Hand of the God Read online

  Taeral and I exchanged a glance. Apparently, he hadn’t known that either.

  We reached the landing just as Holdrun loosed a long string of clanks and jingles and rough-sounding words that were probably dwarvish curses. And as soon as our feet left the last step, the door swung open fully.

  “DeathSpeaker. Lord Ciar’ Ansghar,” Yusef’s voice called from inside the room. “I’ve been expecting you. Please, come in.”

  Somehow that polite greeting was even worse than being immediately murdered.

  But we were already here, so in we went.

  Chapter 28

  The sanctum was basically a huge, pretentious study with a lot of dark, gleaming wood, blood-red plush carpet and furniture, and gold edges and accents everywhere. Gold-bound books, gold figurines, even a few gold statues of anatomically correct, half-naked people. The walls were half paneled wood, half richly textured wallpaper, and decked with shields, crossed swords, and fancy coats of arms. A soaring, raftered vault ceiling terminated in an elaborate glass skylight that framed a wedge of the night sky with a sliver of near-full moon starting to ease across from one edge.

  Holdrun hung from one of the rafters with a length of silver chain wrapped around his torso several times. He must’ve kicked one of his boots off in his struggles, because it lay halfway across the room in the middle of the floor, smoldering gently. When the dwarf caught sight of us, his breath snagged and he started a fresh struggle against the chains, muttering under his breath the whole time.

  Yusef stood at the far end of the room, with the suspended Holdrun between us and him. He looked exactly the same as he had in my dream, except the sword was in his hand instead of on his back. There was a massive window behind him with thick red curtains drawn closed across it, and for a moment all I could think about was how the hell they’d managed to install glass in a mountain.

  Then the door slammed shut by itself behind us, and I had more important things to think about.

  “Good evening,” Yusef said as he started across the room. “I’m glad you’ve come. We had so little time to speak in your dreams. Now, I hope we can have a more fruitful discussion, since we won’t be interrupted.”

  He raised his free hand, and his fingers glowed as he traced symbols in the air. Not runes, but a lot of circles and triangles, dots and curled lines. They seemed almost familiar. When he finished drawing, he made a pushing gesture. The symbols flew past us and slammed into the door, glowing briefly before they vanished. I assumed that meant the door was sealed.

  And I remembered where I’d seen writing like that before. On the Scrolls of Gideon.

  “Magic?” I said as Yusef drew slowly closer. “Thought you said you were perfectly human.”

  “Oh, I am. That ‘magic’ is hermetic alchemy,” he said. “The only form of magic native to humans.”

  “Uh-huh.” I gripped the hammer tighter as he took a few more steps. Now I could make out his smooth, hairless chest where his robes split, and the familiar dark blue tattoos marching down from his throat. Goddamn it. Of course he was protected from Fae magic. “Hey, how about you stop right there?” I said, hoping Taeral had noticed it too. I’d told him basically what the anti-Fae seals looked like on the way up.

  Yusef actually stopped, and looked mildly surprised. “So, you’ll talk with me?”

  “Nah.” I used my free hand to grab one of the guns. “Just thought I’d find out how many bullets it takes to kill a hand of the god.”

  I started shooting.

  Instantly, there was a flashing gray blur in front of Yusef, and every bullet pinged off and bounced away like popcorn escaping a hot pan. At first I thought he’d made some kind of alchemy shield, until I caught a glimpse of honed metal edge in one of the flashes.

  He was deflecting the bullets with Fragarach, just as fast as I shot them.

  “Great,” I muttered, and emptied the gun at him anyway before I tossed the useless thing on the floor. “Well, it was worth a try.”

  But Taeral wasn’t giving up on the kill-first, talk-later strategy.

  He’d already palmed the lodestone and formed the glowing gauntlet that allowed him to control metal. He stretched an arm toward one of the full-sized gold statues, lifted and twisted his hand until the statue hovered in midair like the world’s most unlikely dart, and then launched it at Yusef.

  The paladin swung Fragarach down on the golden missile, shattering it into glitter.

  “Are you finished yet?” he said. “I really do have a lot to discuss with both of you.”

