The captain raised his hands in the air. He made a complicated gesture with one hand bent in half, the fingers of the others splayed.
The night air on the common fluttered, as if a great flock of birds had all lifted into the air at the same time. The barrier was down. The guard who’d been trapped by it fell to the gravel with a thud and lay still.
“Thank you,” Croy said, turning to look the captain in the eye. But the man was already gone. His halberd lay abandoned on the grass.
Croy breathed deeply. He was badly hurt, and he knew it. But now the barrier was down. His path was clear.
“Hold,” Gurrh said. Croy whirled to face the ogre. It was a bad idea, as it aggravated his wounds. For a moment he could see only blood, and his breath caught in his throat.
“Into that place, goest thou must. But not yet,” Gurrh told him. The ogre had torn the tunic off one of the fallen guards. He ripped it into bandages and stanched Croy’s wounds. “Now, thou art ready.”
Croy grinned. There was less humor in his smile than he would have liked, but at least it didn’t hurt to move his mouth. “Thank you, Gurrh. You know what you must do now, don’t you?”
“I do,” the ogre said. He walked over to a point about twenty yards before the gate of the villa and sat down once more in the grass, to wait.
Croy strode up to the gate and hesitated only a moment before walking through. On the far side the gravel crunched under his boots. The main door of the villa stood before him. He started toward it, walking as fast as he could.
But of course he would not be allowed to enter the house, not yet.
Bikker was leaning against the side of the building. His arms were folded across his massive chest. Croy could see the cowl of a chain-mail hauberk emerging from inside his tunic. The big swordsman’s face glowed with ruddy health.
“Croy,” Bikker said, and stepped away from the wall. “Might I have a moment of your time?”
Chapter Eighty-One
Hazoth’s sanctum was a long room with high vaulted ceilings shrouded in darkness. As Malden entered, the only light came from the rose window at its far end, a massive round piece of stained glass that cast long ribbons of red and blue illumination across the floor. After the gloom of the corridor and its dark illusions, it was almost enough light for him to see clearly by-he almost welcomed the eerily hued light that streamed into the room. Peering forward, he sought what he’d come for, though he wasn’t sure what it would look like.
Vague shapes of furniture and magical equipment were all around him. Every corner of the place was cluttered with gear and apparatus, and he was careful not to step forward until he was sure he wouldn’t trip over something baleful or disgusting. Once he’d taken a few strides, he began to make out more distinct shapes. He could vaguely see the silhouette of a tree in the middle of the room, its branches raised high like the beseeching arms of a woman in distress.
That must be the witch Coruth. Cythera’s mother, who had transformed herself into the shape of a rowan tree, to avoid torture at the hands of the sorcerer.
Malden took a step toward the tree-and the room erupted in light.
Red fire leapt up all around him, from braziers and cressets and dozens of candelabra on high stands. The flames danced wickedly-these were no normal flames, but tongues of fire summoned straight from the pit. They lit up every detail of the room but gave the place a ruddy cast that made everything look stained with blood.
The walls of the room were lined with bookshelves-he had thought Hazoth’s library on the first floor impressive, but here there must be ten times as many books, scrolls, palimpsests, and fragments of stone tablets. Standing before the bookshelves were worktables covered in magical implements: athames, compasses and calibers, goblets, wands, styli of bitumen, silver chains, bundles of herbs tied together, ready to be cast into the magical flames. Incense burned from a dozen censers. The mummified body of a lizard with a long, toothy snout hung in chains from the ceiling.
On one of the tables stood a glass dome on a carved wooden trivet. Inside the dome a thing perhaps nine inches tall scratched at the glass with tiny pincers. Its face was almost human but its body was
… not. Malden chose not to study its form too carefully. Looking away, he saw that on another table stood a bowl full of what looked like quicksilver. When he walked past it, its substance stretched upward until a cluster of argent eyes stared at him, mounted on a thin stalk of liquid substance. It made no attempt to molest him, so he showed it the same respect. A third table held the body of a small demon, pinned to the boards with long iron needles, its lights and guts exposed to the air. The demon’s seven eyes blinked and quivered, and Malden knew it was still alive. He shuddered as it beseeched him with its alien gaze, begging him to free it. For all of its alien form, he might have done just that if he hadn’t known better, and if not for far more pressing errands waiting him. He looked away again and scanned more of the room.
