The Thief Who Spat In Luck's Good Eye

by Michael McClung

  “No,” I said.

  “No? Are you unrepentant then? Will you not plead for mercy, for forgiveness as your mother did before she died?” I could feel his breath on the back of my neck. I balled my fists at my side, took hold of my remaining fear and strangled it to death.

  “No. I won't. What deaths I've caused, I regret for the most part, but I've rarely had any choice, and I've never killed for profit or pleasure. Only survival, mine or others'. If you know so much, then you have to know that, too.” I took a deep, ragged breath. “Was I supposed to lie down and die? Everyone has the right to try and survive, if they can. I won't beg forgiveness for it. Not from you. Not from anybody.” I steeled myself and turned around.

  A tiny, blue-white flame bobbed at eye level, somehow casting a warm golden glow. No robed figure. No father's face.

  “Spoken truly, Amra. I've waited centuries for one like you to come to me. You were almost too late. The umbrals attack even now.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You are the one. Receive my mark.” The flame flew at me, into me. It didn't burn. That hellish maze disintegrated around me. I fell to the cold, coarse winter grass, and into another kind of hell entirely.

  I was on my back at the base of the pyramid. Night had fallen and massive, shadowed creatures roamed the ruins. Their wicked blades flashed in the moonlight, but every movement they made was warped, blurred, like ink in water.

  Holgren stood near me, flinging bolt after bolt of pure white fire at the attackers, with little effect.

  “Oh, Kerf,” I swore.

  One, the largest of them, was bearing down on us. It swung a blade as long as I. Each swing was measured, precise, the space of a slow heartbeat. The thing was a juggernaut. Nothing Holgren threw at it did more than rock it in its course. It was going to be on us in three or four more strides.

  I estimated the distance between us and it, watched the rise and fall of its sword. I timed it as best I could, hoping the thing had poor reflexes.

  Just as another of Holgren's bolts splashed harmlessly off the thing and its sword began a downward sweep to the left, I darted out toward it, knife in hand. I heard Holgren call my name, and felt the whispering passage of its blade on the air near my head. I swung the knife up toward the cleft between its massive thighs.

  My blade shattered like a cheap wine bottle dropped on paving stones.

  Not the servants, but their Master, hissed the Flame's voice in my ears. I cursed and rolled through the thing's legs, pulling my last knife.

  It turned quickly to try and face me. I kept behind it. It kept turning. I moved to stay behind it.

  “This is not a long-term plan,” I muttered.

  It swung its blade behind its back and nearly took my head off. I'd found only a momentary respite.

  It had to see, I reasoned. Which meant it had to have eyes. I hoped. I sprang from the muddy grass onto its massive back, clawing for purchase. Its skin felt like nothing so much as a bankfish's underbelly—cold and soft, and smooth in a distasteful way. I slipped an arm around what I had to assume was its neck and began to poke at where a face generally went. I jabbed less fiercely than I might have otherwise. I couldn't afford to lose my last knife.

  I have no idea whether I had much of an effect. Holgren screamed at me to drop—but he was too late. I heard the low, terrible hum of a blade slicing air in the split second before it connected. I knew I was dead. I didn't have time to see my life flash before me. I didn't even have time to curse. It struck me in the neck.

  It should have decapitated me. I felt the links of that cursed necklace bite into the flesh of my neck under the weight of that terrible blow—and then the monster's sword bounced away and buried itself in the shoulder of the creature I was clinging to. Thick black blood sprayed up from the wound and drenched my face. It stung and smoked, and smelled much like the death lands had. I dropped instantly, retching and clawing the stuff away from my eyes and mouth with my free hand. I landed hard on my back and instinctively rolled away. Good thing I did. The one that had been cleaved fell on the space I'd just quit. It made no sound, and it didn't get back up.

  The creature that should have decapitated me was still very much alive, though, and was right on top of me. It had left its sword in its brethren. It crouched above me, and with thick fingers began to probe its own stomach. I scrabbled back on my elbows in the slick grass. A fissure appeared there on the thing's torso that stretched from groin to neck. The thing pulled it open wider, revealing a blackness that beggared the darkest cave. A sigh escaped that black opening, and I swear it formed whispered, groaning words.

