Spinner of Lies

CHAPTER NINE

THE CITY OF AIRSPUR, AKANUL

18 LEAFFALL, THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

Unexpected pain yanked a gasp from Madri. had twin daggers just punched into her temples? Where she was, what she’d been doing-it all swirled away from her in a volcanic eruption of agony. She opened her mouth to scream in earnest …

And closed it again. It wasn’t pain. Well, yes, it hurt something terrible, but so did seeing the sunrise after days spent blindfolded.

Something was different. Her mind was … freer. As unexpectedly as if someone had opened a door, she became more herself. She was Madri, plenipotentiary of Halruaa. Whether ghost, or reconstructed figment, or some hybrid of both, she knew suddenly and with full conviction … she was real.

A genasi in a green tunic stared at her with surprise plain in his wide eyes and flared nostrils. “Where’d you come from?” he asked. He was a docent for the Netheril exhibit she’d been viewing before whatever had just happened … happened. And he saw her, when a moment ago she’d been only a shade to his perception.

She laughed. “I’m a stowaway. I survived the shipwreck of a deva’s incarnation.”

The docent frowned, clearly confused. He coughed. “I’m going to have to see your pass.”

“I don’t have one. I’m not even really alive, you see.”

The genasi paused, obviously wondering what he should do about this crazy woman. Madri laughed again. She couldn’t help it; she felt drunk.

“Madam, please, don’t make me call the peacemakers …” She wondered if she should fear a peacemaker’s sword? It probably wasn’t the best time to experiment. She should-

Flicker.

The dimness of the secret crypt greeted her. The painting, chair, bottomless fissure, and the heap of earth were as silent and still as ever. The mask was nowhere in evidence. It could come and go, apparently with a thought, or as so often happened to her, with a yearning. Had it heard her talking to the Necromancer? She shrugged. More important things occupied her mind. Like, what’d just happened to her?

She flopped into the chair and studied the draped painting. Had her talk with what lay beneath borne fruit so quickly? She didn’t see how. She hadn’t fulfilled any of the grisly requirements the thing had described. Madri shuddered. Striking out on her own wasn’t going to be as simple as she’d hoped. Her soul would be stained if she accepted the Necromancer’s help, and she hadn’t yet decided if she was willing to descend to those depths to ensure her independence from Kalkan and Fossil. So, if not the painting, then what? Demascus must have done something. Somehow, the deva had managed to mentally jab her from who knew how far away. She closed her eyes, considering, while at the same time trying her damnedest to avoid flicking across space to wherever he was. She didn’t want to see him again until she had to.

She could sense a faint connection to something not in the room. A line of silvery light, snaking off into nothingness. Well, that was too simplistic, but it was how she imagined her connection to … the deva? To his sword? It was brighter than before, more tangible. More real …

“That rotten snake-licking heartless bastard!” she screamed, surprising herself at the abruptness of her rage. Why? Why had the deva killed her? She still didn’t know. Fossil had declined to explain. It was only interested in describing how, by becoming part of Kalkan’s plan, she could have vengeance. How many murder victims ever get that kind of opportunity? Damn few. So, Fossil had intimated, she should just be grateful and stop asking questions that didn’t bear on the plan.

Madri stood. She faced the draped frame and gathered her courage.

The velvet drape felt like cold blood against her fingers as she flipped it aside. The face was waiting. It could just barely be described as a face. The multitude of shattered portraits, jammed together to form a single entity abiding in apparent unceasing agony, met her gaze with mismatched eyes. Its gaping mouth was like a wound. The frozen vista of paint snared the visage in cruel brush strokes.

“Necromancer,” she said, “Your specialty is death. Why did Demascus kill me?”

The two-dimensional mouth squirmed. The painting whispered. Her stomach lurched.

“… the Sword serves only those to whom Fate is an ally …”

“That makes no sense! Fate wants … wanted me dead?” Her confusion commingled with the nausea that seeing the painting induced. And her headache was back. Unlike before, it didn’t break down the doors of perception; the pain seemed like a live thing, chewing on her brain from inside her skull.

“… the Sword may also serve those who can bend Fate, or deceive it with a tapestry of interlocking lies …” The pain was unspeakable. Her memory of Demascus, telling her again how sorry he was before he broke her neck, danced and mixed with the crazy-quilt image of the Necromancer.

She screamed. The draping fell back over the painting. She dropped into a shuddering fit.

The pain … was receding. She found herself with her face pressed against the dirt floor. The sour smell of grave dirt was literally in her nose. She rolled onto her side. The Necromancer hadn’t answered her question. Instead, it’d whispered some nonsense about Fate. She rubbed her temple. It’d also said something about lies-

“Why are you lying on the floor?” A silver mask floated into her field of vision. Fossil was home. It’d apparently missed her conversation with the whispering painting. The thing was a manipulating liar, first and foremost, but it was also ruthless. If it thought she was going behind its back, it would act. She was still safe, but she’d have to be more careful in the future.

Madri pulled herself into the chair. She smoothed her hair and said, “Pain like an avalanche overwhelmed me.” She swaddled the lie around the truth with expert delicacy.

The mask vibrated a moment, perhaps with excitement. Though how could one tell with an inexpressive silvery facade? It could have been confusion just as easily, or fear.

“So,” Fossil finally uttered. “Kalkan’s prophecy has nearly run its course.”

She waited only a heartbeat before giving Fossil what he wanted, and asked, “What do you mean by that?”

