Fortune's Fool by Mercedes Lackey

her dagger in the right—
    And with a single, swift slash, Katya cut the stone from the witch’s neck.
    A scream literally split the air, joined a moment later by a disharmony of howls from every part of the room. The witch made a snatch at her, hands outstretched, turning into claws, into talons, elongating in a way that made Katya gag even as she spun away.
    She fell back rather than trying to run, tumbling over and turning the fall into a roll, with the stone tightly clutched against her chest. She had been afraid that it was some kind of talisman of evil and would hurt her when she touched it, but it wasn’t, and hadn’t. In fact, it felt warm and smooth in her hand, as if it welcomed her “rescue,” as she used the momentum of her roll to spring to her feet and whirl to face the witch again.
    What she saw, though, was nothing like the elegant, beautiful courtesan who had stood there. The face, skull-like and a cadaverous white, had baleful yellow eyes that glared at her with hate that had a life of its own. In place of the elegant robes, she was swathed in garments the color of dried blood, and the body inside those garments promised not pleasure, but the grave.
    The only part of her that was the same was the long, long white hair, hair that, unbound as it was now, was easily twice as long as she was tall. Like a spider stuck in the middle of its own web, she was trapped in her hair, trapped by the now-visible demon heads that held the hair tight, while she screamed out unintelligible syllables and her claws—not hands anymore, but nasty, scabrous things of bone and talon—moved to form shapes that made Katya’s stomach churn. Even though she had no idea what the witch was invoking, no knowledge of her magic, those sketched shapes somehow twisted the space around the witch into something utterly wrong .
    The demon heads continued to howl, and swarmed the red-haired woman. Katya moved in, swatting furiously with her sword in one hand, the stone in the other. With a look of intense concentration on her face, the red-haired woman suddenly unwound the sash from her arms, whipped one end of it over her head in a circle, and let fly.
    The sash flew across the distance between her and the witch as surely as any arrow from the bow of Katya’s sister.
    The instant it touched the witch, it twisted in midair as if obeying a command, and as if being manipulated by unseen hands. One end whipped around and around the witch’s hands, binding them, mummifying them. The other slung around her neck, then continued to wrap around and around her head, sealing her mouth, until all that could be seen of that wreck of a face were the glaring, hate-filled eyes.
    And the moment the woman in blue had been rendered immobile—the demon heads turned on her.
    They swarmed her.
    Like sharks converging on one of their number, wounded and bleeding, they moved in on her, teeth clattering angrily. Like sharks, they began tearing at her—the witch struggled and staggered backward, struggling with her bonds, flailing at the heads with her bound hands. Blood spattered the wooden floor as the demonic teeth found their marks.
    The red-haired woman shouted a single word, and clapped her hands, and a whirling hole opened in the air above the witch, like a whirlpool in reverse, except that in the heart of this creation was a glow of ominous green. The red-haired woman bent to the pile of her garments and snatched up her fan, holding it closed, and pointing it at the witch. For the last time she flicked it open and made a complicated twisting motion with it, the hole became a whirlwind that surrounded the witch and all her hideous little helpers, and in the time it took to gasp, sucked them into itself—
    Then it spun itself closed.
    And winked out of existence, taking the witch and all with it.
    Katya sat down abruptly, the stone still glowing softly in her hand.
    Silence filled the wide wooden room, as the splotches of blood faded from the floor,