"Hold out your hand. This won't hurt you," Lucius said.
Myrmeen did as the sorcerer asked. She heard him whisper in the darkness, then jumped as a flaming sphere appeared in her hand. Her head struck the hard ceiling. Lucius had kept a tight grip on her arm, and she quickly calmed herself, realizing that the flames were not harming her. "Whatever you do, keep away from the box."
Myrmeen nodded. The mystical blast from the destruction of the spell trap had left the mage shaken, his flesh burned, lacerations visible beneath his shredded white smock. Myrmeen could see the wounds that had killed him, and turned away in disgust from the sight. She once had desired this man, had suffered through her life.
She had been betrayed.
During her career as a politician, betrayal was an accepted factor in her day-to-day existence. She had come to expect it and knew precisely how to deal with a certain lack of integrity on the part of her associates. That had been tolerable only because she had been trained to rely on no one but herself; as long as she decided well in advance that no one could be trusted in a given situation, she was never hurt by their unscrupulous actions. Give someone an opening and invariably they will hurt you.
From the moment she had summoned the Harpers, Myrmeen had been forced to surrender her trust, and had paid dearly for the mistake. Lucius, with whom she had been emotionally and sexually intrigued, had revealed a loyalty to his family and a fear of eternal torment that had caused him to hand their lives over to the creatures from whom he had sworn to protect them. Eyen Varina's sacrifice was difficult for Myrmeen to accept. To spare her husband a worse death, she had taken Burke's life, then given her own to help her friends escape. Myrmeen knew that on the surface her sacrifice was noble and heroic-but a part of her could not help regarding Varina's actions as cowardly and selfish. Varina did not want to face life without her husband at her side and so she chose to have no life at all. Myrmeen was ashamed of her feelings. However, she could not deny that she was angry.
Everyone goes away, a taunting voice whispered in her mind. You can trust no one.
Not everyone, she thought desperately. Reisz would take me back. He still loves me. He always will.
But you don't love him, and you know it.
She thought of the woman-spider and its unexpected generosity, sparing Myrmeen's life when the beast easily could have taken it.
Perhaps that was the point, Myrmeen thought. This way I know it can have me at any time. I live or die by its wishes.
No, that was not it. The look on the woman-spider's face before it retreated had revealed that it had been as confused by its own decision as Myrmeen had been.
Thinking about the mysterious woman-thing caused Myrmeen to recall her strange dream, then she moved beyond such unpleasantness, to gentler memories of her parents and their life before that fateful morning that her father was convinced would change all their lives forever. He had been correct, but not in the manner he had anticipated.
Suddenly she remembered the lonely nights after his death, when bizarre nightmares plagued her and she woke up screaming. Don't abandon me! Don't go away! Don't leave me for the shadow people to come crawling up from the floor when the lanterns are blown out! Father, please don't-!
"I am finished," Lucius announced.
Myrmeen looked up in shock, glancing away from the pulsing, hypnotic fires that were dimming in her hand. She looked at the pair of boxes on the ground, darted forward with the speed and ferocity of an animal, and clutched the sides of the arcane box holding the apparatus. Before Lucius, who was trembling with fatigue, could stop her, Myrmeen hurled the box over the edge, into the pit.
The lazy sound of swords scraping against one another rose from the darkness outside the niche. Myrmeen had heard the sound only a few hours earlier, in her room, when the woman-spider had tried to kill her. The creature appeared on the opposite wall, the box clutched in two human hands. Myrmeen looked over the edge of the niche and saw that, fifty feet below, the monster had spun an intricate web. When she turned her gaze back to the box in Tamara's hands, she saw that white, sticky strands clung to its sides.
"Sudden movement," Lucius said, horrified.
Myrmeen spun in his direction to see the second box flaring with a rainbow of colors. The mage covered his mouth, his brow furrowed as he rifled through his vast mental library of spells, hoping to find one that would purchase their lives.
"The spell," he whispered, "was not yet fixed. No sudden movement, or it would all be undone."
"By the gods," she whispered, suddenly aware of the cost of her actions. The flames in her hand flickered out and several strands of lightning reached from the second box like newly awakened hands eager to explore. "Lucius!"
Myrmeen was aware of nothing but the feel of powerful hands on her back as she was dragged back from the niche, into the darkened shaft. She was quickly carried upward as an explosion sounded from where Lucius had remained.
The walls of the pit shook and Myrmeen looked up to see that she was in the woman-spider's arms. Tamara desperately tried to hold on as clouds of light and smoke billowed up from beneath them. Suddenly they were at the rim, over the top, stumbling forward. A beautiful shaft of greenish white light shot up from the pit and licked at the cavernous theater's ceiling, charring the stone black before the stream of light faded abruptly and was gone.
There had been no sound. Lucius's body had been destroyed, and he had not even issued a scream. Myrmeen scrambled to her feet and clutched at Lord Sixx. He held her at bay with ease.
"Help him!" she shouted. "Release your hold on his soul, before it is too late."
"It is too late," Lord Sixx said with genuine regret. "I prefer to keep my word, but there is nothing to be done."
My fault, Myrmeen thought. It's my fault he's gone, his soul wandering forever in torment. Lucius, I'm sorry.
Behind Myrmeen, Tamara had regained her human form. She approached Lord Sixx, the box containing the apparatus in her hands. Before she handed the box to her leader, she glanced in her husband's direction, hoping for a sign that he would be willing to take the box instead. Imperator Zeal stared at her in displeasure and angled his head in Sixx's direction. Tamara felt her arms grow heavy as she presented the box to Lord Sixx and withdrew quickly. Myrmeen stood beside the dark man.
"Now," Sixx whispered as he held the ornately designed gold box high over his head, intoxicated by the end of the quest and the security this object brought him: No challenger would dare usurp him. "Now we may begin again."
A roar sliced through the theater surrounding the pit as the Night Parade creatures cheered Lord Sixx. Myrmeen ran to Krystin and embraced her. Tamara watched them, her arms folded over her breasts. She was the only member of the Night Parade whose gaze was not riveted to the object Lord Sixx held out to his subjects. Her husband, Imperator Zeal, glanced at her and hoped that Sixx would not become aware of the woman's distraction.
When he was certain that the moment had passed, Lord Sixx allowed his people to break off into smaller groups, friends and allies congregating to discuss in hushed, excited tones the importance of this event to each of them. Although the conversations were diverse, many conducted in languages spawned by cultures that had not originated on this world, the content of each was invariably the same: With the apparatus back in their leader's possession, the long delayed Festival of Renewal finally would be held.