CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

AIRSPUR
THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

THANKS TO CHANT’S LAST VIAL OF LIQUID GRACE, THE TERRIBLE wound on Riltana’s neck closed over, and the unconscious windsoul breathed easier. Demascus closed his eyes in relief. She was out of the worst danger. If she’d died, no reparation would have been enough.

The pawnbroker said, “She’ll require further tending or clerical magic.”

Demascus rubbed Oghma’s charm between his thumb and forefinger. He mused, “My former self had dozens of these divine tokens, given for services rendered. I bet one of those would heal her to full health with a thought.”

“But they’re in some kind of strongbox, along with the, what’d you call it, the Whorl of Ioun? Which has your …?”

“Which contains the lion’s share of my memories I thought important enough to fix forever into it, yeah. Apparently, it’ll eventually appear out of nowhere, a gift from myself.” Although, based on what Oghma’s charm had revealed, he was surprised the skull-decorated coffer hadn’t already turned up.

“When?”

“It’s overdue,” he admitted.

“I’m sure I don’t know what constitutes as overdue for a magically time-traveling strongbox,” said Chant.

“Yeah. Me either.”

Demascus looked at Kalkan’s mounded gray remains for the hundredth time. The rakshasa’s body had just sort of fallen in on itself, collapsing to ash in moments, as if the weight of a thousand years had descended on the body in one go. Except for the hood and the odd disk, which had disappeared in a brief blaze of blue light.

He supposed that meant the hood and disk had been pulled to some hidden resting place akin to his own—

Riltana gasped and opened her eyes. “The rakshasa!” she said, her voice thin.

“Easy,” Chant said. “He’s dead. And you’re hurt, but you’ll be fine if you take it easy.”

Riltana tried to say something else, but all that came out was a rasp. She raised a trembling gloved hand and managed to work her fingers in a weak approximation of a snap. A healing draft appeared in her palm.

“You’ve been holding out on us!” said Chant, laughing.

A fragile smile lifted Riltana’s mouth. Demascus popped the cork on Riltana’s vial, and she drank.

Silvery vitality chased away her dull gray pallor, and she propped herself up. She was still weak, and a ragged, half-healed scar yet marred her throat, but Demascus judged the windsoul was definitely out of the woods. She really is tough as nails, he thought.

“So, Demascus, was this shit all part of your last incarnation’s plan?” she asked. Her voice was stronger too.

“Hardly,” he said. “The only reason Kalkan didn’t kill me is … because I had the help of you and Chant. And Oghma’s charm, with its snippet of memory to guide me. Sorry you were hurt. I—”

She punched his shoulder, not hard. “Stop it. I knew the risks. And look, we’re alive, and the rakshasa is gone.”

“What did the rakshasa mean,” said Chant suddenly. “When it said that you would return like it?”

Demascus let his breath out. His mouth went dry, and his palms clammy. He debated whether he should claim ignorance. But he spoke his shame, “To accomplish my last contract, I had to convince a sect of Oghmanyte betrayers I was one of them. I had to do that so convincingly that they’d take me into their confidences without question. I …” He shook his head. “I may have exceeded the limits of my code.”

“Which means what, exactly?” pressed Chant.

“If I cannot find absolution for what I did, there’s a chance my next incarnation will wake in flesh as twisted as Kalkan’s,” he said, his voice matter-of-fact.

Riltana put a hand to her mouth and her eyes narrowed.

“But Kalkan’s a liar, a fiend, and every word it spoke was probably a deception,” Chant replied. “Right?”

“Sure, but—”

“But nothing,” Chant said, and clapped him on the back. “We’ve just met, but I feel like I’ve got your measure. Yes, I was rattled when I realized you drew a portion of your strength from shadow. Yet you obviously draw the balance from light—I saw the radiance blaze from your sword. I don’t know about devas or fallen angels, but I sincerely doubt your soul is in danger of tipping over into unredeemable evil.”

Riltana gave a hopeful nod of encouragement.

“What if I’ve made many such choices over my career as an executioner for the gods? Maybe I’ve always walked the edge.” For instance, something about that woman who had appeared when he claimed Exorcessum …

“Leech-piss,” said the thief. “You sure know how to push the river, don’t you?”

“I …” He laughed. “I guess I do.”

