Rodrick thought quickly, and what he thought about was survival. When Hrym’s demonic taint made him giggle and titter, it was inevitably followed by an outburst of power, with random chaos or a destructive surge of icy magic or both.
True, as long as Rodrick’s hand was on Hrym’s hilt, he’d be shielded from the effects of any ice magic, but as the guards they’d dropped a load of crates on back in Absalom had learned, there were dangers other than being harmed by the ice directly. Hrym was currently in a scabbard strapped to Rodrick’s back, and if he shot out a torrent of ice in that state, the scabbard would shatter, driving shards into Rodrick’s body. Escaping this situation would be quite difficult with wooden shrapnel severing his spine. He swiftly drew Hrym free.
The next split-second decision he needed to make was where to point the sword. Aiming Hrym at Nagesh was tempting—let the wicked advisor be buried in ice, it would only make it easier to escape—but the man was standing next to the thakur, and there were at least two reasons Rodrick didn’t want to risk killing the ruler of Jalmeray. For one, it was possible he was innocent, and that the plot to murder the visiting rajah was all Nagesh’s doing. For another, killing or even injuring a king would inevitably lead to greater problems in the future, like being pursued by an entire vengeful nation.
So Rodrick raised the blade high overhead, pointing skyward. Hrym giggled again, and then a cone of swirling ice shot into the air overhead. There was a long, silent moment, and then fist-sized stones of ice began to rain down.
“Assassin!” Nagesh yelled, and shoved the thakur to the ground, shielding him with his body. A disturbance in the air overhead resolved into a djinni, glaring and armed with scimitars, descending in a fury.
“Rodrick!” Hrym shouted. “We’re being attacked!”
There was no time to close his eyes and groan. Hrym had no idea what he’d done—from his point of view, they were just in the midst of a mysterious hailstorm, being set upon by armed guards. Rodrick swung the sword toward the djinni, and Hrym obliged by letting out a rush of icy wind powerful enough to send the djinni spinning away through the air. “Cover our escape!” Rodrick shouted.
A thick, freezing fog precipitated out of the air around them, shrouding everything in icy mist. The fog was wonderful at hiding them, and holding Hrym protected Rodrick from the chilling effects of the cloud and the slipperiness of the ground, but now he had to stumble blindly in what he hoped was the right direction to escape the garden.
“What happened?” Hrym said. “Why did that djinni attack us?”
“I’ll explain later,” Rodrick said. “Right now we need to get away.” Away, and off the island as soon as possible.
Someone slammed into Rodrick in the mist, knocking him to the ground and nearly sending Hrym spinning from his grasp. Nagesh loomed over him, frost hanging in his beard and in his eyebrows. How had he pursued them? Hrym’s fog turned the ground where it touched so slick it was impossible to walk without falling, which should have covered their escape from any foot pursuit. But this was an island of mystics, and anyone with Nagesh’s level of authority doubtless had hidden resources. If he could read minds, maybe he could also run nimbly across ice too.
The advisor bent down toward Rodrick, reaching for his throat. Rodrick swung Hrym wildly, the blade sinking into the man’s face—
Or, rather, it should have. Instead, the edge bounced off, leaving a thin line like a shallow razor cut. Nagesh howled as if he’d received a much more grievous injury, and his features flickered again—but this time, instead of returning to normal, they changed utterly.
Where a darkly handsome human head had been a moment before, there was now an immense serpent’s head. Nagesh’s true face was covered in gleaming dark scales, the eyes black and shining, his mouth a maw that opened to reveal a pair of curving fangs as long as Rodrick’s forefingers. When he cried out, it was a discordant hiss of sibilants. He reached for Rodrick again, and something was wrong with his hands, the fingers curling the wrong way, the palms where the backs should be.
Rakshasa! Rodrick swung the sword again, and Nagesh shied away, clearly wary of receiving another cut, however minor. Rodrick had read of such monsters on the voyage to Jalmeray. They were treacherous and vicious, masters of illusion who infiltrated human society in the guise of mortals and sought to sow discord and chaos for their own gain and the love of destruction. In their true forms, they had had the heads of deadly animals, and backward-facing hands, and dreadful claws, and were masters of terrible magics, which apparently included mind-reading and an annoying level of durability. They were nothing Rodrick had any desire to tangle with, but discovering Nagesh was a monster at least made him more confident the thakur wasn’t part of the plot to murder the rajah. Maybe if Rodrick could talk to the thakur, tell him the truth—
Nagesh’s features blurred and became human again, and Rodrick scrambled to his feet, pointing the blade at the advisor. The rakshasa dove away, the main strength of the icy blast missing him, but it caught his legs, encasing them in ice. At least he wouldn’t be chasing them anytime soon. Rodrick ran again, as hard as he could. Being chased by a king’s advisor was one thing. When the advisor was a legendary monster, that was another, far worse thing.
