Hundreds of fast moving, razor-sharp blades whistled through Gustine, so fast, so completely, that he didn't realise what had happened to him.
A mist of blood puffed in the air. Ghustine collapsed. Literally.
Glaw turned on me again. I'd lost sight of Cherubael. I was on my own.
And only now did I admit to myself that I was out-matched.
Glaw was almost impervious to damage. Fast, armoured, deadly. Even on a good day, he would have been hard to defeat in single combat.
And this wasn't a good day.
He was going to kill me.
He knew it too. As he pressed his assault, he started to laugh.
That cut me deeper than any of his blades. I thought of Fischig, Aemos and Bequin. I thought of all the allies and friends who had perished because of him. I thought of what his spite had done to me and what it had cost me to get this far.
I thought of Cherubael. The laughter reminded me of Cherubael.
I came back at him so hard and so furiously that Barbarisater's blade became notched and chipped. I struck blows that snapped blade-scales off his clinking cape. I struck at him until he wasn't laughing any more.
His answer was a psychic blast that smashed me backwards ten paces. Blood spurted from my nose and filled my mouth. I didn't fall. I would not give him that pleasure. But Barbarisater flew, screaming, from my dislodged grip.
I was hunched over. My hands on my thighs, panting like a dog. My head was swimming. I could hear him crunching over the onyx towards me.
You'd have won by now if you'd had the book/ I said, coughing the blood from my mouth.
'What?'
The book. The damned book. The Malus Codicium. That's what you were really after when you sent your hired murderers against me. That's why you tore my operation apart and killed everyone you could reach. You wanted the book.'
'Of course I did/ he snarled.
I looked up at him. 'It would have unlocked the prize already. Done away with this endless, fruitless study. You'd simply have opened the tomb and taken the daemon's chariot. Long before we could ever get here/
'Savour that little triumph, Gregor/ he said. 'Your little pyrrhic victory. By keeping that book from me you have added extra months… years, to my work. Yssarile's weapon will be mine, but you've made its acquisition so much harder/
'Good/1 said.
He chuckled. 'You're a brave man, Gregor Eisenhorn. Come on, now –I'll make it quick/
His blades clinked.
'I suppose, then/ I added, 'I'd have been mad to bring it with me/
He froze.
With a shaking, bloody hand, I reached into my coat and took out the Malus Codicium. I think he gasped. I held it out, half open, so he could see, and riffled the pages through with my fingers.
'You foolish, foolish man/ he said, smiling.
That's what I thought/ I said. With one brutal jerk, I ripped the pages out of the cover.
'No!' he cried.
I wasn't listening. I fixed my mind on the loose bundle of sheets in my hands and subjected them to the most ferocious mental blast I could manage. The pages caught fire.
I threw them up into the air.
Glaw screamed with despair and rage. A blizzard of burning pages fluttered around us. He tried to grab at them. He moved like an idiot, like a child, snatching what he could out of the air, trying to preserve anything, anything at all.
The pages burned. Leaves of darkness, billowing across the plinth, consumed by fire.
He snatched a handful, tried for more, stamping out those half-burned sheets that landed on the ground.
He wasn't paying any attention to me at all.
Barbarisater tore into him so hard it almost severed his head. Electricity crackled from the rent metal. He rasped and staggered. The Carthean blade sang in my hands as I ripped it across his chest and shattered part of his cloak.
He fell backwards, right at the edge of the plinth, his finger hooks shrieking as they fought to get a purchase on the smooth onyx. I swung again, an upswing that ripped off his golden mask and sent it spinning out over the gulf. The interior of his head was revealed. The circuits, the crackling, fusing cables, the crystal that contained his consciousness and being, set in its cradle of links and wires.