They met the queen again a day later. Rather than assembling in her bower, they joined Arathane and her forces beneath the ruined Motherhouse. The queen was personally overseeing a sweep of the surviving substructure, commanding a sortie of elite peacemakers and Firestorm Cabal regulars that were free of contamination by Murmur’s abortive cult.

The day before, they’d sent a courier to the queen describing what they’d found beneath the Motherhouse. Of how they’d rooted out the cult of the Elder Elemental Eye, and destroyed the oddly manipulative nightmare demon that had used Leheren’s body as a host. They’d included in the report their inference that most Cabal members brought into the cult were tricked, and thus were hopefully not irredeemably compromised.

Demascus gawked at the queen when he saw her standing at the edge of the droning pit.

The gown of their first meeting was gone. Today Arathane wore sturdy leather armor scuffed and scarred from past action. Only the fragile silver circlet flashing at her brow bespoke her queenly station. A cloak flared on her back, half-alive with defensive enchantments, and a crystalline spear nestled in the crook of her arm with easy familiarity. You only carry a spear like that, thought Demascus, if you know how to use it.

Here we go again, he thought, mooning over a queen.

He told himself the woman was a monarch, untouchable in her role as leader of her people, and probably trothed to marry some foreign king or prince. But that didn’t lessen his reaction to her. He imagined that his original angelic self, that being lost behind so many reincarnations that the personality was long gone, would find Arathane equally divine.

She was directing one of the peacemakers as they came into the subterranean chamber. Arathane continue speaking, even as she became aware of their presence. She raised an amiable eyebrow at his single-minded regard, and he managed a friendly smile in return despite how his heart was suddenly punching his ribs.

When the queen finished explaining to the peacemaker that he was to make one last sweep of all cells in the complex, she turned to them and smiled.

“Thank you for joining me here,” said Queen Arathane. “It’s easiest for me to deal with this situation personally rather than let it become a project for the Four Stewards. Especially since I know I can count on your expertise to help me. I owe you all a great debt for putting down this threat to my rule, and the safety of everyone in Airspur.”

Chant bowed, as did Riltana and Carmenere to different degrees. Demascus cleared his throat and said, “We’re happy to help you however we can, Your Majesty.”

Then, so quickly he must have imagined it, Arathane winked at him. It took several heartbeats for him to focus after that as he tried to sort out whether he’d really seen it.

The queen went on, “As soon as we finish here, I plan to set aside an endowment to rebuild the Motherhouse. I’ve already sent rumors circulating that the Firestorm Cabal came under attack by an enemy of Akanûl, and that only the sacrifice of those who wear the red prevented a far greater evil from visiting the genasi of Airspur.”

“Which, from a certain point of view, is true enough,” Chant said.

Arathane gave the slightest of nods, and said, “To rule, a queen must be adept at seeing many points of view at the same time. And the Cabal, despite its shortcomings, is a weapon in my arsenal I’d rather not lose. The borders remain uncertain, sightings of Xxiphu over the Sea of Fallen Stars have increased markedly, and news out of Tymanther and Chessenta seems especially troublesome. But I won’t burden you with those details, at least not today.”

Chant said, “But such details sound fascinating, Your Majesty.”

“I’m sure. In any event, for today at least, the citizens of Airspur are safe from this particular threat. I think a reward of some sort is in order. And who knows—perhaps Akanûl, and I, will need your services again.”

“All you need do is ask,” Demascus said. His mouth seemed to have a life of its own, but he didn’t much care to stop it.

“Well, then—my first question: how shall we deal with these insects?” She used the spear tip to gesture into the pit. “My peacemakers tell me it’s some kind of swarm entity.”

“They’re right,” said Riltana. “The nightmare demon said the bugs in the pit were its ‘sibling’ and called it Scour. That leech-son fed people to …” She shivered and closed her eyes a moment, then continued, “It thought it could wake Scour up, whatever that means. Nothing good I’m sure.”

Carmenere put a hand on Riltana’s shoulder.

“So, an extermination, before it comes to its senses?” said the queen.

Demascus nodded. “We should have dealt with this earlier. We’re probably lucky it hasn’t already gained consciousness.” He didn’t volunteer the reason they’d left the bugs to fester was because they’d had to chase down Kalkan.

