Liar's Blade

by Tim Pratt

  "That's even more reason to head south, and rapidly," Rodrick said.

  "We're criminals, like you said," Hrym chimed in. "Strictly profiteers. And, increasingly, it sounds like there's not much profit in this."

  "I beg you," Cilian said. "I fear I cannot stop them on my own. Obed believes me a fool, but he could slay me at any moment. If he has the power to smash flat a manor house, and then send the demons who wrought such destruction home again at his command ..." The huntsman shook his head. "I have sent many demons back to the Abyss, but I fear I am not equal to the task before me."

  "You'll do fine," Rodrick said. "Hrym and I have total faith in you—"

  "Do not make me use coercion," Cilian said, voice sorrowful. "I wish us to be friends, united in this endeavor."

  "What sort of coercion could you ..." Rodrick trailed off. There were various possibilities, of course. The ranger probably couldn't kill him in a straight fight, not with Hrym on Rodrick's side, but there were other forms of pressure. For instance, Cilian could run back to Obed and say that Rodrick planned to betray them to the leader of Port Ice, to point the blame at summoning the demons straight at Obed and Zaqen. The priest would certainly try to stop Rodrick from leaving then, and not even Hrym could guarantee Rodrick's safety against a horde of summoned demons. And that was just one of the ways the huntsman could make Rodrick's life difficult. Given a few minutes, he could think of half a dozen more easily. "Ah," Rodrick said. "It's like that, then. I help you, or I die horribly?"

  "I need your help to prevent hundreds, perhaps thousands, perhaps more from dying horribly." Cilian frowned. "Besides—don't you want revenge, for the way they lied to you, and used you?"

  Rodrick shook his head. "There's no profit in revenge. But there's no profit in crossing you, either, I suspect—you're a man with a destiny. What is it you always say, Hrym?"

  "There's nothing more dangerous than a man with a destiny," the sword replied.

  "All right," Rodrick said, resigning himself. "What's the plan? Kill them in their sleep?"

  "I ...no. Zaqen may not even realize what her master has planned—her geas makes it impossible to know her true desires, and I am unwilling to harm someone who might be an unwilling pawn, if there is any other alternative. We also need to know what exactly Obed has planned. If the priest fails, his demon masters may simply send another envoy. If we find out the nature of their plot, perhaps we can make sure no one ever fulfills his goal."

  "We're gathering intelligence, then." Rodrick sighed. "And trying not to let them know we know they're demon-lovers. Should be easy enough. Everyone else in this party has been lying since the beginning, so I may as well start lying, too."

  "Technically, since we planned to steal whatever relic Obed recovered, we've been lying all this time, too," Hrym said.

  "Yes, but that's just an ordinary sort of lie. This new lie is going to take a bit of effort." Rodrick raised his hands and shouted, "Enough! Fine! You'll follow me all the way back to the Inner Sea if I don't agree, won't you?"

  Cilian smiled a great empty-headed sort of grin, turned back to face the cart, and waved at Obed and Zaqen merrily. "He'll stay!" the huntsman boomed. Then, in a lower voice, "Thank you, Rodrick. You could come out of this a hero."

  "Remind me, Hrym, what kind of payment does the average hero usually get?"

  "An early, ugly death," the sword said. "Though on the plus side, people sing songs about them. Not that the heroes are generally alive to hear those songs, mind you."

  "The women love a hero, at least," Rodrick said. "If I live long enough for any of those women to hear about my great and selfless acts, perhaps I can look forward to receiving some great and selfless acts from them in return."

  "Just leave me sheathed when you do," Hrym said. "There are many things in this life I have no desire to see, and you having sex is most of them."

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  "I get his share," Rodrick said when he returned to the cart. "And I know you didn't plan on giving him a share, but now he gets a share, only I get it instead. All right?"

  "Zaqen will handle any further negotiations," Obed said. "If I become involved, it will not end well." He slunk back to his tub of water, disappearing beneath the surface.

  "I'm glad you came back, Rodrick," she said. "We need you. If it were only a question of more money—"

  "Money is nice, but mostly it was Cilian's endless bleating and pleading. I loathe Obed, and to the extent that you're merely an appendage of Obed, I'm not so fond of you either at the moment. But Cilian has helped keep me alive more than once, and I owe him something."

