The Choice Left Open

Rishi led the descent from the servants’ quarters with one hand sliding along the wall. The binding at his thigh pulled on every step. Behind him, Maeril’s crooked staff touched down beside his heel, close enough that he could hear when she took her weight off the injured leg.

Stone scraped farther up the passage. Gondafrey had folded her wings tight to fit. Grim’s breath rasped through his nose, and Duhlark’s green light moved over them all.

Rishi reached the bottom and took his hand from the wall.

Manshoon stood beside the foot of a broad bed, his metal arm fitted, a staff in his living hand. Long black hair fell across a young, unmasked face. It was the face Rishi had seen fall upstairs. Here, its mouth was unbloodied, and the fingers around the staff were still.

His mask lay on a black table at the head of the bed, above legs carved as winged serpents. A few paces of open floor separated him from the stair. There was room to pass along the bed on the right.

Rishi stopped where the others could come off the steps behind him.

“There you are,” Manshoon said.

His gaze passed over the blood on Rishi’s robe and continued to the people behind him. Rishi wanted some sign that the cries from upstairs had reached this room. He found only the slight movement of the wizard’s eyes as Gondafrey unfolded one wing.

“Where is Lysaerra?” he asked.

“Alive, at present.”

Maeril came to Rishi’s shoulder. Her hand had tightened around her staff. “We know what you have been doing to her.”

“Then you know why she cannot leave.”

Rishi felt Maeril draw breath beside him. Gondafrey spoke before she could answer. “Your mark was on my door.”

She had come up on Maeril’s other side. Her claws opened, then closed slowly, as though she were testing how much of the man before her they could hold.

Manshoon looked at her stone face. “I did not put you behind it.”

“You left me there.”

She leaned forward. Rishi could feel the weight of her next step waiting beside him.

Duhlark drifted clear of the stair on their left. His fire threw a green sheen across the wizard’s metal hand. “Everything you found in my house, you kept.”

“Including you,” Manshoon said. “You were quieter dead.”

The flame drew tight against Duhlark’s skull. For an instant, Rishi could see every tooth and the empty spaces between them.

On the right, Grim moved toward the open strip beside the bed. The rapier stayed low against his leg.

Manshoon’s eyes found him. “Put that down, Grim.”

The sword’s point dipped. Grim caught the movement and brought it level again. His mouth worked once before any sound came out. “I need it where I’m standing.”

He had gone pale around the mouth. Rishi had heard him complain and bargain while bound. Now the rapier’s tip trembled, and he kept it raised.

Manshoon turned back to Rishi.

The staff was in the living hand. Rishi watched the fingers around it.

Break that grip first, he thought. Before he can turn it on Maeril.

Manshoon’s thumb moved over a mark on the shaft. It shone as he lifted the staff’s tip from the floor.

Something cold touched the thought before Rishi had finished it.

You will leave that hand alone.

Manshoon’s lips had not moved. His voice was inside Rishi’s head.

Rishi tried to keep the next thought wordless, only the shape of a movement. The cold pulled it apart, then drove deeper, forcing memories open faster than he could shut them away.

He tried to turn his head toward Maeril. The cold pressed behind his eyes and ran down his neck. His chin stayed where it was.

Come and stand here.

Rishi planted his heels. His feet lifted anyway.

Two strides carried him across the open floor. His body made the small adjustments it always made for pain and balance, sparing the cut thigh, setting each foot beneath his weight. He could feel every familiar movement while he tried to stop it.

He halted within reach of Manshoon, then turned to face his companions.

Maeril had followed him a step. Her gaze went from his face to his hands.

He tried to let go of his staff.

Keep hold of it.

His fingers tightened. The grain pressed into the same places where it had worn his skin hard. He knew that weight better than any other thing he carried. He could not make himself drop it.

Duhlark’s eyes burned brighter, fixed on Manshoon. The grip inside Rishi’s head forced him a step sideways into the line of fire. His arm rose across his chest.

Duhlark fired anyway. Green fire struck Rishi’s upper arm and shriveled his sleeve against the skin. Pain wrenched a cry from him, but Manshoon held him there.

