“What the hell?” Tilda asked. Zeb wished she had found a different word.
“You do not know?” Balan’s voice came from still another part of the room. “That hardly seems sporting. The lovely Nesha-tari never told you people of her lineage as a Lamia?”
Zeb dropped his jaw, as the last several weeks he had spent in Nesha-tari’s company suddenly made complete sense to him. He knew just enough about the creatures known as lamias, from spook stories told across campfires if nothing else, to give serious consideration to turning his bow on the woman slumped against the end of the table.
“What is a lamia?” Tilda whispered behind Zeb.
“Monsters of high deserts and lonely plains,” he answered. “They lure men to their deaths, and eat them.”
“Lure them how?” Tilda asked.
“How would you?”
A deep, resonating growl emerged from Nesha-tari. The table she leaned on toppled to its side as though her weight had suddenly increased, and as she hit the floor on all fours she was no longer wholly a woman, though neither was she fully something else. Her clothing strained at the seams as her limbs and torso elongated. Thick, tawny fur sprang from every inch of her exposed skin. She crouched cat-like on four thick paws, and when she raised her head to release a deafening roar it came out of a muzzle framed by long whiskers. Only her eyes, still of the deepest blue, remained unchanged.
Even Shikashe and Amatesu sprang away from her and put their backs to the walls, the samurai’s sword and the shukenja’s club warding away the great half-feline beast. A spark flashed on the floor in front of Nesha-tari and suddenly Balan was there, kneeling right in front of her with his red eyes looking into her blue ones.
“Nesha-tari,” Balan spoke in a soft whisper. “You do not have to fight what you are. Not here, and not with me.”
The big cat’s ears twitched, and Nesha-tari’s fanged maw hung open. The devil reached out slowly and gently scratched the side of her head.
“You can not stay with these monkeys, they will not allow it. Not now that they have seen you for what you are. Stay here, with us, Nesha-tari. We are of a kind.”
Zeb was staring, everyone was staring, with the exception of Kendall Heggenauer. The armored Jobian took several running steps and lunged, dropping his mace to hang from his wrist, bracing both arms and a strong shoulder behind his shield.
Balan looked up to see Jobe’s holy symbol bearing down on him and before he could move or disappear, Heggenauer crashed into him as though fired from a ballista. The devil lord reeled and slammed into a wall, as Heggenauer leaped to his feet and raised his mace, white light blooming from its head.
“She is with us, devil,” Heggenauer said calmly. “Sell your lies to another.”
The great beast that had been Nesha-tari cringed back as Balan’s focus came off her, nails scratching on the floor as the cat reeled back on its hind legs, which were suddenly human legs. She was a woman again, tripping over the overturned table and falling toward the floor. Shikashe and Amatesu came together to catch her by the shoulders. Balan righted himself, and glared at Heggenauer.
“You godlings are the same everywhere, aren’t you?” the devil sneered. “Nesha-tari, explain to this dolt the way of the world, will you?”
Nesha-tari shoved herself away from Shikashe and Amatesu, growling again though it was now with a human voice. The blue lightning bloomed in her hands and she threw her tanned arms forward, split sleeves hanging off them in tatters, and unleashed arcs of crackling blue fire across the room, into Balan.
The devil was lifted off his foot and hoof, and Zeb and Tilda flattened to the ground as the creature was blown across the wall above them, rolling and screeching. Balan slammed into a corner and fell to the ground in a smoking heap. The smell of bad barbeque filled the room so thickly that Zeb nearly gagged.
“Ouch,” Balan muttered, lying on his neck and shoulders with his legs sticking up against the wall. He groaned and rolled to his side, then pushed himself up to a seat. A hole had been blown in the clothing on his chest and the jagged edge of coat, vest, and shirt were all smoldering. The gray skin beneath was blackened like a piece of meat fallen off a spit into the fire. He coughed, and a puff of smoke came out of his mouth.
Nesha-tari stood glaring, her own tattered clothes hanging so she had to hold the trousers up with a hand. Blue fire still danced in her other palm.
“Where is the Wizard?” she hissed.
“And J-John Deskata,” Tilda added, almost getting it out without stammering.
One of Balan’s arms hung limp at his side, but the devil pointed back into the tower entryway with the other.
“First set of double doors on the left. Long hall through the wing, then another set of doors into the central tower. They are both in there.”
The lightning in Nesha-tari’s hand rose in intensity, and Balan shook his head.
“You chose badly, Kitty,” he said, then rolled on the floor and disappeared.
*
Balan rolled another turn across the hard ground of a courtyard, shouting as he went over his broken arm. He stopped on his back and let out a ragged breath at the featureless night sky above.
“Poltus,” he said, and the devil appeared instantly above him.
“Anything?” Balan asked, and the spiked devil shook his head once. Balan sighed. “Such a waste. Open the western tower.”
Poltus bowed and disappeared. Balan lay still for a moment, grimacing as the fried skin on his chest moved, burns and blisters sinking back into the flesh and the unhealthy gray pallor returning. Nesha-tari’s lightning bolt had caused the muscles of Balan’s left arm to contract so violently his humerus had snapped. Nothing funny about it. Balan grabbed the arm under the elbow and pulled it straight with a gasp, so that the bones could knit back together.
“Balan?” a disembodied voice asked from all around.
“Danavod,” Balan said, needing to add no affectation of strain to his voice. “The Circle Wizard is in the central tower, at the Node. I have opened the tower doors to your hobgoblins. You must send them right away.”
“The Wizard did this to you?”
“No, Blue Akroya’s servant. She seeks to aid the Wizard.”
There was silence in the courtyard but the air seemed heavy, and angry.
“Does my Blue brother act against me?” Danavod asked, possibly a rhetorical question but Balan answered anyway, and as always with complete honesty.
“I do not know what Akroya wants done here, your Fierceness.”
There was another moment of silence, then dust stirred all around the courtyard as if tremendous wings had beat the ground. The dark presence of the Dragon rose into the sky, and moved off west.
Balan winced and pulled himself to a seat. He moved his left arm at the shoulder with only a twinge of pain, as his chest was fully healed. The clothes, however, were a complete loss.
“Such a waste,” he muttered again, and climbed to his feet.
*
When the white light faded before Phin’s eyes, he found himself looking at Kanderamath’s book in his hands, which he had caught just above his nose. He dropped the book to one side and scrambled away from Centurion Deskata, but caught his breath when he looked at the man.
Deskata had tossed the leather satchel aside after shaking out the book over Phin‘s head, and the fact that he now stood absolutely still was nowhere near as disconcerting as the fact that the satchel was hanging motionless in the air a foot from his hand. Phin stared at the man and realized that absolutely still was an understatement. Deskata was frozen in mid motion, one foot raised to step forward, mouth hanging open to draw in breath, probably so that he could yell at Phin some more.
Phin scooted away and scrambled to his feet, panting so hard that it struck him that his breath was presently the only sound in the vast room, and seemingly in the world. There was a cold profundity to the silence all around, and the quality of the light was somehow off as well though Phin could not say just what was wrong with it. He turned where he stood, looking all around, and jerked when he saw the winged woman who had led John Deskata here, across the room and up on the second floor catwalk. She was perched on the balustrade, squatting on her haunches with a broad smile on her face. Motionless.