2012-08-In the Event of My Untimely Demise Read Online Free Page B

his expression asking: are we going to let this happen?
    Luma waved him to silence, then reached into the citysong for the vein of venom that pulsed below the city’s skin. Magnimar’s settlers brought with them their Chelish tradition of settling affairs with arsenic, belladonna, and kingsleep. Luma took in this dark harmony and projected it outward, to the blood-spotted tunic worn by the howling Gaval. In this town, to hear that a man was an apothecary was to think not only of healing, but its opposite.
    Luma’s magic-inflamed senses confirmed it: tiny speckles of poison dotted his tunic, were ground as grime into his fingerprints. She couldn’t tell what variety, with so little of it still left. But she would bet it was the kind that made an already sick man die from seeming natural causes–of pleurisy, say.
    “We need him,” said Luma. With a turn of her head she indicated an opposite window, not far from the second imprisoned man, the cleric Rieslan. “It will help if you can get him free–that will make it three against two.”
    Ontor nodded and was gone. Moments later she saw him appear at the other window. Jordyar once more laid the poker on Gaval, this time applying it to his chest. Naphrax watched with stoic attention. Fully occupied by Gaval’s shrieking and squirming, neither man noticed Ontor’s acrobatic contortions as he fit himself, legs first, through the tiny window. He dropped to the floor with a muffled thud that at last turned their heads, but only in time to see him draw his knife and slash open the ropes binding Rieslan. Then he bounded up to grab the holy symbol from the rafter, tossed it to the priest, and threw his knife at Naphrax. The spellcaster only barely managed to duck out of the way, yet the blade succeeded in interrupting his gesticulations and spoiling whatever spell he meant to cast.
    Luma, meanwhile, shifted her awareness to another vault of the city’s memory. Her mind traveled to the spires and rooftops, from the heights of the Arvensoar barracks tower to the great stone snake encircling the Hippodrome. From the mystic vibrations of these structures she pulled out the countless times they’d been struck by lightning. Converting them from past thought to present memory, she brought into being a vertical bolt of blue energy. It materialized above the dwarf, striking the crown of his bald head. He sizzled and convulsed, the poker flying out of his hands.
    Naphrax started to cast a spell at her, but Rieslan, holy symbol clutched between gnarled fingers, came up behind him, chanting. He shoved his hand past the sorcerer’s vest and onto his bare skin. A swirl of angry energy shunted from the old priest’s fingers into Naphrax’s breastbone. The sorcerer staggered back, clutching his chest, his arm going stiff.
    A wolfish look came over the priest. “That sluggish heart of yours can’t take another of those. Can it, Naphrax?”
    “I should have killed you in Kaer Maga,” said the sorcerer, sweating.
    “I should have killed you in that awful tavern, the moment we met,” said Rieslan.
    Jordyar, his clothes still steaming slightly, staggered and reached for his axe, positioning himself for a lunge against Ontor. Luma called down another lightning bolt, striking him as before, and he dropped to one knee, panting.
    Luma crawled through her window, a few last tendrils of summoned fog purling away from her. “Are we done here, gentlemen?”
    Naphrax still hadn’t caught his breath. “He hasn’t told us.”
    Ontor cut Gaval’s bonds.
    The freed prisoner rose, quaking; Luma indicated his soiled trousers. “You terrified him. You think he wouldn’t have sold out the widow in a heartbeat, if he thought it would spare him?”
    Gaval struggled to form words. “I take exception to—”
    Luma cut him off. “This is not a good time for you to talk.”
    He hung his head.
    “My brother and I,” Luma said, “are leaving, with Gaval. He and I have a separate matter to discuss.