  "That's ...surprisingly honorable of you." Zaqen cocked her head and regarded him curiously.

  "Honor alone isn't enough, but combine honor with profit, and I begin to see the light." He clambered back up onto the cart and picked up the horse's reins as Cilian loped off into the woods. "Where are we going?"

  "Just to the edge of the water," Zaqen said. "Then head east. We're looking for a place marked by the ruins of a boat, shattered against a sharp stone."

  "Nice of someone to wreck their ship just to mark your spot." Rodrick snapped the reins. "It must come from having a god on your side, even a dead one."

  Zaqen leaned against the seat as they began moving forward. "I've been thinking about some of the things I've learned about Brevoy, Rodrick. I think there are good opportunities here for a man of your particular skill set to make a profit. Assuming you're interested in paying work after the deluge of gold you're going to receive when we're finished here—"

  "Stop making conversation." Rodrick's tone was more weary than angry. "I'll start liking you again if you continue, and I can't afford to start liking you, because you are Obed's creature, and you can't be trusted."

  "It's true I can't be trusted, technically, but surely we can pass the time—"

  "If you do not stop, I will get off this cart again, and this time, I will not come back."

  The sorcerer lowered her head, shrugged, and sat down in the back of the cart on the heap of blankets and furs.

  "That was rude of you," Hrym said. "I was interested in hearing about those potential profits she was talking about."

  "Then I can toss you into the back of the cart with her. I don't intend to dictate who you converse with. But I'm on edge here, and if I want to avoid tottering right off —"

  "Yes, yes, how you do carry on. Sulk away, then. I'll just be here in silent contemplation of the infinite. Rouse me when there's money to be made or blood to spill."

  So I'm to be a world-saving demon-slayer now, Rodrick thought. Friendless and not a bit charming. What have I ever done to deserve this sort of exalted fate?

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Their Mistress, the Lake

  The shipwreck was barely a ship, but it was certainly a wreck, a small fishing vessel that had somehow managed to smash itself against a jagged spike of rock, where it was now impaled through its hull, single mast leaning sharply out over the water. "How does that even happen?" Rodrick said. "Are there vast storms on the lake? Waves sufficient to toss a boat?"

  Cilian, who'd appeared from a nearby stand of trees just after the cart stopped, looked at the ship for a moment and grunted. "That ship was not tossed there by wind or wave. Given the angle. ...I would say the ship was picked up, and slammed down on the rock."

  Rodrick closed his eyes. "You're saying there are, what, giants in the lake? Not like the giants you find in the hills anywhere, men twelve feet tall, but giant giants?"

  "It could have been something with tentacles," Cilian said. "The ship is too weathered to show precise signs."

  "This lake is said to be home to all manner of strange things," Zaqen said. "I hope this doesn't count as conversation, Rodrick. I'd hate to offend you when I'm merely trying to be factual. The waters are said to be inhabited by everything from draugr to grindylows to kelpies to aquatic ogres to water orms to undines, creatures of chaos and the Abyss, and perhaps even stranger monsters, though
I may be able to make pleasant conversation with those."

  "I wish you the best of luck with that, then. I know how you love to chat."

  Obed climbed out of the cart, strapping a belt holding a long dagger around his waist. He pulled a large backpack—containing the four keys, Rodrick assumed—over his shoulders, then waded out into the cold blue waters of the lake and dove under the rippling surface.

  Rodrick closed his eyes. "I've been dreading this part since you mentioned it back in Loric Fells. We're going for a swim now, then?"

  Zaqen nodded. "We are."

  "Obed finally gets to be in his element. Good for him. I'll just be here on shore, guarding the cart."

  "The cart is sufficiently guarded by magic," Zaqen said. "Guarded from you, too, I'm afraid—my master insisted. The gold and gems in those trunks will stay there until he returns to release them. No, we have other needs for you."

  "I am not a fish-man," Rodrick said. "I am not, though I hate to admit inadequacy in any area, a particularly good swimmer, either. Even if you can grant me the ability to breathe water, I'll just be bobbing around uselessly."

