Touch of the Demon (29 page)

The relentless torment abruptly flickered and died, and I dimly heard a cry of pain that wasn’t my own. I struggled to focus on Rhyzkahl. His breath hissed through his teeth as he looked down at the knife in his hand. Brilliant blue fire surrounded his fist, and the azure gem in the pommel glowed as though lit by an internal sun. He shook his hand as though to release the blade but the cruel spikes on the hilt still curled around his fingers, locking it in his grip.

I gasped for breath in the brief surcease. He raised the blade before him again, igniting the pattern around us both and in every nerve in my body. “Rowan…
Rowan!”
he growled.

There was no way to think beyond the pain. No way to hold onto myself. No oblivion to escape to.

Kara!

The entire diagram stuttered. Rhyzkahl screamed in fury and frustration as the rings of sigils fractured in a cascade of arcane sparks. Within three heartbeats all were dark, leaving only a lone amber sigil above us to cast any light. I
hung, twitching, as the name,
my
name, reverberated in my essence.
Kara.

“
…here
,” I breathed.

Rhyzkahl stood with hands clenched as he assessed the ruin of the diagram, clearly seeking what could be salvaged. With a flick of his hand he released the bindings holding me. I crumpled hard to the floor, barely feeling it amidst the other pain. I no longer heard the call, but it didn’t matter now. I knew who I was. I didn’t know much else, but I knew that.

My breath rasped as Rhyzkahl moved to me. He stood over me, looking down, right hand still locked onto the hilt of the knife. It no longer burned with the red fire. Now it gave off a mist, like dry ice.

Breath hissing through his teeth, he crouched and grabbed my left wrist, hauling my arm forward and sending another electric jolt of pain through the dislocated shoulder.

“…please,” I whimpered, “no…more.”

Rhyzkahl’s eyes lifted to mine, then lowered to the mark on my forearm. “I salvage that which can be salvaged,” he said, setting the hideous blade against my skin above the mark. I tried to jerk away, but his grip was too strong, and I was too weak.

“I take back that which I gave to you,” he said through clenched teeth as he sliced the skin of my arm. He began to excise the mark from me, breath coming heavily as the strands shuddered. “And we will begin anew.”

Of all the pain he’d dealt me, all the mind-fucking torments—my skin doused with acid, my organs shriveling and squeezing, my bones on fire—none could compare to the pure hell of this right now. The mark was more than an arcane brand or a mere symbol. Its strands hooked deeply into my essence, and as that horrible blade sliced through my flesh, it was as if all of those strands were ripped from me, tearing and stretching at the very core of my being. I screamed through a throat already raw, arching my back, near blind from the torment. A shudder went through Rhyzkahl, and a tiny part of me knew that the pain of the excision wracked him as well.

He dropped my arm and staggered upright, holding the strip of flesh in one hand and the blade in the other. I
sucked in shallow gasps of breath as the echoes of the unholy pain continued to reverberate through me.

I jerked at a sudden harsh tug, though no one was touching me.

Kara

“
…here
,” I gasped.

Rhyzkahl gave a cry of primal rage. “Dahn.
Dahn!
” He dropped to his knees and dragged me up, holding my chest to his with his left arm as I sagged. “He will not have you!” He let out an animal scream. “You will not have her!” Breathing heavily, he brought the blade to my throat, looked down into my face.

I felt the blade part the first layers of skin. I met his eyes and forced my words through split and swollen lips. “I…am…Kara.” Even if I died now, at least I remained me.

The tug deepened, and I sucked in a ragged breath. Rhyzkahl continued to hold the blade at my throat, yet didn’t press it deeper, didn’t draw it across to make the slice that would end me.

His eyes stayed on mine as the pull increased.

“Kara!” My name burst from his lips in a harsh scream, reverberating through me as I dropped away from him and into the void.

I felt smooth stone beneath me, cooler than the floor of Rhyzkahl’s summoning chamber. I lay sprawled on my right side and stomach, my arms twisted at impossible angles. Pain seared through my shoulders and the rest of me, but I could only twitch and whimper. Everything about me felt wrong, unclean, as if I’d been immersed in slime.

Shouted words penetrated the fog of pain, but I couldn’t understand them. The wrongness persisted, as did the shouted commands. I tried to see through swollen eyes. I thought I knew the two men in the room. I knew that neither were the Tormentor. I didn’t know much else.

