The cuts burned, but Jorim ignored the pain. The bloody-handed Mozoyan priest-Jorim sensed the creature could be nothing else-reached down and grabbed a skull onto which his blood had dripped. Obscene and blasphemous-sounding words slithered from his mouth and the skull began to glow. The priest tossed it down to a waiting warrior at the pyramid’s base, then that Mozoyan leaped with all speed through formations to the front lines.

Fear pulsed through Jorim because, as weak as he was, he sensed the play of the mai in what the priest was doing. It wasn’t magic the way he’d learned it. There was no gentle balancing of elements. This magic twisted things, and that should have required far more power than the priest could muster.

But he is drawing the power from my blood, a god’s blood.

Jorim shifted his senses to the realm of the mai and almost vomited. Each of the skulls-for a dozen had already headed toward the lines-burned with destruction. Zoloa stalked the battlefield and raked his claws through the Amentzutl ranks.

The first skull made it to the causeway. A Mozoyan clutched it tightly to his chest, then leaped forward. He soared over the front lines. Arrows flew, piercing him again and again, splashing more blood over the skull. The dark power it contained flared. And when the Mozoyan corpse landed, the skull exploded.

Amentzutl warriors pitched off the causeway and fell into the writhing grey mass that was the Mozoyan army. The lucky had been slain by the blast. The others were rent to pieces by claws and teeth. A defiant roar from the Mozoyan troops muffled any screams and Jorim chose to believe the men went bravely and silently to their deaths.

Destruction gained momentum. More skulls arced upward, some just thrown, others held tightly by suicidal Mozoyan warriors. As each of them exploded, bodies flew and blood splashed. Men retreated quickly. One Mozoyan leaped for the causeway, but an Amentzutl tackled him in midair. Together they fell into the Mozoyan army and the explosion opened a hole in their ranks.

But it quickly closed, and the Mozoyan surge pushed farther up the causeway.

People at the top began to throw stones and burning pots of oil. The projectiles flew into the Mozoyan ranks, but for every warrior killed, nine more took his place. The Amentzutl warriors retreated more quickly, but as they reached the causeway’s first switchback, they faced being flanked again. Skulls arced and burst, men screamed and fell, and the retreat quickened.

Jorim’s blood flowed and skulls enriched with it streamed away from the pyramid. He hoped that the whole pyramid might collapse, but it wouldn’t make any difference. The Mozoyan had momentum. Destruction had momentum. Nothing could stop them.

But perhaps the key is not to stop them.

Gritting his teeth, Jorim tried to pull his head up. He tensed his stomach muscles and blood flowed anew. The Mozoyan soldier slapped his stomach again with the stick and the priest raked his talons over Jorim’s chest. Fire blossomed anew in his body, his shoulders ached as the sapling dragged at his arms.

Jorim reached inside and touched the destruction within him. The Mozoyan intended that he die and they were using his death to hasten the deaths of all those who believed in him. Jorim had unconsciously been opposing them, but now he stopped. He touched the mai and tipped the balance in favor of the twist. More magic poured into the destruction, entering the world through his blood.

He pushed the mai out, feeding it into Zoloa’s aspect. The shadowy Jaguar god became more voracious. Its snarls encouraged the Mozoyan who had their spirit steeled by the other god’s silent calls. Jorim watched the shadow cat’s muscles bulge and its fangs grow longer.

Not enough.

He pushed harder, drawing all the mai he could into himself, and pulsed it out faster. Zoloa gorged on it and swelled. Swelled like a leech tapping an artery.

Zoloa tried to pull away, but Jorim clamped a hand-a dragon’s taloned claw-over the god’s muzzle. He made it drink, pumping more power into it, taking his own life, twisting and rebalancing it, forcing the Jaguar god to accept it.

Does a god have a limit as to how much magic it can control?

Its brave snarl having been reduced to a puling mew, the obese god of destruction burst. Havoc flooded out in a black cloud of mai that washed over the battlefield. Its power gouged the ground, then crested in a dark wave that lifted successive Mozoyan ranks. They curved up the inside of the wave, then dissolved in the foam that curled downward. Where it touched a skull, where it merged with his blood, the skull exploded, vaporizing Mozoyan.

The Mozoyan priest either sensed the magic or knew Jorim had something to do with his army’s destruction. He slashed down with his claws, opening Jorim’s throat. Blood gushed, splashing over the priest’s hand and leg. The blood burned and in a heartbeat turned the priest into a torch.

And then the wave hit the pyramid of skulls.

It snuffed out the priest.

It carried past and spread, killing everything in its wake from the plains below Nemehyan, outward for the next fifty miles. It spread in a cone leaving nothing alive, not an insect or plant, bird or fish, animal, Mozoyan, or man.

It did not even spare a god.

Chapter Fifty-two

2nd day, Month of the Hawk, Year of the Rat

Last Year of Imperial Prince Cyron’s Court

163rd Year of the Komyr Dynasty

737th year since the Cataclysm

Moriande, Nalenyr

Though not having done so would have led to his discovery, Junel Aerynnor sincerely regretted removing the woman’s larynx. Not only did it prevent her from screaming, but her breath whistled and gurgled most annoyingly. And the way she screamed with her eyes let him know she would have been a delight to hear. She would have hit notes beyond hearing, and they would have resonated within him for a long time indeed.

Junel had come far, and had decided to take the slender slip of a girl apart in celebration. She’d actually caught his eye days before, as he had come to meet with his shadowy benefactor. She’d really been nothing, just a hollow-eyed wastrel, addicted to opium, willing to do anything to earn the price of a pipe. It was her eagerness that attracted him and, in retrospect, it was that same eagerness that doomed her.

He could have killed her right then and no one would have cared, but she intrigued him. She had survived somehow without having her spirit broken. He’d asked her what her name was, and she could have-almost had-replied that she could be whoever he wanted her to be. After a moment’s hesitation, she said she was Karari.

He bid her join him and bought her a bowl of noodles, which she devoured so quickly he expected her to vomit. Though she had told him her name, he wasn’t certain the story she told was true. She said her mother had been mistress of a ship’s navigator who worked for the Phoesel family on the Silver Gull. It had run aground off Miromil and the crew took her father for a jinx. They wrapped him in chains and threw him into the sea. Her mother, taken ill with grief, had died. She, with no one else in the world to help her, had fallen on hard times and taken to the pipe to ease her pain.

Junel knew of the Silver Gull, and supposed the story could be true. The girl’s descent could have begun five months earlier. She was not so far gone that she could not be saved, and she had enough civilization in her to be grateful.

And enough of the street in her to see him as her benefactor. She would cling to him. She would do as he bid, not questioning. To question would be to turn her fortune from good to ill, and she’d become too hungry on the street to do that thoughtlessly.

Junel had rented rooms and sat with her while she sweated through the battle with opium. He cleaned her up and moved her away from the slums, where she could fall back into her old habits. He even enjoyed buying things for her. Her transparent joy and gratitude was all the more potent in light of her eventual fate.