Riltana said, “Hey! I know where to find a few casks of lamp oil. Through there. We could burn the bugs out.” She pointed to the arrow slits where the cultists had monitored the chamber.

In short order, they produced ten kegs of lamp oil from the guardroom. Arathane pitched in, as if rolling casks filled with sloshing flammable liquid was common fare for a queen.

Everyone took a place around the pit: Demascus, Chant, Carmenere, Riltana, and Arathane, as well some Cabal regulars and peacemakers the queen selected. Everyone also prepared a smoldering torch, dripping with fresh tar.

“On my mark!” said Arathane. Then, “Mark!”

Ten casks smashed down into the pit, sending the insects into a frenzy of perturbed buzzing.

When the torches followed, a whoomp of fire and black smoke punched out of the cavity, forcing everyone back several feet from the heat and throat-scratching, acrid odor.

After that, it was just a matter of letting it burn.

Demascus stared into the pit as if the curling flames were from an oracle’s brazier. Black smoke from smoldering carapaces billowed up from the cavity. The smoke would have filled the chamber if a couple windsoul peacemakers hadn’t applied their heritage to direct it out of the chamber in a braided column of black.

A handful of gray moths escaped the pit before the inferno took hold, though not before being singed. They flopped around on the cavern floor, vainly struggling to take wing.

He briefly considered stomping on the survivors, but it seemed obvious the winged insects were doing the bug-equivalent of gasping their last. Scour was dying. Just as the insects in the pit had eaten so many innocents, now the fire was eating it.

Scour almost ate me, he thought. Or … had Kalkan planned for me to get free of Murmur and the pit all along, as part of his crazy scheme? And who in the name of all the lords of shadow did Kalkan answer to? Why did Kalkan want him to embrace his dark side, and become a rakshasa? What evils did his complete memory contain that—

Demascus lifted his jaw. No. He was done with wondering. He’d allowed himself to fall into Kalkan’s power, and he’d learned much from that lesson. He was forewarned about the threat, and he didn’t have to be a victim anymore. He wouldn’t allow it again.

I almost died, he thought. Worse, so did people I’ve come to think of as friends. He glanced at the faces of his companions, and the queen’s too, lit by dancing orange flames.

If I perish, he thought, I’ll forget everything all over again. But whether I remember or forget, one thing is sure: Kalkan is coming back. He will remember everything. And he will hunt me down again.

He recognized that the time had come for him to seize control of his own fate. Kalkan could come back in four years, or for all he knew, four months. Either way, he had to be prepared.

So … he had to stop agonizing over what kind of person he might have been—he needed his full identity and abilities returned, no matter what he once was. He had to retrieve all his lost artifacts, especially the Whorl of Ioun. He had to take charge of his destiny before his destiny took charge of him.

How long would it take for Kalkan to reincarnate? It took Demascus four years last time. Maybe that was long, and Kalkan could pull off the return trick in just a quarter of that time.

One year, then. Fine.

That should give him enough time to be ready.

The world was a mosaic of colors, of sounds, of smells, and tastes. Countless tiny moving windows revealed textures and experience, and the occasional hot, orgasmic sensation of food. Time was meaningless. All was just the infinite, now of teeming existence.

Something changed. Something registered as … interest? A new morsel, bigger than any that had come before, and richer too, squirting hot ichor and life energy every which way. But none escaped the hundred thousand tiny bodies, each with a mouth, proboscis, a stylet, or pair of tearing mandibles.

As each tiny bite was digested across the swarm, a hundred thousand heartlike organs, each pumping according to its own internal rhythm, came into sluggish synchrony.

What’s this? it thought. So good. Tastes like life itself. Like …

Peels of knowledge tightened and closed together into a whole, its own memories as well as those skimmed from the food that had thought of itself as a being called Murmur.

And I am Scour, it thought.

All it had known of its home fossil dimension, of the attempted ritual that was foiled a world away, and the darkness that followed, Scour knew. And as it finished off the flesh, mind, and soul of what had been its sibling, everything that Murmur once knew became Scour’s too.

It was still integrating itself a day later, assessing its power and potential, plus Murmur’s experiences and abilities, when the casks of lamp oil dropped onto it, followed by the throng of flaming torches.

Then Scour knew only pain.