Hazoth grinned. “Juring’s body was fragile, like all human flesh. It would perish and decay. His mind, however, could live on, through cunning applications of magics known only to me. It needed something to hold it, however—his mortal brains would rot away, so his consciousness had to be imbued into a vessel that time could not corrode . . . something of gold, which unlike other metals does not rust or tarnish or turn to verdigris. Gold has other qualities that make it ideal for such an enchantment as well—but you would not understand if I listed them. The object in question must also be something that his son would not like to part with. The crown was the obvious choice.
“Juring wanted the crown to speak with his voice, even after his death, and I made it so. Every time the son placed the crown on his head, he heard his father’s voice whispering in his ear. He could no longer enjoy his carousing and his ruinous wagers. When he consorted with low company or dealt poorly with his subjects, he was plagued by terrible headaches and by a need to atone. He could only ever be at rest when he was ruling the city with the judicious pragmatism of his father, and so he grew to be a very capable Burgrave. When he grew old, he worried very much what would become of the city under his own son, who was capricious and cruel. But the crown served Juring’s grandson well, and his great-grandson, and so on.”
Hazoth shrugged. “Even I, however, have difficulty understanding how magic changes over time. It is an unpredictable force even in the short term, and I did not know that the enchantment on the crown would only grow stronger with every passing year. The soul in the crown maintained Juring’s brilliance, but its hold on those who wore it made them weaker. The brain is like a muscle of the body. If it does not get proper exercise, it atrophies and eventually dies. Each successive Burgrave was a bigger fool than his father had been. Juring, inside the crown, had to exert more and more control over them, and more and more often had to block out their own misbegotten thoughts and replace them with his own. His character, his intelligence, was imposed on them more frequently, and they suffered for it. Now they can barely speak or count on their fingers without his consultations.” The sneer on the sorcerer’s face showed how little pity he had for the House of Tarness.
“For a very long time there has been only one Burgrave in this city, and that has been Juring Tarness. It is an unnatural situation, and one some people would like to see changed. Juring was my good friend, and I have always been pleased that he, like myself, survived when so many of our contemporaries grew old and died. But now, perhaps, it is time for new blood to rule this place.”
“You betrayed him,” Malden said, forgetting himself.
Hazoth seemed not to notice this rudeness. “You speak of loyalty? The man I knew has been corrupted by eight hundred years of stealing someone else’s body. He was never meant to live that long. No man was meant to live in that fashion. The enchantment I placed on that crown was meant to last for one generation only. Say instead I am fixing a mistake I made when I was young and foolish.”
Malden stared at the sorcerer. He could scarcely credit what he’d heard.
Yet . . . the crown had spoken to him. And he did not doubt it had used Juring Tarness’s voice when it did so.
It must be as Hazoth had described. And yet, that meant—
He was not allowed to finish his thought.
“I think the crown will remain here, with me,” Hazoth said. “I considered letting you have it. Letting you take it and go free—just to see what would happen. I have a theory, you see. I have a theory that the blood of the Tarness line doesn’t matter. That Juring could control anyone who wore the crown. And I am certain you lack the power of will necessary to resist its entreaties. It would convince you somehow to place it on your own head eventually. I wondered if Juring could take some mortal clay—even such a pitiful specimen as yourself—and over time mold it into the stuff of a great leader. I do believe he could. In a span of a few years, I think, you might become king of Skrae.”
He looked down on Malden with laughing eyes.
“Imagine that, hmm? A whoreson made into a king. How amusing!”
The sorcerer laughed wildly then, his tongue flapping in his mouth as he gibbered and cackled. It was not a laugh of sanity.
Malden shivered, but not simply because of Hazoth’s lapse of lucidity. He considered what would have become of him if he had put on the crown, as he’d wanted to so badly. He didn’t doubt that Juring would have given him power in return, knowledge and advice and courage. But he would have been enslaved by it. His greatest fear, that he should lose that little shred of freedom he possessed, would have been realized.
