Sathra's men turned tail.

The demon tore a chunk from his shoulder. He yowled in surprised pain. This was how he would end? Eaten by a damned demon?

Join with me, and this demon shall fall.

Gage struggled even as his skin ripped and peeled away. Fighting the blade hadn't helped him; it had left him vulnerable. And in another few moments, he would be dead anyway . . .

He surrendered himself to Angul's will.

A blue haze fell across his eyes. Through the filter of Angul's perceptions, everything was suddenly, gloriously, perfect.

*   *   *   *   *

Someone was screaming, but the noise was distant, unimportant, not significant to the task at hand—even though the screamer turned out to be himself. He coughed blood, but the many weaknesses of flesh were no longer his concern. Something far stronger girded his frame and held him steady.

Angul's flame flashed and new vigor flooded his limbs. Flayed skin sloughed, unsullied flesh burgeoned and sleeted across his gaping wounds. Gage stood, heaving the demon up, too. Overbalanced, man, sword, and fiend crashed into heaped treasures.

Demoriel's grasp slackened and Gage pulled away, slashing with Angul, knocking the demon backward. It rolled, sinuously as a snake might, onto two cloven feet. It screamed again in its unholy tongue, You anger me. More than your soul is forfeit—have you parents? A wife? A suckling child you spawned? I will find them, and they—

The Blade Cerulean seared the demon's sharklike skin, textured its flesh with vicious swipes, broke its teeth on the hard side of its invulnerable iron. Yet Demoriel withstood this punishment as if it enjoyed the pain. It never ceased its obscene banter, but screamed louder, abyssal curses that smote stone and liquefied metal. A portion of the ceiling collapsed and the demon grappled Gage once more.

But this time, it was a clinch of desperation—Angul's punishments had weakened it. Demoriel attempted to encompass Angul and Gage in a great hug, trapping the blade against its body and thus preventing Gage from swinging the enchanted sword. Gage danced away, ending the demon's best chance to turn the battle's tide. Demoriel's wounds burned with fire, its eyes glazed with pain, and its mouth dripped, a bloody mass of shattered fangs. Yet it fought on. A bound thing, it was compelled to struggle until it triumphed or failed, or until the words that yanked it forth from outside the world lost their force . . .

Angul staked the demon to the floor. The blade pulsed with purifying fire. Of Demoriel, only ash remained. The demon's time in the world had proven brief.

Gage released his grip. Strength rushed from him like water emptying from a holed aquifer.

His remaining glove whimpered a childlike gurgle of loss and misery.

CHAPTER SIX

City of Laothkund, The Gutter

"G'way," mumbled Kiril. Daylight pried at her eyelids. Worse, something small and four-footed pattered around on her back. What the Hells?

Where in Mystra's starry hair was . . . the smell of garbage and bile brought with it her memory. She lay in an alley alcove.

A fuzzy image of her defeating a sweaty dwarf in an arm wrestling contest took shape in her mind's eye. Had she quit the Smokehouse Inn after that? Maybe. If not then, then later. Somehow, lost in a whisky haze, she'd found her way to the alcove. Her muddy, sodden clothes hinted she'd been there a while. The greasy yellow clay on her shoes, legs, and arms matched the hue of the muck between the cobbles. That must have been earlier, when it was still warm enough for mud. The winter night, now giving way to day, had stolen the previous day's heat. The mud was ridged with ice and a coating of snow hid treacherous ruts.

She was frankly surprised she hadn't frozen to death. And the creature sharing the alcove with her ... a rat!?

She gave an involuntary jerk, spooking the creature resting on her back. Its squeal sounded like a bag of dropped bells. It flew up across the alley and landed on a ledge. Despite being opalescent and faceted, it moved uncannily like a live thing. It reminded her of earth magic exploits performed by an old friend. . .

"Xet!" she exclaimed. "I thought you'd left me for good!" She shook her head, jarring loose a headache waiting in ambush.

Kiril brought a hand to her forehead and dislodged a heavy fur covering her body. She didn't remember the fur when she'd passed out. Of course, her faculties had been much the worse for wear then.

The crystal dragonet tolled a happy note and flew down to her.

"Did . . . did you bring this fur?"

A tiny, drakelike head on the end of a sinuous crystalline neck nodded.

"You saved my life. Damn interfering beast!"

It rang a resentful tone.

She glared at it a moment or two, but the headache wasn't so fierce it was able to conquer her desire to pierce last night's gloom.

If history was any guide, she'd done something humiliating, if not downright dangerous. She hoped she hadn't hurt anybody. Killed anybody, she amended. She was sure she'd hurt someone. She couldn't truthfully call it a bender if she didn't get into a fight. Lately, her barroom brawls were much more entertaining. Because of Gage.

Since she'd come to Laothkund, her new acquaintance Gage had proved the perfect partner on the tavern circuit. He was funny, could almost match her drink for drink, and fought like a wildcat. A sneaky wildcat. His forte was disabling assailants quickly.

This was how it usually went down: Kiril's foul mouth, purposeful baiting, and derision were enough to launch a stiff-necked merc or a righteous priest off a bar stool into Kiril's business. She took the brunt, and Gage backed her up, if he was around. They would laugh about it later. A few bruises here and there, a few more for their foes—what was the harm in that? Though she one time saw Gage lighten the purse of a cleric who lay groaning beneath a mead-sopped bench. She wasn't one for robbery, but to her mind stealing from priests was merely putting already stolen gold back into circulation.

Her stomach intruded with a new question: When had she eaten last? An image of thick porridge crystallized in her bleary brain. Next to a rasher of bacon. And some thick ale, of course . . .

She swayed to her feet, bracing herself on a wall. "Come if you're coming, then, I don't care," she lied to Xet. Truth was, she was pleased to see the gemlike dragonet. Its absence had revealed her attachment to it. Who would have guessed? Its most accomplished trait was its ability to irritate her. But it reminded Kiril of the time immediately before she'd come to Laothkund. The only good memory of the last ten years . . .

She knew an innkeeper who owed her a favor. She began trudging in the direction of the man's establishment, unsteady at first, but gaining composure as she moved. Xet chimed, then flew over and lighted on her shoulder. Kiril resisted her initial urge to shrug the creature off.

As she walked, her right hand fell of its own accord to her empty scabbard.

Angul!

Gone.

Vertigo and defeat pushed a forlorn groan from her lips.

She remembered, again. He'd been gone for days.

She knew it already, of course. But the mind's knowing and the body's are not the same. If she ignored his absence long enough, perhaps the next time she checked, he'd magically be back, as if never gone.

"Yeah, right, you canker-ridden half-wit," she chided herself. Thank Shar's dead promises she still had her flask of all-forgiving whisky if nothing else.

The flask was forged of bronze, probably made by wood elves. Verdigris obfuscated the deranged face chiseled into the flask's side—some ancient god of the vine. She didn't care who it was. She cared only that in all the years she'd owned it, it had never failed to produce its potent drink. Once a bottomless flask to assuage her infinite shame, it was now a reservoir to fill the hole of Angul's absence.