Skein of Shadows (33 page)

The last stragglers were just disembarking from her
boot when Xujil appeared at the mouth of the alleyway and quickly made his way to them.

“Come. I have found her.”

Tilde was being held in a small chapel away from the main temple complex where the majority of the city’s population had gathered for their observance of the Holy. Here, Xujil told them, she would undergo a cleansing ritual so that on the appointed day, she would be an acceptable offering for the Spinner. The sorceress would be attended by priestesses at designated times during the three days leading up to her sacrifice, but for the most part, she would be left alone. They had a chance to free her, if they moved quickly enough.

Two drow in ceremonial armor guarded the door, the crest on their black breastplates depicting a red-eyed, blade-footed guardian. Greddark took them out with two crossbow bolts to the forehead and they collapsed with a clatter.

Sabira hurried across the open courtyard and up the stairs, eyes alert for movement from the surrounding buildings, but all was still. She stepped over the body of one of the drow, noting the scars on his cheeks. Not so different from their Vulkoorim brethren after all, it seemed.

She pushed one of the doors open slightly and squeezed through, stepping quickly to the side to let her eyes adjust to the deeper gloom here and to avoid making herself a target. Greddark followed suit, moving to the other side of the door. Xujil came in last, and Greddark had to pull
him out of the meager light coming through the open door.

Though she listened for long moments, she heard nothing but her own breathing and that of her companions. The chapel was deserted.

Except for the sanctuary.

Lit by torches that burned red, what appeared to be an altar carved from some black, iridescent metal and fashioned in the shape of a spider sat upon a raised dais. And on that altar lay a blonde, pale-skinned woman.

Tilde.

There was something wrong about the way the sorceress’s body lay, and Sabira approached cautiously, wondering if they were too late and Ned’s sister was already dead. She eschewed the main aisle, opting to walk along the church’s wall, beneath the overhanging balcony. Greddark again followed her lead, walking up the other side, his crossbow trained on Tilde while his eyes scanned the balcony above Sabira for movement. Xujil hesitated, then followed Sabira’s path as he, too, searched the balcony for any errant guards.

As she neared, reaching the chancel, Sabira realized abruptly what was wrong with Tilde, and she felt a moment of horror mixed with profound pity.

The sorceress had no legs.

Oh, Tilde
. I’m so sorry I didn’t get here sooner.

Even as she thought it, Tilde reared up from the altar, its metal legs bucking with her movement.

And then Sabira realized she hadn’t even begun to comprehend the true horror for the situation, because Tilde wasn’t
on
the altar, she
was
the altar. Where her hips and legs had been before, the metal spider’s body now grew, melding with her flesh as if she had burst from her mother’s
womb thus made.

Or her mother’s egg sac.

The sorceress wore a halter of black silk. A golden chain hung about her neck, the half of Ned’s medallion twinkling in the light, framed now by the bones of a tiny winged mammal. And in her abdomen, where her navel should be, a sphere carved from a large, flawless Khyber shard pulsed with blue-black light.

“Hello, Saba,” she said, smiling.

Welcome, Daughter of Stone and Sentinel
.

“I’ve been waiting for you.”

B
efore Sabira could react, torches flared to life throughout the chapel. She looked back to see the balcony full of spider-armored drow, all with crossbows trained on her and Greddark. More drow filled the rows of pews and stepped up from the shadows of the sacristy.

“Xujil,” Tilde crooned, “my faithful servant. Come forth and receive your reward.”

The guide, who Sabira realized belatedly was no longer behind her, materialized in front of the sorceress, or spider, or whatever she was now.

“My lady,” he replied reverently, bowing low before her as Greddark spat out a string of virulent curses. Sabira understood the sentiment—she’d had her doubts about the drow, but he’d had rational, believable explanations for his actions at every turn and she’d had nothing to hang her suspicions on.

Which in retrospect should have been her first clue. No one was that logical all the time, especially not an elf.

Xujil turned to give Sabira a short, mocking bow as well.

“For the record, Marshal, I don’t really like you that much either.”

The drow’s sneering smile became a gaping, bloody hole as one of Tilde’s legs punched through the back of his skull and exited out his mouth in a spray of scarlet. The sorceress lifted the guide by his head, let him dangle there for a moment, and then tossed him to one side like trash.

“Xujil,” she said chidingly. “No one turns their back on me. Not anymore. Not
ever
.”

Sabira stared in stunned shock at the thing that had once been Ned’s sister. Tilde saw her expression and covered her mouth with one long-nailed hand, feigning shock.

“Oh, dear. Was I not supposed to do that? I know She only takes their hands when She’s displeased, but I think even Her patience would have been tested by this one, don’t you?”

“What
happened
to you?”

Tilde’s smile widened, and Sabira saw fangs.

“
She
happened to me. I am so much more now than I was, more than I could ever have hoped to be on my own. And this is nothing compared to what I will become, soon.”

Sabira saw for the first time that Tilde’s eyes were no longer brown, like Ned’s. They were red, and hungry.

“But at what cost?” she asked, letting her revulsion leak into her voice, wondering if there was anything of Tilde left inside that strange hybrid body. Anything of Ned.

“Only my mortality. My humanity. Nothing I truly needed, and a small price to pay for what I’m getting in return.”

“And what’s that? A few extra legs and bad teeth?”

Tilde’s smile evaporated like tears in the desert.

“I have
always
hated you and that smart mouth of yours. It will be a pleasure to sacrifice you and your little friend when the time comes.”

“Ah. That’s the real price, isn’t it, Tilde? Bringing
me
here, with that little trick with the medallion? You knew I would come in his place.”

The sorceress shrugged, her eight segmented legs moving in perfect synchrony with her slim human shoulders.

