A single eye shines scarlet through the darkness swirling around his face, and even in the rain his tronic mount releases tendrils of black smoke from angry, flaring nostrils. He is armed with a long black spear that also emits shadows and wears a robe the color of a starless night.
She recognizes him. She has never seen him before, but she recognizes beyond a doubt that here stands her enemy, the warlord whose men stormed her village and killed Urura, the focus of all her murderous intent. A profoundly venomous sort of rage burns beneath her newly scourged skin, and her shards crackle with power as she prepares to attack, but her limbs refuse to move. She calls on the deadliest spell she knows, a spear carved entirely from Void craft, but it fizzles out in her hands before she can strike.
By the way his head tilts to one side in apparent amusement, he must understand what is happening.
“I sensed my old mentor’s death,” he says in a voice like rumbling thunder. “Even from miles away I sensed her power exerting itself one last time, searching, reaching out to me. Do you want to know what it told me before it vanished?”
That this warlord was a student of the Anchorite’s is a deep betrayal she feels like a knife twisting inside her guts. All this time, she knew and said nothing. “You’re not welcome here. Leave.”
“It told me that she had left a parting gift of a sort, the most promising student she had ever taught, handed to me on a platter.” The red eye strobes in the rain. “You must be truly remarkable if you could inspire such emotion in her.”
“I will never serve you.”
“Kneel.”
An irresistible force pulls her down to the earth, and she sinks to her knees before the warlord. She roars in hatred, fighting her own body from the inside. It refuses to obey.
The warlord watches silently until she stops struggling against herself. “I am here to offer you a position, maidservant of the Anchorite, a position in the fief I’m building.”
“I’m not interested,” she spits.
The warlord is unruffled by her flat rejection. “You may have survived out here beneath our old mentor’s shadow—after all, she was deeply respected and feared, even by the most hardened of us. But she’s gone now, by your own hand. You will soon find that you are defenseless.”
“I can protect myself.”
“Perhaps I misspoke. I tolerated the Anchorite’s presence out of respect for her, and so did those who ruled this land before me. But now that she is gone, I am here to claim what is mine. I would be glad to share it with you, of course, and if you prove as useful as I think you are, I will share much, much more. But only if you come under my wing.”
“Why the devil don’t you just compel me?”
“I would rather you served me willingly, knowing that if I had to compel you, I would make you do terrible, terrible things. I lose nothing either way, but the cost of disobedience to you would be great.”
Still on her knees, she forces herself to think rationally, to see through the thick mist of hatred fighting against her body. You will lose yourself to it.
No. She refuses this. Her dead mentor will not win. She will act the thrall to this man, serve him as a loyal disciple, but she will look for a way to break this vile curse and free herself. And then, when he least expects, she will have her vengeance. “I don’t have much of a choice.” She lets her head hang. “I will serve you.”
Whatever expression steals across the warlord’s face is hidden behind his veil of shadows, but she senses that he is satisfied. “A wise decision. What shall we call you, then, maidservant of the Anchorite?”
She thinks for a second, and the answer comes to her as if it were whispered into her ear by a breeze. “You shall call me precisely that. I am the Maidservant.”
“Once our old mentor’s helper, soon to be mine. A fitting name.”
In her heart she thinks: And I shall stand over your corpse just as I stood over hers, even if I have to call on the powers of hell.
42: Musalodi
Bonobo Province—Kingdom of the Yontai
The ground seems to go out from under him, and Salo almost collapses, his ears ringing with Tuk’s and Ilapara’s screams as they fell into the Void.
Across the clearing a cloud of flies drops to the forest floor like a solid weight and congregates into a woman with black markings covering the entire expanse of her body. Her hair stands wild like horns on either side of her head, and there is a hungry look in her eyes.
The Maidservant.
At the sight of her, rage clouds Salo’s vision, and he grips his staff so tightly he feels the blood leave his knuckles. He was afraid before, and he still is, but anger and vengeance have set his mind on fire and outshine everything else. This is the woman who killed Monti. This is the woman he hates more than anything in the world, and now she has taken his friends from him.
“Your quarrel is with me,” he says in her forsaken tongue. “Fight me and leave my companions out of it.”
The Maidservant tilts her head curiously and starts to edge along the clearing’s perimeter on lissome legs. “I remember you,” she says, her filed teeth glistening as she speaks. “I saw you that day. You really are newly awoken, aren’t you?”
Salo starts to move, too, matching the Maidservant’s progress around the clearing’s perimeter. “I’m not afraid of you, witch. You will pay for what you did to my people.”
“Perhaps I will,” she says. “But first, you will tell me about this power you wield, this . . . Elusive Cube. I had my doubts, but I have seen that yours is no ordinary Axiom. How did you know to build it?”
Salo can’t help his surprise. “How do you—” he starts but immediately cuts himself off. “I will tell you nothing!”
The Umadi witch keeps walking. “Believe it or not, but I don’t want to hurt you. This isn’t personal. If you force my hand, however, you will regret it. All I want is information. Tell me how you knew to build that Axiom of yours, and maybe I’ll let you go.”
“I will die before I confess anything to you.”
The witch’s eyes flash threateningly. “I don’t need your consent to get what I want, but have it your way.” In the next split second, magic crackles in the air, her shards flare with power, and from the Void she launches a spear of warped space in his direction.
Salo doesn’t flinch. His mind is still connected to his talisman, which sees the projectile even before it has covered half the distance, judging it hostile to him based on its trajectory. Through its vastly accelerated logic, he is able to know precisely how much Storm and Void craft to draw and where to cast a simple barrier of tessellated hexagons that winks out of existence as soon as the spear crashes against it.
A loud peal and a flash of red lightning, and then the spear flakes away into nothing.
“Impressive,” the Maidservant says. She keeps moving around the clearing, and so does he.
Then her eyes incandesce with moonlight, and she spreads her arms wide. When she slams her palms together with a loud clap, a hundred Void arrows fly out of thin air and converge upon him.
He lenses his mind with his staff, letting his talisman guide his release of magic. An instant later a half dome of Void hexagons and lightning takes shape from the ground up and covers him like a giant parasol tipped on its side. The hail of arrows shatters on its surface with sparks of lightning, and the shield blinks away a heartbeat later, replenishing his flow of magic.