Martise tugged on his sleeve. “We can’t, in good conscience, abandon her to this fate.”
“Yes we can.” He took a breath to argue more when a blot of darkness appeared before him. Hands with an iron grip lifted him off his feet and hurled him backwards through the cottage doorway. His spine shuddered, and black stars exploded across his vision as he slammed back against a wall of rock. Martise’s screams were distant in his ears as he fell and rolled.
He barely regained his feet before he was thrown once more, punched sideways into a trestle table that tipped and fell half on him, pinning him between it and the opposite wall. A sharp pain throbbed in his left side, and his sight blurred. He clawed for the sheathed sword trapped beneath him.
“Touch it, and I’ll snap her neck.”
Silhara froze at Megiddo’s command. The demon stood a few steps away, pale and black and malevolent. Martise stood in front of him, her eyes wide and nostrils flared. Megiddo’s hand curved under her chin toward the side of her jaw. His other arm wrapped around her waist, holding her close. His faint smile might have frosted windows from the inside were he in the living world.
“Speak or reach for the sword, and there will be no saving her, even if you manage to return to your home. Broken and disfigured here. Dead there. How much are you willing to sacrifice, sorcerer, so that I may act your puppet?”
Silhara wanted nothing more than to spit his adversary on the demon blade and roast him over an open fire, but he held his tongue. He stared into Martise’s eyes, trying with only a gaze to reassure her. Her terror was palpable in the room—to him, to Megiddo and to Acseh who stood near the door, ashen and still.
Megiddo gestured to him with a thrust of his chin. “Take off your belt and toss it toward me.”
That was easier said than done with him half pinned by the overturned table. Silhara did as instructed, careful to always keep his hands in sight. After much squirming and sweating, he managed to free the belt from the twisted fabric of his cloak and threw the sheathed sword over the table where it landed closer to Acseh than to Megiddo.
The Wraith King shook his head. “Difficult to the last.” The tone of his voice shifted, softened, and he addressed Acseh without taking his eyes off Silhara. “Damkiana, kick the sword to me. Don’t touch it with your hands.”
Acseh hesitated for a moment, gaze darting back and forth between Megiddo and Silhara before she did as the king commanded and pushed the glowing scabbard across the floor with her foot. It spun until he stopped its spin with the toe of his boot.
Heedless of the fact she was embraced by a demon and enrobed by cursed shadows and damned souls, Martise did her best to climb up her captor and away from the sword where it lay near her feet.
Her struggles didn’t faze him. Megiddo neatly flipped the scabbard into the air with his foot and caught it with the hand previously resting at Martise’s waist. The hand at her vulnerable neck never moved.
Lightning slithered up his forearm and disappeared into the shadow robes. Silhara watched, puzzled, as the faces swirling in its mist faded. Even more unsettling was the minute change that overtook the king. Had he any doubt about Megiddo’s corporeality, being physically thrown into a wall had squelched that notion. But the Wraith King looked more solid, more...complete, as if the connection with the sword added layers to him that weren’t there before.
The king is the sword; the sword is the king.
Megiddo’s slight smile returned. “You are indeed powerful, mage. No barrier ward I ever heard of withstood this blade’s effects. We could have used a necromancer like you in the beginning.”
Silhara bit back a scathing remark, bound to silence by Megiddo’s threat against Martise. Beginning of what? The annihilation of a world by demon hordes? Even if he were a necromancer and lived then, he’d be quick to tell the Wraith Kings and their ilk exactly what they could do with their demand for his help. Besides, those who dealt with the dead rarely consorted with the damned. Far too unpredictable and savage.
Megiddo uttered something in a guttural language that made the hairs on Silhara’s arms rise and plummeted the temperature in the cottage. The blade slid out of the scabbard by itself and hovered mid air at Megiddo’s forearm. The sharp lightning blue radiance crackling down the steel cast Martise’s drawn features in high relief. The king dropped the scabbard and grasped the sword hilt.
For a split second, his gaze flickered away from Silhara to the sword, and his hand relaxed against Martise’s jaw. It was the opportunity Silhara had waited for. The command not to speak had little bearing on a man whose voice had long ago been ruined by a strangulation attempt. Spells worked in any language, even those of hands as well as the mouth.
