Red Tide (33 page)

A left turn, and another, and another. Were they going in circles now? People ran in every direction, seemingly as lost as Karmel herself. Then abruptly Caval slowed, his arms coming out to shield Karmel from whatever lay ahead. Stone-skins? No, when the priestess looked past she saw only two Rubyholters, a woman pushed face-first against a wall, a man behind her with one arm round her throat, smiling a cutthroat smile. The woman had gone for a knife at her hip, but the man's free hand gripped her wrist to stop her from drawing it.

It was the same way Veran had held Karmel in that cave below Dian.

Something snapped in the priestess, and her anger came boiling up. She didn't know she'd been storing it inside, but it broke upon her now like a wave that had burst its dam. She pushed past Caval, her sword raised. Someone was shouting, could have been her. The man half turned. His eyes showed irritation at first, then widened in alarm. He released the woman, stepped back, and lifted his hands.

“Now, wait up there.”

Karmel's sword slashed through his hands and cut into his face, tore his cheek open and smashed the bone beneath. Blood spattered the wall behind. The man went down with a shriek. The priestess stood over him, her sword poised to deliver a mortal stroke. He'd landed on his side, the flesh of his cheek flapping where she'd opened it from mouth to ear. Beneath, his teeth had been smashed to stumps. A severed finger with a wedding band lay in the pool of blood spreading about his head.

Karmel retched up bile. Her legs were weak, and she might have sat down in the alley if Caval hadn't seized her arm. The Rubyholt woman cowered against the wall, her face covered with blood, sobbing hysterically. She wouldn't meet Karmel's gaze. Probably thought the priestess meant to carve her up next, and Karmel's rage burned all the hotter.
You're welcome!
she wanted to shout, but she couldn't form the words.

Caval steered her away.

*   *   *

As the spiders poured from the wall, Noon gave a strangled curse and reached for one of the sorcerous globes in his belt-pouch.

Amerel seized his arm. “No,” she said, “you'll kill us too.”

Noon didn't answer. She wasn't even sure he'd heard her.

“No!” she said again, sharp enough to make him flinch. Then she gathered her Will and lashed out at the spiders. The air concussed amid the onrushing black tide, sending scores of broken creatures spinning into the air.

Still they came. Of course they did, this was Hex's dream—no matter how many Amerel killed, he could always make more.

Hex sighed. “Yes, I know, spiders are terribly unimaginative. I promise you my next creations will be more inventive. Hee hee!”

Noon tore free of Amerel's grasp and looked about with wild eyes. But there was nowhere to run. He sheathed his swords and drew a throwing knife before hurling it at one of the larger spiders. And some of the creatures were big enough to take a knife, too—huge black things with white on their backs like a dusting of snow.

“Fear not,” Hex said, “their bite isn't poisonous.”

Amerel did not doubt it. The dreamweaver had said he intended to question her and Noon, so he wasn't going to kill them so early in the game. What to do, though? Climb onto the desk? That would only delay the inevitable. Spin a Will-shield about herself to keep the spiders at bay? Hex would simply make the creatures rise from the floor instead, or conjure them up inside her barrier. No, better to meet his challenge head-on. Better to use what little time she had left to prepare herself. She set her jaw. This wouldn't be the first time she'd had to endure something like this. The Deliverer had liked spiders too, she recalled. Didn't everyone?

In her peripheral vision, she saw Noon drop to his knees and curl into a ball, thumbs pressed over his ears, hands covering his eyes and nose.

Amerel took a breath and let it out slowly. Her pulse was trying to run away from her, but she reined it in. There were a dozen different exercises the Guardians used to heighten their concentration. The one she had in mind, though, worked by blocking out the world around her. Focus was a hard thing to find with the wave of spiders rolling closer, yet force of habit saved her, and one by one the perceptions of her senses melted away: the dryness in her throat, the sweat on her brow, the knot in her stomach.

The spiders engulfed Noon, and he disappeared from view. The creatures had also reached Hex. The stone-skin could have disappeared himself if he'd wanted to, but instead he remained motionless as the spiders scuttled up his legs. He giggled like he was being tickled.

