Of the Abyss (22 page)

The new Abyssi snarled, a noise that struck Hansa like a blow, driving a sharp pain between his temples. Its fur rose, as well as a crest of inky spines around its jaw and above its eyes, tipped in the brilliant green and orange stripes Hansa associated with poisonous frogs. “Alizarin owes me.”

Stall,
Hansa thought. Alizarin said he would be nearby hunting. He had to have anticipated a challenge like this coming. If he could sense another Abyssi so close, he would come back.

Right?

It was hard to hold to that fragile hope as Antioch stalked closer and looked past Umber's shoulder to directly meet Hansa's eyes. The light of the Abyss glowed in them like the blue heart of a pyre. “You stole my mancer,” he accused.

Help came from the last place Hansa ever would have expected. Xaz said, “From what I heard, you had nearly destroyed your mancer already. Hansa wouldn't have been there if you hadn't used him so carelessly.”

Another of those horrifying blinks, and the Abyssi was suddenly in front of Xaz. He lifted a hand and touched her face.

Xaz flinched, and Hansa saw beads of blood run down her cheek.

“Alizarin asked permission to give my chosen one a gift. Do you know what that gift was?”

Xaz paused an instant to think, then guessed, “The knife.” Her voice was tight and strangled. “That's how he formed a bond with me.”

“He
said
it would make a powerful tool,” Antioch growled. “But as soon as it was time to fight, he forced my mancer to discard it.”

“Alizarin didn't make Baryte throw the knife away,” Cadmia said
.
She sounded breathy, as if it was hard to get the words out. Was she mad enough to think arguing with Antioch was a good idea, or had she, like Hansa, decided playing for time was their only way to survive this?

As Antioch flickered in front of Cadmia, he remarked, “I only need to keep one of you.” The words sounded contemplative, though they were clearly a threat. He looked from her to Hansa as if trying to decide which one he wanted.

Hansa looked around, desperately hoping the shades had some kind of secret weapon they could use against the Abyssi, but they had scattered like leaves before a storm. No help from that quarter.

“Hansa belongs to me,” Umber said, drawing the Abyssi's attention back to him, “and I did nothing to you. Perhaps we could discuss an arrangement?”

He's not serious,
Hansa thought.
I really hope he's not serious.
He didn't think Umber was the type to sell one of them to an Abyssi if he had a choice, but he might not feel there was another option. Maybe there wasn't.

“Your human took my mancer,” the Abyssi spat, “so I was going to take
him
. Baryte marked him for me. You tried to remove the mark, but you can't own prey I already claimed.”

This time, when the Abyssi looked back at Hansa, he felt the old, healed injury in his left hand flare to life again. Compared to the suffocating heat he had felt when Baryte had first cut him, this was like holding a winter-­chilled hand up before a slightly-­too-­hot fire to warm, but understanding made him shudder.

If it hadn't been for Umber, he really could have become a mancer—­not from the deep rents down his back from Alizarin, but from a tiny scratch made by an Abyssumancer's blade.

“That's why he was able to get blood-­drunk,” Umber said, clearly trying to pull Antioch's attention away from Hansa again. “I was able to remove Alizarin's power from him, but didn't notice your mark among the larger contamination.”

Whatever Antioch might have said in return was lost. The Abyssi bounded past Umber, brushing against Hansa before shouldering Cadmia out of the way, sending her sprawling. Hansa spun, relieved to see that Antioch was heading toward another form now slipping over the gate—­this one a familiar, luminescent blue.

Alizarin's humanity had faded away. As he crossed the sands, he was once again the formless terror they had seen when they first appeared in the Abyss, something Hansa flinched instinctively away from even as he breathed relief at his appearance. Knees weak, he leaned against Umber for support, listening to the rapid pounding of the spawn's anxious heart. Xaz scrambled to help Cadmia.

Antioch leapt. Alizarin met him, and they clashed as a void of darkness, claws, fangs, and hunger.

A deep rumbling came from the combatants. Hansa felt it as a grating sensation, as if his bones were moving tectonically past each other. A hiss from one of the Abyssi reached him like a sharp wind.

Come on,
Umber urged, his voice in Hansa's head momentarily loud enough to get his attention. He was trying to make them all move.

