The Dark Remains (71 page)

The Scirathi came to a halt a dozen feet away.

“Come on, you
va’keth!
” Sareth hissed. “Come on so we can kill you.”

Low at first, then rising eerily, a sound emanated from behind the gold mask. It was the sound of laughter.

“Really, Sareth.” The sorcerer spoke in a strangely lisping voice. “Is that the only greeting you have for your oldest and dearest friend?”

The Scirathi lifted black-gloved hands to the gold mask. There was a faint
click
. Then the sorcerer lowered the mask, revealing the face beneath.

Or what was left of his face.

Travis’s gorge rose in his throat. On the left, the man’s visage was normal, the skin coppery, the eye dark brown. In a way he looked not unlike Sareth, although dull and plain where Sareth was sharply handsome. But it was to the right side of the man’s face that Travis’s gaze was drawn—or rather, where the right side of his face should
have been. Travis could see bone, and teeth, and leathery skin that had been stretched tight in an effort to conceal the deep concavity. However, without the mask, there was no hiding it: the right side of the man’s face was eaten away.

“By the Blood of Orú!” Sareth swore. “It cannot be you. You are dead!”

The Scirathi’s words were slurred yet cutting. “And it’s so good to see you as well, old friend.”

Sareth sputtered. “I only meant … the demon … I saw it take you!”

“Did you, Sareth?” the other said, moving closer. “Perhaps that was only what you wished to see. For here I am before you—alive if not exactly whole.” The left side of the man’s mouth curled up in a sneer, and he nodded toward Sareth’s wooden leg. “But then, neither are you. Yet I would say you are still the lucky one.” His fingers fluttered across the ruined side of his face, and a shudder coursed through him. Pain.

Sareth licked his lips. “Xemeth.”

“Yes, it is I—the friend you brought with you to the demon’s lair, the one you left to die while you fled.”

“But you didn’t die.”

“Obviously. You always were an idiot, Sareth. Evidently your parents had but one brain to give, and Vani got it. But do not fear. I am not angry anymore. In fact, I am grateful for what you did to me. Were it not for you, dear Sareth, I never would have gained what I have now—the key to everything I have ever desired.”

Sareth hesitated, then took a step closer. “What are you talking about, Xemeth? What have you gained?”

“This.” Xemeth reached into his robe and drew something out. Soft gold light welled between his fingers. Then he held out his hand.

It rested on his palm, its legs moving slowly against his flesh: a spider made of gold.

At once Travis knew it was not one of the spiders the
Scirathi made to carry their poison. It was larger, and vastly more beautiful. Its eyes were like many-faceted opals, and a sparkling red gem was set into its back. Power radiated from the gold spider along with the light. It seemed a living jewel.

“The Scarab of Orú,” Sareth whispered.

The demon might have been gone, but Grace didn’t need Durge to tell her that they were still in grave peril. Sareth had drawn as close to his old friend as he could, but Xemeth would not let the Mournish man come too near, and he would move away if Sareth drew within five paces of him.

He’s not really a Scirathi—he can’t be. If he was a sorcerer, we’d all be dead by now. He’s just dressed like one of them. But why?

Travis and Lirith stood next to Grace, eyes on Sareth. Durge had stepped a little farther away. He still held his greatsword, but he did not move. Xemeth might not have been a sorcerer, but he did have the scarab, and from what Sareth had said there was no telling what Xemeth might be capable of doing with the relic in hand.

Sareth moistened his lips. No doubt the Mournish man was carefully calculating what to speak.

“This is a wonder, Xemeth. You have done what we came here to do that day—you have saved the scarab from the hands of the Scirathi. And I am beyond joy to know you are well. Only why did you not come to us sooner and let us know you were alive? All the Mournish would have been glad.” He paused. “Vani would have been glad.”

A tremor passed through Xemeth. For a moment the left side of his face seemed to go slack. Then the intact half of his expression hardened again.

“Clever, Sareth. However, false platitudes will not make me forget how you left me to die. Nor will your pretty words give me back my face.”

“I am so sorry for what happened to you, my friend. I truly am.”

“And now you offer me false pity,” Xemeth snapped, “an even less potent remedy for what has happened. And while it is satisfying to know that you lost part of yourself as I did, do not think it makes us equals. For what is a missing leg to what I have suffered?”