  “Come to me, my love. Come inside...”

  “Not on your best day,” I muttered, and hurled my last knife into that perverted talking womb.

  The fissure closed with an elastic snap and the creature rose up with fists raised, ready to pummel me into the earth. I heard Holgren uttering more strained, liquid syllables. I didn't want to be anywhere near when he was done. I was positive whatever Holgren was about to unleash would be quite unhealthy for me, if not the beast.

  I started running, sure I'd never get out of the creature’s reach in time. The top of my head tingled, where its fists would come down and turn my brains to jelly. All my hair began to stand on end. I didn't dare look back.

  Holgren uttered a final word and lightning pounded down out of a cloudless sky. Once. Twice. Again.

  I looked back over my shoulder and the thing stood, fists raised above its head, smoking and sizzling. It wasn't blurry anymore.

  I saw then that it did have a head of sorts, a massive bulge atop its torso with three holes spaced in a triangle, point down, in the center of it. It had no neck to speak of. Slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, it began to topple. When it fell, the ground shook and the meadow echoed with the impact, leaving a momentary silence in its wake.

  The rest of the creatures hardly seemed to notice. They were too busy bearing down on me and Holgren. They formed a terrifying skirmish line, weaving a wall of steel before them as they came. Holgren was face-down in the grass, unmoving.

  Not the servants, but their Master, the Flame hissed again. Flee, Amra.

  I fled. Scooping him up under the armpits, I pulled Holgren back from the creatures. I was delaying the inevitable. They'd mow us down. I couldn't move fast enough, carrying him.

  “Holgren! Wake up, you heavy bastard!” Nothing.

  Inside the pyramid is an escape, of sorts, hissed the Flame. The doorway is hidden.

  “How do we get in?”

  How did you enter before?

  The monsters were coming, relentless. There was about a forty foot gap between them and us, and it was narrowing by the second.

  We could escape. Through that pale fire at the pyramid's point. Now it was a race.

  I got a better grip on Holgren and, digging for every scrap of strength and speed I had, dragged him up the stepped slope of the pyramid as quickly as I could. I held Holgren by his shirt to keep him from sliding back down the pyramid, hoping he would be transferred along with me to the Flame's halls beyond. I reached up over the stone bowl's lip to touch that pale blue fire. That's when one of the creature's swords came whistling down from out of the dark to cleave the bowl of fire in two.

  What happened next was over in a matter of moments. I looked back over my shoulder and the creature was raising its sword again, to bisect me this time. But its blade was now coated with a living, dancing flame that was crawling rapidly toward the sword's hilt. As the sword descended, pale blue flame found the inky flesh of the creature’s hand.

  The effect was explosive.

  The creature disintegrated instantly, along with pretty much that entire side of the pyramid. The roar of the explosion was like nothing else I'd ever heard. The blast threw me back onto what was left of the stepped side of the pyramid and ripped Holgren from my grasp. I landed hard, my right arm twisted behind me. I felt the bone of my upper arm snap. The stone beneath me gr
oaned, shifted, and suddenly gave way. I tumbled into darkness. I struck something, bounced, and then lots of rocks beat my body to a pulp. I don't know how big the one was that nearly took my head off but it was big enough. The pain was excruciating, nauseating.

  Luckily I passed out before I vomited. I hate vomiting.

  I don’t really remember much of what passed after that. Hours flew by, and I drifted in and out of consciousness. I was pinned in the rubble, legs immobile, facing down into the great hall where I’d first faced the flame when it was wearing my father’s face. In the dim moonlight I could see that rubble and earth made a perilous slope from the meadow above down to the hall’s floor, perhaps forty yards from top to bottom. I was somewhere in the middle.

  At one point I started to cough, which brought on agony from my shattered arm. I suppressed it before I passed out, and just lay there for a time, concentrating on each breath.

