“What can we do for him?” she said.
“All magic fades. I don’t expect this will last long. Its intent is only to stun the victim long enough for the Venori to feed.”
“Well, we can’t wait. What if more of those things come? We have to do something to get him on his feet again.”
“A mild shock, perhaps?”
“A what?”
“Flush him with a small amount of the Fount. That should revive him.”
“How much?” Solène said, not sure she liked the idea but unable to come up with any alternatives.
Pharadon shrugged. “I do not know how much will be needed for a human.”
“What happens if I use too much?”
“The same as always happens when too much of the Fount passes through a living thing.”
“Burnout,” Solène said under her breath. “Wonderful.”
She did her best to imagine how much would send a tingle across her skin, and focussed that thought on Gill. Indecision was as likely to get them killed as making the wrong decision. He jerked awake.
“Auroré?”
As he searched about him, the look of happiness on his face faded. “What happened?”
“The demon did that enrapturing thing to you,” Solène said.
What was left of the smile on Gill’s face disappeared completely. “That sounds about right,” he said. “Where is it?”
“I killed it,” Solène said, gesturing to the creature’s corpse by the rock wall.
“At least we know they can die,” Gill said.
“We should continue on as soon as you’re ready,” Pharadon said.
CHAPTER 34
Gill hauled himself to his feet, cast a glance at the Venori corpse lying at the side of the chamber, and shuddered. A moment before, he had thought it was his long-dead wife. Auroré’s smell was still in his nose, the sound of her voice in his ears; the sensation of her touch lingered on his skin. How could he have been so utterly fooled? How could he have allowed it? And how had the Venori known so much about him? Above all, the most frightening thing was how much he wanted to be back in that state.
The pain of her death was fresh in his heart, making it difficult to think of anything else. She had been so real. Every detail. At what point had reality blended into illusion? That was concerning—there was no clear transition. No point he could identify as the moment he had walked from the real world into one the demon had created. If he couldn’t tell when that was, how could he prevent it from happening again?
The only consolation was the visible evidence that they could be killed. He would have preferred to be the one who had done the killing, but a dead demon was better than a live one. Gill gave the body one final look before moving toward the passage leading deeper into the mountain.
“I’m ready,” he said. He didn’t believe what he said and wondered if his companions did. Surely they were as concerned as he was by what had happened. “Wait,” he said, second-guessing himself. “The enrapture thing. Is there anything you can do to stop it happening again?”
Solène blanched. He’d seen the same reaction from her before—it was the one she had every time she was asked to try a new piece of magic that might have a negative impact on someone. Gill wondered if she’d ever get over it, but knew she was still haunted by the first time she had killed. She’d done it to save him from the Prince Bishop’s men, but the justification didn’t seem enough for her. Some people never got over that kind of thing. Those with good souls. Gill wondered what that said about him.
She and Pharadon entered into a heated discussion, which continued for some time. At last they both started to nod and Solène turned to Gill.
“I think I have a way to allow you to see what’s born of magic, and what’s not,” Solène said. “Hopefully it will work.”
“Hopefully,” Gill said, doing his best to muster some enthusiasm.
Solène muttered some words and Gill waited to feel different, but when he realised she was done, and he didn’t, made his best effort to appear emboldened. She cast a globe of light in the passageway and Gill started down it, determined to claim the next kill.
He had not gone far before another creature peeked out of the darkness. For a moment it appeared stunned by Solène’s light, but it adapted quickly and continued to approach, albeit more cautiously. Gill took his guard and advanced slowly. The demon regarded him with hungry curiosity for a moment. Suddenly it became covered with a coruscating blue light. Magical energy. It was a beautiful thing to see, and Gill realised what it meant—the Venori was trying to use its tricks on him again. Whatever Solène had done to him, it had worked.
Gill began to lower his sword, aping an expression of stupefaction. The Venori moved forward, lips pulling back to reveal pointed, elongated canine teeth. It thought it had Gill in its spell. Gill burst into motion. If the creature was surprised, it didn’t have the time to show it. Gill had run it through the chest, pulled his blade clear, and taken its head from its shoulders in the blink of an eye. The body teetered on its feet, then collapsed to the ground.
There were two more Venori right behind it. Perhaps realising that their friend’s trick hadn’t worked, they split to opposite sides of the passageway, moving so quickly that they were in new positions before Gill could blink. His only advantage was that in such narrow confines, even their unnatural speed couldn’t take them far from his blade.
He slashed left and right, attacks intended to do nothing more than harry, but the Telastrian steel blade made contact on both sides, yielding glancing cuts. The howls of pain the creatures let out suggested far more serious injury. They recoiled from him, smoke billowing from the wounds.
They were focussed on their agony, and Gill had never been one to pass up a good opportunity. He skewered each one through the heart, then took their heads. As he watched the second one tumble down the passageway, he started to think they might make it out of the mountain alive. Perhaps even with what they’d come for.
“Are there many more of these things?” Gill said, as he stepped over the bodies.
“Some,” Pharadon said. “I’m not sure how many. All this rock makes it more difficult to tell. Particularly when my powers are weakened.”
Gill cast Solène a glance; she shrugged. One way or the other, there were four fewer than when they arrived. Would their intelligence overcome their hunger? Might the deaths of four of their kind persuade the rest to scurry deeper into the mountain and leave them in peace?
They continued moving farther into the mountain for what seemed like an age. Gill couldn’t work out how many times they had spiralled around, only that there was a gentle left-hand turn to the passageway as it dropped.
Down and down they went, into places that had probably never before been touched by light. Were it not for Gill’s presence, he reckoned they still wouldn’t be—Solène and Pharadon would be able to use their magical tricks to see in the dark.
“Eat it, you dumb beast,” Ysabeau said. She stood, arms akimbo, staring into the cage. The golden dragon stared back at her with mournful eyes, completely ignoring the cow carcass that Ysabeau’s men had lowered into the cage. There was nothing wrong with it—the cow had been slaughtered only that morning—but the dragon didn’t show even the slightest interest.
“That cow would feed a family for a week,” Ysabeau said. She felt foolish barking at the creature, but some instinct within her said that it might understand at least the sentiment of what she was saying, if the great chunk of raw meat wasn’t enough.