The Thief Who Spat In Luck's Good Eye (17 page)

“
I have other endeavors on which to spend my power,” the Shadow said. “The circle makes his abilities available to me, to open the gate. The side effect is painful and unpleasant.”

“
Then hurry up and open it.”

“
Perhaps you haven't noticed, but it is I who commands here.”

“
Fine. Please open the gate!”

“
You can do better than that, Amra.”

“
Tell me what you want me to say and I’ll say it!”

Holgren was going into convulsions on the floor. Foamy spittle was collecting at the corner of his mouth. His head smacked the block with every spastic jerk.

“
Draw your example from Ruiqi,” he said.

“
Please open the gate ... master.” I forced the word out. What was a word in comparison to the agony Holgren was going through? Words are cheap.

“
Much better, Amra. Much better, though I might question your sincerity. Don't feel as though you've compromised any vestiges of honor or dignity in acknowledging my station. Once Athagos comes to me, the entire world will bend to my will. You have only done what everyone will, in time.”

“
Whatever you say. Master. Please stop. You're killing him. How can he help me in getting Athagos for you if he's dead?”

“
Holgren will not be joining you in Thagoth.” The circle of flame sputtered out, and Holgren’s convulsions subsided. I ran to his slack body and cradled his head in my lap. He was still breathing.

A pearlescent gate opened in the center of the courtyard, a few feet away from us.

“
I would never kill a member of my khordun,” the Shadow King said. “Not in any permanent sense. If you doubt me, ask Ruiqi. Holgren will go a long way in replacing the Duke. His death was a vexing inconvenience, and one I've learned from. Holgren will remain here.”

The bastard had taken Holgren against his will. He would be a slave just as much as Ruiqi, and if the husk had been telling the truth, they would eventually become mindless, will-less vessels for the Shadow King to draw power from. Ruiqi seemed well on her way already.

I remembered the ghost formed from corpse-dust in the husk's throne room, and his sighing ‘
Master, someone has come.’
Not even death would free Holgren from the khordun.

It was then I knew I would have to destroy the Shadow King, whatever the cost. Not for the Flame, not for any god, but for Holgren. With that certainty came a cold inner peace, and a clarity of purpose that allowed me to see what I needed to do.

It might not work. It probably wouldn't work, but it was our only chance for survival. I looked up at the Shadow King with tears in my eyes. Those I didn't have to fake.

“
Master, I would like to say good-bye to him before I leave. Please. I'm begging you.” This one wanted slaves, wanted power. Wanted to show his power, I hoped.

He smiled again, waved an indulgent hand. “As you wish.”

I felt Holgren stir. His eyes fluttered open and a groan escaped his lips. “Oh, gods,” he whispered, and began to shudder. I tried to haul Holgren to his feet, but he was practically dead weight. I had to get him standing if what I planned had any chance of success.

“
Ruiqi, will you help?”

She hesitated, then when her master didn't object, bobbed her head and helped pull him upright. I worked it to where we staggered a pace or two closer to the gate. I didn't know if it would be enough.

“
Hurry up. I waste power keeping the gate open while you dally.”

“
Yes, master. Just one last embrace.” I put my hands to his face and kissed him, thoroughly. Ruiqi looked away. I wrapped my arms tightly around his waist and looked into his eyes, and saw a pain there that had nothing to do with his body.

“
Say good-bye, Holgren,” I whispered. Then with every scrap of speed and strength I had, I flung us both toward the pearlescent, glowing gate.

The Shadow King's scream of rage rang across the courtyard. Holgren shrieked in time. The gate shrank even as we hurtled toward it.

Chapter 7

When Holgren had opened the first gate to Thagoth, he'd had us go through one at a time. When we plummeted through this one together I found out why.

Stepping through that first gate had been unpleasant. To disappear from one place and reappear in another the next instant wasn't a natural act, and my body had known it. This time both Holgren and I occupied the same non-space, the same space between here and there, the same fissure in reality. We shared an intimacy that living things were not meant to know. There are no reference points, nothing to proceed from. It was as if our very souls mixed and intermingled. I saw—I felt—just who he was, his own essence, whatever made him
him
. And he saw and felt me. For that brief eternity, we became each other. It was terrifying, and elating. Then it was over.

We hit the ground hard with Holgren on top of me. The familiar putrid stench of the death lands forced its way into my nostrils. I suppressed my gag reflex, breathed through my mouth. I pushed Holgren off me and looked back to see if anything was coming after us.

Something was.

Through the rapidly dwindling gate hurtled Ruiqi, a look of abject terror on her face. Was she trying to escape the Shadow King, or had she been sent to do his bidding? I wished that I had a knife.

Most of her made it. The gate contracted down to nothing just after her knees cleared. The double amputation was instantaneous. Her scream was a twin of the one Holgren had uttered months before, in this very spot.

She fell to the ground next to us and writhed and shrieked in the dark. Blood spurted from the stumps of her legs, dark gouts spraying the hideous foliage around us as she twisted in agony. I saw the pale, fleshy flowers of a thorny shrub bend down to catch her blood. I shuddered, and turned my attention back to her.

I couldn't leave her like that. She had tried to warn me of what the Shadow King was capable of, had tried to help in her own way. However she had fallen under his sway, she had obviously tried to balk his will more than once, with horrifying results. I didn't trust her or even like her, but walking away from her was beyond me.

“
Help me out if you can, Holgren. We've got to get tourniquets on her legs. Rip some strips from your cloak. I'll find sticks or something to twist 'em with.”

“
Alright.” His voice was weak, but certain. He began to rip at his threadbare cloak. I searched around the area with blind hands, trying to find a stick or even a rock, something to tighten the strips of cloth around her stumps and stop the bleeding. I came across a moldering piece of canvas.

