If I could find the breath to scream at the pair of them, I would. What does it matter whose wife I am, while I lay dying at their feet?
Artoris considers Taar, his eyes widening slowly. “I know you,” he says, then draws in a sharp gasp of recognition. “You’re the fae warlord from the temple! The one who took my talisman. It was you who led the attack on Evisar.” He takes an aggressive step closer, cursing viciously. “Do you know what damage your foolishness wrought? All Morthiel’s labors set back, by years potentially. Years he doesn’t have to waste! All that energy spent just to repel your hopeless siege. What did you think you’daccomplish? You deserved to be slaughtered like pigs.”
Taar growls. “Your master has poisoned my world long enough.”
“Poisoned?” Artoris barks a mirthless laugh. “Is that what you think is happening? No, no, Morthiel has every intention of rejuvenating that little world of yours. Of remaking it into the most powerful realm in all Eledria, a rival even to Aurelis and Noxaur and all the great fae courts. He has the power right at his fingertips, if he can only create for himself a strong enough body with which to wield it.”
“Power?” Taar scoffs. “You mean the power of Ashtari, the power of the Seventh Hell. There is no creative force in that power, only destruction.”
Artoris smiles. “Ah, but there can be no new creation without destruction first. Even a barbarian such as yourself should know that much. No life without death, no glory without loss, no goodness without evil.”
I’ve had just about enough of their posturing. They’re like a couple of bristling tomcats, yeowling on the rooftop. Summoning whatever strength I have left, I try to push myself upright, but cannot. The spell is mostly wound out of me now, and the agony is overwhelming. A shuddering groan vibrates in my throat.
“Shakh,”Taar curses, hearing my pain. “Enough of this, Artoris. I don’t care what you do to me—reassert that spell. Don’t let her die.”
“Oh, I won’t, have no fear,” Artoris sneers. “Morthiel has need of her, and I am bound to honor my master’s commands.He would have kept her at Evisar, did we not require witch-magic to deal with that cursed rune your people gave her. Now that’s been effectively suppressed, I can bring her back to him, ready for his use. Yes, barbarian, I’ll keep her alive. But she can suffer a little now, as I need that power back from her.”
So saying, he begins to murmur something in an arcane language. It sounds strangely familiar, though I cannot place it. Even through the haze of pain, however, I recognize the sudden flickering of red light which forms at his fingertips. I don’t know if Taar sees it, if hisibrildianeyes can perceive what my gods-gift can, but I know what is about to happen. I’ve seen it before, the night of the temple attack, when Artoris summoned death magic, and ripped the soul straight out of a Licornyn rider. In another second it’s Taar’s soul he will claim.
“No,” I whisper. Then, pushing myself up onto my elbows, I drag in an agonized lungful of air and scream:“NO!”
A pulse of song goes out from me—bursting against the stone walls of the gallery, echoing and reechoing, doubled, tripled, quadrupled from wall to floor to ceiling. It pulses like a wave, just strong enough to knock Artoris off balance, to momentarily silence the flow of the spell he chants.
It isn’t much. But it’s enough.
Taar lunges, hands outstretched.
Artoris’s eyes widen. His lips move, trying to form words—either a prayer, a curse, or even a vain attempt tofinish the death-spell he was weaving. But it’s already too late for him. Taar’s hands close down around his throat. A sick crunch of bone fills my ears and, with that sound, the last of the dark magic sustaining my body breaks away, scatters in the ether, leaves me unprotected against the onslaught of mortal pain.
I collapse.
My head strikes stone, and I know no more.
16
TAAR
“Give me to drink, Taarthalor!”roars the darkness in my blood.
I stare down at the mage’s body, broken in my grasp. My hands still clasp his throat and hold him limp and suspended above the stones. His dead weight is heavy, but I scarcely feel it, so great is the dark triumph pulsing in my veins.
“Pour out blood unto me!”
I’ve poured out my enemy’s blood, wrung life from this mortal frame with shocking ease. And the joy of his death—the sensation of his soul ripped from the confines of this corpse and dragged away into hellish realms—is darker, more dreadful, more addicting than anything I could have wished for.
It is right that I should feel this way,I tell myself in those first moments.It is justice.
How much suffering has this man caused in the name of his master, Morthiel? Shanaera’s face appears before my mind’s eye. Shanaera, and so many others, my friends and cohorts. All those the death mages took and cursed and forced into servitude. Yes, it is right that this man should pay for their suffering, right that he should be sent to damnation at my hands.
But even as the righteousness of vengeance surges within me, I become aware of something else stirring in the atmosphere. Whorling magic energy, dissipating from Artoris’s corpse, vanishing back into the realm from which it was forcibly drawn. And I realize.
Dropping Artoris like a sack of bones, I whirl to look back at Ilsevel where she lies, crumpled up in an attitude of pain on the floor behind me.
“No,” I breathe.
The next moment I am beside her, kneeling, trying to speak her name but unable to utter it through the horror clogging my throat.“Give me to drink!”the voice of latent virulium snarls, but I dismiss it with a sharp shake of my head. Nothing else matters, no vengeance, no violence. Only her. Only the pain she suffers.
She’s so still. Dead? No—my trembling fingers find a pulse in her throat. She’s alive, Nornala be praised!
