False Covenant

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Fire and ice warred for dominance in the nerves of her leg, making the entire left side of her body lock up in agony. Sparks burst inside her; her own thoughts stabbed at her; her memories singed the edges of her mind. Her vision-or what little she could make out through the blurring and twisting of the inner fire-constricted, a tunnel, then a pinprick in a field of black. Through it, all she could see, now, was Ferrand's slack face, and she knew without a doubt that the spell was dragging her down into death alongside him.

Except it didn't. She felt the grass under her cheek, little things crawling in the soil, the sun beating down on her neck. She heard the swish and clatter of blades, the grunts of exertion, the bishop's broken voice calling Brother Ferrand's name.

Her leg ached, but it was a dull, distant sort of pain, the last lingering remnants of an old injury. And where she'd felt that peculiar connection, that strange echo of Ferrand's memories lurking just behind a thin curtain of concentration, she now sensed only…

“Olgun?!”

Despite his lack of anything resembling a head, she sensed what could only be a nod.

“You cut the link?”

Another nod, along with an emotional gust suggesting, in no uncertain terms, that it hadn't been even remotely easy.

“Thank you.” She sucked in a deep breath. “How are we doing?”

Before the god could answer, she heard a grunt of pain and felt a few warm spatters of blood across her outstretched hands.

“Oh. That good?” Widdershins forced her eyes open and craned her neck to see.

The combatants drew ever nearer to Sicard and Julien, despite the best efforts of the aristocrat and the thief to hold the line. Renard was bleeding furiously from his left arm and shoulder, where Iruoch's touch had ripped strips of skin from his body. It hadn't slowed him much-not yet-but he winced in pain with every step. Evrard didn't seem much better off, favoring the same spot on his body, even though it bore no visible injury. Iruoch seemed to be playing with them as much as battling them, casually brushing their blades aside, sometimes feigning a lunge at one or the other without bothering to follow through.

Igraine Vernadoe stood between the two groups, shouting prayers and malisons, her icon of the Shrouded God raised high. It was brave, no doubt, but if it had any appreciable impact on Iruoch's advance, Widdershins couldn't see it from here. The glistening sweat on the priestess's forehead, which was visible to Widdershins, suggested that Igraine didn't expect much good to come of her defiance, either. Since neither she nor Julien still held their pistols, Widdershins assumed that they'd taken their shots during the brief moments when she was insensate on the lawn.

And speaking of Julien…

“-better idea?!” the Guardsman was shouting, shaking Sicard by the shoulders. Clearly, any courtesy or respect he'd normally have felt inclined to show the bishop was long gone.

Widdershins grunted, trying to rise without drawing Iruoch's attention, and strained to listen in on the argument. Her ears tingled as Olgun lent a hand to her efforts.

“Even if she wasn't too far away and too busy,” Sicard was insisting through clenched teeth, “it takes ten or fifteen minutes to cast! This'll be long over before-”

“You can try! I can't just stand here useless like this!”

The bishop shook his head, and it was only Olgun's power that enabled Widdershins to hear his muttered reply. “It didn't help Brother Ferrand much, did it?”

“Gods damn you, we have to do something! We-”

Widdershins felt the roiling tumult of Olgun's emotional shouting, strained to make sense of concepts too complex to be easily conveyed. “What? I don't…But…Are you sure? All right, you don't have to yell! Julien! Your Eminence!” She winced even as she raised her voice, knowing she'd just announced to Iruoch that she was up and around. “Just start casting!”

“But-,” Sicard began.

“Trust me!”

“Trust her,” Julien insisted. “Do it.”

The bishop jogged back to where he'd left the iron brazier and began scooping up the last of his stock of herbs and incense. Julien trailed behind, his rapier drawn, watching the ongoing melee.

“Awake, awake, our little girl's awake!” Iruoch actually clapped his hands with glee as he bent over backward and stepped to the left, allowing both Renard's and Evrard's blades to pass harmlessly through the space he'd just vacated. “Oh, I'm so happy!” He straightened with impossible speed, a living catapult snapping upright, with one arm outstretched. The creature's palm slapped against Renard's wounded shoulder, sending him tumbling-and screaming-across the grass, leaving a serpentine trail of blood behind him.

“If you're not awake,” Iruoch continued, his voice dropping in mock disappointment, “you don't actually feel anything.” The fingers of his left hand twitched and flexed, parrying even the fastest and most ornate of Evrard's thrusts. “And that's no fun at all!”

The children booed at the very idea.

“Yep, I'm awake!” Widdershins scooped her rapier up from where it had fallen, slashed the air before her a time or two. “Not feeling anything, though. Why don't you come get me?” Even before the creature took a step, she had begun to fall back, retreating with a slow but steady pace, trusting Olgun to warn her if she was about to back into an obstacle of any sort.

“Aww…Step and dance and run away, thiefie doesn't want to play?” Iruoch took a pace toward her, a second, and then, “Thiefie thinks I'm really, really stupid.”

