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  Spinner of Lies

  ( Forgotten Realms:Sword of the Gods: - 1 )

  Bruce R. Cordell

  Bruce R. Cordell

  Spinner of Lies

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE CITY OF AIRSPUR, AKANUL

  16 LEAFFALL, THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

  One rainy evening, while Demascus was playing a game of tiles on his rooftop balcony, the memory of killing his lover returned. He was studying a game board that spelled out improbable actions, fiery emotions, and especially dubious curse words. The latter were courtesy of his absent opponent. He nodded thoughtfully, then laid down several square playing pieces, each carved with a single letter, to spell the word conspire across a space marked with crossed wands. That multiplied the value of his play by two … and he realized he’d just catapulted into the lead! When Riltana sees this, he thought, she’s going to curse me out as a rat-hearted cheater. He grinned.

  Riltana had a flare for laying down high-scoring words, probably thanks to the windsoul’s colorful vocabulary. He’d discovered her talent a few months ago when she’d decisively beat him at a game that she said he “might find interesting.” Since then, they’d set up each game on the roof. It was convenient for Riltana; she could drop in and make her play whether he was home or not.

  Demascus was fascinated by tiles, despite the fact that Riltana trounced him five times out of six. It wasn’t only that he enjoyed a challenge and anticipated the day his skill would rival his friend’s. No, the real reason he couldn’t get enough was because sometimes the words on the board unlocked splinters of memory.

  For instance, CONSPIRE. That was a word to conjure with. The two syllables suggested a wanton trespass, a meeting high above an unsuspecting-

  A gust of wind sprayed cold rain in his face. His chain of thought collapsed. “Shadow take it,” he muttered. He rubbed water out of his eyes. And just like that, the world went gray, as a recollection flung him somewhere else.

  A woman stood in a hallway, her features soft in trembling candlelight. Her shoulders were bare and her eyes smoldered like distant storm clouds. Her name was Madri, and Demascus loved her.

  He stood a few paces from her, and he wore only loose trousers, baring his elaborate ash-gray designs. The marks ran down his arms and across his back like the ghosts of tattoos. His bone-white hair was wet and his pale skin tingled from the bath.

  “Coming to bed?” she asked, winding a curl of hair around one finger in languid circles.

  His blood surged higher. It pounded in his temples like a drum. I can’t go through with this, he thought. I can’t …

  “What’s wrong? You’ve been quiet all night. It’s not like you, Demascus.” Madri’s impish expression wavered.

  “I took a new commission,” he said, his voice dull as a worn blade. “One I wish for all my lives I hadn’t accepted. If only I’d known who …”

  “You accept commissions without knowing the target?”

  “Sometimes.” Because whomever the gods choose always deserved death. And when had he ever refused? Never. Even …

  Oh, Madri! What secrets do you keep? How awful they must be.

  “You’re not frightened, surely,” she said, misreading his reticence. “If I’m to believe a quarter of your stories, even demigods fear your name, if they’re unlucky enough to learn it.” She laughed and came to him. Her scent, a sort of orange-peach fragrance with undertones of cedar, was solace. He breathed it in for the last time. Then he took her supple shoulders in his hands.

  “It’s not that I’m afraid, Madri. I’m paralyzed by … grief. And I regret that it’s come to this.” Her arms went around his waist to draw him close. He slid his hands up from her shoulders, tracing the line of her neck until he cupped her head. “I’m sorry,” he said. Even as she gazed at him with incomprehension, he gave a savage twist.

  Pelting rain brought Demascus back to the rooftop patio. Water streamed down his hair, under his collar, and saturated his smallclothes. He was standing beyond the protection of the awning with no memory of having moved. And his throat was sore, as if he’d been screaming. The city lights were nebulous beneath the sleeting downpour, and the wind tugged at him with icy fingers. A few more steps and he’d pitch over the roof’s edge. From somewhere below, a wailing child cried for its mother.

  “Burning dominions,” he whispered. What in the name of all the gods of shadow had he just witnessed? That woman-Madri-he’d seen her before. Images only, flashes of memory with no context. In each of these, she’d glared at him with naked animosity. Now he knew why.

