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Chapter Eleven


“Let’s get the Wixits out of here.” Indrajit grabbed Fix and pulled his partner to his feet.

“Agreed.” Fix scooped up his ax and his falchion. “We can negotiate with the winner here to get Thoat restored.”

Adunummu threw the demon bodily. Bolt yelped and ducked, and the Protagonists leaped across in the demon’s wake, trying to put space between themselves and the battling wizards. While Bolt struck the monster repeatedly with his wand, Adunummu pointed his white ceramic fist and fired.

The red beam of light and heat struck the demon and the little wizard alike. Indrajit smelled scorched flesh and something like sulphur. Bolt yelled high-pitched, hysterical gibberish, and Indrajit shot a glance over his shoulder to see what was happening.

Bolt patted around on the floor as if blinded and looking for something. His wand lay just out of reach. Adunummu stood and fired again with his weapon, striking the demon, who sprang into the air and away from Bolt.

But toward the Wixits.

“I was promised blood!” the demon shrieked.

“Adakles!” Fix yelled. “Duck! Get away from your father!”

Munahim stepped into the demon’s path, bow whizzing. Arrows struck the beast as it descended, sticking into its hide but not apparently wounding it at all. Indrajit accelerated, stretching his legs into a long, fast pace. He was grateful for the food in his belly, without which he thought he would be unconscious at this point.

The demon alighted, claws slashing downward. Munahim’s bow rattled across the stone and his blade flashed from its sheath. He parried the crushing attack, and then Indrajit dove. He grabbed the demon’s tail with his left hand and rolled to the right. His momentum spun the monster about, letting Munahim rain unopposed blows around its head and shoulders. Indrajit struck at the creature’s ankle. He yelled, not quite managing to form actual words. Then Fix with his shorter stride caught up, in time to hit the demon in the shoulder with his ax, and in the belly with his sword.

The demon squealed and leaped back.

A swarm of insects burst from where Adakles crouched over his father on the floor. They were wasps, but bloodred, and the size of Indrajit’s thumb. They weaved left and right to cut around Munahim on both sides and then around Fix’s shoulders, giving him a halo like a bloody cloud but not hitting him.

The wasps slammed into the demon’s chest and face. Each insect exploded as it hit, and blackish blood sprayed from the monster’s body. It leaped up and away, yanking itself free of Indrajit’s grip and flipping over backward, toward the dueling magicians.

“Blood!” it howled. “The blood of a magician!”

Bolt had recovered his wand and now crouched to take shelter behind the throne. He launched green lances of fire from his wand, but Adunummu held a shield, resembling a flat copper disk. He caught the stabbing green light, deflecting it right and left and laughing. Shaking his right arm, he unkinked a whiplike device consisting of white spheres linked by short white rods.

“Is your father okay?” Indrajit called to Adakles.

Adakles nodded.

“Are you okay?” Fix asked. “The demon keeps screaming that it wants the blood of a magician. It must have been coming after you.”

“I don’t know.” Adakles’s paws trembled.

Swinging the whip once over his head, Adunummu cracked it against the throne.

BOOM!

The throne went flying, split in two flaming halves. Bolt skidded back several steps but rose to his feet at the same time, holding his hands in front of himself in a mystic gesture of defense.

The demon sprang again, falling toward Adunummu.

“No!” Shafi leaped to interpose himself between the monster and the magician. He raised two short swords, and a look of stubborn hopelessness on his lavender face, and Indrajit knew he was doomed.

The demon landed on Shafi and crushed him, reducing him instantly to a lifeless doll that bounced once on the floor and then lay still. One sword rattled back and forth, steel whining on the marble, for several seconds after Shafi was gone.

“I was promised!” the demon wailed. But it didn’t linger over Shafi’s body. Instead, it hurled itself at Adunummu.

“The demon is a wizard-killer,” Fix said. “We should leave now with the Wixits. Urgently.”

