Sword of the Tyrant Read online

  Unless whatever she'd been subjected to had completely erased the memory of what she had been, his ritual should work.

  "I thought you needed Prada to help you manage your mana," Euryale said after a few moments watching him trace each letter of the words involved in his spell on the ground around the circumference of the circle.

  "I'm sure she'll be along before I'm ready," Terry said. "There was no sense in waiting for her to do this part though."

  He paused again and looked back at her as he said, "She's asked to say goodbye before she leaves."

  "Who?"

  Terry's lips compressed as he gazed at her. "Your sister."

  Euryale scowled and began to protest. "She's-"

  She stopped when Terry lifted his hand. He said, "She's in a doll that — unlike the one Vlad put you in — can see, hear, and speak. She can even walk around, horrifying as that was to see. Baba Yaga will be taking her away after I get this body back to her ... she wants to say goodbye."

  Euryale's expression was flat and unreadable, which was unusual for a woman that typically wore her heart on her sleeve.

  "I don't want to do that, Master," she finally said, obviously choosing her words carefully.

  "I know you don't."

  Terry stood up as he turned, cupping the hand he had slashed to give him blood for his ritual with the other to minimize the bleeding as he gave her his full attention.

  Euryale's eyes widened as they met his and one of her brazen claws shot up, palm facing him. She shook her head vehemently as she said, "I know that look. Don't you dare talk to me about the future. Don't talk to me about after. Please. I'm begging you. Don't."

  He swallowed the entire speech he'd prepared as he saw the look in her eyes. The pleading desperation. She understood. For all her impulsiveness, Euryale had a much better grasp of her situation than he ever would.

  "Please say goodbye to your sister," he said instead, speaking softly. "I know it would mean a lot to her. Whatever else you say to her is between you, all I'm asking is that you say goodbye. She didn't do that for you ... this is your chance to be better."

  She dropped her hand and hugged herself, glancing away as she murmured, "Is that an order?"

  Terry hesitated, then shook his head.

  "No ... but I am asking. It might be a thousand years, or ten thousand, before you see her again ... but you will see her again. Please."

  Her lips trembled and tears spilled from her ice-blue eyes as she whispered, "That's not fair!"

  He opened his mouth, then closed it again and stepped to her, wrapping her up and kissing her snakes before he laid his cheek atop her head.

  She didn't hug him back. He felt her trembling in his grasp, and he waited for that trembling to ease before he said, "You've given me everything that you are, and I accept you. I love you, and I will cherish you all the days of my life. I want to give a little piece of you, of the you that I love, to your sister. If you do this for me, there'll be a little piece of me there too whenever you see her again ... and she'll be around forever."

  "She wanted to hurt you, she wanted to take you away from me!" she sobbed, finally wrapping him up and holding him tight.

  "She failed. Instead, she's lost everything. Could it hurt us to give her just a little bit? Something to hold onto?"

  "You're too soft!" she cried, leaning away to glare at him.

  He grinned lopsidedly at her and said, "I'm taking her away from Thomas. She'll never see him again. By the time she gets her body back, she'll be lucky if she can even dig up legends to remember him by. Is that too soft?"

  She blinked, her expression incredulous as she said, "You have no idea of the depth of our depravity, Master. What you're doing amounts to less than nothing. I want to put her in a brazen bull and keep the fires under it lit until the metal fails."

  His jaw dropped as she nodded solemnly, adding, "I'd use lava, but then I wouldn't be able to tend the blaze myself. I would happily go to sleep for a hundred years listening to the lullaby of her screams."

  "Jesus."

  He looked away from her as his grip slackened, but hers tightened in response. She lifted a brazen claw and cupped his cheek, turning his face to hers as she said, "We are not good people, my sister and I. She will only think you weak for not torturing her while you have the chance. I think you weak, and I love you. I doubt she has anything but contempt for you now."

  Terry's horror at what Euryale said must have shown through, because she reached up with her other hand, cupping his face with both as she pleaded, "Please, don't hate me. Please!"

