The Desert Spear

table. Jardir kicked out with his good leg to deflect it as the demon’s flesh seemed to melt like wax, and it stumbled about, thrashing madly.
    Jardir looked up then and saw why. He hadn’t been fighting Alagai Ka at all. Leesha and Inevera stood over the smoking body of a slender demon with a gigantic head. Even from across the room, Jardir could sense the power and evil the creature radiated. The demon he had fought was its Hasik: brainless muscle to clear paths and break skulls that were beneath its master to shatter personally.
    The slender demon lifted its head. Inevera shrieked and sent another bolt of lightning at it, but the demon drew a ward in the air, dispersing the energy. It reached out, and the demon bone flew from her hand. The slender demon caught it, and the bone glowed briefly in the demon’s grasp before the magic was absorbed and the bone crumbled to dust.
    The demon reached out again, and Inevera’s
hora
pouch flew to its hands. She shrieked as it upended the bag, dropping her precious dice into its clawed hand.
    Leesha and Inevera charged the demon with their warded knives, but it drew another ward in the air that flared to throw them across the room as if picked up by a great wind.
    The
alagai hora
glowed as the demon absorbed their power. Jardir felt a strange mix of fear and relief as the dice that had controlled his life for more than twenty years crumbled to dust. Inevera wailed as if the sight caused her physical pain.
    The mimic demon regained its senses as soon as its master recovered, but Jardir was already moving, springing across the broken bed on his good leg. He caught the Spear of Kaji in his hands as he rolled off the far side, letting his weight pull it from the wall.
    Pain screamed through Jardir’s mangled leg as he came to his feet, but he embraced it effortlessly, his movements sharp and decisive as he drew back and threw.
    And before either demon could react, the fight was over. The spear blasted through the mind demon’s skull, leaving a gaping, blasted hole and continuing on to stick quivering in the far wall. The mind demon fell dead, and without it, the mimic fell to the ground shrieking and thrashing about as if on fire. Finally it lay still, a melted pile of scale and claw.

    Leesha came awake at the sound of a sharp crack, opening her eyes to see Jardir, his eyes closed and his face serene as Inevera pulled hard on his foot to give herself play to reinsert the bone jutting from his leg.
    Shaking off her own pains, Leesha fumbled to her side, taking the bone in her hand and guiding it back into the incision Inevera had cut. As with Arlen, the wound began to close almost instantly, but Leesha still reached for needle and thread to stitch it evenly.
    “There is no need,” Inevera said, rising to her feet and going to the mind demon’s body. She drew her warded knife and cut off one of its vestigial horns. She returned with the foul, ichorous thing, then removed a thin brush and bottle from her pouch. She drew neat wards along the edges of Jardir’s wound, and as she passed the horn over them, the wards flared, closing the incision seamlessly.
    She did the same for her own wound, and then wordlessly tended to Leesha, not meeting her eyes. Leesha watched in silence, memorizing the wards Inevera used and the fashion in which she knit them together.
    She looked at the horn when she was finished. It was still intact, and Inevera grunted. “I’ll make better dice from this one’s bones, anyway.” Leesha went to the mind demon’s body herself, cutting off the other horn and one of its arms. These she rolled in a heavy tapestry for later study. Inevera’s eyes narrowed at her, but she said nothing.
    “Why has no one come to investigate the sounds of battle?” Jardir asked.
    “I expect it was simple for Alagai Ka to draw wards of silence around your chambers,” Inevera said. “They will likely remain in power until the sunlight strikes the walls.”
    Jardir looked at them. “It controlled everything you said and did?”
    Inevera nodded. “It…ah, even made us fight each other, for its amusement.” She touched her swollen nose gingerly.
    Leesha felt her face color, and she coughed. “Yes,” she agreed, “it made us do that.”
    “Why play such cruel games?” Jardir asked. “Why not just have one of you cut my throat as we lay in the pillows?”
    “Because it didn’t want to kill you,” Inevera said. “It’s more afraid of your power to inspire