It was the remains of the pack I'd thrown down months ago in my haste to drag Holgren to safety. I searched some more, with greater hope.

The contents were scattered far and wide. I found the shovel I’d missed while burying Holgren and, after a few seconds, a pickax. I rushed back over to them.

“
Is she still breathing?” I asked while I fit the shovel's handle in the loop that Holgren had left in the bandage on her right leg.

“
Yes. She's passed out, thankfully. Give me the pickax.” I did, and he pulled the remains of her legs further apart so that our unwieldy tools wouldn't collide as we cranked down on the bleeding stumps.

The gushing slowed to a trickle as the strips of cloth bit cruelly into the flesh just above her knees.

“
We'll have to secure them, now. I didn't tear enough strips off.”

“
Give me your cloak.” He handed it over. He held on to the handle of the pickax and I sat on the shovel's handle and tore more strips from the remains of his cloak, starting them with my teeth when they were too stubborn to be torn by hand. Then one leg at a time we secured the handles to her thighs.

I stood up and looked at our makeshift physicking. The effect was unsettling. Where her lower legs should have been, the shovel's blade and the head of the pickax stood out. But I thought it had saved her life, for the moment. If she could die at all.

“
Let's get someplace more comfortable,” I said. “Necklace or no, I don't like being out here.”

“
It isn't my favorite spot either,” said Holgren.

Together we managed to hoist her up and carry her past that abrupt demarcation between the death lands and the ruins without jostling her too badly. I directed Holgren to the nearby garden where I'd buried him and spent my first night in Thagoth.

We laid her flat on the grass, and proceeded with the grim task of bandaging her stumps. The remains of Holgren's cloak served. As we padded each stump with cloth and secured them tightly to the remains of her legs, I wondered if we had truly done her a favor in saving her life. When it was finished I sat down with my back against the garden's yew tree and rested for a moment. I looked around at my surroundings, at Holgren's crumbling open grave. A thought came to me, and I smiled. History wasn't repeating itself exactly, but it had begun to rhyme, after a fashion.

Would Ruiqi die, as Holgren had? Could she die? I wondered if we'd eventually have to put her in the grave I'd dug for Holgren. At least I'd have a shovel this time instead of making do with a bowl and a knife.

A knife.

“
I'll be right back,” I said to Holgren, and walked back toward the death lands.

“
Where are you going?”

“
To get something I left here months ago. And to gather firewood. We're going to have to cauterize her wounds.”

“
What a pleasant thought.”

It was still sunk deep in the trunk of the tree out in the death lands where I'd pinned the thing that had killed Holgren. I pried my best blade loose, using both hands and eventually a foot for leverage. I'd paid dearly for that knife, had it made and weighted specifically for my hand.

The tree had begun to grow around the blade. The corpse of the little beastie was long gone, or else I would have taken its skull to Holgren as a souvenir. He was always one for picking up odd, sometimes disturbing items.

The knife was in remarkably good shape, save for a bit of rust and discoloration. Maybe it was foolish, even pointless considering the types of horrors I'd seen and was likely to encounter, but just holding that blade in my hand made me feel better. It was more than a weapon. It was a link to life before Thagoth. I stuck it back into its long-empty sheath and walked unmolested back out of the death lands, into Thagoth. The necklace had its uses.

While I was out I gathered deadwood for a fire and swung by the remains of the Duke's camp to gather up some of the supplies I'd abandoned there when I left the first time. The Duke’s silk tent still stood in the center of the square, though it had begun to sag. Various supplies were scattered all around, tossed about by more than a month's worth of weather. It was a forlorn scene.

It was also dangerously near the Tabernacle gates and Athagos, but Ruiqi needed blankets. I tried not to think about those stumps too much. We had probably saved her life for the moment, but I had no idea whether she would survive the night. We could only cauterize the stumps, to prevent further bleeding and infection. And, if we got the chance, we could try to secure some of Tha-Agoth's blood and treat her with it.

I knew a sufficient dose would probably regenerate a limb—when I'd pulled Holgren's corpse out of the ground, not much flesh had remained. Hell, it might even heal her other wounds. The ones inflicted by the Shadow King.

Getting it would be the problem. And I still didn't know what her intentions were toward us. We might have to kill her, if it came down to it. I didn't like the thought of saving someone's life only to turn around and take it, but I would, if she gave me cause. If she was killable.

If not, I supposed we could hack her into lots of little pieces, as revolting as that would be.

No, I didn't want to kill her, and I didn't want her to die for a number of reasons, not the least of which was I had a feeling in my gut that she was a key to our survival. Her knowledge alone made it worth saving her. Who else could we question as to the Shadow King’s capabilities, his plans, his weaknesses? Forewarned is forearmed, and all that.

I loaded up the supplies in an oilskin as quickly and silently as I could in the dark, and lugged them back to the garden with such thoughts for company. When I returned, Holgren was asleep, curled up on his side like a child. It had been a long time since either of us had had any real rest. I felt my own exhaustion, looking at him. The business of survival had kept it at bay.

I decided to let him sleep until I'd built up the wood for a fire. Then I'd need him to start it, and hold her down while I did the deed.

I eased my bundle to the ground and pulled out a blanket, covered him with it, and turned to get another for Ruiqi.

“
Why did you save me?” Her voice was a strengthless whisper. I pulled out another blanket for her and a stack of tarps to elevate her legs with.

“
Why?” she asked again.

“
Because I couldn't just watch you die.” I moved over to her and put the blanket around her. I avoided looking at her legs, and didn't want to look her in the eyes. It didn't leave much to look at.

“
I’ve done nothing to you. Why don’t you let me die?”

“
Is that what you want? To die?”