He sketched a quick symbol, and Acseh screamed as an invisible force slung her at Megiddo and the sword’s lethal edge. The demon’s eyes widened. He was fast, inhumanly so, just as Silhara hoped. Megiddo shoved Martise from him and spun so that he caught Acseh with his free hand and yanked the blade away before it sliced into her.
Silhara fired off another spell. The table holding him down shot across the room, a moving barricade that slammed the demon against the wall behind him. The mage rolled to his feet and grabbed Martise’s hand, using the precious moments in which Megiddo was busy juggling a sword, a woman and a crushing table, to dart out the cottage door.
He shoved Martise through first and nearly choked on his own cloak when something grabbed hold and wrenched him back into the cottage.
Rage cast a red haze over his vision. Gods damn it! He’d had more than enough of this bastard!
He fired spell after spell against the demon king, turning the cottage’s interior into a shambles of shattered furniture and cracked walls. The sagging roof groaned and threatened to cave in on them. Silhara sought the one weak spot besides the sword, but Megiddo shielded Acseh, absorbing every shockwave of battle magic Silhara threw at him until his coiling hair literally smoked, his robes screamed in agony and his face bore the black grooves of scorch marks in the marble skin.
Silhara advanced on him, casually hurling spells. He heard bones crack and saw Megiddo flinch, but the demon remained standing, sword held at his side, Acseh crouched behind him, arms covering her head.
“You can throw spells into eternity, mage, but you will not leave here until you open the gate for me,” Megiddo said.
“Then you and I will dance this dance forever, demon spawn.” Silhara lowered his stance and lunged for Acseh.
The tell-tale crackle of the sword hummed by his ear. He jerked back, caught Megiddo’s wrist and crushed the tendons on the underside. Megiddo’s palm opened and the sword, still bound by the barrier wards, fell into Silhara’s hand.
Too easy, he thought. Far too easy. But his suspicions didn’t stop him. He turned the sword and drove it into Megiddo’s chest, just below the breastbone. The blade sank deep, through clothing, skin, muscle and organs and out Megiddo’s back. He staggered, stumbled over a wailing Acseh and fell against the wall. The sword tip raked down the plaster, sending snow drifts of powder over the demon’s robes.
He gasped a few short breaths, and his icy hand closed over Silhara’s where he still gripped the hilt. Silhara twisted the blade and was rewarded with another gasp. “Stings, doesn’t it, demon?”
Acseh crawled away from them until she climbed to her feet and flew out the door. Megiddo watched her escape before turning his metallic gaze to Silhara with a gleam of satisfaction. He grinned, a death’s head smile of clenched teeth and black amusement. “I am no demon,” he said in a wheezing voice.
Another twist; another pained gasp. “Why should I believe you?”
This time Megiddo’s smile was triumphant. The hand covering Silhara’s lifted, fingers spread. “Because it’s true.” Before Silhara could pull away, the demon’s index finger touched his forehead.
And the Master of Crows awakened to hell.
CHAPTER NINE
“My gods, what have you done to him?” Martise stared a
t the wreckage that was once a tidy cottage before vaulting over a broken bench and a heap of pots netted together in a snarl of clothesline.
Silhara crouched with his back to her, unmoving. The demon king slumped in front of him, impaled by his own sword. His macabre robes squirmed across his body, twitching each time a shard of lightning crackled down the blade and lit his insides like some grotesque festival lamp.
Megiddo lifted his head at her shout. “Don’t touch him,” he said in a thick voice and promptly spat a gobbet of black blood onto the floor.
For some reason Martise couldn’t fathom, she obeyed and skirted around Silhara’s still form to see his face. Her heartbeat stopped and restarted at the speed of a runaway horse. Except for several nasty bruises and the streamers of dried blood from his use of the black arcana to get here, he seemed unharmed. No fresh blood or broken limbs, but he was like a corpse in rigor, eyes wide and staring into some unfathomable vastness. His lips moved, shaping soundless words. he remained unresponsive when Martise called his name several times, first in gentle question and finally in resounding demand.
