Кейт Новак - Azure Bonds

“How would you know what’s right for me, you monster?” A raging fire ignited in her, hot enough to burn away the power that held her. “I will not be controlled! I am my own master.”

The wand exploded in Phalse’s hand, and the cloud of shattered blue crystals mixed with the blood spurting from his wrist. The last master screamed, opening his mouth wide like the kalmari. Alias felt the invisible web dissolve; she was free. She crossed the last few feet separating her from her foe, swung with Dragonbait’s sword, and severed Phalse’s head neatly from his body.

The head flew two feet away, toppling in a bloodless arch, while the body collapsed like an empty skin. Alias circled warily. She wondered if it was only a coincidence that Phalse’s smile resembled the kalmari’s, but no smoking monster rose from the two halves.

Olive shivered, suddenly exhausted.

“Finally,” Akabar said. “It’s over.”

Dragonbait shook his head.

“No,” Alias said in a quiet, angry voice. “It’s not. Look.” She held up her arm. It still bore Phalse’s sigil.

Laughter rose from the floor, Phalse’s laughter, loud and strong, issued from the severed head.

“Foolish, foolish, One. You shouldn’t make me angry.” Phalse’s face leered at her from the disembodied head, and as it spoke it began to change. The head expanded, puffing up like a balloon and rising several feet off the ground, the laughter growing deeper and more malicious. Phalse’s two blue eyes merged into a single orb above his over-large mouth. Thick worms snaked from his hair, and each worm ended with a fanged mouth shaped like a lamprey’s. Phalse had become a huge beholder, only with jaws instead of eyes.

This was the creature that had attacked Nameless, Alias realized, recalling the multiple bites in the bard’s body. It was Phalse all along.

The body’s empty skin also began to inflate, turning into the naked form of a large, sexless humanoid. The skin darkened to a shiny, reflective black. The creature had only a sharp stump where the right hand had been blown off by the exploding wand, but the left appendage sported a set of pincers.

Olive lunged at the beastly head with her daggers. A worm-appendage snaked around her slender waist, lifted her from the ground, and sent her skittering across the floor like a ball. She hit the far wall with a bone-wrenching crack and did not get up again.

Akabar made a movement toward the halfling, but he was blocked by the headless, shining black body. It caught the mage firmly in its viselike pincers and squeezed. Akabar screamed.

Dragonbait had started toward the beholder, but now spun about to rescue Akabar. Using the sword he had borrowed from one of the Aliases, he hacked at the beast. Chips of dark crystal flew from the monstrous torso, and it stopped squeezing Akabar and began using him as a shield. The beholder used the pointy stump of its right arm to spear at the saurial, driving him back.

“One,” the head announced with its largest mouth, the rest of them hissing as it spoke, “enter the portal now or die.”

“Make me.”

The beholder launched itself at her.

Alias put a foot on the well’s rim and brought Dragonbait’s sword up with a sweeping cut, shearing off the mouth-tipped worms along one side. The head turned and charged her again.

Alias dodged to the right, twisting and turning as she did so. Moander had taught her that the best way to fight tendrils was to avoid them. She shifted the sword to her right hand and drew a dagger from her left boot.

Phalse began his third charge at Alias’s head. At the last moment he swooped down and slammed into her knees. The swordswoman crashed to the floor, losing her grip on Dragonbait’s sword and her dagger. Three of the lamprey jaws clamped tightly on her thigh, while the oozing stumps of two others wrapped around her leg. The beast began drawing her into its huge, central maw.

Alias grabbed at the stonework surrounding the portal and kicked at the beholder with her free leg.

Far above the fray, the figure behind the banner shook his head and reached for the crossbow he’d retrieved from the citadel’s depths. The tower’s new owner had not found the cache of magical items, scavenged during his exile.

Nameless drew a single quarrel from a slim case of dark wood. The bolt shone in the dimness of the secret passage, illuminating his careworn face. With his foot in the crossbow’s stirrup, he wound back the weapon’s spring until the crosswire clicked into position. He loaded the shining bolt into the groove, tight against the wire. Sighting along the top of the weapon, Nameless chose the blue-in-blue-in-blue major eye as his target.

He hesitated as Alias pulled against the strength of Phalse’s mouth-stalks. Had he believed the gods still favored him, he would have prayed.

A hand jostled his shoulder, and Nameless accidentally set off the trigger. The bolt sizzled as it left the crossbow but it flew wide of its mark, smashing deep into the far wall, unnoticed by the combatants below.

Nameless turned in rage, expecting some dire beast. Instead, his blue eyes met those of an old man dressed in dirty brown robes, and sporting a voluminous beard which spilled out over his cloak.

“Elminster,” Nameless growled.

“She must finish this battle alone, Nameless.”

“So Phalse can kill her and do your dirty work for you?”

“So she can prove to herself, and to thee, that she is her own master.”

“She could die!”

A smile played across Elminster’s lips. “I thought she was thy immortal vessel, who could not be killed. Ye made her a powerful fighter. Will ye follow her around until the end of thy days, rescuing her from every danger? What good is she to ye as an eternal monument if she cannot defend herself from the forces of the world?”

“But she’s human. I …”

“Care for her?”

“Of course.”

“That’s a first,” Elminster said. “Now show it. Let her go free.”

The deadly tug of war between Alias and Phalse continued. Alias felt as if the monster was tearing her arms from her sockets. Her fingers were white from gripping the rock, and her hold was slipping. The time had come to risk a new strategy. She pushed hard against the wall, toward the mouth-beholder.

Phalse tumbled backward with Alias on top of him. She kicked at the head, but it was not like kicking a balloon, as she had expected. The head was as hard as armor, and a numbing shock rang up Alias’s leg, but Phalse’s grip on her slackened. She took advantage of the moment to draw her other boot dagger. She slashed off the stalks that bit into her, leaving long trails of misty blood in the air. She fell to the ground as Phalse floated back a few yards and hovered.

Alias rose without taking her eyes from the head, brandishing her bloody dagger, Dragonbait’s sword lay on her right. She spoke, trying to cover her movement as she edged slowly toward it.

“You’re awfully quiet now, Phalse. Run out of threats and taunts?” She noticed that her kick had dimpled its side.

“I’m listening—to the portal. Can’t you hear it calling to you? Don’t you feel drawn into it?”

“You wish, Phalse,” Alias said with a laugh. “You don’t think my sisters out there can do it, so you want me to believe I’m expendable. None of them ever received the mark of Moander, did they? They can’t get to Moander the way I can, can they?”

“Not as easily as you, One, but they will try. I will send them, one at a time, until one of them succeeds. You could spare them all of that pain and agony. How can you resist the challenge?”

“Forget it, Phalse. You’re not going to talk me into it.”

Phalse’s words, though, managed to split her attention between the beholder and the portal, so she didn’t notice Phalse’s ebony body behind her until it was too late. It struck her with a hard, powerful swing of its handless arm.