I'll kill it piece by piece, he told himself, if I have to.
He scanned the floor for his greatsword while keeping one eye on the behemoth. The monster stepped back and brought its only remaining hand up to its shoulder. It looked to Regdar as if the beast meant to draw a greatsword of its own, and the prospect of facing the thing armed made Regdar redouble his efforts at finding the sword.
Regdar knew that the magic that had briefly staggered the thing must have come from Naull. He could see her shadowy outline deep in the fog. She was well enough away from the thing that – there it was!
Leaving any thought of decorum far behind, Regdar scurried, crawled, rolled, and squirmed his way to his fallen blade. His fingers wrapped around the pommel, and he looked up at his opponent. It was indeed drawing a weapon of some sort from its back but in the dense fog it was impossible for Regdar to see in detail exactly what it was. It looked like a staff made of steel-no, not steel, platinum. The behemoth leveled the rod at Regdar as if it was taking aim with a crossbow.
Regdar scrambled to his feet and kept his heavy blade in front of him, momentarily unsure what to do. He heard Naull begin the nonsensical chant of a spell.
The two things that happened next were indistinguishable in Regdar's mind, so perfectly were they timed.
A blinding flash of light illuminated the fog around them so that Regdar felt as if he was bathing in its luminescence-and Naull was in front of him. She hadn't stepped in front of him or jumped in front of him. She was just there, between Regdar and the burst of light. Naull's body flashed in perfect silhouette before him. He heard a sort of thump, like something heavy but soft hitting the floor after a long fall, but it wasn't Naull falling.
The young mage froze as if a great, invisible hand reached up from the ground, stopped her in mid step, and crushed her in its grip. Regdar heard her bones snapping, her breath being forced from her lungs. Her flesh quivered and stretched over ribs that snapped under the force of her own constricting muscles like dry twigs in a giant's hand.
Regdar wanted to scream, or cry, or do anything, but he couldn't. All he could do was wait the few short seconds it took his reeling mind to realize that the woman he loved was dead. Again.
25
Vargussel's body was locked in a spasm of conflicting emotions as he watched the lord constable go berserk.
Blood pounded in the wizard's head, and the scrying spell darkened, faded with every fevered heartbeat. Regdar's huge sword became a blur in the fog, moving so fast and so hard that whirls of vapor spun around its tip. The shield guardian hit at the blade, blocked the slashes, hacks, and jabs as best it could, but managed to turn away less than a third of the lord constable's furious attacks.
The scrying spell darkened again but didn't brighten. Regdar thrust his greatsword through the shield guardian's chest, burying the blade in steel up to the hand guard. The construct's arms quivered at its side. Its chin turned up, and its head slowly lolled to one side.
The scrying spell lasted just long enough for Regdar's bellowing battle cry to echo in Vargussel's head, just long enough for the wizard to see his shield guardian fall, the death ray still clutched in its dead hand.
The spell was gone, and Vargussel's sight blurred, spun, then came to rest in the very real surrounds of his private study.
The wizard clenched his teeth and slammed a fist onto his desk. The lord constable had not only survived but had destroyed the shield guardian. The death ray was in an enemy's hands, and all of it would lead back to Vargussel soon enough. He had very few options left, but all of them spilled into his head at once.
Already muttering the words to a spell that would grant him the gift of flight, Vargussel grabbed his staff and pouches and ran from his study to the nearest exit, a high balcony he rarely visited, where he took to the sky.
Ahead of Vargussel was the stinking sprawl of the Trade Quarter and the only man in New Koratia who could destroy him.
Regdar dragged Naull's body out of the fog and smoke and sat with her. With tears streaming down his face, his body racked with pain and sick, desperate grief, all he could do was sit for as long as it took him to start breathing again. He didn't bother speaking. She couldn't hear him, even if he could put what he felt into words.
She couldn't hear him but there were people who could.
Regdar reminded himself of his position, of where he was, and of the resources at his command. Naull died in the service of the duke. She was the future wife of the lord constable. That had to confer some privileges.
Regdar dragged himself to his feet, sheathed his greatsword, and hefted the limp body. He hated the idea of slinging her over his shoulder like a sack but it was the easiest, fastest way to get her away from the slaughterhouse-and he had to get her out of there. The lord constable had no idea how Naull had so suddenly come between him and the behemoth. He had to assume that she used her magic to appear between them in some silly effort to shield him. He had never seen her do that before but her spells always struck Regdar as a confusing bag of tricks, sometimes unreliable, frequently running dry at the worst times. Ultimately, one of those spells allowed her to make a rash decision that cost her her life.
Regdar scanned the huge room and saw that the fog was fading away. An old, stone ramp rose from the center of the room, ending in a fall of timbers, brick, and plaster at the ceiling. The bottom of the ramp emptied into the wooden chutes. The place was a slaughterhouse, and the cattle must have been driven down the ramp from the street above, through the chutes, to be killed at the end of each passage. Their carcasses then were hefted up on meat hooks and rolled along tracks to the butchers. Underground, the disturbing sounds and smells of the killing floor would be hidden from the city around it, and the whole affair would take up less valuable space.
He turned toward the ramp, seeking the most direct path back to the street, but stopped long enough to spare a glance at the thing that had murdered so many of the city's best people.
It was a made thing, not a living being, put together mostly with steel. It was dead, whatever that meant in its case, but there was no blood. Its only adornment was a steel carving on its chest, inlaid with two rubies. The rubies formed the eyes of what might have been a dog, a bear, a horse, or some other animal's face. Regdar's eyes stopped on the carving. He'd seen it before. That stylized, simple, but distinctive shape with its two rubies was familiar, but from where?
Regdar stepped closer to the dead construct and his eyes settled on the platinum rod still gripped in its remaining hand. That bar was pointed at him when the flash went off-the flash that killed Naull.
"It's not the behemoth," Regdar muttered, thinking aloud.
Groaning with pain, and careful not to drop Naull's body, Regdar squatted and slid the platinum rod out of the dead thing's hand. It wasn't easy but he managed to secure the rod in the straps of his pack, against his scabbard.
The behemoth wasn't the murder weapon, he concluded silently. The behemoth wielded the murder weapon.
Regdar turned to the ramp again with Naull hanging from his shoulders, and he started climbing. Already her body was growing cold.