“What did you do?” she repeated in quieter, despairing tones.
Megiddo inhaled deeply, grasped the hilt and pulled the sword out in slow measures. Martise felt the blood drain from her face and a warning buzz start in her ears. The blade, driven clean through the demon’s body, glistened with blood that faded as soon as it hit the light. Megiddo groaned in agony but continued until the sword no longer impaled him. The unliving robes parted, and where there should have been a wound, only a long tear in his tunic shown, surrounded by a dark stain. A human might not heal here, but a demon did.
Martise stood her ground, unwilling to leave Silhara’s side, when Megiddo gained his feet, sword still clutched in his hand. He stared at Silhara in silence for long moments and then at Martise. “I believe you, kashaptu,” he said. “It was his power, not yours, that awakened the sword and cracked open the gate.”
She didn’t correct him. Besides, her recalcitrant Gift might as well not even exist for all the help it had given her through this ordeal. She gazed at Silhara and didn’t squelch the whimper that escaped her lips.
“I gave him memory,” the demon said. “My memory. My story.” He stepped over scattered bits of plaster and lath, and skirted the remains of a bench with a broken washboard perched atop it to retrieve the sword’s scabbard. “When he revives, tell him to call my name. I will come.”
This time he chose to walk out the door instead of disappear from sight in an eye’s blink. Martise promptly forgot him and turned her attention to Silhara. He hadn’t moved, not a muscle, except for his mouth which continued to recite silent words.
“Is he gone?” Acseh spoke from the doorway.
Martise didn’t bother to turn. The woman had fled past her into the gray distance, features twisted in terror. Martise had been too focused on reaching Silhara to stop her or even to care. “He just walked out,” she answered. “Did you not see him?” It didn’t surprise her if Megiddo had strolled by Acseh, soundless and invisible.
The woman remained at the doorway, unwilling to venture farther inside. “Your mage tried to kill me.”
Knowing Silhara and how he viewed a battle, she didn’t doubt it. In his mind, one fought to win by whatever means necessary, and he’d quickly figured out that Acseh was Megiddo’s weakness, just as she was Silhara’s.
Martise slowly circled him. “Come back to me, love,” she whispered. “Tell me what you see.” A more desperate, fearful plea echoed in her mind. Please, gods, please, please, please come back to me.
She glanced at Acseh. “I doubt he’s any threat to you now.”
He made a liar out of her as soon as she spoke the words. Her skirt hem brushed his hip. Silhara erupted from his frozen stillness with a bellow that challenged a thunderclap and a swinging fist that would have taken Martise’s head off her shoulders if she hadn’t ducked at the last minute. Acseh screamed and bolted a second time.
Martise shouted his name, forgetting the danger of revealing his name on the gray plane. He ignored her, clawing at his cloak, hair, his skin, until he’d gouged scratches into his arms that welled with blood. A chaotic mix of languages spilled from his mouth—bits and pieces of spells that set a broken chair on fire and sent the ceramic water pitcher smashing against an opposite wall.
The pitch of his voice rose, beyond the raspy timbre created by a damaged throat, to a high inhuman scream of unimaginable suffering. His body contorted, and he staggered across the room in a violent paroxysm of flailing arms and agonized cries.
Pots, broken shards of pitcher, clothesline and bits of furniture swirled upward, spinning around the room with Silhara in the center of its vortex. Martise dove behind the upended table to keep from being skewered by a pair of flensing knives and bludgeoned by an iron skillet. The knives buried themselves in the wall above her head while the skillet smashed into a cupboard before falling to the floor by her hip.
The spinning column collapsed with the end of whatever incantation Silhara uttered. His screams had changed to pitiful moans, and his back arched, as if someone had taken a bullwhip to him. He careened into the table where Martise had taken shelter, sick with horror. This had to stop. No waiting for him to “revive” as Megiddo so gently and so mendaciously described.
