The Silver Thief

by Edward W. Robertson

  A second mind was relieved that the abomination of the demon was being stricken from the world. Though this was at odds with Gladdic's immediate goal, he was glad for the presence of this thought, for it proved he remained holy.

  And his third mind was furious. To see the Andrac threatened, yes. But mostly, to see Galand profane the ether through its use.

  Gladdic gathered a sphere of purity and sent it streaming toward Galand. As it neared, the nethermancer turned and thrust forth his hand, fingers splayed. Shadows swarmed to him from beneath the rocks of the trail—and, strangely, from the latest wound Buckler had slashed across the Andrac's thigh. The demon grasped at the nether escaping its body, but the shadows slipped through its claws like the water of a rushing stream.

  Its body was becoming thinner yet; transparent patches let sunlight shine through. If the demon was dispatched to the netherworld, Gladdic could resummon it. But the bone portal had been spent; he'd need to arrange another. That would take time, which he suddenly had very little of. Of far greater importance, when the demons were banished and resummoned, they grew…unpredictable. No different than a trained bear which, while generally docile, grew furious if gored. Enough to turn on the very person who'd summoned them.

  "Horstad." He maintained perfect flatness in his voice. "Bring the remaining priests. Along with all our soldiers who remain on the road."

  His secretary nodded, jowls jerking, and rushed downhill.

  Fall back, Gladdic sent. Buy time.

  For a moment, the beleaguered Andrac continued to swipe at the harrying swordsman. Gladdic turned his back and retreated down the path. When next he glanced up, the demon was jumping down to the switchback below the swordsman. Bolts of ether flew after it, slamming into its back.

  Gladdic descended one more level, then stopped and kneeled. He spilled his bag of bones across the dust, hastening to arrange the hexagon. Finished, he stepped back and shut his eyes.

  Come.

  The second demon traipsed forward, eager to feed, angry that it had been left in waiting. Up on the slopes, the first creature stumbled. Its body was as thin as mist. Streamers of nether trailed from its shredded arms and trunk.

  Its replacement unfurled before Gladdic. He met its dazzling eyes. Stay back. Help my men hold this road.

  The Andrac stared down at him. Feed.

  Gladdic shook his head. First you must—

  FEED!

  Gladdic pointed uphill. The wounded Andrac hauled itself from where it had fallen. From the old woman's hands, ether streamed through the air like lines of light drawn across the page of the sky. They hit the demon at five different points. Its silhouette flickered, fading until the rocks were visible behind it, then vanished.

  It wished to feed as well, he sent. Wait until the time is right, and thousands will be yours.

  The demon opened and shut its jaws. When Gladdic turned, it followed him downslope.

  Horstad met him in the company of five men in the gray of Taim and thirty more in the blue of the king.

  "Hold the road." Gladdic pointed down to a spot halfway between them and the enemy. "Allow them no further than that."

  He hurried downhill. The silence behind him made him glance over his shoulder. His priests were watching him go, faces blanched. His blood heated—they were so faithless they thought he was abandoning them, running away to save himself. They deserved no reply.

  But perhaps he deserved to make one. Most people, priests and common folk alike, held pride to be a sin. Yet wasn't Taim proud? And didn't he have the right to be?

  "Do you think you are our last line of defense?" Gladdic let his laughter peal up the cliffs. "Retain your faith. I have powers of which they can't dream."

  With a sweep of robes, he turned away and hurried on. By the time he reached the Cavern of Blessings, his priests were engaged with the enemy. Black and white sparks rained from above. Galand and his minions had halted, however.

  Gladdic entered the cave. Despite the efforts of those who cleaned it, the room stank of blood and offal. He had almost grown used to it. Perhaps it wasn't entirely the fault of lazy servants. After all, bones were laid out along the base of the walls, ringing the entire room. The bones were quite fresh, as bones went, but the marrow inside them was starting to rot.

  He closed his eyes and reached out. The stains of the dead ran together like drops of juice squeezed from an orange. As they joined, Gladdic gasped at what he wrought.

  29

  The fight with the Andrac went off as smoothly as a stroll down the king's road.