  Taeral made a very unpleasant sound. “I’ve no wish to hear anything from you.”

  “Let me down, Unseelie,” Holdrun called suddenly, twisting and lunging at the end of his chain. “I can help ye.”

  In response, Taeral loosed a blistering stream of Fae that probably would’ve made his mother blush.

  Holdrun stopped moving. “Is that a no, then?”

  “If you plan to kill us, get on with it,” Taeral snapped at Yusef, completely ignoring the dwarf. “I’d rather die than hear the rotted tripe you vomit up, after you digest the fecal droppings your master feeds you. How can you serve such a soulless creature?”

  Yusef’s patient expression didn’t change. “I have served my lord for more than three hundred years,” he said. “It is an honor and a privilege to bow down to perfection, and to help him create that perfection for the rest of the world.”

  “By killing all of us, and a bunch of humans along the way. Great idea.” My mind stuttered a bit when he said three hundred years, but I remembered Sir Livingston Cromwell, stuck at the bottom of the ocean while he protected the Scrolls of Gideon for seven centuries. He’d practiced this alchemy stuff, too. “That’s definitely going to save the planet, and maybe fix the economy while you’re at it.”

  “Though it saddens me, human casualties are sometimes unavoidable,” he said.

  “Right. Like all five hundred people in Basin Springs. That was unavoidable?”

  Yusef blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Don’t play dumb, asshole,” I said. “You thought Rex told someone about your goddamned mission and you couldn’t figure out who he told, so you decided to play it safe and kill them all. Your orders.” My jaw clenched hard. “And if you know anything about me, you won’t bother lying, because I heard it straight from a dead man.”

  “It can’t be true,” Yusef said, shaking his head. “My lord … stepped in to give the order. I’m not aware of what happens when he possesses my body, but he would not command such an atrocity. Five hundred innocents …” He swallowed and looked at me. “And yet you are the DeathSpeaker. The dead cannot lie to you.”

  “That’s right. I am, and he did,” I said. “And if you really expect me to believe that you had no idea —”

  “I did not. On my life, I swear it.” He took a step back. “Five hundred,” he whispered. The sword shook in his hand, and his features twisted in pain.

  Oh, shit. I’d seen this before, too.

  “Um. I think Dante’s coming,” I murmured.

  Unfortunately, I was right.

  Chapter 29

  Taeral hadn’t seen his whole transformation bit before. I had, and it still gave me a serious case of the creeps when the man in front of us went from biblical Egyptian to stone-faced, blue-eyed god.

  The Dante-thing gave a short sigh and brushed at the sleeve of his robe. “My paladins are still soft when it comes to necessary sacrifice. It is the only flaw remaining in them, particularly this model,” he said in his flat, Arctic cold voice. “I have told them time and again that humans are easily replaceable. Still, they persist.”

  “Dante,” Holdrun spat, suddenly coming to life after a long silence. “We had a bargain.”

  “Be silent, creature. I will deal with you when the time comes.” Dante raised the hand without the sword and made a twirling motion that spun the dwarf up the chain, wrapping it around his mouth.

  “I cannot sense his power,” Taeral sai
d under his breath, gaping at the sword-wielding apparition. “In fact, there is nothing. Nothing at all. A moment ago I could sense Yusef, along with some kind of powerful bond that gripped him. “But now …” He stumbled a half-step back. “It’s as if he’s ceased to exist. And that thing is not real. It is not there.”

  Dante’s brow rose about a millimeter. “You could not be more wrong, Lord Fae,” he said. “I am utterly real, the very apex of reality. So real, in fact, that your unearthly senses have nothing to grasp.”

  “Fine, we get it. You’re super real,” I said. “And you’ve got telekinesis and alchemy, a scary sword that makes you basically bulletproof, and a face that could stop a clock. Okay, all the clocks.” I leaned back and gripped the hammer in both hands. “What else you got?”

  “I have an offer for you. Both of you.” Dante lifted the sword a few inches, and then changed his mind and let it hang down again. “As I mentioned before … join us. Become my followers.”

  I snorted. “The only place I’d follow you is into a deep, dark hole, so I could kill you and bury you there.”

