The Brush of Black Wings (13 page)

Another twist; another pained gasp. “Why
should I believe you?”

This time Megiddo’s smile was triumphant. The
hand covering Silhara’s lifted, fingers spread. “Because it’s
true.” Before Silhara could pull away, the demon’s index finger
touched his forehead.

And the Master of Crows awakened to
hell.

CHAPTER NINE

“
My gods, what have you done to
him?” Martise stared at the wreckage that was once a tidy cottage
before vaulting over a broken bench and a heap of pots netted
together in a snarl of clothesline.

Silhara crouched with his back to her,
unmoving. The demon king slumped in front of him, impaled by his
own sword. His macabre robes squirmed across his body, twitching
each time a shard of lightning crackled down the blade and lit his
insides like some grotesque festival lamp.

Megiddo lifted his head at her shout. “Don’t
touch him,” he said in a thick voice and promptly spat a gobbet of
black blood onto the floor.

For some reason Martise couldn’t fathom, she
obeyed and skirted around Silhara’s still form to see his face. Her
heartbeat stopped and restarted at the speed of a runaway horse.
Except for several nasty bruises and the streamers of dried blood
from his use of the black arcana to get here, he seemed unharmed.
No fresh blood or broken limbs, but he was like a corpse in rigor,
eyes wide and staring into some unfathomable vastness. His lips
moved, shaping soundless words. he remained unresponsive when
Martise called his name several times, first in gentle question and
finally in resounding demand.

“
What did you do?” she repeated in
quieter, despairing tones.

Megiddo inhaled deeply, grasped the hilt and
pulled the sword out in slow measures. Martise felt the blood drain
from her face and a warning buzz start in her ears. The blade,
driven clean through the demon’s body, glistened with blood that
faded as soon as it hit the light. Megiddo groaned in agony but
continued until the sword no longer impaled him. The unliving robes
parted, and where there should have been a wound, only a long tear
in his tunic shown, surrounded by a dark stain. A human might not
heal here, but a demon did.

Martise stood her ground, unwilling to leave
Silhara’s side, when Megiddo gained his feet, sword still clutched
in his hand. He stared at Silhara in silence for long moments and
then at Martise. “I believe you,
kashaptu
,” he said. “It was
his power, not yours, that awakened the sword and cracked open the
gate.”

She didn’t correct him. Besides, her
recalcitrant Gift might as well not even exist for all the help it
had given her through this ordeal. She gazed at Silhara and didn’t
squelch the whimper that escaped her lips.

“
I gave him memory,” the demon
said. “My memory. My story.” He stepped over scattered bits of
plaster and lath, and skirted the remains of a bench with a broken
washboard perched atop it to retrieve the sword’s scabbard. “When
he revives, tell him to call my name. I will come.”

This time he chose to walk out the door
instead of disappear from sight in an eye’s blink. Martise promptly
forgot him and turned her attention to Silhara. He hadn’t moved,
not a muscle, except for his mouth which continued to recite silent
words.

“
Is he gone?” Acseh spoke from the
doorway.

Martise didn’t bother to turn. The woman had
fled past her into the gray distance, features twisted in terror.
Martise had been too focused on reaching Silhara to stop her or
even to care. “He just walked out,” she answered. “Did you not see
him?” It didn’t surprise her if Megiddo had strolled by Acseh,
soundless and invisible.

The woman remained at the doorway, unwilling
to venture farther inside. “Your mage tried to kill me.”

Knowing Silhara and how he viewed a battle,
she didn’t doubt it. In his mind, one fought to win by whatever
means necessary, and he’d quickly figured out that Acseh was
Megiddo’s weakness, just as she was Silhara’s.

Martise slowly circled him. “Come back to me,
love,” she whispered. “Tell me what you see.” A more desperate,
fearful plea echoed in her mind.
Please, gods, please, please,
please come back to me.

She glanced at Acseh. “I doubt he’s any threat
to you now.”

