CHAPTER EIGHT.

The spell known as Half-Death had earned its name in more ways than one. Conclave considered it an outlawed incantation, its use punishable by imprisonment as well as various painful incentives designed to convince the offending mage not to try it again.

A spell which could transport its user from one place to another in an instant exacted its own heavy toll. Silhara nearly killed himself employing it as a way for him and Martise to escape a lich. Three rapid-fire transports of two people together and he'd been reduced to a senseless bloodied heap.

This time he suffered no damage from the spell. The gray plane in which he traveled didn't resist his manipulations as hard or drain his power as much as the living world did. The most he suffered was a popping in his ears and the welcome impact of his wife's body as she threw herself at him with a glad cry.

"Sil...Master!"

Martise's arms wrapped around his neck, nearly strangling him in her enthusiasm. He lifted her off her feet, trying to not shake with relief at having her in his arms once more, safe and sound. He pressed his face into the spot where her shoulder curved into her neck and breathed. The putrid reek permeated everything in this G.o.ds forsaken place, but Silhara fancied he still smelled the hint of orange flower on her skin and the soap she and Gurn used to launder the blankets.

He wanted to hold her like this for hours, an indulgence that would have to wait until after they escaped. Martise must have thought the same thing because she ended their embrace and stepped back to stare at him with a critical eye.

"Blood all over you. You faced Megiddo."

"I did, but this is from spellwork getting here. I've leashed your king for a moment, but it won't last."

She winced and caressed his arm with her fingertips. Her hair was a tangled mess, and fatigue painted lavender shadows under her eyes. She'd obviously dressed under enchantment and without benefit of a light. Her skirts were inside out, and she had donned one of his shirts instead of hers. It fell almost to her knees, and the sleeves were rolled to her elbows. No woman ever born was more beautiful.

So focused on tracking his wife through incantation and so relieved at finding her, he barely registered the structure at his back, incongruous as it squatted on the featureless landscape beneath the ever-changing sky. The cottage door hung open, and he tensed at the sight of a hazy shape hovering just inside the doorway. It stepped onto the threshold, revealing a wide-eyed woman of regal bearing, garbed in fine clothing.

"Who the h.e.l.l are you?" he practically snarled at her and smirked when she jumped and retreated into the cottage.

"Peace, Acseh. He's a friend," Martise called to her in Glimming. Silhara scowled at her. "My friend," she corrected. "There's no need to hide."

He refused to second that notion. Nothing and no one here was safe from him except the wife he'd cracked open a demon's cage to retrieve. He watched, narrow-eyed, as the woman Martise called Acseh ventured out of the cottage, keeping a wide distance between herself and him as she came to stand to one side of Martise.

"Why is there a house in the middle of a demon's world?" he asked in the language he and Martise shared in their world.

She answered him in the same tongue with a faint smile. "That's a story in itself and one we don't have time for now. Acseh is human, a prisoner here. From Megiddo's age I think." Her voice softened so only he could hear. "He calls her Damkiana. It's Makkadian for 'mistress of earth and heaven.' It's the name of a Makkadian G.o.ddess, sacred to witches."

Silhara's eyebrows rose as he stared at Acseh who stared back for a moment before her gaze slid away from his. "Is that so?" Martise's nod and intent expression revealed her thoughts matched his. Demons using affectionate terms-this place grew stranger every second.

Martise continued. "She doesn't know the meaning of the name. The king won't tell her, and neither have I as of yet."

Silhara scrutinized Acseh before crooking a finger at her. "Come closer." He rolled his eyes when she shook her head and took two steps back. "Fine," he said. "I can do this as easily with you standing there."

Both women gasped when he hurled a walnut-sized ball of red light at Acseh. She tried to leap away but was held fast by Silhara's sorcery. The small light swelled to enclose her in a crimson coc.o.o.n that pulsed and hummed.

Acseh's eyes were the size of saucers, and she swatted at the light, arms flailing as she sought to brush it off her skirts.

He half expected a protest from Martise, but she stood quietly next to him. Sympathy clouded her expression, but she said nothing, allowing the spell that sought out demonic possession do its work.

The light faded and disappeared, leaving Acseh shaking and teary-eyed. Martise didn't approach her, but she offered an apology in Glimming. "I'm sorry, Acseh," she said. "I want to believe you are as much an unlucky human as I am, but I don't know you. That spell verifies you're no demon or host to one."

"It doesn't mean you can trust her," Silhara said. He wasn't in the least apologetic for using the spell on an unwilling target.

Martise sighed. "I know." She glanced down, and it was her turn to startle. "The books were right. You found the sword." She stretched out a hand, not quite touching the scabbard where it rested at Silhara hip, partially hidden by his cloak. "It feels..."

