Demonkin (29 page)

She waited as the sun rose and chanting became audible in the distance. Divad's cultists had begun their ritual. Finally, Jyllith sensed the auras of a small group intrigued by her unique sigil and ready to do mischief.

The Shifters had arrived.

She knew Shifters favored lakes and other bodies of water, creating illusions to drown unwary travelers or send them screaming through the woods. Once again, Cantrall's training had saved her. Jyllith wondered how many times he would save her before she forgave him.

“Ready!”
she mouthed, and then closed her eyes and took the dream world. She scribed another sigil on the flesh of her broken hand. The Shifters drifted into the square, and then everyone started screaming at once.

“Now!” Jyllith shouted.

She and Andar sprinted into chaos. People ran in all directions, shrieking. Shadowy forms stalked the survivors, changing pockets of nightmare that shifted from clouds of spiders to venomous lizards to vaporous demons.

The Shifter illusions even fooled the davengers, drawing the demons from specter to specter as they slashed and snorted at air. What they did not slash at, as Jyllith had hoped, were the panicked villagers. Good.

Jyllith sent her own davenger at the nearest of the two davengers controlled by Divad and Rala. Spike. Neither Divad or Rala moved, which meant they must be focused on their complex glyphs.

Jyllith's davenger tore Spike apart before it noticed what was happening, and Rala's davenger was too busy swiping at a giant yellow spider to stop it. More vaporous demons chased a man and woman in hunting leathers between two cabins. Shifters made no distinction between playthings.

“Rally them!” Jyllith shouted. “Get them out!”

Andar charged after those people, shouting. “To me! Free Rain!”

Jyllith avoided the crowd by dashing right
through
the illusion of a giant, roaring bear. Just ahead of her, two figures scribed on the tall wooden posts that blocked in the south gate, eyes closed. She had gotten lucky.

Jyllith stared as Divad and Rala painted ancient blood glyphs she recognized from the Alcedi scroll. The glyphs started a good way up each side of the gate and were almost to the bottom. They were almost finished. She might not be as lucky as she thought.

Jyllith scribed as she charged them, and her first Hand of Breath smacked into Rala hard enough to knock her head over heels. That disappointed Jyllith. She had meant to break the woman in half.

Divad turned and scribed. Instinct caused Jyllith to dive aside, hitting the mucked up earth and rolling.
Nothing
screamed by beside her. Divad's
nothing
hit a cabin and its whole wall ceased to exist.

Divad knew the Hand of Ruin. That was very, very bad. Rala scrambled up as Jyllith did too, shrieking for her davenger, but it was still too far away. What had once been Xel was faster.

“Kill!” Jyllith shouted.

Rala’s former lover ripped through her body, tearing Rala in two with the sickening sound of popping bone. Jyllith scribed another Hand of Breath as the demon roared. As Rala's gasping torso landed, her own davenger tore off after a spectral purple horse. Without a master, it was out of the fight.

Divad scribed a Hand of Ruin and what had been Xel ceased to be. Jyllith ignited her Hand of Breath and slammed Divad into the palisade wall hard enough to rattle it. Even so, the cultist leader stumbled to his feet.

The blood glyphs Divad and Rala had carved into wooden posts flared brilliant gold, burning so brightly they hurt Jyllith's eyes. She squinted and breathed, trying to get her breath back. Trying to finish this.

“I've saved us!” Divad laughed and stumbled on weary feet. “I've saved us all! Look!”

The shimmering air between the gates swung open.

KARA CROUCHED BESIDE ANYLUS at the edge of a narrow overlook that revealed the town of Knoll Point. They had arrived.

“There, Kara.” Anylus pointed below, face calm. “The Mavoureen portal must be inside that town.”

Kara evaluated the sleepy looking town in pre-dawn light. Knoll Point was built in the shadow of an ancient mountain from which its inhabitants had quarried large chunks of granite. The mountain was cut everywhere, and abandoned gantries and winches protruded like broken bones.

Byn crouched to Kara's left and Sera crouched beside him. They were here and Kara loved them. Her friends made this possible. For one last day — this day — they had each other. Time to save the world and go home.

“It's open ground all around,” Byn whispered. “How do we get close without getting arrows through our heads?”

“Astral glyphs,” Sera said. “The only mages in there are Demonkin, and I doubt they're watching the walls. Anyone else won't be able to see us.”

“Good plan.” Kara gripped Byn's hand and squeezed. “We get inside, find the portal, close it, then look for Sera's cure. We don't leave without it.”

“What about Trell?” Byn whispered. “Think he's in there?”

“He may be, but we can't look for him until we deal with that portal.” Just the thought of Trell suffering in that town made Kara's heart break, but she knew he would want her to stop this first. Save the world, then him.

“I'll ward us both,” Sera said, scribing blood glyphs on the air. “Anylus, you ward Kara.”

Anylus took Kara's hand. “We will succeed.”

Kara smiled at her teacher. This almost seemed possible. They had a plan, if a rough one, and they had a full day before Sera's execution glyph fired at dusk. They would find Sera's cure. Kara would save her best friend.