Skulls inscribed with tiny writing sat in a heap. Charts of the heavens, with the constellations picked out in gold, lay half unrolled on the floor. A thing like a clock made of brass lay in pieces across one table. Its numbered face did not measure time in any fashion Malden recognized.
A scholar of the arcane might spend a lifetime cataloging all the oddments in the room. Malden had so little time he barely bothered to glance at the assembled paraphernalia. He moved quickly to the magic circle in the center of the room, where Coruth stood imprisoned. The circle was merely a diagram in chalk inscribed on the floor, a double circle with runes and sigils drawn between its concentric lines. It looked like a child’s scrawl on a pavement, not like an inescapable prison for a powerful witch. Then again, Coruth’s appearance was deceiving as well.
In the red light she looked far less like a woman and more like a normal tree, though she lacked foliage even now in the height of summer. There was a vague suggestion of a face in the bark of the rowan, but it did not open eyes or whisper secrets to Malden as he approached. If he had not known otherwise, he would have thought it a perfectly natural tree. It was strange, perhaps, that its roots were driven into the wooden floorboards of the room, or that they spread to fill the circle to its full extent but never edged outside the chalk lines inscribed on the floor.
Far more important, and thus absorbing all of his attention, was the leaden coffer half tangled in those roots. It was a simple box traced with a few simple runes, four feet long and two feet high and wide. It had been sealed with great heat so that its lid was fused closed.
Malden knelt down just outside the magic circle and reached tentatively toward the coffer. He knew he had to free Coruth, but the crown was in there! He could almost hear it speaking inside his head, and it demanded to be released. His fingertips passed over the outermost chalk mark of the circle and — he pulled his hand back instantly. He had expected the circle to burn him, or perhaps to grab him and hold him like the magical barrier outside. Instead, it only deflected him. He felt no resistance, suffered no pain. His hand was merely repelled, gently, without apparent force. Just enough that he could not have overcome the resistance no matter how hard he tried. He could tell it would be physically impossible for him to reach across the circle and touch the coffer.
There must be some way to break the circle. There had to be some tool for that in this room, some combination of herbs that, when burned together in a flame, would release the circle’s captives.
Before he could find them, however, the red flames that lit the room jumped high, and burned a furious white so bright they overwhelmed his vision and blinded him completely.
Chapter Eighty-Two
Bikker made no move to draw Acidtongue from its glass-lined scabbard. Croy left his own swords in their sheaths.
There was an etiquette to these things. When two swordsmen met in single combat, the resultant duel was known as a conversation. Typically it began with exactly that-a verbal back and forth, designed to test the will of the opponents. Such contests could
often be resolved long before the first sword was drawn. Croy knew better than to think he could drive off Bikker the way he had frightened the guards or reasoned with their captain. No, it would never be that easy-for Bikker knew about bravado as well. Yet he could score some points against the man with a clever quip or a daring taunt. He might infuriate his hirsute opposite number and goad him into an ill-timed attack. He might chip away at Bikker’s confidence, and convince him to spend more effort on defense and thereby avoid a devastating attack. Or he might simply gain some honor by calling Bikker the cur that he was.
“Hello, old friend,” Croy said. “I don’t suppose you’ve come around and regained your honor, have you? Care to apologize to me, offer a prayer to the Lady, and be on your way?”
Bikker laughed. “Oh, and is it that easy for a dog to change his spots? I suppose I should make some act of contrition as well. Some penance for my evil ways. Yes, I suppose I could give in to your outmoded notions of honor and chivalry. Or I could just kill you-crush you like a gnat that buzzes in my ear, and then go back to my debauchery. Like any sane man living in the real world would do.”