  You have survived much, said the flame suddenly in my head. You will live to survive more.

  When I could talk again. I asked a question. It helped take my mind from the wreckage of my body.

  “Hey Flame. What the hell are you?”

  I am what the Sorcerer-King discarded when he attempted to become immortal.

  “That's about as clear as mud.”

  All your questions will be answered, in time. For now, save your strength. Dawn comes, and with it your hope of rescue.

  “Flame? Hey. Flame?” But there was no answer.

  It was getting lighter, though nearly imperceptibly at first. After a time the pale morning light filtered down enough for me to make out more of my surroundings.

  From my nearly upside-down position on the rubble hill, everything took on a crazed perspective. I knew exactly where I was and it would have been just as crazed if I were right side up. The mammoth hall was still mostly intact. Staircases still beggared gravity, hallways still stood at impossible angles and at random spots in those cliff-like walls. At the far end of the hall I could just make out those two huge, black double doors. I looked to my right. A few yards away rose the spiral staircase that the Flame had descended.

  High above, one of the shadowy monsters was speared through the back on the jagged tip of the stair's central support. Its limbs hung limp, boneless. It might have been a huge ugly doll. Eventually, when the sun rose high enough to shine straight on the corpse, it sort of dissolved, leaving behind a tiny, shrivelled husk.

  The rising sun also illuminated more of the hall below me. The pyramid had just been the tip of a vast madhouse. I couldn't imagine what it had taken to build such a thing, or why anyone would have bothered.

  “I suppose it will make a good tomb,” I muttered. As the light grew, my consciousness dimmed.

  It must have been close to noon when I woke again, this time to a massive shift in the rubble. I was far gone. I didn't know where I was anymore, and was none too certain of who I was. I only knew I was in pain, and that I was thirsty. I opened my eyes, but couldn't focus properly. I saw a wavering silhouette above me, coming closer. Slowly it came into focus. It was Holgren. He picked his way down to me, carefully, taking forever. Relief flooded through me. He was alive. He was here.

  “Where the hell have you been?” I croaked. He just smiled, thinly, and said “Hush now.”

  My mind wandered far and away, into the deep recesses of memory. It's one way to escape pain. And Holgren couldn’t help but cause me pain as he freed me.

  I awoke to distant birdsong. I smelled winter rye, felt the weak sun on my face. I tried to move and found I was wrapped up much like an infant in swaddling clothes.

  I was lying in a makeshift bath made from an oilskin tarp supported by cut saplings. Pinkish water covered me to the chin. Something was different, besides that. It took me a while to think of what it was. Then I remembered. I was supposed to be half deaf and in agony. I was neither. I looked around. Still in the clearing. The yawning pit that had been the Flame's pyramid was some distance off to my left. The sun was brushing the treetops behind it, on its way to bed.

  “I didn't know if it would work,” Holgren said from behind me. “The blood was old and dried, and I had no idea how much potency was left after my own resurrection. I thought it best to return it to a liquid state.”

  Tha-Agoth’s blood. Ugh.

  “Can you hear me, Amra?”

  “I'm not particularly fond of blood baths, Holgren. Can you get me out of here, please?”

  He pulled me out of the bath, undoing the strips of rag that bound me. I found I was shaky and weak, and had to lean against him during the whole procedure. He felt my right arm, tenderly at first.

  “Any pain?”

  I shook my head.

  “Excellent.” He held me away front him, at arm's length. “Look at you,” he said. “Not a scratch, not a scrape.”

  I shivered. “Not a stitch of clothing, either. I'm cold, Holgren.”

  He looked at me again, then, with different eyes. He blushed and turned his head. “Yes, of course. Sorry. Let me set you down and I'll, ah, get your things. Here's a blanket.”

  “What happened to you after the pyramid collapsed?” I asked him as he collected my clothing, which was in a tidy pile near the bath.

  “I woke as I was being thrown through the air. You'll have to tell me just what happened to cause that. The remaining raiders set on me, drove me back into the woods. I didn't have a thimbleful of power left.” He handed me my clothes and took my hand.

