Basysus 28, 1278: Hidden Temple of the Sunfate Sisters, Mandami Hills. A knife in my heart would have been easier…

Funny thing about a close fight. It’s as much a dance as anything else. At least, it is if it’s done right—which means being the one still standing when the music stops.

The jackal-faced mercenary cut fast and low with his knife, but he flinched when I cracked my whip. I swatted his knife arm at the elbow, deflecting him before he found my guts. We separated fast. My wrist flicked, and the whip’s popper caught him hard enough to crack bone. The man’s knife skittered across the floor.

“Damn it!” he yelped, grabbing his hand.

Jackal-face ducked away, looking for shelter. I ran him down, skidding over ancient bricks soaked by spray from the churning reflection pool. Another whip crack sent Jackal-face diving behind a table and right into Atha’s meaty grip.

I wasn’t sure who broke first, that table or the mercenary.

Then the air erupted with a sharp hiss as the elemental woman slammed the butt of her silver spear onto the sandstone floor. It rang like a funeral bell for a massacre. A shockwave slapped everyone in the room like we’d deserved it. Which, to her, we probably did.

The shockwave tossed us like rags. I staggered, then fell to my knees. But I shook my head, clawing my way upright with a madwoman’s snarl, using my sheer refusal to die.

“Aile Shavat!” I growled. The air was hot and smelled of damp rage.

Prairie winds shoved through the open door with a howl. Gritty clouds of acrid dirt, ripped from the red hills outside, flooded down the stairs. The stench of rotten grass followed it. I jerked toward the haunting moan as brown fog boiled across the stones. Every instinct screamed something else was wrong.

I never saw Lady Nimad until she kicked my feet out from under me.

The Fateweaver lunged, serpentine dagger headed for my neck. I rolled right, and her dagger stabbed stone. Pain lanced through me as I scrambled onto my feet, but Lady Nimad had already closed in.

My boots skidded against the slick, mist-splattered floor as I darted back. Lady Nimad stabbed at my gut, but missed by a finger. She was too close for me to use my whip correctly, so I improvised.

I gripped the popper of my whip in one hand, then swung the handle over my head like a weighted chain. Lady Nimad ducked in, slashing for my throat. I slapped the side of her jaw with that leather-wrapped wooden handle like a sharp insult.

The Fateweaver’s eyes widened in shock, head jerked to one side. I swept the handle in a quick circle, then twisted hard, throwing my hips into it. The handle slapped the murder madam once more, putting a matching bruise on her other cheek.

A blast of glowing blue watery threads, bright with elemental runes, slammed between us, smashing an ancient table to kindling. I snapped a glare at Lady Nimad’s tiefling minion as he pinched more magic threads off the pool.

“Water mage,” I snarled between clenched teeth.

Reversing my grip, I cracked my whip in his direction. It split the air in front of him. The man yelped, backing up for safety, until Skarri tried to slice him apart with her saber.

I turned to corner the water mage, but Lady Nimad tackled me in mid-step.

We hit the floor in a tangle of limbs that knocked my whip out of reach. It was a desperate scramble to hit first and hardest. Then my fingers found a knife as I rolled to one side.

“Get off me!” I frantically punched and cut at anything that seemed like her.

She backed off, and I stumbled to my feet, gulping down acrid, smoke-stained air. I’d shattered Lady Nimad’s nose, and managed three deep cuts along her left arm. But she looked more angry than hurt.

Then I saw why.

A trickle of soot-like powder—gravedust—bled from her open wounds. No blood. Just dust.

I watched, horrified, while the wounds knitted. The Fateweaver grinned, grabbed her nose and pulled. It snapped into place with a sharp pop and healed like her cuts.

My breath caught. A sharp ring echoed in my ears.

I knew what that gravedust meant.

A lich.

“Oh, Lady Deep, drown me,” I murmured.

My thoughts snapped together like tight-fitting planks for a wooden floor. The Fateweaver? Her gray-clad mercenaries? I had a guess that made too much sense.

“You’re not a real Fateweaver,” I croaked out. “You’re a Gatekeeper.”

Lady Nimad’s smile turned as sharp as a carving knife. Slowly, she wiped a stain of my blood from her cheek, licking a little off a finger.

“You do catch up,” she cooed as the last of her wounds closed. “A mind mage. I can taste it. Now I know why Marius was so obsessed with you, my dear.”

Lady Nimad pulled a hidden knife from her vest as she sauntered toward me. I gave ground, wiping soot, sweat, and a tide of ugly memories from my face.

“My little Windtracer, you are fascinating.” That damn dark smile spread wider. “Stand still—I want a closer look.”

She rubbed bits of my blood between her thumb and forefinger, drawing out glowing red magical threads. I recognized that reaction. Lord Marius had done the same damn thing.

Blood magic.

I tried to step away, but my feet wouldn’t move. Elsewhere, I heard the clash of steel, shouts, and hiss of magic. Each wave of noise was punctuated by another slam of the elemental’s silver spear. Occasionally, there was a scream when her spear found a victim.

The stone walls suddenly felt too close and tight, like inside a narrow tomb. I couldn’t breathe. Lady Nimad strolled forward, deliberately slow, eyes bright with some hidden cruelty.

“Show me your magic.” The lich giggled. It was light, high-pitched, and horribly deranged. “Let me see.”

A dull headache grew behind my eyes. Why couldn’t I breathe? Darkness frayed the edge of my vision.

It was the Bathrogg Station ruins all over again. That moment when Lord Marius tried to murder me. Turn me undead.

A ghostly memory of the baron hovered around Lady Nimad. She reached again for my face with those bone-pale fingers.

“No!”