Hansa's limbs felt leaden, and the others looked the same. With Xaz's help, Cadmia was pushing to her feet haltingly, her mouth set in a grim line. The Numenmancer was gray-­pale except for the blood seeping down her face.

Hansa spared a look back to the two Abyssi. They were lost in a swirling miasma of indefinable violence.

“Get out!” Hansa jumped as the shade who had greeted them so graciously earlier hissed at them to leave. “Don't come back here.”

“But—­”

He hadn't really intended to argue, just hadn't been able to think quickly enough to process Yarrow's words. The shade snapped, “We survive here because the Abyssi have no interest in us.
Get out!”

Stumbling, gasping, they fled the encampment.

 

CHAPTER 26

X
az's only injuries were the small cuts on her face, but she felt battered. When a dog growled, it raised its hackles and tried to look big to avoid a fight. When an Abyssi growled, it wasn't posturing; it was a first attack. Power flared like a mantle, striking those within range. Just being near the two battling creatures was enough to do damage to a mortal.

They limped along, following Umber with no thought beyond
get away,
until Cadmia collapsed and gasped, “Can't.”

A plume of fine black sand rose around her, looking too inviting to resist. Xaz fell next to her with little more grace.

The others didn't argue either, but sprawled nearby, alternately coughing and panting as if they had all inhaled something caustic.

Cadmia clutched a hand to her ribs, grimacing.

“How badly are you hurt?” Xaz asked, remembering Antioch striking Cadmia on his way by.

“I don't know.”

“You're bleeding,” Umber told her. “Your arm, your side.”

The light that had grayed the sky when they first arrived had been dying since some time at the shades' camp, and even the glowing creatures on the trees seemed less numerous now. In the dim light, any blood on Cadmia's dark clothes was invisible to Xaz. Was Umber's vision better, or could he sense the blood another way?

“Let me see,” Umber said.

Cadmia set her jaw as if the movement hurt, and gingerly raised her shirt. Jagged scratches ran up and down her chest and arm on the side where Antioch had brushed against her. Several were still bleeding, and the skin around them was inflamed.

Umber pulled off his own shirt and started tearing it into strips, using the pieces to apply pressure to the deepest cuts. Cadmia let out a small, pained sound at the back of her throat.

“How bad is it?” Xaz asked. She didn't like the look of the swollen flesh that surrounded the wounds. They reminded her of the brightly colored spines Antioch had lifted when angered, which in a natural creature would have warned of poison.

“The blood might attract predators,” Hansa said. His words were carefully measured, as if forming them was a struggle. “We should . . .” He looked around, eyes scanning the ground, then made a waving gesture as if trying to recall the word. No, not as if searching for a word; as if swinging a sword.

“Weapons,” Cadmia agreed.

Her voice choked on the end of the word and she started coughing, a fit that racked her body so severely Umber had to grip her tightly to keep her from falling face-­first in the sand. By the time she had recovered, her face was flushed and covered with a sheen of sweat, but her lips were gray-­blue.

Umber lifted the cloth he was using to staunch the blood, and Xaz clamped her teeth on her horror as she saw the way the skin around the wounds had started to blister and blacken.

“Can you do anything?” she asked the spawn. “You healed Hansa.”

“With effort, I could close the wounds and stop the bleeding,” Umber said hesitantly. “I can't remove the poison from her blood, though.” Cadmia bit her lip, suppressing her first response to the obvious death sentence Umber had just declared, and the spawn added hastily, “It's an Abyssal poison. Divine power might be able to cleanse it.”

They both looked at Xaz expectantly, Umber calmly and Cadmia with a desperate plea.

“Xaz?” Umber prompted. His voice was too calm, carefully managed to avoid panicking Cadmia, as if she couldn't see and undoubtedly feel the poison's rapid spread.

“I don't know if I can do anything.” She was unable to make her voice any stronger than a whisper. “I haven't had much control over my power since Alizarin bonded to me.”

“Try?” Cadmia urged.

Xaz nodded sharply, and forced herself to step forward. She knelt next to the Sister of the Napthol, and touched her fingertips to a spot of unmarked skin. Cadmia jumped, reminding Xaz that her hands were usually icy. Ruby used to remark on it when Xaz accidentally touched her while passing a dish at dinner or something similar.

