A Thief in the Night (25 page)

Chapter Forty-five

M
alden dropped the bar instantly. He grabbed up a candle and peered at the wall next to the door. It didn't take long to find what he was looking for—a hole bored into the stone, as wide across as his little finger, drilled at exactly neck height for a dwarf. It was hard to tell by candlelight but he thought there might be a spring inside.

A classic trap, and one he would have seen instantly if it had been set for a victim of human height. The hole would be drilled all the way through the wall, and the spring latched in place. On the far side of the wall there would be a bit of wire running from the door to the spring. When they opened the door, the wire snapped, releasing the spring. Anyone standing near the door would be shot with the dart.

As to who had set the dart, Malden had no clue—though he supposed it must be the same unknown person who had placed the spike trap back in the barricade room.

“Damn,” he said. “So obvious, when you know it's there!”

“Aye, lad,” Slag said. He pulled the dart free and threw it to the floor. “Smarts a bit.” He looked up at Malden. When their eyes met, Malden knew instantly that something was wrong. He had a pretty clear idea what it was, too.

“I got so fucking close,” Slag whispered.

“Oh, no,” Malden said. “It can't be. I—I'm sorry, old man.”

The dwarf nodded and looked away. Then he took two steps away from the door and let out a scream of pain that echoed around the abandoned foundry. The agony must have been excruciating, for he doubled over and his whole body shook.

Cythera looked over at Malden with wide eyes, then rushed forward with her light. “Slag—are you all right?”

“What a fucking daft question,” the dwarf told her. “No, I'm not.”

“Poison,” Cythera cried as she bent down by Slag's side. The dwarf put an arm around her waist and let her help him off his feet. Gently, she laid him down on the floor, then emptied her pack and wadded it up to make a pillow for his head. He tried to sit up but she pushed him back down. “No, Slag,” she said, “don't move, just—just rest.”

“No,” Malden said, clenching his eyes shut. “No, damn you. Not like this.”

There was little he could do. He wrapped the end of his cloak around his hand and picked up the dart. It was made of very light wood and fletched with pigeon feathers. The point looked very sharp. There was no doubt in his mind that it had not been sitting there, waiting to kill someone, for eight hundred years. The mechanism would have rusted away or the dart itself would have rotted. Someone had laid that trap recently, within the last couple of days. And it didn't seem at all like the work of revenants. They longed to kill the living, true enough, but they had far less subtle methods at their disposal.

A droplet of straw-colored liquid ran down the shaft of the dart, and he sniffed at it before dropping it again. “It doesn't smell like hemlock,” he said.

“Lad,” the dwarf said, staring up at Malden. “Lad, I'm fucking cold.”

Malden nodded and took off his cloak. Laying it across the dwarf's body, he knelt down beside him.

Slag gave him a wry smile. He tried to say something more but then his body seized up and he could only tilt his head to the side before he started retching.

Cythera dropped to her knees by the dwarf's side. “Hold him,” she told Malden. “He might hurt himself.”

Malden clutched the dwarf's arms as Slag began to shake violently. Convulsions wracked his slight frame and his back arched unnaturally.

“There must be something we can do for him,” Malden insisted.

“Just—Just hold him!” Cythera said, grabbing Slag's ankles. “This won't last very long. Not this time, I think.”

Slag's body gave one last buck and then he fell back and lay still.

“Oooh,” the dwarf said. “My back hurts.”

Cythera brought her hand up to her mouth and gnawed anxiously on one fingernail. “You said it didn't smell like hemlock. The poison on the dart. What did it smell like? Did it smell of almonds? Or perhaps garlic?”

Malden shook his head. “No smell at all, really. It was the color of straw.”

“Was it liquid, or was it pasty?”

The thief stared at her. “Liquid,” he said. “What are you getting at? You knew he would have that fit. What do you know of poisons?”

She waved one hand in the air. “I mentioned that my mother's a witch, Malden.”

“I have met her, you know,” he protested. Then he shook his head and said, “She taught you something of poisons?”

“There are more reagents, tinctures, and orpiments in her larder than you'd find in an apothecary's shop. She uses them to brew potions, to make healing salves, special ointments—she taught me a little of the plants and compounds that heal, and, yes, a little of those that kill.”

She jumped up and ran to where the dart lay. She studied it carefully, then took a droplet of the poison between two fingertips and rubbed them together briskly. “It's not hemlock, you're right. Nor hebon of yew, though the symptoms are close . . . maybe henbane? He's too lucid for it to be deadly nightshade.”