  Coated in ether, Blays' swords ripped into the darkness of its body one lash after another. Dante and the Keeper stood ready to harry it with bolts of light, but once it became clear Blays was as apt at dueling the full-sized demon as he had been with the miniature one they'd practiced on, the two sorcerers hung back, conserving their strength.

  Only when Blays faltered did they hammer it with more light—and then again at the end, when the demon began to grow faint. As Dante and the Keeper pelted it with ether, a scintillating bolt winged up from down the road. Gladdic. Dante smiled grimly and reached for the nether. Shadows streamed from the packed dirt and broken rocks of the trail. Others flowed from around the fraying demon, where the air was fuzzy with loose nether. The demon jerked back, as if stung, but Dante couldn't see the source of its troubles: the Keeper hadn't struck it, and Blays stood back from it, regaining his footing after the last encounter.

  The incoming bolt was only a blink away. Dante batted it aside in a spray of twinkling motes. Below them, Gladdic said something to his portly assistant, who trotted away. Blays and the demon clashed again and the Andrac came away leaking nether from three fresh wounds. Gladdic turned and hurried down the trail. The Andrac jumped from the road onto the slope below. The Keeper hurled ethereal darts into its back, stumbling it long enough to allow Blays to catch up. Downhill, Gladdic stopped and dumped out a bag of slender white objects—bones.

  Naran moved beside Dante, saber in hand. "Is he fleeing? We must stop him!"

  "I'd say he's calling another demon," Dante said. "So unless you want to be close enough that, when it arrives, you can reach out and shake its claws on a good job being summoned, I suggest you stay put. Cord!"

  She moved forward with a grin, wheel tucked under her right arm. "About time I got the chance to sweep this foulness from my city."

  "And you'll be accomplishing that task by going to get the city's rebels."

  "Who are you to give me orders?"

  Downhill, Blays' shining blades sliced at the fading Andrac, knocking it from its feet.

  "In a moment, we'll kick that thing back into the nether," Dante said. "And we'll do the same to the next one Gladdic throws at us. After that, we'll have him—if we have the manpower to go forward."

  She tipped back her head. "I'll see that we do."

  Cord turned and dashed up the road. Ether flew from the Keeper's hand, separating into five tendrils. When they tore into the Andrac, it vanished into the netherworld.

  Further down the hill, however, a second shadow stood beside Gladdic.

  "I wish these things had faces," Blays called from a level below. "I would have loved to see the look on the demon's face when it got beaten by a human."

  Gladdic turned and the demon followed. Dante motioned the others downhill. A body of troops emerged from one of the shops carved into the cliff walls, rushing up to meet Gladdic. Most were common infantry, but a handful of gray-robed ethermancers moved among them.

  "Priests," Dante muttered. "Blays, you handle the Andrac. The Keeper and I will keep the sorcerers off you. Naran, eyes sharp for Cord's return or any surprises."

  The first surprise came moments later when Gladdic continued to retreat rather than face them, leaving his demon alongside the reinforcements. A few bolts of ether flew up from below, probing strikes which Dante turned aside with minimal expenditure of nether. Blays stood with swords ready, but the new Andrac stayed close to the Ma
llish, gazing up with its silvery eyes.

  The two sides came to a halt some fifty vertical feet away. Dante continued to swat down the testing spears of ether, firing back just enough counterattacks to keep the priests honest. Below, Gladdic disappeared inside a cavern. Did he have a secret passage to the basin floor? Then again, if he wanted to escape, all he had to do was continue down the road; his soldiers had battled off the army of the six towns, driving them to regroup in the hills to the west.

  Dante moved into the nether in the cliffs above the priests, looking to bring the rocks crashing down on their heads, but the men were wary for such things and knocked his focus loose from the stone. His second effort fared no better.

  For several minutes, the fighting on the switchbacks slowed. With both sides conserving strength, it was less like a pitched battle for the city and more like a lawn game played with paddles, a net, and pairs of lords too drunk to keep score.

  "Cord!" Naran shouted. "She returns!"

  At the top of the road, silhouettes stood against the sky. Cord thrust up her wheel and bellowed. Dozens of soldiers spilled onto the road, ribbons of all colors fluttering from their elbows. Others bore no markers of shrines—common citizens rallied to the cause.