His heart thundered in his ears. It had been a close thing. He barely heard Hazoth when the wizard spoke again.
“But when I tell this tale out loud, I am reminded exactly why I chose to be part of this scheme in the first place. I can’t afford to let you become king, you see. Nor can I afford to let the Tarness family—ha ha ha—tell me what to do. I can’t afford to have any rivals. No powers must remain that might conscribe me. Do you understand? I think, in fact, you might. How astonishing! How clever! And so tragic, now. No, I’m sorry, rodent. You can’t have your prize. And you can’t leave my house. Not alive, at any rate.”
Hazoth lifted one hand, the third and fourth fingers tucked into the palm, the others outstretched. He began to lift his arm high over his head.
“Malden!” Cythera shouted. “Cover your eyes!”
Malden did exactly as he was told. He also grabbed the hilt of his bodkin and got ready to draw.
Chapter Eighty-Five
Drops of acid hit Croy’s arm and seared right through his leather jerkin. He shouted as the acid burned through his skin as well. Pain lanced up to his spine, while his lungs heaved against the stink of sulfur in the air. Croy couldn’t help but cough as the fumes seared his throat and eyes.
It was the sign of weakness he had put off as long as he could. He’d finally broken. Bikker took it for exactly what it was—a call to attack, which he executed with a flurry of devastating blows, one after another. Croy managed to parry them, but not without cost. He had to stagger backward, away from the fight, and wince as the pain threatened to overcome him. He forced his eyes to stay open, to keep watching, to keep assessing the situation.
His shield was reduced to a few sticks of sizzling oak held together by a melting boss. Far worse, the shortsword was etched and notched each time it parried Acidtongue’s attacks. Croy could feel his sword growing weaker and less stable with each passing moment.
The weapon was still in better shape than the man, though, and that was the real problem. Already weakened by multiple wounds and loss of blood, Croy’s endurance was reaching its end very quickly. Just lifting his sword arm took a great effort and he was gasping for breath. Sweat rolled down into his eyes and he could taste the salt when it trickled across his lips. Proper swordsmanship was as much about the legs as the arms—he could hear Bikker’s voice in his head from back when the bigger swordsman had taught him how to fight. You need to move when a sword comes at your face, boy, lunge forward with your knee when you riposte, dance if you want to stay alive. His legs felt like they were made of solid wood. He could barely get his feet off the ground without falling over.
A sweeping blow came at his injured side, Acidtongue spitting as it burned through the air. Croy barely brought the shortsword down to counter. Acidtongue flew back to recover from the parry and then whistled over Bikker’s head as he brought his corroded sword up for a high slice. Croy shoved the fuming remnants of his shield up into the blow but lacked the strength to hold it back completely. Using Acidtongue like a club, Bikker knocked the shield into Croy’s teeth. Croy’s entire skull rattled and he felt his brains slosh back and forth.
So tired.
Parry. He tried a riposte but found the shortsword tangled in Acidtongue’s withdrawal.
His body was failing him.
Parry. Step back, away from the lunge, one foot behind the other to
make his body a narrower target. Acidtongue jabbed past his face, and he batted it away like a cat batting at a piece of string—and just as effectually.
He was going to collapse.
Yielding parry—catching Acidtongue just before it cut his throat, taking Acidtongue’s foible with the shortsword’s forte. A classic parry perfectly executed, which should have given him an ideal chance to counterattack. By the time he saw the opportunity, however, Bikker was dancing away.
Croy knew he was doomed.
Acidtongue came rushing toward his shield. It might be a feint, which he should ignore. He lacked the strength to turn into the rush. Acidtongue picked apart the shield, scattering its pieces. Croy’s left was suddenly exposed and undefended. Bikker howled in joy and twisted around, whipping Acidtongue about and building to a slash that would cut open Croy’s belly and spill his guts on the ground.
