Chapter Thirty
Amber talons reached for Rae. The wriggling knot of light was gone, but the fiendbinder stood several feet taller than Rae, and twice as wide. Tenebrous wings brushed the buildings on either side of the narrow switchback, and his body was crusted with chitinous hooks. Only his face resembled the man that had stalked down the street a moment earlier, though that was more because his face was already so horrific. It didn’t take much to imagine a demon in that jigsaw of scars and ragged teeth. Only the thorny crown and the addition of six glowing eyes were new.
Even through these changes, Rae recognized Rassek Brant. He had only met the man a few times, usually when he went to visit his father at work. The monstrosity before him looked like a mockery of the living man, a puppet that had been taken apart and stitched back together by a madman, but it was still Rassek. Rassek, who was supposed to be dead. Rassek, who had formed the cabal that doomed Hadroy House, and had sent Rae’s family running for the edge of the world. And now, Rassek Brant, the man who had killed Rae’s parents.
Rae screamed and threw himself backward. Talons clicked together just inches above his head, forming into a fist that then slammed down, catching Rae by the shoulder and spinning him to the ground. Rae rolled away just as the demon’s cloven hoof smashed into the cobblestones. Rae called out, but his voice echoed off the quiet walls of the hovels.
“Stop wriggling, you bastard,” Rassek growled. He slashed at Rae with his crooked talons. Sparks flew from the pavement as Rae slithered away. Rae got to his feet and started to run, staggering as he sped up, the uneven cobbles of the street and the rapid descent of the switchback conspiring to trip him up. “They always run,” the fiendbinder said with irritation. “Why do they always run?”
“Something to do with your face, I think,” Rae muttered to himself, but then the demon was loping down the slope in his direction. The wraith flickered in his soul. Rae reached for it, weaving the dead man into his bones. Mist coiled up from his footsteps, and a ghostly light shot through his veins. Rae leapt, and the wraith lifted him up. He flew.
—he banished me. i don’t understand the power he has over me. who is this man?
“The bastard who killed my parents,” Rae answered. “He’s supposed to be dead.”
—he has some connection to my soul. explains how he found us. don’t worry, we can cut it free.
“Rather just run away,” Rae said as he scrambled past the stairs that led down to the stables. The road in front of him was in poor repair, and the houses towering on either side were barricaded against the night. But the justicars were somewhere ahead. With wraith-lightened strides, Rae vaulted down the street.
—as long as he has that connection, there is nowhere we can run that he cannot follow.
“Yeah, well, long as he’s on us, La and the others are fine,” Rae gasped. “Just have to keep moving.”
A deep shadow occulted the moon, and a roar of wind and sulfurous flame tore overhead. The fiendbinder crashed to the ground in front of Rae. A curtain in one of the surrounding houses flicked aside. Wide, white eyes took in the demon and the wraith facing off in the middle of the street, then the curtain fell and shutters slammed closed. There would be no help.
“Haven’t enough people died, Kelthannis?” Rassek boomed as he unfolded from a crouch. “Not that I care for the dead. They belong to a different realm. Nothing to do with us. Still, you would think some bit of humanity remained in that twisted heart of yours.”
“Don’t put this on me,” Rae said. “You killed all those people. Can’t blame that on me.”
“Can’t I? The innocent of Hadroy House, the baron, his children. All those servants. And then Hammerwall, while you cowered in the wreckage of your life. Those justicars were right to arrest you. It would have been the death penalty if they knew who it was they sheltered.” He rose to his full height, wings lazily stirring the night air. “Pity they didn’t end it for me. So many dead in your wake, Kelthannis. How many more? How many will die tonight, because you’re too stubborn to admit your father’s sin?”
“My father did nothing wrong!” Anger surged through Rae, even through the cold embrace of the grave. He stretched out his hand, and the wraithblade formed like a bolt of snow-wrapped thunder. “You killed him! You murdered my family!”
“Ghost boy has a knife. How marvelous,” Rassek said. He gestured with one hand. A spinning mote of sparks formed in his palm, rolling out like a whip, forming a chain of thick links engraved with profane runes. Cinders cascaded from the coiled steel. He drew the metal whip once around his shoulders, cracking it with a shower of sparks that nearly blinded Rae. When the light faded, the links had fused together into a rough-hewn blade of dark iron and cinder. “Only one more soul, now. One more, and I can rest.”
Before Rae could answer, the fiendbinder charged forward with the profane spiritblade overhead. Rae deflected the strike with the silvered edge of the wraithblade, but the blade was just a distraction. The real attack came from the fiendbinder’s knee, driven into Rae’s belly, horn-hard spike puncturing Rae’s clothes and pushing into his ribs. Rae crumpled around the wound. The fiendbinder stomped at him, missing only by inches as Rae tumbled down the road. He finally rolled to his feet, ducking just as the chain-blade roared over his head. The smell of burned hair filled the air.