Malden looked down at the dwarf. Sweat slicked across Slag's face, and his skin was a rosy pink—which looked decidedly unhealthy, since normally a dwarf's skin was whiter than snow. Slag writhed and pushed Malden's cloak off him, as if he had grown too hot. Consciousness had nearly fled him.

Malden ran over to where Cythera stood and whispered, “Will he perish?”

“Yes,” she said, looking him right in the eye. “Whether it happens in the next few minutes, though, or as much as a day from now, I can't say. Not without knowing what kind of poison was on this dart, how much of a dose he received—and a hundred other things I can't begin to guess at.”

“You must know an antidote, though. Surely there is one!”

“If I could get him out of here—if I could bring him to Coruth, perhaps. But she's hundreds of miles away.”

“We have to try. If he has any chance at all.” He reached over and took her hand. “Cythera, I know you won't want to hear it. But this means we have to escape from the Vincularium as fast as we can. We can't go looking for Croy.”

Her mouth formed a hard line but she didn't look away from his eyes.

“You're right,” she said. The words came as if they'd been dragged out of her.

Malden nodded and turned around, intending to build some kind of litter out of the tents they carried in their packs. He stopped, though, when he saw that Slag was crawling across the floor.

“Stop that this instant,” Cythera said.

Slag halted his forward progress. Yet he looked up at them and said, “Fuck off. I know I'm dying. You don't have to fucking whisper about it. Before I go, though, I have to see what's behind that door. I have to know if it's still there.”

Chapter Forty-six

“W
hat was that sound, just now?” Croy asked.

Mörget turned and shook his head to indicate he'd heard nothing.

“It sounded like someone screaming, very far away.”

The barbarian stopped where he was and tilted his head to one side. “Nothing,” he said. “Perhaps a gust of wind, howling through these ruins. Did it sound to you like your woman?”

“. . . No,” Croy admitted. “You must be right. Let's hurry onward, all the same.”

They had found a spiral ramp that led upward to a higher level. A thin stream of water rolled down the ramp and made their footing precarious, but Croy was able to climb with one hand along the rough stone wall.

At the top of the ramp they found a long, low tunnel, perhaps twenty feet wide, its ceiling not much higher than their heads. It ran away from them into darkness. Croy hardly trusted his sense of direction at that point, but he believed the tunnel headed back in the direction of the main shaft.

The floor was slick with water, and a thin vapor coiled around his ankles. The tunnel was filled with broad stone racks, standing in uniform rows. Each rack had four shelves, and each shelf was packed tight with a type of object he didn't recognize. They were cylindrical in shape, though some were squatter than others, and some taller. Each was wrapped tightly in coarse fabric with a broad weave. They gave off a peculiar smell of dampness and must, and Croy thought they must be rotting away after so long underground in the wet.

Farther along the corridor, narrow side passages opened to either side. Mörget took the one on the left, Croy on the right, and when they came back together in the center they each could report they'd seen the same thing—more long, wet corridors, more racks, myriad more cylinders wrapped in fabric. There were at least a dozen such tunnels, and every one was filled in exactly the same manner.

Croy's curiosity got the better of him. He mounted his candle on top of one rack to free his hands. Then he lifted one of the cylinders from the rack and carefully unwrapped it. It was heavier than he'd expected it to be, but once open, it crumbled and fell apart easily. Inside the fabric he found three pounds of stinking black dirt. Clods of it broke off and pattered down along his cloak and struck his boots. A trickle of fine dirt rolled down the sleeve of his jerkin. Peering close in the darkness, he made out pale shapes inside the dark dirt, so he broke open the larger clods for a closer inspection. Growing inside the dirt were yellow-white fans of pulpy fungus.

“This is a farm,” he said, surprised. “Of course, the dwarves couldn't grow proper crops down here—but mushrooms prosper under the earth. They don't need the sun. All they need is a little damp. And some . . . night soil.”

He stared down at his filthy hands.

Mörget stared at him. “What is that on your skin? It smells like shit.”

Croy dropped the unwrapped cylinder. Hurriedly, he bent down and washed his hands in the thin stream of water covering the floor.

Mörget leaned over to sniff at one of the cylinders. Then he looked at Croy where he squatted. The barbarian let out a booming laugh that echoed wildly in the low-ceilinged tunnel.

“Ha ha ha,” he crowed. “Ha ha! The fancy knight has gotten himself all dirty! This is funny!”

Croy fought down a homicidal impulse and breathed deeply to clear his head. It was, after all, a little funny. He forced himself to smile. Then he rose to his full height and bowed deeply.

Mörget was weeping from laughing so hard. He bent from the waist—it was not a bow—and then slowly straightened up.

Just in time for Croy to hurl one of the cylinders at his chest.

