Red Tide (72 page)

“I have spent the last quarter-bell considering how best to describe your servants,” she said to the Augeran. “The word I settled on was ‘inept.'”

“They are not to everyone's taste, it is true. But an artist must be allowed a degree of license in his creation. Hee hee!”

More likely, Romany reckoned, they were inept because anything more would require the stone-skin's constant input. “Just keep them out of my way.”

On the floor ahead was a severed foot. Romany could have stepped over it, yet she felt the need to give it a wide berth. The corridors on this level were less gloomy than they had been upstairs, but still dark enough to make it impossible to gauge where she was. Fortunately, enough of Romany's web had survived to guide her course, and she surprised Hex with an abrupt left turn.

The Augeran trotted to catch up once more. He was not so much walking as tapping out a beat with his feet.
Tap, tap, swish, tap, slap. Tap, tap, swish, tap, slap.

“Our powers have much in common,” he said. “The subtlety of our touch, the sweep of our awareness.”

“And what makes you think you've seen the entirety of my powers?”

“It is rare for anyone to detect my dreamworld before it is unveiled. Yet I sense that you did just that.”

Dreamworld?
That explained a few things.

Hex added, “I might not even have noticed your web were it not for the resistance it offered to my expanding realm.”

Romany sniffed. “Resistance was not intended. If it had been, it would not have been so easily brushed aside.”

“Perhaps. I assume you constructed your web so you could spy on the others here? If so, it is curious that you extended it not just into the emperor's quarters, but the emira's too.”

“Isn't it.”

In front, the floor of the passage was covered with blood right up to the walls. Not the flaky brown sort either, but the sort that sucked and slipped under Romany's sandals. She suppressed a shudder.

Tap, tap, swish, tap, slap.

“Where are we going?” Hex asked.

“Perhaps I'm going to find your body. Perhaps I'm going to wake you up.”

“I think you'll find I am a sound sleeper. Hee hee!”

Romany took a right turn. The chamber where Hex had left Mazana was ahead somewhere, and a blast of bloodred light lit up the corridor to reveal two eviscerated Gray Cloaks thirty paces away. That blast told Romany the emira was still alive and fighting, and the executioner was too, judging by the roar that set the gloom quivering.

“You're going to help your patron?” Hex said. That note of disappointment was back.

“She's not my patron,” Romany said, turning into a passage on her left that led her away from Mazana. “I must say it was considerate of you to feed her strength with all that blood.”

The Augeran's voice became thoughtful. “The emira a blood-mage. That much at least I did not anticipate.”

“And now it's too late.”

“Please!” He waved a hand at the red-streaked walls. “If I wanted to, I could dispense with all this in a heartbeat, and thus rob her of her strength.”

“Then why don't you?”

“Because for now it amuses me to see her flail about. It amuses me to let her think she might still find a way out. When the time comes to disabuse her of that notion, crushing her will be a simple matter.”

“So simple you could do it in your sleep?”

Hex chuckled.

Romany's step had quickened as she neared her destination, and she forced herself to slow. The stone-skin believed that he had her caged, let him think she was aimlessly pacing her prison's confines. There was no way he could have guessed her goal, because if he had done he would have summoned up a firestorm or some other calamitous deluge to bring this to an end.

“Pick a corridor, any corridor,” the Augeran said. “If you look long enough, maybe you'll find one I forgot to block.”

His tone was still good-humored, but something told Romany he had begun to tire of this game. How long before he returned to his business with the emperor? She needed something to hold his interest, but what? Ordinarily, giving a man a chance to brag would keep him talking until the stars were dust. But in Hex's case she suspected he found flattery as tedious as she did.

Just a little farther. There was the turning ahead.

Tap, tap, swish, tap, slap.

“You made a mistake, you know,” Romany said.

“How so?”

She turned into the corridor she'd been looking for. Fifty paces in front was the portal she had opened yesterday.

“By allowing your sorcery to destroy my web.”

