Rakon had enslaved his own sisters, made them whores to Hell.
And for what?
For power.
Nix had never before wanted a man dead as badly as he wanted Rakon dead. Nix had lived in Rusilla's skin, even if only for a moment, and what he'd felt was beyond words.
He thought back on his dreams, wincing over the lustful grunting he'd heard behind the doors of the hallway in the Norristru manse. Through the dreams, Rusilla had made him feel an inkling, a mere inkling, of what she and Merelda had felt, the terror and helpless rage that generations of Norristru women had felt while being made to suffer at the hands of Norristru men and the foul devils of Hell.
He wept anew.
How could a man do that to his sisters? To any woman?
Be that kind of man.
The words echoed in his mind, in their way more compelling than Rakon's spellworm had ever been.
The many lewd glances and lascivious comments that Nix had made to women through the years stared at him accusingly across the gulf of his memory. Tesha. Kiir. He'd always told himself that he was a wit, a flirt, but he could not escape the feeling that his words echoed, however distantly, the kind of thinking that allowed Rakon to justify his sisters' sexual enslavement. He suddenly felt like he weighed four hundred stone. Shame weighed him down.
"Nix?" Egil called.
He sat up and looked around, bleary-eyed, and saw the priest standing over the ruined body of the eunuch. Egil, too, had tears in his eyes. He covered Ebenor's eye with his hand as if doing so would blind him to what he had seen. The priest's voice broke when he spoke.
"What have we done, Nix? Gods, what have we done?"
Nix bowed his head. He had no words.
Be that kind of man.
The priest turned and looked up at the twilight sky, in the direction the sylph had carried Rakon and his sisters. They were no longer visible. The sylph flew as fast as the wind. There was no way they could catch them. Rusilla and Merelda's hopes had died on the Afirion sands. Egil and Nix had failed them.
"I'm upside down here," Egil said, in a voice smaller than Nix had ever heard the priest use. "I didn't see it. I was so, so wrong."
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Jyme, prone in the sand to Nix's left, groaned and rolled over to face the sky.
"Gods, what happened? Why do I…? How do I know what I know? Is it real?"
Nix did not bother to explain. He looked over to the eunuch, at the bloody crater in the skull from which the truth had erupted.
"Gods," he said, balling his hands into fists. "Gods."
He stood, pacing the sand on his wounded leg, agitated, periodically returning to the eunuch's corpse and unleashing a frustrated kick into his bulk.
"You're bleeding," Jyme said, pointing at Nix's side.
Nix's shirt was stained where the eunuch's blade had penetrated his leather jack. He waved off the wound with a grunt.
"We have to follow them," he said to Egil. "We have to."
Egil's expression fell. "How? They're gone."
"Follow who?" Jyme asked. "Rakon? Are you both mad?"
Nix whirled on Jyme, the hiresword a convenient target for his displaced ire. "Did you see what we saw when Egil split this… thing's head? Did you?"
Jyme colored, looked away. Nix did not relent.
"So you know what awaits them? You'd just let them go? What kind of man are you, Jyme?"
Jyme looked up, shame coloring his cheeks, but his chin stuck out defiantly. "The kind that wants to stay alive. I see things different now, sure. I wish I'd never pawed at that lass back at the Tunnel and that's sure. But bad things happen everywhere, all the time. I'm worried about my own skin, you know?"
Nix didn't know.
Be that kind of man.
"They're too far gone anyway," Jyme continued. "You saw how fast that… thing flew. You'd never catch them, not unless you could fly. You got something in that bag of yours?"
Jyme meant his words as a joke, but the words triggered an idea for Nix, a hope, a desperate ploy. He turned to the shoreline. He could not see the surf but he could see the wheeling sea birds. He reached into his bag, touched a wand he'd pocketed in the tomb of Abn Thuset.
"What are you thinking?" Egil asked, reading Nix's expression.
"I'm thinking we can fly."
"What are you talking about?" Jyme said.
"I'm talking about flying," Nix repeated, warming to his idea. He held up the teak and gold wand. "With this. All I need is a living bird. The magic in the wand…"
Egil cut him off, eyeing the wand with distrust. "I thought Abn Thuset used it to change her sex?"
Jyme looked on, hopelessly confused. "What about sex, now?"
Nix ignored him and spoke to Egil. "Yes, but that's a particular use of the wand's general power. It's transmutational magic, Egil."
"Which you learned in your year at the Conclave, before…" Egil held up his hand to forestall Nix's inevitable correction. "… you ceased attending."
"Yes. It'll work, Egil."
The priest looked skeptical, but Nix saw hope in his eyes. He ran his palm over Ebenor's eye. "You're certain?"
Nix pulled the end of his nose. "Fairly certain."
Egil stared at him while the tattooed eye of Ebenor stared hopelessly at the sky. "Fairly certain? That's it?"
Nix looked over at the eunuch, back at Egil. "That's it."
Jyme shook his head and paced a tight circle. "After all we've been through, now you're talking about changing into birds? You are mad. Don't you remember the last wand you used?"
"I remember," Egil said darkly.
"That was a mistake," Nix said. "I missed something. This won't be."
"I can tell you I'm not doing this," Jyme said. "If you two do this, you do it alone. Think me a coward if you want."
Nix never took his eyes from Egil's blood-spattered face. He forced a grin.
"Come on, Egil. Fun's in finding out, right? This is a moment, right?"
Egil sighed, shook his head, obviously torn. He stared at the wand as if daring it to do something other than what Nix claimed.
"Look," Nix said. "We both know what's going to happen to Rusilla and Merelda. Isn't it you who talks about alms and grace?"
"That's not why I hesitate," Egil said.
"Then what is it?"
Egil shook his head. "Never mind. We do it."
Jyme stomped his foot in the sand. "That's just a stick you found in a tomb! Gods, you're fools! What if it… does something awful?"
"When it comes to Nix and his gewgaws, I find it best to anticipate something awful," Egil said. "Then, if it doesn't, I'm pleasantly surprised."
Nix gave him a half-hearted obscene gesture.
"Come on," Jyme said. He looked at the eunuch, at Baras's body, back at Egil and Nix. "Get your heads on right. We find the nearest city, spend whatever gold you took out of that tomb on drinks and women, and forget any of this happened."
"There's no forgetting," Egil said somberly.
"Truth," Nix agreed. The story of House Norristru had been graven into his brain, etched there by horror.
"No, I guess there's not," Jyme said. "Even so, I don't understand you two."
"You're not the first to say that," Nix said. He waved the wand at Jyme. "Last chance, slubber."
For a moment, Nix thought Jyme might reconsider. He stared at the wand a long moment, then said, "I can't."
"Well enough," Nix said. "No shame in it, Jyme. We are who we are."
"How will you get back to Dur Follin alone?" Egil asked him.
Jyme shook his head. He looked around as if he were lost and seeking direction.
"I'm not sure I'll go back. But if I decide to, I'll manage. Find a ship or something. But I ain't riding the magic of some ancient wizard-king."
"Ah, you're no fun," Nix said.