The Thief Who Spat In Luck's Good Eye

by Michael McClung

  The god pushed open the door to the sanctum. Nothing happened. He stepped inside. His men followed him in. Still nothing happened. I could see a slice of the room through the open door—a bit of wall, the torso of one contorted corpse, the pale blue light of a brazier and obscene shadows dancing on the wall. Then those ghostly, gibbering voices started shrieking, and the door slammed shut with a thunderous clap.

  Even with that thick door closed. I could hear the sounds of carnage and millennium-old hate being vented.

  The ghost-khordun feeds, whispered the Flame. Their hunger is a thousand years old, and insatiable.

  “Why didn't they eat me, before? And where the hell have you been?” I asked.

  You are my chosen. They can sense you, but cannot harm you. And I have been here, as always.

  The hallway shuddered and I felt magic's chill hand on the back of my neck. Blood began to seep through the crack underneath the door. Battle raged on for perhaps three or four minutes, then a perfect silence descended.

  As I was about to get up and put an ear to the door, it exploded outward, torn to splinters. Tha-Agoth strode into the hallway, his face a bloody mask, his dragonfly armor ripped to shreds. He held the stunted husk of the Sorcerer King up above him, by the neck.

  YOU DARE? YOU ARE NOTHING! Tha-Agoth slammed the king’s body against a wall. Bones splintered. The husk's tongue lolled out of his mouth, and his withered face was purple.

  Where is she, worm? said Tha-Agoth, punctuating each word by beating his opponent's head into the wall. Where is Athagos? Where? Where?

  “He can't answer you if he can't speak,” I pointed out.

  Tha-Agoth threw the wreckage that had been the Sorcerer King to the floor. There it gagged and coughed, but did not otherwise move.

  Answer me, or I’ll rend your desiccated flesh from your bones.

  It took me a moment to realize the husk was laughing.

  “You can no more destroy me now than I can destroy you, godling. I am beyond death. As I can affect nothing, so too can nothing affect me.”

  That's when Tha-Agoth started ripping his limbs from his body. Tha-Agoth was definitely affecting him, in my opinion. It wasn't a pretty sight.

  When the husk was nothing but head and torso, Tha-Agoth leaned down and spat into his face.

  I will ask you once more. Where is my sister?

  “Somewhere in the labyrinth,” he rasped, “and soon under the sway of the Shadow King. More I cannot say.”

  Then your usefulness is at an end. And Tha-Agoth put his fist through the husk's wizened face, and tore his head from his body. I shuddered. If what he'd told me was true, even in that state the old bastard wasn't dead. I wondered briefly what it might be like to live through such a thing. My mind couldn't encompass it.

  Tha-Agoth stood and shook bloody gobbets of flesh and brain from his hand. I got up as well and stood in front of him. Perhaps not the best time to confront him, but time was in short supply. Night was coming.

  “Listen to me now. Abandon this search. You know where she's going, where she has to go. If we waste time searching for her here, it may well be too late. Please, listen to reason.”

  He shook his head. She is here. I sense her.

  “She could be anywhere! Do you really think you were following her trail when you entered that room? It was a trap!”

  No. She was here. That was no illusion.

  “Then she led you here on purpose, hoping to destroy you or at least slow your pursuit. Have you forgotten how she tricked you a thousand years ago?”

  Some of his certainty seemed to crumble.

  She was swayed by that one, he said, indicating the remains of the Sorcerer King.

  “Why she did it doesn't matter, only what she did and will do. For whatever reason, she doesn't want you to catch her. If you waste time down here, you will lose her to the Shadow King forever, and the entire world will be enslaved. Think beyond the moment, for Kerf’s sweet sake! We know where she has to go. Why not wait for her there?”

  He relented. I didn't think he would. He was as mad in his own way as his sister; obsessed with her to the point of unreason.

  Take me to this Shadow King, he said.

  Tha-Agoth would not help me carry Holgren, the bastard, and so it was slow going.

  Hurry, mortal. Time flies.

