Page 113 of Silver & Gold
Seth turned to face the real threat. Atop the dais, Kahzir stood unafraid. Seth could see his pleasure, the certainty in his eyes. From his neck, over his dingy white scholar’s robes, hung a glittering orb in a cage of gold. The Alchemist’s Stone.
As Seth took aim with his chakram, Kahzir raised his hand, displaying an undoubtedly arcane device, though Seth didn’t know what it was.
“I can kill him!” Kahzir shouted in warning. “If I shock him at full strength, his brain will shut down. So I suggest, Curator, that you throw down your weapons.”
When Seth didn’t immediately comply, Kahzir pressed a button on the device. Raider’s scream split the air. Seth’s head whipped back Raider’s direction as Raider dropped to his knees.
“Throw down your weapons, Curator!”
Seth dropped his chakram and sword.
Raider’s scream cut off, and he climbed back to his feet, quicksilver lashing out to drive back the men who had thought to attack him while he was down.
Raider proceeded toward the dais. Seth stormed toward him. Reaching Seth, Raider halted. His right eye was still blazing gold, burning out any emotion that Seth might find there. The left, of course, was arcane and without life, made by Kahzir. Forced on him by Kahzir, just like the quicksilver. Just like that fucking collar around his throat.
“Baby,” Seth pleaded. “Come back to me.”
Seth could read nothing in Raider’s expression, so he wasn’t prepared for the quicksilver that lashed out from Raider’s body. It caught him around the torso and flung him out of the way.
As Seth crashed to the ground, he dimly registered that Raider and done the same thing to Nasrin. Zarina, too, he had pushed aside—and he was stalking past them up the dais steps.
With a snarl, Kahzir hit the button on his arcane device again. Raider’s body arched horribly as the shock seized his limbs.
Then a cat-sized blue shape shimmered into sight beside Kahzir. Adavasti snatched the control from his hand and hurled it at the wall.
Raider had fallen down the steps, but released from the torture of the shock, he got up—and the homunculus grabbed him by the throat and threw him across the room.
Seth, on his feet, was racing toward the dais again. He vaulted the steps.
Kahzir began to dissolve in a cloud of blue smoke, but Seth tackled him before he lost all form. Kahzir’s body solidified as Seth tackled him, slamming him into the throne. Seth reached for his knife, but it wasn’t in his thigh sheath. He’d dropped it after cutting off the homunculus’s hand and had lost track of it.
But it would do him no good in any case, not with the Alchemist’s Stone around Kahzir’s neck. Seth snatched for it, thrusting his hand past Kahzir’s scrabbling hands. Heat pulsed at Seth as flames grew in Kahzir’s hands, but Seth ignored it. He grabbed hold of the Alchemist’s Stone and ripped it away from Kahzir. He yanked so hard that the Stone went flying out of his grasp, but he didn’t care about that right now.
Seth took Kahzir’s head in his hands. The dark eyes widened, all arrogance gone. Even the thin lips had lost their superior tilt. He knew what was coming—and, yes, it fucking was.
Seth wrenched Kahzir’s head in a twisting motion, snapping his neck. Still hot with rage, Seth hurled his limp body down the dais steps.
Seth spun to hunt for Raider and saw his quicksilver spear into the clay body of the homunculus. Raider slammed the creature to the ground. It shattered into a hundred pieces—which were already drawing together once more.
Nasrin, with Zarina huddled behind her, shouted, “How in Hasa’s hell do we get rid of that thing?”
Seth’s eyes darted around as he sought the Alchemist’s Stone—and he found it glowing bright in Adavasti’s spindly fingers. He had found it on the other side of the dais.
Seth’s heart leaped with terror at what the ifrit might do with that vast source of power.
“Adavasti!” came a boyish shout from the throne room doors. Julian. “Do it!”
The Stone flared bright in Adavasti’s thin fingers, blazing out. Then the light seeped from the Stone into the ifrit, who glowed like molten gold. His body hummed and shimmered, half losing its shape.
As the Alchemist’s Stone fell from his grip, it hit the floor of the dais as a sphere of dull lead.
Then Adavasti seemed to burst like an exploding star. Dozens of streams of light shot out from him. White. Blue. Gold. They wove through the air, twisting and brightening, almost seeming to laugh in pure joy and release.
Seth’s eyes went straight to Raider, who had two hands of clay around his neck—but the homunculus had stilled, nothing now but lifeless clay.
Raider broke free, shattering the clay hands. This time, the dust that rained to the ground stayed there.
Seth raced down the dais steps toward Raider, who had fallen to his hands and knees amid the last chaos of the fight as Prince Rahim and the other traitors fled, pursued by the Hammer.