“Sorry,” she said to Cadmia, closing her eyes and resisting the impulse to look at Hansa. “My power is cold.”

It wasn't the first time Ruby had come to mind unexpectedly and it wouldn't be the last. Despite all Xaz's attempts to keep her distance, Ruby had been a friend, and Xaz was almost certainly at least partially responsible for her death. Now that the strange madness that had gripped them all had receded, Xaz didn't like the idea of trying to resurrect the woman, but if she could save Ruby's soul from the Abyss along with the dead guards, she would do it.

Finger-­walking along Cadmia's skin, she found the edges of Antioch's poison and tugged at it. She envisioned her own, cool power flowing through the wounds to cleanse them like a river flooding a stagnant pool.

Instead of her magic rising in her body, an icy voice slipped into her mind.
Now you seek our aid?
it asked.
After defying us, you dare seek our assistance?

Xaz felt a new kind of coldness wash over her, one that had nothing to do with her magic and everything to do with fury.

“Napthol is a Numini, isn't it? That means she is sworn to one of
you,
”
she murmured, her voice sub-­audible, only intended for her disapproving Numini patron.
“You won't let her die.
”

She has already been given to us as a tool for our plans,
the Numini replied indifferently.
If those plans are not to find success, she is of no more use to us.

Oh, those bastards. Those arrogant, manipulative—­

Watch your thoughts, Mancer,
the Numini hissed warningly.
Your tie to the Abyssi is making you irrational and disrespectful. We have given you a task. If you are not our servant, we have no responsibility to give you aid.

“Is this the first time you've manipulated Antioch into helping you get your way?”
she asked, this time not worrying about keeping her voice quiet enough to keep the others from overhearing.
“Or were you the one who made his mancer throw the knife at me, too?
”

If you hope to save her, you had best decide swiftly,
the Numini advised.

Xaz opened her eyes, and blinked them twice to clear the rim of frost that tried to stick the lashes together. The world around her had the silver halo she knew meant the Numini were still riding her.

She said the words swiftly, bluntly. “A necromancer cannot raise Ruby unless she has a body to raise, and the Quin will have destroyed that by now.” She saw Hansa and Umber both tense, their faces showing wary relief that disappeared swiftly when she continued. “There is a sorcerer who
can
raise her, though, a man named Terre Verte. The Numini want us to retrieve him from the Abyssi court.”

Hansa's breath hissed in as if he, too, had been stung by the Abyssi. Umber raised his eyes skyward, took a breath, and said flatly, “You've relayed your message. Can you help Cadmia now?”

Before Xaz could turn her attention to the effort, she felt the Numini's power rush through her, not a river but a torrent. Cadmia called out wordlessly, her body spasming once as the magic struck her.

When it was done, Xaz collapsed, panting, on the black sand, which was rimed with ice in a spreading circle. She wasn't sure when Umber had moved away, but he and Hansa had judiciously stepped back from the needle-­like icicles and frost heaves that grew like strange plants ringing her and Cadmia.

Umber called, “Are you two all right?”

Before Xaz could catch her breath to answer, Cadmia's dazed voice said, “I think so.” As Xaz struggled to sit up, Cadmia prodded at the remnants of the wounds on her side and arm. The bleeding had stopped, though not in the neat way an Abyssumancer's wounds healed; it looked more like the injuries had been seared shut with frostbite. More importantly, though, the swelling had gone down, and Cadmia's skin had returned to a healthier shade.

As she remembered the price she had paid for that healing, Xaz looked up at Umber and said, “I'm sorry.”

He gave a half shrug, his other arm around Hansa, who looked as dazed and exhausted as Xaz felt.

Briefly, Xaz indulged a fantasy in which the hero of Mars had discovered himself to be a mancer following Baryte's death. Would Antioch have been able to twist him fast enough to secure his loyalty even as he served Kavet from such a lofty role? Or would Hansa have found an excuse to resign when he realized what he was? Would he have killed himself?

“We need to rest before we can accomplish anything else,” Umber said, surveying their bedraggled group. “That will give Alizarin time to come back. Or not,” he admitted with a wince. “I do not think we can plan a trip into the royal court until we know if we have him on our side.”

