Stardeep (7 page)

Gage struggled even as his skin ripped and peeled away. Fighting the blade hadn’t helped him; it had left him vulnerable. And in anothet few moments, he would be dead anyway…

He surrendered himself to Angul’s will.

A blue haze fell across his eyes. Through the filter of Angul’s perceptions, everything was suddenly, gloriously, perfect.

Someone was screaming, but the noise was distant, unimportant, not significant to the task at hand—even though the screamer turned out to be himself. He coughed blood, but the many weaknesses of flesh were no longer his concern. Something far stronger girded his frame and held him steady.

Angul’s flame flashed and new vigor flooded his limbs. Flayed skin sloughed, unsullied flesh burgeoned and sleeted across his gaping wounds. Gage stood, heaving the demon up, too. Overbalanced, man, sword, and fiend crashed into heaped tteasures.

Demoriel’s grasp slackened and Gage pulled away, slashing with Angul, knocking the demon backward. It rolled, sinuously as a snake might, onto two cloven feet. It screamed again in its unholy tongue, You anger me. More than your soul is forfeit—have you parents? A wife? A suckling child you spawned? I will find them, and they—

The Blade Cerulean seared the demon’s sharklike skin, textuted its flesh with vicious swipes, broke its teeth on the hard side of its invulnerable iron. Yet Demoriel withstood

this punishment as if it enjoyed the pain. It never ceased its obscene banter, but screamed louder, abyssal curses that smote stone and liquefied metal. A portion of the ceiling collapsed and the demon grappled Gage once more.

But this time, it was a clinch of desperation—Angul’s punishments had weakened it. Demoriel attempted to encompass Angul and Gage in a great hug, trapping the blade against its body and thus preventing Gage from swinging the enchanted sword. Gage danced away, ending the demon’s best chance to turn the battle’s tide. Demoriel’s wounds burned with fire, its eyes glazed with pain, and its mouth dripped, a bloody mass of shattered fangs. Yet it fought on. A bound thing, it was compelled to struggle until it triumphed or failed, or until the words that yanked it forth from outside the world lost their force…

Angul staked the demon to the floor. The blade pulsed with purifying fire. Of Demoriel, only ash remained. The demon’s time in the world had proven brief.

Gage released his grip. Strength rushed from him like water emptying from a holed aquifer.

His remaining glove whimpered a childlike gurgle of loss and misery.

City of Laothkund, The Gutter

G’way,” mumbled Kiril. Daylight pried at her eyelids. Worse, something small and four-footed pattered around on her back. What the Hells?

Where in Mystra’s starry hair was… the smell of garbage and bile brought with it her memory. She lay in an alley alcove.

A fuzzy image of her defeating a sweaty dwarf in an arm wrestling contest took shape in her mind’s eye. Had she quit the Smokehouse Inn after that? Maybe. If not then, then later. Somehow, lost in a whisky haze, she’d found her way to the alcove. Her muddy, sodden clothes hinted she’d been there a while. The greasy yellow clay on her shoes, legs, and arms matched the hue of the muck between the cobbles. That must have been earlier, when it was still warm enough for mud. The winter night, now giving way to day, had stolen the previous day’s heat. The mud was ridged with ice and a coating of snow hid treacherous ruts.

She was frankly surprised she hadn’t frozen to death. And the creature sharing the alcove with her… a rat!?

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She gave an involuntary jerk, spooking the creature resting on her back. Its squeal sounded like a bag of dropped bells. It flew up across the alley and landed on a ledge. Despite being opalescent and faceted, it moved uncannily like a live thing. It reminded her of earth magic exploits performed by an old friend…

“Xet!” she exclaimed. “I thought you’d left me for good!” She shook her head, jarring loose a headache waiting in ambush.

Kitil brought a hand to her forehead and dislodged a heavy fur covering her body. She didn’t remember the fur when she’d passed out. Of course, her faculties had been much the worse for wear then.

The crystal dragonet tolled a happy note and flew down to her.

“Did… did you bring this fur?”

A tiny, drakelike head on the end of a sinuous crystalline neck nodded.

“You saved my life. Damn interfering beast!” It rang a resentful tone.

She glared at it a moment or two, but the headache wasn’t so fierce it was able to conquer her desire to pierce last night’s gloom.