The second ray came before Rishi’s cry had ended. Manshoon spoke a sharp word behind his shoulder, and fire split past either side of his head.

The next order came without sound. Keep them away from me.

Rishi’s foot slid forward. His staff drove at Maeril’s throat.

He knew where it would land. His hands had already chosen the short, direct line beneath her raised arm. Her good eye widened, and he was trying to scream before Gondafrey crossed between them.

The tip struck her stone forearm with a crack that jarred his teeth.

Gondafrey pushed the shaft outward and stepped in. A wing opened behind her arm, covering Maeril from shoulder to knee. “Work your spell. I have him.”

Rishi’s hands drew the weapon back. He tried to make the return stroke a harmless touch. His wrists turned instead, driving the end low toward the gap beneath Gondafrey’s wing. He had practiced that change until it needed no thought.

Gondafrey knocked the shaft high. She was close enough for him to see the human anger in her stone face. Her eyes kept reaching past him toward Manshoon, but her body stayed between Rishi and the woman he was trying to kill.

Maeril planted her crooked staff and reached around the wing with her free hand. “Keep looking at me, Rish.”

Her voice caught on his name. He held on to it as green light threaded around his shoulders. Something tugged at the weight inside his skull, and for an instant he wanted to believe his hands had begun to loosen.

Manshoon spoke a clipped word behind him.

The light snapped.

You may listen to her, Manshoon told him silently. You will obey me.

Rishi’s next thrust drove Gondafrey’s clawed foot scraping across the alabaster. Maeril’s fingers closed on empty air.

He saw the shock reach her face.

“I can’t get through it,” she said.

Gondafrey recovered the step. The edge of her wing pressed Maeril farther behind her as she took the next blow on her other arm. “Again, Maeril. I am not leaving him in there.”

Maeril’s mouth tightened. She changed the angle of her hand, reaching lower, and the green light gathered again. Above her, Duhlark fired twice in quick succession at Manshoon. Heat swept past Rishi, and the wizard’s grip shuddered under the attack. It tightened again, driving Rishi’s burned arm forward.

Gondafrey turned the staff up over her wing. Rishi’s shoulders followed the shaft, bringing the side of the bed into view.

Grim was there.

He had come along the open flank with the rapier close to his body. He was watching Manshoon’s metal hand. Rishi could see the fear in his face even as he took the last step.

The wizard’s head snapped toward him. Metal fingers opened to meet the blade.

Grim drove the rapier beneath them into Manshoon’s side.

Manshoon’s breath broke against Rishi’s ear.

The pressure vanished. Manshoon was gone from his thoughts.

Rishi’s weight came down on his wounded leg. His staff was still rising under Gondafrey’s check. He let it fall clear of her arm.

The movement obeyed him.

Grim pulled the blade free. Manshoon lurched toward the bed, and Rishi turned with the falling shaft.

He had seen Maeril’s throat beyond its end. He had felt his hands trying to drive it through her. The rage came up so hard that for an instant it hurt worse than the burn.

The darkness rose with his anger. He felt it gather between his shoulders and let it spread.

Vast, ragged wings of darkness opened behind him. Their edges reached across the pale floor and swallowed the light beside the bed. Grim recoiled, his bloody rapier coming up between them.

Manshoon looked past Rishi’s shoulder at the wings. His living hand snatched the staff up between them.

Rishi struck that hand.

The quarterstaff cracked across the knuckles. Manshoon’s grip broke, and his weapon spun across the floor toward Gondafrey’s wing. Rishi reversed the stroke through the pain in his arm and drove the butt into the wizard’s mouth.

Blood struck the wood and his hands. Manshoon staggered. Rishi followed before he could recover, hitting beneath the ribs, driving his shoulder into the folding body. The bed frame caught the wizard behind the knees.

At the edge of Rishi’s sight, Maeril bent on her good leg. Her crooked staff braced her while her free hand closed around Manshoon’s fallen weapon.

The wizard dragged breath through his bloodied mouth. His metal hand came up, fingers searching for the shape of a spell.

Rishi drove the shaft across that arm, knocking the metal hand against the bed frame. Manshoon looked at him then, fully, with the young face stripped of its stillness.

