Chapter 4 #2
Still, she had learned a sigil, whether it was a raised scar or fancy gold embroidery, could be a focus of a particular type of magic.
None of the Bone Lords she had dispatched had possessed even one of the symbols, but Cliona’s skin had at least five of the marks.
Terrifying, but as she scanned the woman’s body, she saw only two still burned dull red.
Not only had the assassin depleted the energy that would allow her to sink into her speed, some of her death magic had weakened as well.
She and Gallmau could do this. They could take her down.
“Without light, there is no shadow.” Sinan gave as much reverence to the words as he had when invoking the saints of Gallmau’s religion.
He wore a hooded cape now. Calling it a cloak would have been generous—it was nothing more than a crude white cloth hanging from his shoulders, identical to a burial shroud.
Meri counted no less than ten sigils, glowing a deep purple, on the fabric.
Holy shit, what had she gotten herself into?
“Without shadow, there is no light.” Cliona responded as if by rote and then attacked.
It took every iota of discipline for Meri not to sink into her speed. She had done too much, in too short of time, and she had limited reserves left. If she had read the situation wrong and Cliona chose to attack her and Gallmau first, they would die.
Meri focused on her heartbeats, getting a sense of how long Cliona stayed in an accelerated state.
It wasn’t long. From Meri’s normal perspective of time, the assassin vanished from her current position as a curtain of darkness fell over Sinan’s form. Cliona reappeared, gasping and on her knees, near one of the dead horses.
Sinan sank into a classic attack form with his sword raised. There wasn’t a mark on him. His stance struck Meri as odd at first, since his opponent was far out of his reach. Then a line of shadow extended out from his blade, slicing through the body of the horse and cleaving it in two.
Meri flinched, and behind her Gallmau gasped.
Well, that was another Bone Lord trick neither of them had seen before.
The blow missed Cliona, who dove into her speed again, and she reappeared next to Sinan. Her next attack was at normal speed, and Meri had an opportunity to see how much Sinan had lied about his sword-fighting skills.
He was well-trained by any standards, but his form was even more surprising considering he was a necromancer.
Few of the ones Meri had encountered could put up any sort of physical resistance once their magic had been depleted.
That was her main strategy—wear their powers down, then get in close and kill them.
That wouldn’t be easy to do with Sinan. She pushed that fear from her mind and tried to focus on one opponent at a time.
Cliona was a strong and savage fighter, with less finesse than Sinan, but possessing a brutal efficiency to her movements.
Neither necromancer was playing around with their shadow powers, and Meri thought she knew why.
The two opponents were all but on top of each other, striking and parrying with neither one getting in a definitive blow.
They both must be inside whatever protection their magical armor gave them, and that meant Meri needed to get close to do damage.
Sinan landed a hit on Cliona’s leg, opening up a wide slice, and the assassin dropped to one knee, a grunt of pain slipping from her lips. He pulled back to reset for another blow, but Cliona took advantage of the momentary opening to strike.
The necromancer staggered back, the hilt of a knife protruding from his ribs. One of the purple sigils on his cloak flickered and dimmed.
Both Bone Lords were injured, and this was their chance. Meri focused all of her fury into striking back. Hard.
“Now,” Meri told Gallmau and fell into her speed.
She closed the distance between herself and Cliona, and struck low at the woman’s injured leg. The shadow protection the woman gathered around her acted as a shield for her upper body only, and Meri was able to land a solid cut with her curved blade.
Cliona sank again into her speed and was up and clashing against Meri’s second strike in time to block it.
Against a fellow speed fighter, Meri focused on using one of her curved swords while fending off the assassin’s blows with a knife in her other hand.
Their flurry of hits and misses on each other would have been a blur of motion to an observer, ending when Cliona again dropped out of her speed first, allowing Meri to smash the assassin in the face with the hilt of her sword.
Cliona was on her back, blood streaming from her nose as she spat out a curse.
Meri gripped her sword and moved in for the kill, but Gallmau’s shout of warning gave her time to dodge a sword thrust to her head. It did not, however, help her avoid the smash of a fist to her abdomen. Her belly blossomed with pain, and she sank to her knees.
