Ascendancy of the Last - By Lisa Smedman Page 0,48

wasn’t the only one back there; Molvayas had followed him. The fanatic had heard Kâras’s prayer. He bared his stained teeth in a furious griŹmace. “Imposter!” he howled. His arm jerked up, flicking his tentacle rod back—ready to strike.

Kâras shot a poisoned bolt from his wristbow, but Molvayas whipped up his shield and gurgled a one-word prayer. The metal shield turned into a shimmering disk made up of droplets, which caused the bolt to dissolve instantly when it struck.

Molyvas smiled and flicked his whip.

“Masked Lady, cloak me!” Kâras cried as the tentacles flicked toward him. A sphere of darkness leavened with sparkles of moonlight sprang into being around him. The tentacles smacked into it and glanced aside—all but one, which brushed Kâras’s left knee, instantly deadening it. His leg muscles felt as though they’d turned to mush. He’d been leaning in that direction, and his left foot slipped out of the stirrup. He toppled sideways to the muddy ground, the weakŹened leg collapsing beneath him, his right foot still tangled in its stirrup, which had twisted up and over the saddle. The lizard, struck in the tail by a tentacle, twisted around to bite at its weakened, useless tail, dragging Kâras behind it.

Molvayas flicked the tentacles back, readying for a second strike. Kâras twisted to face his opponent. He spat out foul-tasting mud, pointed, and chanted a prayer. It should have immobilized Molvayas, but the Ghaunadaurian priest somehow shrugged it off. His arm whipped forward, and the tentacles lashed out a second time.

Kâras at last yanked his foot out of the stirrup. He tried to roll behind his mount, but wasn’t quick enough. Tentacles struck his shoulders and the back of his neck. His arms immeŹdiately numbed and fell limp at his sides. His head flopped forward on a loose-boned neck. Gasping, desperately trying to blink the mud from his eyes, he mumbled a prayer through numbed lips. “Masst Laybee, dribe him frum me …”

A foot squelched in the mud next to his ear. Kâras twisted around and saw Molvayas looming over him. The tentacles of his rod were coiled around his waist; the handle hung like a sheath at his side. As he chanted, a green tinge appeared around his hands. Slime trickled down to his wrist, then fell, hissing, into the mud next to Kâras’s ear. In the distance, Kâras heard the sounds of battle, and the squelch of his mount limping away.

“See him,” Molvayas chanted. “Devour him. Destroy him.”

Kâras steeled himself. He was ready. A moment more, and he would go to his god—and find out, at long last, if it really was the Lady of the Dance who wore the mask, or if the Shadow Lord wore her.

Molvayas bent down, his slimed fingers splayed. But before he could touch Kâras, a cord appeared around his neck and yanked him backward. A bolt of darkfire erupted out of his chest, burnŹing a smoking hole through the eye embroidered on his tabard.

Yet still the priest didn’t go down. He clawed at the strangle cord around his neck, choked out a word, and his neck softened to the consistency of jelly. The strangle cord slipped through it and was gone. His neck solid again, Molvayas twisted furiously to meet his opponent, his hands raised to cast a spell.

Kâras seized his chance. He flailed with his good leg, snapping it against the back of Molvayas’s knee. The priest staggered and toppled sideways, forced to check his fall with his hands. They slid into the foul-smelling mud. Snarling, he reached for his rod. But before the tentacles could uncoil from his body, a second bolt of darkfire caught him square in the mouth and exploded out of the back of his head, carrying bits of brain and skull with it. Molvayas fell over backward with a strangled cry. The rod’s tentacles suckled at his smoking remains for a moment, then fell still.

A green-robed drow with distinctive pink eyes stepped over the corpse and kneeled beside Kâras. His mud-splattered tabard bore Ghaunadaur’s unblinking eye, but the prayer he whispered as he touched Kâras’s weakened arms, neck and leg was to another god entirely. “Masked Lord,” he intoned, “heal him.”

Sensation and strength returned. With a shudder, Kâras sat up. “My thanks, Valdar. That was close.”

Valdar helped Kâras to his feet. “Not much of a ‘truce between Houses,’ is it?”

Kâras shook his head in agreement. “The fanatics’ vows don’t seem to count for much, when it’s time for a Gathering. Let’s just hope it