  Blays punched his fist into the air and whooped. Dante turned back to the priests, but they'd already begun to move down the road. The Andrac lingered at the rear of the column, watching Blays.

  "What's our next move?" Blays said. "I say we clear the road, stick Gladdic's head on the largest spike we can find, and then go drink the largest beer we can find."

  Dante brought the nether to his palms. "That was the deal. Once Gladdic and the demons are gone, the rest is up to the Colleners."

  He started downhill, slowly enough to let Cord's warriors catch up, but fast enough to stay relatively close to the Mallish withdrawal. As the enemy passed the stretch of road where Gladdic had disappeared, Dante rocked to a stop.

  A black river gushed from the mouth of a cavern. At first, Dante thought Gladdic had unleashed the pools within the butte to wash out the road and cover their retreat. Then the river bent to the right and flowed uphill. Within moments, it was thirty feet long and eight across. A thinner black rivulet stretched up the rutted trail.

  A huge round glob swiveled from the front of the flow. Silver eyes the size of melons opened and fixed on Dante.

  Even then, he didn't understand what he was seeing until the Andrac opened its mouth and revealed the star burning within its mouth.

  Among the Collenese soldiers, a grown man screamed. Dante's own throat was too dry to do so. Downhill from the cavern, the Mallish priests broke into a dead run, opening space between them and the gigantic demon.

  "Oh," Blays said. "Shit."

  "Get back!" Dante yelled to Cord. "Back up the hill!"

  Cord couldn't tear her eyes away from the Andrac, but her mouth moved of its own accord, relaying orders to the city's soldiers. Dante ran uphill, accompanied by Blays and Naran. The Keeper, who'd been lagging at the rear, stood transfixed as the Andrac finished flowing out of the cavern. Now fifty feet long, it got to its knees and stretched its arms above its head. Its claws were as long as a man's arm from elbow to fingertip.

  Dante grabbed the Keeper's bony shoulder. She lurched forward, moving upward with a speed he didn't know she was capable of.

  "Run, Galand!" Gladdic's voice thundered from below, amplified through some trick of the ether. "Yet I'll find you wherever you go. The darkness of your soul is a beacon stronger than the sun."

  Be that as it may, Dante ran as fast as he could. Outside the cavern, the Andrac dug its claws into the cliff and pulled itself to its full height of fifty feet. It took a step uphill, then wobbled, leaning against the cliffs for support.

  "It's like a newborn," Dante said.

  Blays goggled between him and the demon. "I would offer condolences to the father for the explosion of the mother, but by the look of that thing, the father must be an angry god."

  "I thought he was summoning them. But he's creating them. He must have used the traces of all the people he's slaughtered."

  "Please tell me this revelation has come with a plan to kill it."

  "Sure. I figured we'd throw you at it same as the last one."

  They ran on. The demon shook out its legs and stamped its feet, blasting vast waves of dust from the road. Cord's troops spilled onto the top of the butte.

  The light on Blays' swords was starting to fade. "Really though, what is the plan?"

  "I think," Dante said, "we lose."

  "There has to be a way out of this."

  "Maybe if my sorcerers were here. But I don't see how we fight that thing. The Keeper and I don't even have the power to banish a person-sized Andrac."

  "Right. But I do."

  "Wonderful," Dante snapped. "How is that going to help us do away with the tower-sized Andrac? Do you really think you can fight it alone?"

  Blays fell silent, words lost in favor of the rasp of their breath, the thump of their feet, and the rattle of scabbards and armor.

  "No," Blays said. "But I don't have to be alone. You and the Keeper can coat Cord's wheel in ether, too. And the weapons of all of her friends."

  "None of these people have ever fought a Star-Eater."

  "What's there to know? It's just like fighting a person. Who takes dozens of blows to kill and only one to kill you. And in this case is also a giant."

  Reflexively, Dante had pegged it as a terrible idea. As he ran on, however, it seemed less absurd. Cord and Naran had dueled the tiny Andrac, hadn't they? Why couldn't the Colleners stand and fight now?