One last shred of strength remained in Croy’s body. He used it up stabbing downward with the shortsword, driving its point into the ground to make a wall against Acidtongue’s slash. The shortsword wobbled, good dwarven steel pushed past its limits of flexibility. Acidtongue cut through it like a ribbon. Fragments of steel flew everywhere, one of them cutting through the skin of Croy’s cheek. The sword that remained was nothing but a hilt with a jagged inch or two of blade sticking out of it. He dropped the hilt, then closed his eyes and sank down on one knee.
He couldn’t lift his head. His neck was perfectly exposed. Acidtongue could cut through flesh without resistance when it was hot and singing with battlelust. One cut and Bikker could take his head off.
Croy couldn’t lift it. He was just too tired.
Cythera, he thought, I love you. I am so sorry.
The blow didn’t come.
Croy opened his eyes but still couldn’t move. He looked down at the grass beneath him. It looked very soft, and he thought it would be nice to fall, face forward, into its green embrace. One shard of his broken sword lay on the ground there, etched but still shining with polish.
Bikker still hadn’t killed him. What was he waiting for?
“Look at me, Croy.”
Slowly, painfully, Croy lifted his head and met his foe’s eyes. Bikker’s face was wild, his eyes mad. Froth flecked his lips.
“Good,” Bikker said. “That’s taken care of. Draw Ghostcutter. Playtime is over. Now we’ll fight like men.”
Chapter Eighty-Six
Malden kept his eyes shut until he was sure the hellish light of sorcery had drained from the room. His hand clenched tight at the hilt of his bodkin, and he started to draw it, careful not to make a sound.
When the glare faded from the inside of his eyelids, he opened his eyes again and saw Hazoth still before him. Something had changed, something he noticed only in his peripheral vision, but he focused entirely on the sorcerer. Hazoth was breathing heavily and his hands were down by his sides. Malden bent his legs like springs and then jumped, thrusting the bodkin before him so it would cut right through the sorcerer’s belly and come out the other side.
He fully expected Hazoth to turn and glare at him, eyes blazing with some spell that would tear his flesh from his bones. Or perhaps Hazoth would simply vanish before he could reach him. Instead he caught the magician completely off guard. He felt the point of the bodkin part the fibers of the sorcerer’s nightshirt, felt it sink into the hated flesh, felt it scrape on bone. He pushed and shoved with all his might until it broke free from the sorcerer’s back. He did not feel hot blood pour over his hand, but that surprised him less than the look on Hazoth’s face.
The sorcerer simply looked disappointed.
Malden fell backward, pulling the bodkin free. He stared down at the length of iron in his hand and saw no blood on it, nor ichor nor living fire nor any of the things he supposed might flow through a sorcerer’s veins. He looked up and saw the hole he’d cut through the nightshirt . . . but the flesh underneath wasn’t even scarred.
“A violent response to a threatening stimulus. The hallmark of an unenlightened being. Rodent, you have surprised me so many times tonight—now you prove that there is a limit to what a primitive creature can do with cunning. Ah, well. I suppose even the most advanced of the species must eventually revert to rodentlike behavior. Oh, and now look at what you’ve gone and done.”
Cythera cried out. Malden looked over at her and saw her staring at the palm of her left hand. The ink there looked like it was boiling. Flowers bloomed and their petals fell away, driven up her arm by a howling wind entirely contained within her skin. Vines circled around her wrist so tight they looked like they would constrict her pulse. On her face a hundred snowdrops wilted, while roses erupted in blossom across her shoulders, their thorns gleaming with painted poison.
It would seem the link that bound Cythera to Hazoth wasn’t just for inimical magic. It could absorb physical damage as well.
“Cythera!” Malden shouted. “No—please, forgive me, I didn’t know—”
“It’s . . . all right, Malden,” she said, straightening up. “It doesn’t pain me. It just startles me a bit when it happens, that’s all.”
