The Thief Who Spat In Luck's Good Eye (25 page)

You shall see.

“
If it doesn't have something to do with catching up to your sister, we're wasting time.”

There is time enough for this.

“
I guess I'll just have to take your word on it, since I have no idea what you're going to do.”

He didn't respond, but just kept climbing the steps. When we reached the top floor, he went from one window to the next, looking out at the corpse of Thagoth.

It was now completely free of the last remnants of snow, dreary desolation ringed on all sides by the death lands. Then, impatient with his limited ability to see, I suppose, he gestured with one hand and the roofless walls of the tower fell away, leaving an unobstructed view on all sides. The stones didn't fall, really; they just disappeared.

Now you will see. What has been done can be undone. What time has destroyed, I can mend here in this place. First I will cure the disease that eats away at the edges of my domain.

A wind started up, blowing outward in all directions from Tha-Agoth. That golden glow suffused him again, only this time it was swept up by the wind and formed a pulsing. shimmering whirlwind with him at the base. Gale-force winds battered us. I fell to my knees and held on to the edge of the tower's precipice. Holgren followed my lead.

The storm grew to an intensity that threatened to pluck us from the tower top. Tha-Agoth gestured, throwing his arms wide. The whirlwind of light surged outward in all directions. It hit the death lands with a mighty rumble.

The scale of the change was massive, and instantaneous. Demented vegetation turned to ash, swept away by that light-suffused, cleansing wind. Horribly mutated predators were caught in it, died, and decomposed in the blink of an eye.

It was finished in the space of a dozen slow breaths. The wind just ceased to be and the golden light winked out. Tha-Agoth had swept the remnants of the Sorcerer King's death magic away from the limits of the valley, scoured the earth around the city clean of any taint of it. I looked out on that newly discovered terrain, and saw tumbled stones and bare, red earth. Dreary as it was, it was a beautiful thing to behold.

I am far from finished. Observe.

I looked up into his starlight eyes, then back out on the red, stony wasteland that had been covered by the death lands. First I saw nothing. Then I glimpsed motion out of the corner of my eye, and felt the first tremors. The ground was spewing up stones.

What the Sorcerer King's magic tore down, what time's patient fingers pried apart, I will rebuild.

Hewn stones flew through the air in a complicated dance, reknitting buildings, streets, fountains, garden walls, statues. The very dust of crumbled stones was drawn together like iron filings to a lodestone, obscuring much of the magic playing out before us in a howling, rust-colored storm.

When the storm was done, we saw Thagoth standing in its true splendor for the first time in over a thousand years. It was breathtaking. The shattered ruins I'd wandered through for six months hadn't given me a true sense of the beauty of the city.

It put Lucernis or any of the great cities of the Dragonsea to shame. Where most of them had grown up in haphazard fashion over the course of centuries, the city that now lay before me was planned, with care and thought given to the placement of streets and fountains and garden spaces. Perhaps one of the great builders or architects could have appreciated and understood it more, a Lohen or a Kanikesh, but I understood well enough that Thagoth was of a piece. The last detail had been planned before the first stone was ever laid. It saddened me that it was, despite its resurrection, still a dead city.

Patience, Amra. Patience and faith. My work is not yet complete. You see only bones.

Fountains sputtered to life first, as their workings knitted back together below ground. Water splashed on stone and caught the light. Then green things began to reappear across the city—trees shot up, vines climbed walls and sprouted flowers, hedges burst forth in spots that had lacked something I couldn't name before, and lush grass rushed across bare expanses of earth like a frantic green tide, changing the primary color of the city from rust red to emerald green.

“
How can you do this? I know you're powerful, but—”

This is my city. The earth and the stones of the earth here take their color from the blood I shed to create it, and to keep it safe. It is mine. Time itself cannot destroy it, if I will otherwise.

“
But it's still lifeless. Cities are meant to be inhabited. Your people are long since dust.”

He smiled.
The ones that fled the cataclysm, I can do nothing for. Those whose lives Athagos took I can do nothing for. All others I cradle in my palm. My blood is life eternal. What the earth has taken to its bosom, I can call back into the light. Your knife, please.

I handed it over to him and he plunged it into his palm, unflinchingly. Then he flung the resulting blood droplets out and away from the tower.

Awake, you sleepers,
he muttered as he walked around the tower top, slinging blood in every direction.
Death is only a dream.

And they came. A vast humming filled the air, and thousand-year-old corpses reassembled themselves out of the tiniest bits of matter, suddenly appearing, one after the other on lawns, in streets, in doorways. They stood and stretched, for all the world like sleepers awakening from a thousand-year nap. It was powerful magic.

They had lost their lives here. Even after an age, some infinitesimal portion of their physical selves still remained in this place. It seemed to be enough for Tha-Agoth to work with.

“
Nothing is ever truly destroyed, I suppose,” said Holgren.

Come, awake. I call to you, my people, my children. Time is no bar, matter is no barrier. Come.
One by one they woke from death, hundreds of men, women, children—an entire bronze-skinned race that had not walked the world in a thousand years. Straight-limbed and handsome, each and every one, they looked up at their emperor and god with an expression of wonder and rapture. They uttered no sound. And Tha-Agoth looked down on them with what I can only call a look of paternal affection.

My children,
he said.
My people. I am eternal, they are eternal, denizens of this eternal city.

That was all great and wonderful, but had little to do with the doom pressing down on the rest of the world. I had had enough of wonders. I wanted to foil the Shadow King, save Holgren from a fate worse than death, and go home.

“
Can I have my knife back now?” I asked.