  He spared a glance downhill. The massive demon took a hesitant step upward. "Think they'll go for it?"

  "If it helped to defeat the Mallish, these people would swallow a live rooster. Anyway, if it wasn't so easy to talk soldiers into hopeless causes, there would be no kingdoms at all."

  Dante went to the Keeper and told her the plan. She looked even graver than usual. "Many will die. But this is the only answer I see."

  The top of the road hung above them, a single turn of the road away. Below, the Andrac neared the bend of a switchback and climbed up to the next one as if it was a step. Dante scrambled to the top of the plateau. There, a few Colleners were fleeing headlong into the city, but most remained in a tight bunch. Dante found Cord and hastily explained the idea.

  Dante motioned to the top of the road. "When it steps forth, do you think they'll lose their nerve?"

  "Only a fool wouldn't fear the demon," Cord said. "But you know what I fear worse? Losing my lands to the man who made that monster."

  She moved to her soldiers, who now numbered over two hundred, with more entering the plaza by the second. The Keeper went from person to person, bathing their swords and the tips of their wheels with light. Dante spent most of his remaining ether recoating Blays' swords and Naran's saber, then unsheathed his blade and treated it, too. So far, the Keeper had emblazoned twenty blades and was still going.

  "It's coming!" a woman yelled from the edge of the road. "The demon nears!"

  Dante's heart thumped in his ears. His palm sweated on the hilt of his sword. Far from the first time, he wished he'd brought the sword of Barden with him to Gallador. There had been no need to have it during the peaceful work on the tunnel he'd been building for the merchants—he'd been concerned about it being lost or stolen—but he should have learned long ago that, for him, there was no such thing as peace.

  A black sun rose from the edge of the cliffs. Sandals rasped on gravel as dozens of Cord's warriors stepped back. The Andrac's eyes crested the ridge, followed by the searing light within its throat, which silhouetted fangs as long as a man's hand. It planted its hand in the dirt, fingers spread wide enough to snatch a horse. Two-foot claws scraped stone and sank into the earth.

  Blays grimaced. "I don't suppose it will listen to reason?"

  As it stepped onto the surface of the butte, steel clanged. A score of Collenese sold
iers had dropped their weapons to run away with all their speed. Two of the fallen arms shined with ether. A pair of soldiers flung aside their mundane blades and picked up the treated weapons, staring up at the towering Andrac. Swords wobbled in shaky hands. The point of Dante's blade twitched, too, but watching the wonder of the soldiers standing their ground against the black titan, a coolness entered his veins.

  With a boom, the Andrac stepped forward.

  The Keeper was still painting other blades with shimmering white. Dante's mind raced, searching for a strategy of attack. To his right, Cord shouted orders, obviating his need to find an idea. Six soldiers edged forward, blades glowing. They kept themselves well separated from each other. The demon stopped. With no pupils in its eyes, it was difficult to tell where it was looking, but it seemed to be focused on their weapons.

  Cord trotted forward, wheel held in two hands. The Andrac swung its leg forward, closing on her in a single stride. It dipped its hips and raked its claws toward her. She fell on her back, its claws whisking over her, and swung up her wheel, gashing through the demon's palm as it passed by.

  Shadows gushed from the wound. The demon yanked back its hand and opened its jaws wide, roaring with a sound like wind over crackling logs.

  Cord sprung to her feet, pointing her wheel at its palm. "It bleeds. Whatever bleeds can die!"

  With a cry, her six soldiers ran toward the monster's legs. White weapons jabbed and slashed its shins, spilling shadows. Dozens of other Colleners yelled and charged. More than half of them bore weapons of plain metal.

  Naran gripped his saber. "Gentlemen. Shall we?"

  Blays looked ready to offer a rejoinder, then his face blanked, too focused on the task for words. He ran forward. Feeling insane, Dante followed.

  Soldiers hacked at the demon's legs like they were trying to chop down a pitch black tree. Claws swooshed through the air. A soldier fell prone, attempting to mimic Cord's maneuver, but the Star-Eater caught on, ripping its claws along the dirt. They shredded into the man's torso. Blackening hunks of meat spun through the air.