The cloth tore open on impact and three pounds of manure splattered across Mörget's laced-up cloak. Some of it got on his face.

“You—” Mörget howled, and his hands came up to claw at the air. His eyes went wide with pure, unadulterated rage.

Maybe, Croy thought, I just made a mistake.

As Mörget's hands started to come down, Croy dashed sideways into the racks. He ducked low to hide himself from view. He could hear Mörget rushing toward him, perhaps intent on slaughtering him for the insult.

The barbarian was twice Croy's size. He held an Ancient Blade equal to Croy's own, and plenty of other weapons he could use in his weak hand. If the two of them came to blows, Croy knew it would go hard on him.

He reached down to put a hand on Ghostcutter's hilt. The barbarian was only steps away. Croy put one foot forward in a strong defensive crouch.

Mörget came around the side of the rack, both hands filled with weaponry. Croy raised one arm to protect his face—

But it was no use. Both cylinders full of manure struck him square on, covering him instantly in filth.

“Oh, for fie,” Croy said, spluttering as wet manure slid down his cheeks and matted his hair. He jumped forward but Mörget had already run away. As Croy came out into the main aisle between the racks, a steady rain of manure cylinders smashed all around him, knocking over racks, exploding on the wet floor until it was a slippery morass. Croy tried to return fire, snatching cylinder after cylinder off the rack, but he could barely sense where Mörget hid.

A cylinder struck Croy's shoulder and spun him around—but for a split second he'd seen Mörget's shaved head sticking up over a rack to his left. Croy ducked low, gathering a pair of cylinders up in his arms as he hurried forward. It was hard to keep his balance on the muck-covered floor, but just as Mörget rose to throw again, Croy leapt forward, twisting in midair, and cast first one then the other cylinder, at very close range and with all the power of his arms.

The first cylinder missed Mörget and burst against the wall behind him. The second, however, hit Mörget squarely in the face. The red stain on his mouth and chin made an excellent target, even in the low light.

Manure splattered over Mörget's features, masking him in excrement. The barbarian tried to howl but only gurgled. He reached up with filthy hands to claw at his eyes, then dropped to his knees and coughed desperately to clear his mouth. For a while he could do nothing but grimace and spit.

Croy slapped him on the back and a thick ball of manure shot out of the barbarian's windpipe. Mörget gasped for breath and nodded his thanks. When he could breathe again, Croy reached down with one hand and grasped Mörget's wrist tightly, helping him to his feet.

The barbarian laughed and shook his head. “It is like the olden days, when my brother and I would wrestle and play tricks on one another,” he said.

“It's good to have a laugh now and again,” Croy agreed. He sighed. “Ah, Mörget, here we are—surrounded by death and danger, our comrades in certain peril, lost in the dark in the lair of a demon.”

The barbarian agreed with a hearty sigh. “What other treasures could life offer to a man?”

Croy's eyes went wide. This was a . . . treasure? And yet . . . he knew exactly what Mörget meant. Croy never felt so alive as when he was dodging certain annihilation, or cutting his way through a throng of enemies. As much as he wanted to rescue Cythera and Slag and get away from the Vincularium, there was a part of him that longed for adventures like this, and mourned how few of them fate presented to him.

“I'll miss this life,” he said.

“You are expecting to die soon?” Mörget asked.

“Only part of me.” Croy shook his head. “I fear the age of adventuring is coming to an end. My land is pacified, and from here to the mountains in every direction, it is turned to agriculture, and the good of mankind. All of Skrae is under the rule of the king's law. No more trolls scheming in dark forests. No more bandits preying on travelers in the hills.” He laughed a little. “And every year, fewer sorcerers remain—the arcane arts are thankfully being lost. Now that Hazoth is dead, there are only two or three real sorcerers left in the world. And where there are no sorcerers, there can be no demons that need slaying.”

“It is true. Too true,” Mörget agreed.

“Well, no point in crying over future boredom when today is full of excitement,” Croy said, brushing off his cloak as best he could. He would need to bathe before he saw Cythera again, or she would most likely faint from the smell of him. “We must press on.” He sniffed at the air. The stench of the manure didn't bother him so much anymore—nor did it obscure other smells quite as much. He led Mörget back to the central aisle, then started once more up the tunnel, looking for another way up.

He sniffed at the air again. Something—maybe—reached his nose that was not the smell of excrement, nor of mushrooms, nor of general damp. Something sharp and slightly acrid. Something that tickled the roof of his mouth.

Looking back at Mörget, he placed a finger across his lips for silence. Then he drew Ghostcutter.

He had definitely smelled the smoke of a campfire.