“She wants you, Saba, and what She wants, She gets. And when She does, She’ll give me the power to take what has been so long denied me. And She’ll give me Idris.”

Idris Ismorah, Tilde’s protégé at Arcanix who’d decided to try the Maze of Shadowy Terror without a proctor, before he was ready. And more than her protégé—it was widely rumored that he’d been her lover, and she was as good as admitting that now.

The sorceress had been unable to save him from his own hubris, and he’d died in agony in her arms. Sabira had often thought the experience should have made Tilde more sympathetic to her when Ned had died, since she, too, had been helpless to save a man she loved from a horrible death. Instead, it had fueled Tilde’s hatred for her, as she became convinced that Sabira had not simply watched as her brother died, but that she’d actually
chosen
not to save him.

As if Sabira wouldn’t have gladly traded her life for Ned’s in that moment, and in countless others that had passed since then.

“And Ned, Saba,” Tilde said, her voice almost gentle. “She’ll give him back to me, as well. You like to boast that you would have given your life for him. Well, now’s your chance.”

Sabira started at the sorceress’s words. They echoed her thoughts so closely, it was almost as if … of course. The medallion.

Tilde was no telepath, but she could enchant items in her sleep. It would have been a small matter for her to place a spell on the medallion so that it would transmit the thoughts of whoever held it, and maybe even influence them. After all, there’d been no real reason for Elix to give the necklace to Sabira, especially knowing how much it meant to his father.

“The nightmares, too, Saba,” Tilde said with her fanged smile. “Don’t forget those. Crafting them was so much fun. Almost as much fun as seeing you writhing helpless in their grasp.”

With a curse to rival Greddark’s, Sabira snatched the golden half-disk out of her pocket and threw it to the ground. It skittered across the stone floor and came to rest against the base of the dais, where it lay there in the red firelight, twinkling at her accusingly.

“Get out of my head, you sadistic bi—”

The sound of a hundred crossbows being ratcheted back in unison echoed through the small chapel.

“Now, now, Sabira. Your harsh language is upsetting the children.”

“She can’t do it, you know.”

They both turned to look at Greddark, who still had his crossbow trained on Tilde, waiting for Sabira to tell him when, or if, to pull the trigger.

“The Spinner. Whoever—
whatever
—She is, She can’t bring them back. It’s been too long. And even if She could, what would they be? Ismorah was torn to shreds by the
Maze and not even Leoned’s bones could have survived that magma pool. Is that what you want, a lover who is less even than a zombie and a brother who is nothing more than a wraith?” The dwarf had clearly done his inquisitive homework before he’d agreed to come with her to Xen’drik; Sabira was impressed. “And that’s leaving aside the most important question of all—what makes you think either of them
wants
to come back?”

Tilde’s red eyes narrowed and she tossed her blonde hair over her shoulder, an incongruously human gesture from such an inhuman being.

“Do be quiet. You’re boring me.” She gestured, and Greddark stiffened, his mouth slamming shut of its own accord, his eyes growing round and panicked as he realized he couldn’t move. Then she turned back to Sabira. “You really should have taught him not to interrupt while the adults are speaking.”

“You’re avoiding the question, Tilde. What makes you think they’d want to come back … to
you
?” Tilde might have untold power now, but she was still the insecure daughter of a House that needed but didn’t want her. Sabira could use that against her.
Would
use it, and without mercy. She had no other choice. “You know the answer. They wouldn’t. They don’t want you. No one’s ever wanted you, only what you could do for them. Not Idris, not Breven, not even your precious Spinner. If She did—if She really thought you were worthy—then why did She have you go to so much effort to bring
me
here?”

“Stop it, Saba.” Tilde’s voice was low and dangerous, and her eyes were wild. “I’m warning you.”

“Or what? You said yourself She wanted me. She’s not
going to let you harm me.”

It was a mistake, and Sabira saw it in the sudden gleam in Tilde’s eye. It was her only warning before a dozen crossbow bolts buried themselves in her back, sending her to her knees on the stone floor, in too much pain to even scream.

“Oh, no. She doesn’t care if I hurt you—in fact, she likes it better that way. Pain amuses Her. Just so long as I don’t
kill
you, I can do whatever I want. And there are so very many things I want to do to you, Sabira.”

Sabira reached out one shaky hand, grabbing the pew beside her to keep from falling. She could barely breathe through the fire in her back, her belly, her lungs. Drawing on the strength of the urgrosh she still held, she managed to gasp out one bloody word. Despite Tilde’s claim to the contrary, she feared it might be her last.

“Why …?”

Tilde laughed, a cold, brittle sound with no true mirth in it. Because there could be no mirth where there was no joy.

“And
you
know the answer to
that
, Sabira Lyet d’Deneith.” The sorceress spat her name out like rancid meat, and as the world darkened around the edges of her vision, she realized that she did.

“… Breven.…”

“Bravo. Perhaps you are as smart as Ned always said you were. In exchange for you, She will give me the power to bring the House that never wanted me begging to its knees.” She giggled then, a mad sound that curdled Sabira’s blood. “Just as you are now.”

“… not … begging.…”

“Oh, but you will be.”

Another dozen crossbow bolts thunked into Sabira’s chest, tearing through her armor like a paper target and piercing her heart. A cry of anguish was ripped unwilling from her throat as she slammed back into a pew, then slumped to one side as the life drained from her in tiny crimson streams.

Ned
, she thought as oblivion reached up to swallow her whole.
And my dear, beloved Elix. I’m so sorry. I failed you both
.

And then ice, and fire, as every nerve in her body screamed and she was brought rushing back from the edge of infinity by two drow soldiers pouring healing potions down her throat and over her myriad wounds. Sabira bit through her lip trying not to give voice to those screams, and then hot agony blossomed there as well as the drows’ magic sealed the jagged wound closed around her teeth.