Amerel closed her eyes.

Even through her sensory detachment, she felt a whisper of movement on the tops of her feet as the first spiders reached her. She needed something else to think about, and what better way to distract herself than to consider how she was going to get out of here? Her first instinct was to use her Will to strike at Hex in the hope she might cause his dream to waver, but there seemed little chance of that if even a knife in his eye hadn't broken his concentration. The stone-skin was no more than a sending—a phantasm—and it was the conscious will
behind
that image she needed to target. Yet she still had no idea where Hex's body was sleeping. Somewhere close, no doubt, but did she have time to go looking?

No, better to target the dream than the man who'd fashioned it. She couldn't lift the portcullis behind her, couldn't shatter the metal from which it was forged, but perhaps she could interrupt the flow of power sustaining it. If she focused a Will-strike to the gate, she might be able to punch through. Reach the yard beyond, and she would escape his clutches. The dreamworld couldn't exist there too, else Hex would have sprung his trap the moment Amerel entered it on arriving.

Her hair stirred as a spider crawled across her head.
Ignore it.
She'd closed her mouth to keep the creatures out, but when she tried to breathe through her nose, she found one nostril half blocked by something inside. A wave of revulsion swept through her, a shudder that started at the tips of her toes—

Then suddenly the obstruction was gone, and she sensed a change come over her body: the release of a weight she'd barely noticed before; an abrupt silence where previously there had been a half-perceived rustle of tiny legs. Her skin tingled with the memory of the spiders, but the creatures themselves were … gone?

Unless that was just what Hex wanted her to think.

She opened her eyes. The room had grown darker, and she had to squint now to see the dreamweaver, still watching her, still smiling.

Yes, the spiders were gone.

A burst of relief made her shoulders sag, but she couldn't afford to lower her guard. If she didn't escape, those spiders would mark not the end of her ordeal but the beginning. And Amerel had no wish to see what horrors Hex summoned next from the throbbing walls. Now was the time to strike. She gathered her power, felt it swell within her like a long-drawn breath. To her left, Noon remained curled in a ball.

“Get up,” she said to him. She couldn't tell him what she planned to do without alerting Hex, but if the Breaker was to escape with her, he needed to be ready to move.

He paid her no mind.

“Get up!” she said again. One chance she would give him to pull himself together. One chance, and even that seemed a mercy she could ill afford.

Hex spoke. “You control your fear well,” he said to Amerel. “But not all fears are of the flesh. Take our friend Talet here.” He pointed to the spy's corpse, and it rose in a series of jerky motions. “His greatest fear was for his son, but I made him betray the boy before the end. Can you imagine that? Giving up the person you care for most? Cursing yourself with your final breath? His mind broke long before his body did.”

Fascinating stuff. What did Hex think Amerel was going to do, vow to avenge the spy? She should thank him rather for sparing her the task of killing the man.

Noon finally stirred. He rose on shaky legs, his expression as grim as their setting. It looked like Amerel wouldn't be the only one having bad dreams for a while.

“Now that those spiders are out of the way,” Hex said, “we can move on to something with more … bite.” He gestured to the torture implements lining one wall. “You may need some assistance taking your place in the more elaborate devices, but fear not, help is at hand. Hee hee!”

The walls bulged again, and figures started to squirm from the slime. First to emerge was a girl missing both feet, and she tottered toward Amerel with stilted steps. Behind her came a man with weeping red arms, the flesh peeled back to reveal the workings of the muscles. Talet, meanwhile, advanced on the Guardian with a knife in his hand. Her mouth twitched. Here was irony. She'd come to this place to kill the man, yet
he
could end up killing
her.

“Who's first?” Hex asked. “No pushing, please.”

Amerel edged back. A dozen freaks had now been … birthed from the walls, with more appearing each moment. The Guardian half turned toward the portcullis. Beyond, the yard remained empty of stone-skins, but there could have been a legion out there and she would still have chosen their company over Hex's.

No more putting this off. She needed to hit this with everything she had.