—do not draw the blade if you will not call to death. leave me in the sheath, or wield me like a harbinger. there is no other choice.
“I’m not a fighter!” Rae said, choking around the taste of blood in his mouth.
—neither am i. fighters fight. i murder.
“But how—”
Rassek interrupted Rae’s internal squabble with a series of quick slashes that drove Rae back. Each strike pierced Rae’s coat, one scraping his hip with sizzling metal, leaving blisters and charred fabric behind. The pain drove Rae slowly mad, his temper rising as he was forced to dance across the street. More and more of the wraith unspooled into the material plane. Rae’s features melted into a skeletal mask, luminous bands bisecting his eyes and the slash across his cheek. His clothes, crawling with embers from the demon’s blade, billowed into a wave of fog that extinguished the flame. He jumped back, and passed soundlessly into the shadowlands.
The fiendbinder bellowed and swung, but the blade passed through the space Rae had been without touching him. Profane metal slipped through Rae’s chest and out again.
Coils of mist hung heavy on the street. The fiendbinder twisted back and forth, sword in a guard position, wings flapping, driving the fog away. A dozen bright lines hovered in the mists, the afterimage of Rae’s soul, floating just out of reach. The fiendbinder growled in frustration.
“You will run, and I will hunt. Your sister, if you’re too frightened to stand against me,” he spat. “She will make fine meat. Fight me, so that she will be spared. Fight me!”
—the dead are patient. Rae’s voice, made hollow by the wraith, floated through the mists. everything dies. we just have to wait.
“Coward! I will break her! I will run her into the earth, until she prays for death!” The fiendbinder backed slowly up the street. So focused was he on the mists that he failed to see the figure rise from the ground behind him. Cloaked in shadows, with eyes the color of moonlight, it waited until Rassek was close enough. Sensing something, the fiendbinder whirled around. When he saw the figure he howled and swung. The blade passed through the phantom, disrupting the curls of fog and glamor that formed it. He was still staring in disbelief at the phantasm when Rae dropped from the sky, the shimmering tip of his ghostly spiritblade leading the charge.
The wraithblade cut into the demon’s wings, tearing downward through the webbed flesh. Shredded, the wings flapped uselessly. Rassek howled in pain and turned, but Rae was back in the mists, reappearing to snipe at the demon’s heels, apparating just long enough to drag the edge of his sword across the fiendbinder’s ribs before fading away. The demon twisted and turned, trying to bring its bulky sword into play, but Rae was too quick, too silent, barely touching the material plane long enough to strike before diving back into the shadowlands.
“Bastard!” Rassek Brant howled, and drew the demon fully into the world. Even the cracked semblance of humanity in his face disappeared, swallowed by the barbed visage of the demon as it rose, eclipsing the surrounding houses, those barbed wings flapping lazily as they reached into the air. The cobblestones cracked and spat at his feet, and the air turned to the sulfurous maelstrom of Hell. The fog burned away, and the houses fronting the street hissed and kindled, their wooden facades catching fire in the profane presence.
As the fog burned away, Rae found himself pulled inexorably back into the world. An aura of cinders formed around his body as the demon shifted the material plane, dragging everything closer and closer to Hell. The skies turned crimson, and clouds of balefire formed on the horizon. Rae stood at the head of an alleyway, shivering. The fiendbinder turned slowly in his direction. His smile was long and thin and full of teeth.
“We have played enough games, Kelthannis. Your father ran when he should have died. Better that he had fallen with his master, and spared you the misery.” He took a ponderous step toward Rae, each footfall kicking embers off the ground. “This is no place for children. Especially not a fool like you.”
“Why did you kill him? Why did you kill them both?” Rae asked. The effort of drawing the wraith and fighting the demon had drained him. His chest heaved, and his knees wobbled. The wraith reached for him, and he relented. Cold, dead strength filled his body. “Why did you kill my father?”
“Your father killed himself. Poking where he didn’t belong, then hiding when he was found out.” Another step, and the fiendbinder loomed over him. “I hold no grudge against your father. No more than I begrudge the beetle when I step on it. Just another line in a list. And now that you have trapped the renegade in your soul, there is only one name left on that list, child.” He bent closer. The smell of sulfur and rotten breath washed over Rae. “Care to guess whose name that is?”
Rae backed away. His heel scraped over the ledge behind him. Looking down, he saw he was perched on a tall bluff that towered over the lower city. The river wound through a canyon of tall buildings, manacled by a dozen bridges and the crowded traffic of barges. Rae’s stomach dropped through his guts.
“I think I’ll pass,” Rae said, then stepped off the precipice.
