Den of Thieves (12 page)

Chapter Twenty-Four

I
t was all Malden could do to hold on. His strength was no match for the demon's, even with half its arms crushed under the fallen tower.

But he would not let go of the crown.

In the last moment before the tower collapsed, Malden's luck had returned in trumps. The doorway that had been jammed shut by the demon's bulk collapsed in front of him, its stones shattered by the creature's thrashing. Suddenly the way back to the moonlit corridor was open—and he was given a chance at survival.

He had nearly squandered it. Because even as the tower was collapsing over his head, when the stone was shrieking and roaring and smashing all around him, he heard a voice calling him. A voice of authority that demanded respect. A voice that could have commanded nations.

Thief
, the voice had said. And that was all. It had not been his ears that heard the voice, of that he was certain. Though it sounded exactly like someone shouting just behind him, he knew the voice was inside his head.

He turned away from escape and safety to see who had spoken. It was not the demon—the thing had no voice, and even if it could speak, it would not have sounded like that. It was a human voice. Which meant, absurd as it might sound, that it was the crown that spoke. The simple golden coronet of the Burgrave.

Malden's childhood had been full of tales of statues that could speak, and of talking animals that were secretly men under the curses of dire sorcery. Those were simple tales, made to entertain. Yet magic was real enough. He was almost willing to accept that a crown could talk, even if he hadn't heard it himself.

When it spoke again, all doubts flew away.

Thief, do not let me be entombed here.

Malden reached out then, heedless of the demon's thrashing arms, and grabbed the crown out of the air. The fact that a slender tentacle was still wrapped around its other side did not matter. When that voice spoke, something inside Malden had no choice but to listen. He had grasped the crown, and then thrown himself clear of the collapsing tower, into the trapped palace corridor beyond. When the earth stopped shaking and the demon was crushed under a dozen tons of broken stone, Malden found himself lying on the floor dazed and bruised but with the fingers of one hand still clutching the crown.

He looked up to see the corridor transfixed. When the tower came down it must have shaken the entire palace like an earthquake. The vibrations had been enough to trigger every one of the traps in the corridor. The portcullises were all down, their spear points embedded in the floor. No matter how long he watched them, they did not retract—the delicate springs that controlled them must have snapped. He was trapped inside the corridor, between a massive pile of rock debris and a portcullis that looked uncomfortably like a set of prison bars.

He tried to rise carefully to his feet, intent on figuring out what to do next. “You wouldn't have any clever ideas, would you, crown?” he asked the thing in his hand. It did not answer—perhaps it only gave commands, and did not accept them. He started to dust himself off and consider his plight.

Which was when he was yanked off his feet again, to fall painfully to the floor. He looked in horror at the crown and saw that he was not the only one still holding onto it. The demon's slender tentacle was still wrapped around it in an unbreakable grip.

Slowly, with jerks and starts, the tentacle began to withdraw back into the pile of broken stone. The damned thing was still alive—and intent on keeping its treasure.

But so was Malden. He grabbed the crown with both hands and braced his feet against the pile of debris. He pulled with all his might, heedless if he bent the crown in the process. The muscles in his skinny arms bunched and tightened like lengths of rope, and he gritted his teeth as sweat broke out on his brow. It was certainly a losing battle. The demon was many times stronger than he was, he knew. As it tugged at the crown he felt the power in its gelatinous muscles straining against him. But Malden had heard that voice. The voice that could send men to their deaths, and make them believe they went only to glory.

He refused to let go.

Chapter Twenty-Five

C
roy's blood thrummed with excitement, as if his veins were harp strings plucked by righteousness. As he and Bikker approached the fiend they were laughing. Each drew his sword, and the very air seemed to throb with potential.

The blades were made for one purpose alone. It had been a long time since they'd had a chance to perform that function.