I screamed the word and slashed her outstretched hand with my knife. My body moved before my thoughts could catch up. I felt like an angry passenger, yelling in the darkness of my own head. Sharp ozone over rot filled my nose.

Two knife cuts and a quick spin put me beside the lich. She turned to face me even as I pinched the air in front of my forehead. Ragged, silver-blue magic threads burst to life. I slapped those onto the dagger, then stabbed the whole mess into Lady Nimad’s chest.

A bright silver flash flung us apart. I careened into an ancient table, collecting fresh bruises. Lady Nimad tumbled across the floor, slamming against the side of the pool.

I grunted as I got to my feet. Lady Nimad wasn’t far behind, new cuts healing a bit more slowly than before.

“Delightful,” she purred, studying her wounds. “You must let me pick you apart to find out how you did that.”

Tired and bruised, I tensed. Ready to defend myself when she charged at me, but it never happened.

Atha and Kiyosi rushed out from behind the closest Sunfate statue. The minotaur charged the Fateweaver. She avoided his horns but not his shoulder. He slammed the lich against the stone pool even as she drove a dagger into his back.

He bellowed, stumbling aside, blood pouring off his shoulder. Lady Nimad pushed herself upright as Kiyosi snapped a golden net of magic threads around her. The lich snarled at Kiyosi, falling against the pool, straining to reach Atha’s blood on her dagger.

I saw a ripple of glowing threads snake over the water behind Kiyosi.

“Ki! Behind you!”

He dashed aside as Lady Nimad’s red-skinned tiefling finished his spell. Watery threads leaped up, then stabbed magical blades through the golden net around Lady Nimad. Both spells shattered like cracked crystal, raining down glittery, glowing powder.

“My thanks, Sherkus!” Lady Nimad hissed as she lunged at Kiyosi.

I knocked the lich sideways before she touched him. She careened against the pool while I hit the stone floor. I rolled to my feet, knife at the ready to slice Lady Nimad into tiny pieces.

“Tela! Elemental!” Kiyosi warned, yanking me to safety.

The water elemental lashed the floor and anything nearby with a steaming water-whip. Stones cracked as the shockwave hurled people off their feet.

“Sherkus!” Lady Nimad shrieked, yanking dripping red magic threads off her bloody dagger. “Bind that damn thing!”

Nearby, Sherkus yanked blue threads off the pool, locking the elemental in place with glowing liquid chains.

I rubbed my eyes, vision frayed like old cloth, as I pushed to my feet, then charged at Lady Nimad. Her blood spell slammed into me before I was even partway there.

Darkness wrapped me in a close hug. I never even felt it when I collapsed.

I woke with a start, then tried to scurry to my feet. Nicodemus spat out an angry hiss. Skarri grabbed my shoulder, shaking her head.

“No, Tela. We can’t. Not this way.”

She nodded toward the pool. I followed her gaze to see Lady Nimad holding Kiyosi with a knife at his neck. A trickle of blood teased a thin line down his cobalt skin. His eyes met mine, wide, determined, but still scared.

“Ki. No,” I exclaimed, heart hammering against my ribs like a captured bird.

It was a bloody stalemate. Skarri and I had squared off against Lady Nimad and her damn water mage. Nearby, Mikasi and Nicodemus had backed two of Lady Nimad’s mercenaries into a corner. On the far side of the pool, bloody gash in his back and all, Atha had another mercenary shoved up against a statue. That left the water elemental who was magically chained in the middle of the room.

Everyone else lay on the ancient floor in pools of their own cooling blood.

A pair of shadow-drenched figures bearing drawn bows appeared in the doorway to the surface.

“Lady Nimad! Trade-Wardens running hard this way!”

The lich locked eyes with me, her smile all splinters and sharp edges. She jerked her head toward the pool.

“It seems we’ve overstayed our welcome, Windtracer. Unlock that model and find a way into Toshirom Ifoon. Bring whatever you discover to the Dirty Whistle in Old Quarter. One of my people will be there. You’ve three days.”

I understood what she left out—fail, and she’d bleed out my oldest friend in the world.

“Three days? Plenty of time to make your life miserable,” Kiyosi snarled at Lady Nimad.

“You.” She clenched her jaw. “You’re just so delightful. Come along…”

The lich and her mercenaries retreated up the stairs with Kiyosi in hand. I lunged out of Skarri’s grasp, but stopped when the two archers at the doorway leveled arrows at me.

Memories crowded my vision. I saw Kiyosi, sick with venom, as he struggled to walk through a cavern. Then, there was me, next to an underground pond as I begged Liru—a young shaman at the time—to bring Kiyosi back to life. Promising I’d do anything if he would just try.

I trembled like rage bottled in a broken jar as my vision cleared. Words caught in my throat, burning with fury and grief.

“This… just…” I struggled to say anything coherent that wasn’t a half-thought-out curse.

Skarri put a firm hand on my shoulder and squeezed. It grounded me, if even for a second. I heard the temple guard snap and slam her muscular snake tail against the sandstone floor.

“We’ll get him back,” she hissed low, voice dripping with vengeance.

Nearby, Atha stomped a hoof. For a second, I thought he would charge the archers.

“Hyu!” he bellowed, stabbing a finger at Lady Nimad and her mercenaries. “I would sleep with one eye open, if I were hyu!”

With a last sneer, the lich dragged Kiyosi outside and vanished.

I collapsed to my knees. Rage boiled over. I screamed, fury echoing off the ancient walls. Skarri wrapped her cool, scaled arms around me, holding me in place. An anchor in the storm of my emotions.

It was the last thing I remembered before the frayed darkness at the edge of my vision swallowed me.

Pain followed, then there was nothing.