Tanax gave a shout of surprise as the tendrils closed around his legs, lifting him off the ground. Black rot splashed and sprayed as he flayed the thing with blades of deiat to no avail. Beq fired her blaster until the creeping rot grabbed her hands, dragging her forward toward the bulk of the blob.
It’s not a plaguespawn. Monstrous as they were, those creatures had bones and muscles like any other living thing and could be destroyed by cuts or burns. Cyrtak is using dhaka to … animate this thing. She’d never heard of anything like it. So if it isn’t alive, how do we kill it?
“Maya!” Beq’s voice rose to a scream as a wave of foul-smelling stuff boiled around her, holding her arms pinioned and running up her legs. “Maya, help!”
Maya pushed toward her, slashing and cursing. Blasts of flame made the vile stuff retreat, but only momentarily, and she didn’t dare direct them too close to Beq. Black tentacles grabbed at her ankles, dragging her backward, and a scream ripped from her own throat as the wave of gory darkness rose ever higher.
All at once, the world shifted around her, space folding in on itself in a neat circle. Tanax’s power. The goo vaporized, falling away, and for a moment Maya was free. She started toward Beq, whose head and shoulders were all that remained visible.
“The dhakim!” Tanax shouted, stopping her in her tracks. He was upside down, a meter off the ground, haken flailing. “Maya, get the fucking dhakim!”
Plaguefire. He was right, but turning away from Beq was harder than anything Maya had ever had to do. She screamed a curse as she ran into the pit, sending a wave of fire in front of her to drive the rotting mass from her path. In a moment she was past it, pounding along the packed earth, haken blazing as she closed on Cyrtak.
A half dozen smugglers were between her and the pirate leader, blasters leveled. Maya let her haken move on its own, soaking up the bolts. The closest smuggler, a big woman with a vividly blond spike of hair, gave a wild cry as Maya got within arm’s length. She shoved her blaster forward, directly in Maya’s face. A brave move, Maya acknowledged. She ducked, then came back with a rising stroke that removed the woman’s arm cleanly at the shoulder. The next man came at her with a curved sword, which melted into glowing liquid at Maya’s parry. She ran him through, tossed him aside, and blasted the next smuggler with a bolt of fire that sent him sprawling backward in a blazing inferno. The rest of her opponents were already scrambling away, leaving her face-to-face with Cyrtak.
“Let them go now,” Maya growled.
The dhakim only laughed. He gripped his right arm with his left hand, and his biceps writhed and twisted, leather splitting as his limb unfolded into two long, twisting whips of flesh and bone. They curved toward Maya, and her parry sent one of them spinning away, but the other lashed her panoply hard enough to make her stagger. Cyrtak’s other arm hardened into a long, bone-edged blade, and he came at her in a whirl, whip and sword together. Maya stood her ground, letting her overextended panoply take one more blow as she aimed a counterstrike at his shoulder. Her hold on deiat flickered, and her vision grayed at the edges, but she carved his whip-arm away. Her next parry shattered the bone-blade, and she kicked him in the stomach, driving him backward. Another slash took one of his legs at the knee, and Cyrtak fell backward. Maya planted her boot on his chest and leveled her haken at his throat.
“Let them go,” she repeated. “And tell me what you did to Jaedia.”
“What I did to Jaedia?” The big man laughed, fast and insane. The skin of his face seemed to boil, bubbles forming, tiny scraps tearing free into miniature tendrils that reached up toward Maya. “It was Jaedia who brought us here. She told us to wait for you. She’s so eager to see you again.” His lips split, and his tongue distorted as though he’d swallowed a snake. “Mayaaaaaa—”
Maya closed her fist, and flame engulfed the struggling dhakim, hot enough to char flesh and bone. It whipped around her as he blackened, his body still shifting and changing. Finally he collapsed, leaving only a patina of ash and twisted bones behind, his ribs cracking like twigs under the weight of her boot.
Beq. Maya turned away and sagged with relief at the sight of Beq and Tanax sitting in the dirt, surrounded by quiescent globs of black ooze. Behind them, Marn was pressed against the wall, eyes very wide. Cyrtak’s remaining smugglers had taken the opportunity to run for it, and they were alone in the smoke-filled chamber.
Jaedia … Maya turned to look at Cyrtak, now little more than a misshapen skull. Her hand touched the Thing, and she yanked it away immediately—the little arcana was hot enough to scorch her shirt and blister her finger. Maya swallowed and let her haken blade fade away.
“Maya?” Beq was on her feet, scrambling across the vile pit. “Are you all right?”
“’M just …” Maya mumbled, and shook her head. “Tired.”
She didn’t even remember hitting the floor.
*
When she awoke, they were still in the tunnels, though thankfully no longer in that charnel house of a smuggler’s lair. Instead, she found herself propped against the unmetal wall of a smaller chamber, with Beq and Marn sitting anxiously beside her. Tanax, waiting at the corridor entrance with his hand on his haken, looked over his shoulder as Maya groaned.
“Maya,” Beq said, leaning forward. She was coated in gobbets of black goop, mixed with larger bits of rotting flesh. Maya’s sense of smell had thankfully shut down long ago. “Maya, can you hear me?”
Maya nodded dully. Marn handed her a canteen, and she drank until it was empty.
“Are you hurt anywhere?” Beq said urgently. “We didn’t want to move you too much.”
“I think … not.” Maya shook her head. She felt exhausted, with the hollowed-out sensation that came with overuse of deiat, but the only actual pain was in her chest, around the Thing. It felt as though the arcana had been replaced with a hive of stinging wasps. “Drew too much power. Give me a minute.”
“As soon as you can walk, we should get out of here,” Tanax said. “We don’t know when those Chosen-damned smugglers will come back.”
“They won’t,” Marn said. His cheeks were hollow, and his filthy hair hung around his head, but his eyes were still bright. “Cyrtak was the one who brought them here. The rest followed him because he could pay.”
“Are you all right?” Maya said, sitting up a little straighter. “How long have they had you?”
“I don’t know,” Marn said. “A long time. They kept me there while they brought in other prisoners and … used them to create those things. Cyrtak told me he was looking forward to what he could build out of me.” He hunched in on himself a little, shuddering. “I’m glad you killed him.”
“We’re all glad you killed him,” Beq said fervently, trying and failing to clean her spectacles with her already filthy shirt.
“Marn.” Maya touched his shoulder gingerly. “What happened to Jaedia?”
“Jaedia …” The light in Marn’s eyes faded. “She brought me here. Gave me to them.”
“What?” Maya shook her head weakly. “She would never. You know her.”
“I …” He swallowed. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it … wasn’t her. It seemed … I don’t know.” He shook his head. “She left me in the inn when she first arrived. After a few days, she came back and told me to come with her, and we went into the tunnels. Cyrtak chained me up, and Jaedia told him to keep me around until you got here. I was … bait, I guess.” He blinked rapidly. “I tried to warn you.”