Xaz had been so focused on Cadmia, it hadn't occurred to her until that moment that Alizarin hadn't come after them. The fight had to be over by now. She looked out over the Abyss, which had now grown so dark it was hard to even see Hansa and Umber a few feet off. A breeze had sprung up as the light faded, and though it couldn't compete with a Kavet winter or come anywhere near to divine cold, Hansa and Cadmia both hunched against it.

Hansa stepped away from Umber as he asked, “Can we make a fire?”

“Do you see anything that might burn?” Umber asked in reply. “I don't know what the shades made their fire from, but all I see here is stone and sand. If we all stay close, we should be all right.”

Cadmia nodded, warily looking between the two men, as if recognizing the logic in the suggestion but not entirely comfortable with it. Hansa, who Xaz would have expected to jump at the invitation to lie down with the Abyss-­spawn he had been intermittently cuddling against all day, continued to make excuses.

“One of us should stand guard. I'll take first shift,” Hansa volunteered. “I know I can't kill an Abyssi if one comes, but those shades talked about hunting. That means there are some creatures here a mortal is strong enough to fight.”

Umber sighed, shook his head, and said, “Do whatever you want, Quin. Just don't wander off.”

“Are we really helpless against the Abyssi?” Cadmia asked. “Aren't Numenmancers supposed to be able to summon lightning?”

Supposed to
was the operative word. Cadmia clearly hadn't been coherent enough to realize how close she had come to dying through the Numini's stupid pride and refusal to help unless Xaz heeded their will.

She said, “Don't count on the Numini's help. They aren't that generous.”

It was the closest to a direct criticism of her divine masters as she had ever dared speak aloud, but she was too tired to worry about whether they heard her and would make her pay for the words later. She led the way to a hollow where black stones and sand dunes would block the worst of the wind and reached out to smooth the sand—­

Umber pulled her back an instant before a glistening, transparent tentacle no thicker than her little finger flailed upward, seized nothing, and disappeared again beneath the sand.

“What was that?” Cadmia asked hoarsely.

“I think . . .” Umber trailed off and frowned, looking around. After a moment he found a shell a little longer than his forearm, which he used to gingerly prod the black sand.

Again the tentacle came up, this time joined by several others. They slapped the shell with a meaty sound and wrapped around it, questing both directions. Just before they reached Umber's hand, he yanked on the shell, pulling the creature attached to the tentacles up like a carrot.

The little beast had a fat, bulbous body that looked like a jellyfish's, eight thick legs segmented like an insect's, and a mass of slender tentacles that groped toward Umber's hand before he threw the shell and dangling thing away. Every part of it looked watery and translucent, like something that should have been crushed by the sand in which it had hidden.

It started moving toward Umber, who pulled Xaz with him as he backed away.

Hansa stepped forward with another long, sharp-­edged shell, which he used to decisively cut the creature in half.

“Be careful of sheltered places where the sand is soft and deep,” Umber said. “There are small creatures in the Abyss that can devour a man or woman as surely as the larger beasts can. They just do it more slowly.”

Xaz was reconsidering whether she ever again needed to sleep when she felt the approach of familiar power.

Alizarin's normal bounding stride was more subdued than usual, and as he drew close, Xaz could see scalds and tufts where his fur pulled irregularly over new injuries. It was hard to tell in the dim light, but even his colors seemed subdued, blue tinged gray instead of his normal brilliant turquoise and sapphire.

“Are you all right?” she asked, reaching toward him instinctively.

Somehow Cadmia got there first. Alizarin leaned toward her hand.

Through their magical bond, Xaz could feel the Abyssi's overwhelming fatigue, but he tossed his head dismissively as Cadmia crooned sympathetic words.

“I won,” Alizarin announced. “I needed to hunt after. You did, too?” he asked, looking at the still-­twitching creature. “I don't think you can eat those.”

“I wasn't going to try,” Hansa said.

“They taste bad,” Alizarin said idly, “and their poison rots flesh, though it takes a few days to get all the way in to the heart and brain. They didn't touch you, did they?” he asked Hansa, seeming reluctant to spend time on the question.

Eyes wide, Hansa paused to look at his hands, then shook his head.

“Good,” Alizarin said. “Umber wouldn't want to cut pieces off you.” With no further concern, he stretched, fluffed his fur, yawned widely and announced, “It's time to sleep. You picked a good spot.”