Manshoon tried to speak through the blood in his mouth. “You will put—”

Rishi reversed the staff into his jaw.

The words broke. Manshoon’s knees gave, and he slid down the side of the bed. Grim drew back along the opposite flank, rapier still raised, leaving Rishi over the body.

Rishi lifted his staff again.

Manshoon’s eyes had lost him. His lips moved around a shallow, wet breath. The metal arm lay across the purple cover hanging from the mattress. He was no longer trying to lift it.

Rishi held the end of the staff above his face.

He wanted to bring it down. He wanted the voice that had ordered his hands against Maeril to be silent for good. Even now, with the man helpless beneath him, the memory of being moved against his will made his stomach turn.

His burned arm shook. The wings remained spread over the bed.

One more blow would be easy. He knew where to put it, and he had enough strength left. He could feel that strength waiting in his hands.

He could lower them, too.

Manshoon’s empty fingers shifted against the cloth and went still. Rishi made himself hold the blow until he could choose what followed it. The red cord at his wrist was wet with another man’s blood.

He lowered the staff. “I will not kill him.”

His voice was rough from the cry. He took a step back, with the anger still in him and his wings still open.

Green fire gathered above his shoulder. “Then I will,” Duhlark said.

Duhlark sent the gathered fire toward the bed.

“Get away from him!” Maeril shouted.

Gondafrey folded her wing across Maeril. Maeril’s pale ward flared behind the stone as Rishi threw himself toward the stair, catching his staff against his chest and covering his head.

Fire filled the chamber.

Heat rolled over his back. The blast drove him against the floor, tearing the breath from him. Something struck the wall beside the bed. He tried to rise before he had air enough to do it, and his burned arm folded beneath him.

Across the room, Grim lay crumpled against the alabaster. His coat smoked. The rapier was still in his hand, its point dragging over the stone as his arm moved.

Rishi watched his chest.

A cough tore out of the orc. He curled around it, one hand clawing at the floor.

Gondafrey opened her wing. Maeril stood behind it with a staff in each hand, her face turned toward the place where Rishi had fallen. The last pale fragments of her ward went out between them.

“Rish, can you hear me?” she called.

He nodded. He tried to say her name and had to swallow before he could.

Manshoon remained beside the bed. The purple bedding burned above his body. His chest no longer moved.

Rishi waited for the next breath anyway.

Gondafrey crossed to Grim and knelt. She smothered the burning edge of his coat beneath one stone hand.

He flinched at her touch, then clutched her wrist. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

His eyes were fixed on the body. Gondafrey followed his gaze. “He is dead.”

Grim’s grip on her wrist eased. He looked down at the rapier as though he had only just found it in his hand. “I kept expecting him to stop me.”

The next breath hurt him. He bent over it, and Gondafrey put her other hand against his back. Her claws rested there with care. Over his shoulder, her face remained turned toward the burning bed.

Duhlark hovered above it. Every crack in his skull shone green.

Rishi drew his wings in and set the end of his staff against the floor. Pain ran through his arm as he pushed himself upright. He had to stand before he could trust his voice.

He looked across at Grim. “You gave me back my hands.”

Then he faced the skull. “Grim was beside him.”

The skull turned. “Manshoon was still alive.”

Gondafrey’s wing settled between Duhlark and the orc beneath her hands.

The fire in the skull’s eyes brightened. He looked past Rishi to the body again, and stayed where he was.

Maeril came to Rishi. She drew both staffs into one hand and held the other out to him. Her fingers were shaking.

He reached for them. Halfway there, his hand stopped.

She waited.

He could still feel the wood driving forward, the resistance when Gondafrey caught it. His own fingers looked strange against Maeril’s green skin. He opened them deliberately and laid his hand in hers.

“He went through my memories,” Rishi said.

“I couldn’t get him out,” she said.

Her grip tightened. Her good eye shone, and she kept it on his face.

“I heard you,” he said. “I knew you were there.”

She pressed his hand once between her fingers. Her breath shook on the way out.

Behind her, the bed frame settled into the fire. Gondafrey shifted her hold beneath Grim’s arm.

Rishi kept Maeril’s hand until he could loosen his own without making himself do it.