Croy smiled, though it pained him. “You know, in some strange way it’s good to see you again. It takes me back to better days. You remember, back when you were young and you were at your best.”
“I’d like to say it’s good to see you, too. Except that you don’t look well, Croy,” Bikker said, frowning as if this saddened him. “How much blood is left in you?”
“Enough yet to boil, old friend,” Croy said. Enough to keep me standing for perhaps a moment or two longer, he hoped. “Enough to best a dozen men, just now.”
Bikker nodded in respectful appreciation. “Yes, you certainly showed those dogs how a real man fights. By feint and bluff, mostly.”
Croy bowed low. “Perhaps I’ve been taking lessons from the master of deception,” he said. “You taught me much of that style.”
“Just as I taught you how to hold that piece of iron you call a sword.” Bikker took a step toward Croy. “Tell me. Why are you here? For Cythera, truly? I daresay right now she could fight better than her champion.”
“I’ve come for the crown you stole. The one you paid to have stolen, rather, at the behest of the man who holds your leash.”
Bikker shrugged. “Perhaps. Perhaps that’s why you came. But you must know you won’t leave here with it. I think you came for another reason, though. I think you came to apologize and beg my mercy. To make amends for the time you impugned my honor.”
“Do you mean when I called you faithless, because you sell your sword to any man with a purse?” Croy laughed. “A gross insult indeed. Though how, may I ask, did I besmirch your honor-when I spoke nothing but the truth? You were sworn to defend the Burgrave, just as I was. Now you’ve received a better offer and you work for the man who would unseat my lord.”
Bikker’s face darkened with rage. “Wake up, Croy. Put away your dreams, your naive ideals. We are Ancient Blades! The Burgrave doesn’t deserve our service.”
“It isn’t a question of merit. It’s a question of loyalty. Of duty. You may call those things fancies, but I will not. I believe in them and I will fight to prove it.”
“When you die by my sword, what will that prove?”
“That honor is immortal,” Croy replied.
Bikker’s hand went to his scabbard, and Acidtongue leapt free. Its pitted and corroded surface glinted wet in the moonlight. A droplet of acid formed on its tip and fell to the ground, where it smoked and bubbled. “Draw your sword,” the big swordsman said. He held Acidtongue almost straight out at his side.
Croy bowed his head. He uttered a short prayer to the Lady, that She might strengthen his arm in Her service. Then he reached behind him and drew his shortsword, bringing it down over his shoulder to point directly at Bikker. Ghostcutter remained safely in its sheath.
“You bastard,” Bikker said. “Draw your real sword.”
“Ghostcutter is for killing demons,” Croy said, “or worthy opponents. You are neither, only a churl whose blood will befoul even this length of simple steel.”
It was a harsh insult indeed, but it had the desired effect. Bikker’s wrath bubbled over and he slashed wildly with Acidtongue, bringing the blade up high and then driving it down toward Croy’s quillions.
That might have been enough-that one blow could have carved right through the dwarven steel of the shortsword and had enough momentum left to drive Acidtongue right through Croy’s body. It could have been the stroke that killed the knight.
But he still had his shield on his left arm. He brought it up high and took the blow hard on his forearm. The acid-wet blade burned through the oak shield and cut through its iron boss as easily as it cut through the air, but Croy rolled his arm under the cut and sent Acidtongue driving down into the grass and dirt between his feet.
Bikker leapt backward, pulling his blade free and out of range of a counterattack. He laughed maniacally. “Very good, Croy. Very good.” The rage drained out of his countenance. Had it been a ruse? It had looked real enough. “You might survive five minutes if you keep fighting defensively. Will that be long enough?”
“Long enough for what?” Croy asked.
“For your friend Malden to reach the crown. After all, the real reason you’re here is to distract me, isn’t it? To keep me out of the house while your pet thief robs the place.”