Hex was silent, thinking about that. Even if he was immune to flattery, he was still a man, and that meant he would be proud enough to want to work out the answer to Romany's riddle. There
was
no answer, of course. By destroying the priestess's web he had rendered her half blind, and at no cost to the Augeran. But every heartbeat it took him to figure that out brought Romany closer to her target.

Forty paces.

Tap, tap, swish, tap, slap. Tap, tap, swish, tap … slap.

That hesitation in Hex's step told Romany she was in trouble. Since she was able to perceive the gateway through her web, there was every chance the Augeran could too. And while he wouldn't know what he was sensing, he
would
know that Romany hadn't chosen this corridor without a purpose.

Thirty paces.

Once again she considered driving her knife into Hex's neck in an effort to slow him, but she suspected she'd lose more time delivering the blow than she would gain from it. She had tensed herself in readiness for this moment and now sprang forward.

Twenty paces.

If she'd caught the Augeran sufficiently by surprise …

A handful of armspans away, a portcullis slammed down across the corridor.

*   *   *

The tattooed stone-skin leapt at Senar, using Strike's body as a stepping-stone across the puddle of the bodyguard's blood. Senar lashed out with his Will at the corpse as the other man's foot landed on it. The body shifted, and the Augeran's jump turned into a stumble, his left boot twisting as it came down on the blood-slick tiles. Senar surged to the attack, cutting and thrusting while the stone-skin was off balance. An overhand blow from the Guardian—reinforced with his Will—burst through his enemy's block, scoring a nick to the man's forehead. The Augeran was slow to react to Senar's next attack. Senar's backhand cut passed over his foe's attempted parry and swung unimpeded toward his chest.

As easy as that? The Guardian was almost disappointed.

Then his sword passed through the man's body and emerged from the other side. It clipped a spark from the wall of the corridor.

Senar gaped, tottered backward.

The stone-skin's blade came for his throat. No time to block or sway aside, so instead he threw up a Will-shield to halt the stroke.

The weapon hit the invisible barrier and bounced off.

The Augeran came roaring forward, lunging with his sword at Senar's chest. The Guardian turned to let the weapon slide past. He could have tried to grab the blade, maybe aimed a counter at his opponent, but instead he backpedaled, hoping to buy himself time to think. He hadn't just imagined it; his sword had passed through the stone-skin like he was a spirit. Yet the Augeran's blade had been real enough moments later when it crashed into Senar's Will-barrier. He seemed real enough now, too, as he pressed forward again, feinting low before swinging high. The Guardian ducked under the stroke, his mind still turning over. So the warrior had … dematerialized as Senar's sword swept toward him, then rematerialized after it exited his body? All in the space of a heartbeat? How was that possible?

The Augeran attacked again. Senar's sorcerous blade came round so fast it was in position before his opponent's weapon reached it, forcing the Guardian to check his stroke.

The stone-skin's sword ghosted through, whistling for Senar's groin before cannoning off another hastily thrown-up Will-barrier.

Great, so the man could make his blade insubstantial as well as his body.

Senar tested his opponent's low guard with a thrust. The Augeran blocked easily. Senar's attack had been tentative, but how could he commit to a stroke when he didn't know whether his foe would be there in body to meet it? His gaze flickered to the stone-skin's face. There had been no tell in the man's eyes when he went spectral, no change in the translucency of his flesh. There had to be some way, though, to read when he employed his power. Some way to anticipate which strokes were real and which illusory.

Through the windows to Senar's right, the battle in the courtyard was a blur. The emperor shouted at the defenders to rally to him, but Senar paid him no mind. His enemy's next attack was a cut at his chest, and the Guardian blocked it with his sword, allowed his foe's weapon to slide along the blade to the hilt. He kicked out at the Augeran's leg, landed a hit on the knee.

The blow might have hurt Senar more than it did his opponent, for all the expression he showed. The stone-skin heaved against their locked swords, hurling the Guardian back.

And came forward once more.

His lunges were his most dangerous attacks, because they gave Senar less time to react if they passed through his parry. The Guardian began employing his Will more and more as a first line of defense. A little extra in his next Will-block forced his opponent's weapon wide, and the Augeran was late to recover it. Most likely his moment of vulnerability was merely bait for another trap, but Senar plunged in anyway, angling a cut at his enemy's throat. His blade beat the stone-skin's attempted block … only to meet no resistance as it entered the man's neck.