The first dozen feet passed before Rae even realized he was falling. He tried to scream, but the sound froze in his lungs. He saw the fiendbinder launch himself from the ledge in a sizzling shadow, limned by cinders that fell like rain in its wake. Rae twisted through the air, falling, falling, his blood hammering in his head. The buildings rushed at him, a flat roof had seemed so far away before Rae jumped suddenly on top of him. Reaching for the wraith, he felt its icy fingers grasp his heart just as he hit the tiled roof.
The pain of crashing through the roof knocked the sense from Rae’s head. He was dimly aware of breaking tile, another drop interrupted by a collision with hay and rough-hewn wood slats, the sound of cracking wood, yet another fall that ended in an explosion of grit. He lay on his back, staring up through a gray cloud at a hole in the rafters. Tiles and fabric corkscrewed down like heavy snow.
His first breath was as ragged as swallowed barbed wire. Lights swam through his vision, and a sharp hum filled his head. He tried to push himself up, but his hands slipped through the thick scree of whatever he had fallen into.
“How am I . . . still alive?” he muttered.
—there are values of death that look very much like life. The wraith’s presence squirmed through his soul like a virus. i have done what i can to preserve you, but you will feel this in the morning. unless he kills you first.
“Cheery thought.” Rae rolled over onto his side, burying his face in the gray powder. Flour, maybe. He spat it out, turning the grit red. Finally getting an arm planted, he levered himself onto one elbow. “I thought it was farther. I thought I had more time to react.”
—much farther and it would have killed you.
“I thought wraithbinders could fly.”
—wraiths can fly. you are not a wraith. The spirit seemed to grumble unhappily to itself. you are a pile of meat tied to a wraith. that is like saying you thought an anchor could float, just because they’re bound to a ship.
“Look, I’m doing the best I can. If you think—”
The rafters shook, sending a shower of dust and broken tiles raining down. Heavy footsteps sounded across the roof. The fiendbinder!
—stop grousing and move. Rae obeyed, almost as if the wraith pulled his strings, jerking him to his feet. Pain shot through his bones. He started to collapse, but the icy bands seized his limbs. move or die. pain is a luxury you do not have.
Stumbling out of the vat of flour that his fall had ruptured, Rae dragged himself down the length of the warehouse and toward the doors. He realized he was seeing with the dead man’s eyes; everything was limning in phantasmal light, and the distant stars of mortal souls glittered outside the building. It was like stumbling through a dream. The floor felt too far away, and each step was an effort, like he was swimming through molasses. He turned around and saw a shadow fall across the hole in the ceiling.
Hitting the door at a run, he spun out into the night-darkened street. A shadow etched in cinders fell into the warehouse behind him. As its bright shape hit the cloud of flour, a curl of flame filled in its wake. Rae turned and stared at the fiendbinder, standing in the middle of the flour. Rae had a memory of a mill on Hadroy’s estate exploding when a spark ignited the ground flour. The mill had erupted like a firecracker. Curls of flame worked their way around the fiendbinder’s form. Rae threw himself to the ground.
The shock wave hit him like a fist. High windows that lined the street blew out in jets of flame, and a tongue of fire rolled out the door. The hole in the ceiling blew outward like a volcano, lifting the roof a foot off its pilings before the whole thing started to collapse.
Rae stood up. He stared up at the sheets of flame leaking out the gable vents. Inside was a furnace, as though a gate had been opened directly into Inferno. Rae took a tentative step toward the door, but the heat drove him back.
Deep in the flames, the figure of the fiendbinder writhed like a fish on the hook. Its wings burned into crisps, and then the barbed crown of its head fractured. Its entire form shattered, leaving only the frail body of the black-haired mage, with his scarred face and bony hands. And then even that disappeared, consumed by the fire, burned into ash.
“Well. That’s going to draw some attention.”
Rae whirled around, the wraithblade already forming in his hand. Estev stood a few feet away, hands up. Cinders framed his shoulders, swirling around like fireflies. He waved them away with one hand.
“Peace, Rae. We slipped the justicars. But we need to get out of here.”
“Where’s La? And Mahk?” Rae asked.
“Back at the stables. Your little fireworks display will draw the justicars away quite nicely.” Estev strode up to Rae, light from the flames flickering in his eyes. “And that should hold him. For now at least.”
“Is he dead?” Rae asked. He couldn’t drag his eyes away from the flames, where Rassek had disappeared. “The man who killed my parents?”
“Yes,” Estev answered. “How does vengeance feel, Raelle?”
“Sudden,” he said. “And empty.”
“That sounds right,” Estev said. “Come on. Your sister is waiting.”
But he has died before, Rae thought. Then he turned and followed Estev into the darkness.