  “I'm sorry I left you for so long.”

  “Don't be an ass. What good would you have done me dead?”

  “I should have done something.”

  “What? Jumped in after me, broken your legs? We'd both be down there dying right now. You did the right thing, Holgren. The only thing.”

  I tried to pull my hand away, to start dressing, but he held it firm. Those eyes of his searched my face. “When I saw you fall, Amra, I...” He let go of my hand, raised both of his in a helpless gesture. “I don't want to lose you.”

  It was my turn to blush.

  “Turn the hell around so I can get dressed,” I growled. I explained to Holgren how the pyramid had exploded as I dressed. It was a slow process. I was healed, but I didn't have much strength or coordination. My fingers fumbled on buttons and ties. I strapped on the knife sheaths, though I no longer had any knives to go in them. Without their familiarity on my body, I'd still feel naked.

  “How did you escape the creatures?" I asked him.

  “I didn't, really. They would have gotten me eventually. When the sun rose, they just melted into the ground. Their power is limited in that way, at least. Gods know they're powerful enough.”

  “What are they, Holgren, and why did they attack? You can turn around now, by the way.”

  “And will they attack again? I don't have any answers.”

  I also remembered what the Flame had said when I'd been dying down below, about being what the Shadow King had discarded. And there was that shrivelled corpse of a raider still speared on the jagged tip of the staircase down there. Not enough answers, too many questions.

  “We need to get going ourselves, before those bastards show up again.”

  “Let me just collect some of your bathwater before we go.” He poured out the contents of water skin and then submerged it in the pink water I'd been soaking in.

  “Do you think it will be any good anymore?”

  “Only one way to find out. I can't imagine it will hurt, at any rate.”

  “Did you find Dandy, or any of the mules?”

  “Yes. Dead. I'm sorry. I’m also sorry to say that we’ll be eating mule for the foreseeable future. It’s all there is.”

  “Damn.” I was going to miss our beasts of burden, and not just for sentimental reasons. I’d have been hard put to outpace the monsters fully rested. I had no chance to, weak as I was.

  “What do we do now?”

  “For now, we go to ground.”

  It was a long way down to the m
ound of rubble I'd been pinned on. Holgren and I made it down with the aid of a rope. He lowered me, then climbed down after. From there we carefully picked our way across the floor of the Flame's dismal foyer.

  The –umbrals, hadn’t the flame called them? – hadn't liked the pyramid's blue fire one bit, but it was out now. Would they hesitate to chase us down here? I just didn't know enough about what was happening to guess. One thing was for certain—if they came again that night I didn't have the strength to fight or to run.

  Holgren and I made camp in one of the empty rooms. He brought down firewood and started a fire, then he pulled out canvas wrapped chunks of meat and began to roast them over the fire.

  “You need to eat something, Amra. You can't do much more tonight, I think.”

  Mule steak. Great. But it was true. My stomach was a gurgling void, and if the umbrals showed up just then I'd barely be able to crawl away. As the pieces cooked, he doled them out and I ate mechanically, bite by tough bite.

  When we were done, I lay back on one of the blankets Holgren had salvaged from our packs. We were in a high, nearly inaccessible chamber deep inside the Flame's labyrinth. I didn't feel terribly safe. The shadow raiders weren't exactly smart, but just then I could only think of one thing that frightened me more: Athagos. I remembered how she had sucked all those men dry, and shuddered.

  “Are you cold?" Holgren asked, and I shook my head. "No. Just thinking unpleasant thoughts. I'm fine.”

  “Do you want to plan now, or in the morning?”

  “What are our options? We have limited supplies, we can only go where the necklace lets me, and these shadow creatures could set on us any time from sunset to sunrise."

  "It will work out. You survived Thagoth. You can survive this." A thought crossed his face. "I just realized, I never got a chance to ask you what happened with the flame."

  “Nothing I care to talk about right now.” I didn't want to go into the details. Killing your father is a very personal thing, no matter how you look at it.