But even as the thunder rolled and the lightning crackled, striking dose enough to light up the plaza, Myrmeen knew she was on her own. Bhaelros was ignoring the affront.
Myrmeen raised her sword as Bellophat swatted at her with the harp it had formed from its pink, sweaty mass. The fighter was swept from her feet, her head striking the marble altar when she fell. As she tried to ward off the lancing pain she felt behind her eyes, Myrmeen heard Bellophat’s music resume its original patterns, the lovely composition a stark contrast to the disgusting mass that was performing the piece. Then she heard flesh tearing, bones cracking, and looked down to see Bellophat altering his body once again, this time creating hands that clamped down on her legs and arms and hauled her into the air as the creature’s jaws snapped in accompaniment to the music it was creating.
Swinging blindly with her sword arm, Myrmeen was stunned to hear a scream that appeared to have been torn from a howling whirlwind. Her body was unceremoniously dumped at the foot of the altar. The music had stopped.
Myrmeen saw that she had severed the fleshy strands that made up the harp’s strings.
Even as Bellophat roared in pain, its pink, rolling skin turning red with anger, she registered that the strands were reaching back and soon would meld together once more. Trying to stand, Myrmeen felt a coldness on her ankle and tried to pull away. She was too late. One of Bellophat’s hands still gripped her. It yanked her forward, tipping her from her feet once again. A jolt of pain raced up through her back as she struck the edge of the altar’s first step. She pulled herself to a sitting position and hacked the limb from the creature.
For the first time she truly paid attention to the number of instruments Bellophat had created from its elastic body. There were more than a dozen in all. The music suddenly resumed and Myrmeen darted out of the way as a thin, rapierlike bow shot out toward her face. She felt the breeze as it passed her. With a hollow scream, Myrmeen leapt at Bellophat, her boot catching in the triangle it held. She used it as she would the first step in a ladder. She kicked herself higher, her blade whipping around to thrust directly toward Bellophat’s right eye.
Myrmeen drove the sword through the creature’s head. Her body slammed against the monster with a soft, sickening noise, then she lost her grip on the borrowed weapon and fell back into Bellophat’s huge lap, stopping inches from his wildly snapping jaws, which slowed, then stopped. The music died with its creator.
Then there was no more time to think. Bellophat’s body began to dissolve, changing into a dripping mass. Myrmeen felt as if she were being sucked into a mountain of gelatinous flesh, about to be drowned in an ocean of muck and gore. Her flesh sizzled as the heat of the monster’s body rose substantially and turned acidic.
“Take my hand!” a familiar voice called.
The fighter looked up and saw Krystin standing on the remains of Bhaelros’s idol, which had been hidden behind and beneath Bellophat’s immense form. Myrmeen snatched Krystin’s hand and allowed the child to yank her out of the boiling mass that had been the creature’s body. In seconds they crouched on the storm god’s chest and clutched at each other as the rain washed the blood and gore from them.
Around them, the storm raged on, indifferent to their suffering.
Twenty-Two
Some time earlier, Tamara had dutifully taken her place beside her husband in the procession. Her scheme to take vengeance on Lord Sixx called for both conspirators to remain in full view of the monstrous throng who would be their followers once Sixx was dead, thus erasing any possible accusations of guilt.
As they walked through the streets, Tamara stared at the emerald locket she had retrieved from the pit of Shandower’s cavernous lair, finally understanding the fascination the object held for the girclass="underline" The locket was not a magical item. The mage, Cardoc, had proved this. It was, however, magic sensitive. With no real power of its own, it could assimilate the power of its owner and fulfill whatever need the mage holding it required. The locket responded to desire, an alien emotion to the mage while he was in the course of performing his duties, thus, despite his great power, for him it had remained a useless lump of metal with a shining emerald surface. Krystin had needed to know her past, and the locket had revealed it to her. Tamara wanted to know only her future, and the images that she saw within its emerald depths confused and disturbed her. With time and effort she knew she could force the locket to show her the future in such detail that the meaning of the glimpses would come clear, but it did not appear that she would have such time, not tonight, in any case.
“Stop looking at that thing,” Zeal whispered.
Tamara tore her gaze from the locket and smiled as she waved to the entranced humans on either side of the street. She felt slightly embarrassed that she, the originator of the plan to depose Lord Sixx, had to be reminded to follow their script. Sixx walked directly before them, holding the box containing the apparatus high over his head. Bellophat’s music eased through the streets, carried to all parts of the city by his will.
As the procession wore on, the music changed, becoming heated and out of control. Then it ceased altogether. Tamara forced back a smile of triumph. Myrmeen had succeeded in her task. Bellophat was dead.
Lord Sixx slowed, looking around in anger and surprise. He drew the box to his breast and stopped in the middle of the street. The procession, moving in perfect time with him, also stopped.
“Tamara,” Lord Sixx said with a nervous edge in his voice, “Find Bellophat. Make him begin again.”
She hesitated. This had not been according to plan. Tamara had been certain that Sixx would send her husband away to check on Bellophat. As they both were aware of what had happened to the monstrosity, Zeal instead would have secretly followed Lord Sixx and remained hidden until Sixx opened the box containing the apparatus. Then he would have performed the task they had discussed; Tamara had wanted to be near Lord Sixx, to see the look of surprise on his face, to laugh as he died. Instead, she would have to watch from a distance and Zeal would have to look his victim in the eye—an ironic turn of phrase considering their leader’s many-eyed condition—when he dispatched the man.
Lord Sixx shouted orders, reminding all of his followers that the matter of paramount importance was the children. They were to search the city and bring him the living bodies of any babies that had been born tonight. He took Zeal and a handful of others as private guards and prepared to go on to the predetermined end of the parade, the shrine to Sharess on the docks overlooking the Shining Sea.
Sixx looked at Tamara and growled, “What are you waiting for? Go now!”
Tamara broke from the procession, wading into the stream of slowly waking humans. She smiled broadly as she heard the first shrieks of terror from the men and women who had been the Night Parade’s adoring audience.
The people of Calimport were waking up.
Across the city, in the basement of a school that had been ravaged by two members of the Night Parade, the survivors of the attack were huddled in the semidarkness as one of the tutors, a dark-skinned woman from the south, wailed in agony as she gave birth. The music drifted even here, keeping the handful of men and women and the dozens of children, all in their midteens, happily at bay. The people waited for their new masters to debase them sexually, or simply kill them outright, feasting on their flesh while their still living bodies twitched. They would die as hapless idiots, entranced by the sounds.
“This is good,” the first creature said. He stood slightly over seven feet and all of his appendages were greatly exaggerated in length. His flesh was orange and as hard and dry as an elephant’s hide. His long, thin fingers, each a foot long, were caked in human blood. “I know it isn’t safe to wake so many of them, but I prefer to taste their fear and hear their screams, don’t you?”