Rotating so swiftly that it should have neatly snapped his knees, Iruoch bounded back toward the others. Evrard took a desperate swing, but again caught nothing but the hem of the filthy coat. The creature landed beside Igraine, flinched away from the holy symbol, and then kicked her in the gut with the toe of his boot. The priestess doubled over, tumbling to the earth and spitting blood-tinged vomit.

Their trick with the tombstone, and the mass of injuries they'd inflicted, had left some enduring effect. His leap was less steady, his pace not quite as swift as Widdershins remembered it. Even so, as she broke into another run, ignoring the growing pain in her sides and the exhausted patina that lay across every one of Olgun's emotions, she knew that she could never reach the creature before he reached Julien and Sicard.

The volume of the bishop's incantation grew louder, the tension in the major's shoulders more obvious, but neither of them could do anything but press on, and hope.

Because she'd told them to. Because they trusted her.

“Olgun! Olgun, it has to be now!” She was gasping, forcing each word out between harsh breaths and pounding steps. “It has to be now!”

The god's power lashed outward, a whip of sheer, stubborn intent. Widdershins had never felt anything quite like it, and stumbled as she ran. She felt her god reach out, snagging the raw strands of the mystical link that were only beginning to form around Julien, the earliest stages of Sicard's spell. She felt him grasping the remnants of the prior spell that clung to her, the broken link that had joined her with the late and lamented Brother Ferrand; felt him sculpting it beneath his intangible touch, forcing it into a new form.

And she felt the two ends, of the two distinct but similar incomplete magics, touch and fuse into one.

Sicard could not have done it. Olgun could not have done it. But together, they forced the magics to meld. In perhaps a tenth the time it should have required, Widdershins and Julien were joined.

Again she felt a brief moment of disorientation, of overlapping memories and shared experiences, but it was gone half a heartbeat after it began. Widdershins had experienced the effect once already, and knew better how to work through it-and because she knew it, so, too, did Julien.

Iruoch was two steps away from him when Julien rose, faster than a striking serpent, and plunged his sword through Iruoch's throat.

It wasn't enough to kill the creature, not by far, but Iruoch stumbled to a sudden halt, gagging and coughing up rusty powder. He staggered back, pulling himself off the blade, hands clutching briefly at the wound.

Again Julien struck, the tip of his sword moving too swiftly even for Iruoch, and two of those spidery fingers tumbled through the air in an almost graceful arc to land, flopping and twitching, in the dust.

Everyone-Iruoch included-fell silent and stared at the thrashing digits for a moment, until they swiftly decomposed with a puff of grayish, peppermint-scented powder. Several of the beetles boring through the nearby soil abruptly metamorphosed into bright scarlet moths. They fluttered away on the summer breeze, their flight paths awkward and very, very confused.

Slowly, gradually, Iruoch turned to gawp at Julien. “Those were two of my favorites!”

“Um…” Julien sounded utterly at a loss. “I'm sorry?”

Iruoch lunged; the Guardsman parried. Back and forth, step and cross-step…And then, before the creature could even begin to wear his opponent down, Widdershins was there.

Finally, finally, it looked as though they might have a chance. The two of them shared not only in Olgun's gifts, as Widdershins and Ferrand had done, but in Julien's skill and experience in the Guard. Not only her speed, but his training, allowed them to block strokes that might otherwise have laid open their flesh; to stab through the tiniest openings in Iruoch's own defenses. Blood, both dusty and liquid, flew-but for the first time, there was far more of the former than the latter.

Renard and Evrard hovered around the edges, lunging when an opportunity presented itself but mostly keeping Iruoch from easily retreating out of the others' reach. Widdershins and Julien shared a grin-quite literally-at the thought that this might soon, finally, be over.

But again, Iruoch's implacability dashed those hopes even as they began to sprout. Yes, they pressed him hard, far harder than they had; yes, his injuries were many, slowing him down. Still, still they could not land any crippling or killing blows. Still all but the worst of his wounds knitted themselves closed in moments, the ragged edges interlacing with and grasping at each other. Widdershins tried every trick in her repertoire, from head-on dueling, to tumbles and twists that would shame an acrobat, to balancing on and bouncing off the tombstones and tree branches like a rubber ballet dancer. No technique worked better than any other.

The mortals verged on exhaustion, propped up only by the strength they borrowed from one another, or from Olgun. And the god, too, teetered on the edge of collapse, his energies coming more and more sporadically to even Widdershins's most urgent need.

And ultimately, as everyone knew they must, Widdershins and Olgun stumbled together once too often.

She'd just twirled aside from another of Iruoch's grabs, then kicked off with one foot against a drooping old tree in hopes of coming back at him before he was prepared. She twisted in the air, blade coming sharply down-and Iruoch sidestepped the blade and caught her. His injured hand wrapped her wrist, fingers and stumps digging into her flesh, holding her rapier at bay. The other closed around her neck.

“It always makes me a little sad,” he said conversationally, his shoulders leaning this way and that as he dodged her friends' attacks, “when I outgrow a playmate.”