She struck at the portcullis with her Will. The gate and the wall around it rippled like they were naught but reflections in a pool. Then the center of the portcullis melted to leave a circle of brightness an armspan across, the bars immediately around it half translucent. Only an armspan? Amerel had hoped for something bigger, but Hex was already throwing his will in opposition to hers. The gap began to close.

She sprang forward.

The opening was too small to simply jump through, so she dived headfirst, felt a faint resistance like she was plunging through cobwebs. Then her feet clipped the bars at the bottom of the hole. Her dive became a sprawl. She stung her palms on the gravel in the yard, slipped as she sought to rise, then scrabbled forward on all fours to make way for Noon behind. The sounds of fighting in the city were suddenly loud and disconcertingly close. Regaining her feet, Amerel turned about so quickly she almost spun herself from her feet.

Noon had only just reached the portcullis. Still holding his swords, he flung himself through the hole. But the opening had nearly shut. His feet caught on the gate as Amerel's had done, his upper body pitching forward and down. Before he could pull his legs clear, the bars closed on them. Amerel thought the metal would sheer through his ankles. Instead it held him pinned. The sight of him was almost comical—face in the gravel, legs up in the air behind. But Noon wasn't laughing as he writhed and bucked and kicked. He released his swords, fingers scrabbling at the ground for something to grip.

“Help me!”

Amerel hesitated. Hex's dreamworld was expanding into the yard, the mold and the shadows spilling out from the study.

“Help me!” Noon screamed again.

He'd stopped calling her Princess, she noticed.

Amerel looked at him. One chance, she'd told herself, and hadn't she given him that? It wasn't her fault if he'd been slow to trail her through the opening. To her right a black flash seared the sky, and it was followed by the
whump
of a sorcerous explosion, the patter and groan of a building collapsing. Running feet sounded from along the street. Stone-skins on their way to Dresk's fortress, most likely, but it wouldn't require much of a detour to call on this place. Amerel stood a better chance of escaping if she left now. And if Hex had Noon to answer his questions, maybe he wouldn't feel the need to come looking for her afterward.

It was the right thing to do; even the Breaker couldn't deny it.

Her gaze locked to Noon's. She could see in his eyes that he'd read her intent. There was no pleading, no cursing—he just stared at her. She'd miss him, of course, but she could always find someone else to mock her and question her every action.

Behind, Hex's dreamworld edged closer, threads of sorcery creeping into the yard like tendrils of knotweed.

Scowling, Amerel struck at the portcullis with her Will. Hex must have anticipated the move, for the resistance she met was stronger than before. She didn't need to create a hole as large as the last one, though, just some wriggle room for Noon to pry himself loose. His left leg came free, the right twisted but held. The Breaker screamed his frustration. He flipped onto his back, braced his free foot against the door frame, and pushed.

Nothing.

Amerel tensed to hit the gate again.

No need. A final yank, and Noon's foot pulled out of his boot. He kicked like an upturned beetle, then rolled and staggered upright. He didn't thank her. He didn't even look at her, just gazed at the boot caught in the portcullis as if he was minded to try and retrieve it.

“Leave it!” Amerel said, not quite believing he had to be told.

The Breaker frowned.

Another magical detonation set the doors and windows rattling, but at least it had come from farther away than the previous one. Evidently the fight had passed the house by—

A sword scraped free of its scabbard.

Amerel swung round to see four stone-skins, all men, standing on the opposite side of the courtyard. One of them had no armor—a mage, probably. All wore red cloaks and the relaxed expressions of warriors who had never tasted defeat. As Amerel studied them, she shook her head in disgust. If she'd left when she had the chance, she might have avoided them. This was what she got for helping Noon. Offer your hand to someone hanging from a cliff, and more often than not they dragged you over the side with them.

She drew her sword. Beside her Noon was hopping about on one foot, pulling off his remaining boot. What, was he going to throw it at the stone-skins? The enemy held their ground. All they had to do was stop Amerel and Noon escaping until Hex's dreamworld expanded into the courtyard.