Vengeance

CHAPTER 83

Rix saw a golden nimbus form around Rannilt only to be slammed back into her. She yelped, clenched her pointed jaw and the nimbus reformed, brighter. Again it was driven back into her. Rannilt let out a strained groan, pressed her hands together like a diver and thrust them upwards at the blur.

The facinore was clinging to the wall like a chameleon to a branch. It reached up, yanked and Tali appeared there, upside-down, suspended by the ankle from its right hand.

‘Rix?’ Tali wailed, ‘why did you bring Rannilt here?’

Rix was asking himself the same question. The facinore had felt Rannilt’s great gift before, and it would not be long before Lyf knew she was here.

Its arms shifted to wings, to crab claws and back to arms; the shadows writhed and fluttered all around it. It drew Tali towards it, hissed a visible breath in her face and a silver aura appeared like a halo above her head. The facinore snatched at it, tore part of it away and swallowed it. The rest of the aura faded.

Rix’s skin crept. Was it trying to feed on her psyche, attacking her mentally as well as physically? He raised the sword, wondering if he could hurl it true and impale the beast. No, the risk was too great.

Rannilt shrieked in fury and thrust her folded hands up again. The facinore reared backwards, Tali tore free, tumbled and landed hard on her feet with the beast close behind.

She darted towards the shelves, looking around desperately. The facinore’s legs shifted to frog’s legs; it leapt over her head and blocked her, spreading its arms wide. Bare feet skidding on the black floor, she shot back towards Rix. It sprang over her head again.

Its back was to Rix, only three steps away. He lunged, aiming to pierce its heart from behind, but it shifted and the sword tip skidded off thick, ridged armour, then it leapt over Tali again, out of reach. Rix cursed and went after it.

‘Tali, you can kill the beast,’ cried Rannilt. ‘I know you can.’

Tali was trembling, her eyes darting. What was she looking for? A moan burst from her but she strangled it. She made hand-over-hand motions as if raising a bucket from a well, then extended her right hand towards the creature. A jagged grey clot shot forth, though it only shattered against the facinore’s chest like mushy ice.

‘Your gift’s there!’ yelled Rannilt. ‘I can see it.’

Rannilt flung a golden globe at the facinore, which ducked and shot out a chitinous fist, striking her a glancing blow to the left temple and sending her tumbling. She took a shuddering breath and rolled over, holding her head with both hands and trying not to cry.

‘Rannilt, stay down!’ Tali blasted again and again but her feeble gift could only produce harmless, rotten ice.

‘Out of the way,’ said Rix.

Tobry yanked him back by the shoulder. ‘The facinore was created by magery, and only magery can finish it.’

His arm was trembling, his voice thick. Fear of the shifter was choking him and Rix knew he couldn’t do it. If Tobry took on the facinore he would die.

‘I can deal with it, Tobe,’ said Rix.

‘I let you down last time,’ Tobry said bitterly. ‘I’m not doing it again.’

Rix knocked him aside and extended the titane blade, gauging his foe. It did not retreat. It was leaning towards Tali, a humanoid core with those eerily shifting limbs and the fluttering shadows surrounding it that made it nine feet tall. It reeked of blood and sweat and the carrion it had been feeding on.

It was a creature of the magery he had always feared, and powerful magery at that, stronger than anything he had come across outside these caverns. But Rannilt had hurt it out in the Seethings and surely he could do as much here. Rix lunged and struck at its back.

It whirled, the left fist clubbed and shot out like a Cythonian war rocket. Rix tried to parry it but the air clung to his blade like tar and he barely got it up in time to protect his face from a blow that would have pulped it. The facinore’s fist struck the flat of the blade, driving it against his forehead so hard that Rix saw coloured lights. He staggered, momentarily dazed, went to one knee then recovered as the other fist came looping around, shifting and opening like lobster pincers.

Instinct jerked the edge of his blade into its path. The pincers split down the limb and the left half shot past his head. The right half struck him a skidding blow on the cheek that knocked him sideways and almost tore his ear off. Defence was going to be fatal. His only option was to attack.

The severed pincers withdrew, shifted to the serrated blade of a sawfish and the muscles behind it swelled as it prepared for a killing blow. Rix settled into the warrior’s mindset where his sword became an extension of his arm and he simply reacted. The sawfish blade swung. Rix did too, hacking it off, and when it clattered to the floor it sizzled into a black, glutinous stain.

The facinore shifted its other arm to a narwhal’s tusk and tried to spear him through the groin. He leapt onto the six-foot tusk, swung low and clove it off at the shoulder. The facinore shrieked and stumbled, and its enveloping shadow shrank, retreating into flesh. The shifter seemed smaller than before, though it was still bigger than he was. He was only one lucky blow away from death, but luck was an unreliable ally.

His own warrior’s heart was not; attack was the only defence worth pursuing. He lunged, weaving between the blows, and struck at its chest, turning the sword tip in a circle as if to cut out its heart. Fire seared up the blade, the facinore reared and the sword withdrew. He’d hurt it.

A rhino’s foot struck his kneecap, numbing the whole leg. He staggered sideways and the blow that would have smashed his pelvis glanced off his hip and spun him around. He went with it, whirling and putting the momentum into his swing, and was aiming for its neck when an icy needle blast pierced his shoulder.

Before Rix could check behind him the facinore attacked with a pile-driving flurry of blows, driving him backwards, and suddenly he was fighting for his life. A dozen chisel-shaped protrusions shot at him. He severed three, then another two, and ducked the rest. The facinore shrank and withdrew a step.

Ha! Rix thought.

Before he could strike a fatal blow, another rain of cold needles spiked into the back of his shoulder. He was under attack with magery. The ice set alight his nerve fibres, spread to his heart and it began to race and burn as it had done when he had been attacked by Mijl the pothecky, by the lake. When he had nearly died …

There was no one behind him save Tobry. Rix turned, free hand pressed to his heart, the other hand fighting the titane blade which had begun to shudder as though thirsting to drink the blood of his dearest friend.

A friend with someone else glaring out of his eyes.

Lyf had returned, and in the chaos he had slipped into Tobry’s unprotected mind like a key into a lock.