The figure on the massive throne raised a hand and compelled a sudden silence.
Maksim lifted his hands to fight, opened his mouth to pour forth the syllables he’d stored against this moment. Nothing happened.
Nothing came to him.
He was mute.
He was erased.
His hands shook.
His arms went limp, falling to his sides.
“Maks, Maksi, Maksim, is that the way to greet your Master?”
He stared, swallowed. He didn’t believe what he saw. Musteba Xa. Line for line, gesture for gesture, it was Musteba Xa.
It couldn’t be.
“You’re dead,” he said, was momentarily pleased to hear his own voice, then was afraid and angry.
“I killed you,” he said. “I flung you into a place where nothing was.”
Did they get him from my mind? he thought.
No, he thought.
I would know.
I would know if they plundered me like that.
Trembling with an ancient rage, an even older fear, he glared at the ancient evil old man.
“I will not believe it,” he said.
“You are dead, you are ash and nothing,” he said.
He gazed into the eyes of what had to be a simulacrum and saw himself.
Whoever or whatever sat there, it knew him to the marrow of his bones.
“You always were a stubborn git, li’l Maks.” Musteba Xa (no, it wasn’t him, no, it couldn’t be him) lifted a crudely polished gemstone, a star sapphire the size of a man’s fist.
Maksim tried to snap elsewhere, but the stone anchored him and he could not move.
He fought to break free, but could not.
The stone was one of the Great Talismans, Massulit the Sink, Massulit the Harvester, Massulit awkward and impossible, taking more skill to wield than any of the other talismans. Massulit in the hands of Musteba Xa. No. In the hands of that THING who chose to take his Master’s form.
The Thing on the Throne began to chant, drawing threads of soulstuff from Maksim’s helpless body, gathering the threads in the heart of the Stone,
He tried to fight.
He slammed into a wall.
For an instant he lost control and beat helplessly, futilely at that wall.
Then he gathered himself and waited for what would happen next.
They want something.
They need me to get it.
They need me alive.
Their mistake.
He managed a slight smile.
I hope.
The Thing watched the souls spin into the Stone, watched the stone glow brighter until its clear blue light filled the cavern.
The Thing laughed, a tottery wheezy giggle that should have made him sound senile and silly. It didn’t.
Maksim knew that sound, it was like remembered pain. He watched his souls spin out of him into the hands that seemed to belong to Musteba Xa and it was as if none of the intervening years had happened.
“You should thank the geniod for our reunion, Maks.” Having settled Massulit into the crack between his withered thighs so his hands would be free to gesture, he waved at the seven glowspheres ranged in an arc behind Maksim, then at the hundreds of smaller lights that oozed from the walls of the cavern and floated free. “They have a little quest for you, dear boy. I told them you’d be stubborn, but you weren’t stupid. So here we area No questions? You haven’t changed, have you, Sweetness.” Another shrill giggle, then he straightened his bony shoulders and fixed his eyes on Maksim’s face. “The Magus of Tok Kinsa has a talisman at the heart of his Keep. One of the Great Ones. Shaddalakh.” He clicked his horny yellow nails on the curve of Massulit. “The geniod want it. Matched set, eh? You are going to get it for them. Do it and you get your souls back. Still no questions?”
“Swear on Massulit for your souls’ sake that I will get mine back if I bring Shaddalakh out and hand it over.”
“You don’t want to qualify that, dear boy?”
Maksim shrugged. “Tell me what more I could get if the lie pleases you.”
“For old time’s sake? For the love that was once between us? Ask, my sweet boy, and you shall receive.”
Maksim shuddered, but refused to let his sickness show. “Swear on Massulit for your souls’ sake that I will get mine back if I bring Shaddalakh out and hand it over.”
The bones in Musteba Xa’s face were suddenly more visible; there was spite in him and anger, but he did as Maksim asked. He swore and Maksim was satisfied the oath was complete.
“Let him who is first among the geniod swear the same,” he said. “I have lived long enough to know how to die if I must. Let him swear.”
The glowspheres grew agitated, went darting about in complex orbits, maintaining a set distance between them no matter how recklessly they careered about. After some minutes of this confusion, the largest of the geniod came rushing toward the throne; it hovered before Musteba Xa, changed form, was a beautiful woman, naked and powerful in her nakedness. She reached out, took Massulit from Musteba Xa’s trembling hands. Her contralto filling the cavern with echoes, she declaimed the oath that Xa had sworn, then she dropped the talisman into Xa’s lap and stalked over to Maksim.
She caught hold of his arm. Her fingers were strong, but they felt like flesh. He could feel no strangeness in her, see no sign she-was other than woman. She stared at him a moment, measuring him, then she snapped them both from the cavern.
4
He slammed down on the backward-facing seat of a closed carriage, a traveling gada, he thought. The woman settled herself opposite him, knocked on the window shutter beside her and braced herself as the gada started moving over a rutted track about as bad as any road he’d ever tried out. The gada swayed wildly enough to nauseate him, lurched and jolted even though the team that drew it was moving at a walk.
He was stiff, cold, filthy, half-starved, and half-crazy with thirst.
On top of that, he was a brittle shell of himself and his body was already beginning the slow agonizing death of the unsouled.
He sat staring at the veiled woman without really seeing her, trying to work out his next move.
Somehow he had to get hold of Massulit and take his souls back with his own hands.
Oath or no oath, he couldn’t trust any of them to leave him alive once they had Shaddalakh.
Massulit and Shaddalakh. What talisman did they send Brann after? That at least was clear to him. Someone, something, was gathering the Great Stones.
Who? And did it matter?
All knowledge mattered. How could he plan without a basic piece of information like that?
He scowled at the woman. Geniod?
Who or what were geniod?
Kin to the demons his Master had controlled. Yes. That he’d believe.
He passed his hand across his face, his dehydrated palm rasping across the dry leathery skin. No stubble, thank his unknown father for that and the M’darj absence of face hair.
The geniod woman wore the gauzy voluminous trousers, the tight bodice and silken head veil of a Jorpashil courte-
san, having acquired all of these in mid-passage between the cavern and the carriage. She swept the veil aside, let him see her astonishingly beautiful face, skin like cream velvet, brilliant blue-green eyes, hair the color of dark honey falling about her face in dozens of fine braids threaded with amber beads that matched the amber lights the lamps on the carriage wall woke in that honey hair. There was nothing to tell Maksim’s ordinary senses or his sorceror’s nose that she was demon, not mortal. He found that astonishing also. She smiled and lowered her eyes; one lovely tapering hand played with the amber beads that fell onto the swell of her breasts. She was a superb artifact, a perfect example of what she pretended to be. He suppressed a smile. If she was supposed to be an added inducement, that was one mistake they’d made. Perhaps because I’ve been living with Brann, he thought. Something else I owe my Thomlet.
He thought about that Thing on the Throne and decided he’d been too precipitous in accepting appearances. He settled himself to endure his physical hardships. I’ll beat the bastards yet.