Tithian looked at the nearest set of eyes. Recognizing the voice as that of Grakidi, a young slave he had once used as an example to keep Rikus from trying to escape, the king visualized himself laying a purple caterpillar on a slave boy’s upper lip.
Grakidi’s terrified face appeared in the center of the eddy, and the caterpillar instantly crawled up his nose. An instant later, blood began to stream from both nostrils, and the slave screamed in terror as the eddy faded from sight.
Tithian forced a smile across his lips, feebly trying to ignore the pain of his terrible wounds. “You see? You can kill a dead man-over and over,” he sneered, glancing over his shoulder at the third welt that his brother was raising on his wing. “What are a few scratches compared to the joy of murdering you all again?”
As he spoke, he fixed his gaze on a set of lavender eyes. They belonged to Deva, a young noblewoman who had been fond of Bevus, and who had lacked the good sense not to voice her suspicions in public. She had been one of his less imaginative murders. Still, when he visualized an obsidian blade pressing against her throat, the woman screamed and vanished before the tip could pierce her skin.
More than half of the other spirits also succumbed to the terror tactics, fading silently into the Gray. The others were not so easy to chase off. Assuming forms that resembled the bodies they had occupied in life, they crowded around, gouging at Tithian’s face with talonlike fingers and ripping at his flesh with keen-edged teeth. As with Bevus, each attack sent an icy bolt of pain shooting through his flesh, and ugly welts began to rise over his entire body.
Shrieking with pain, Tithian fought back in the only way he could, by identifying each of his attackers and recreating their deaths. Using the power of the Dark Lens, he fashioned a dozen different kinds of murderous utensils: the dagger he had used to kill the templars who had accompanied him into the desert, the looped wires with which he had choked unsuspecting rivals, the lingering poisons he had so graciously poured for women who spurned him, the rare venomous beetles he had sent scurrying under the door of a hated superior, even the crude axe he had once used to vent his wrath on an undeserving servant. With each attack, another spirit screamed and vanished, leaving one less set of claws to rake at him. Had it not been for his own agony, the king might well have enjoyed his encounter with the spirits.
At last, after Tithian had recreated the dagger that he had plunged into Kester’s back just a few hours earlier, only two spirits remained: Bevus and one other that he did not recognize. Although his brother continued to torment him, slowly running a claw down his spine, the second spirit remained motionless. It had neither spoken nor laughed the whole time, and its beady black eyes did nothing to help the king identify who it had been. Tithian racked his brain, trying to remember all of the people he had murdered and match them with someone that he had chased off, but he could not think of who this last spirit could be.
“You have an excellent memory for murder,” snickered Bevus.
The king hardly heard, so awash was he in pain. From head to foot, his body seemed nothing but a single, aching welt. Even his wings were so red and abused that they looked like the twin dorsal crests of some deformed lizard. He felt dizzy and sick from the pain, perilously close to falling unconscious.
“It’s too bad you can’t remember how you killed me,” Bevus continued. “Perhaps it’s because you were in such a drunken stupor.”
Fighting through his pain, Tithian visualized a large steel-bladed axe that had been in the Mericles family for years. It had been found in the desert several weeks after the murder and was commonly assumed to be the murder weapon.
Bevus merely laughed. “It wasn’t the axe, dear brother,” he said, flopping his half-severed neck around. “Your friends didn’t do this to me until after I was dead.”
Tithian closed his eyes, trying again to remember what had happened that night. He and the two templars had dragged the liveryman out of bed, claiming they were on official business so they would not have to pay for his kanks. They had galloped the beasts through the dark streets, trampling a half-dozen derelicts too drunk to leap out of the way. At the night gate, they had merrily bragged to the guards that when they returned they would be wealthy men, and they had ridden into the desert. After that …
It was no use. Tithian could remember no more.
The king looked toward the last spirit. “Were you there that night?” he asked. “Perhaps you were one of my brother’s guards?”
“Weak fool!”
Tithian’s jaw dropped as he realized the identity of the last eddy. “King Kalak!” he gasped. “I didn’t kill you!”
“Of course not. The honor belongs to that jackal, Agis, and his friends,” hissed Kalak, coalescing into solid form. Although he had been well on his way to becoming a dragon when Tithian had last seen him, he now assumed the shape of a skinny old man with a bald, scaly pate and a face buried beneath wrinkles. “You merely betrayed me to them.”
“Then what are you doing here?” Tithian asked.
“I came to see if I should help you,” said Kalak. “I thought you might avenge my death-but I see that’s unlikely. You’re as big a coward as ever. If you can’t face your brother’s murder, you’ll never murder Agis.”
“I didn’t kill Bevus!” Tithian protested, his pained voice a mere croak. “Everyone else-but not him.”
“I know what happened,” snorted Kalak. “You called on my magic-”
“King Kalak, no!” protested Bevus, reaching out to quiet the old man.
Kalak slapped the hand away, then continued to address Tithian. “When I saw how you killed your brother, Tithian, I ranked you a true murderer-as fine as any since Rajaat,” Kalak said. He paused a moment, then shook his ancient head in disgust and reached up to take the battered circlet from Tithian’s welt-covered head. “But I was wrong. You don’t deserve this.”
Kalak flung the crown into the grayness, then looked back to Bevus. “If you really want to torture your brother, I suggest you let him go.”
“Why should I help him?” demanded the spirit.
“You wouldn’t be helping, fool. Tithian can’t remember murdering you, and he balks every time he has the chance to kill Agis,” the sorcerer-king sneered. “If a coward like him uses the Dark Lens against Borys, nothing you can think of will compare to what the Dragon does to him.”
As Kalak faded away, Bevus turned to consider his brother’s tormented form. “I think Kalak is underestimating me,” he said, reaching for Tithian’s eyes. “Don’t you?”
The king turned his head away, fighting through his pain to keep his mind clear. Bevus began to harass him, tracing agonizing circles around the king’s eye sockets, moving just slowly enough so that Tithian could always look away in time to save his eyes.
As he was tormented, the king focused his thoughts on saving himself. He did not try to remember what had happened the night of Bevus’s death, but concentrated only on accepting that the first person he had ever murdered had been his younger brother.
A sickening pall of self-loathing settled over Tithian, and for a moment he was more conscious of it than of the physical pain tormenting his body. He felt a foul darkness welling up inside himself, coming from a recess so deep and hidden that he had not even known it existed. As the guilty secret rose into the light, he recognized it for the hideous beast it was-but instead of recoiling from the terrible knowledge, he embraced it as a part of himself.
All at once, a placid sense of relief descended over Tithian. He understood what had happened on that brutal night, and why everything since had come so easily for him: his rise through the templar ranks, his consolidation of the family fortune, even the fortuitous alliance that had made a king of him. And he also understood why, when all else had failed and no amount of treachery or bribery would win him what he wanted, he had always relished the final option-insisting, whenever practical, that he perform the deed with his own hands.