Anylus scribed an astral glyph, vanishing a moment before Kara did as well. She glanced down at herself and saw nothing, and walking without seeing herself was incredibly disorienting. A dip into the dream world showed her Sera and Byn walking beside them, orange forms bright.

As they crossed the open ground around Knoll Point Kara heard a strange roar inside the walls, rising and falling. People shouting? A battle?

They reached the gates. Sera scribed the same glyph she had scribed several times before — the Demonkin key that opened anything — and a postern door in the palisade swung open. Sera and Byn slipped inside and Kara followed them, with Anylus.

They stepped into a town filled with chaos and screams. People ran everywhere, panicked. A thin woman in her smallclothes slammed right into Kara, and Kara was too shocked to stop her as she dashed outside.

Dozens followed that woman, some in boiled leather armor and some only in their smallclothes. Had someone rousted them out of their homes? One of the men in leather stopped and raised a sword.

“Hey!” he shouted, scowling at them. “Who are you?”

Byn slammed his quarterstaff into the back of the man's head. He fell without another word as another man in armor fell to his knees beside him. Constables. That man raised his hands.

“Peace, Mynt! We're leaving!” The constable glared at them. “Or do you plan to beat us to death?”

An enormous green lizard charged around a cabin, and Kara panicked before she recognized it as illusion. “Shifters!” she shouted for the benefit of the others. “That means Jyllith might be here, somewhere!” One more reason to kill her.

The constable struggled to lift his friend's slumped weight. Kara turned on him and they locked eyes. “Which gate? Where are your mages scribing?”

“Like I'd tell you?” The man finally got his friend upright and stumbled off with his disoriented ally. “Run or burn, Mynt. I couldn't care less.”

A black shape landed atop a cabin, more solid and substantial than Shifter illusions. A demonic hound that bared drool-stained teeth. Jyllith’s Demonkin allies had found them.

“Davenger!” Kara shouted.

Even as the davenger dropped upon them,
nothing
rose to greet it. The demon ceased to be and Sera lowered her arm, eyes green and face chillingly calm. Sera had taught herself the Hand of Ruin, just like she had claimed when she destroyed Balazel.

No time to worry about it now. Kara turned to Anylus. “Where would they open the portal?”

“They might need a physical gate to shape their glyphs.” Anylus stepped aside as two more terrified people rushed past. “We must check them all. Byn, Sera, go to the west gate. I'll go north, to the mining tunnel.”

“I'll take south.” Kara rushed past Anylus, leaving behind her friends and sprinting through fleeing, panicked people. She dodged those she could and shoved aside those she could not. Fortunately, no one attacked her.

As Kara ran she recognized the people streaming past her as farmers, or laborers, or militia. These people were Free Rain, the guerilla fighters who had plagued Mynt's borders for a decade, and they were terrified, but was this due to Shifters? Or had their Demonkin turned on them?

Kara passed cabin after empty cabin, doors hanging open. An unseasonably warm wind blew from the south, hot and fragrant. Kara spotted Melyssa's severed head.

She stumbled to a halt, gaping up at the pitch-soaked atrocity. Someone had impaled her great-grandmother's head atop a pole in the center of the town, and that was no illusion. It was real and horrible.

Jyllith had done that. Jyllith had murdered Kara's great-grandmother and she was here now, summoning these Shifters and damning their world. Jyllith was not going to murder anyone else.

Even if Kara had to put her down for good.

JYLLITH DIVED ASIDE as Divad's Hand of Ruin hissed over her, eating through the palisade wall. She launched one Finger of Breath after another, spending her strikes against risen earth. Divad cowered behind raised earthen walls, sheltered and saving his blood.

They were both exhausted, barely keeping their feet. Divad might be older, bigger, but finishing whatever Alcedi glyphs he had carved on that pole had consumed a great deal of blood. Jyllith could defeat him, if given enough time, but time was a luxury she no longer had.

The poles of the south gate glowed and the air remained split to reveal a portal to a bright green sky. It shined over fields of golden wheat swaying in impossibly warm wind. It
looked
like paradise, but given what she had read and what Cantrall had said, it was anything but.

Jyllith charged Divad's tiny fort of raised earth before he could scribe anything else. She tossed herself over the wall and into close quarters, kicking and scratching and biting. Just where Divad wanted her to be, because he clutched a dagger in his hand.

Divad slashed repeatedly but his strikes were slow, clumsy, the flailing of an anemic body. Jyllith spun past another clumsy stab — she had faced knife-wielding men before, many times — and kneed Divad in the crotch. As he dropped she dropped on top of him. She clawed his eyes and smashed at him with her elbows, howling with rage.

Divad dropped his dagger and covered his face with raised arms. He let Jyllith hammer his body because he didn't need to beat her, only exhaust her until his Alcedi arrived. Until he doomed the Five Provinces.

Divad got one arm free and glyphed. Jyllith twisted and bent his arm up as
nothing
roared to open sky. She slammed an elbow into his exposed nose and stunned him. Jyllith liked noses. Noses shattered good.

