In The Shadow Of His Nemesis
Chapter Ninety Four
By AL BRUNO III
Saturday, December 4th 1996
My brother is dead. The thought tolled through her mind like the clang of a broken bell. My brother is dead.
Isobel was standing outside the Great House staring into the open doorway. The sound of the helicopter and the thick growl of Sig’s voice almost drowned out the sound of chanting coming from inside.
My brother is dead.
“Isobel?” Sig had given up trying to tell his story to her. His hunched bestial form moved into her field of vision, “You don’t want to look. You don’t have to see what’s coming.”
“What’s she doing in there?” Isobel shivered but not from the cold. She had forgotten about the cold long ago.
The vlodek explained, his voice had an edge of uncertainty to it, “Calling up one of the Dread Lords. I know the ceremony, by reputation. They need flesh to occupy. Without it they’re too frail.”
My brother is dead. She thought again. My brother is dead because of me. He suffered because of me.
But he had never held her responsible, even though it was her affair that had ruined her life and ended his. Somehow in the midst of all this they had become closer than they had ever been in childhood, when she had been so very bossy and disdainful and he had grown fatter and sadder by the year.
“I cannot be part of what’s coming,” Sig said, “the Monarchs know me. I’m marked.”
The voice echoing from the doorway of the Great House had begun to sing in a language that sounded Oriental to Isobel’s straining ears. It took a few seconds for her to realize what he had said, “Marked?”
“I sinned against their Chosen One. Crippled him. Perhaps forever. They would sense me if I got too close.”
The song had become a caterwauling nonsense, the voice singing it was no longer recognizable to Isobel, it was no human sound. For some reason it made her think of the smokey wave that had torn them from the Spaces Between. Why had it singled her out? Was it marking her as Sig had been marked?
Did it even matter?
My brother is dead. Hasn’t that already marked me? Haven’t I sinned against him?
“I can take you away from here,” Sig said, “you don’t have to be a part of this. Not if you don’t want to. If you make yourself a part of Hao’s revenge or Magwier’s war it will destroy you.”
The thought of running was tempting but she couldn’t. Galen had saved her from Sauno and Ginmett and even if she hadn’t loved him, even if he was a traitor to his own kind and even if he was a creature far removed from humanity she would have felt bound to return the favor.
“I’m...” the words caught in her throat as she saw a shape walking through the doorway, a shape familiar yet utterly alien to her.
A single gunshot and a screeching mechanical crash filled the air but no one at the Great House noticed.
I’m already destroyed. Was what she had been about to say. Because my brother is dead.
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