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Chapter Forty-Nine

Estev crashed to the ground. His outstretched hand went through the wall, bringing down a landslide of masonry that buried him up to the shoulder. He was barely down before he roared back to his feet, slashing at Rassek with his blade. The spiritblade skittered off the thorny armor on Rassek’s chest, drawing blood and cinders. The fiendbinder howled and pushed Estev straight through the wall. The study collapsed around them all.

Dust and grit and despair filled Rae’s mouth. The collapsing walls of his childhood home blinded him. The roar of falling stone and shattering shingles deafened him. A tremendous weight lay on his chest. He couldn’t move his arms.

—still depending on your flesh.

Sorry. I keep forgetting.

—dangerous habit.

Rae drew the wraith through his soul. The weight on his chest eased, and his limbs came unstuck, like he was covered in heavy snow that was melting quickly. He stood. The house was a ruin, the walls folded in on themselves and the roof flat against the ground. Small piles of rubble poked up through the debris. Clouds of dust rose into the sky. The impact had flattened the field of sunflowers, burying them under splintered stone.

“Thanks,” Rae muttered to the wraith. He started to draw himself back into the material plane, only to meet resistance from the spirit.

—i wouldn’t do that yet. you’re badly hurt. broken ribs, at the very least, and maybe worse. i have forgotten how fragile mortal flesh can be.

“You could have pulled me down earlier,” Rae complained. “You’ve done it before.”

—that was before you bound me to your wraithblade. i have less control now. you’re going to have to learn how to properly use the powers i can offer, rae.

“Sure. After I sort this lot out.” Despite the wraith’s warning, Rae pulled himself mostly back to the material plane. Sharp pain stitched its way through his chest, and his left leg felt like it wanted to curl into a ball and die, but nothing felt fatal. He shuffled through the ruins, kicking aside the broken remnants of his house. “Did we kill him again? Gods, are we going to have to go through this entire game of tag all over again?”

—no. he is still here. though the other one, the lifebinder...Rae could feel the wraith’s senses extend like a mist through the forest. that one has fled.

“We have to go after Estev. I need to know why he tried to kill me, and what he wants with the sword.”

there is a connection between us. wherever that blade goes, we will find it. The wraith suddenly withdrew into Rae’s body. Rae could taste fear in the spirit’s mind. you have other problems to deal with.

“Rae!” Caeris’s voice came from down the lane, followed by a corona of light that reflected off the closely spaced trees like a firebolt. She sailed across the gravel path, turning hard as she reached the ruin of the Kelthannis home. She landed with a crunch among the broken shingles of the roof. “I heard an explosion! What happened? Did you find it?” She looked around the dusty ruins. “Is this your home?”

“Not anymore. The pattern was gone. Estev was waiting, but someone else already has it. Probably destroyed, he said. He wanted me to retrieve it from the shadowlands, and when I refused he tried to kill me.” Rae rubbed his shoulder, finding a new pain deep in his bones. He drew a little deeper into the shadowlands to numb the pain, in his arm, and elsewhere. “He might have managed it, but Rassek showed up, as well.”

“Where are they now?”

“Estev ran. He still has the spiritblade. This deep in the forest, it’s going to be impossible to catch a master of the fae. As for Rassek . . .” Rae turned slowly, looking at the tight ring of trees and the canopy that hung overhead. “Come out, fiendbinder. I’m not afraid of you!”

“I live on fear, Raelle. I feed on it. I know its scent. You cannot hide your terror from me.” A shape disengaged from the canopy of trees and slowly floated down to the debris-strewn floor, supported by a pair of shadowy, scythelike limbs that dug into the ground with each step. The shape resolved into Rassek Brant, the broken man. He was shirtless, the top of his robes pulled back and tied around his waist, leaving baggy sleeves to drape his legs. The limbs that carried him dissolved into mist as he came into the light thrown from Caeris’s bound spirit. His chest, arms, shoulders . . . every inch of his body was covered in scars, turning his ruined flesh into a jigsaw pattern. His eyes shone with a zealot’s fury. He touched down lightly, cocking his head at Caeris. “You brought a friend. How pleasant.”

“I am here to end you, heretic. This has gone on long enough,” Caeris said. Her golden sword flashed to life, divine fire rushing down the blade in a flurry of sparks, following the trail of runes etched into the weapon’s steel. The angel’s wings curled out of her shoulders, unfurling with the sound of hundreds of coins clattering together. Caeris took a defensive stance, sword low, shoulders high, her eyes locked on Rassek’s placid face.

“Yes, I remember you. The courageous one from Anvilheim. I assumed you were dead,” Rassek purred. He turned curiously in her direction, his hands steepled at his waist. “What makes you think you can best me this time around?”

“I know what I face this time,” Caeris declared, drawing the angel around her head and letting it drift in glowing streamers down her body. The silver-laced blindfold wove around her eyes. Platinum light outlined her face. “You will not escape!”

“What you face is your destruction, lawbinder.” Rassek lifted one hand, cupping his palm as though presenting a fruit. His arm writhed and boiled. Thorns burst out along his forearm, and black skin erupted along the puckered tracks of his scars. The gnarled knuckles of his hand swelled, growing talons and chitinous, black plates that crawled down the length of his arm. Rassek smiled. His teeth were small and sharp and glistening with spit. “But there is nothing of fear in you. Good. I despise slaughtering cowards.”