Again his fingers fluttered over the pit where the right side of his face should have been. Grace knew Xemeth had beaten the odds surviving that injury—especially on this world, where even a small wound could lead to a fatal infection.

But it was sterile excision, wasn’t it, Doctor? Just like Xemeth’s leg. The demon doesn’t really eat things—not with a mouth and teeth. Whatever it touches simply … vanishes. Like the stone in these tunnels
.

Or like flesh.

“How, Xemeth?” Sareth said. “How did you survive? And why are you dressed as one of the Scirathi?”

“What, old friend, do you and your companions wish to hear a tale?”

Sareth’s gaze was pleading. “No one should have been able to survive the demon, yet you did.”

Xemeth’s remaining eye shone. Grace understood; Sareth was appealing to Xemeth’s vanity and self-importance, trying to buy them time. But time for what?

“Very well, Sareth. I confess, now that you have come here, I would be disappointed for you to perish without first hearing my story. And I believe there is time enough to tell it.” Xemeth laughed, a bubbling sound. “Time
certainly means little to
it
. And I imagine, soon enough, I will have all the time in the world.” He tightened his grip around the radiant scarab.

Grace saw Travis slip his hand in his pocket. Would the Stone be able to stop Xemeth if he tried to harm them? Grace didn’t know enough about its powers. Durge still gripped his sword, and Lirith’s fingers were moving behind her back, weaving.

Grace spun a thread toward the slender witch.
A spell?

Yes, sister, a spell of binding. Although I do not know if it can hold him. Do you feel it? The scarab pulls apart the threads even as I try to weave them together
.

Let me help
.

It was hard to work with her eyes open, but they couldn’t let Xemeth know what they were doing.

“…  and the demon came upon us,” Sareth was saying. “I made it to the passage, then turned around and reached for you. Only then I felt a coldness in my leg. The shadow seemed to swallow you, and you were gone.”

Xemeth stroked the scarab with a finger. “What you saw was not quite what happened,
friend
. The demon did come upon me. I felt it surround me, and as you described with your leg, I felt my face go cold. Then the ground shook, and a crack opened beneath me. I fell.”

“So that’s why it seemed to me the demon had consumed you. I could not know you were still alive.”

Xemeth made a strangled, snarling sound. “Do you think that absolves you of your crime? If you had remained, then you would have heard my cries of agony. For a full five fathoms I fell. When I hit the bottom I know not how many bones were shattered. And as I lay there, the numbness in my face faded, and the pain came.”

Grace could not even imagine the horror and the agony. In a way, she could not blame Xemeth for his rage.

“Then what?” Sareth said.

“How long I lay there, broken upon the rocks, I do not
know. A day, perhaps more. There was no light, nothing with which to measure the passage of time. I was dying, slowly but steadily. I tried to crawl, but to move inches took me hours. Finally I felt myself weakening, and I knew the end was close. One more time I heaved my body forward over sharp stones—and that was when I found it.”

Another laugh escaped him. “Ironic, I know, but had I not been injured I never would have found the means of my escape. In the dark it looked just like all the other stones. But I had cut my hands, and when my blood fell upon the thing, it … awakened at the taste.”

Xemeth slipped the scarab into his robes, then drew forth something else: a triangular object of black stone.

“The second artifact!” Sareth said.

Xemeth’s ruined lips twitched upward in a smirk. “So, you know that was how we were doing it, how we were sacrificing the gods to the demon. But I am not displeased. Indeed, I had hoped the Mournish would surmise what was happening, and that they would interfere with the Scirathi. I was counting on it, really. That was all part of my plan for getting both the demon and the sorcerers out of my way.”

“You mean you haven’t joined them?”

“Join those
va’keths?
I may have been homely, I may have been clumsy, but I have never been stupid.” Xemeth touched the gold mask, which now hung from a cord around his neck. “True, their costume has suited me. It has allowed me to keep my face and form concealed as I move about the city.”

“You!” Lirith gasped, and Grace felt the witch’s attention slip away from the spell they were weaving. “You were the one who tried to murder me!”

