Lirra feared the worst for her father. Tentacle whip venom was raging through his system, and he’d just received a severe blow to the head. Either condition alone might prove fatal, but together …
Evidently Ksana was thinking along the same lines, for the cleric dropped her halberd and ran to Vaddon’s side. The halfelf laid a hand upon the general’s swollen cheek, closed her eyes, and began softly murmuring prayers to her goddess. Confident her father was in good hands, Lirra looked away and turned her attention toward Elidyr and Sinnoch. She was just in time to witness the closing of the spatial portal above the Overmantle. When the rift between realms was sealed, the malignant presence that had filled the chamber vanished, and the atmosphere immediately felt less oppressive, almost like the aftermath of a terrible thunderstorm.
Lirra was thrilled. Her uncle had succeeded in closing the portal and preventing whatever had been on the other side from coming through. It was over.
She sensed an amused thought from the tentacle whip: Not quite. Watch.
Elidyr began laughing, but it wasn’t the relieved laughter of a man who’d just survived a close call with death-or worse. This was the cackling mad laughter of an unhinged mind. As she watched, Elidyr raised his arms above his head and spoke two simple words.
“To me!”
A trio of distorted shapes moved swiftly forth from the shadows, and Lirra recognized the other symbionts that had been used in the failed experiment. All three of them-the crawling gauntlet, the tongueworm, and the stormstalk-rushed toward the artificer with frightening speed and launched themselves at him. If Elidyr felt any pain as the symbionts grafted themselves to his flesh, he didn’t show it. He merely stood, arms raised, a beatific look in his eyes as if he were a religious supplicant receiving his god’s blessing. Within seconds the aberrations had fused with Elidyr’s body, and the artificer lowered his hands and looked at Sinnoch.
“What do you think?” Elidyr asked.
Sinnoch grinned. “It suits you, my friend.”
Elidyr’s answering smile was lopsided and his eyes blazed fiercly. “My thoughts precisely.”
It shouldn’t have been possible for her uncle to have three symbionts attached to his body. There shouldn’t have been enough blood in him to sustain more than one aberration, and the strain on his system of hosting three should’ve killed him. But he looked perfectly healthy. Almost too much so, as if bonding with the symbionts had increased the strength of his life-force. Perhaps it had something to do with the power generated by the Overmantle-or with the chaos energy that had filtered through the portal to Xoriat. Whichever the case, not only did Elidyr appear to be suffering no ill effects from fusing with the symbionts, he appeared stronger than ever. And from the wild, mad expression on his face, he had become completely insane.
If bonding with the symbionts had driven him to lunacy, then he was a greater threat than all of the aberrations combined. For he still stood before the Overmantle, and though it was now shut down, he might well choose to reactivate it again-and reopen the portal to Xoriat. And this time, whatever was on the other side might well make it all the way through.
Lirra glanced at Ksana and saw the cleric was still tending to her injured father. With the other soldiers dead, that left only Rhedyn to help Lirra deal with her uncle. She’d lost track of Rhedyn in all the confusion, but she found him standing next to the body of the woman he’d slain. He stood watching Elidyr, sword held at his side, the dark aspect of his shadow sibling full upon him, so that he appeared to be standing in deep shadow. Lirra had a difficult time making out his facial features, but his expression seemed to be one of wonder and … she wasn’t certain, but she thought it might be satisfaction. What was wrong with him? He shouldn’t just be standing there! He was a soldier; he should be fighting!
A thought whispered through her mind. He’s one of us …
I’m not US! Lirra thought, but in response the tentacle whip only coiled more tightly around her forearm.
“Rhedyn!” she shouted. “Help me!”
He didn’t react at first, and Lirra feared that something had happened to his mind during the time the Xoriat portal had been open. But then he turned to her and slowly smiled behind the shadow that cloaked him. The sight of that smile hit Lirra like a blow to the gut. Rhedyn-her Rhedyn-had gone mad just like Elidyr. Following on the heels of that thought was a worse one: What if he’d been mad for some time now, perhaps from the moment he’d fused with his shadow sibling? She remembered the words he’d spoken during his visit to her room last night.
I cannot-will not-give up my shadow sibling. As an impure prince, I can serve Karrnath in ways others could never hope to. And as long as I remain bound to a symbiont, I will repulse you physically. But if you were to accept a symbiont …
Of course Rhedyn was smiling, for he’d gotten his wish. She was bound to a symbiont. At least for the moment. But as long as that was the case, she might as well make some use of the damned thing.
She turned away from Rhedyn and started toward Elidyr.
CHAPTER EIGHT
It looks like I’m not the only one who’s made a new friend today,” Elidyr said, eyeing the tentacle whip coiled about her arm. He nodded approvingly. “It suits you, Lirra.”
She felt an intense surge of rage at her uncle’s words. He’d become a loathsome monstrosity, as much an aberration as the dolgaunt standing next to him, an unclean, unnatural thing that needed to be removed from the world, and she wanted nothing more than to strike him down. Her fingers tightened on her sword, and she felt the coils of the tentacle whip go slack around her forearm as it prepared to attack.
It was the whip’s reaction that helped her understand why she felt such rage. The whip was using the repugnance she felt upon seeing her uncle’s transformation to goad her into attacking him. She hadn’t realized the creature could be that subtle. There was no way she was going to allow the tentacle whip to control her, and so she stopped three feet from her uncle and lowered her sword to her side.
She gritted her teeth against the rage still roiling inside her and forced herself to speak calmly. “I don’t know what went wrong with the experiment, Uncle, but you have to let us help you. You can’t survive long with three symbionts attached to your body.”
Elidyr grinned at Lirra as if what she’d said was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. But it wasn’t her uncle who responded to her words: It was Sinnoch.
“If your uncle was an ordinary human, you’d be correct,” the dolgaunt said. “But he’s become something more, something better. He’s far more than a mere human now.” The dolgaunt paused, and though it didn’t have eyebrows exactly, Lirra had the impression the creature frowned. “Though to be honest, I’m not certain precisely what he is, but I imagine we’ll have a great deal of fun trying to find out. Don’t you?”
You should kill him too, whispered a voice in her mind, and she’d have been hard-pressed to say whether the thought originated with her or the symbiont. Again she felt the rage, so strong this time that it nearly overwhelmed her, but she fought it down and managed to stay in control, if only just.
“Be silent, dolgaunt,” she said. “I’m not talking to you; I’m talking to my uncle.”
Sinnoch’s inhuman mouth twisted into an amused smile, but from the way the tendrils on top of his head writhed, Lirra knew the dolgaunt was irritated with her. She’d never been able to read the aberration’s body language before, and she realized that becoming bonded with the tentacle whip had somehow granted her a deeper understanding of the denizens of Xoriat. But sympathy did not accompany that understanding. She still wanted to ram her sword blade into the dolgaunt’s cadaverous chest and thrust the needle-sharp tip through his heart-assuming the foul thing even had a heart. But she resisted. Just because she was bound to a symbiont didn’t make her a creature like Sinnoch. Not even close. As satisfying as it would be to destroy the dolgaunt-and the way she felt right now, it would be most satisfying indeed-Lirra was a highly trained soldier, and she only killed when there was no other course of action available to her.