  I had Holgren slung across my back. Every tottering step threatened to be my last. “You won't heal him and you won't help me carry him, you godly sack of dung, so you can take your 'flying time' and choke on it.” We were making our slow way down the passage that led to the stairs, and the lake. I had no idea of the time. I hoped it was still daylight.

  He is a burden. Leave him.

  “He's only a burden because you refuse to help. He's also the only reason I'm helping you at all. You'd better remember that.”

  I do not need your help.

  I stopped and lowered Holgren to the ground. “Fine,” I said, pulling out my knife. “I'll just end his life here, so he doesn't become a mindless slave to the Shadow King. Then I’ll get along home and leave you to find Shadowfall on your own. Maybe you'll find it before your sister does. Maybe you'll be able to keep the Shadow King from snaring her. I don't really care anymore, you selfish, obsessed, immortal puddle of vomit. Godhood was wasted on you, you miserable tick.”

  I thought he was going to kill me. The rage on his face was plain. Maybe no one had ever spoken to him in such fashion. I stood my ground, waiting for his divine fist to punch a hole in my very mortal face. He trembled with anger, and his hands balled at his sides.

  “Do it, if you're going to,” I said quietly. “But make sure you kill Holgren as well. He would not want to survive as a pawn of evil.”

  I cannot kill him, nor heal him, just as I cannot rifle through your mind. I swore I would not. My word is final. I cannot go against it.

  “You've got a twisted sense of honor, then. Are you going to kill me or not?”

  No.

  He said it as though it caused him physical pain to do so. I should be so lucky.

  “Then help me carry him, if you want to get to Shadowfall before Athagos.” He stood there for a little while longer, eyes shining. Then he scooped Holgren up in his arms, like a parent would a sleeping child. I sheathed my knife with trembling hand, and set out once again for the stairs and the ledge and the lake. Beyond that, I didn't contemplate. One thing at a time.

  We made the ledge above the lake. It had snowed, but only a little. A light powder dusted the ledge. The lake wasn't frozen, not even at the edges. The sun was bleeding its life away in great red streaks behind and above us. Darkness was creeping in ahead. We had wasted the day down below, and would face the Shadow King in all his power.

  Where to now, Amra? Tha-Agoth asked. Where will Athagos go?

  I pointed out to the other end of the lake, which was lost in gloom and a pale, Acrid smelling fog. “There,” I said. “The far shore, or rather a short distance beyond. You should be able to see Shadowfall construct itself any moment now. Kerf knows it's big enough to be seen from here.”

  Tha-Agoth lay Holgren gently down, and started for the stairs. I cannot be encumbered now, he said.

  I heaved Holgren onto my back and staggered after Tha-Agoth. In my heart I held little hope for Holgren or myself, but I would see it through to the end. There was nothing else to be done.

  Tha-Agoth made his way to the stone quay where we'd first met Ruiqi and stood there, staring out at the approaching gloom. In the distance green planes of light had sprung into being. Shadowfall was assembling itself. The Shadow King had woken. Tha-Agoth stood looking out at it. He seemed bemused by the sight.

  There lairs my enemy, he said. But there was another enemy much closer.

  The fog-shrouded surface of the lake exploded up and outward. Shemrang, mother of monsters, raised her black, steaming bulk out of the murky waters of the lake, snared Tha-Agoth with tentacles made of night, and dragged him down under the water. It was over in a
heartbeat.

  I just stood there for a moment, stunned and soaked, staring at the roiling water. Then I laid Holgren down on the slick stones of the quay, drew my knife and the rod from my belt, and jumped in.

  I don't know how to swim so really I don't know what I was thinking. I suppose I wasn't thinking, in fact. All I knew was Tha-Agoth was the key to defeating the Shadow King and freeing Holgren, and to saving the world. And Shemrang had him. She might not be able to kill him, but he was of no use to me torn into a thousand little pieces, his severed head giving birth to monsters. So I went in that murky water to get him back.

  That lake was cold, choked with weeds, and black as pitch now that night had come. I struggled toward where I thought Shemrang must be, kicking and sinking. I wasn't going to make it. My lungs began to burn with the need for air almost immediately, but I couldn't even tell which way was up after a few seconds. I could barely see my own hand in front of my face. I thought I had used up all my fear over the past months. I was wrong. It was an awful, terrifying experience.

