Thief Who Spat in Luck's Good Eye

by Michael McClung

  Her face lit up like a child presented with a new toy or an unexpected treat. She actually clapped her hands together and laughed exultantly. She dragged me to her. One hand cradled the back of my head, her other arm snaked around my waist. It was going to happen—she was going to suck me dry.

  And then she was hugging me tightly, so tightly my spine creaked. She buried my face in the hollow of her neck. I drew a breath and caught a whiff of lilacs. Death smelled like lilacs.

  You are joy’s messenger, little mouse. I will not harm you, oh no. How could I?

  She kissed the top of my head then pushed me away into the snow and ran fleet-footed toward the gates. I watched her go, the realization that I was still somehow alive and apparently would remain so for the time being slowly sinking in.

  Just before the falling snow obscured her completely, she stopped and turned to look back at me.

  Gnaw through the bar of my brother’s cage, mouse. Set him free to follow me. But take your time.

  And then she was gone. “Kerf’s lice-ridden beard,” I muttered and staggered to my feet. I had to find Holgren.

  I found him just inside the Tabernacle. He was slumped against the wall, head lolling at an unnatural angle. He was breathing in short gasps, like a dying fish. The wall behind him was daubed with one long streak of blood where his head had been bashed against it and he’d slid to the floor. Athagos must have hurled him against the wall and then come after me.

  I pulled his head to a more natural angle, hoping to help his breathing, and began to realize just how massive his injury was. The back of his head was a sticky, bloody mess. I examined it more carefully by touch, as gently as I could. I resisted the panic welling up in me. It wouldn’t help. The back of his skull was crushed. It was more than crushed, actually. It was pulverized.

  I’d watched him die once. I wasn’t about to go through that again. Not after what we’d shared. He needed Tha-Agoth’s blood immediately. I put my shoulder against his abdomen and levered him up using the wall until I got to a standing position. I wouldn’t be able to carry him far, but I didn’t have to. I just had to make it to Tha-Agoth’s chamber.

  I staggered off down the hall toward it. “No problem, partner. We’ll just get some of that good old blood that brought you back before. Don’t you worry now, Holgren. Don’t you worry; do you hear me?”

  He couldn’t hear me. But the words weren’t for him anyway.

  When I reached the stairs down to Tha-Agoth’s chamber, it was with relief. Then, I ran into an invisible wall. The stairs were blocked. It could only be Tha-Agoth.

  “Let me come down,” I panted. Only silence answered.

  “Tha-Agoth, let me down. He needs healing. He’s dying.”

  You took her from me. You sent her to my enemy.

  “I had no choice. You know all this.”

  Silence.

  “If you don’t let me down to get healing for him, I swear I’ll let you rot down there. You’ll never see her again, and you’ll still be pinned to that stone when the Shadow King puts the entire world to torture. He will have won because you were pouting like a selfish child. Is that what you want?”

  Silence.

  “Answer me, damn you! Is that what you want?”

  It is not.

  “Then let me come down. Now.”

  Come.

  I made my precarious way down the stairs as quickly as I could then rammed the door open with the heel of my hand. I lay Holgren down gently on the blood-washed floor in the gray light that filtered in from the broken windows high above.

  I didn’t look at Tha-Agoth. He wasn’t my favorite person at that moment.

  Holgren had stopped breathing. I turned his head to the side and scooped up handfuls of blood from the floor. I dribbled it onto the back of Holgren’s skull then pried his jaw open and filled his mouth with it. Seconds stretched to minutes. Nothing happened.

  “Why isn’t it working?” Panic began to well up in me in earnest. I fought it, but it felt as if my heart was being sliced to ribbons. I looked at Tha-Agoth. His head was turned away.

  “Why isn’t it working?” I asked again.

  I don’t know. But I knew he was lying.

  “Tell me, Tha-Agoth.”

  I don’t know. Perhaps his bond to the Shadow King prevents the healing.

