She was standing almost against the far wall. The secret door hung open behind her, apparently not a secret anymore. In her hand was a rapier with a blade so long and thin it drooped when she held it still and whistled through the air like a whip at her slightest twitch.
"Are you Shadow?" she asked him again.
Coughing from the searing blast of fire, the spraying blood, and the stench of the boiling venom, he nodded.
The woman started toward him, her strides simultaneously guarded and confident.
"I suppose," he started to say, "I should thank you for-"
The sound of the whip-rapier shrieking through the air stopped him, and he was actually alive just long enough to feel his head hit the floor after mouthing the word "Damn" on the way down.
Moments before and hundreds of miles away, the archwizard Grenway stood before a giant glass tank filled with a thick green semi-liquid that was moving with a life of its own.
"Very nicely," the old man muttered to himself, turning in the cluttered laboratory and shuffling slowly to the great palantir that had been a gift from his third wife, just before he'd had her killed. "Coming along nicely."
He had only to think the name of the would-be assassin he'd sent after Shadow, and he could see everything she saw. The information he'd given her, about the tunnel that led under the wall, below Karsus's private gardens, then into the complex of rooms and laboratories inhabited by his foe, was so far proving to be quite correct.
She was running with almost supernatural speed down the dim, low-ceilinged passageway, and Grenway had to admire her physicality. This was something he had been able to admire only from afar, or for a price, since his own body tended to be little more than a frail, withering container for his vast intellect and even greater greed. Yes, he thought, quite a specimen this one. A shame, really.
He looked back over to the huge glass tank, as big as a commoner's house. Something heavy thudded against the inside of the tank. Grenway could see something solid and rough drag itself along the inside of the glass before disappearing back into the thick green medium.
"Soon," he muttered to the tank's inhabitant. Grenway smiled and laughed for little more than a second before falling into a fit of ragged, sputtering coughs. Spittle hanging from his gray, stubbly chin, he smiled yet wider.
Alashar Crywinds, with the tip of her bare left toe, rolled Shadow's head so she could see his face. He was handsome enough to make her frown. Destroying things never really made her happy. Destroying beautiful things almost made her want to stop destroying things altogether. Almost.
She pulled the sack through her belt, and shook it open. Her employer told her it was waterproof; the bloody head wouldn't soak through. He promised her she could even walk the streets of Karsus enclave without attracting attention. Of course, she didn't intend to stay in Karsus that long. She wanted to get back to loulaum, deliver her package, and be done with it all before her damnable conscience started whispering in her ear again. Profitable as it may be, she hated working for archwizards. She hated how insignificant they made her feel.
She sheathed her rapier and crouched, slipping her feet back to avoid the blood on the floor, which would have seemed impossible-would have been impossible-for most people.
"Excuse me," a voice behind her said. She stopped dead, not bothering to whirl at the intruder with her whip-rapier, not bothering to run. She recognized the voice. She was good with voices.
"Shadow," she said, turning her head slowly to see him standing in the high, arched doorway.
Someone was standing behind him, in the shadows of the dimly lit corridor. There was something familiar about the outline, but it was eclipsed in her mind by the presence of the man she'd just decapitated, whole and hearty, dressed in his signature black silks. She resisted the temptation to glance back at the head on the floor to be sure it was still there. It was.
"Damn," the archwizard breathed, "those things are a pain to replace-"
She let her hand slip to the hilt of her whip-rapier, and then heard him mumble something. When her hand stopped just a fraction of a fraction of an inch from the hilt, she knew she was paralyzed. She wanted to curse, maybe say good-bye to the world, but couldn't. She couldn't do anything.
"What a rness," Shadow said, stepping carefully into the room. The figure behind him followed, and if Alashar had been able to do anything but breathe shal-lowly, she might have screamed.
It was her. She was looking at herself, long auburn hair, crystal green eyes, dark green leathers, bare feet, whip-rapier, and all.
The room he brought her to was pure Karsus enclave. This insane city was full of buildings with floors on the walls and bridges where people walked on the top and bottom at the same time. Anyone not actually from there was always dizzy. "Down" seemed to be whatever the bottoms of your feet were touching.
This room must have been hewn from the solid rock of the inverted floating mountain. Four ornately carved pillars looked like spokes holding the whole thing together, but they didn't meet in the center. Each was about forty feet high, leaving a good twenty feet between the top of one and the top of the next.
Floating in the center of the huge chamber was a yellow-green crystal fully eight feet in diameter. It gave off a gentle, somehow disturbing glow.
Alashar's double had carried her here from Shadow's bedchamber. The true Alashar was still frozen in the crouched position, still almost touching the hilt of her whip-rapier, still unable to do or say anything. She rode along in a state of stunned awe at the perfection of the double, the attention to detail in what had to be an illusion.
On some level, she was embarrassed. Shadow must know her, and know her well, though she was sure he had never seen her before.
"You," Shadow told her conversationally after having her rigid form placed gently on the floor near the room's only piece of furniture, a well-organized desk, "are going to help me today. Help me with a bit of an experiment."
He stood behind the desk, shifting absentmindedly through a stack of parchment and paper sheets while he spoke. His voice was lively, as if he was really excited about whatever he was going to do to kill her. Of course he would kill her. She had already killed him, after all, for money. Revenge was actually a more laudable motive for murder than money.
"Usually when I catch an assassin alive, I send him into the demiplane of imprisonment."
She touched her whip-rapier. She felt the warm leather-wrapped hilt against the insides of her fingers. She tried to stand or stretch, but couldn't yet.
"But it never occurred to me," he continued, "to arrange some method for their retrieval. It was always a sort of… life sentence."
She could get her jaw to open just a little wider now. She made each small move as slowly as she could, so as not to attract his attention.
"I knew you were coming, of course," he said, turning away from her now to walk gingerly over to one of the huge pillars. "I have at least as many spies in Grenway's employ as he has in mine. Still, I must admit you are quite good. That simulacrum has… had successfully fended off seventeen major assassination attempts. Bravo."
She could finally bend her elbow a good three degrees, and now that he had his back to her, she started to strain, her sluggish muscles bunching, pushing hard against nothing, but a nothing that was still effectively paralyzing her. He had to know the spell was wearing off, or would be wearing off soon. Certainly, she hadn't much time.
Otherwise engrossed in tracing the pattern of one of the pillar's cryptic carvings, Shadow continued, "Anyway, I made up a simulacrum of you. Or, well, had one made at any rate. This way I can leave you imprisoned for a few years and use the simulacrum's link with you to pull you back out. Well, if the last few components are finished by then."