"Foul," he finished for her. He'd grown more used to the skin-crawling sensation that danced up and down his leg, but if he didn't need the blade to control the demon while they lingered here, he'd gladly unhook it from his belt, snap the thing in half and toss the pieces in the dirt.

Martise didn't withdraw her hand, and her brow furrowed. "It is foul, but something else as well."

He shrugged. "Whatever it is, it's bought us a little time. Not much though. Are you ready?"

She nodded. "Since I got here. What's your tether to our world? What's mine?"

"I splattered enough blood on the temple steps to harness a team of horses." He traced the deepening lines in her forehead with his fingertip. "You know the price of difficult rituals, apprentice."

Her frown became a full scowl. "I don't have to like it. You've shed so much of your own blood for your magic, it's a wonder you aren't bled dry by now."

He didn't argue her point. He'd bled plenty during invocations and considered the price worth it. He was blessed with an extraordinarily powerful Gift and the skills to use it to his maximum benefit. If it meant spilling some of his own blood to exercise that power, so be it.

He was much more reluctant to spill Martise's. "Your spirit necklace is hidden beneath a pile of stones near the temple. If that and my magic don't anchor you to our world, nothing will."

"Please. Don't leave me here."

Silhara and Martise both turned at Acseh's plea. His brows snapped together. "You speak our language?" His question, in Glimming, was a whip's kiss, and Acseh flinched.

She shook her head. "I don't need to. You talk with your faces and bodies as well. It's easy enough to know of what you speak."

Martise tugged on his sleeve. "We can't, in good conscience, abandon her to this fate."

"Yes we can." He took a breath to argue more when a blot of darkness appeared before him. Hands with an iron grip lifted him off his feet and hurled him backwards through the cottage doorway. His spine shuddered, and black stars exploded across his vision as he slammed back against a wall of rock. Martise's screams were distant in his ears as he fell and rolled.

He barely regained his feet before he was thrown once more, punched sideways into a trestle table that tipped and fell half on him, pinning him between it and the opposite wall. A sharp pain throbbed in his left side, and his sight blurred. He clawed for the sheathed sword trapped beneath him.

"Touch it, and I'll snap her neck."

Silhara froze at Megiddo's command. The demon stood a few steps away, pale and black and malevolent. Martise stood in front of him, her eyes wide and nostrils flared. Megiddo's hand curved under her chin toward the side of her jaw. His other arm wrapped around her waist, holding her close. His faint smile might have frosted windows from the inside were he in the living world.

"Speak or reach for the sword, and there will be no saving her, even if you manage to return to your home. Broken and disfigured here. Dead there. How much are you willing to sacrifice, sorcerer, so that I may act your puppet?"

Silhara wanted nothing more than to spit his adversary on the demon blade and roast him over an open fire, but he held his tongue. He stared into Martise's eyes, trying with only a gaze to rea.s.sure her. Her terror was palpable in the room-to him, to Megiddo and to Acseh who stood near the door, ashen and still.

Megiddo gestured to him with a thrust of his chin. "Take off your belt and toss it toward me."

That was easier said than done with him half pinned by the overturned table. Silhara did as instructed, careful to always keep his hands in sight. After much squirming and sweating, he managed to free the belt from the twisted fabric of his cloak and threw the sheathed sword over the table where it landed closer to Acseh than to Megiddo.

The Wraith King shook his head. "Difficult to the last." The tone of his voice shifted, softened, and he addressed Acseh without taking his eyes off Silhara. "Damkiana, kick the sword to me. Don't touch it with your hands."

Acseh hesitated for a moment, gaze darting back and forth between Megiddo and Silhara before she did as the king commanded and pushed the glowing scabbard across the floor with her foot. It spun until he stopped its spin with the toe of his boot.

Heedless of the fact she was embraced by a demon and enrobed by cursed shadows and d.a.m.ned souls, Martise did her best to climb up her captor and away from the sword where it lay near her feet.

Her struggles didn't faze him. Megiddo neatly flipped the scabbard into the air with his foot and caught it with the hand previously resting at Martise's waist. The hand at her vulnerable neck never moved.

Lightning slithered up his forearm and disappeared into the shadow robes. Silhara watched, puzzled, as the faces swirling in its mist faded. Even more unsettling was the minute change that overtook the king. Had he any doubt about Megiddo's corporeality, being physically thrown into a wall had squelched that notion. But the Wraith King looked more solid, more...complete, as if the connection with the sword added layers to him that weren't there before.

The king is the sword; the sword is the king.

Megiddo's slight smile returned. "You are indeed powerful, mage. No barrier ward I ever heard of withstood this blade's effects. We could have used a necromancer like you in the beginning."