  "I ... don't. I just, I thought ..."

  "You thought a few weeks with you would magically erase the fact that I've killed tens of thousands? That I terrorized nations? Master, I am a monster. I will never be anything else. That I love you is just a ... a bright spot. A little, tiny flash of happiness. It doesn't undo anything."

  "Maybe not, but this isn't about just me. You've got a second chance," he said. "You don't have to be miserable anymore! Here on Celestine you could be happy for-"

  She slipped a finger over his lips to still them as she shook her head and said quietly, "Don't. I can only be happy as long as I have you. If I have to be good to have you, then I'll be as good as I can be. The end."

  "But I want more for you," he murmured as he looked into her eyes.

  "Then give me more," she said. "Give me more of you, and maybe someday I will change. Or maybe I won't. Maybe I'll just be different one day, and we'll never know when or how it happened. Don't give up on me."

  She smiled slightly, then her expression got just a touch predatory as her brazen claws curled in a bit against his skin. "And don't, go, wandering, off, alone."

  Knowing better than to fight that battle he simply nodded and said, "Yes ma'am."

  She fondly patted his cheek, then stepped back, turning as she spread her wings and said, "I'll go tell the others where you are, send Prada ... and I'll think about what you've asked me to do."

  She paused and her snakes oriented on him as she asked, "You still aren't ordering me?"

  He almost shook his head. The idea of ordering her around wasn't something he was comfortable with. He didn't want to abuse the control he had over her, but something she'd said came back to him then, something that made him change his mind.

  'Give me more of you ...'

  He nodded once and said, "It's an order. This is what I want, and not just for you. I never got a chance to say goodbye to my family. I don't want you to live with that regret. Go to your sister. Talk to her. Say goodbye."

  Euryale wasn't facing him so he couldn't see her expression. She drew in a breath, then let it out slowly as she said, "As you wish, Master.

  "I didn't see anyone anywhere around on my way here, so you should be fine until I get back. Nice to meet you, Twisted."

  Twisted made what Terry could only think of as a happy growly sound, panting lazily as her tail wagged, and Euryale launched herself into the air and winged her way back toward the abandoned town a few miles distant.

  Terry watched her go, then glanced over at Twisted and said, "Pro-tip. Don't piss off Euryale."

  She reeled her tongue back in long enough to nod solemnly at him, then started to pant again.

  Prada showed up about ten minutes later. He wasn't surprised to see her still in the form of Charlie, the blonde bombshell from the old Top Gun movie. She was even wearing jeans and a t-shirt under the bomber jacket she'd gotten Marcus to make for her. As a doppelgänger she could manifest whatever clothes she wanted, but had once told him she preferred the sensation of wearing the real thing.

  She was riding on Isthil, and had his pack with her. As Isthil slowed to a stop, Prada slid off her back and said without preamble, "You know better than this, Husband."

  "Christ. Look, I already got the speech from Euryale. Spare me a repeat?" he asked, glancing up from his ongoing work as he lifted a hand in greeting. "Hey Isthil."

  "Terry," the Nightmare re
plied, acknowledging him as she began a slow walk around the circumference of the massive, hydra-like body of Stheno, her eyes on the bloody ritual circle and spell Terry was crafting.

  Returning his attention to Prada, he said, "It's not like any of you were even around to ask. What the hell were you all doing anyway?"

  "We got together to talk about how best to keep you alive, naturally," she said without missing a beat. "We should have known better than to leave you without a sitter."

  "Prada, I swear we are going round and round if you-"

  "I will kick your ass if we go round and round, Husband," she declared, cutting him off with a haughty look.

  Terry gave up with a simple skyward glance before turning back to his work as he waved a hand toward Twisted and said, "Prada, Isthil? Twisted. Twisted? That's Prada, and the nightmare is Isthil."

  "Pleasure," Isthil said, having already made her circuit and come to a stop a few feet away from the panting white wolf. The two nodded at each other.