  I didn't have to find Shemrang. She found me. One giant questing tentacle latched onto my thigh and dragged me through the water toward her. I hacked at it with my knife. It did not seem to affect her in the least. She didn't loosen her grip. Quite the contrary. The tentacle snaked around my chest and squeezed, forcing air out of my tortured lungs. Everywhere exposed flesh met tentacle, it burned.

  Ahead of me, a burst of golden light shot through the gloom. I could only assume it was Tha-Agoth. It didn't rival Holgren's magelight. I don't think it actually harmed Shemrang all that much. She still had me firmly in her grip. It did allow me to see the battle that raged between the two as I approached. Tha-Agoth was being constricted in much the same way I was. He was having much better success at causing Shemrang discomfort. Much as she had torn him asunder, he was shredding tentacle after tentacle with his bare hands. A desperate hope flared in me that we might survive. That hope died as suddenly as it was born when Shemrang maneuvered Tha-Agoth within range of her gaping, serrated maw.

  She snapped his head off with one bite.

  The golden glow slowly faded from around his decapitated corpse, now set free to float down to the bottom of the lake with a dark cloud of blood to mark its passage. It was my turn next.

  I suppose she didn't consider me much of a threat after Tha-Agoth. I had no doubts she was still harboring a wee bit of resentment over the unflattering things I'd said about her and her children. She wanted to torment me before she finished me off. She rose up from the lake, dangling me in front of her long, narrow face. I gasped a tiny bit of blessed fresh air, as much as my constricted lungs would allow. The tip of her leathery tongue lapped at my face.

  Not as savory as a god, gutter thief, but you will do. And the mage as well.

  I'd have snapped off a witty retort, but I could barely breathe. Besides, none sprang to mind. My arms were free of her embrace so I let my knife speak for me.

  I nearly severed the last inch or so of her tongue.

  Apparently it was a fairly sensitive organ. Her shriek was quite loud. Then I was rushing toward her mouth, head first. Dropping the knife, I got a two-handed grip on the rod and prayed.

  My timing wasn't perfect, nor my aim. I'd intended to wedge the bar between her jaws, thus staving off my imminent beheading. Instead, the jagged tip of the rod caught her about a foot or so below her eyes. It parted her strange, sleek flesh and continued on into the interior of her head as if she were composed of warm butter. And I thought she'd screamed when I nicked her tongue.

  She tried to fling me away, but I held on to that tentacle for dear life, wrapping my thighs and free arm around it as tightly as I could. I didn't want to end up in the lake again, or smeared against the cliff wall.

  I clung to her, burning, hoping something else would to me.

  She started pounding me against the lake.

  I'd always thought of water as being soft. When you're hurled against it, it isn't soft at all. I suppose it isn't as bad as being smacked against stone. It wasn't a feather bed, either.

  After the third or fourth time, I knew I had to do something other than just hold on. She was hurt, but how hurt I didn't know. First things first. I had to get Tha-Agoth's head back, and it was inside her. I was going to have to retrieve it.

  The things we do for love.

  On the tentacle's next upswing I took in the situation as best I could. It was going to be tricky. I'd only get one chance.

  It is amazingly difficult to judge distances and angles when you're clinging to a lashing, writhing monster of a tentacle. Try it sometime; you'll see what I mean. The tentacle flew downward and smacked me into the water again. I was getting very tired of that. On the next upswing I launched myself, hoping I would get it right. I very much doubted I'd get a second chance.

  I’d planned to land behind her head, so that I could drive the rod into the base of her brain. It would make everything else so much easier if I didn't have to deal with Shemrang's writhing. It didn't turn out that way. My vault carried me up over her half-cleaved, screaming head.

  I landed down around the middle of her back, among the faces that pebbled her flesh. I stuck my hand in one of the mouths unknowingly. It gnashed down and I nearly lost a finger. I pulled my hand away and began to slide down her slippery back toward the water. That wouldn't do.

