Кейт Новак - Azure Bonds

When the companions had passed through the door, and Dragonbait had pushed past Alias to scout ahead, he had left Hill Cleaver still in her grasp. Without a weapon, the swordswoman was only a human of soft flesh and tool-using hands, while the saurial felt quite confident with his claws and powerful jaws.

The passages were lighted by the stones of the wall, which shone from within—a benefit of the citadel’s position. Akabar was reminded of the light that had come from behind the elven wall that had imprisoned the Abomination of Moander, but these walls glowed with a rosy light that gave them all a ruddy hue.

They passed through one chamber, then another. Both had held some furniture, but recently had been stripped bare. The dust on the floor was disturbed as though several heavy objects had been dragged across it. The small prints of the pseudo-halfling crossed the rooms, as well as a set of large, heavier boots, nearly giant size.

They came to a pair of doors made of crystal that, like the the walls, glowed from within. The doors opened at a touch.

A large hall lay beyond. Dragonbait froze upon entering the room. It was not arranged the way it had been more than a month ago when he’d been dragged through it. There had been a long feasting table, and the walls had been covered with banners of some of the Realms’ older nations. The table and banners were gone, replaced by twelve biers. Each funeral stand was occupied by a body.

Alias’s first guess was that the citadel’s new inhabitants had turned this room into a morgue, or maybe even a meat locker.

Dragonbait, already standing in the center of the room, spun about in obvious confusion. A brimstone stench emanated from his body.

“Brandobas’s Beard!” Olive exclaimed, already near enough to see what useful things might be left on the corpses. “They’re you!”

Uneasily, Alias walked closer to the bodies. They were all as similar as a batch of bowls a potter might throw in a day. Each face had the same features, some were thinner, some wider, but they all had her features. Each face was framed with hair some shade of red, from reddish black to strawberry blonde. Their skin tones covered the spectrum from the pale flesh of the north to the swarthy complexions of the south.

Their dress was more varied. A body in the heavy armor of Mulhorand lay beside one in wolfhide robes and the headpiece of the far north. The sultry slitted dress of a Waterdeep courtesan—something perhaps from Cassana’s closet—adorned a body one bier over from another dressed in the conservative robes of a Moonshae druid. A weapon lay beside each, a mace or sword or sickle or dagger. One figure, wrapped in black, was equipped with eastern weapons whose uses were unfamiliar to Alias.

Yet they were all her. Earlier models? Alias wondered. Then she shook her head grimly. No, later improvements. How foolish to think that they would stop at just one. A few minutes ago, when she’d thought herself unique, she’d been certain she could prove her worth, justify her own existence. But what if she was just one of a pack, a herd of Aliases to be unleashed on the unsuspecting worlds?

She forced herself to stand closer to one of the bodies—one dressed as a cleric of Tymora in robes of white trimmed with blue, with her holy symbol—a silver disk—hanging on a chain about her neck. Alias fought back the queasiness in her stomach and touched the body, grabbing the right wrist and turning it to reveal the underside of the arm.

The pattern of serpents and waves was there, as motionless as a tattoo placed on a piece of dead flesh. The only sigil in the pattern was the bull’s eye of Phalse’s master. There was no blank spot at the wrist for Nameless. The flesh was clammy, like clay.

Akabar came up behind her and put a hand on her shoulder. “Dead?” he asked.

“Dead,” she echoed, “or at least not alive. Or less alive than me.” She shook with anger. “This is all I was to them. A thing to be copied over and over.”

“Easy now,” Akabar said, squeezing her shoulder gently. “They’re no more like you than a painting of you would be. If you want, we can destroy them.”

“No!” Alias snapped. “Whatever they are, I will not see them destroyed. They’re no more … evil than I am. I’m going to kill the last master and lay them to rest that way.”

Akabar stood silent for a moment, then nodded. “As you wish.”

Alias could tell he was trying to determine if her reaction was a natural one or another pattern, like her obsession to reach Yulash had been.

Olive shook her head, disapproving of Akabar’s tone. Just like a mage. Thinking too much with the head, not enough with the heart. Wonder how he’d feel if we offered to burn up his brothers?

Dragonbait snapped out of his shen state. He could not understand what his senses were telling him about the women laid out before him. Each body possessed a living soul, but the saurial could not sense a trace of a spirit in any of them. Is that all that separates them from death—or birth? he wondered.

“Is the courtyard over there, Dragonbait?” Alias asked, pointing to a second pair of crystal doors at the far end of the hall.

The saurial nodded.

Alias approached these doors and inspected them. They glowed in the same fashion, but there was something different about them. They made her uneasy. Then she realized why.

They drew her. As with the elven wall in Yulash, she could not resist moving toward them. She wanted to open them. What she sought lay beyond them in the courtyard.

She glanced at the others. Akabar pulled a small bundle from his belt, fishing out spell components. Dragonbait took a two-handed sword from one of the biers. Olive placed an ear against one of the doors. She pulled back, rubbing her ear. “No noise, but it’s very warm.”

Alias took a deep breath as she reached for the door. She wanted to be prepared to slam it shut in an instant or dodge aside if some horrible beast came lunging out.

The door pushed open at a touch, revealing a large, open courtyard. To the right and left, passages wove farther into the mazework of the tower. Directly across from them, a balcony opened onto the splendor of the shimmering Plane of Life. In the center of the court was a large pool filled with swirling patterns of silver and red, like the portal on the Hill of Fangs. This pool was set into the floor, though, and ringed with bluish stones.

A small form, dressed in shades of red and brown was seated on the stones. He smiled a smile wider than any human or halfling could manage, and his blue-on-blue-on-blue eyes glinted wickedly. In his hands he passed back and forth Cassana’s slender, blue wand.

“Welcome home, One,” Phalse said. “I take it you have met Two through Thirteen.”

Alias strode into the court, casting a glance to the right, to the left, overhead. No assassins were hidden behind the crystal doors, no cage hung suspended above. Olive moved to the right, Dragonbait to the left. Akabar held back, slightly behind Alias, ready to cast in a moment.

Phalse remained seated on the portal stones, swinging his short legs back and forth, playing with the wand like a child with a stick.

“Where is your master?” Alias demanded.

“Where is yours?” Phalse asked with a giggle.

From the rear, Akabar began to cast a spell.

Phalse pointed a finger at one of the blue stones near the pool. The stone rose, hovered for a moment, then flew, as if propelled by an invisible sling, across the room. Alias ducked instinctively and raised Dragonbait’s sword to deflect the stone, but she was not its target. It circled around the saurial’s blade and streaked past the swordswoman. Alias heard the brutal impact of stone cracking bone. She half-turned, Akabar was kneeling on the floor, clutching his forehead. Blood oozed between his fingers.