“Did that man turn into a snake?” Hrym said.
“Not a man. A monster.” Rodrick burst from the garden into a hallway, fortunately deserted. Now what? He still had the jeweled scabbard and the useless longsword at his waist, but the treasure map, and the gold they’d made from Grimschaw, and his wonderful shapeshifting cloak, were all back in his room. Did he dare retrieve them? It was probably the last place Nagesh would expect him to go, but if the alarm were raised …
Doing anything was better than standing around mired in indecision, so he ran down the hall toward his room. The only way he knew out of the palace went past there, anyway, and it wouldn’t take long to duck inside and grab his bag. He passed a couple of servants on the way, but they didn’t try to stop him, just looked startled at his headlong rush. The thakur might be slowed by the fog, and his djinni guard too, but it was only a matter of time before the defenses were roused. Rodrick might be able to fight his way out of the palace with Hrym in his hands, but he didn’t want to try. Enough fire elementals could overwhelm Hrym’s ice magic, and there were no shortage of such creatures here.
He reached his rooms and burst in, snatching up his pack and turning to rush back into the hallway … and only then noticed the toadlike fire elemental squatting beside the door. Waiting, no doubt, to begin his duty keeping Rodrick hostage to ensure Hrym’s cooperation. Seeing him with a blade in hand, the elemental rose up, swelling in size, its flames flickering intensely, until it towered almost to the fifteen-foot-ceiling. Horns blossomed from its head, and it became less toadlike and more like some immense devil.
Rodrick swung Hrym at the creature, and a flurry of white ice filled the room, but hissed and turned to steam before it touched the creature. Gouts of fire poured from its mouth and outstretched hands—when had it grown hands?—but a wall of ice formed between Rodrick and the elemental, saving the swordsman from being roasted where he stood. Magical fire met magical ice, and the wall streamed with water. The elemental strode forward, pounding on the ice wall, and it grew over the elemental and formed a dome, enclosing the creature.
“That dome would put out a normal fire,” Hrym said sourly. “Not enough air in there to sustain that kind of burning for long. But elementals burn forever, and it will break out soon.”
Indeed, the dome cracked under one of the elemental’s hammerlike blows, and Rodrick stumbled back, pack dangling from his free hand. He shrugged it onto his shoulder and turned toward the balcony. The elemental and the dome of ice thoroughly blocked his preferred exit, so the only way out was into the gardens. He rushed to the rail and looked down. It was only ten feet or so to the ground, and if he aimed right he’d land in a bush, hopefully one without any thorns—
While he was steeling himself to vault over the railing, Hrym sent out a torrent of ice, and a ramp of smooth white coldness stretched from the rail to a point midway through the garden. Rodrick groaned and climbed onto the slide. Walking down the ramp would be slower, so he just tightened his grip on Hrym and let gravity take hold. He slid so rapidly he ended up on his back, watching the starry sky overhead whip by, until he hit the ground with his feet, spinning sideways and falling off the ramp.
“Very dignified,” Hrym said. “Now run.”
The palace had finally been roused. There were shouts behind him, and the roar of inhuman voices, bound djinn and efreet and more, all being sent to find him. He ran for the nearest wall, raising Hrym before him. “Make a door,” he said.
The bolts of ice that Hrym shot forth made the wall first crack and then shatter, and Rodrick stepped through the ragged hole, kicking bits of stone turned to icy shards out of his way.
He paused a moment to get his bearings. They were in a narrow street, palace wall on one side, a wooded hill on the other, part of the forested land that lay outside the city. Turning back to the hole in the wall, he saw figures moving in the garden, including one towering creature of flame, and he had Hrym seal up the hole they’d made with a patch of ice like they’d used on the ship, but thicker.
Rodrick ran for the hill. The slope was gentle at first, but soon became steeper, and he sheathed Hrym so he could grab onto saplings and bushes to haul himself up. At one point he fell and rolled halfway back down the hill, the ordinary longsword’s hilt snagging on a bush and getting torn from the jeweled scabbard in the process. Rodrick paused to look for the sword, then decided it wasn’t worth the effort—he couldn’t sell it for much anyway, and it was extra weight he didn’t need to carry. The most important thing now was to get away.
Disappearing into the forest was likely his only option, and he was glad when they reached a thickly wooded ridge. “We’ve got to get to the docks,” he muttered. “Which bloody way is it?”
