"Curse you!" he cried, striking her hand from his shoulder and surging to his feet. "How dare you strive to sway me from my purpose? You're only a slave. Begone until tomorrow evening."
Shaking with frustration, Kotara turned and moved away. She'd come so close to persuading him, but in the end, his bloody obsession had proved stronger than any argument she could muster. She folded her wings to slip out the window, then realized she didn't feel as if she were being compelled, to go.
Ever since the moment Sabul had summoned her, she'd borne the touch of his magic, like a collar of silk that would swell into an iron yoke if ever she defied him. Now, however, the sorcery had grown so attenuated that she could scarcely feel it at all.
She didn't understand how it could be so. Ordinarily a wizard's conjured agents were bound to him until he perished or chose to release them. But she did comprehend that fate had given her an opportunity to liberate herself permanently.
Sabul was lost in thought again, seemingly unaware that she had yet to depart. Stalking lightly as a cat, she tiptoed toward him. On the way, she lifted an ivory-hilted longsword from its rack. She trusted her own prowess. How could she not, after proving it over and over these past several nights? But she respected Sabul's sorcery as well, and a weapon would help ensure that she slew him instantly, denying him the chance to rattle off a spell. Besides, it would be somehow satisfying to dispatch him with one of his own tools.
As she glided closer, she felt the magic of the summoning gather itself and fumble at her like a palsied hand. Too late, she thought. A final step carried her into striking range. She raised the blade for a decapitating stroke, and then, even from the back, his appearance struck her anew.
How miserable he looked with his bowed head and hunched shoulders, his stale vestments and unwashed neck, how sorely in need of help and solace. Suddenly her murderous intent seemed not merely alien but despicable, and the cruel pleasure she'd found in her purpose, fouler still. She hesitated, and in that instant the power of the summoning came back full force like a set of manacles snapping shut.
She grimaced in vexation but not despair, because she could feel that the magic still wasn't as strong as it had been originally. Something was chipping away at it, and soon she'd shake it off for good.
Kotara alternately crept and flitted through the maze of towers, rooftops, balconies, walls, and windows that together constituted the upper stories of the Ilmiera mansion. Even those members of the family who normally resided elsewhere had moved into the great house for the duration of the crisis, just as they were all keeping indoors after dark. If the angel was to continue slaying them, she would have to extract one from their stronghold itself.
The aristocrats clearly expected her to attempt precisely that. The exterior of the mansion fairly bristled with sentries, as well as alarms and snares both mechanical and magical in nature. Evading them all, she peeked in one casement after the next, searching for Ferren Tynlo, an Ilmiera by marriage, the night's appointed prey.
Chancy as such a venture would be, she might actually have to search around inside to locate him. But not if Sabul's magic failed utterly, and she sensed that the binding might well crumble away before the night was through.
The prospect wasn't entirely pleasant. Bewildered by the stranger who'd nearly struck Sabul down from behind and taken vicious pleasure in the deed, she'd spent the day pondering her situation, and her reflections had borne fruit. She believed she now understood why the sorcerer's magic was failing, and if she was correct, she was paying a heavy price for her liberation.
But not too heavy. Not if it afforded her the opportunity to pay Sabul back for misusing her, then leave this charnel house of a city and its demented blood feuds far behind.
She contemplated her master's spell. As best she could judge, it was still potent. Time to go inside then. She climbed through a window into a vacant bedchamber, and at that moment, the whole world seemed to beat like a colossal heart.
Tainted with decay and damnation, the pulse of power grated on her senses like the throbbing of an abscessed tooth. Elsewhere in the house, some mage was performing infernal sorcery-not a simple spell like the one Multam had unleashed against her but a far more elaborate conjuration.
Eskander had warned Kotara that his kin planned to raise some dire power against her. If that was what was happening now, she supposed she'd better find out about it. Keeping a wary eye out for members of the household, she skulked through corridors and down stairways, following the magical emanations to their source.
At first she encountered no one. Lacking her more rarefied perceptions, the Ilmieras and their retainers could scarcely have registered the malign power surging through their home. Even so, they must have recognized that some fearful enterprise was afoot and therefore abode in their personal quarters.
Eventually the pulsations led her to a narrow match-boarded door and the two sentries stationed before it. Peeking at them from behind an enormous vase, Kotara saw that they were edgy, and small wonder. The snarling sound of the chant murmuring through the portal at their backs was enough to jangle any mortal's nerves, even if he didn't comprehend the tongues of the Abyss.
Sabul had commanded Kotara to conceal herself from human eyes, but the erosion of his influence left her considerable leeway in how she carried out the directive. She simply waited until both guards were looking elsewhere, then charged down the hallway at them. Closing the distance in an instant, she struck them unconscious before they could level their spears, shout an alarm, or even, presumably, discern what manner of creature had assaulted them.
Cautiously passing through the crack between the door and the jamb, Kotara found herself at the top of a long staircase, which descended into a subterranean chamber. On the floor below, greenish flames, the sole source of illumination, flickered in an iron brazier, casting the dancing shadows of five humans on the rough stone walls. The sorcerers were all middle-aged or older, no doubt ranking members of the house of Ilmiera, and each wore the regalia of an initiate in the mysteries of darkness. Sickly sweet smoke hung in the air, the product of some narcotic substance smoldering in the flames.
