The Black Bouquet

"My perspective has changed," Sefris replied, still gliding forward past the corpses of the Red Axes. "I'm done playing your games. You claimed you could hold up under torture for a long while, but now I'm going to put it to the test. We'll see if you can keep your secret while I mangle you one small piece at a time. Rest assured that if you do, after I finish with you, I'll hunt down Nicos and make him pay for your stubbor

Aeron backed away from her. He could feel the blood from his torn scalp on the nape of his neck.

"All right," he said, "you win. I'll take you to the book."

"It isn't that easy," Sefris said. "You've played too many tricks. I need to pluck an eye or cripple a limb, so you'll understand what truly lies in store for you. I need to hear you scream and beg. Maybe after that, I'll find it possible to believe what you say."

He lifted his weapons. For no reason, really, except mat he preferred to go down fighting. He knew he had no chance, or at least that was what he assumed until he glimpsed a stirring at the uppermost edge of his vision.

Terrified as he was, he nearly jerked his head higher for a better look. If he had, Sefris would naturally have turned and peered, also. Fortunately, at the last possible instant, his instinct for stealth asserted itself, and he managed to glance surreptitiously upward without alerting her.

Miri was squirming inside the shadow tentacle. She must have played dead so Sefris wouldn't blast her with yet another spell. The monastic had turned her attention elsewhere, so the ranger was trying to free herself. If she succeeded, and Aeron stayed alive until she did, perhaps the plan could still work.

He retreated farther. Every second he could keep away from his pursuer was another moment for Miri to struggle free. Sefris broke into a sprint to close the distance. He wished he could think her reckless for rushing his long, sharp fighting knife that way, but knew she had no reason to fear it.

She leaped high, spun, and kicked at his head. Aeron jumped back, and the attack fell short by inches. He slashed at her foot as it whizzed by, but he was too slow.

She touched down, and instantly, her stiffened hands chopped at him. He hopped back once more, faked a thrust with the Arthyn fang when she followed, and lashed the cudgel at her head in a true attack. She ignored the knife, blocked the club with her forearm, and smashed her leather-wrapped fist into his solar plexus.

All the strength went out of him. He would have collapsed if she hadn't caught him. Her fingertips dug into each of his wrists in turn. His hands spasmed, and he dropped his weapons. Still holding him upright, she manhandled him down the alley, no doubt seeking a dark spot where she could torture him undisturbed.

Sefris threw herself to the side, carrying him with her. An arrow from on high streaked past them. He didn't think she'd been looking upward, but somehow she'd sensed it coming.

A second shaft flew at once. Heedless of the danger to the man Sefris still clutched against her, Miri was shooting as fast as she could. Ironically, at that moment, it was the daughter of the Dark Moon who had the greater care for his safety. She flung him aside to smack down on the ground.

Unencumbered, Sefris shifted back and forth, her spi

Which was to say that Sefris was still going to win the fight, and hurt as he was, Aeron had no idea how to change that. Even if he could muster the strength to find his fallen knife and attack, the monastic would just swat him down like a fly.

Unless…

He couldn't seem to catch his breath but forced himself to crawl. It was easier than walking and less likely to attract Sefris's notice.

As he neared the dead orc, Sefris lashed lengths of black ribbon through the air. Up on the roof, a ragged bulb of shadow exploded into being. Caught in the dark flare, Miri wailed, lost her footing on the slanted tiles, fell on her rump, and slid. She plunged partway off the edge, then managed to snatch hold of something and catch herself. Her bow and most of the remaining arrows from her quiver tumbled toward the ground.

Aeron had to find the strength to rise. Otherwise, in just another second, Sefris would surely finish off the helplessly dangling ranger. He staggered up and charged the agent of the Dark Moon, shouting-or croaking… making noise, anyway-to divert her attention. She pivoted like a demonic dancer and lunged to meet him.

If the leather-and-copper gloves he'd removed from the orc's body had needed him to speak a trigger word or make some special mystic gesture to activate them, he couldn't have done it, but it turned out that the mere intent was enough. And if Sefris had been standing just a couple yards away, he was certain she could have dodged the magic. Fortunately, however, she herself was pouncing to close the distance, and the blaze of lightning caught her square in the middle of the chest. She shuddered and twitched, then fell. Aeron thought she clutched at him as she went down, but maybe it was just his imagination, for she didn't stir after she hit the ground. She simply lay inert, a contorted husk giving off a sickening stink of burned meat.

It certainly looked like death. But Aeron found the Arthyn fang and drove it into her heart anyway, just to make sure.

Only then did he look up. Miri had hauled herself back from the brink.

"Are you all right?" she wheezed.

"Better than I expected to be, certainly. What about you?"

"The same."

She knotted a rope around a gargoyle and used it to clamber to the ground, where she stood peering at Sefris's smoking body as if she too couldn't quite believe the Shar worshiper was dead.

"I think that if she hadn't already been wounded," Miri said, "we never could have beaten her, not even with the magic gloves."

"I think you're right."

"Thank the Forest Queen it's over."

He took a deep breath, preparing himself for further exertion, and said, "Not yet it isn't"

When Kesk staggered around the bend, he met three halflings slinking in the other direction. Lynxes, beyond a doubt. He would have known even if he hadn't encountered them in the Underways, where honest people had no business. It was obvious from their abundance of weapons and the hardness in their wary eyes.

He knew the small outlaws could tell plenty about him as well. They could scarcely miss his broken tusk and fangs, his pulped, bloody features, or the anguished way he hobbled along bent half double. Accordingly, he knew what they must be thinking. There was their chieftain's hated rival, alone, wounded, and ripe for the murdering at last.

Kesk had regained consciousness on the ground surprised to find himself still alive. Sefris must have rushed off somewhere in a hurry. Maybe she'd felt a need to chase after Aeron without further delay.

Thanks to her sneak attack, Kesk had lost the redheaded thief and Nicos, too. He was grievously hurt, as the agony in his vitals attested. The wizard had deserted him. Apparently off battling Sefris, pursuing the sar Randals, or simply blundering around lost in the conjured fog, none of his underlings were at hand to help him, either.

Still, he told himself, he was going to be all right. A priest of Mask could restore him to health. He just needed to return to the safety of his stronghold before the Gray Blades or any of his other countless ill-wishers found him in his current vulnerable condition. Accordingly, he rose and groped his way through the mist to the nearest entry to the tu

To no avail, perhaps, for thanks to pure foul luck, the three Lynxes had discovered him anyway. He glared at them as ferociously as he'd ever glared in his life, and brandished his battle-axe, still wet with Sefris's gore, for good measure. The haft almost slipped through his numb fingers. He certainly didn't have the strength to swing the weapon.