Part 6 (2/2)

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 d.a.m.ned. 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 crus.h.i.+ng 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. G.o.ds d.a.m.n it! He'd had more than enough of this b.a.s.t.a.r.d!

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 s.h.i.+elded 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 sp.a.w.n.” 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 amus.e.m.e.nt. ”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 h.e.l.l.

CHAPTER NINE.

”My G.o.ds, what have you done to him?” Martise stared at 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, G.o.ds, 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 smas.h.i.+ng 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.

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