Not much of a choice.
“Don’t be stupid,” said Marn, who’d been watching her expression.
“I’m not being stupid.” Maya checked her panoply belt, threaded under her shirt around her midsection. Her haken was concealed at the small of her back, instead of in its normal place at her hip, but she could still draw it quickly. “Chosen know what they’re going to do to her.”
“Jaedia said to stay here!”
“Jaedia wouldn’t stay here and let some poor girl have her skin torn off,” Maya retorted. “And neither will I.”
“But you’re not a centarch!”
Not yet. Maya gritted her teeth. “I’m still going in. You go and find Jaedia, tell her to get back here as soon as she can.”
“How am I supposed to find her?” Marn said. “All I know is she’s somewhere—”
“Fucking figure it out!” Maya snarled as she turned from the window and ran for the door.
*
The flies scattered into a buzzing cloud as Maya emerged, and the ancient mutt cringed against the wall. Bad as the heat had been in the room, it was worse out here, the air baked dry and stinking of rot. Maya hurried to the end of the alley and paused in front of the door to the shack. Every instinct told her to knock, but under the circumstances it felt ridiculous. Excuse me, Master Dhakim, but I couldn’t help but notice you kidnapped a girl?
She touched her haken with one hand, and the power of deiat opened inside her. Heat flashed across her body, like sparks landing on her flesh. The sensation passed in an instant, replaced by the steady pressure of waiting energy in her haken. Maya threaded a thin strand into her belt and felt the panoply field activate, throwing a very slight blue haze over her vision. Thus protected, she stepped forward and tried the door latch, her other hand brushing against the Thing for reassurance.
The door clicked open, swinging inward on rusty hinges to reveal the filthy interior of the shack. There was no furniture, just a cold hearth against one wall surrounded by a few pots and pokers. Dirt was smeared across the floorboards, as though muddy livestock had been driven through. A small window in the back wall looked out onto a brick-lined carriage yard, but there were no other doors, and no sign of the dhakim or their prisoner.
They must have a hiding place somewhere. Maya looked over her shoulder. No wonder we couldn’t spot anyone inside.
The door swung closed, and only dim light came in through the curtained windows. Maya opened her hand and tugged another tiny strand of deiat, conjuring a cool flame that danced blue-white across her fingers. In that harsh glow, she paced in a circle, searching for some sign of the residents. There were bootprints in the dirt, but they ran in every direction.
Where in the Chosen’s name did they go? Maya’s jaw clenched as she imagined the two thugs dragging the girl through some secret passage, only meters away. Come on, come on.
Something made the hairs on her arm stand up. She stopped pacing and paused until she felt it again—a chill draft, lovely in the stifling, dead air. Not from the windows, but from the floorboards. Underground. Maya stomped her boot, hard, and the sound was hollow. Got you.
With a terrific crunch of shattering wood, a ropy thing studded with yellowing spikes smashed up through the floorboards, spraying splinters in all directions. It lashed itself around Maya’s ankle, and before she could reach for her haken she was yanked downward. The floorboards gave way under inhuman strength, and she felt the panoply field flare as she fell, blunting her impact a moment later. Generating the shield pulled power from her, which she felt as a sudden chill, her heart abruptly hammering loud and fast in her ears.
She’d hit stone, about three meters down, light spilling from a broken circle of floorboards overhead. The tendril-thing was still gripping her ankle, and Maya snatched her haken from the small of her back. She drew on deiat, channeling it through the Elder device. The haken, shaped like the hilt of a sword, grew a blade, a meter-long bar of liquid fire that lit up the underground space and threw shifting, hard-edged shadows.
Every centarch manifested deiat differently—as lightning, ice, raw force, or subtle energies. For Maya, it had always been fire. Deiat was the fire of creation, the raw power of the universe. When Maya swung her haken at the gripping tentacle, water on the damp rocks spat and flashed into steam, and the fleshy appendage parted with no more resistance than a damp sheet of paper. The end wrapped around her ankle spasmed and went limp, and Maya shot to her feet.
By the haken’s light, she could see the rest of the tendril, and the creature it was attached to. It was a hulking, heavyset thing, the size of a very large dog or a small pony. There was no confusing it with any natural animal, though. Plaguespawn.
It walked on six legs, asymmetrical, one dragging and one extra-jointed. The thing had no skin, its grotesque musculature on full display, red-gray flesh twisting and pulsing as it moved. Bones protruded from its body, apparently at random, sharpened to yellow, hardened points. A skein of tangled guts hung loose beneath its belly, dripping vile fluids.
And yet the worst part was not what was alien about the creature, but what was familiar. Here and there, pieces of other animals were visible, incorporated whole in the fabric of the monster’s flesh. Half a dog’s snout, upside down, made up what passed for its jaw, with a dozen dangling, wriggling protrusions like the tails of rats. One of the legs ended in a five-fingered hand that looked disturbingly human. The tendril that Maya had severed was its tongue, a muscular rope at least four meters long, edged with canine teeth. A dozen eyes of various sizes stared at her from across the thing, all blinking in eerie unison.
Jaedia had once described plaguespawn as the product of a mad taxidermist, given the run of the contents of a butcher shop and a morgue. That was close, but Maya thought that no human mind, however mad, could have matched the awfulness of the real thing. And, despite all its deformities, the thing functioned. When it stepped forward, the play of muscles in its flanks was smooth and powerful. Its long tongue coiled under its half jaw, dripping black blood from the severed tip.
In the shadows behind it, Maya saw more of the creatures. They were smaller but no less horrific, each a unique amalgamation of rats and cats and dogs and whatever other flesh they’d been able to catch. Fangs, claws, and shattered, repurposed bones gleamed razor-sharp.
Maya straightened up, forcing a grin. Bravado was wasted on these monsters, of course, but …
“Well?” she said. “Are you coming or not?”
They came, the small ones first in a wave, with the larger creature lumbering in behind them. Maya gave ground, drawing power through her haken, and drew a half circle in the air with her off hand. A wall of flame blasted up from the stones, cutting in front of the plaguespawn with a crackle and a wash of heat.
Maya didn’t expect that alone to stop them. The first of the creatures came through only moments later, scorched and smoldering. Its claws scrabbled on the wet stone as it leapt for her, sideways jaws dripping slaver. But it was alone, the others being slower to dare the flames, and Maya was able to sidestep smoothly and pivot to cut the thing in half. Her haken blade went through muscle, bone, and sinew like a wire through cheese, and the separate parts of the thing splashed to the stone behind her, twitching spastically.
The next one appeared in a rush, a crest of hair on its back aflame, and Maya separated its head from its body with a sweeping downward cut. Two more emerged together, coming at her from opposite directions. She intercepted the one that looked more dangerous, smashing it to the ground in a smoking ruin, while the other scored against her hip with a pair of raking strikes. Its claws of splintered bone stopped a few centimeters from her skin, the panoply field flickering blue-white, and she felt the bone-numbing cold of a rapid drain of energy. A gesture with her free hand blasted the thing with a bolt of fire that tossed it backward, burning fiercely.