Silhara bit back a scathing remark, bound to silence by Megiddo's threat against Martise. Beginning of what? The annihilation of a world by demon hordes? Even if he were a necromancer and lived then, he'd be quick to tell the Wraith Kings and their ilk exactly what they could do with their demand for his help. Besides, those who dealt with the dead rarely consorted with the d.a.m.ned. Far too unpredictable and savage.

Megiddo uttered something in a guttural language that made the hairs on Silhara's arms rise and plummeted the temperature in the cottage. The blade slid out of the scabbard by itself and hovered mid air at Megiddo's forearm. The sharp lightning blue radiance crackling down the steel cast Martise's drawn features in high relief. The king dropped the scabbard and grasped the sword hilt.

For a split second, his gaze flickered away from Silhara to the sword, and his hand relaxed against Martise's jaw. It was the opportunity Silhara had waited for. The command not to speak had little bearing on a man whose voice had long ago been ruined by a strangulation attempt. Spells worked in any language, even those of hands as well as the mouth.

He sketched a quick symbol, and Acseh screamed as an invisible force slung her at Megiddo and the sword's lethal edge. The demon's eyes widened. He was fast, inhumanly so, just as Silhara hoped. Megiddo shoved Martise from him and spun so that he caught Acseh with his free hand and yanked the blade away before it sliced into her.

Silhara fired off another spell. The table holding him down shot across the room, a moving barricade that slammed the demon against the wall behind him. The mage rolled to his feet and grabbed Martise's hand, using the precious moments in which Megiddo was busy juggling a sword, a woman and a crushing table, to dart out the cottage door.

He shoved Martise through first and nearly choked on his own cloak when something grabbed hold and wrenched him back into the cottage.

Rage cast a red haze over his vision. G.o.ds d.a.m.n it! He'd had more than enough of this b.a.s.t.a.r.d!

He fired spell after spell against the demon king, turning the cottage's interior into a shambles of shattered furniture and cracked walls. The sagging roof groaned and threatened to cave in on them. Silhara sought the one weak spot besides the sword, but Megiddo shielded Acseh, absorbing every shockwave of battle magic Silhara threw at him until his coiling hair literally smoked, his robes screamed in agony and his face bore the black grooves of scorch marks in the marble skin.

Silhara advanced on him, casually hurling spells. He heard bones crack and saw Megiddo flinch, but the demon remained standing, sword held at his side, Acseh crouched behind him, arms covering her head.

"You can throw spells into eternity, mage, but you will not leave here until you open the gate for me," Megiddo said.

"Then you and I will dance this dance forever, demon sp.a.w.n." Silhara lowered his stance and lunged for Acseh.

The tell-tale crackle of the sword hummed by his ear. He jerked back, caught Megiddo's wrist and crushed the tendons on the underside. Megiddo's palm opened and the sword, still bound by the barrier wards, fell into Silhara's hand.

Too easy, he thought. Far too easy. But his suspicions didn't stop him. He turned the sword and drove it into Megiddo's chest, just below the breastbone. The blade sank deep, through clothing, skin, muscle and organs and out Megiddo's back. He staggered, stumbled over a wailing Acseh and fell against the wall. The sword tip raked down the plaster, sending snow drifts of powder over the demon's robes.

He gasped a few short breaths, and his icy hand closed over Silhara's where he still gripped the hilt. Silhara twisted the blade and was rewarded with another gasp. "Stings, doesn't it, demon?"

Acseh crawled away from them until she climbed to her feet and flew out the door. Megiddo watched her escape before turning his metallic gaze to Silhara with a gleam of satisfaction. He grinned, a death's head smile of clenched teeth and black amus.e.m.e.nt. "I am no demon," he said in a wheezing voice.

Another twist; another pained gasp. "Why should I believe you?"

This time Megiddo's smile was triumphant. The hand covering Silhara's lifted, fingers spread. "Because it's true." Before Silhara could pull away, the demon's index finger touched his forehead.

And the Master of Crows awakened to h.e.l.l.

CHAPTER NINE.

"My G.o.ds, what have you done to him?" Martise stared at the wreckage that was once a tidy cottage before vaulting over a broken bench and a heap of pots netted together in a snarl of clothesline.

Silhara crouched with his back to her, unmoving. The demon king slumped in front of him, impaled by his own sword. His macabre robes squirmed across his body, twitching each time a shard of lightning crackled down the blade and lit his insides like some grotesque festival lamp.

Megiddo lifted his head at her shout. "Don't touch him," he said in a thick voice and promptly spat a gobbet of black blood onto the floor.

