The Mask of Mirrors by M. Carrick; (lightest ebook reader txt) 📗

No wonder Vargo could feel the numinat’s influence spilling outward: Breccone Indestris had been mad enough to scribe it without a circle to contain its power. The world was unraveling further with each pulse of the wellspring’s light, shredding dream into reality into dream again. It was as though the whole world was on ash.

Not yet—but if that numinat isn’t taken down…

::I’ll guide you,:: Alsius said, his voice the only thing holding Vargo steady against the ash.

Hopefully his aid would be enough. Climbing atop the low wall, Vargo waited for Sedge to crouch beside him. At Vargo’s signal, they smashed down on the gathering pack of zlyzen and came up back-to-back, all milling arms and striking knees.

“There en’t shit containing that thing, so stay clear of the lines,” Vargo warned Sedge as they double-teamed the zlyzen blocking the way to the numinat’s edge.

“Lines?” His eyes widened in comprehension as Vargo, bracing himself, stepped over the decagon. Cursing, Sedge heaved a zlyzen into two others and followed.

Sedge was strong, his strength amplified by the ash, and he wouldn’t be one of Vargo’s fists if he didn’t have muscles, brains, and loyalty in equal measure. And yet Vargo hesitated to get to work. To trust someone to defend him against the nightmare-hungry zlyzen, when Vargo knew his mind would be a feast for them.

He hauled your ass out of plague-town. Also, you don’t have much of a choice.

Digging in his satchel for a rag and a bottle of turpentine, Vargo traced the pulsing lines to find the last numen on the spiral. Ninat. Of course: To end this working, he would have to begin with the numen of endings.

His first attempt to scrub away one of the points of the nonagram met with a white shock of pain that sent his rag and bottle flying and left Vargo reeling. Sedge, grappling one of the zlyzen, managed to kick his tools back toward him.

::Wait for the pulse to dim?:: Alsius suggested.

Vargo blinked hard in a pointless attempt to banish the black spots in his vision, rolled up his sleeves, and waited for a dimming moment to try again. The line cleaned up too easily, leaving his hands stained red. This isn’t paint.

::Blood?::

Dreamweaver blood. No wonder the carcass at the labyrinth had been drained. How many birds must have died to create this working? Vargo swallowed against bile rising in his throat and moved along the earthwise spiral to Noctat. Impressive, Tanaquis had called the numinat. He would have said insane.

And he was insane, too, for kneeling here like a housemaid scrubbing the floor clean, instead of running the fuck away like a man with any sense of self-preservation. This wasn’t what he’d expected, any of it, when he chose Indestor’s downfall as the path to his goals. He could only hope it would pay off in the end.

He scrubbed again as the cycle hit the next dim moment, only for the numinat to unexpectedly surge. His muscles seized painfully, and sheer luck kept him from collapsing across the figure in front of him. While he was still recovering his wits and trying to make his fingers open to drop the rag, the damned thing surged again.

“Stay off the fucking lines!” he snarled at Sedge. Protecting him from the zlyzen wouldn’t do any good if Sedge wound up cooking him with numinatria instead.

A stream of curses seemed to be telling him it wasn’t Sedge’s fault, but Vargo didn’t much care. He’d gotten through Ninat, Noctat, Sebat, and Sessat; just four more to go, the light of the wellspring surging brighter every time he took one out, like he was freeing it from chains. But the spiral grew tighter as it arced toward the center, giving him less room to maneuver, and there were more than just zlyzen and Sedge making his life difficult: Other people had joined the fray, surging back and forth across the lines, and Vargo wanted to scream at them all to stop fucking moving for one minute and let him work.

Then fire raked down his back. His scream echoed Alsius’s in his head. Vargo arched, clawing at whatever was clawing him. Get it off! Get it off!

More raking pain. His fear was making it stronger.

“Sedge!” But no help came. Vargo managed to curl forward, twisting so the zlyzen’s body fell across the spiral where it passed through broken Quinat. The creature convulsed, its talons digging deeper into his shoulders, but then it released him to writhe away. Vargo’s arms trembled with the effort to push himself up. Something fluttered against the searing pain along his back, and he hoped it was just his shirt and not tatters of his skin. “Sedge?”

::He went—Vargo, you have to run. There’s more of those things coming.::

Zlyzen. Vargo didn’t look—didn’t want to look. Lay a red thread around your bed… The old song pulsed through his mind in time with the wellspring. Red surrounding him, his blood, dreamweaver blood. It would have to be enough. He’d never had anyone to lay down a thread for him. He’d always been on his own.

::I’m here. Please—Vargo—::

“I can’t leave it like this. I’m not done. We’re not done.” His back burned as he reached for the rag he’d dropped and crawled along the spiral to Quarat.

It was an echo of the reckless stupidity that overtook him during the riot, but this time he had only himself to blame. A thousand times in his life he could have given up, but he’d paid in his blood and that of others in order to push through. Because he had a plan. A promise to keep. And he would cut down or cut away anything that held him back.

Quarat. The wellspring surged again. Another zlyzen lunged at him, but Alsius’s shout warned him, and Vargo dodged in time to throw it across the lines. Tricat. Its energy pulsed wildly, out of time with the rest, scorching his hand as