Xemeth let go of the mask. “Once I saw her arrive in the city, I knew that meddling bitch Melindora Nightsilver wouldn’t be able to keep her nose out of things. I tried to kill you while wearing this garb because I wanted her to
believe that the Scirathi were behind the deaths of the gods. I knew that, once she suspected the Scirathi, she would do everything she could to impede them. Just as she is doing now. And I would indeed have killed you had not my dear old friend arrived to save you.”

Lirith lifted a hand to her heart and gazed at Sareth. “It was you who saved me?”

His eyes were solemn. “It was I,
beshala.
”

“
Beshala?
” Xemeth repeated in a mocking voice. “Oh, Sareth, this is too marvelous. It makes it only sweeter that you have brought her with you, and your other friends as well. Although I must say, the garb of our people does not suit them as it suits her.”

Sareth ran a hand through his hair, his eyes wild. “What are you going to do, Xemeth?”

“Please, Sareth, you know perfectly well I’m going to kill you. Just as the demon will slay all of the Scirathi.”

“You mean you’re betraying them?”

Xemeth sighed. “Now you’re just being dull. Of course I’m betraying them. Just as you betrayed me.”

Grace sucked in a breath. The
T’hot
card Sareth had drawn that morning—the Three of Blades. Didn’t he say it had foretold betrayal that day?

Sareth struggled for words. “I don’t understand.”

“Must I spell it out for you? Very well, but only briefly. Time is running out now, for you and the sorcerers of Scirath.” Xemeth held up the gate artifact. “When I found this in the hole where I lay dying, I knew I had found my salvation. Why it had been put in this place so long ago, I am not certain. Perhaps the sorcerer who bound the demon thought he might use it to escape after working his magic. If so, he perished before he had the chance.

“Regardless, my blood awakened the artifact, and when I opened it I saw there was yet blood of power within it. I used it to create a gate to the surface and crawled through. I was dying, and I had given the gate only a
vague idea of where it should take me, but it seemed fate was on my side, for I came through in the countryside west of Tarras, and I was found by a shepherd. He was a kind and lonely man, and he nursed me back to health. Too bad. Once I was strong again, I was forced to repay his kindness by killing him. But he had seen the artifact, and I could not let word of it get back to the Mournish. Not then, before I had my allies.”

“The Scirathi,” Sareth said through clenched teeth.

“Now you’re catching on.” Xemeth set the artifact down on the altar. “I was determined to come back here and gain the scarab for myself, only I knew I had to find a way to get the demon out of the way. That was where the Scirathi became of use. I approached them, revealed the artifact to them, and told them of the scarab.

“As you can imagine, the sorcerers of Scirath were quite interested. Long have they searched for artifacts such as this. It is because they seek something in the other place beyond the void, the place which only the artifacts can reach. They have allies of some sort there.”

Grace glanced at Travis. He mouthed the word that burned across her brain.
Duratek
.

“I confess,” Xemeth went on, “I didn’t pay much attention to these distant friends of the Scirathi. I’m not even sure how the sorcerers came in contact with these people of the other world without the benefit of an artifact. I believe there is someone here in Falengarth who the sorcerers are in league with, someone who approached them and told them what the Morindai learned long ago, that there is another world across the void. All I know is that these people across the void seek a way to Eldh, and that the Scirathi have agreed to help them get here in return for some unknown favor or payment.

“Not that any of this really matters to me. All I care is that, to indebt them to me, I let the sorcerers use the artifact to communicate with their allies in the other world. Such is their skill at blood sorcery that they were able to
send messages back and forth across the void. They even managed to draw forth a few objects from the other world, including some kind of weapon made by their allies across the void—metal sticks that can slay at a distance.” Xemeth chuckled. “Of course, the sorcerers who attempted to pass through were consumed by the
morndari
in the void. To open a gate through which living men could pass, they needed blood far more powerful than that of a mere sorcerer of Scirath.”

“You mean like the blood of Orú,” Sareth said.

Xemeth drew the scarab forth again. “Exactly. I told the Scirathi about it, and I helped them forge a plan—the plan you are now aware of. Using the artifact and the blood of many sorcerers, we opened gates to the temples of the gods and fed them to the demon in order to sate it, so that we could get past it and gain the scarab.”