The sounds of pursuit followed them up the hill. Rodrick groaned and rushed in the opposite direction. Getting away from an angry mob was more important than making his rendezvous with the smuggler, who wouldn’t be in position for hours yet anyway. Rodrick ran through the dark forest, tripping on every third root, being smacked in the face by branches, and doubtless leaving a path even a blind man could follow. At least his enemies would suffer from the darkness, too, and the trees all around might keep him from being spotted by any djinn soaring overhead. Off to his left, he saw two horned giants seemingly made of fire, and angled away from them. At least he could see the efreet coming.
When the trees began to thin and the ground beneath him became more stony, he came to a terrible realization. Efreet could probably become invisible, just like djinn, so why had they let themselves be seen?
He cursed. Because he was being herded, obviously. He stopped short at the edge of a stony cliff, looking down fifty feet to dark water below. He’d reached the edge of the island, or else a cliff overlooking the River Sald, he couldn’t be sure—his sense of direction was too muddled. Rodrick looked over his shoulder. The efreet, and who knew what else, were coming, trees going up like torches around them, and he was out of room to run. He put his hand on Hrym’s hilt.
“Rodrick,” Hrym said from the scabbard, “I have no interest in a heroic last stand. Would you put on that hideous cloak already?”
“Hrym, you’re a genius.”
“I have a memory, anyway.”
Rodrick slid his pack off his shoulder and began scrabbling inside it, drawing out the disgustingly slick length of the cloak of the devilfish. He’d stolen the cloak—or maybe inherited it—from a sorcerer of his acquaintance, but it worked just fine even for those with no particular knowledge of magic. He understood that cloaks of dolphins or manta rays were more common, but that sorcerer had possessed a perverse streak a league wide, and had preferred to shapeshift into something more alarming. Rodrick awkwardly shouldered the pack again, then threw the cloak on over it, fastening it closed at his throat. Just as the first efreeti emerged from the trees, wielding an axe of fire—which seemed like overkill, but perhaps it was just preparing to meet Hrym—Rodrick leapt from the cliff.
The water came at him very quickly. He hoped there weren’t jagged rocks hidden just below the surface. Oh well. Better to be dashed to pieces than burned alive. Probably.
Halfway down, he put the cloak over his head, and his vision shimmered. He knew what he looked like, now. He’d seen others make the transformation. The hood closed around his face, the cloak’s ragged hem thickening and elongating into seven tentacles, bristling with hooks and suckers. His upper body and head merged into something like an immense egg, with huge white eyes in the center—he was seeing through them, now, and the world was very bright by moonlight, because those eyes were made to suck up every scrap of light in the depths of salty seas. He shouted as he fell, and the voice emerged from the maw at the center of his seven tentacles, a mouth ringed with horrible teeth. Devilfish were at least somewhat intelligent, and could speak, not that he wanted to talk to anyone just now. Hrym and his other possessions were encompassed in the transformation, luckily, though he wished he’d kept Hrym loose, to swing around in a tentacle, maybe.
He hit the water tentacles-first with a terrible impact, stunning him, but devilfish were far hardier than humans, and soon he rolled and slipped beneath the surface. He spun, looking up through the water, and saw flickering flames at the top of the cliff. Would they assume he was dead, and leave him be, or would water elementals be sent down to look for him, and to recover his body?
No, he was being foolish. They probably didn’t care about his body, but they would care about Hrym. Rodrick might be presumed dead, but a fall into cold water from a height wouldn’t harm a magical sword, and Hrym was far too valuable to leave on the bottom of a river.
It was the river, he knew—something about the currents and the depth told him it wasn’t the sea, speaking to his devilfish senses—and that meant it would lead to the docks if he just followed it down. He twisted his body, flicked his tentacles, and began to speed through the water, moving far more quickly than a human could swim. He was tempted to make for the sea and just try to swim to the far shore—how far was Nex, anyway?—but he didn’t have superhuman stamina, or an infallible sense of direction, and the thought of being lost in the lightless depths of the Obari Ocean was horrifying. Besides, there were things in the oceans more dangerous than devilfish, and he didn’t relish being some sea monster’s prey.
Anyway, he had a ride off the island. All he had to do was reach the docks and hide in the shallows until it was time to the meet the smuggler, and then he could escape Jalmeray and get on with his life. Or try to. The thakur might hold a grudge, but Rodrick would unquestionably be safer with an ocean between them.
Eventually Rodrick noticed ships above, and moved closer to the surface, finally finding the pilings of a pier and nestling there in the water. No reason to become human again until he needed to. He settled down to wait until the appointed hour, absentmindedly snatching up small fish and shoving them into his mouth with his tentacles. Raw fish, eaten fins and eyes and guts and all, were actually quite delicious, at least in this form, and he needed to keep his strength up.
