Den of Thieves (38 page)

Chapter Seventy-Nine

T
he floor did not ripple or shimmer like liquid. It looked as solid and flat as stone. Yet it sucked him downward, little by little, and Malden could feel its substance filling his shoes and sticking to the hairs on his legs.

He tried to pull his left foot free of the floor and found only that this threw him off balance—his right foot had nothing to brace against. He kicked and flailed, but that only sped his descent until the floor sucked hungrily at his knees. He started to fall backward, and knew that if he didn't stop himself he would be sucked down into the floor until his face was covered, until the silvery moonlight stuff filled his nose and mouth and he drowned.

Up and down the hallway the patches of darkness between the pools of moonlight came alive, toothy maws opening and quivering with laughter while long tongues snaked and licked at the air. The hallway was mocking him.

Malden refused to let a patch of floor think him a figure of fun. He had no real honor, as he'd told Croy, and he'd never let pride get in the way of a job before. But no gods-damned inanimate object was going to laugh at him and get away with it.

Desperate for anything to hold onto, his hands shot out and his fingers latched onto the sill of the window. He was embedded in the floor up to his waist, but he could hold himself up if he used all the strength in his arms. That strength was not, unfortunately, enough to haul him free.

He was stuck facing the window. He looked out through the glass and saw the palace grounds—the wall of Castle Hill no more than a hundred yards away, the moon high in the sky. A thin finger of cloud was nearly bisecting the full moon. As he watched, though, Malden saw that it never moved. The stars around the moon never twinkled.

This was all an illusion. The moon, the viscous floor, the mouths that gibbered and guffawed. All created by that orange eye he'd seen in the darkness. It could affect him—it could kill him, he was certain—but none of it was real.

Heaving, pulling with all his might, he managed to lift himself a few inches. Enough to get his right elbow up onto the windowsill. He braced himself there, resting most of his weight against the wall. Then he released the fingers of his left hand from their death-grip on the sill. He nearly fell back into the liquid moonlight, but just managed to keep steady. The window, he saw, was made up of a dozen long panes of glass leaded into a frame of solid wood. He reached up with his left hand and bashed at the closest pane. It did not shatter (for which he was somewhat glad—he'd worried the breaking glass would shred the flesh of his hand), but instead splashed away from him, as fluid as the floor. He reached through the opening he'd made and felt the air outside. Except it wasn't really air. It felt the same as when he tried to shake Kemper's hand. Cold and clammy, a nothingness that could not exist according to his other senses. His mind could not accept that absence and thus made of it a presence, gave it texture and sensation where none existed.

For all the misery and misfortune he'd experienced since agreeing to steal the crown, Malden was grateful then for the education those misadventures had given him. Most thieves, he knew, avoided magic and the supernatural like the pox, and for good reason. A common man no matter how deft or agile had little chance against even the simplest wizardry. But he was a fast learner, and because he'd had no choice, he learned something of magic in the last week or so. He learned it operated by rules. Not—by definition—the same rules the natural world obeyed. Magic was a perversion of those fundamental laws. Yet like any perversion, it must mirror the original, if only in a distorted fashion. Magic was never just arbitrary, though it could seem that way. There had to be an inherent logic to it, a set of boundaries beyond which it would not pass. Light and glass might act like liquids here, but they would always act like liquids. Solid objects here seemed as strong as steel. For the nonce, at least, he thought he had the hallway's measure.

He reached up through that wet nothingness and grabbed at the wooden frame that held the panes of glass in place. Another pane splashed and dripped away from his touch and his hand closed on the wood, which thankfully was as solid as it looked. More so—it felt as solid as iron in his palm. He thought it might hold his weight.

Thus anchored, he carefully brought his right hand up to grab at the frame as well. He pulled himself up the frame as if climbing a ladder. Little by little his legs came free of the floor. The moonlight did not stick to them or hang in droplets from his breeches, nor did the moonlight shift or flow as he pulled free of it.

In time he climbed up onto the frame of the window altogether, and got his feet up on the sill so he could stand there and let his legs take his weight. Then he looked down.

The floor below him looked as solid as ever. The mouths in the shadows had shut themselves again and showed only darkness. The hall was exactly as it had been when he first entered it. He had progressed about six feet down its length.

Well. That was something. He also had the measure of the place now. He knew its rules—at least some of them.

The next patch of moonlight was ten feet away. He needed to cross over a maw of darkness to get there, and when he arrived he would have to deal with its floor trying to swallow him whole. He thought he might know a way to handle that. Taking the rope from around his waist—the same one he and Kemper had used to get inside the villa, with its end dipped in silver—he tied it to the highest part of the window frame. He gave the rope a couple hard tugs until he was sure it would not come unknotted when he put his weight on it. Then, holding to its silver end, he leapt back to the featureless wall behind him, where the door had been when he came in. The floor there was solid and did not have teeth. It was perhaps the only patch of ground he could stand on safely in the entire hallway.

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

C
roy 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 the 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?”