  "Her name is Twisted?" Prada asked curiously as she looked over at her. Twisted wagged her tail.

  "It's apt, trust me. Long story short: we talked, she gets to hang around, no fucking. I'm almost finished with this, going to need you to monitor my mana. If I have to do this in stages that's fine."

  "Your object is to return her to her original shape? Euryale said something about it but she wasn't very clear. Let me join you so I can read your spell."

  "Yeah okay, give me a few more minutes. I need to finish this and if you come in now I'll grow a foot and it'll throw me off."

  Prada nodded, then turned her attention to the white wolf.

  "Can you shift and talk to me?" Prada asked, moving to crouch in front of Twisted, who did as asked, then said, "What about?"

  "I would like a slightly longer version of the very short story my Husband just told."

  "Um, well, I tried to get him to bond with me, and we fought when he wouldn't. He won, but said I could hang around if I promised not to try and 'get in his pants.'"

  "You look none the worse for wear after fighting my Husband, which is surprising considering his abilities. Were you play fighting?"

  "Oh no. He slaughtered my dad. If he wouldn't let me join his pack, I wanted to kill him or ... well, die. I can't stand being alone, and there's no one else anywhere around here worth joining. Tauren are just food."

  "Is that so ..." Prada ground out, and her tone made it clear she was glaring at Terry's back as she added, "So you didn't just, 'talk.'"

  "Wouldn't have happened if you'd left me a sitter," he blithely pointed out without looking up from his work.

  Prada sucked her teeth, but chose not to make further issue as she asked, "Yet you have no injury?"

  "I heal quickly."

  "Tell me about yourself."

  Terry listened with half an ear as Twisted gave Prada essentially the same story she'd given him. He was reminded that she'd been one of the four that had attacked Shy and Halla, and made a note to himself to tell Halla not to flatten her out of hand when she found out.

  "All right, come on in and have a look at this," Terry said at last.

  Prada glanced at him, then stood and sauntered over. She reached out, took the hand he'd slashed to make his inscription, and brought it to her lips, licking the wound with unmistakable sensuality.

  "That's really kinda creepy," he said with a half-smile.

  "I vant to drink your blood," Prada murmured, adopting a hokey Dracula accent as she smiled at him, a smear of his blood still clinging to her lips.

  "Okay, funny now, but also still creepy because I know you aren't kidding," he said, half-smile turning into a full grin as he noticed that she'd sealed his wound. Prada didn't heal him in the same way Mila's magic or Laina's milk could. Instead, she used her flesh-crafting ability to simply 'fix' him. She could shape his flesh just like she could shape her own. It was one of the myriad benefits of the binding marriage vow they had exchanged. She'd closed his cut by essentially remolding his flesh. He hadn't even felt it.

  She stretched to her tiptoes and kissed him, then slipped into him, her body literally melting into his.

  He felt her rearranging his innards to make space, stretching him in every dimension, and when it was done he was seven feet tall. The familiarity of her presence in his mind was one he welcomed as he thought, Missed you.

  'Ah, Husband. That's sweet. Now show me your work.'

  He walked the circle, she found no fault with his incantation, and he reached into the pack she'd brought him to retrieve the Rod of the Heart.

  The coal-black wood of the staff was wound with a single bead of gold that coiled from the platinum butt to the fist-sized, human heart-shaped ruby at the head, there splitting into innumerable traceries that looked like veins and arteries to hold the stone in place.

  His mana seemed to ignite within him as he took the staff in hand, but the pain of it no longer troubled him. Its lactic burn was simply part of the cost of doing business now, and his experiences had given him plenty of perspective on just how much pain he could withstand. Where once the agony the Rod inflicted had been almost enough to incapacitate him, now it was — if not trivial — no more than an annoyance.

