Amicia fell in the loose-limbed sprawl of death.
The Red Knight’s sword snapped from the scabbard and cut into another of the monsters-this one intended for him, wings spread and virulent poison already dripping. His sword slammed into it-and bounced off.
He’d had a clue that they were aethereal from the sparks. He rolled, a leather-soft wing clipped his thigh and something disgustingly velvety touched his hand-his arming sword reached out, striking a panicked blow. But as his point came on line he thrust-the blade tip snagged its material belly and because it was flying and had no anchor, it rebounded. The point, sharp as one of Mag’s needles, had still failed to bite. But it was pushed, tumbling, through fifteen feet of darkness to slam into one of its mates.
Ser Gabriel realized then that they were all coming for him-but his attention was on Amicia. “They’re magicked!” he shouted. “No mortal weapon will bite!”
He rolled under the table where the men had been sitting. One of them slipped past Ser Pavalo and landed awkwardly on the table-cups exploded out, and it flipped the table.
He saw Bad Tom, armed with the dragon’s sword, split another one in half, the two sides lit in a white-veined horror for one beat of a frightened man’s heart, the two wings each beating separately once, ripping the two halves apart and spraying black ichor. Ser Pavalo rolled, passing under a gout of the foul stuff, and rose to strike from beneath a moth with a rising cut-then whirled, and struck again as if gifted with eyes in the back of his head.
Gavin had no magic sword. He leapt onto the back of the one on the table. It was low and slow, and it didn’t seem to have any weapons that could reach its back-Gavin got his arms under its wings as if putting a small man in a head lock, and pushed the body away from him with both hands and all the passion of abhorrence, and the wings seemed to shred.
It was all perfectly silent.
Gabriel saw two of the black velvet horrors unengaged-one attempting to rise over the melee, and the other settling on the prone figure of the dying nun.
“Amicia!” he screamed.
He threw himself towards her. In the aethereal, he flooded her bridge with light-and, improvising heartbeat by heartbeat-tried forcing ops back down the bond-first through the ring, and then the strange working on his ankle.
He refused to accept that the pale corpse on the bridge was hers.
He poured his power into their bond…
One of the moths had him. He was on his stomach, stretched over her body, and the moth was settling on him, the weight like that of a dog-he felt the…
In the moment that the thing’s probisicis penetrated his back, he took his hate and terror and pushed it right up through the contact, into its body.
The moth exploded.
The poison was lethal, but slower than hermetical counters-he set a construct to cleanse the wound with fire even as he reached for her-
– and found her.
“Anything!” he shouted at the universe. “I will give anything.”
Then, desperation winning over mastery, he pushed her aethereal form off the bridge and into the torrent of green potentia that rushed under it.
The power-the raw power that she channelled so often-washed the caked, burned flakes off her face and left new, fresh skin. Her green gown was gone and she was naked.
He knew his myths, and when he’d held her in the stream long enough, he hauled her by main force onto the bridge, rolled her over and held the leg by which he’d held her in the power.
He had his arms under her arms, his hands clasped under her breasts, when her eyes opened.
She took a breath.
And another.
He pulled her back onto the bridge.
In the real, she was fully clothed. But her eyes were open.
“I thought I was dead,” she said aloud.
The last moth, struck repeatedly by two Fell Swords, tried to reach its prey once more and was spitted on the spear, wielded by Toby, who levered the corpse away from his captain and the nun.
“You’re alive,” Gabriel said. He backed away, his voice strange, his arms still clasped around her as if he was unwilling to let go, and he dragged her away from the corpses of the moths even as Prior Wishart and half the monks of the abbey came at a run, a forest of vengeful swords. There was a long scream from the direction of the cloister.
He was reluctant to let her go. Aware that he had just made a pact with-something-for her life. He could feel it.
He heard the screams. He hauled her into a chair and let her go-one hand lingering on her hair.
It was foolish-stupid-but he had not touched her in so long…
He snapped himself to attention and fell into his own palace.
“There are more of them,” Prudentia said.
He nodded. Having immolated one at point blank range, he had their making in his head, and he knew how to unmake them. More, his rage was such-
“Take a breath,” Prudentia said. “You are badly hurt yourself.”
Instead, he reached out into the darkness, and located them-only three, and those without the ferocity of purpose that had so nearly defeated him.
One was in the town, having killed two women and a child and a cat.
One was in the cloister hunting monks.
One was high in the air overhead, watching. Or rather, monitoring.
Prudentia said, “by offering such a promise you have given something a back door into your soul.”
Gabriel reached out into the night with the same working he had used at the Inn of Dorling. He layered it with a simple working of identity from his intimate contact with the one that had landed on him.
In a flash of golden fire, a low stone house in the town exploded.
To his left, in the cloister, the moth was suddenly outlined in an angry red-and then fell as ash over the rose garden.
High overhead, the largest of all the moths turned away for home.
But Gabriel was sometimes an impatient hunter, and he followed it across the sky with his thought, leaving his wounded body to collapse to the cobbles.
He had never tried this particular form of aethereal movement, and it was terrifying-like being at court while naked. He was bereft of many of his powers-a thing of wind and fancy.
But rage bore him up. Rage cancelled out rational thought and kept him to his mission. He followed the fleeing thing up into the light of the moon, and out, running north to its master.
It didn’t get more than three miles. Gabriel took it in the air and subsumed it, and like a conjuror he caught the single strand of aethereal will by which it was bound to its distant master and he-kept it.