The Augeran's sword, meanwhile, had changed direction midparry. Now it swung for Senar's midriff, ready to fillet the Guardian the instant Senar's blade left his foe's throat.

Which it did not.

Senar had stopped his stroke to leave his sword in his opponent's insubstantial form. He'd been hoping that, when the stone-skin rematerialized, he would find himself choking on a handspan of steel.

The warrior did not re-form, though. Instead he held back his own stroke, his blade hovering short of Senar's ribs.

They remained that way for a while, the Guardian unable to disengage for the threat to his midsection, the stone-skin unable to complete his attack because of the sword in his neck. The Augeran smiled, then cocked his head with a look that suggested they agree to break apart.

To hell with that.

Senar gathered his Will and unleashed it in a blow that sent his spiritual foe reeling backward.

*   *   *

Amerel ran her opponent through and looked for the next. The arrival of the dragons meant her plan to destroy the Augeran fleet had worked, but she would save her celebrations until the
Fury
was free of the stone-skin vessel. Assuming it hadn't caught a dragon's eye already, of course. Even now one of the archers in the tops was yelling something to Galantas. And judging by the panic in his voice, he wasn't shouting down his lunch order.

Amerel needed to cut the lines holding the
Fury
to the stone-skin vessel, but before she could do so, there was the small matter of twenty enraged Augerans in her path. Apparently they hadn't understood the archer's warning, for they showed no signs of ceasing the attack. One leapt at the Guardian, only for the deck to tip beneath him. He was sent tottering back against the gunwale, and Amerel fell against him, her head beneath his chin, her nose in his armpit. He pushed her away, then drew his sword arm back.
Hold!
she commanded with her Will, and he checked his swing for the heartbeat she needed to sway clear. Her own blade traced a line of blood across his throat.

Someone bundled into her from behind. Might have been on her side, but Amerel wasn't taking chances. She reversed her sword and stabbed out, felt the blade sink into flesh. The figure fell away. A Rubyholter teetered past, his face a crimson mask. There was blood in Amerel's eyes too, and blood-dreams rattled around in her head, so sharp she couldn't tell if her hurts were real or imagined. A few paces away, Noon and a stone-skin wrestled over a spear shaft. Amerel was about to strike at the Augeran when the deck pitched again. Matron's mercy, enough with all the shaking! What was Barnick doing? Mixing up a cocktail?

Then there was a bump and a creak, a scraping noise from the hull, and Amerel realized it might not be the water-mage doing the jolting.

Noon and his opponent broke off their struggle. The stone-skins had finally deduced that something was wrong, because the latest warriors to gain the
Fury
's deck paused at the rail. Even the demon figurehead had lost some of its bluster. A shadow danced back and forth across Amerel, and she looked up to see a dead archer swinging by one foot from the rigging, an arrow through his neck. A wave slapped the hull. The distant rumble of combat from Gilgamar floated over the sea.

Then the scraping noise returned, moving down the length of the devilship from stern to bow.

The boards trembled.

A dragon's head reared up off the
Fury
's starboard bow, streaming water. Its silver plates were scratched and tarnished like an old suit of armor, and atop its brow was a crown of scales from which hung strands of fireweed like tangles of hair. Up, up, it went, so high it put a crick in Amerel's neck just tracking it. Its eyes were so large they could have taken in the world, yet they seemed to be looking straight at the Guardian. Its lips peeled back with a sound like a hundred swords being drawn from their scabbards, and it gave a roar that set the foresails shivering.

A Rubyholt archer was on the forecastle. He jumped to the main deck and crashed into a rack of boarding spikes. Around Amerel, the other Islanders stampeded toward the quarterdeck. “Dragon!” someone shouted, like she needed the clarification. One man dived down the companionway. Maybe he thought he would be safe belowdecks, but the truth was, there was nowhere safe while the
Fury
remained here. Their only hope was to flee this place and the dragon with it.