No amount of coaxing or talking would end this torture, and she had no magic that might subdue him. She wrapped her hand around the skillet’s handle. Silhara’s voice rose in pitch again, signaling a crest of whatever torture ripped his mind to shreds. A gout of flame burst across one wall and spilled down another. Martise rose to her feet and crept closer. Silhara spun, and she struck.
The skillet gave a dull thrung when it connected with the side of Silhara’s skull. The screaming stopped abruptly, and he dropped like a sack of oranges fallen from a cart. Martise dropped the pan, fingers still stinging from the resonate vibrations that jittered from her hand to her shoulder when she hit him.
Smoke filled the room. Above her, the ceiling groaned a warning just as one of the supporting joists cracked. Perfect. They’d survived a demon’s machinations only to be killed by a collapsing roof.
She slid her hands under Silhara’s arms and dragged him toward the door, uttering a stream of curses that would have made him applaud if he’d been conscious. The curses changed to coughs as smoke filled her lungs and obscured the cottage’s interior. She aimed for the gray light of the open door, barely visible in the haze of smoke. Silhara was a slender, muscular man without a speck of extra padding on him, but he was dead weight unconscious and harder to drag than an anvil through mud.
Her shoulders clenched in protest, and sweat soaked the shirt she wore, as much from the exertion of dragging her husband through the door as from the heat of the fire. The fetid air smelled almost sweet when she finally got them both to safety and just in time.
A final booming crack, and the cottage roof collapsed in a giant cloud of dust and smoke, smothering the flames inside. The flattened structure revealed Acseh standing in the distance, staring at the ruins. She rubbed her eyes as if disbelieving of what she saw.
Shrouded in a fine coating of dirt, Martise dropped to her backside next to her prone husband and exhaled a long sigh. She lowered her hand so that it hovered just above his nose and mouth. His breath tickled her palm, and she breathed another relieved sigh, this one accompanied by tears.
Her blow hadn’t killed him even if whatever Megiddo had done to him almost did. She’d take the image of the powerful Master of Crows reduced to a screaming, thrashing cipher to her death, certain neither old age nor mind sickness would lessen its clarity. She’d never made the mistake of assuming him invincible. Their battle with the lich years earlier had confirmed that, but a man who could defeat a god seemed invulnerable in many ways. A demon king had shown her otherwise, and she’d hate him beyond immortality for it.
She jumped when Silhara groaned and reached up to gingerly touch the side of hi
s head. “What is wrong with you?” he said in a voice so scratchy he was almost incoherent. “First you try to emasculate me by kicking my balls into my throat and then you bash my head in.”
Martise’s dry chuckle turned to outright laughter mixed with tears. He’d come back to her—beaten, bloody, exasperated and snappish. Very much the man she loved with all her heart.
She stroked his hair away from his face and temples, careful to avoid the swelling knot where the skillet had kissed him. “You’re a filthy mess,” she told him. He frowned at her, and somewhere in that black, black gaze, Martise saw a glimmer of something that made her shiver—horror. He blinked and it was gone, and a part of her hoped she imagined it.
“And you’re beautiful,” he replied. “Dirt suits you. So does my shirt.” He sat up with her help and felt the spot where she struck him. “Ouch! Did you have to hit me that hard?” His scowl faded when he caught sight of the cottage. “You knocked the house down too?”
She grasped his hand, laced her fingers through his and kissed his dusty knuckles. “You and Megiddo did that.” She saw it again, that flicker of aversion she’d never seen before Megiddo’s enchantment. “What did he do to you, husband? I found you entranced, completely unaware of your surroundings. When I touched you, you went mad.”
Silhara’s harsh features grew even harsher, colder. He stared at the deep scratches he’d inflicted on his arms and felt the ones on his neck. “There is memory, and there is nightmare,” he said hoarsely. “Did I hurt you?” She shook her head, and his shoulders slumped a little before stiffening once more. “Did he say anything to you?”
She shrugged, desperate to banish that strange look in his eyes but unable to figure out how, especially when he was as cryptic as he was now. “Only that he gave you his story, and when you revived to call his name. He’d come to you.” She clutched his hand. “Silhara, you can’t battle him yet. Whatever he did surely weakened you. Maybe enough so that we can’t escape here yet.”