We decided to set out as the setting sun touched the rim of the valley. Tha-Agoth had called up the warriors of his people to accompany us, and the rest went back to their daily lives as if nothing had happened. That in itself was bizarre, but the truly unnerving thing about the Thagothians was that none of them spoke. Not a word, not a sigh or a chuckle or a hum. Not even the children. They walked around their resurrected city with content smiles plastered on their faces, like half-wits, or sleepwalkers.

Thagoth was not a city I wanted to spend any more time in, whether the death lands were gone or not.

What Holgren thought of the situation he kept to himself. He was hardly more talkative than the Thagothians. When I asked him what the matter was, he shrugged and squeezed my hand lightly with his own burned one. We were sitting out of the way of things, against the outer wall of the Tabernacle.

“
Everything depends on what happens now,” he said. “I’m nervous is all.”

“
Don't be. We've made it through everything else. We'll make it through this as well.”

He smiled and nodded, then pointed out to the square where warriors were assembling around Tha-Agoth. They wore ancient bronze breastplates and helms and nothing by way of armor below their waists except for pale linen breechcloths and sandals. They carried huge bronze shields and long, bronze-tipped spears. They looked like something out of legend. I had no idea what good they could possibly do in the coming struggle, but they'd look good doing it.

Tha-Agoth himself had donned a suit of armor that reminded me of a shimmering body of a dragonfly. His long braids hung free and heavy down his back. He held no shield or weapon. I suppose he didn't need them. I suspected the armor he wore wasn't much more than ceremonial, since he was immortal. I felt that sense of awe catch at my heart again as he stood amidst his troops, and I squashed it. Then Tha-Agoth turned and started walking down the main thoroughfare through the city The soldiers fell in step behind him in two columns.

“
I think it's time to get going,” Holgren said.

“
All right, partner. Let's go face the future.” We hitched ourselves upright and fell in behind the last of the ancient warriors, two ragged afterthoughts among the shining host.

Tha-Agoth ripped holes in reality for his troops to march through. Holgren tried to explain what he was doing, something about folding space. All I know is the god would rip at the air with his hands, and before us would suddenly be a ragged, pulsing hole that opened on an area a mile or more distant. Everybody would troop through, and the process would be repeated.

In this fashion we moved through the night, skipping over miles and miles of terrain. At that pace I estimated it would take us no more than two days to reach Shadowfall, perhaps much less. Not as swift as a gate, but definitely faster than walking or riding.

Once out of the valley, though, we encountered the tag end of the snowstorm that Tha-Agoth had banished from his city. It sputtered out quickly enough, leaving the land under a silent white blanket. After the third or fourth leap forward, I made my way up the lines of silent soldiers to talk to Tha-Agoth.

We would make better time in daylight,
he said,
but to delay until dawn might mean arriving too late.

“
Athagos can do this as well?”

Yes, though not as well as I.

“
Can you sense her?”

Always. She is somewhere ahead. I follow her trail.

“
What will you do when you catch up to her?”

I will rip the cursed chain from her neck and send her home.

“
And then?”

I will destroy the Shadow King.

“
How?”

Slowly and painfully.

“
That's not exactly what I meant.”

It is all you need to know.

“
This coming encounter affects all of us. You may need Holgren and me. You are perhaps the most powerful being I've ever met, but the Shadow King scares me silly, and I don't scare easily.”

He is a worm that I will crush underfoot. Be sure you are not standing too near when I do so, little thief. I have not forgotten your betrayal.

I shook my head. If he didn't realize by now that we had done only what we had to, he never would.

“
I'm not your enemy, Tha-Agoth. Nor is Holgren.”

Of course you aren't. You are nothing in the grand design. You spurned the gift of immortality. You delivered Athagos to my enemy. I do not consider you an enemy. I do not consider you at all.
He turned away from me and ripped another hole in reality.

“
Well, it's nice to know where I stand,” I muttered as the Thagothians shouldered past me into the pulsing rift.

It was some time around midnight when the first attack came. I'd stopped counting the rifts we'd walked through. I was tired, hungry, and concentrating on keeping up with the seemingly indefatigable Thagothians. I didn't doubt Tha-Agoth would leave us behind should we start to lag. If that happened, Holgren would almost certainly fall under the Shadow King's sway. We had to keep huddling under his protective aura.

We'd just stepped through a rift into a dark copse mostly free of snow when the umbrals hurled themselves out of the ground, huge swords whirring. Blood and body parts few in all directions.

It was a perfect ambush.

It was doomed.

In the first few seconds Tha-Agoth's foot soldiers were being decimated. I saw one man split in two from skull to crotch, the umbral's sword cutting through his breastplate like it was cheese. The monster reversed its blade with blinding speed and beheaded another man. All this in the space of two seconds.

The remaining soldiers formed a hollow square around their god, leaving Holgren and I to fend for ourselves. Holgren was already uttering the harsh syllables that would call down lightning. I stood there, useless, knife out.

Then the soldiers opened their mouths and screamed.

It wasn't exactly like Athagos's power. There was a thinner quality to the shriek, a less powerful feel. Still, it turned my bones to jelly and had Holgren and I twitching on the ground. The thought came to me that Tha-Agoth had been speaking literally when he'd called the Thagothians his children. His and Athagos's, with powers to match. No wonder they didn't talk.

Around us the umbrals stopped in their tracks and crumbled to dust. When it was over, their terrible shrieking stopped. The darning needles in my ears withdrew and control of my body returned to me. I turned over and dry heaved the nothing that was in my stomach.

Tha-Agoth moved among the fallen warriors, spending drops of blood to resurrect them. I sat up and helped Holgren regain his feet.