“The Swordbreaker saw far. But even his damos isn’t infallible. Despite its marvelous reach, Kalkan couldn’t foresee whether Demascus would discover his sword has more than a single configuration. Your genesis, Madri, as an unquiet spirit, lies in the power Exorcessum generated when Demascus retrieved it. You are both memory and spirit, a figment-ghost.”

Fossil’s words overstuffed her head with knowledge. What sort of gods-abandoned nonsense was the relic spouting-about her being undead after all, except not really? And …

“What’s a damos?” she said.

“A relic of the Imaskar empire. A portal that vouchsafes the future course of history to its owner who is willing to risk its venomous shackle. The damos is what Kalkan used to devise Demascus’s route into dissolution and ultimate defeat. But we’ve finally reached the frayed ends of Kalkan’s original damos-derived prophecy. He foresaw the possibility that Demascus would discover how to split his sword into two blades. If that happened-and it has-then everything becomes a bit … touch and go.”

It was too much to understand. Madri wished she had parchment and quill so she could take notes. Future course of history? Two blades in one? Touch-and-go prophecy?

Time to wrest the course of conversation back herself while Fossil was in a talkative mood. “Wait. You said I’m both a spirit and a memory? How can that be?”

“Do not concern yourself. It does not matter what you are, does it? All that matters is that we execute our plan to bring Demascus down.”

“I … suppose you’re right,” she said. Though it did matter. Her odds of coming out of this with something more than ashes after they dealt with Demascus depended on her true status. Or so the Necromancer had whispered. She couldn’t press too hard for that particular truth. If Fossil suspected she was lining up her own agenda, the relic angel would “erase” her and begin anew, as it suggested had happened before. Unless that was just a lie to keep her in line …

“Well, tell me more about this damos, then. Where is it?”

The mask rotated toward the heap of earth. “In there with Kalkan’s regenerating shell.”

A surge of excitement drew Madri to her feet. “It’s right here? If Kalkan used it to create a prophecy that saw all of us this far into the future, let’s dig it out and use it again, right now. We’ll just tell this ‘damos’ that the sword split after all, whatever that means, and have it start a new prophecy from there!”

The mask settled its hollow regard on her, saying nothing.

“What, now you’re back to giving me the silent treatment? You know, we’d get on so much better if you’d just be honest. Like you keep saying, Fossil, we both want the same thing.” Except, what was it the Necromancer had whispered, right before she’d collapsed? Something about lies motivating Demascus to accept a commission involving her. But what of it? No exonerating evidence would ever change the fact he had killed her. Of course, she wanted to know why, whatever the answer was … why Demascus had wrapped his fingers around her head and twisted.

Fossil’s voice broke into her reverie. “True enough, figment. We want the same thing. And were it possible to craft a new prophecy now that Demascus has rediscovered how to switch between the most brutish shape of his blade and a more adaptable configuration, I would consider it. But it won’t work. Only a living creature can call on the Voice of Tomorrow. Neither of us qualify.”

“I guess that’d be too easy.” She snorted. “Just out of idle curiosity, how many configurations does Demascus’s gods-abandoned sword have, anyhow?” The more she heard about the blade, the more she wished she’d had something like it when she’d been plenipotentiary to Halruaa. She’d had to undertake more than a couple of tasks in her country’s defense that could have benefited from a divinely amorphous weapon.

“It is not recorded. More than two. An assassin’s weapon must be versatile. Kalkan Swordbreaker once claimed even gods should fear Exorcessum’s final configuration.”

“Why?”

“Only one thing is as strong as that explosive configuration: the flame that burns at the heart of a star.”

Oh. Madri imagined a celestial fire touching down in the heart of Airspur, a blaze so hot it would melt even a god’s flesh from its bones. Such potency, once unleashed, would race out in all directions, burning even the air …

She put her hand to her mouth and closed her eyes. No one should have that kind of power. “But that would kill Demascus, too.”

“Only for a time.”

“It’s madness-what demented deity gave such a weapon into one man’s hands?” she demanded, suddenly angry at the incongruity of it all.

“Gods, not those of Toril, fabricated the implements for the deva Demascus. When he came to Toril, the gods here created a counterbalance-Kalkan Swordbreaker. Though what we propose to do now goes beyond Kalkan’s original remit. We shall permanently deal with Demascus.”

Being permanently dealt with was what Demascus deserved. How many other innocent people had he killed, deluded by the same force that had turned him against her? If she had any second thoughts about her vendetta, learning about the “final configuration” convinced her that the deva must be put down for good. She didn’t know exactly how Kalkan planned to do it, but apparently her involvement was somehow important. Maybe even critical … something Fossil had said earlier, about having to “start over” with her, as if having the help of just any half-ghost, half-figment wouldn’t do. Kalkan and the relic angel needed her. Someone who’d been betrayed and killed by Demascus himself. Curious. She promised herself to give it more thought.

“You have a task to perform,” Fossil said.

“I don’t recall-”

“It was predicated on whether Demascus split his sword, which was uncertain. Now he has accessed the dual-blade configuration, and you must do as Kalkan decreed. Are you ready?”

“What else do I have to fill my hours? Get a manicure at the salon? Have tea with the noble ladies of Airspur? Just tell me.”

Fossil studied her for a moment, perhaps wondering if the time had come to erase her after all. But then it said, “Go to House Norjah. Tell them where they can find the thief, Riltana, with her accomplice. Tell them the thief who stole one of two paintings missing from their gallery stands at the newly connected threshold of the Demonweb.”