My daughter is right, Aric. This Aric recognized as the liquid voice of the Shadow King himself. Stab the demon with your new sword.
Aric wondered for an instant how Nibenay knew his sword was new.
A templar ran into him, blind with terror, pushed off his chest and raced around him. Others bumped him as they rushed past. Blood pooled on the flagstones, bodies were everywhere, and Tallik continued his slaughter.
Then Aric understood. The voices sounding his head, Siemhouk and Nibenay—they weren’t just speaking to him, they were inside him, seeing everything. The journey, the discovery of the trove of steel, the knowledge that the demon was imprisoned beneath it, the escape. They knew about Kadya accepting the demon into her—wanting it there.
And as if that understanding turned a key, he realized that he saw flashes from their minds as well. They had both known that Kadya carried a demon inside her. Siemhouk had known it all along, had sent Kadya specifically to ensure that the demon would be brought back to Nibenay, where she believed she could control it. Nibenay had found out later, and decided to let his daughter’s plan play out, thinking he could make use of the demon when Siemhouk failed.
Now, however, both were frightened. The demon’s power grew with every passing moment, as it sapped the magical energies of Nibenay’s templar wives. Already Tallik was beyond their control—the only question remaining was whether or not it could be destroyed.
Aric was their best hope—and not much of a hope, at that. But he was someone they were happy to sacrifice.
And his hand was full of steel.
Another templar crashed into him, light as a bird. She fled, and then it was Aric and Tallik, facing each other across stones washed with crimson.
“You again?” Tallik asked. His voice was loud enough to rattle the branches at the tops of the agafari trees, and his breath carried the stink of a thousand cesspools. “I thought you had learned.”
“I’m slow,” Aric said.
“I let you live before. No longer.”
“Do your worst.” Fleeing was out of the question now, so Aric decided pretending to bravery was his best option. Not that he could frighten Tallik. But if he could make Tallik believe he wasn’t afraid, perhaps that would give him some small advantage.
He needed whatever advantage he could gain. The demon towered over him, as big as a giant now, if not bigger.
Tallik’s tentacles lashed out toward him, all at once. Aric struck back, steel flashing in the colored firelight, slicing through tentacles. They flopped to the bloody stones and writhed there. Tallik yanked them back, grew them again. He sent them once more.
Once more, Aric fought back.
The wildness was beginning to grip him again, the feel of steel in his fist feeding him. He moved faster than he knew he could, cutting and slicing, not thinking about his weapon but letting it have its head. The moment seemed at once to happen instantly, and drawn out, slowed down—he seemed to see the blade whip almost to the ground, chopping off tentacles as if they were no more substantial than dried out stalks of grass, then swinging up again, carving through more, sweeping to the left to block the ones coming from that way, then down and right again. At the same time it was all faster than his eyes could follow, the blade a silvery blur.
Then a tentacle caught him on the cheek with the force of a hammer blow, and at the same time another wrapped around his waist. That one burned like coiled fire. If not for the burn, Aric believed the blow to his face might have knocked him senseless.
If not for the burn, and the wild fever imparted to him by the steel.
Now, Aric, Nibenay’s voice said.
Now, Aric, said Siemhouk.
Another tentacle lashed him in the face. Blood flew, and Aric’s eyes started to close. And another blow landed. Another. Claws tore at his flesh, opening gaping wounds. Blood splashed into the pools below.
Aric pushed through unconsciousness, refusing to give in. He embraced the fire at his waist, pulling him ever closer to Tallik, because hanging onto that was the only thing keeping him awake.
He was barely aware of his feet leaving the ground. Tallik lifted him, raising him up, two tentacles wrapped around him now, waist and thigh.
That massive jaw opened, and the tentacles carried Aric toward the mouth, and Aric knew then that the demon meant to bite him, perhaps to eat him whole.
Aric could barely speak, but with a thick tongue and battered lips, he said, “I’ve no magic in me, demon, I’d just give you indigestion.”
He held his coin medallion in his left fist.
And he plunged his sword deep into Tallik’s upper chest.
Once again, it burned.
Aric hung on despite the agony.
Yes, Aric, Siemhouk said.
Yes, Aric, said her father.
Tallik tried to wrench him away with tentacles, to push him away with hands almost big enough to cover Aric completely. But Aric kept his grip on the sword, and the steel clung to Tallik, and it took several moments to realize, through eyes swollen almost to slits, that the blade was glowing red, its glow visible even beneath the demon’s skin.
Aric’s head flopped onto his shoulder and he blinked, nearly unconscious from the pain, but he could see Siemhouk on the dais, standing straight, arms thrust out before her, and a red glow emanating from her flowing toward Aric’s sword. Another struck the sword from elsewhere, like a beam of scarlet light. Nibenay, Aric guessed, from wherever he was hiding. Then more of them, beams striking the blade, running along it, down its edges and its fuller groove and into Tallik’s breast, and he knew these came from templars, gathering once more around the demon. He caught another glimpse of Siemhouk, and flanking her now were Sheridia and Sellis and Amoni, their hands resting on Siemhouk’s shoulders and hips, feeding him their magical energies.
And Tallik screamed.
The scream hit the branches of the agafari trees like a terrible wind, tearing leaves from limbs, raining them onto those gathered below. It deafened Aric; he felt hot blood running down his jawline, and for an instant his eyes shut and he was gone, away from this plaza in the Naggaramakam and back in the chamber beneath Akrankhot, beneath all the steel there, imprisoned for a millennium, and inside the Shadow King’s palace, in darkened corridors choked with incense and tuneless chants, in the elf market, in Nibenay’s streets, alone and frightened, and he almost let go of the sword’s handle.
Then he was back in that place, in that moment. He strengthened his grip on the sword, its blade nothing but red light now, and shoved it in deeper, to the hilt. Tallik screamed again, his face contorting. Aric felt the wind, smelled his ghastly breath, but heard nothing. Tallik’s knees buckled. He dropped to his knees, trying to cast Aric away but unable to. He was smaller, Aric realized, he had stolen the templars’ strength and grown but now he was shrinking again. Aric twisted the blade in the demon’s breast.
Tallik’s tentacles relaxed, flopped limp at his sides, then his arms did the same, and he released Aric. Aric hung onto the sword, refusing to fall, to let go, unwilling to give Tallik the chance to pull it from his chest. But now the red light showed in Tallik’s eyes, glowing from his open mouth, from his nostrils and ears, and he shrunk more, teetered, and sank backward, rump meeting heels. He kept going, head swaying back, back paralleling the wet paving stones. Aric hung on.