Crouching down, grateful for once that her feathers no longer glowed, Kotara watched as the chanting rose in a climactic crescendo. On the final syllable, the emerald flames shot upward, and the strongest pulsation of magic yet, so potent it seemed to stab her like a lance, split the air.
Nothing else happened for the next few moments, save that the fire shrank back to its former height. If she hadn't known better, the angel might have imagined that the ritual had failed. Gradually, however, the temperature dropped, until the crypt was as frigid as a hollow inside a glacier. At the same time a portion of the darkness seemed to gather itself, to clot and take on definition, until it became a huge figure with scaly hide, batlike wings, and the curling horns of a ram. Eyes as green and lambent as the fire shone beneath a bony ridge of brow. Kotara tensed, for she recognized the fiend for what it was, a knight banneret in the hosts of darkness. She recalled the first time she'd seen such a creature, riding at the head of a column of lesser fiends, during that primordial rebellion when the spirits of darkness had nearly overthrown the Divine Will, destroyed her people, and extinguished the sun, moon, and stars. Despite herself, she shivered.
The five mortals bowed to the fiend.
The eldest of the Ilmieras, a stooped, wizened woman with spotted skin and thin, silvery hair, quavered, "We bid you welcome, spirit."
The harbinger of night merely smirked, baring rows of jagged fangs.
If the old woman was nonplussed by the fiend's response, or lack thereof, she didn't show it. "My family is in desperate straits," she continued. "Some agency is murdering-"
"I know about your troubles," the monster rasped, "just as I know that, as you suspect, the Guildmage Sabul Hajeen is responsible. I will kill him if you meet my price."
A sorcerer with a grizzled beard exclaimed, " Trice?' My family has a covenant with your kind!"
The paladin of darkness stared down at him. Kotara couldn't tell what the Ilmiera elder read in the fiend's eyes, but it was enough to make him blanch.
"Your pact scarcely gives you the right to command a captain of the legions of darkness," the spirit said at last. "Conjure up some wurm if you think it capable of overcoming a wizard of order. It will serve you docilely, demanding nothing in return. But if you wish the aid of a true champion of the night, you must meet my price."
"Which is what?" the old woman asked.
"License to slaughter other mortals for my sport."
"Done," said a necromancer with an embroidered patch covering his right eye. "Kill everyone you find in the mansion of the Hajeen."
The fiend leered and shook his head. "I fear it's not that easy. You must grant me liberty of the city for three nights, to hunt whomever and wherever I will. Only the house above our heads will be off-limits."
The Ilmieras gaped at him.
After a time, the man with the eye patch said, "But why? Why can't you simply kill the Hajeen?"
"Because their annihilation would delight you," the creature replied, "and that's precisely wrong. You must squirm and bleed a little to enlist my aid. Such is the custom of my kind."
"We will pay your fee," the elderly sorceress said. "You have my word on it."
"Good," said the creature. "Toss more resin in the brazier, and feed me. I wish to manifest my arms and armor." Kotara turned and slipped back through the door.
As was so often the case of late, the angel's mind seethed with contradictory emotions. She'd loathed the captain of darkness on sight. How could she not, when its race and hers had been at war since the dawn of time? It sickened her to imagine it wreaking havoc in the city.
Yet she'd come to despise the mortals of Zhalfir, so what did it matter if they suffered and died? Indeed, since the fiend was here to slay Sabul and so end her servitude, she supposed she ought to rejoice at the creature's advent, even though it would deny her the chance to take revenge on the magician herself.
Well, however she ought to feel, she needn't fret over what to do. Thanks to Sabul's magic, she had little choice but to remain here in the mansion of the Ilmieras and seek her designated victim. Never mind that meanwhile the dark spirit would be closing in on its own.
Or so she thought. But as she stepped past the unconscious sentries, she felt a tingling across her skin and realized that the power of the summoning had finally faded to nothing.
Laughing and crying at the same time, heedless now of who might see her, she raced through the house till she found a window. Kotara sprang through, spread her wings, and hurtled across the city.
When she climbed into Sabul's chamber, the wizard's bloodshot eyes widened in surprise. "That was fast, " he said. "I thought you'd have more trouble, considering that Ferren had taken refuge in the Ilmiera citadel itself. "
"Oh, I could have slaughtered him easily enough, " Kotara said, "if I'd cared to do so."
The gaunt young wizard peered at her uncertainly. "What?"
"But I didn't care to, " she continued. "Instead I choose to do this. " With a flick of her wing, she overturned a trestle table. An intricate alchemical apparatus constructed of glass retorts and tubing smashed on the floor. "And this. " She pushed over a rack of clattering wands and staves. "And this. " She snatched him off his stool and hurled him across the room. He slammed into a bookshelf, then fell on his backside. Volumes bound in cracked white leather and rolls of parchment tied with creamy ribbons showered down around his head.
Clutching his diamond amulet, he babbled an incantation intended to reestablish control over her. She felt the mana pulse from the gem and sensed the spell take form, but it never touched her.