“Yes.” Indrajit scooped up Thoat and tossed him onto his shoulder. “Munahim, can you cover our backs?”

“My arrows seem pointless,” Munahim said, but he switched to his bow anyway. “I’ll do what I can.”

Fix reached to pick up Adakles, but the younger Wixit shook off the offer. “I’ll walk.”

They shuffled together back toward the stairs that were the only exit from the room.

“What are the residents of the Crown seeing?” Fix asked. “Are we in a tower that appears to be burning? Or is all of this screened from their eyes by magic?”

“Or by mysterious devices we don’t otherwise understand?” Indrajit suggested.

He looked back in time to see Adunummu wrap his whip around the demon’s waist and then throw the monster at the ceiling. Marble cracked and stone dust fell around the battling magicians. The beast fell, uncoiling from the links of the whip, and Adunummu struck it with his flipper. The demon bowled through the air end over end and crashed into Bolt. They rolled together across the floor. Green flashes of light stuttered in the tight space between the combatants as Bolt stabbed the monster again and again and it bit and clawed at him.

“Shafi!” Adunummu dropped his whip and knelt to cradle the lavender corpse in his arms.

“The stairs!” Fix cried. “Where are they?”

Indrajit pulled his gaze away from the battle and looked. The stairway had disappeared. Were they in the wrong part of the room? He looked around: no, this was where they had emerged, and there was no visible staircase elsewhere.

The stairs had vanished.

He slipped to the edge of the throne room and looked over the railing. “It’s still Kish down there,” he said. “Can we climb?”

“Without rope?” Fix asked. “Certain death.”

“Do you have . . . I don’t know, a flying spell?” Indrajit asked Adakles.

Adakles shook. “I can . . . I can . . . translate some things.”

“Translate? You can translate some things? Frozen hells!” Indrajit roared. “You sound like Fix! You go to wizard school, boy! Can you do nothing useful?”

“Well, you have to be able to read the books first,” Adakles muttered.

A high-pitched squeal whipped Indrajit’s head back around to look at the fight again.

A cloud of smoke exploded above Adunummu’s head, and a Gund fell out of it. The Gund wore a red toga, and as it landed on Adunummu, it collapsed into an amorphous blob, a mass of translucent flesh that swallowed the walrusoid face and melted down over his chest and shoulders.

The demon slashed the blob, and a clear liquid sprayed out.

“Back!” Bolt shouted. “Back!” The short wizard advanced on the demon, stabbing it with green light.

Adunummu lurched to his feet, clawing at the mass on his face. He tore away handfuls of clear gelatinous flesh, but what remained reshaped itself and continued to suffocate him. As Adunummu pivoted, Indrajit saw his face clearly, as if through a window.

Bolt stabbed the demon again, but Adunummu lurched toward the monster and grabbed it.

“Maybe we can do something with the flask,” Fix suggested.

Indrajit scanned the room and found the bottle on a chain, lying next to the smoldering remains of the throne.

“Like what?” he asked. “Hit someone with it?”

“Get the demon back inside,” Fix suggested. “If it tries to attack us again.”

“Right.” Indrajit sighed, set Thoat on his feet, and charged back toward the fray.

Adunummu grabbed the demon and pressed it to his head. The beast roared in indignation and pain and slashed at the wizard, but claws and teeth sank into the flesh of the thing wrapped around Adunummu’s skull.

Clear blood sprayed. A Fanchee head appeared, momentarily green, and then the white insectoid shoulder-arms of a Gund, and then four arms like a Luzzazza’s rose from the translucent mass, darkening momentarily into a slate blue before subsiding again.

Bolt stabbed Adunummu in the side, causing the big magician to spin. He swung his flipper and sent Bolt sprawling with a blow to the head. He clawed at the blob on his head, soaking himself in clear ichor.