  "We have remedies for that." She went to the back of the cart and chose a sack. "These are just a few of the items we've been lugging around the countryside these past weeks." She drew out a cloak of ugly deep purple, its hem shredded into six or seven long, dangling rags. "Have you ever heard of magical cloaks that allow one to change form, into bats or spiders or manta rays or eels?"

  Rodrick frowned. "You want to give me a cloak that will turn me into a sea snake? I have no desire to acquire gills, Zaqen—"

  "Ha, no, I wouldn't give you something that much fun—besides, you could hardly wield Hrym if you were in the shape of a sea creature. Most of them lack hands, after all. No, this garment is mine, and it doesn't transform me into eel or fish or manta. It's a variation Obed had crafted for me especially. It's a cloak of the devilfish. Have you ever seen a devilfish?"

  "I regret that I have not had the pleasure."

  "You will soon. I'm going to turn into one. But for you, we have something a bit simpler. A ring, and a necklace. You'll want to keep the ring especially—it will keep you from drowning, since it lets you breathe underwater—but the necklace will keep the water from freezing you too much, and will give you the ability to move more easily in water than you could otherwise. Making it possible, for example, to swing a sword in something other than a slow and lazy waterlogged arc. I've tried the necklace myself, in the sea, and it's an interesting experience—a bit like walking on thickened air."

  "Ah, yes, walking on thickened air, of course. We all know what that's like. So I'm to follow a fish-man and a devilfish-woman into the sea, slaughtering any merfolk or similar who seek to hinder us?"

  "That is the general idea."

  "Do you have rings for Cilian too?"

  "I have my own spells," Cilian said. "I often explored the deep lakes of Loric Fells."

  "Grand," Rodrick said. "Let's swim to—what was it again? The Vault of Aroden? Surely it has a name. All these legendary temples have names."

  "If it has a name, that name is unknown to me," Zaqen said.

  "Do we know where it is? Or are we just going to swim about at random and hope for the best?"

  "My master told me to find the spot where a boat was spiked on a stone, and to enter the water there, and descend. So that is what we're doing. I trust he knows where to go from here."

  "One wonders how he knew about the boat," Rodrick mused. "Or who left it here for him to see."

  "My master has many contacts, and many resources. He does not share them all with me."

  "Yes, Obed is a bit stingy when it comes to sharing the fruits of his knowledge. I've noticed that. Give me the jewelry, then."

  Zaqen passed over the ring, a simple circle of blue coral, and the necklace, a thick golden chain with a pendant in the shape of a man with arms and legs outstretched. The figure was probably meant to look utterly unfettered and glorying in freedom, but to Rodrick it looked more like the posture of a man spread-eagled on a torture device. He slipped on the ring, and felt no different at all, and put on the necklace, also with a total lack of noticeable effects. "If this is all a ruse to drown me, I'll be very disappointed."

  "The dead are incapable of disappointment," Zaqen said. "That's probably one of the few consolations of being dead."

  "I hope I don't have an opportunity to discover that firsthand anytime soon."

  The sorcerer waded out into the waves, and once she was waist deep, she put on the cloak of the devilfish. "Follow me closely," she said. "I think I'll be the only devilfish in the lake—they prefer salt oceans, as I understand it—but take care anyway. I'd hate for you to start following the wrong monster."

  "You're the only monster for me, Zaqen."

  She put up the hood of the cloak and began to twist and shudder. The hood closed down around her face, and the ragged ends at the hem slapped against the water, thickening and elongating into seven long and lashing tentacles. Her head and upper body blurred, seemed to run together, and bulged out into a single vaguely egg-shaped mass topped by a pair of frilled fins, with two bulging white eyes resolving in the center of the bulbous mass. The creature—which overall looked a bit like the octopuses Rodrick had eaten in certain coastal cities, albeit ten feet long and probably weighing a quarter ton—rolled over in the water, revealing a maw at the center of the seven toothed tentacles.

