He rubbed his palms on his breeches to wipe the sweat away, then tied the silver end of the rope around his wrist. Getting a good running start, he dashed forward to the patch of liquid moonlight and then jumped up onto the rope. It swung him far out over the moonlit floor and up over the darkness beyond.
Beneath him teeth snapped at the air and a long pink tongue shot out to grab him the way a frog seizes a fly. Malden pulled his legs up and tucked them against his chest, and the tongue barely tickled him as he passed.
The end of his arc came fast and he crashed against the second window. The glass there made no sound as it splashed away from him. He was able to grab the frame with one hand before anything more than his toes had sunk into the moonlight beneath him. He scrambled up onto the windowsill halfway down the corridor.
It had worked.
Malden let himself gasp for breath for a while. The hard part was still ahead of him. He had another patch of moonlight—and another wizardly mouth—to cross before he reached the end of the hallway. His rope was still tied to the window behind him. When he recovered his wind, he wrapped one leg through the bars of the window frame and took a strong grip on the rope. With all his strength, he heaved.
The window frame creaked and groaned where the rope was tied to it. The sound was enormous in the otherwise silent hall, but Malden was past caring about making too much noise. He pulled and grunted and sweated as the muscles in his back burned—but then the rope came free, dragging a broken piece of window frame with it. The knotted end fell toward a patch of moonlight, but Malden hauled it in before it could get fouled.
Untying the knot with shaking fingers, he picked broken bits of window frame out of the rope and made another knot, tying the rope to the top of the second, unbroken frame. It would be difficult to repeat his swing from before—he had no room to get a running start this time—but if he failed, he would die.
Malden refused to fail. He kicked off hard from the windowsill and swung for the next window. He didn’t get as far out or travel as fast as the previous time, but he made it far enough to get the toes of one foot on the sill of the third and last window. Beneath him a toothy mouth bit and chewed at the wind of his passage, but it couldn’t touch him and its long tongue couldn’t reach him.
He repeated his trick again—pulling his rope free, tying it off, swinging desperately as the corridor tried to devour him—and suddenly he was at the end of the trapped corridor. He reached down tentatively with one foot and found the floor there was solid. Leaping down, he found himself face-to-face with a statuette of the Bloodgod—just like the one he’d seen in the palace, save one difference. Its eyes were glowing orange.
He ignored their stare as he pushed down on the statue’s hinged arm, the one that held the arrow. In the palace, that triggered a section of floor to pivot and transport him into the tower room. Here it had a different effect.
The hallway went black—instantly. Malden’s senses reeled, and when he could see again he found the hallway lit well by burning cressets. It was the same length and width as before, but largely featureless now. Just a stretch of unadorned hall with no windows. A normal door stood at either end.
The illusion was gone.
Above Malden, on the wall above the door to the sanctum, was a glowing orange eye mounted in a brass plate. It stared down at him for a moment, burning with hatred. Then brass lids closed over it and it went dark.
The door before him was unlocked. He opened it carefully, then stepped inside Hazoth’s sanctum. Now nothing stood between him and the crown.
Chapter Eighty
Croy took a step forward and nearly collapsed. The wound in his side was deep and bleeding freely. The wound in his back had reopened, and though it was only oozing blood, the muscles there were painfully stiff and the wound sent jolts of agony through his body every time he moved.
He took another step. It cost him.
The five remaining guards watched him with awe. Two of them had dropped their polearms and looked ready to run away. The rest weren’t moving. Their captain kept glancing back at the villa, as if he expected reinforcements to arrive at any moment.
If they rushed him now, Croy knew he was doomed. He could not fend them all off, and Gurrh couldn’t help him. The ogre was wounded himself and kept blinking blood out of his eyes.
Croy took another step. Sometimes courage was what mattered, not the strength of your arm. He’d learned that lesson countless times. Courage.
Even if it was empty bravado.
There was an element of showmanship in swordfighting. Bikker had taught him that. A battle of arms was often really a battle of wills, and sometimes brag counted more than bravery. A man with a savage grin on his face could look more dangerous than one with a sword in his hand. He was wounded, exhausted, and ready to slump to his knees. If he showed any sign of weakness at this point—and Lady, how he wanted to just wipe his brow or take a deep breath—he would be finished, and the guards would fall on him in a pile. But if he could just put on a brave face and keep standing, just maybe he still had a chance.
He lifted his shortsword, which was clotted with gore. Brought it up as far as his arm could reach and clanged it against the side of his shield.
“Which of you is next?” he demanded. His voice was hoarse with fatigue but he could still shout.
The two guards who had already divested themselves of their weapons ran off across the grassy common, into the night. Another started shouting for the barrier to be lowered. He ran toward the gate of the villa, but when he passed through was caught up by the magical barrier and lifted into the air. He struggled in vain as his polearm was ripped out of his hands by invisible claws and thrown away.
“He’s bleeding,” the captain said, then wiped at his mouth with one hand. “He’s injured. Look at him! He can barely walk!”
The two remaining guards looked to each other. Then they dropped their weapons and fell to their knees. One of them started praying to the Lady for deliverance. The captain clouted him across the ear, and he fell over on his side.
“What’s wrong with you curs?” the captain demanded. “He’s just one man! I don’t care if he’s the king’s own champion, one man can’t stand against us all. Not if we fight together!” He grabbed at the arms of his charges, trying to drag them forward through sheer willpower.
Croy felt a burgeoning respect for the man grow in his breast. Had things been otherwise, if he had fought beside the captain on some battlefield, he might have called the fellow a hero. If he could avoid it, he very much wanted to keep this man alive, if only for the sake of honor.
But that meant convincing him to shirk his duty, now.
“They don’t want to die,” Croy said. He pointed his sword at the captain. “Do you? Do you feel such loyalty to the sorcerer that you’ll die for him?”
The captain tried to sneer. He failed. “I think I’m more than a match for one bleeding fool,” he said. But even he didn’t sound convinced.
Gurrh reached down and helped one of the kneeling guards to his feet. The man screamed and ran off. Apparently that didn’t violate the terms of the ogre’s curse. The other guard, the devout one, crawled away as if too terrified to run.
“Come no further, Sir Croy,” the captain said. He looked toward the villa, where the trapped guard still writhed in the grip of the magical barrier. “Bikker!” the captain shouted. “Bikker! You are needed!”
“Bikker’s a faithless coward,” Croy said. He took another step toward the captain. He lifted his sword and made his shield ring. “If he was going to help you, he would be here already.”
The captain brought his halberd up. Swung it around so the point faced Croy.
Croy stepped closer. Close enough. He brought the shortsword around in a wide arc. The forte of the blade caught the point of the halberd and knocked it away. The captain had no strength in his arms and couldn’t hold his weapon still. Its iron fittings rattled as it shook in his hands. That happened to men in th
e extremes of fear, Croy knew. Their muscles turned to water.
“Hold that thing properly,” Croy said to him. “There’s no honor in slaying a man who can’t fight back.”
The captain bit his lip and closed his eyes for a moment. “If you kill me, what do you gain? The barrier is still up. Even your fancy sword won’t bring it down.”
“No,” Croy said, “that’s true. But you can lower it with a gesture, can’t you?”
The captain stared.
“Lower the barrier,” Croy said, “and then walk away from here.”
“My lord and master has tasked me to stop you,” the captain said.
“I serve your true lord, the Burgrave. I do the Lady’s work here. In every man’s life a moment comes when he must choose to serve good, or to do evil. What choice will you make? What profit will evil bring you?”
The captain closed his eyes again. It would be effortless to step forward and strike him down, Croy thought. It would be the easiest thing in the world.
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 res
istance, 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.
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