  One of his former incarnations had been snakehearted enough to kill his own lover. By all that’s holy and sovereign, he thought, I’m a monster. I …

  No, no-I’m not-thatwasn’t me! That was an earlier incarnation of me, not me. I’d never do that. He shook his head in accompaniment with his denial. The atrocity of the recollection was not his to claim. He’d never even imagine it!

  Except … except he must have. He’d done more than consider committing such an atrocity. And if the reasons were irrefutable, who’s to say he’d been wrong? Especially if a lord of creation commanded him. Disposing of those selected by the gods had been his purpose. He was an instrument of fate, as he’d discovered when he pulled his blade from the mausoleum of his last life. What he had become, however, with his reduced abilities and incomplete memory, was disputable. If any of his former selves felt gnawing remorse over the vision of Madri, he doubted they could have long claimed the title Sword of the Gods.

  The cold rain still streamed down. Rain dripped under his boot cuffs and pooled around his toes. Whatever else, he thought, I’m not the person who did that! That person … shared my name, that’s all. If I believe otherwise, I’m only a stumble away from the sanatorium. It’s time to stop rooting for memories. It can’t be worth this.

  Except that was a lie. Necessity required he continue striving to remember his previous lives. Learning all he’d once been, and everything he’d once done, was the only way to protect himself from a potential cavalcade of enemies he didn’t even remember making. Enemies his previous selves had made, he corrected himself. That distinction mattered, if only to him. Unfortunately, the events of a few months ago had revealed that his enemies would continue to pursue him, life after life, incarnation after incarnation.

  They weren’t after his life; they were after his soul.

  He stared up into the rain, as bleakness settled over him. Even if he jumped and smashed himself along the cliffside city below, it would be no escape. I’ll just reform into a new mortal shell somewhere in a few years and lose all the progress I’ve gained this time around. Which was maybe what his worst enemy-his nemesis-intended. The Madri recollection might be the very thing Kalkan had manipulated him into recalling, thanks to the rakshasa’s unholy knowledge of the future. The rakshasa, though dead, had proved to be the ultimate puppeteer. Perhaps Kalkan foresaw he’d kill himself in a fit of despair and so seal the fate of Demascus’s next incarnation. Kalkan wanted to turn Demascus into an unforgiving fiend exactly like himself. Why? But Kalkan would be out of the picture for a few more years, until the rakshasa returned to renew his blasted purpose …

  Demascus glanced once more into the night, then stepped back from the edge. He gasped, after releasing a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. His hands trembled as he recalled the touch of the woman’s shoulders and the trust in her tumultuous eyes. Madri … Who were you? Is this awful vision all I will ever know about you? Probably. You’re long dead, and have been for who knows how many years …

  I need to leave Airspur. Maybe find someplace in Faerun where none of my previous selves ever visited. Throw away the Veil, the sword,
and start over completely-

  Something dropped from the storm, tumbling out of control. It smashed right through the skylight he’d spent a small fortune installing. As the bark of shattering glass cut the air, he realized the shape had worn a black leather mask. It was Riltana!

  Five figures arrowed down from the night, hot on the windsoul’s trail. Four crashed through the shattered skylight, amid falling pieces of glass, rain, and his friend, landing in the living room. The fifth landed on the rooftop as easily as Riltana normally would, no worse for wear from a plunge off some higher city cliff or mote. The figure was gaunt, with colorless eyes. He gripped a black blade and wore gray leather without insignia or decoration.

  “Who the Hells are you?” said Demascus.

  “Your end.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE CITY OF AIRSPUR, AKANUL

  16 LEAFFALL, THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

  The gaunt man advanced across Demascus’s roof.

  Demascus sighed in relief. Sometimes fate was kind. He couldn’t have asked for a more perfect distraction from the maelstrom battering his mind.

  He relinquished confusion and regret; he wasn’t even sure what he should feel guilty about. It was easier to let go. A familiar spike of joy in the face of drawn weapons shattered his doubt. This newcomer was about to discover the only ending on this night would be his.