  "Rodrick," it—she—said, voice a mushy sort of hiss. "Didn't expect me to be able to talk, did you? Devilfish are surprisingly intelligent. If you ever meet a real one, you might even stand a chance of using your silver tongue to convince it not to eat you."

  "It would certainly present an interesting challenge," Rodrick said.

  Zaqen rolled again, tentacles flexing, and vanished beneath the surface.

  "Here we go, then." He glanced at Cilian, who nodded. The huntsman had left his bow and arrow behind—sensibly enough—but he was armed with a small axe and an array of knives. The half-elf dove into the water and began swimming out to greater depth, then dove down and disappeared.

  "It's a good thing I can't rust," Hrym said. "Really, the sort of situations you get me into, Rodrick."

  "All ice starts out as water. At least you'll have plenty of moisture to work with down there." He walked out into the water, leaned forward, and put his face in. The water was shockingly cold, but somehow the cold didn't bother him at all; it was just a fact he noticed. He pulled his face out. "They want me to breathe under there? It's madness! Every inch of my body rebels against it!"

  "Always afraid to try new things," Hrym said. "You're a perpetual disappointment."

  "If I drown, you'll be stuck here in the shallows, with no gold for a bed. You should be more sensitive to my worries, if only for purely mercenary reasons." He took a deep breath and let himself fall face first into the water. Letting the breath out, watching the bubbles obscure his vision, he steeled himself for the sting that comes with cold water flooding one's nostrils, something he'd only ever experienced accidentally before. He allowed himself to take the tiniest breath, and didn't immediately feel like he was drowning; it was more like breathing cold mountain air. When he took a deeper breath, it was the same, and the exhalation was similar: a peculiar sensation, but not fundamentally alien. And now when he breathed, there were no bubbles, so he could see, though there was precious little to see, so far—just the sandy lake bottom in the shallows and, in the distance, the dimness of deeper water.

  Cilian swam toward him, giving a little wave before kicking off toward the darkness again, in the direction of a purple, writhing shape that was probably Zaqen in her devilfish cloak.

  Rodrick submerged himself more deeply, Hrym iced to his back, and though his movements were essentially those of swimming, Zaqen was right—it was like moving in thickened air. He could swing his arms and legs without the weight and pressure of the water slowing him down, and yet somehow he still propelled himsel
f through the fluid medium. "This is bizarre, Hrym," he said, and his voice sounded quite natural to his own ears, not muffled by water at all, though perhaps a bit more echoey than usual.

  "You humans are so fussy about your environments," the sword said, clearly audible from his back. "Water, air, what's the difference? You're all so fragile, it's a wonder you survive your first few months of life. Anything short of being dropped in a volcano and I'd be fine."

  "You're a terrible dancer, though," Rodrick said. "So we've got that going for us." He kicked—lazily, with no more effort than walking—his way after Cilian and the now-monstrous Zaqen. As he drew closer, he saw that her devilfish form also sported a tumorous growth on the back, a Lump-sized bulge, though either its eyes were absent in this form, or they were simply closed in sleep. He wondered if the sorcerer's parasitic brother could pull himself free in her current transformed condition. Rodrick could easily imagine Lump propelling himself through the waves, a grotesque eye-covered jellyfish, tentacles trailing underneath and grasping hungrily at any passing wildlife, collecting fish eyes...Rodrick shuddered.

  They swam down, down, down, and though the light from above grew gradually thinner and more attenuated, there must have been some magic relating to vision in the necklace, too, because Rodrick could see just fine—the uneven, rocky bottom of the lake was murky, certainly, but no dimmer than a room lit by torchlight.

  There were fish, now, great schools of them, doubtless the sustenance of the region, silver shoals swimming past in formation, some of the creatures very nearly as big as Rodrick himself, others as small as his thumb. They paid him no mind at all, though they shied away from Zaqen, who was admittedly the most obviously predatorial of the bunch.

  As the lake floor grew closer, many of the shapes Rodrick had taken to be rocks revealed themselves as the shattered remnants of ships, from two-man canoes to larger fishing boats, broken into greater or lesser pieces, their wooden shapes furred with underwater vegetation and colonized by various forms of aquatic life, used as dens for fish and freshwater crabs the size of large dogs.