Her fingers tightened around the hilt of her whip-rapier and she slid her feet apart on the rough stone floor. "No, Grenway," she said through gritted teeth. "This time, I win."
The coughing laugh sounded again, and a new mouth, the biggest one yet, opened on the lower side of the great beast. The thing had stopped a few paces from where Alashar stood, and though it spoke to her, Grenway's eyes were fixed lustfully on Shadow. "Grow up, girl," it growled. "You could never kill him."
Her whip-rapier flashed, and she shot forward and down. The Grenway face screamed in frustration and hatred, but not in pain when the tentacle holding Shadow split and fell away under the singing bite of the razor-sharp sword. The tentacle fell away from Shadow's face, and he sucked in a single huge, gurgling breath, his eyes bulging from their sockets, even as Alashar grabbed the collar of his blood-encrusted silk robe and pulled him harshly away.
"I'm not done," she hissed at both of them, "with either of you bastards."
Grenway pulled away from the link with the mutant and screamed his frustrated wrath at the tin-plated ceiling of his laboratory. He grabbed again at the sides of the palantir and watched through Alashar's eyes as she tore his mutant to ribbons. Shadow was still alive, and she now knew her true place in the game.
Yes, he thought, quite a specimen.
"Damn her," he growled.
Alashar's whole body was trembling as she stood knee-deep in twitching pieces of the huge green monster. She didn't remember exactly when it had stopped trying to fight back, but she was aware of that blurry point at which it seemed to resign itself to its fate and let her kill it. She was breathing hard and could barely move her feet.
Behind her, Shadow was panting and coughing, still trying to pull himself together after having been dragged by the head fifteen feet along the rough stone floor. When she turned to look at him, her foot slipped, and she ended up sitting in a pile of dead tentacles and rubbery things.
Their eyes met, and Shadow forced a smile.
"You weren't supposed to be able to do that," he said cryptically.
Anger flared through her, and without willing it, she lunged at him. She grabbed him by the neck. His eyes told her it hurt.
"Damn you," she huffed, "I should kill you after all, you son of a-"
She stopped herself, released his neck, and brought her whip-rapier over her head. Her eyes never wavered from his, but her arm was shaking now almost uncontrollably.
"You were both using me," she accused, "weren't you? Damn archwizards." The contempt in her voice actually seemed to affect him. "Great, petty lords of Netheril," she pressed. "Sitting in the muck and guts and filth of your own little…" She let her words trail off, not having any idea how to express this much outrage.
"Was it me?" he said. His voice was even, ironically so coming from a man half dead, sitting in a pool of stinking yellow-green gore. "You were going to kill me, Alashar. For money. Was it me? Or was it him?"
She let her arm drop, more out of exhaustion than any sudden desire not to slice his arrogant head off. "I woke up in your bed, and it could just as easily have been your prison world. Grenway's… whatever it was… was going to swallow you whole. You could have killed me. I could have let him kill you."
"So that makes us even?" he asked. "You can kill me now if you want to."
"That naga thing wasn't Grenway's, was it?"
He shook his head slowly in reply.
"Then Grenway's not the only one who wants you dead?"
He laughed this time, but with a hint of sadness.
"I might kill you later," she said, smiling, "if somebody actually pays me to. But right now, I think we both have a debt to collect."
The look on his face was the same one she'd seen in the demiplane of shadow. And yes, it was admiration.
Only after making absolutely certain the necessary safeguards were in place did Grenway speak the word that drew the big doors to his sitting room open.
Alashar came in slowly, each step deliberate and careful. Her big green eyes surveyed the dusty, cluttered room. The sack in her hand was soaked in blood the color of a human's. Grenway smirked at the thought that the weaver mage who sold it to him had promised it wouldn't do that. The archmage thought he might have to have someone pay the weaver a visit in the morning.
Alashar stopped a few paces from where Grenway was sitting. The archmage sprawled casually on pillows and cushions spread over a thick rug made from the dark brown fur of a cave bear.
"Well, Alashar, dear girl," he said, "what have you got for me today?" His voice was calm because he knew she couldn't kill him. The fact that she didn't have her strange sword didn't even matter. The room itself would protect him.
He forgave the sneer that preceded her flat answer.
"Something that finishes us, Grenway."
He watched every movement of her lithe body as she reached a slender arm into the blood-soaked bag. When she pulled out the head of the archwizard Shadow, Grenway fell into a fit of laughing, coughing, laughing, and coughing until the cushions were sprinkled with spittle and his nose had started to run. His clawlike hands played absentmindedly with the few tufts of white hair hanging in patches to his withered, spotted scalp.
"The gems," Alashar said sternly, and Grenway laughed again.
Even Alashar couldn't react fast enough to dodge the hand that burst out of the floor behind her, trailing an arm the color and texture of the sitting-room floor. It shot up behind her, up over her head, and came down to palm her scalp and continue pulling back. Her neck snapped, the sound echoing sickeningly in the big stone room. The force of it almost ripped her head off her shoulders. Her body fell backward. The hand followed the arm back into the floor and was gone before Alashar's body stopped its death spasms.
Grenway finally stopped coughing. The ancient arch-wizard stood weakly and spared a happy glance at the head on the floor, not bothering to acknowledge the corpse of his own assassin. He turned, whistling a little tune from his youth, and shuffled to the door to his private bedchamber and opened it.
"Good evening," Alashar said.
Grenway stopped and looked up as fast as his brittle neck would allow. They were there, alive, both of them.
The simulacrums…
He opened his mouth to begin an incantation, but no sound came out. Shadow smiled, and Alashar drew her rapier and stepped forward.
Shadows Of The Past
Brian M. Thomsen
The first thing I can remember is the face of an angel, the real-world variety, with an expression of satisfaction that usually follows a night's satiation.
I quickly returned her smile, sat up to kiss her… and immediately felt a thunderous headache that shattered my focus. I quickly blacked out, not conscious even long enough to sense my surroundings.
All I could remember was the face of the angel.
I awoke again much later-at least I thought it was much later, since the room seemed to have been brighter upon my first awakening.
Careful so as not to repeat the outcome of my first endeavor, I allowed my eyes to get accustomed to the ambient light. I slowly scanned as much of my surroundings as I could without moving my head and jarring my obviously bruised brains. I still felt a certain throbbing tenderness in my skull. Ever so slowly, I turned my head to the side.
The woman I first took for an angel was still in the room. She was turned away, her curvaceous figure backlit by an alcoved lantern. She cast a decidedly human shadow on the opposite wall. I could not make out her face. Saving my strength, I waited for her to turn around.