  The world slowed, making it seem like each raindrop was a distinct globule suspended in air. Even as Demascus’s adversary tensed to attack, he seemed to freeze in place. The deva’s hands itched for Exorcessum, but he’d had no reason to bring his blade to the roof. It was locked in a trunk under his cot. He really should keep his sword closer, especially after all the trouble he’d gone through to find it. But the weapon was so unwieldy. Even sheathing it on his back was awkward. How had his previous selves managed it? No matter. His current weapons included his Veil, which seemed to function only about half the time; and the single scroll-shaped charm woven into his hair-useful in conversations where lies were flying like crows-but not so much against swordplay.

  And by the way the newcomer’s tar-colored blade seemed to eat light, the weapon was enchanted with some kind of nasty surprise. Demascus swiveled side-wise toward his foe to bring one of his favorite weapons into play. His heel lashed, once into the man’s stomach, a second time into his neck, and finally where the stranger’s fingers wrapped around the hilt of his blade. It was like kicking a bag filled with sodden earth, not flesh. But the sword came free. Demascus snatched it out of the air even as his foe’s eyes dilated with pain. Or maybe just surprise. It didn’t matter; Riltana was squaring off against four foes by herself in his living room.

  A row of ghostly runes faded onto his borrowed blade in pale imitation of Exorcessum’s designs. He hewed the intruder with the man’s own sword, and the man dropped like a limp rag from the force of the blow, though no blood came. Demascus dismissed the attacker and gazed into the gaping hole in his skylight. A jagged shadow thrown up from a glass splinter offered a convenient path, so he stepped into its embrace. His next step was out of a different shadow, this one thrown by an overturned divan one level down.

  Riltana was on her feet. Four adversaries ringed her, menacing the genasi with black iron weapons. One intruder was huge, another tiny, the third dressed all in yellow, and the last was a woman with painted red fingernails as long as daggers … they all had the same feral, hungry look and colorless eyes with only tiny black circles to mark their irises. When the one in yellow screamed and leaped at Riltana, Demascus saw long incisors in her mouth. Vampires? He swallowed. He hoped not. He’d faced vampires before. At least, a previous version of himself had. Probably. Uncertainty made him hesitate.

  Riltana dove beneath her opponent. Her adversary managed to score the back of her armor, but the windsoul came to her feet in one piece. She’d exchanged places with her attacker; the vampire stood in the center of the wrecked living room and Riltana’s back was to a wall. Time jerked back to its too-rapid pace as he unwound the Veil from around his neck. The black iron weapons made him nervous. What if the one in his hand decided to betray him? The Veil of Wrath and Knowledge would serve as a backup weapon if it came to it.

  “Demascus, when you’re done standing there like a beer-addled tosser, maybe you could help?” Riltana yelled.

  Oops. “You should’ve let me know you were bringing guests,” he replied. “I would’ve set more places.”

  The woman with red dagger nails spun at the sound of his voice. Before she’d half turned, he stabbed her. The sword plunged to its hilt in her side, but the woman didn’t seem to mind. She snarled, “The thief has a friend. Kill them both! Retrieve what she stole!”

  Demascus realized Riltana had filched from the wrong household. He wanted to tell the woman that he’d had no part in Riltana’s thievery. But before he could say anything, the red-nailed woman blurred forward and grabbed Demascus’s wrist. He gasped; her fingers were like ice. He released the sword and jerked back his hand. But she didn’t let go, and her eyes blazed with hypnotic power.

  She whispered, “Blood. It tastes like danger. So sweet and thick …” She bent her head to his neck. He elbowed her in the face. If anything, she was more solid than the man on the roof, and her grip was a glacial manacle sucking away his body’s warmth, his vitality. If he didn’t get away, he’d collapse, drained of life. She wasn’t a pushover like the vampire on the rooftop.