Caeris screamed and ran forward, golden sword grasped over her shoulder. Four-fold wings beat the air in ordered rhythm, feathers singing as they thrummed. Rassek rose into the air on those cruel, scythelike appendages, and for a brief second Rae saw an image in the mage’s shadow. Something held Rassek in its grasp, a creature of spindly arms and cruel hooks, its face a hash of gaping eyes and slavering jaws. It was only a heartbeat, but the horror of it nearly stopped Rae’s heart.

Rassek and Caeris met in midair. The broken man caught Caeris’s blade in his thorned grasp, throwing it aside before swiping at her throat. Caeris ducked under the blow, recovered the sword, then kicked at Rassek’s chest as she floated past. The thick leather of her boot hissed as it impacted the fiendbinder’s chest. The strike separated them. Angel wings stopped Caeris’s flight, turned her, threw her forward. She approached Rassek more carefully this time, hovering on the saltire of her wings as she slipped sideways through the air, always keeping the golden blade pointed at the broken man’s chest. Rassek waited passively, demonic hand held palm up in front of him, as though he was waiting to catch something Caeris was going to throw to him.

—let it go. let her die. this is not our battle.

“It is our battle,” Rae answered, digging into the wraith, drawing its shadowy power into the material plane. “Ours and ours alone. No one else can die for this. I won’t let them.”

—as you wish.

The wraith blossomed through his soul. Cold mist wove through Rae’s body, lifting him off the ground. With a flick of his wrist, Rae brought the wraithblade out of his soul, manifesting in the palm of his hand. Moonlit sword in hand and the wraith’s icy cowl pulled tight across his face, Rae threw himself into the fight.

Rassek and Caeris were already trading blows again. The hard flesh of Rassek’s corrupted hand turned aside Caeris’s blade as easily as the strongest steel, throwing sparks across the floor. The justicar’s willowy arms moved like quicksilver, a blur so fast that it looked like she had four arms, two swords, and then she did. The lawbinder’s face split down the middle, then split again. Rae remembered how her angel had manifested the first time they met, in the wastes outside Hammerwall, when her voice alone was enough to scatter a demon. Caeris’s mouth clenched tight in concentration, her brow furrowed under the blindfold. The quartet of angelic faces circling her head flickered through a dozen emotions, from anger to hate to fear.

Rae stuck close to the precariously leaning remnants of the chimney, skidding across the broken shingles of the fallen roof. The two combatants had risen high into the air, Caeris on wings, Rassek dangling from the scissor-jointed arms of the demon. Their attention was entirely consumed with the other as they traded blows and insults. Rae took advantage, sliding to Rassek’s flank, trying to get behind the fiendbinder.

Caeris lunged, drawing Rassek to one side, nearly revealing Rae. Her eyes fell on Rae’s shadowy form. They locked eyes. She turned back to Rassek. On her next pass, she faltered, and Rassek pressed the attack, driving her almost into the surrounding forest. The circle of trunks hissed at the waves of heat washing off the lawbinder. Caeris grounded and took a defensive posture. Rassek lunged at her. But in so doing, Rassek exposed his back to Rae’s shimmering blade.

Rae braced himself against the chimney, then leapt into the air, leaving behind a trail of mist and curling darkness. Rassek’s bare back glistened with sweat, a line of thorny protrusions along his shoulders poking through his puckered skin. Rae brought the wraithblade over his head and fell like a comet on the fiendbinder.

The silver steel of the wraithblade skidded off something dark, deflecting the blow. The point plunged into the top of Rassek’s shoulder, catching flesh before bouncing away. Rae slammed into the fiendbinder’s shoulders. There was more of him than Rae could see. Rassek backed slowly away from the pair of them, his arms up, eyes darting side to side.

“So the wraithbinder feels ready to fight? It doesn’t matter. You don’t have the old man’s skill, only his darkness, wound into your soul,” Rassek said.

“But there are two of us,” Caeris said. She strode forward. “And more on the way. We have you this time, Rassek. And we have you cornered.”

“Yes, this is true.” The trees waved back and forth in the wind, as though a storm was gathering on the horizon. “This forest is too close, and too wild. Estev left his mark on it, didn’t he? No matter. It is time for a change of venue, don’t you think?”

The fiendbinder curled his other hand into a fist, mortal flesh bursting to reveal gnarled demonic armor. The chitinous black shell crawled over his shoulders and down his glistening chest. Rassek grew, and the demon rose through him, his skin boiling as the minion from Hell manifested through his bones. He towered over them both. Sharp wings loomed over his shoulders, brushed the highest trees. Rassek slapped his hands together. When he drew them apart, a fiendish blade of barbed black metal sizzled into reality. Its very presence was an offense to the senses, an assault on Rae’s soul. Caeris gasped in pain.

Rassek held the sword over his head and then, leering at Rae and Caeris, slammed it tip-first into the ground. A shock wave washed out from the point of impact, and the world changed as it passed. The trees disintegrated, the air turned to dust, the forest floor hissed and cracked and rumbled. With the canopy of trees gone, Rae could see the sky, but it was different. Pewter clouds roiled from horizon to horizon, shot through with black lightning and a rain of sizzling pitch. The ruins of Hadroy House stood in the distance. They hadn’t gone anywhere, they were still in the Heretic’s Eye. But Rassek had drawn them all down into the realm of Chaos.

They were in Hell, with nowhere to run, and a demon looming over them.


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