Karabil stood above her, his throat gashed and his eyes open and staring. His sword was raised over her, jerking down and back up again as if he was a puppet having his strings pulled by two different masters. She choked back a rush of nausea.
Sinan and Cliona. They were using their necromancy to battle through Karabil’s corpse. Both Bone Lords were on their feet, hands at their sides with their palms facing outward.
It wasn’t—possible.
Meri’s mind flashed back to her first encounter with Sinan and how this same odd posture had struck her as threatening.
Cliona stood on her injured leg, which she shouldn’t be able to do, and no blood welled from her wounds.
Sinan had pulled the knife in his abdomen out, and the son of a bitch didn’t even look winded.
The horror of watching Karabil’s lifeless body being used to attack her rooted Meri to the spot. She only shook off her paralysis after another shout from Gallmau. Her friend stood, his shield spattered with blood and gore, over a mess of blood and broken bone that was all that remained of Tharin.
Sheer, unadulterated rage filled Meri. People died in battle, yes, but this desecration of two young men who had come out of the poorest slums in her home city and become her trusted comrades was too much. She summoned up the last of her strength and lunged forward.
Focused on her magical battle with Sinan, Cliona wasn’t expecting to be tackled around the knees.
Instead of her curved swords, now lying on the ground, Meri had one of the several stilettos she kept on her at all times.
She drove it up and into Cliona’s chest, slipping it past the ribs on the left.
The assassin’s body convulsed underneath her.
It was a good strike, right into the woman’s heart.
Cliona’s body didn’t go limp, however. It continued to jerk, even as the red of her pupils widened to spreading pools of scarlet and her lips turned a grayish blue. A twisting mass of shadow formed over the assassin’s chest, stretching and pulling into a shape reminiscent of the open jaws of a dog.
“Take her head.” Sinan’s voice floated over her, but Meri had already scrambled backward to find her blades.
The necromancer stood back and watched her.
Karabil was at his side, his body now rigid but upright, with the sword still in his hand.
She was sure Sinan didn’t think she could use her Gift of speed again, or that she and Gallmau could overcome both his death magic and the undead Karabil.
This was the time to finish both of them.
She limped back to Cliona’s body, glancing up to see Gallmau standing by Mother Naghwe, his sword out. Meri had no idea who or what the woman was—necromancers were sterile, so she doubted the old woman could be yet another Bone Lord if she had given birth to Sinan.
Still, Meri didn’t want to discount any further possible threat.
Kneeling on the assassin from the Order of Katil, Meri used one of the curved blades to carve through Cliona’s neck.
It was far from a clean job, and she was both exhausted and repulsed by the task.
Under her, the writhing shadows on the woman’s chest snarled and growled, and she knew all too well what it was —Cliona’s cursed soul, trying to free itself from dead flesh and enter one of the living.
Too bad for Cliona Meri already had one unwelcome Bone Lord guest in her body.
She could feel her curse twist and squirm in her spine, uneasy with the nearness of another one of his kind. At least there was no crippling pain. Maybe the dead necromancer inside her didn’t want any company.
Cliona’s head finally rolled free, and the snarls from the shadow dog died away, but Meri didn’t stop to savor the moment. She reached one more time for her speed, knowing the effort would cost her, and sprang up. She hit Sinan low and hard, as she had hit Cliona, and the maneuver worked.
Karabil started to crumple, the weapon in his hand dropping toward the earth. It felt like she had killed him herself, a second time.
Meri slipped back into normal time, straddling Sinan with both of her swords pressed against the sides of his neck.
Drops of water glittered on the blades, their polished surfaces wavy and rippled like a disturbed pond.
The magic in her weapons was responding to Sinan’s power, and it wanted her to end his life like she had ended Cliona’s.
“Gallmau, watch the old woman.” Meri’s back was to her friend, so she reminded him not to let his fanciful ideas of chivalry outweigh his common sense. “Listen to me, death witch. I’ve cleansed this earth of one Bone Lord, and I’m happy to make it two in a day. Tell me what happened here and why.”