  With a cry of command he summoned a flare of divine light from his skin and clothing. The vampire flinched at the radiance, and he stepped across the room and down the hall within the woman’s wavering shadow. She’d feel differently once he retrieved Exorcessum-

  “Watch out!” came Riltana’s warning from down the hallway.

  Something bit him on the shoulder. He spun, spattering his own blood on the walls. The man he’d dispatched on the rooftop crouched there, his mouth red with Demascus’s flesh. Burning dominions, the thing had actually bitten him! That couldn’t be good. He fought back the urge to shrug off his coat and examine the wound then and there in the hallway mirror. He wouldn’t know what to look for anyway-two holes where the incisors had gone in? Discoloration?

  The female vampire stood a few steps behind him. When his eyes skittered across hers, she tried to catch him in a hypnotic trap. He averted his gaze.

  The woman’s touch had hollowed his stomach like he’d eaten bad fish, and the expanding burn on his shoulder was worrisome. A regular bite would ache just the same, right? He realized … he was sort of afraid of vampires.

  Stop it, he commanded. Remember who you are. Or, anyway, who you once were.

  Demascus stood with one foot in light and one in shadow. He recalled how his friend Chant remarked awhile ago that a deva could draw his strength from either, and that on the whole, Chant preferred the light.

  Demascus, however, reveled in the dark. He shook out the Veil, throwing a shadow into a plane few could see. That gloom fell across the vampire like an immaterial shroud, and through its gauzy lens all of the vampire’s strengths and weaknesses were made plain. Seven points of pale light flickered through the creature’s body. Their gleams revealed to him a creature animated by necrotic vigor. An undead was stronger, faster, and more resistant to hurt than living flesh, and its wounds would mend supernaturally quickly. But it wasn’t invulnerable. The root of the vampire’s power lay in the bottommost point of illumination, which pulsed red like spilled blood. In that flicker, Demascus discovered what he should have known all along.

  The vampire would burn away instantly in full sunlight; too bad he was fresh out of sunshine. Of course, he wielded the next best thing: the radiance of the gods’ wrath.

  But without his sword to channel it, his options were limited. He could try the same thing he’d-

  The male vampire lunged, arms out, to ensnare the deva in a wrestler’s grapple. Demascus made no move to stop him. The bloodsucker pulled the deva close to its chest, baring Demascus’s
neck. The deva whispered an oath of light. His voice was a quill that scrawled a burning mark of divine brilliance, the promise of destruction. The mark erupted, and the vampire blew apart in gobbets of golden illumination, sizzling gore, and a smell of decay so pungent Demascus gagged. Weren’t they supposed to turn to grave mist and slink away? He was pretty sure that was the case. But he’d touched something of his deeper power, accidentally, when he’d called the light. That undead wouldn’t be coming back in any fashion whatsoever.

  The back splatter of radiance and burning flesh had caught the female vampire nearby. She screamed as smoking holes marred her previously flawless skin. Her scream bubbled to a sigh as she transformed into a pillar of mist. Ha! he thought, I knew it! Mist!

  Thuds, scrapes of metal on stone, and Riltana’s curses echoed down the hallway from the living room, muted by the grave vapor. Demascus checked his instinct to plunge through the roiling bank to Riltana’s aid. Though she faced three all alone, he still hadn’t retrieved his best weapon! And what if the red-nailed vampire re-formed around him as he rushed through?

  He flung open his bedroom door and dove for the long chest containing his sword. As he worked the latches, he heard Riltana scream in equal parts fury and pain. “Hold on!” he yelled, clicking the last latch open.

  “What’re you doing back there, having a lie down?” came her muffled reply. He could tell by the hoarse timbre in her voice that she was desperate. Demascus snatched up his sword. The cross guard was an intricate affair of opposing styles, as if the smith had managed to forge two or three weapons into a single whole. Nearly as long as two regular blades laid end to end, it still felt light as a switch of hazel wood in his hands. The sword trembled, and for a moment he saw … Madri, the woman he’d killed!

  Demascus opened his mouth in surprise. He wanted to tell her he was sorry for what his previous self had done, to explain that he wasn’t that person anymore.