  “You’re lying. I can sense it.” I stood up and walked over to him. He refused to look at me. I put my hand on his chin and turned his head toward me. Those star-filled eyes blazed up at me.

  “Listen to me. If he dies, I’ll leave you here and the world be damned. I swear it. I’ll walk out into the death lands and let the beasties have me for a snack to make sure I don’t go soft and change my mind.”

  I could turn your mind now, thief, and make you help me.

  “No you can’t. You’d already have done it. I’ve had a while to think about our first encounter. If you had been able to make me free you, you would have. After a thousand years, anybody would have done whatever was necessary to get free. You didn’t because you couldn’t. And you can’t now. If I’m wrong, prove it. If I’m right, you’d better stop playing games because I’m your only hope.”

  No response.

  “I’ll take that as an admission. Now why isn’t the blood bringing Holgren back?”

  Because I do not wish it to.

  “Why?”

  You took her from me. Why should I give him back to you?

  “You pathetic piece of—” I choked the words down. They wouldn’t do any good and would probably only make matters worse. I began to see why Athagos might want to get rid of her brother. I leaned in closer.

  “If the fact that we’re going to free you isn’t enough, consider this: He’s just as much a victim of the Shadow King as you are of the Sorcerer King. You might say he’s a fellow victim; we both are. To allow him to die when you have the means to save him makes you both a murderer and party to the evil that put you in your own personal hell.”

  I leaned in closer and whispered in his ear. “It makes you at least as guilty as your own worst enemy.”

  He closed his eyes and rolled his head away from me. Perhaps I’m beyond caring.

  “For your sister’s sake, I hope not. You’re the only chance she has. If you want to spare Athagos from the Shadow King’s attentions, you’d better bring Holgren back to life. If I can’t have him, I’ll make sure you can’t have her. That I promise you.”

  He looked back at me with those star-torn eyes, and I stared into them, unblinkingly. He looked away. Eventually.

  Very well. But expect no more healing from my blood for either of you.

  Behind me, Holgren choked his way back to life and along with him, my heart.

  Chapter Ten

  I rushed to Holgren as he scrabbled onto his side to retch out a mouthful of god blood. It afforded me a view of his knitting skull. Seeing the shards of bone jostle themselves back into place and the scalp crawl back over the skull beneath wasn’t pretty, but I could have asked to see nothing that caused me more joy.

  I knelt down and put an arm around his middle, pressed my cheek to his, and whispered in his ear. “Don't you ever die on me again, you whore-spawned excuse for a mage. I couldn’t stand it.”

  “My mother…wasn’t a whore. She—ah, gods my head hurts!—she was a witch. Not the same thing at all.” He boosted himself up to a kneeling position with my help.

  “Besides, I don’t die on purpose, you know.”

  Enough. Free me. Now.

  I kissed Holgren quickly then helped him to his feet. There was work to be done.

  #

  “Oh, this isn’t good at all.” Holgren had both hands wrapped around the rod that speared Tha-Agoth. He had been muttering arcanities for the better part of an hour.

  “What is it?” I asked him as he let go of the rod and stepped away from Tha-Agoth.

  I’ve given you back your life twice now, mageling. You
are indebted to me. Do not fail.

  “The hells you say,” I told Tha-Agoth. “I pulled his rotting corpse out of the ground the first time and had to coerce you to bring him back the second. He doesn’t owe you a damned thing.”

  Without my blood, he would still be decaying in the garden where he was buried.

  “I would prefer not to be talked about as if I weren’t present. I’d like it even more if you’d both be quiet. This is difficult enough without listening to you two bicker. I’ve still got a headache.”

  Holgren cracked his knuckles, stepped further back from the altar and stretched. “The magics employed to fashion this—thing—were powerful in the extreme.”

  It has thwarted all my attempts to destroy it for a millennium, mage. It was specifically designed to kill me though in that, it failed. Its nature should not be proof to your mundane Art, however.

  Holgren looked down at Tha-Agoth, eyebrow raised. “How much do you really know about the laws of thaumaturgy, may I ask?”

