His smile began to fade, leaving nothing behind. No peace was on his lips as they went slack, no contentment in his eyes as they dimmed. All the sin he carried, he carried with him as he, too, faded.
But not completely.
He drew a shallow breath, held the faintest light in his eye. Wherever he was, it was neither heaven nor hell nor earth, but some place between them all.
Slowly, she found her left hand reaching for his neck. Her fingers trembled as she did so, wary to unleash the power behind them. It seemed not so much a mercy. Those who had felt her touch before had felt the pain as she had, as whatever was in her arm had destroyed them. But he wouldn’t last that long. One moment of pain, then she would send him on his way. Maybe it was a mercy. Maybe it was agony.
But he deserved it. One confession and everything was all right? As though he had never done it? No. Some part of her, the part that watched only three people walk out of her temple and leave hundreds left to be buried, wanted this. Some part of her wanted him to suffer for his crimes. And that part of her brushed the tips of her fingers against his throat.
“He can not be sal va tion.”
The sound that paper makes when it burns. Ashes unmoved by wind. Dust falling in thin beams of light. She looked over shoulder. The paper man was staring at her with its black eyes. All too alive.
“Feel noth ing in your arm, lit tle crea ture?”
And speaking, sounding almost amused.
She shook her head.
“He can not do it.”
“Who?”
“He has no name. He was nev er giv en one bef ore he went there.”
“Where?”
“Un der the skin. In the bone. He spoke to me when he sensed me. Such a hap py voice. So ea ger to talk to some one who could hear him.” The creature’s voice came slowly, on each exhale and inhale. “There, he is blind. Here, you are deaf. He can on ly hear you. He can not speak to you.”
“He’s. . like you? The thing in my arm?”
“But he was close. I could hear him. And he was young. He knew noth ing of the war. Been trapped in the flesh for so long. Re fresh ing. Wan ted to know me, wan ted to know ab out the sta tue, wan ted to know my name.”
“It was. . looking for something. Earlier. I could hear it.”
“For me. Could hear him. But could not speak to him. Deaf in there. On ly knows you, your voice, your fears, your pains. Gets scared in there, tries to es cape.”
“Then why isn’t it doing it now? Why won’t it kill him?” she asked, holding Denaos up.
“Be cause you do not want him dead.”
She looked down at Denaos, emptying like a vessel.
“He deserves it.”
“When you dream, do you see a world where ev er y one gets what they de serve?”
She looked from the paper man to Denaos again. The rogue drew in a short breath. It did not come out again.
“What. . do I do?”
“You speak. He will li sten. He can not hear an y thing else.”
Somewhere far away, there was a crashing sound in the darkness beyond the rubble. Then a moment of the hollow quiet, the long, blank page waiting for the words. She pressed her left hand to Denaos’s face.
“Not like that. He does not be lieve you.”
Her right hand trembled. She closed her eyes, let it fall upon his body, slide down beneath his tunic to the great wound beneath.
“Ask him a gain.”
She spoke a whispered word.
“Please.”
And she could feel him dying. She could feel the blood drying, skin blackening, organs failing. Pain. Agony. Her fingers drank it like water, all the suffering in the blood. Her arm grew heavy, glutted with the agony. She felt it course into her, into her arm and from death into life.
She could feel a life lived in reverse, pulled out of the darkness and into a burning light, the sensation of skin kissing steel, the sound of air dying before a body hit the floor, the first breath a woman takes when her husband plans to kill her, the wail of a mother when she gives birth to a murderer.
She was screaming. Her arm was ablaze. Skin was bathed in something bright white, something hideous and hungry that drank his pain and left behind black bone as it grew brighter with each drop drank. She was screaming. And through it, she could hear him. In her arm, she could hear the demon.
What is this, don’t like it, it hurts, can feel it, why does it hurt, why can’t I find anything here, I can fix this, I can make this work, I can make it work, I can fix everything, I will, do not be worried, do not fear.
It was a sensation she had felt before, in Sheraptus’s clutches, as she watched a young woman die. It had craved her pain, then, craved to fix it as Asper had wanted to. She opened her eyes long enough to look down at her arm. No skin remained. No cloth remained. Only the bright white light. Only the black, black bone. Only the blood growing wet, the skin pulling itself together, the organs waking up from their slumber.
Only the light.
Over her own agony, she could not hear the crash in the distance growing louder. Against the light, she could not see the stream of water racing across the floor. As she felt Denaos’s body grow warm, as she felt the pain inside her own arm, she could not feel the earth shake beneath her.
A moment before the wall of water came to swallow her up. A moment between when she drew breath and when the thing in her arm went silent and the water had just begun to burst beyond the archway. A perfect silence, the moment of the quill pressed to parchment.
And she heard Denaos breathe as the silver glow enveloped them both completely.
Gariath came to the crest of the staircase after he had left a good deal of his life on the stone steps below. He looked up at the face of the mountain and saw the carving of Ulbecetonth, arms stretched out and smile wide with benevolence. He looked over his shoulder to see what the hell she was so damn happy about.
Bodies. Some of them his friends. Blood. Some of it his own. The battle in the ring raged, as it would always rage until they all fell. But they hadn’t all fallen. The netherlings that did not know the words “lie down and die” swung at the demons that spoke to them with gurgling voices and reaching claws. As they would, always.
Perhaps that was just how life for the Rhega was, to drift from battle to battle. To stand over corpses and say, “This is what we fought for.” He had done just that, or intended to. He had intended to stand over the corpse of Daga-Mer, to look at his friends and say, “This is what I fought for. These humans. Not my family. Not even close. The Shen were close. And I left them. For these humans.”
Maybe it would have sounded better if he had been standing on the corpse of a titanic demon.
But he was going to die here alone, at the top of these stairs, surrounded by the water and with only one corpse to share it all with.
Mahalar. Blackened and split apart, lying there like ashes from a fire. His eyes were still dull, still yellow, still staring as Gariath approached him. The dragonman reached down, plucked the elder Shen up in his arms. Funny, he thought; his eyes still looked alive, as though he were expecting something from Gariath. Words of encouragement? A report?
Why the hell not.
“The fight isn’t going well,” the dragonman said. “Your people, they fled. They left their oaths behind and ran. Some are alive. Some are not.” He sniffed. “I thought you should know.”
Maybe not the best words to end on. Maybe not something the elder wanted to hear in the afterlife. But for a moment, the Shen’s eyes looked like they grew darker, slipping away from whatever they clung to.