Before Divad could recover Jyllith wriggled behind him, wrapping one arm around his neck. Divad choked, desperate to breathe, as Jyllith forced her knees into his spine. His hand slapped earth, came up with his dagger, and stabbed it into her side. Agony tore through Jyllith's chest.

She screamed and choked him harder, putting all her rage and pain into the effort. Remembering Calun as he collapsed in a pool of blood.

Divad twisted his dagger in her side, spitting, choking, yet each twist seemed weaker than the last. There was no way he could win this fight — he had been doomed from the start — because he wanted to live, desperately.

Jyllith didn’t.

Divad gasped for air he couldn't breathe, clawed for salvation he could not see. He wanted so badly to see his wonderful new world. Jyllith crushed his neck until he stopped moving. She crushed it some more after that.

Divad was dead. She had avenged Calun. Jyllith tried to stand and fell, clutching the dagger in her side.

Spots danced before her eyes as she painted a flash heal on her chest with one trembling hand. The last of her blood channeled into a few more moments of life. She would not fail Melyssa or their world.

The strength provided by her flash heal would buy her time. As Melyssa had done before her, Jyllith would live just long enough. She stumbled to one pillar of the gate and collapsed against it, gasping for breath.

Jyllith fought drooping eyelids, fought for breaths that wouldn't come, and scribed. She focused on the glyphs she had memorized inside Knoll Point's mine. She would save Knoll Point. She would save everyone.

The first four glyphs came easily, but once she started coughing the fifth took longer. She wasn't supposed to be alive right now, and her arm didn't move like it was supposed to. It felt like another person's arm, like she was pushing that person and they pushed
back
.

Jyllith completed the sixth glyph. She had just started the seventh when a Hand of Breath snatched her and tossed her into the mud.

“Stop!” a woman screamed. Furious.

Jyllith rolled onto her side, coughs tearing through her like shards of glass. She blinked through bleary eyes at her attacker. A tall, slim figure stalked toward her, orange eyes narrow and teeth bared.

What in the Six Seas was Kara Honuron
doing
here?

“Surrender!” Kara shouted. “You’ve lost, and I won't let you bring the Mavoureen through!”

“Not Mavoureen.” Jyllith tried to shout, but all that emerged was a raspy whisper. “Alcedi—”

“Shut up!” Kara's bloody hands clenched. “I don't have time for your delusions!” Kara stomped closer. “You murdered Melyssa! You cut off her head!”

Jyllith clawed her way toward the gate. Kara reached her first, pressed down hard and ground her into the earth. Jyllith
urked
and breathed.

“Melyssa trusted you!” Kara shouted. “She saved you and you slaughtered her, and for what? Cantrall's madness?”

“The gate,” Jyllith rasped. “Help me—”

“How do I close it?” Kara gripped Jyllith's hair and wrenched her up to her knees. “Tell me!”

Jyllith scribed a Hand of Breath, ignited it, and tossed Kara off her hard enough to crack Kara's head on the ground. Hopefully not killing her. Jyllith gripped the pillar and dragged herself upright. Scribed that seventh glyph.

After she saved them, she could explain everything.

“Stop!” Kara shouted. “Damn you, stop!”

Jyllith started the final glyph as her vision faded, as her shallow breaths slowed. Would this sacrifice redeem her? Did she deserve to be redeemed?

A spike of muddy rock burst through her chest.

Jyllith toppled backward, slamming onto the spike that impaled her. As her head hung upside down she struggled to breathe, to live, but that wasn't possible anymore. Kara stood trembling paces away. A killer at last.

Jyllith had failed everyone, her family, Melyssa, her entire world. The Alcedi would invade and everyone would die but she found she did not care so much. She had never stopped fighting, never given up.

She was ready to return to her family, to be with the people she had mourned for a decade. She looked for Yara as her world went dark, remembered her mother's strong arms and warm smile. How it felt to be hugged tight.

Jyllith looked for her father, and she looked for her mother, and she looked for Marel and Lehma and Nat. None of them came for her. They had abandoned her, and why wouldn't they? She had betrayed them all.

Her family no longer loved her. They had not forgiven her and she would never see them again. She deserved to be hated. She deserved to suffer.

Jyllith Malconen died cold and alone.

BYN MERIS REACHED THE LARGE WESTERN GATE to find it hanging open. Everyone in this part of town had fled. Sera clutched his arm as he turned back, staring at an open cabin to their right.

“Byn.” Sera pointed. “Look there.”

“What is it?” Byn could not stop thinking about the way Sera sent blasts of
nothing
from her hand. It left him cold inside.

“This is it,” Sera said. “Demonkin lived here.”

“In that cabin?” How could she know that?

“Yes.” The woman Byn loved smiled at him with warmth that made him weak. “The cure's inside.”

Byn did not see how she could know that, but he hesitated only a moment. This was Sera — his Sera — and now they had a chance to live out their lives together. Kara could take care of herself.