He took a step closer. "So many scores to settle."
Another step. Mahalagris the Mighty loomed over them, seven feet tall or more, hollow-cheeked and sallow, his eyes blazing brilliant blue. One of his hands was hidden in a copper-hued gauntlet that had rubies inset into every knuckle joint, but the other had impossibly long, cruel-taloned red fingers that held a curved, naked sword glowing with emerald light.
"Right, Tarram Armistrade?"
Chapter Sixteen
The Masked did not answer the wizard, but took a step back from that curved blade and muttered warningly to Tantaerra, "Undead. Don't let it touch you."
"Gee, you think?" Tantaerra spat.
Mahalagris lifted his blade and took another step forward, its point following the retreating man-whose mask was now a steady blue, as bright as any beacon.
Fear me not, the sword whispered, both aloud and inside Tantaerra's head. I heal, not harm.
Tantaerra looked up at its wielder, tall and grinning, his eyes gleeful.
And full of hate.
"I–I don't believe we've been introduced," she observed as she backed away, too, managing to get the words out with only the slightest of quavers.
Mahalagris looked down at her for a moment, then returned his attention to The Masked. "An amusing pet," he croaked. "Housebroken, no doubt, but truly preferable to a human wench, when nights are cold? Hmm?"
"How is it that you know me?" Tarram asked softly. "Do you watch the world outside this tomb of yours with the mask, or magic of your own?"
"Both," Mahalagris replied smugly. "I've been waiting for you for some time, Tarram Armistrade. Or do you prefer Dusker Bellowbar? Morim Jalosker? Or perhaps Taluth Markant? I knew you'd have to come here. A properly crafted curse is like a hook no fish can shake loose. You took your time, though. Schemed, thought up stratagems. Then threw them all away when seeming mischance handed you an excuse to visit ruined Hurlandrun."
"Mischance?" The Masked asked, almost mockingly.
Mahalagris smiled and took a step closer. "At last."
My touch will make you tall and strong, the glittering sword in its hand murmured. My kiss hurts not at all.
"I'll just bet," Tantaerra told it bitterly, backing away. "Does the Fearsome Gauntlet talk, too?"
The corpse ignored her.
"None have reached me, all these years," he told The Masked, almost mournfully. "None have got farther than the third chamber. I have been so bored."
The wizard wasn't even looking at her when it lunged, that whispering blade lashing out with a swift suddenness that terrified her.
Tantaerra flung herself headlong. An instant later and she'd have lost an ear, not just the tress of neatly severed hair that was now sighing floorward.
Guts and garters, but the sword must be sharp!
Mahalagris could have beheaded her, she realized with a chill. He had let her escape being slain. This time.
So the dance begins, the sword told her, as tenderly as a lover.
"At last, after so long idle …" Mahalagris purred. "Fresh foes, excitement once more …sport that must be made to last."
"And if we don't play?" The Masked asked the undead wizard.
Mahalagris shrugged. "Then you die faster."
"Faster?"
The wizard sighed. "Dullards, just as I feared." He raised his sword, and explained as if to a child, "A slaying stroke, rather than slowly hewing you to pieces." Then he raised the Fearsome Gauntlet. "Or I'll use this, rather than just wearing it."
Tantaerra took three swift steps sideways, farther from The Masked. Was the creature now far enough from the door that she could scuttle past it and have time to get the door open?
The Masked sidestepped too, moving farther from her. Giving her a better chance to try, she realized.
Instead, she rushed at Mahalagris.
At last, the blade purred, gliding up into an almost liquid arc to race down and across at her in a wicked slash.
The Masked charged Mahalagris, and the corpse-thing turned with frightening speed, the slash becoming a parry that-
Tantaerra didn't wait to see more, but swerved away from the creature and launched herself into a pounding run, faster than she'd ever sprinted before.
The door seemed to rush up to meet her, as blood pounded in her ears. It didn't look to be locked, and the handle was a simple protruding lever, metal cast in the shape of an undulating serpent. She was going to manage this!
She caught hold of the lever, pulled it sharply down, felt the latch disengage, kicked off from the wall to propel the door open-
And found herself slamming hard into the floor and rolling, sudden burning agony in her left wrist. There was blood everywhere, spurting and glistening wet and dark, and she was-she was-
Lying on the floor, writhing in pain and clutching at her wrist, where her body now abruptly ended.
Her left hand was missing.
Four fingers fewer, and a thumb, the wizard's blade whispered gloatingly, as it glided over her, trailing drops of her own blood. A triumphant reddish-purple light was flaring from it.
Mahalagris was floating above her as well, wearing a gleeful smile as wide as the door she'd failed to open. "Such a valiant little fool! Need a hand, halfling?"
Tantaerra wept, rolling over and over and curling up around her pain. Her hand was severed and gone, somewhere in the room behind her, but she could feel pain in her lost fingers, a burning that-
The Masked shouted something wordless and furious. Then tortured metal clanged, shrieked, and clattered, a sound that became the dying tinklings of many shards on stone.
Mahalagris laughed.
"Your paltry fangs are no match for the Whispering Blade! But please, keep trying. Come at me with your broken hilts and your stumps!"
Someone-The Masked, she could tell by his panting-came running, scooped Tantaerra up around her waist, and ran with her.
Gods, the pain! She howled, waving her ruined arm. It felt as if it were on fire, and blazing from her elbow on down.
Down to the fingers she'd never have again.
Mahalagris was roaring with laughter now, a booming, gloating bellowing that echoed back from something large and solid just ahead. The Masked skidded to a halt and set Tantaerra down against it, in a half-sitting slump. The wall.
"The winch," he muttered in her ear. "Pull its spike when the moment is right."
And he was gone, sprinting away across the room.
Through a chaos of hair and tears Tantaerra saw her partner reach the catafalque and swarm up it. Still laughing, Mahalagris swooped, not bothering to use his wicked blade. Instead, he raked The Masked's back with his long red talons, baring shoulders and spine in long, bloody slashes that trailed tattered clothing.
The Masked roared in pain, driving his attacker into fresh bellows of laughter.
"Trying to entomb yourself before I slaughter you? How considerate! So thoughtful of you, mask-thief!"
The undead wizard whirled in the air and slammed into The Masked like a charging bull, sweeping him off the catafalque to crash back down to the floor. Mahalagris swirled around him tauntingly.
"Up! Up, fool! Up and lose a finger! Just one at first, I think …oh, I foresee us dancing together a long while yet!"
Dance together, the Whispering Blade echoed eagerly. Dansssssse.
The Masked got up and ran a few strides away from the catafalque, then skidded to an abrupt halt. Mahalagris was in front of him again, blocking his way, grinning from ear to ear, his eyes two blue flames of malice, his blade drawn back to slash.