“Kara!”

My name. That was my name. I knew that too. The dark-haired one shouted my name. He stood several feet from me, as if reluctant to approach. Barefooted. Never seen him barefooted. Face twisted in concentration, he worked the arcane with blinding speed, tracing sigils and patterns and sending them to do…I had no idea what.

“Kara!” He shouted again. “Rhyzkahl seeks to follow. You must cast him back. Push him back through the conduit.” He turned to the blond one. “Prepare to seal it as soon as it is clear.”

Cast him back? I struggled to comprehend. I was Kara. Everything hurt. The sense of wrongness filled me, and I let out a mewling cry. I felt him, the Tormentor. He still sought to touch me, to pull me back. I dragged in a wretched breath and struggled to push the wrongness away, gathered what shreds of will I still had to drive back the smothering miasma.

“Kara! Again. Cast him from you!”

I moaned and recoiled as the foul touch returned.
You are mine
, it whispered.
No other may touch you thus
.
You will be eternal.

I sucked breath through a throat raw from too much screaming. Shaking, I threw my head back, channeled rage and pain and betrayal and hatred, then let it all loose upon the wrongness, upon the Tormentor, shoving him back and away from me with everything I had left.

And then I collapsed, spent. I could see the blond one tracing quickly. I no longer felt the Tormentor, as if the door had been closed upon him. Yet I still felt wrong, deeply soiled, and awash with relentless pain.

The dark-haired one crouched, still several feet away, eyes intent upon me. “Kara.” He inched forward, reached out a hand even though he was still far from me, pulled something from the air around me and, with a flick of his fingers, dispersed it. It stung, whatever it was he did, and I flinched and whimpered.

“Kara.”
Kara.

I heard my name,
felt
my name. “
Here
,” I whispered, lips barely moving.

He continued to inch forward, continued to pluck
things
from around me. Each time he did so it stung, like the snap of a rubber band against my skin, but with every sting the sense of
yuck
seemed to fade.

“Idris,” the dark-haired man said over his shoulder without taking his eyes from me. “Prepare a support diagram with my tertiary parameters.”

The blond man nodded, beginning to rapidly trace. He glanced over at me for the first time, and his face paled. He looked quickly away, throat working as if holding back the urge to spew.

I knew this dark-haired one. Not the Tormenter, but one of his ilk.

“Mzatal,” I breathed.

“Yes, Kara, Mzatal,” he responded, exuding utter calm as he slowly crept forward, pulling, dispersing, steadily clearing the arcane crap that clung to me. Behind him, the blond one—Idris, yes, that was his name—Idris finished tracing a diagram and ignited it. Mzatal instantly breathed deeper, and I could sense the flow of power as he drew potency from the new pattern.

I wanted oblivion. I wanted to pass out, escape the pain, escape everything I’d just been through, but that relief eluded me as though behind a locked door with no key. My gaze drifted to the pattern. I didn’t try and focus on it. I didn’t want to focus on anything. My mind wanted to drift, and I let it. I didn’t want to be aware or awake. I didn’t want to be in the here and now.

Kara!

I jerked back to myself, whimpered as the movement sent fresh pain lancing through me. “Mzatal,” I moaned. He wasn’t going to let me drift. Wasn’t going to let me lose myself.
I might never find my way back
. “…you…called me.”

“Yes,” he said, still working his way forward. “And I am still calling you.”

I fought to work moisture into my mouth. “You…have me.” He’d sworn to retrieve me. And he had. I was right back in his control, right back to being his prisoner.

“Yes, almost,” he replied. “And until I can touch you, I will continue to call you so that you do not slip away.”

He did continue to call to me, sometimes sharply, when I began to drift. Every time, his voice and an incorporeal touch—more intimate and penetrating than words—brought me back. After what felt like an eternity, he reached me and placed a hand very lightly on my shoulder. The simple touch dragged me back to myself, as if surfacing from the depths of water. Pain flared, and I sucked in a ragged breath.

Mzatal shifted to sit cross-legged beside me and laid his hand carefully on my cheek, easing the bruising and swelling of my face. His fingers came away bloody, and I realized that Rhyzkahl’s ring must have cut me when he’d backhanded me.

