Were gods immortal already, or would her conquest of Kannwar give her something extra? Either way, she would certainly abandon Deorc. Perhaps she might not kill him first.
In the unlikely event of the Undying Man’s triumph, Deorc might well be in the position he has wished for, after all. Depending, of course, on the nature of the victory. Somehow Deorc will need to persuade the Undying Man to spare his body.
Desperate chances, and nothing he can do to affect the outcome either way.
Umu spits something out of her—his—mouth: things she has fashioned from trace elements stolen from his body.
At that moment, everything changes. Stella walks through the door.
* * *
The phrase “nothing to lose” had been a popular one in Leith’s court. Introduced by Phemanderac, it bespoke a certain degree of risk-taking, an innovative approach to difficult political problems. Leith had adopted the term with glee: as he matured, he had abandoned the nervous, introspective disposition that had characterised him as a young man and had become quite adventurous. Sometimes too adventurous. The affair with the Central Plains-men came to mind as an example of an outrageous but ultimately successfully negotiated solution to what had been thought an intractable problem.
“Nothing to lose” summed up Stella’s thoughts exactly as she closed the door behind her. If she died, she achieved an unexpected but welcome release. If she lived, it would be because one or the other of the colossi in the room had lost everything. So as the door clicked gently into its frame—a sound drawing the attention of both parties—she stood there with absolutely no fear.
She expected surprise to rise into the face of the Undying Man. Instead, she saw relief.
He turned from her to face the oncoming peril. A thousand tiny spikes sped through the air towards him, each one rotating vigorously, impelled by dark magic. Stella knew she could not have stopped a single one of them. The Undying Man stopped almost all of them.
The fact that a dozen or so slipped through his defences implied deliberate intent on the part of the Undying Man’s opponent. Carefully calculated to overwhelm without utterly destroying him. Stella watched in fascinated horror as the spikes dug into his skin, vanishing in a cloud of blood and flesh.
Hooks, they were, made fast in his flesh. Magical ropes extended from them to the body sprawled on the chair. An appendage—not a hand, more a flipper—held the ropes and jerked at them. The Undying Man skidded across the room. To finish up in a heap at the feet of a… a monstrosity.
Stella clapped her hand to her mouth, burying four fingers in her long-ago childhood gesture, at what Deorc of Jasweyah had become. He was the shape and texture of a slug. Body covered in slime, skin glistening, solid only in patches, abraded in others. Covered in deep red gouges, as though hacked at by swords. Riddled with suppurating sores. Leaking fluids onto the chair and floor. Something that had once been a man, his former identity visible only in the general form and the vestigial appendages. Not in the face; there was no face. No real head. Just the top of the slug-like torso, from which twin stalks jutted, each ending in a single large eye able to swivel to view the whole room at once. Now focused on the form at his feet.
No wonder he’d called himself Husk.
Horrified at the sight, Stella found herself on the point of regretting what she’d done all those years ago.
A fifth appendage in the centre of the ghastly shape drew her eye. What… was that? Length and thickness of a forearm, sharp edges protruding, leathery, some sort of weapon perhaps. Pus dribbled from its end in a slow stream.
No. Nausea grabbed at her stomach as she realised what it was, what it had been designed for. Who it had been designed for.
Conal had been spiked in order to draw her here. To where Deorc could exact the cruellest revenge he could imagine—and he’d had seventy years to imagine it.
“Nothing to lose” suddenly became a mockery. Deorc of Jasweyah must not, must not win this fight. If she had been wearing a sword, she had no doubt she’d be hacking at him.
She breathed out, and let her anger go. As though this was a signal, the presence of the Most High unfolded within her.
She’d once thought the Firefall a rare and sacred experience. Certainly that was how the Halites understood it, though they denied she’d shared in