  It is a subject that holds little interest for me. The power I possess is drawn from a different source. One far more powerful.

  “Not in this case, it would appear. Let me state the situation as concisely as I can. A mage is able to produce effects in direct correlation to two conditions: the raw power he possesses the ability to tap and the strength of will he is able to exert on that power to shape reality. It gets a bit more complicated than that, but to illustrate the point, consider this rod. It is the product of magic. It was created by a mage powerful enough, a mage possessing the requisite strength of will, to fashion something that could trap a god for an age.”

  I fail to see your point.

  “That’s because I haven’t made it yet.” Holgren rubbed at his eyes, took a deep breath. I guess dying made him irritable.

  Then make your point, mage. You waste time.

  “This rod isn’t subject to the same laws that govern other physical things. A mage forces his will on reality when he uses the Art to the extent that his power and will enable him. Part of the reality of this rod, as envisioned by its creator, is that it is indestructible.”

  There is no indestructible object. It must have a weakness.

  “You’re absolutely right. There is one set of conditions that will allow us to break the rod. But you aren’t going to like it.”

  What conditions must be met, mage?

  “The Sorcerer King was good at what he did. He knew that it would take a greater power than even he possessed to best a god. He took that into account when he set about creating your doom.

  “Tha-Agoth, It is your own power that sustains and strengthens your enemy’s weapon. You must have noticed your weakened condition?”

  Yes.

  “The rod leaches your power away and turns it against you. The more you struggle against it, the more power you lend it. Artfully clever, actually.”

  The chamber was silent. If I understood what Holgren was saying, there was no way to free Tha-Agoth that I could see. I had faith, though, that Holgren would find a way. If he didn’t, we were doomed.

  “What can be done?” I asked. Holgren glanced at me then looked down at the god.

  “I have only one solution, and it isn’t certain or easy.”

  Tell me.

  “We’re going to have to kill you in order to save you,” he said.

  What foolishness is this? I cannot be killed. Do you understand nothing?

  “I understand more than you do in this case. The rod feeds off your energy. I need for the flow of energy from you to the rod to cease or at least falter before I can attempt to impose my will on it. A massive trauma, such as beheading, should do the trick.”

  You expect me to allow you to behead me? Your humor escapes me.

  “I’m pretty sure he’s serious,” I told Tha-Agoth. “Holgren doesn’t have much of a sense of humor.”

  “Not at the moment, at least.”

  This is insanity.

  “Nevertheless. I do wish there was another way. There isn’t, not that I can think of.” Holgren spread his hands and shrugged.

  “Once he’s beheaded, how will you break the rod?” I didn’t think a shovel and pickax would do it. That’s all we had in the way of tools.

  “I’ll use the Art. Destroying it is as much a matter of ripping through the mesh of commands that infuse the rod as breaking its physical reality. Once I’ve accomplished that, a sharp blow should suffice.”

  “Will you be able to manage it?”

  He gave me a flat stare. “There’s only one way to find out. With the additional power made available to me through the khordun, it is at least possible. I will do my best.”

  Do more than your best, mageling. You will not be allowed to take my head more than once.

  “I don’t expect to fail, Tha-Agoth. Failure dooms us as much as anyone. But I cannot guarantee success. That is the reality of the situation. Accustom yourself to it.”

  I started toward the stairs. “I’ll go fetch a sword from the Duke’s camp. You two try to get along while I’m gone. We all need each other, like it or not.”

  #

  It took me forever to find a sword in the snow.

  Just inside the gate, a score of armed men had met their fate at the hands and mouth of Athagos. Most of them hadn’t even been able to draw their blades. They’d hung at their sides, utterly useless, inches away from hands that did not their owners’ bidding but Athagos’. What a way to die.

  It should have been a simple thing to find one sword in a relatively small area, but the snow made it a frustrating, agonizing task.