Widdershins tried to thrash, and could not. Tried to speak, and couldn't force so much as a squeak through her throat. Blood pounded in her ears, and her chest began to burn.

“If it's any consolation to you,” Iruoch continued, “there are plenty more people for me to play with in your beautiful city. I know it's a consolation to me.”

Her skin burned where his fingers lay across it. She could feel it tear as he moved, feel the blood welling up. Her hand spasmed, dropping her rapier. She wondered why the others had ceased attacking, wondered where Julien was, and only realized when her sword fell away that they now hung above the ground. Using the tips of the same fingers that clutched at her throat, Iruoch had climbed over a dozen feet up the trunk of that tree. There was nothing the others could do.

She couldn't move, couldn't breathe. Olgun, I don't want to die this way….

Through eyelids that she struggled to keep open, she looked down past Iruoch, past his feet that dangled perfectly straight, parallel to the trunk. She saw Julien running toward them, saw him leap, felt the faintest surge of Olgun's power. But she felt how weak the god had become, knew that Julien couldn't possibly reach them….

But what he swung at them was not his rapier at all, but Bishop Sicard's staff of office, which Ferrand had been using as a bludgeon.

The curved end of the crook hooked around Iruoch's arm. Widdershins had the brief satisfaction of seeing the creature's jaw go slack before the weight of Julien's body yanked them both off the tree.

They hit the ground and rolled apart, bark and skin clinging to Iruoch's fingers. Widdershins sucked in an agonizing breath, and it was only the fact that she couldn't stop her desperate gasping that kept her from screaming at the agony in her wrist and her throat. She rolled to her knees, coughing and choking. A hand closed on her shoulder, and she almost lashed out before she recognized Sicard standing over her, offering her a sip from his flask.

She reached for it, wheezing-and then saw the bishop's face go white, his lip begin to quiver. And she felt…

A sudden surge of fear, overwhelming, held at bay only by the memory of the life he had just saved….

Pain, roaring, screaming pain, the tearing of flesh, the breaking of bone, the bursting of a beating heart….

Delight that, at the last, he'd overcome his doubts, his hesitations. That she'd known, before the end.

Widdershins…Adrienne…I love you….

A final surge of magic, as Olgun gave almost everything he had left to once more sever the link before it was too late.

And Julien Bouniard was gone.

No screams. No tears. Widdershins rose, everything inside her absolutely numb. Iruoch stood some yards away, Julien's rapier jutting obscenely through his chest-he seemed scarcely even to notice it-and Julien's broken body hanging from a two-fisted grip.

Casually, dismissively, Iruoch tossed the corpse aside. It bounced once, wetly, off the tree trunk and then slammed to earth. Evrard and Renard stood close, their own blades trembling with fatigue.

“Now,” Iruoch said, gripping the hilt of the rapier between two fingers and slowly sliding it from his body, “perhaps we can-”

Widdershins reached back and shoved Sicard aside, ignoring his startled yelp. Hands held at her side, empty of any obvious weapon-though one fist was clenched around something that glinted in the sun-she strode steadily up toward the creature she hated more than anything else in the world. As she clearly was not attacking, didn't appear armed, Iruoch let her approach.

“Was there something?” he asked lightly as the sword finally sprung free from his torso with a moist pop.

“Yes.” Olgun, I need you to stand for just a moment more….“Heal this!”

Widdershins sprang forward, opening her fingers to reveal the silver Eternal Eye amulet she'd yanked from the bishop's neck as she'd shoved him, and jammed it hard into the slowly closing wound left by Julien's blade.

Iruoch's scream rose above the graveyard, the twin voices undulating across a dozen octaves. He collapsed to his knees and instantly began scrabbling at the flesh of his chest, hurling desiccated, lightly smoking chunks of muscle and bone aside as he worked desperately to dig the holy symbol from his body. Widdershins calmly, resolutely watched his efforts, even waving off the others as they approached with weapons raised.

Finally the silver-now tarnished and pitted-flew free, and Iruoch gasped in relief, seemingly oblivious to the gaping hole in his chest.

A hole through which Widdershins reached, her hand tingling with the last inklings of power that Olgun had to give, and grasped Iruoch's shriveled, unbeating heart.

He looked down at the arm jutting into his chest, then up into the face of the woman who'd killed him.

“Well…Darn.”

Widdershins yanked. The voices of the children wailed once in the distance, and were gone. Iruoch's body fell at her feet and exploded into a puff of dust that flew, with utter disregard for the wind, up into the open sky. In her fist, she held only an undulating mass of maggot-white sludge.

It smelled of peppermint.

“It's over, Shins,” Renard gasped from behind her. “You did it.”

“Yes.” Her voice was raw, gravelly, every word a stab at her aching throat. “It is over, isn't it?”

She staggered a few steps, fell to her knees beside Julien's body, and willed-even begged-the tears to finally come.

But she was too exhausted even to mourn.