  “Are you not a god?” Taeral added mockingly as some of the color came back into him. “You should know that neither of us will ever agree to such an ‘offer.’ Or do you believe us so foolish that we’d join your mad cause, only to participate in engineering our own destruction?” He hooked a thumb at Holdrun. “You’ve that one for it, if you require a brainless sacrificial lamb.”

  Dante didn’t move or change his expression. “If you join me, you will live to see the end. Which is the beginning,” he said. “You will die knowing that you have helped to perfect this world for those it truly belongs to, rather than throw your lives away on this pointless attempt to preserve chaos and corruption. The plan will not be stopped.”

  “So the plan is all humans, all the time,” I said. “Well, here’s a news flash for you. I’m human, and I’d rather eat rusty nails and drink bleach than live in any world you create.”

  “Aye. Two votes for rusty nails and bleach,” Taeral said. “How about you, dwarf?”

  Holdrun made a muffled sound that was probably something like ‘go to hell.’

  Speaking of Holdrun, I was really starting to think we’d be better off with him loose. Even if it was just so he’d throw himself at Dante and distract him so we could try to get the hell out of here. Maybe we could crash through the window or something — he hadn’t sealed that.

  Because Dante was right about one thing: there was no way in hell we could stop him. At least, not tonight.

  I caught Taeral’s eye, then flicked my gaze to the dangling dwarf and gave a deliberate nod. Get him down, I thought as strenuously as I could, in case that helped. He seemed to understand. Meanwhile, I had a trick or two left up my sleeve to try.

  “You still think we’re going to join you?” I said as I swung the hammer to my shoulder, at the same time palming one of the blades I’d liberated from the soldiers in the lab. Then I started carefully moving away from Taeral. “I mean, my brother has a point. Who’s crazy enough to enlist in a cult that has the sole purpose of killing them? Except Holdrun.”

  Dante watched me warily. Good — I wanted to keep his focus off Taeral. “All of my followers are quite willing to die when it is called for,” he said, as if that was the most sane and logical thing in the world. “I believe my magister demonstrated that most conclusively, before you killed him.”

  “Oh, you mean Cavanaugh? Shame about him. He was a genius, you know,” I said with a snort. “By the way, have you heard this one?” I took a minute to concentrate, and said, “Ah-dab ilah alnuir.”

  I felt the spell trying to work. Then it hit him like a marshmallow thrown at a brick wall, bouncing off harmlessly.

  A tiny v-shape formed between Dante’s brows. “Interesting,” he said a fraction slower than normal. “I know all languages, and yet I did not understand what you said. Did you fabricate those words yourself?”

  I caught myself before I told him it was the DeathSpeaker language—something I had no idea existed myself, before Kelwyyn told me. I could keep a few secrets from him, at least. And I’d kinda hoped that would work, since it wasn’t Fae magic.

  Kelwyyn said the spell was supposed to forcibly separate souls from where they didn’t belong. So I’d wanted to part Dante’s soul from Yusef’s body — obviously, it didn’t belong there. No dice, but I thought there might be a way to make it work.

  Maybe we could have a win here, after all.

  The faint jingling of chains drew Dante’s attention, and he looked away from me. I kept my eye on him, even as he shouted, “Stop that!” and made a gesture that blasted something into the air. Something that looked like Taeral.

  While Dante’s arm was still out, I rushed at him and drew back the hammer.

  He came around quick, swinging Fragarach in an overhand arch. I prayed that the hammer would hold and brought it up to meet the sword, with no intention of actually trying to strike him with it. What I really wanted to use was in my other hand.

  Cold iron and bronze crashed together hard enough to rattle my bones, spewing sparks into the air between us.

  And I slashed out with the knife, slicing down the middle of the tattoos on his chest.

  Dante shoved me away with a palm. I staggered back, the hammer dragging on the carpet, and finally fell on my ass. There was actual emotion on his face — fury, frigid and absolute — but then his features smoothed out to neutral and the corner of his mouth lifted a fraction. “Perhaps now you believe that you can stop me,” he said, wiping absently at the blood welling on his skin. “But this protection is for my paladin. I am naturally immune to Fae magic.”