Indrajit ducked to grab the bottle and back away, but the demon wasn’t looking at him. Intent on the magician in its grasp, or perhaps the two magicians, it raised a crooked arm and plunged its talons into the translucent mass. It stabbed so fiercely and so deep, Indrajit saw the claws pierce all the way through the shape-changing creature and dig into Adunummu’s flesh. Red blood rose into and through the shape-changer, puddling in dark clouds within its body, and pumping thinly out around the demon’s claws.

Adunummu lurched toward Indrajit. Indrajit staggered backward and fell, dropping the bottle and Vacho alike. Adunummu stared at him, bug-eyed, through the transparent thing on his head, as he gripped it with both hands and tried to rip it free. Indrajit grabbed his sword, just in case.

Adunummu turned and ran. His pace was erratic, his steps wove from side to side. He charged over Bolt, knocking the little wizard down just as he was trying to stand again. He kicked aside a charred chunk of throne as if he hadn’t seen it. He hit the handrailing at the edge of the platform and snapped it like a twig, charging straight through it and over the side.

Adunummu fell out of sight, taking the shape-changer and the demon with him.

Indrajit’s ears rang from the racket for long seconds after the racket was gone. He took the bottle and stood, feeling weak in the knees and tired in every muscle he had. Fix was there, offering him a hand, and he took it to steady himself. Sheathe the sword, or hold it threateningly? Indrajit decided to put Vacho in its scabbard, and then he cleared his throat.

“Bolt,” he said. “Recondite, something, I don’t remember. Whatever you are. Magician. We did our part. Time for you to restore our client.”

Theophilus Bolt stood. His robe was slashed and charred, his face dusty and streaked with sweat. He held his white wand casually. “Did you do your part, then?”

Indrajit nodded.

“As I recall,” Bolt said, “your part was to get invited in here with the bottle-imp.”

“Which we did,” Indrajit said.

“And then your part was to stab Megistos,” Bolt said. “Instead, you opened the bottle on him. Didn’t you?”

“Why does it matter?” Fix asked. “Megistos is dead.”

“It matters,” Bolt said, his voice rising in pitch, “because you learned how to open the bottle from Adunummu. Didn’t you?”

“So what?” Indrajit shrugged. “You got what you wanted. Megistos is dead.”

“So is Adunummu,” Fix added, “who was clearly your rival. You win. Help our client.”

Bolt shrugged. “No. You didn’t do what I wanted. You get nothing more from me. Leave, and be grateful I don’t throw you off this tower.”

Fix drew the Dagger of Slaying. “Heal Thoat.”

Bolt chuckled, drily, once. Then he started to laugh, his laughter growing more and more maniacal until he nearly fell over. “Oh, that’s rich.”

“He doesn’t feel threatened,” Indrajit said.

There was a pregnant pause while the Protagonists thought through the implications of that fact.

“The Dagger of Slaying is nothing,” Fix said. “It’s an ordinary knife.”

“You expected us to get killed,” Indrajit said to the little wizard. “We’d come in here with the bottle we didn’t know how to use, then try to attack and kill the tyrant lord of the Collegium Arcanum with an ordinary little knife. We’d have been ripped to pieces.”

“But what a great distraction you would have been,” Bolt said. “Then we would have appeared and struck the Lord Dean from behind. Instead, you allied with that miscreant Adunummu, and now my apprentice is dead.”

“Your apprentice is dead, but you planned for us to die,” Indrajit pointed out. “Let’s call it even. You restore Thoat, and we’ll go away and leave you alone.”

Bolt’s lip curled into a sneer. He raised his white wand, pointing it at Indrajit.

An arrow struck the magician in the throat. He staggered backward, and before he hit the ground, two more arrows sank into his chest.

“Well,” Fix said, “some of our problems are solved.”

Indrajit heard the scrape of nails on stone, then the flap of wings, and then the demon dragged itself over the lip of the shelf.

“I was promised the blood of a magician,” the demon said.


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