Hazoth looked from one of them to the other. Then he clucked his tongue and faced Malden again. “You interested me, briefly. That’s why I’ve let you live for so long. But not for your animal passions, rodent. For the way you seemed to exceed the limitations of your upbringing. But now I see you’ve only been so clever, so brave, for one thing—that prize Cythera keeps between her legs.” He shook his head sadly. “Pathetic. I’m afraid that attacking me was the last mistake I can permit you.”
Malden’s blood curdled in his veins. He knew he’d never been closer to death than this exact moment. His brains turned over in his head, desperately trying to imagine what to do next. He could think of only one thing: obfuscate. Stall for time. “I beg to disagree,” he said. His mouth was so dry he had trouble forming the words. Hazoth had not given him leave to speak, but he knew it no longer mattered. Silence at that moment would have been his death warrant.
“What’s that, rodent?”
“You suggest that my logic was faulty in some way. That I made an irrational decision by attacking you. I would say instead that my information was merely incomplete. I did not try to stab you before, when you caught me. I did not try to do so when your back was turned. I waited until your magic had drained you and distracted your attention to the point where an attack might logically succeed. You see, I thought very carefully before I struck that blow.”
Hazoth looked upward, as if consulting a higher power. “Almost clever,” he said. “There is one flaw, however. One place where your logic falls apart.”
“Yes?” Malden asked, in the tone of a scholar asking for a gloss on a particularly thorny text.
“You,” Hazoth said, “are the human equivalent of a cockroach. I am a being of extraordinary power. You should have recognized that someone like you could never, under any circumstances, harm me. The intelligent thing to do in this situation would have been to curl up and die. It would at least have saved you from what comes next.”
Hazoth walked a few yards away from Malden and looked up again.
For the first time, Malden saw what had changed. When the sorcerer had cast his spell, Malden did not know what effect it might have. Now he understood. He had been transported from one place to another, without traversing the intervening distance. He was no longer in the sanctum.
Hazoth had delivered the three of them to his grand hall. They stood in the shadow of the iron egg.
“Now, I’ll ask again. Who sent you here?”
Malden looked away. “I came on my own—this was all my plan,” he insisted. Why implicate Cutbill? It wouldn’t save his own life, and it would only make trouble for the guildmaster of thieves. If he could spare Cutbill that, then perhaps he could earn a little something with his death. “I need the crown or Anselm Vry is going to kill me.”
Magic buzzed through the air toward Malden like an angry insect. An invisible s
tinger jabbed him in the chest, causing a bright blossom of pain to stretch its petals all the way around his rib cage.
“Impossible,” Hazoth said. “You lack the will for something like this.”
“I . . . swear,” Malden said as the pain radiated outward, toward his extremities. Red blood stained his vision. “It was wholly . . . my own . . . notion . . . I—”
“It was Croy!” Cythera shouted. “Croy paid him to help me!”
The pain left Malden as quickly as it had come. He dropped to the marble floor, still writhing with the memory of it.
Hazoth turned to face Cythera. “Truly? I suppose I can believe that.” Hazoth looked almost disappointed. “I had thought I might discover the name of my fellow schemer. Hmm. But yes—yes, Croy would be foolish enough. Very well.”
He shrugged and came over to where Malden had curled up on the floor.
“So. We have reached the end of our experiment. The subject has failed to justify the hypothesis. There remains nothing to say,” Hazoth said. “And there are other matters that require my attention. There is a knight errant on my lawn, brawling with the hired help. I think I need to go boil him in his own blood.”
“Croy,” Cythera said, one hand to her mouth. “No—you can’t . . .”
Hazoth looked over at her. “You know perfectly well that I can,” he said. “And now, by telling me he was behind this intrusion, you’ve given me every reason to do so immediately.”
She went pale beneath her tattoos. “I meant—I meant to say—you may not,” she said. “I won’t allow it, Father.”
Malden’s eyes went wide.
Den of Thieves Page 40
