Fat and skinny, tall and short, they oriented on us the moment we burst through, a dozen men and women who looked worse for the wear. They were sweaty, muddy, hollow-eyed; most had lost their shoes, and their feet were bloody stumps. The demons that animated them didn’t care about their health or the state of the corpses they were animating; they cared only about following their mistress’s instructions.
They charged, and I spat seven Words, taking some inspiration from what my old pal Lugal was doing to the enustari and their Bleeders all around us: levitation. The Stringers were people dominated by demons, which was a word for intelligences from another plane or some such shit. Weak link: They were just bodies. As Mags put his shoulder down to clear a path, all the arad shot about ten feet into the air and hung there. I felt the drain as the universe took my sacrifice; I stumbled and caught hold of Mags’s jacket to stop myself from falling over as the wave of nauseated weakness passed through me. We ran under the Stringers as they waved their arms and legs at us, too far above to do any damage.
And then Mags kicked in the front door, and we were in the house. The noise level dropped, then rose up along with the ambient light as something brighter than the sun bloomed behind us, either another assault from Lugal rummaging through Elsa’s library of spells or a counterattack organized by Fallon.
“Hall, straight on!” I shouted, breathing hard. I felt dizzy and hot and rubber-legged, but as Mags steered himself into the narrow, suffocating hallway, I rallied. This wasn’t the worst I’d ever felt. I’d done way more, I’d cast when I was about to pass out, I’d woken up in the emergency room with some sucker’s gas hooked up to me, moments from death. This was nothing.
Bodies appeared at the other end of the hall, feral, writhing, their clothes torn and their fingernails ripped away as the arad ground their prisoners down. They threw themselves at us, snarling as their human mouths attempted to speak a language they were physically incapable of pronouncing. Mags caught the first, growling, and somehow levered them up and over, tossing them behind us as if they weighed nothing, then went crashing into the rest, roaring. I was ready, Words in my head, but I held back. I had to make my blood count.
One of the Stringers reached around Mags as he struggled and caught me by the arm, her hand hot and her strength surprising, sinewy and taut, like she was controlled by wires. I jerked back, spitting out a single Word—sutaka—and she doubled over as if hit by something heavy, sailing backward and pulling me with her, her grip like a vise.
A wave of exhaustion swept through me as my spell took its toll, and for a few seconds I wasn’t able to summon the strength to resist. The Stringer reeled me in by the arm, hand over hand. Just before she leaned forward to sink her teeth into my face, Mags grabbed hold of my foot and yanked with superhuman force, pulling me free. I twisted around in time to see Mags spin and leap into the crowd of Stringers, knocking them down in a confused pile of howls and snarls.
I gathered myself. As I watched, Mags played Whack-a-Mole, knocking each arad down until they were all unconscious.
Mags in a fury was something to see.
When he turned, though, his face was a mask of concern. I struggled to my feet and waved him off.
“I’m fine,” I croaked, pushing a bloody hand through my hair. “Come on.”
I led him through the door to her little office or study or whatever it was. I signaled to Mags that he should stay outside.
“Lem,” he whispered urgently, “she’s enustari. She’s got power.”
I shook my head and took hold of the doorknob. She was enustari and she had power. But I was idimustari and I had tricks.
I rushed in, seizing my own thin thread of gas and speaking a new spell, a spell I’d cobbled together from the one she’d cast to insert Lugal in me. I had always been good with the Words. It was the source of Hiram’s anger at me: He thought I was one of the most talented ustari he’d ever known, yet I refused to bleed anyone.
I’d changed her spell. Shortened it. Shifted the link between puppet and master. I recited it quickly, eyes closed, and felt the glorious sewer feel of the gas, felt the eager universe reaching into me like some giant insect and sucking my life force from me, felt myself being pulled through a tiny infinite tunnel into someone else’s mind.
I OPENED MY eyes. I was kneeling on the floor, shivering, freezing cold. I felt hollow and exhausted, the sort of bright-eyed tired you got to after forcing yourself to stay awake for a few days. I knew if I looked in a mirror, I would be white as a sheet, gray-lipped, red-eyed. Nearly dead. Conscious by force of will alone.
She sat at the desk, staring blankly, her hands frozen in her knitting. Lurida Moret, enustari. She was a vision of Grandmother in repose.