* * *
In the dark of the night, Rodrick dragged himself onto the rocks beneath the pier with his tentacles, then transformed back to his human form. He kept the slick cloak on, though, with the hood up, just in case he stumbled upon an agent of the thakur or Nagesh—the former would likely want him captured, but since he’d discovered Nagesh was a rakshasa, the advisor would probably want him killed. The cloak’s ragged hem made him look like a beggar. That was fine. He could be a beggar. Beggars wouldn’t be attacked on sight. With luck, everyone thought he was dead, and he could meet the smuggler and be away before anyone realized differently.
“Hrym, are you all right?”
“I’ve been better,” Hrym said. “What happened back at the palace? Why did the thakur’s djinni attack us?”
Rodrick sighed. He’d kept this secret too long, but things were dire enough now that truth actually seemed like the best option. “Hrym, I didn’t mention this before because I didn’t want to alarm you, but you’ve been … unwell. For a while.”
“What are you talking about? I’m a sword. I don’t get filthy fleshling diseases.”
“I know, but … this is different. All those months you spent next to the demon lord in the Lake of Mists and Veils … it affected you.”
A long silence, and then Hrym said, “Bugger. I soaked up some of his demonic essence, didn’t I? Just like I soaked up these ice powers from that white dragon so long ago.”
Rodrick had expected disbelief or rage. This was better than either one, so far. “I think so. At first it was just the occasional flash of red light in your blade. Then you started talking to yourself, sometimes, without seeming to realize it. And giggling. Lately, the flashes and the giggles and the mutters have often preceded … more violent outbursts, and destructive coincidences, like shattered lamps or cracked roof beams. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier—I didn’t want to worry you, and at first I hoped the problem would go away on its own. When I realized it was getting worse, I thought we’d take the money we made from the thakur to hire a priest to try and cleanse you.”
“I see. I’m the one who nearly blew a hole in the hull of that ship, then?” Hrym said.
“Ah. It seems so.”
“Did I … did I ruin the job at the little lord’s manor back in Absalom?”
“I’m afraid so. I know, I should have told you—”
“It’s true, you should have.” Hrym’s voice rumbled with annoyance. “I’m not a child to be protected from the truth—I’m older than you, by orders of magnitude. Didn’t it ever occur to you that I might have some ideas about how to solve this problem?”
“Do you?”
“No,” Hrym said. “But you should have asked.”
Rodrick sighed. “You had no awareness of it happening, and you couldn’t help yourself. I didn’t want to make you doubt yourself, or blame yourself, or worry, when the fits couldn’t be helped. I was hoping to fix you soon. But I’m beginning to think the taint in you, the demonic chaos, has begun looking for opportunities to cause the most damage. Or else we’re just stupendously unlucky.”
“You kept me by your side, though,” Hrym said. “Even after I put your life in danger, and more than once. You never cast me aside, even though I really am a cursed blade, now.”
“Of course not. There’s a circle drawn around us, remember?”
After a moment, Hrym said, “I forgive you. But don’t keep secrets like that from me again. I always tell you when you have some horrible affliction, such as your face or your voice or your bearing. Do me the same courtesy.”
“Consider it done. Shall we find our smuggler and say farewell to Jalmeray?”
“Not a moment too soon. The climate doesn’t agree with me. Too hot. And we need to find a cleric immediately once we reach kinder shores. I want this taint out of me.”
Rodrick clambered from beneath the pier and went up a set of stone steps to the docks. The area wasn’t deserted—places like that never were entirely, regardless of the hour—but the activity this late was nothing compared to the thronging bustle he’d seen on his arrival to Niswan. He moved among the laborers and sailors without drawing any undue attention, cloak hiding his face and his jeweled scabbard. Before long, he’d reached the appointed place, a crumbling pier at the far north end of the harbor, suitable only for small craft. The smuggler he’d met in the basement tavern was there, sitting on an upturned barrel, a small boat bobbing beyond her in the water.
“Oh Captain,” Rodrick said. “I’ve come for our ride.”
She started and stood up, eyes darting left and right nervously, then nodded. “Of course. Please. Come, board the ship, we should hurry.” She moved down the pier toward the craft, but Rodrick didn’t follow.
Damn it. The smuggler hadn’t asked to be paid before letting him onto the ship. She hadn’t been nearly so trusting at the tavern. “The gods are against us, Hrym,” he muttered. “All ten thousand of them.”
“What do you mean?” Hrym said.
Rodrick didn’t answer, just turned and walked—he didn’t run, not yet—away from the dock. Maybe he was overreacting, and walking away from his one reliable way off this impossibly irritating island, but—
A net landed on his head, sending him stumbling forward and tangling his limbs.