  Yeah, maybe he was. But I planned to use DeathSpeaker magic.

  We did still had a chance.

  I struggled to my feet, panting slightly as I left the hammer on the carpet and glanced to the side. Holdrun was on the floor, trying to unwrap the chain that still wound around him, and Taeral was headed toward me from across the room at full sprint. The purple gauntlet of the lodestone glowed on his hand.

  He’d nearly reached me when the hammer flew toward him and he gripped the handle. But he wasn’t slowing down.

  Dante looked at Taeral — and actually smiled. It was the most horrifying expression I’d ever seen.

  “Finally,” he said.

  “Taeral, don’t!” I screamed, and lunged at my brother.

  I saw, and heard, and felt the sword draw back and lunge forward, headed straight for Taeral. Somehow I knew that Holdrun’s hammer wasn’t going to stop it this time. I plowed into him in the split second before the cold iron blade skewered him.

  And Dante plunged Fragarach straight through my gut, in the exact spot he’d stabbed me in my dream.

  As if the sword had already known where it was going.

  Chapter 30

  It turned out I had no idea what pain was until now.

  My spark was gone. Not weakened, not drained, but ripped out completely when Dante pulled the sword from my guts. I was only still alive because I was half human — a human who’d just had three feet of sharpened metal with a hooked end shoved through his stomach and ripped back out. Even if Taeral tried to heal me, even if Dante allowed it, there wasn’t enough magic in the world to save me. I had two, maybe three minutes, tops.

  And maybe I would’ve been okay with that, at least until I died, if it wasn’t for the wretched mask of misery that was my brother hovering over me.

  “Keep him busy, dwarf!” Taeral’s shout bludgeoned my ears, and through vision that kept flashing light and dark, I saw him toss something to Holdrun. The lodestone. I wanted to tell him not to do that, he didn’t have to keep the promise because the dwarf wasn’t holding up his end. But when I opened my mouth, a gout of blood poured out instead of words.

  “Gideon … please, do not try to move.” Tears streaked Taeral’s face as he knelt next to me and held a hand over my stomach.

  He was going to attempt healing
me. Pointless.

  I heard the sound of a fight somewhere far away, like it was rolling across an ocean filled with agony. Idly, I wondered how many seconds Holdrun could last against Dante, or how long it would take for Taeral to realize he was trying to drain the Atlantic with a spoon.

  My flickering vision started to dim, and this time it kept going, rapidly closing on darkness. A long, rattling breath bubbled from my throat through the blood. My chest didn’t rise again.

  Through the fragment of sensation that remained to me, I heard a hoarse sob and felt Taeral place his hands on the sides of my head, and then rest his forehead against mine. “It is not enough. I am so sorry,” he whispered. “Goodbye, brother.”

  Goodbye.

  I couldn’t even tell whether I had lips anymore, let alone whether I’d moved them. The dwindling pinpoint of the world lensed shut.

  And then I was engulfed by the purest flash of stark-white light I’d ever seen. Like a hundred Arcadian moons. A thousand. Feeling shot through my body, flooding every millimeter until even my eyelashes tingled with power. And every bit of it was Taeral’s. I never knew he had so much.

  I bolted upright and opened my eyes. I was still in Dante’s study — seeing, hearing, breathing. The hole through me had closed.

  Taeral lay sprawled beside me, glamourless and still.

  “Holy shit, you did it,” I rasped in a shaking voice, nudging Taeral slightly. “Okay. Come on, let me heal you a bit now.” I started to reach for him.

  But he stopped me. “Finish it, brother.”

  Damn. I didn’t want to leave him in such bad shape, but I knew whatever was happening with Dante, there wasn’t much time to take advantage of it. Another one of those right decisions I was starting to hate making.

  “Fine, but I’m coming right back,” I said, searching the room briefly until I spotted the two of them across the room — Dante and Holdrun, the former trying unsuccessfully to cleave the dwarf in two with Fragarach, the latter gesturing with the glowing lodestone, producing a sickening snap each time that actually made Dante wince.