  Tha-Agoth's head was somewhere inside, so I went looking for it. The rod parted her flesh with a terrifying ease. Black viscous blood welled up immediately, and her shrieks took on a new urgency. She began to flail around her back with the tentacles that ringed her head. They buffeted, but did not dislodge me.

  “Hurry up and die, you bitch,” I muttered. And I dug deeper, clearing great gobbets of flesh as I went. And all the while I tried to figure out where she kept her stomach.

  I don't have words to describe the foul stench of Shemrang's innards. It was worse than the death lands, if that gives you any indication. It was distilled essence of corruption. The vomit I choked out as I made my way through the meat of her was a sweet smell in comparison. Somewhere along the way she collapsed and was still, save for a twitch, a tremble that felt like an earthquake as I mined my way through her putrid body.

  I have never been afraid of enclosed spaces—my profession had put me in tight spots many times over the years. As the foul meat of Shemrang pressed in all around me and I clawed my way into stench and darkness, though, I felt an unreasoning fear begin to creep up on me. She was dead, and clawing through her carcass had me more terrified than when she was about to snap my head off.

  The workings of a mind are strange indeed.

  I was all the way inside her corpse and running out of breathable air when I finally hit her windpipe, or gullet or whatever. It was large enough for me to crawl through in a prone position, and air and lake water trickled in from her mauled mouth. It was also coated with an acidic slime that stung my eyes and ate away at my skin. I headed south toward what I assumed would be her version of a stomach, or maybe womb.

  I found Tha-Agoth's head, lodged in a crevice just before the passage opened up into a place I really didn't want to go. Dead or not, I'm certain Shemrang's stomach was not a healthy place to be.

  It wasn't difficult to find Tha-Agoth. His head still glowed, faintly. He’d gotten hold of the slimy wall with his teeth, and was hanging on with a tenacity that, while admirable, was also gut-splittingly funny in a horrible sort of way. Maybe it was just me. He certainly didn't seem amused.

  I picked his head up by the hair, looked into his face and said “Do you have any idea how deep you are in my debt now?" His only response was a slow, shuddering blink.

  I carved a way out for us with the rod, straight up from where I'd found the god's head. I slithered out of the monster's corpse, not unlike how I'd seen her children born. Once free of the vile meat of her. I collapsed on that nasty hide and took in great gulps of relatively fresh air. None of the faces that dotted her torso moved anymore. Th
ey were all slack and gray. I hoped they'd been released with her death.

  Shemrang floated on the surface of the lake like some immense bladder. Roughly a third of her bulk was above the waterline. I could tell she was sinking, slowly. I had to figure out what to do next. I glanced over toward Holgren. He was still lying on the stones of the quay, undisturbed by the battle that had just taken place. I couldn't tell if he was still breathing from this distance, and in the dark. He wasn't moving.

  First things first. I had to get Tha-Agoth his body back. I figured it would be easier to bring his head to his body, rather than the other way around. The only trouble was, I didn't know exactly where his body was. That, and the whole not-being-able-to-swim thing. I held the god's head up and looked him in the face. He was hurting. He'd get over it.

  “Hey, Tha-Agoth. Do you have any control over your body right now? Blink once for yes, twice for no.”

  Blink-blink. Scowl.

  “Any bright ideas as to how I can find it?”

  Blink.

  “Can you tell where it is from here?”

  Blink.

  “I'll call out directions. Blink when I get it right. West?”

  Nothing.

  “East?”

  Nothing.

  “North? South?”

  Nothing. Nothing.

  “I've run out of directions, my friend.”

  Blink-blink. Scowl. Then he mouthed a word: down.

  “It's underneath us. It's underneath her.” And she was sinking fast.

  Blink.

  I took a deep breath, then another. It was time to jump back in, before Shemrang's bulk buried Tha-Agoth's body. I got a good hold of Tha-Agoth's long braids and the length of rod. Before I could think too much about what I was doing, I jumped back in the foul lake. The water hadn't gotten any warmer, or any more breathable, but at least it washed most of her off me. I was able to hold on to my breath better this second time, and the weight of my waterlogged clothes, Tha-Agoth's head, and the rod made sure I found the bottom rather easily.