  Terry set the butt of the Rod within the rim of his blood circle and began to cast. As he spoke the words, the pain within him lessened somewhat as his power flowed, and the massive body before him began to shimmer as though it were a mirage. The blood circle and its attendant words roared to life, burning brightly as the spell took power not only from him, but from the blood he had shed. Unlike normal magi, Terry had no mana pool. Instead, his mana was literally infused into his blood. While most of the flashy magics like fireballs and lightning bolts were utterly beyond him, his blood was extremely potent and effective when it came to ritual casting. Given time and information, he could theoretically craft a spell to meet almost any need.

  The spell took a long time to finish, and Terry quickly lost track of how many times he had to repeat his chant. At last, when the fires burned out and the mirage faded, Stheno's natural body lay in the center of the circle, naked but whole.

  'The Rod served you well, Husband. Without it, this ritual would have taken more mana than you possess to cast. As it is, you have used just over half of what you have available. Greater staves truly do make a marvelous difference when properly tended. The time you spent with it in the Labyrinth has paid dividends.'

  He nodded absently, getting his first good look at Euryale's sister.

  She was larger than Euryale, more muscular, and her snakes were green instead of black, but the family resemblance was otherwise very strong. Same demon's wings, same brazen claws, same vaguely reptilian features.

  "Terry?"

  "Yeah?"

  He turned toward Isthil, who was staring at him with a wide-eyed expression as she said, "You look ... ah, well, really fookin' good."

  "Oh, yeah. Staff does that to me. Don't know why."

  He glanced toward Twisted and saw the white werewolf staring at him looking absolutely floored. Her jaw was slack and he couldn't help but notice she was drooling a little.

  "Dude, really?" he asked, annoyed at the completely over-the-top reaction.

  "I want you," Twisted blurted. "Fuck me? Please?"

  "You promised," he warned, scowling.

  "I'm not trying!" she whined. "Just ... asking!"

  Terry's scowl deepened. He focused inward and mentally asked the staff, Can you knock that off?

  There was a moment of silence, then — for the first time since it had stopped calling him a murderer — the Rod of the Heart spoke to him.

  'No.'

  "Fuck's sake," he muttered as Prada flooded him with an almost overwhelming sense of amusement that was entirely at his expense. He stepped over to put the staff back in the pack. Then he went to Stheno's body, carefully wrapped its wings up, and hefted it into a fireman's carry before turning back toward the town as he said, "Need to get this to Baba Yaga. On
ce that's done we can get the hell out of here."

  "Do ye want to ride back?" Isthil asked as she fell into step with him.

  "It's only a few miles," Terry said, a bit nervous despite the fact he'd ridden Isthil back from the middle of nowhere after his misadventure in the Wildervast.

  The Nightmare leaned forward to look back and down at him, her floating hair drifting around her face as though she were underwater as she asked, "Ye cannae still be afraid to ride?"

  A bit nonplussed, he met her gaze and asked, "Why do you keep offering? Do you like having someone on your back?"

  She blinked, her argent eyes betraying surprise as she said, "'Course I do. What'd'ye think I'm wearin' a saddle for? Looks? An' before you say it, I know you cannae ride. How're you t'learn if you dinnae practice?"

  "Well, all other concerns aside, I'm stupidly heavy," he said, pointing down at the deep imprints his boots were leaving. "It's me and Prada, and she has all the mass I got from Halla's gift. I'm pretty much a condensed giant at this point."

  Glancing back toward Isthil in time to catch her frustrated expression, Terry said, "Thanks for the offer though."

  She flipped her hair away from him and it fluttered in a breeze that ordinarily shouldn't have been strong enough as she said, "You didn'a weigh that much when I carried you back from the Wildervast. I suppose your gifts are more varied than Thomas'. I'm nae suited to be your mount."

  "What gifts does he have?" Terry asked.

  "Only a few that I know of but he doesnae need many. His mana is practically bottomless and he's got all the primary affinities aside from the flips. He's physically blind, but can sense magic an' lies, and he has a sort of ... presence about him. It's hard tae describe. When he focuses on ye, it's ... it's like the whole world and all the Powers are watchin'. Most of his bonds cannae even talk to him because their wills are nae strong enough."