He made a liar out of her as soon as she spoke
the words. Her skirt hem brushed his hip. Silhara erupted from his
frozen stillness with a bellow that challenged a thunderclap and a
swinging fist that would have taken Martise’s head off her
shoulders if she hadn’t ducked at the last minute. Acseh screamed
and bolted a second time.

Martise shouted his name, forgetting the
danger of revealing his name on the gray plane. He ignored her,
clawing at his cloak, hair, his skin, until he’d gouged scratches
into his arms that welled with blood. A chaotic mix of languages
spilled from his mouth—bits and pieces of spells that set a broken
chair on fire and sent the ceramic water pitcher smashing against
an opposite wall.

The pitch of his voice rose, beyond the raspy
timbre created by a damaged throat, to a high inhuman scream of
unimaginable suffering. His body contorted, and he staggered across
the room in a violent paroxysm of flailing arms and agonized
cries.

Pots, broken shards of pitcher, clothesline
and bits of furniture swirled upward, spinning around the room with
Silhara in the center of its vortex. Martise dove behind the
upended table to keep from being skewered by a pair of flensing
knives and bludgeoned by an iron skillet. The knives buried
themselves in the wall above her head while the skillet smashed
into a cupboard before falling to the floor by her hip.

The spinning column collapsed with the end of
whatever incantation Silhara uttered. His screams had changed to
pitiful moans, and his back arched, as if someone had taken a
bullwhip to him. He careened into the table where Martise had taken
shelter, sick with horror. This had to stop. No waiting for him to
“revive” as Megiddo so gently and so mendaciously
described.

No amount of coaxing or talking would end this
torture, and she had no magic that might subdue him. She wrapped
her hand around the skillet’s handle. Silhara’s voice rose in pitch
again, signaling a crest of whatever torture ripped his mind to
shreds. A gout of flame burst across one wall and spilled down
another. Martise rose to her feet and crept closer. Silhara spun,
and she struck.

The skillet gave a dull
thrung
when it
connected with the side of Silhara’s skull. The screaming stopped
abruptly, and he dropped like a sack of oranges fallen from a cart.
Martise dropped the pan, fingers still stinging from the resonate
vibrations that jittered from her hand to her shoulder when she hit
him.

Smoke filled the room. Above her, the ceiling
groaned a warning just as one of the supporting joists cracked.
Perfect. They’d survived a demon’s machinations only to be killed
by a collapsing roof.

She slid her hands under Silhara’s arms and
dragged him toward the door, uttering a stream of curses that would
have made him applaud if he’d been conscious. The curses changed to
coughs as smoke filled her lungs and obscured the cottage’s
interior. She aimed for the gray light of the open door, barely
visible in the haze of smoke. Silhara was a slender, muscular man
without a speck of extra padding on him, but he was dead weight
unconscious and harder to drag than an anvil through
mud.

Her shoulders clenched in protest, and sweat
soaked the shirt she wore, as much from the exertion of dragging
her husband through the door as from the heat of the fire. The
fetid air smelled almost sweet when she finally got them both to
safety and just in time.

A final booming crack, and the cottage roof
collapsed in a giant cloud of dust and smoke, smothering the flames
inside. The flattened structure revealed Acseh standing in the
distance, staring at the ruins. She rubbed her eyes as if
disbelieving of what she saw.

Shrouded in a fine coating of dirt, Martise
dropped to her backside next to her prone husband and exhaled a
long sigh. She lowered her hand so that it hovered just above his
nose and mouth. His breath tickled her palm, and she breathed
another relieved sigh, this one accompanied by tears.

Her blow hadn’t killed him even if whatever
Megiddo had done to him almost did. She’d take the image of the
powerful Master of Crows reduced to a screaming, thrashing cipher
to her death, certain neither old age nor mind sickness would
lessen its clarity. She’d never made the mistake of assuming him
invincible. Their battle with the lich years earlier had confirmed
that, but a man who could defeat a god seemed invulnerable in many
ways. A demon king had shown her otherwise, and she’d hate him
beyond immortality for it.