For some reason Martise couldn't fathom, she obeyed and skirted around Silhara's still form to see his face. Her heartbeat stopped and restarted at the speed of a runaway horse. Except for several nasty bruises and the streamers of dried blood from his use of the black arcana to get here, he seemed unharmed. No fresh blood or broken limbs, but he was like a corpse in rigor, eyes wide and staring into some unfathomable vastness. His lips moved, shaping soundless words. he remained unresponsive when Martise called his name several times, first in gentle question and finally in resounding demand.

"What did you do?" she repeated in quieter, despairing tones.

Megiddo inhaled deeply, grasped the hilt and pulled the sword out in slow measures. Martise felt the blood drain from her face and a warning buzz start in her ears. The blade, driven clean through the demon's body, glistened with blood that faded as soon as it hit the light. Megiddo groaned in agony but continued until the sword no longer impaled him. The unliving robes parted, and where there should have been a wound, only a long tear in his tunic shown, surrounded by a dark stain. A human might not heal here, but a demon did.

Martise stood her ground, unwilling to leave Silhara's side, when Megiddo gained his feet, sword still clutched in his hand. He stared at Silhara in silence for long moments and then at Martise. "I believe you, kashaptu," he said. "It was his power, not yours, that awakened the sword and cracked open the gate."

She didn't correct him. Besides, her recalcitrant Gift might as well not even exist for all the help it had given her through this ordeal. She gazed at Silhara and didn't squelch the whimper that escaped her lips.

"I gave him memory," the demon said. "My memory. My story." He stepped over scattered bits of plaster and lath, and skirted the remains of a bench with a broken washboard perched atop it to retrieve the sword's scabbard. "When he revives, tell him to call my name. I will come."

This time he chose to walk out the door instead of disappear from sight in an eye's blink. Martise promptly forgot him and turned her attention to Silhara. He hadn't moved, not a muscle, except for his mouth which continued to recite silent words.

"Is he gone?" Acseh spoke from the doorway.

Martise didn't bother to turn. The woman had fled past her into the gray distance, features twisted in terror. Martise had been too focused on reaching Silhara to stop her or even to care. "He just walked out," she answered. "Did you not see him?" It didn't surprise her if Megiddo had strolled by Acseh, soundless and invisible.

The woman remained at the doorway, unwilling to venture farther inside. "Your mage tried to kill me."

Knowing Silhara and how he viewed a battle, she didn't doubt it. In his mind, one fought to win by whatever means necessary, and he'd quickly figured out that Acseh was Megiddo's weakness, just as she was Silhara's.

Martise slowly circled him. "Come back to me, love," she whispered. "Tell me what you see." A more desperate, fearful plea echoed in her mind. Please, G.o.ds, please, please, please come back to me.

She glanced at Acseh. "I doubt he's any threat to you now."

He made a liar out of her as soon as she spoke the words. Her skirt hem brushed his hip. Silhara erupted from his frozen stillness with a bellow that challenged a thunderclap and a swinging fist that would have taken Martise's head off her shoulders if she hadn't ducked at the last minute. Acseh screamed and bolted a second time.

Martise shouted his name, forgetting the danger of revealing his name on the gray plane. He ignored her, clawing at his cloak, hair, his skin, until he'd gouged scratches into his arms that welled with blood. A chaotic mix of languages spilled from his mouth-bits and pieces of spells that set a broken chair on fire and sent the ceramic water pitcher smashing against an opposite wall.

The pitch of his voice rose, beyond the raspy timbre created by a damaged throat, to a high inhuman scream of unimaginable suffering. His body contorted, and he staggered across the room in a violent paroxysm of flailing arms and agonized cries.

Pots, broken shards of pitcher, clothesline and bits of furniture swirled upward, spinning around the room with Silhara in the center of its vortex. Martise dove behind the upended table to keep from being skewered by a pair of flensing knives and bludgeoned by an iron skillet. The knives buried themselves in the wall above her head while the skillet smashed into a cupboard before falling to the floor by her hip.

The spinning column collapsed with the end of whatever incantation Silhara uttered. His screams had changed to pitiful moans, and his back arched, as if someone had taken a bullwhip to him. He careened into the table where Martise had taken shelter, sick with horror. This had to stop. No waiting for him to "revive" as Megiddo so gently and so mendaciously described.

No amount of coaxing or talking would end this torture, and she had no magic that might subdue him. She wrapped her hand around the skillet's handle. Silhara's voice rose in pitch again, signaling a crest of whatever torture ripped his mind to shreds. A gout of flame burst across one wall and spilled down another. Martise rose to her feet and crept closer. Silhara spun, and she struck.

The skillet gave a dull thrung when it connected with the side of Silhara's skull. The screaming stopped abruptly, and he dropped like a sack of oranges fallen from a cart. Martise dropped the pan, fingers still stinging from the resonate vibrations that jittered from her hand to her shoulder when she hit him.