Nothing moved save the sheep, the horizontal slits of its pupils wide as it looked up at her helplessly.
She knelt down to check its wounds. They were most likely the work of a marauding wolf that had been frightened off from the kill by her approach, but she needed to be sure there wasn’t something more dangerous lurking this close to the cottage.
Up close, she could see that the injury on the sheep’s flank was the least of its wounds. Something with three claws had nearly gutted the creature, slicing its underbelly like paper. Loops of intestine hung loose from the open wound, still dripping blood and ichor.
“Poor thing,” Sabira murmured, patting its head and knowing she was going to have to put it out of its misery. “Someone tried to rip your heart out, eh? Seems to be a lot of that going around tonight.”
The sheep just looked at her, its eyes glazed over and unblinking.
“Khyber!” Sabira breathed, “You should be dead.…”
Even as the realization struck her that the sheep was dead, a sickening crack sounded from behind its eyes, and before Sabira could do more than blink, its skull shattered, showering her with warm blood, bits of pulpy flesh, and fragments of thick ovine bone.
Sabira fell back as something leaped out at her from the ruins of the sheep’s head. The size of a small dog, it resembled nothing more than a moist, pulsing brain on four legs, each of which ended in three long claws.
Though she’d never met such a loathsome creature before, she recognized it from part of the training she’d gone through as a member of the Blademarks. An intellect devourer—or body thief, as it was more commonly known—was an evil aberration that preferred sentient prey, consuming its victim’s brain and then animating the dead body. The body thief would then masquerade as its host in order to stalk more prey or even to spy for some more powerful master.
Nightshard.
Did the assassin think to have his pet inhabit her body to get past the cottage wards? How could he have known she’d even be here by the river? Unless the killer had been spying on her and Leoned from afar, and was using their argument and subsequent separation—her doing—to get to Aggar.
Which meant Leoned was also in danger, and it was her fault.
The body thief landed lightly on all fours and immediately charged, swiping at her with its powerful claws. Sabira twisted out of the way, feeling the preternaturally quick creature’s blow gouge deeply into her leather armor as it rushed past, just missing the skin beneath.
Sabira used her momentum to bring her sword down, the blade catching the body thief across one of its back legs, drawing blood. The thing had no mouth, but Sabira nevertheless heard a piercing shriek in her mind, so high it made her wince in pain.
Then the creature was facing her again, a few paces off, shuffling back and forth on its legs as if studying her, though it had no eyes with which to do so.
It was so awful to look at. Sabira had to resist the impulse to avert her eyes. How could she fight such a thing by herself? She’d barely scratched it with her blade, despite putting all her strength behind the blow. She wasn’t a skilled enough warrior to defeat the body thief on her own; she needed Leoned. He’d known all along, of course, that she wasn’t good enough. That’s why he was choosing Rhania over her.
No! Sabira thought sharply, biting her lip hard enough to draw blood. The pain helped her to focus, to realize that this self-doubt was not her own. It was one of the intellect devourer’s tricks, to make her hesitate and make a mistake.
That wasn’t going to happen.
She’d already made one error tonight—leaving her partner alone. She wasn’t about to make another.
Keeping her teeth clamped down on her lip, she advanced on the body thief, sword in a two-handed grip. The thing’s brain-like body seemed to pulse faster as she approached, and she found the rhythm almost hypnotic. Before she knew it, her pace had slowed to a stop and she was lowering her blade.
What was she doing here? Why had she drawn her weapon?
An anxious bleat caught her attention. A small lamb was sniffing at the nearly headless body of another sheep—probably its mother.
Sabira’s eyes narrowed. This was her true enemy, a creature of unspeakable depravity posing as an innocent suckling to lure her close enough to attack. But she would not be fooled!
Sabira raised her sword once more and rushed at the terrified animal, who ran away from its mother’s corpse on wobbly legs. She caught up with it in only a few strides and was bringing her blade down on the lamb’s unprotected spine when something hit her full in the back, sending her flying forward almost on top of the bleating sheep and trapping her sword beneath her.
As the lamb scampered away, three lines of fire carved themselves across Sabira’s left shoulder and down her back, slicing into her flesh as if her armor were made of water. With a howl, Sabira rolled hard to her right, away from the pain, throwing the thing that had attacked her off her back in the process.
She scrambled to regain her feet, snatching up her sword just as the creature charged her again. The body thief, she remembered belatedly, the agony in her shoulder erasing the last vestiges of the confusion it had cast over her.
With her muscles screaming in pain, it was all she could do to hold her blade out and up like a spear, its hilt lodged beneath her ribs. As the body thief rushed at her, she dropped to her knees at the last possible moment and braced herself. The aberration was moving too fast; it ran headlong onto her weapon, impaling itself with another of its soundless screams, its wet body sliding up the length of her blade until it she could see the blood-coated tip protruding from between its hind legs. The impact forced the hilt deep into her gut, and she vomited hot bile all over the thing’s still-quivering corpse.
Wiping gall from her bloody mouth, Sabira climbed unsteadily to her feet. Planting her foot where the body thief’s right front leg met its overlarge brain, she pulled her sword out of the carcass with a sucking squelch. Then she turned and ran for the cottage as fast as she could.
It was too late; she knew it even before she got there.
Leoned was gone. Blood spattered the bench where he’d been sitting and dry leaves littered the ground in front of it, crushed by the dance of two pairs of feet. And there, poking out from under the bench, something flashed in Olarune’s orange light.
Sabira bent to pick it up.
Ned’s sword, its blade mockingly clean.
Nightshard had been here. And he’d taken Leoned.
The door cracked open and Aggar’s face appeared, strikingly pale against the darkness of his beard.
“I’m so sorry, Saba! Nightshard found us. He wanted the password to get past the wards, but Leoned wouldn’t give it to him, so Nightshard attacked him. I wanted to help, but Ned ordered me to stay inside, so all I could do was watch from the window. I saw him stab Leoned with a black blade. Then he said, if he couldn’t have me, he’d take my Defender, and they both disappeared.” Grief rang in his every word like a death knell. “It’s all my fault, Saba! I should have done something!”
Sabira just shook her head, but she couldn’t answer the broken-hearted young dwarf. She was too busy fighting off a black wave of despair that threatened to crush the life from her at any moment.
She’d lost Leoned. And she had no one to blame but herself.
CHAPTER TEN
Sabira shook the memories away, looking vainly about the room for something stronger than her willpower to drown them out, but this was Elix’s office, and he’d always been better at facing his feelings than she was at facing hers. Her eyes alighted again on the Conqueror board, and she moved to sit before the checkered board with determination. It wasn’t as good as a cold drink, but no true Karrn could help but find the national game of strategy a soothing balm for whatever troubled the soul.