as Kalkan’s head descended. Lords of shadow, Kalkan was strong! Demascus was cognizant that he wouldn’t be able to hold the thing off for more than a couple heartbeats. He struggled, gasping, coughing, and choking as every breath he took sucked more water into his lungs.

Kalkan whispered, his breath a slaughterhouse, “Do you remember killing the priest of Oghma? That death stains your soul, deva. The means do not justify the ends. And this time around, you’ve done nothing to absolve yourself of the crime, despite it being the very first vision you had upon waking to this new life.”

Oh, lords of shadow, was that why the vision had been vouchsafed him? So he could seek forgiveness? If so, he’d done nothing … Because he hadn’t understood! Burning dominions, it wasn’t fair!

“Which means,” continued Kalkan, “when I take your life this final time, you shall return as I, and remember all. Then—”

Riltana’s steel-toed boot appeared out of nowhere and smashed like a forge hammer into Kalkan’s forehead.

The rakshasa cried out and Demascus finally managed to thrust the creature away.

Chant plunged in the water with them. He leaned over Kalkan and tried to haul the creature back.

Demascus whipped a loop of the Veil around the rakshasa’s neck like a lasso. The fabric, as if waiting for just such a cue, animated. Its opposite end pulled from Demascus’s grip, then whipped around and around Kalkan’s neck.

The rakshasa sprang out of the water, raking Demascus and Chant with the razor claws on its unshod feet in the process.

Demascus sat up, still coughing so hard that his vision seemed scratched with ragged white streaks. His fingers were numb from the cold pool, but he felt around until he came up with Exorcessum.

Light, he thought. The white runes on the sword blazed in answer, as glorious as sunrise.

Kalkan writhed near the wall, scrabbling desperately to get his oddly jointed claws beneath the self-tightening coils of the Veil.

Perfect! Demascus charged the rakshasa; but Riltana was faster.

She spun out of the air like a whirlwind, slashing with her blade. She landed a few telling blows, painting lines of blood on Kalkan’s arms and chest.

The rakshasa abandoned the noose tightening around his neck and grabbed the thief with swiftness far quicker than a cat’s. He hugged the windsoul, and she screamed, more in rage than fear. Then his mouth went wide and he took a savage bite out of the side of the woman’s neck.

“No!” Demascus yelled. Riltana’s body jerked as if in seizure before going limp.

Kalkan grinned, his mouth covered in gore. He let the woman’s body fall to the ground.

Demascus hurled himself at the rakshasa.

But Kalkan’s legs buckled before Demascus arrived. The fiend reflexively put one hand back to the Veil still wound around his neck, but it was far too late. The relic fabric had twisted itself so tightly around the creature’s neck that it was a wonder the head hadn’t popped off.

Like the suicide warriors who screamed across the Elf-harrow, pledging their life’s end to the spirit tree Cuivanu, Kalkan had deliberately allowed the Veil to kill him in order to savage Riltana.

But no, Demascus realized, there had been no sacrifice. Even as the light of life faded from the rakshasa’s eyes, he understood the all-important difference.

No matter how many times Kalkan was killed, he would never, ever die.