She jumped when Silhara groaned and reached up
to gingerly touch the side of his head. “What is wrong with you?”
he said in a voice so scratchy he was almost incoherent. “First you
try to emasculate me by kicking my balls into my throat and then
you bash my head in.”

Martise’s dry chuckle turned to outright
laughter mixed with tears. He’d come back to her—beaten, bloody,
exasperated and snappish. Very much the man she loved with all her
heart.

She stroked his hair away from his face and
temples, careful to avoid the swelling knot where the skillet had
kissed him. “You’re a filthy mess,” she told him. He frowned at
her, and somewhere in that black, black gaze, Martise saw a glimmer
of something that made her shiver—horror. He blinked and it was
gone, and a part of her hoped she imagined it.

“
And you’re beautiful,” he
replied. “Dirt suits you. So does my shirt.” He sat up with her
help and felt the spot where she struck him. “Ouch! Did you have to
hit me that hard?” His scowl faded when he caught sight of the
cottage. “You knocked the house down too?”

She grasped his hand, laced her fingers
through his and kissed his dusty knuckles. “You and Megiddo did
that.” She saw it again, that flicker of aversion she’d never seen
before Megiddo’s enchantment. “What did he do to you, husband? I
found you entranced, completely unaware of your surroundings. When
I touched you, you went mad.”

Silhara’s harsh features grew even harsher,
colder. He stared at the deep scratches he’d inflicted on his arms
and felt the ones on his neck. “There is memory, and there is
nightmare,” he said hoarsely. “Did I hurt you?” She shook her head,
and his shoulders slumped a little before stiffening once more.
“Did he say anything to you?”

She shrugged, desperate to banish that strange
look in his eyes but unable to figure out how, especially when he
was as cryptic as he was now. “Only that he gave you his story, and
when you revived to call his name. He’d come to you.” She clutched
his hand. “Silhara, you can’t battle him yet. Whatever he did
surely weakened you. Maybe enough so that we can’t escape here
yet.”

He stood and lifted her with him until she
rested in the circle of his arms. His beautiful hair was as matted
and dirt-encrusted as hers was now. Never before had she wanted so
badly to be in their bed at this moment with her sitting
cross-legged behind him, combing out his long locks. If they made
it back—when they made it back—she planned to spend hours doing
just that and thanking kind gods for the chance to indulge in so
simple and so fine a thing.

Silhara brushed his thumb across her
cheekbone, and his lips tilted upward a little. “Smears over
smears. Somewhere under all that grit is skin I plan to taste when
we return home.”

“
Promises, promises,” she teased.
She liked that he was as certain of their return as she was. Like
her, he didn’t allow himself the defeat of a “no” or even a
“maybe.”

He gently patted her tangled hair. “I won’t
need to fight him. Not anymore. Not with what I know.”

“
What do you know?” Martise
frowned. He’d retreated back to cryptic remarks. She regretted her
question when his face paled.

“
That cruelty is immeasurable.” He
said it in almost the same hollow voice Megiddo possessed, and
Martise recoiled in his arms. Silhara patted her back to reassure
her. “He said I only need to call his name?” She nodded.

He released her and stepped to one side.
“Megiddo,” he said in a low voice.

Martise almost leapt out of her skin when the
demon spoke behind her. “I am here.”

Silhara slowly turned to face Megiddo. The two
eyed each other in silence, neither moving. Martise’s mouth fell
open when her husband suddenly inclined his head in a gesture of
sincere respect. “Megiddo Saruum,” he said in his ruined voice. “I
am Silhara of Neith, Master of Crows.”

She uttered a strangled gasp, too stunned to
form sounds into words. Less than an hour earlier, they’d
threatened to kill each other and the women trapped with them. Now,
her husband not only greeted the demon with a deference he didn’t
bother to show gods by calling him King Megiddo, but voluntarily
offered up his own name. Her earlier question bore even more
significance.

What do you know?

Megiddo returned the gesture and added a
salute, shocking Martise into further speechlessness. “You’re a
worthy adversary. As I said earlier, my brothers and I could have
used your help. Will you help me now?” His glaze slid to Acseh who
refused to draw closer. “Help us?”