“Tired,” I mumbled, easier now with my lips and face not so swollen. “Sleep.”

“Not yet, Kara,” he said. “The sigils are still active.” He took a blanket offered by a faas, rolled it and positioned it under my head, then spread a second one over me, giving me at least that bit of coverage and dignity, for which I was deeply grateful. I’d had my fill of humiliation, but if he hadn’t provided a blanket, I wouldn’t have had the energy to ask for one.

Mzatal placed both hands on my shoulder. Delicious
warmth flowed through to me, and my breathing eased somewhat.

“Foot massage…and cabana boys…peeled grapes…”

A whisper of a smile touched his mouth. “I can have a faas feed you taba fruit.”

A shudder went through me as the heat in my shoulder intensified. “No deal,” I murmured. “Idris…in loincloth….”

“That is a possibility I will take under consideration,” he said. Idris blinked and straightened, casting a horrified look at Mzatal’s back. I wanted to laugh, but I knew it would hurt far too much. “You will, for the moment, settle for replenishment from tunjen juice, once I have straightened this shoulder,” Mzatal continued. He took my arm and straightened it into a more natural position. I tensed, expecting excruciating pain, but he had blocked it such that I felt little more than a dull ache and a
pop
as the shoulder shifted back into its proper configuration. “The binding that held you dislocated both of your shoulders,” he told me. “I must make adjustments on them before you can be moved.”

I managed to focus on him. “Yeah…how’d you know…binding?”

“The marks on your wrists,” he said after a moment. “And I witnessed it.”

My eyes sought his. “How? Why…?”

“Through Rhyzkahl,” he replied. “Through the blade. Xhan.”

I struggled to process this.

“It is how I knew when to call to you so that you would not lose yourself,” he said. “And the physical recall, regrettably, depended on Rhyzkahl’s removing your mark.”

A shudder went through me, bringing with it new spasms of pain. It was several heartbeats before I could speak. “And that’s what…you always wanted…me, unmarked.”

He shifted his hands slightly, seeking the worst of the damage. “Yes, though this was not a means I would have chosen.”

Despair rose. Betrayed and tortured by Rhyzkahl, and now right back to being Mzatal’s prisoner again. More trapped than ever. I swallowed hard, still not daring to move my arm. I had no doubt there was plenty of muscle damage.

Mzatal moved his hands to my forearm, covering the
wound from the excision of Rhyzkahl’s mark. A strangled breath escaped me as memories of the essence-rending pain echoed. He exhaled forcibly and shook his head, as if he could feel it too. When he lifted his hands from me, he looked like he wanted to puke.

I shuddered. “Bad…?”

He answered with a nod and traced a pygah over us. “I am going to turn you to your other side,” Mzatal said. “But before that, you will drink juice.”

I nodded, then gasped at the pain the movement brought. Gestamar moved forward and helped Mzatal get me into a semi-upright position, supporting my head so that I could drink from the mug Mzatal held for me. I was so weak it was a struggle to drink. Juice dribbled onto my chest, and I let out a low cry of pain as it hit the raw sigils, burning and stinging.

“More,” Mzatal urged when I tried to stop. “You must drink it all.” Wearily, I complied, though he was more careful not to let any spill. My stomach roiled as he and Gestamar eased me to my other side, and I fought the brief wave of nausea. Mzatal placed his hands on my other shoulder and sent healing warmth through it.

I knew it would take him a while to get me fixed up totally, but then he’d finally have me right where he wanted me: a nice, whole summoner of his very own, one with grove affinity and a tie to the cataclysm. A wave of homesickness swept over me, briefly overshadowing the pain, and I closed my eyes to hold back tears. I wanted to be with the people who
really
cared.

“Kara,” he murmured, as he manipulated the shoulder back into its joint. “Kara,” he repeated softly, and I knew he was calling to me as before.

I exhaled a shaking breath, tears leaking. “Here.”
Forever
.

He popped the shoulder into place, then gently shifted me to my back. “Yes. Here. I will not allow him to have you again.”

I stayed silent, aching far beyond the physical. Gestamar moved forward to pick me up but, gesturing him back, Mzatal slid his arms beneath me, lifting as if I weighed no more than a feather. My head lolled against his shoulder, and I tried without success to hold back the whimper.