If history was any guide, she’d done something humiliating, if not downright dangerous. She hoped she hadn’t hurt anybody. Killed anybody, she amended. She was sure she’d hurt someone. She couldn’t truthfully call it a bendet if she didn’t get into a fight. Lately, her barroom brawls were much more entertaining. Because of Gage.

Since she’d come to Laothkund, het new acquaintance Gage had proved the perfect partner on the tavern circuit. He was funny, could almost match her drink for drink, and fought like a wildcat. A sneaky wildcat. His forte was disabling assailants quickly.

This was how it usually went down: Kiril’s foul mouth, purposeful baiting, and derision were enough to launch a stiff-necked mere or a righteous priest off a bar stool into Kiril’s business. She took the brunt, and Gage backed her up, if he was around. They would laugh about it later. A few bruises here and there, a few more for their foes—what was the harm in that? Though she one time saw Gage lighten the purse of a cleric who lay groaning beneath a mead-sopped bench. She wasn’t one for robbery, but to her mind stealing from priests was metely putting already stolen gold back into circulation.

Her stomach intruded with a new question: When had she eaten last? An image of thick potridge crystallized in her bleary brain. Next to a rasher of bacon. And some thick ale, of course…

She swayed to her feet, bracing herself on a wall. “Come if you’re coming, then, I don’t care,” she lied to Xet. Truth was, she was pleased to see the gemlike dtagonet. Its absence had revealed her attachment to it. Who would have guessed? Its most accomplished trait was its ability to irritate her. But it reminded Kiril of the time immediately before she’d come to Laothkund. The only good memory of the last ten years…

She knew an innkeeper who owed her a favor. She began trudging in the direction of the man’s establishment, unsteady at first, but gaining composure as she moved. Xet chimed, then flew over and lighted on her shoulder. Kiril resisted her initial urge to shrug the creature off.

As she walked, her right hand fell of its own accord to her empty scabbard.

Angul!

Gone.

Vertigo and defeat pushed a forlorn groan from her lips. She remembered, again. He’d been gone for days.

She knew it already, of course. But the mind’s knowing and the body’s are not the same. If she ignored his absence long enough, perhaps the next time she checked, he’d magically be back, as if never gone.

“Yeah, right, you canker-ridden half-wit,” she chided herself. Thank Shar’s dead promises she still had her flask of all-forgiving whisky if nothing else.

The flask was forged of bronze, probably made by wood elves. Verdigris obfuscated the deranged face chiseled into the flask’s side—some ancient god of the vine. She didn’t care who it was. She cared only that in all the yeats she’d owned it, it had never failed to produce its potent drink. Once a bottomless flask to assuage hei infinite shame, it was now a reservoir to fill the hole of Angul’s absence.

After some food, she’d pull out the flask and continue the cycle, until death claimed her.

A crowd milled in front of the entrance of the Green Warrior Inn and Tavern. Her thirst had grown desperate as she’d walked, and she scowled when she considered there might be some kind of delay in quenching it.

A crash, and an unkempt but hearty dwatf came huttling through the front door. He screamed some consonant-laden phrase as he regained his feet and charged back into the inn.

More yells, the sound of bteaking crockery and splintering wood; she recognized the telltale signs. This early? The crowd must have carried over from a’particularly hard-drinking night, but…

She sidled up to a swaying man at the edge of the gathering who stank of fish and gtease. She doubted she smelled any better considering how she had spent the night. “Who’s fighting?”

The man, his skin a pallid yellow, slurred, “Crazy man

come in this mornin’ afore dawn. Talkin’ to his blade the whole time. Arguing, like. Then he went after a couple women of the evening, like he wus’ gon’ cut them…”

A crash blotted out part of the man’s stumbling story.

“… so everyone tried stop ‘im. He’s in there, waving that blue sword around—”

“Angul?” she exclaimed. Kiril shoved the drunk aside. He fell, complaining loudly. She paid no mind as she pierced the mob and chatged through the tavern’s gaping entrance. Xet clamped painfully down on her shoulder, holding on through the bustle.

She saw Gage. And there… was Angul! Gage held the flaming sword in a scalded hand. The man whirled around like a marionette whose strings were snagged, brandishing the burning blade with jerky motions. The mob from outside spilled into the tavern, but only the most hardened and most drunk encircled Gage.

How had Gage managed to pick up her sword—why hadn’t Angul fried him? By the look of Gage’s naked hand, the blade had at least tried. And what lunacy was Gage up to now?