  I finally came upon the hilt of a sword, my hands frozen nearly lifeless after almost half an hour of questing blindly through the snow. I pulled up my prize and disentangled the sword belt from the chain mail shirt it was attached to with difficulty.

  When I finally managed it, I pinned the sword in its scabbard awkwardly to my chest with a forearm and buried my numb hands in my armpits.

  I slogged my way back to the Tabernacle through the storm as quickly as possible. I couldn’t imagine Athagos would stick around, especially after the way she had acted when I told her about the necklace, but why take a chance? She was seriously, deeply insane.

  But cracked as she was, I was fairly certain her main goal in life was getting as far away from her brother as possible. There was something between them that I didn’t really understand, more than Tha-Agoth’s seeming obsession with his sister-wife, more than Athagos wanting to cause him harm. I felt as though I were staring at a puzzle with an unknown number of pieces missing. Everything pointed to Athagos wanting to get rid of her brother, yet she’d told me to free him just before she left.

  Except she was raving mad, and nothing was beyond her. Including hanging around the Tabernacle, waiting to make a snack of me.

  I shook my head in disgust. Enough of logic chasing its tail, I told myself. Just get on with the business at hand.

  I didn’t relax until I’d made it back inside and then only by a few degrees. Tha-Agoth didn’t exactly put me at ease.

  Back in the temple, a tense silence reigned. Tha-Agoth was motionless, eyes closed. What he was thinking, I couldn’t even begin to guess. Having his head chopped off might not kill him, but it was still going to be hideously painful.

  As for Holgren, he was squatting in one blood-washed corner, elbows on knees, thumbs pressed against the bridge of his nose. Whatever he was doing had the hairs on the back of my neck trying to loose themselves from my skin.

  “So,” I said more loudly than I intended, “are we ready?”

  Make the stroke clean, thief. One blow only if you can manage it. I’ll not have you carving on me.

  “I’ll do my best. Holgren, are you ready?”

  “As ready as I can be.” He stood up and walked over to Tha-Agoth. “I wish—”

  “—you had access to your sanctum. I know. You don’t. So let’s move on.”
/>
  He smiled half-heartedly and looked down at Tha-Agoth.

  “Forget the rod,” he told the godling, “and concentrate solely on healing the damage we are about to cause. I want as much of your power diverted from the rod as possible.”

  You do not forget a spear through your chest, mage.

  “Do the best you can.” Holgren turned from Tha-Agoth and looked at me. “Once you’ve finished the beheading, I want you to swing on the rod at my signal. However much I may weaken it, physical blows will still be necessary. And do try not to hit me, Amra.”

  “You take the fun out of everything.”

  Holgren moved to the other side of the altar, across from the doors. I lined myself up with Tha-Agoth’s neck, planted my feet, and took a few practice swings. The sword’s balance felt all wrong; it was far too long for me, and the grip was slick. I didn’t have to fight with it, though. I just had to hit a stationary target or two. I hoped I could cut through with one swing—beheadings were a grisly business. There was a reason the condemned paid their executioners to do their best.

  Satisfied as I was going to be with the weapon, I stepped forward until the last few inches of the blade hovered just above Tha-Agoth’s neck. He looked at me with those star-filled eyes of his but said nothing. He turned his head and looked up at the snowflakes swirling in from the broken windows far above.

  “Are we ready?” I whispered and looked at Holgren. He was kneeling down, and his hands clasped the rod just above Tha-Agoth’s chest. His head was bowed. He looked to be praying, almost.

  “Strike when you will,” he said, voice muffled, “but wait for my signal before you swing at the rod.”

  “All right.” My palms were suddenly sweaty, making the sword hilt even more slippery. I thought about wiping them dry but decided against the delay. The sooner this was over, the better.

  Holding the sword in two hands, I lined up the blade along Tha-Agoth’s throat. I took a deep breath and pulled it overhead. With a wordless cry, I whipped it down on the god’s neck with all the force I could muster. The edge of the sword stayed perpendicular to the ground, thankfully, and bit into Tha-Agoth’s neck with a meaty smack.