Kalen had thought he would have more time, but someone had betrayed him.
A tall, feminine form materialized out of the swirling dust.
“Eden,” he said, struggling to rise against the venom in his blood.
The priestess stepped toward him. She wore a huge smile. “Why Brother!” she said. “I thought for sure you’d have the sense to flee by now.”
A mountain-sized creature loomed out of the dust-the Master of the Throat. Eden turned and Kalen saw her coin flare with light. “Begone, in the Lady’s name!”
A storm of power lashed at the hulking zombie and its component corpses abruptly shattered into a dozen pieces, flinging congealed gore in every direction. Some of the muck spattered across Eden’s face and she laughed madly.
A hand touched Kalen on the shoulder-Sithe. Blood spattered the genasi, but Kalen thought none was her own. “Shadowbane,” she said.
“Sithe!” Eden said. “Burn in the Lady’s gaze!”
The priestess waved her hand and a lance of white light stabbed at Sithe, only to be deflected off her black axe. The genasi strode forward, setting her weapon whirling. As the women clashed, Kalen managed to get to his feet. He gazed around to take in the battle.
All was madness. Shou hacked at Dustclaw, Dustclaw at Dogtooth-hundreds of men and women lashed out at anything that did not wear the same colors. A Shou was cutting pieces off a Bloodboot, who howled but couldn’t manage to fight back. A Hide-Etcher drove a blade into a Blacknail’s ribs and stumbled to his next victim. The killer was in turn transfixed with a spear that nailed him to the ground.
Kalen had to stop the fighting. He had to get to the kings.
He cast about, searching. The Master of the Throat he’d seen destroyed. Sithe and Eden had vanished into the dust, fighting loudly with great bursts of power-and wild swirls of Eden’s laughter. Kasi of the Dragonbloods was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps that was for the best-the woman had every reason to want him dead, as a matter of honor.
The ground rumbled and Kalen nearly fell to his knees. The quake stirred up half a hundred shouts. Everywhere the folk of the battle paused in their enthusiastic bloodletting to look around wildly for the source of the disturbance.
A frozen hand closed around Kalen’s spine and fear settled in his bowels. He knew, in that moment, that he had been wrong in some pivotal way. Somehow, he had been mistaken and now they were all going to perish.
A great sound rose through the market-a chittering, chattering, deafening drone that made the gangs in the square cover their ears. The ground shifted and mounds began to rise, just as if some great hand were pushing upward through the burned and blistered soil. Cobblestones popped free of the dirt and skittered down the rising hills. They reminded Kalen of the sores he’d seen on victims of the Fury.
Gods. Kalen saw, too late, what was coming.
The top of one rising hill burst open, sending forth a surging flow of spiders and locusts, beetles and centipedes-all manner of horrors that crawled and devoured. Another of the hills burst, and another-each into a swarm of black, biting death.
“Flee!” Kalen cried, limping toward the nearest building. “Flee-!”
These eruptions contained no mere half-formed, stillborn pests, such as had been birthed from victims of the plague. Rather, the spiders were the size of dogs, the locusts like falcons, and the millipedes the length of a man’s arm. They looked like nothing born of this world-glowing with red and purple veins of fire, bristling with spines and fangs. The swarm was huge and it grew every greater by the heartbeat.
The vermin of Luskan came to play at the kingmaking, as though the city herself had decided to fight for her throne.
Folk screamed and ran, but the swarm fell on them, enveloping them in rivers of vermin that stung, bit, and feasted. Hornets and locusts scattered the warring gang members, stinging madly. A Dead Rat was subsumed and vanished into the dirt, his screams dying away to wet gurgles, then nothing. When the swarm passed on, only bones remained where the man had fought, seconds past.
Gang members died by the score, hacking vainly but ultimately overrun and reduced to mere bones within terrified heartbeats. Hundreds more fled, screaming.
Kalen, who had managed to climb onto a low windowsill, watched it all in horror and dawning realization: this was the plague. He had expected a single man or woman who controlled the swarms. But if the plague was a thousand ravening creatures, how could he hope to fight it?
A loud buzz sent Kalen dodging aside as a wasp the size of his head stabbed at him with a stinger the length of a belt dagger. He caught the creature by its wings and its slimy body thrashed, its abdomen working to thrust its stinger into him. Angry fire burned in its murderous, faceted eyes.
The wasp exploded away from his face, bloody chunks of carapace splattering the bricks. Her axe streaked with gore, Sithe stepped onto the windowsill at Kalen’s side.
“This is no mere swarm but a demon,” Sithe said. “What do we do?”
“Save as many as you can,” Kalen said, and he leaped down toward the swarm.
He fell among the ravening beasts, blades slashing madly this way and that. He kicked a beetle away and cut a spider that lunged at his face into two pieces. Creatures fell away with hisses, angry or dying, but more flowed to take their place. He stabbed and ripped, kicked and flailed, but he might as well have tried to hold back the ocean with his hands. It was like the swarm of rats on the floating derelict: thousands of beasts acting with one mind-one awful will.
He thought he heard a word in the endless cacophony of the creatures’ voices. That single word chilled him more than any battle cry: “Feed.”
“Be aware,” Sithe said at his back. She swept her axe around, ringing them in flame that consumed the rushing beasts. It bought them a moment of respite.
“Lady Luck protect us!” Eden shouted.
Through the blood and dust, Kalen shot a glance to where Eden stood, glowing with divine power. Of all those assembled, she was the only one not startled by the swarm’s appearance. Was that merely her faith?
Regardless, a shimmering golden aura surrounded her, swelling outward to encompass her followers. The swarm shied away, crawling all over itself to escape the gold radiance. The ragged folk in the square-both Coin-Spinners and those of the other gangs-flocked to the protection her magic offered.
“The goddess shows her favor!” Eden cried. She pointed to Kalen. “See the man who would be king and yet leads you only unto death!” She spread her arms. The coin in her eye socket gleamed. “Only through the Lady will you be saved!”
Those words-their offer of hope-and her magic brought scores, if not hundreds of panicked Luskar rushing toward her. Dogtooth or Dragonblood, Dustclaw or Bloodboot, and even a good number of Dead Rats flocked to the miracle of Tymora … or was it Beshaba?
“Can you get to her?” Kalen asked. “To Eden?”
Sithe nodded coolly, her axe gleaming with dark fire. “I shall be with her straightaway.”
“Bring her back unharmed,” Kalen said. “We need her.”
Sithe looked at him curiously. “She is your enemy,” she said. “She manipulated this to secure her own power. For all you know, she summoned the demon.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Kalen said. “Whatever she’s doing, it’s keeping the swarm at bay. We need her to save the others.” He gestured to the hundreds of Luskar trapped by the waves of the swarm, fighting frantically to keep the beasts from their flesh. Scores or even hundreds of skeletons lay bleached and sparkling on the ruined field.