Deathstalker 08 - Deathstalker Coda

people striking out blindly in all directions. And Jesamine Flowers lowered her sword and raised her voice. She sang, and all her Maze power focused through her trained voice. The song drowned out every other sound, rising and rising until it seemed everyone in the city could hear it. It was an old song, from the beginning days of Empire, and perhaps even older than that. Of the joys and responsibilities, the duty and the triumphs of being human. Jesamine’s voice rang like steel and silver and silk on the still air, a pure and striking sound, and it seemed like everyone in the city stopped to hear it. Defenders and thralls alike were held where they stood. And then the Ashrai joined in, adding their voices to hers. It was a song of life and blessed humanity, and voices rose all across the city, joining in, until the air itself shook with the power of the song.
    And one by one, and then dozens by dozens, the thralls began to collapse. They fell limply to the ground, and did not rise again, in all the streets and squares and crowded bloody places around the Imperial Palace. The song of Jesamine, and the Ashrai and the people who had come to save a city and a world, had a strength and a force and a power that not even the uber-espers could match. Their minds were forced out of those they’d possessed, and the grounds around the palace were carpeted with the living empty shells of what had once been men and women.
    But Jesamine couldn’t sing forever, and eventually even her voice gave out. Without her to lead them, the Ashrai and the people fell out of the song. And so everywhere else in the city, the fighting went on, perhaps a little more savagely than before.
    Brett Random’s first instinct had been to bolt for the safety of the Rookery the moment his pinnace landed, and go to ground there until all the fighting was safely over. He knew all kinds of hiding places in the Rookery, where even his oldest friends and enemies wouldn’t have been able to find him. But the sheer number of thralls he faced almost immediately made it clear running out was not a viable option. He wouldn’t get ten paces on his own. Brett whimpered, swore at everything and everyone, and drew his weapons. Rose Constantine had drawn her weapons even before they’d landed properly. She saw the army of thralls laid out before her, thirsting for her blood, and smiled widely. She hefted her sword once, and went to meet them like a lover.
    Brett and Rose soon ended up fighting back to back, separated from the rest of the fighters they’d come down with. Rose didn’t hold back for anyone as she cut a bloody path through the enemy, and Brett was terrified to be separated from her. The tides of battle moved them well away from the Imperial Palace. Brett was forced to call up all the fighting skills he’d learned from Rose, just to survive, and for a while the two of them fought well and finely, cutting down every thrall that came within reach. They were both faster and stronger than any human had a right to be, and none of the thralls could match them for a moment.
    But Brett could still see other soldiers dying, pulled down and torn apart by the thralls, and his borrowed courage and skills were no match for the growing certainty that even with the Wild Rose at his side, eventually the thralls would get him too. There were just too many of them. He couldn’t run, and he knew his fighting skills weren’t enough on their own, so he reluctantly did the one thing that scared him the most. He deliberately reopened the old mental link between him and Rose, and used his esper compulsion to slam their minds together, so that he could share in all the wild madness that made Rose the unbeatable fighter she was. Their minds opened up and meshed together, all the parts fitting into place, into one larger structure. Rose laughed aloud, delighting at the feel of his mind in hers, and hers in his. They both knew everything about each other, all their skills and secrets. The whole process was finished in a second, and suddenly the thralls were faced with a new threat: two superhuman fighters who fought as one. Equally skilled, equally savage.
    Brett and Rose struck about them with inhuman speed and skill, performing dark wonders of swordsmanship, piling up the bodies around them, so that the thralls had to climb over the fallen to get at their enemies. The uber-espers looked on Brett and Rose through their proxy eyes, and then had to look away, because the