A bald man with a menacing tattoo branded on his scalp yelled, “We’re died of your performance, freak! Get out of here!” He hurled a wooden tankard. The sword twitched, but decided against deflecting the attack. The tankard struck Gage on his right shoulder. He grunted and yelled, obviously at the sword, “Defend me, or our deal is through!”

A moment later, he screeched as a flaming blue ember dripped from the blade, licking Gage’s hand clutched on the hilt. But he didn’t give up his grip. He probably couldn’t. Kiril recognized Angul’s methods—punishment was its first recourse against a balky wielder. Which had never before been anyone but her, from the moment Angul was first forged.

Kiril broke through the ring of people, said, “Gage!”

Her old acquaintance whirled. “Kiril! Thank the Queen of Air! Make it let go!”

“Make ‘him,’ ” she corrected. She hated the blade, hated him… but hate couldn’t blunt her dependence.

Kiril held out a hand. Gage presented the sword, hilt forward, trepidation on his face. Relief washed all else away when Gage easily relinquished his grip to her.

When her hands touched the hilt’s leather wrappings, she began to cry and curse. “I missed you,” she whispered. Angul’s angry flames flickered out, and a sense of utter well-being descended over the elf swordswoman. She didn’t fight it.

Gage stood rubbing his hands together, one gloved, the other bare, looking at woman and sword reunited. His brow creased with the weight of his conundrum.

In a private room at a different inn across town, Kiril and Gage shared a plate of olives and cheese. Xet perched near the door, annoying wait staff and customers in the outer chamber with its incessant tinkling. Or so Kiril assumed, though no one complained.

“And here’s the strange thing,” said Gage, continuing the story of finding her stolen blade and stealing it back.

“Yeah?”

“Sathra didn’t crave the blade herself. She was in the employ of someone else who wanted it. Someone named ‘Nangulis.’ “

In mid-swallow, Kiril choked.

Shaking off her coughing fit, she demanded, “Who?” Her tone was incredulous and hoarse. “Did you say… ?”

“Nangulis. Do you know him?” Gage watched her coolly, appraising her response. Kiril was too astounded to notice.

“Yes. I do. I did—he’s dead. It can’t be Nangulis.”

Now Gage was surprised. He shook his head and replied, “I’m… Sathra was certain it was someone named Nangulis. Could you be wrong?”

Shaking with barely restrained emotion, Kiril replied, “Impossible.” She unsttapped her scabbard and put Angul, still in his sheath, on the table between them.

“I know it couldn’t be who you name because all that remains of Nangulis is Angul.”

Gage stared at her, uncomprehending. “I don’t understand.”

Kiril barely heard him—she replied, faintly, “Half of him, anyway. Half his soul, forged into this unbending, bastard blade.”

Gage’s eyes grew wide. “His soul?”

Kiril nodded. “It’s what gives the blade such power—he is a living soul, trapped in steel forever.”

“So, you knew Nangulis, before…”

“Nangulis and I were close. We would have been joined in marriage had our duty allowed. Those dreams are long dead. All I have left of him is Angul.” She put her hand on the sheath, het eyes tight and shining with moisture.

“Which is why I can never give up this damned blade. He’s not Nangulis, but he’s the closest thing I’ll ever find of my love. You’ve returned something I would have died without.”

The thief looked startled, and somehow guilty. He began to speak, paused, began again. “Well, thank the Queen of Air I was able to bring back your most cherished possession.”

Kiril nodded, but grimaced.

“You don’t really seem that happy about it. Is it—”

“The stoty is not so tidy, sadly,” interrupted Kiril. “I treasure Angul, but at the same time, the sword is killing my conscience; killed it, actually, soon after I came to wield him.”

Gage started to speak, but stopped again, his head cocked. He fumbled out a few words then started over. “You’re going

‘to have to explain. I haven’t the faintest conception what you’re talking about.”

Kiril sighed and rubbed her eyes. “Gage…”

“I’m listening.”

“You deserve to hear about him, if you caie to. I’ll tell you how I came to wield Angul, what I once was… and the sins I’ve committed in the name of an unbending ideal.” The moisture in her eyes broke into twin tracks down her cheeks.

“I’d like to hear about it,” Gage responded, his voice soft. He moved his gloved hand from the table, out of view.

“Before Angul, before I wandered, fought, and drank so much, I was a different person. I was a dutiful servant of an ancient order—the Cerulean Sign. Heard of it?”