Croy could not help but let his face show his surprise. How could Bikker know that?
“You didn’t think we would leave the crown unguarded, did you? How very foolish of Malden. Hazoth is a sorcerer. He has many ways of watching what goes on inside his own house. He knows that Malden is in there right now, and he knows what Malden is trying to do. Ah! There, look!”
Bikker pointed up at the rose window on the third floor of the house. Multicolored light burst from inside the glass.
“Hazoth is greeting his uninvited house guest even as we speak,” Bikker announced.
“No,” Croy breathed. “No.” It could not be. If Hazoth caught Malden red-handed and killed him as a trespasser, then who would retrieve the crown? Who would free Coruth, and by so doing, Cythera?
“No!” Croy shouted again, and ran at Bikker, his shortsword flashing up and around for a desperate cut.
Chapter Eighty-Three
Malden scrubbed at his eyes with the balls of his thumbs, trying to clear away the burning smears of light that flickered in his skull. His eyesight returned very slowly-whatever caused that flash of light had been strong enough to blind him. He could only hope it wasn’t permanent.
His hearing was unaffected. He could sense there were other people in the sanctum now. He could hear them walking around him. And he could hear someone applauding.
“Very impressive indeed. I thought it was a clever trick that a gutter ape had learned to read! Now I see that animal cunning can evolve to handle basic problem-solving as well, given an adequate stimulus. Though of course, I should not be surprised. Last summer we had a mole that burrowed into the garden, coming through the barrier from underneath the ground, where I never thought to extend it. Vermin will always find a way.”
“Good evening, Magus,” Malden said, because the voice belonged to Hazoth. Fear washed down his back like a spill of icy water, but he tried to keep his voice level.
“Did I say you could speak? No. Still. You’re a bold rodent, aren’t you? Courage is admirable, even in lower orders of life. So I’ll forgive that breach of manners. I’ll forgive your insolence, if only once.” Hazoth strode over to stand before Malden, who was hunched over, still rubbing at his eyes. He could see nothing in detail, just vague shapes and shadows.
“You bested the Eye of Klaproth,” Hazoth said, as if he couldn’t quite believe it. “I wonder-did you somehow see through its illusions, or is it simply that your simple mind was incapable of providing the imagery it works with? Either way, your primitive brain has served you quite well. You might have actually succeeded-I wa
s preoccupied, and I might have remained ignorant of your presence if Cythera hadn’t warned me.”
“Wh-What…?” Malden managed to ask.
Cythera?
“Even a fool of Sir Croy’s caliber would not think he could cut his way into my house, not with the magical barrier in place. It was a noisy diversion you had him make out front, but I could not figure out why he was doing it. So I summoned Cythera and demanded she tell me everything. Every detail of your ambitious little plan. And she did, without much hesitation.”
Cythera had betrayed him? Malden could scarcely credit it. She had so much to lose-but then he supposed Hazoth had ways enough to get information from her. He moved one hand down toward his belt, inching it toward the hilt of his bodkin.
But… no. He could barely see. Striking out blindly now would be foolish. He fought down his immediate reaction, the rage at being discovered, the terror of what was to come next. It wasn’t useful to him. He could deal with it later, if he lived through this.
“Interesting. Look, look at this, Cythera. You can see his thoughts as they grow ever so slowly in his head. Watch his hands, and his mouth. They give him away. Fascinating, really.”
Malden held his tongue.
“You’re a rodent, my friend, and nothing more. A verminous little animal. Yet you do amuse me, after a fashion. I thank you for bringing a bit of excitement to my tedious routine. Here. You shall have a reward-I will return to you your eyesight.”
Instantly Malden’s eyes cleared. He blinked a few times and then looked around him. The room had changed little. The flames burned a healthier hue now, and the light was better so he could make out more of the sanctum’s contents, though he saw little to recommend the improvement. Hazoth was exactly as Malden remembered him, though now he was wearing a nightshirt and a fitted leather skullcap.
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