Acidtongue seethed in Bikker's hand, its pitted metal slick with power. Ghostcutter leapt from Croy's sheath and shone in the moonlight like a torch of might. Croy's sword had no magic in it—instead, it had been made to cut
through
magic. Its blade was as long as Croy's arm, made of cold-forged iron as black as the pit. No man now alive—nor any dwarf—remembered the method of its manufacture: alone in the world, it possessed its special characteristics. One edge had been honed to razor sharpness, and had to be specially ground out when it dulled—no heat could be applied to the blade or the iron would lose its special properties. Silver had been fused along the other edge, carefully poured along the cutting surface to make a uniform coating. Trails and runnels of the silver streaked the central ridge and fuller like the drippings of candle wax. The iron edge did more damage to demons than the best steel ever could, while the silver could disrupt magic spells and curses, and, aye, even cut the ectoplasmic flesh of a ghost. It was a potent weapon, and it had served Croy well on more occasions than he could count. He knew its every peculiarity, had learned its balance and its heft so thoroughly that when he held it, Ghostcutter became an extension of his arm—an extension of his desire for justice and the right.

In many ways he thought of himself as an extension of Ghostcutter, instead of vice versa. The sword had a destiny, and a longer span of life than Croy ever would.

Now he waded straight into the arms of the demon, flourishing the sword above his head, totally without fear. He brought the iron edge down with a strong overhead swing that should have sliced one of the demon's tentacles in half.

Except that it didn't.

The rubbery tissue scorched where the iron blade touched it—the stench was overpowering—but it was like trying to cut water. The sword went through without resistance but the flesh simply flowed around it. Croy shouted his defiance and swung again, this time a low, sideways cut that could have cleaved a man in half at the waist. The tentacle before him split open—so it could be cut!—but oozed away from the stroke even before Croy had followed through.

He had failed to harm the demon much, but succeeded in one thing: he had gotten its attention. A tentacle lashed toward him even as he was recovering from his attack and wrapped itself around his neck like a living whipcord. There was no time to parry, much less dodge out of its way. In the Lady's sacred name the thing was fast.

The fleshy rope was dry and its skin was cracked, as if it had been exposed to the hot sun of the desert for days. It smelled of corruption and vileness, and had the consistency of a custard. At least, until it constricted. Then it felt like an iron chain lashed around Croy's throat.

A second tentacle wrapped around his thigh and staggered him. It yanked backward, and it was all Croy could do to keep his feet. The fiend would pull him down if he did not find some way to break its grasp. Croy struck at this second arm with his blade, but it held resolute, even as the cold-forged iron seared its skin.

The tentacle around his throat constricted until he felt his throat start to crush. Every breath became a hard-fought effort. He lost all interest in keeping his footing, as just staying alive became his main focus. His vision filled up with throbbing blood and his eyes bulged out of their sockets as the demon dragged him off his feet and toward its center. Was there a mouth in there, full of teeth to grind his bones? He could see none—perhaps it merely wanted to bring more of its arms to bear on crushing him into paste.

“Bik-k-k-k,” he choked, ashamed to call on the scoundrel's aid but knowing he could not free himself.

“What's that, lad? You need to speak up,” Bikker said. A tentacle tried to reach around Bikker's chest but the bearded swordsman punched it away with his free hand. Another lashed him across the side of the head, a glancing blow but strong enough to knock Bikker sideways. “Blast your eyes,” Bikker said. “This is not what I expected of our reacquaintance.” Bikker's sword whirled through the air, droplets of acid falling like rain on the beast so it recoiled in pain. The pitted blade sliced through the tentacle around Croy's throat as easy as it could cut paper. The stump of the cut arm waved desperately in the air, its wound cauterized by the hissing acid. Another swing and Croy's leg was free.

“My thanks,” Croy called as he dodged away from another tentacle bent on snaring his sword arm.

“Save them. The damned thing is still growing. If we're going to kill it, it's best done soon. I'll clear you a path—go for its heart, if it has one!” Acidtongue swung around and around like a scythe mowing wheat. Bikker did not even bother with proper flourishes and cutting strokes, instead engaging the demon with a series of sweeping moulinet cuts. Though he barely touched the demon's arms, they were severed right and left, the tapered ends of the tentacles dropping all around them to writhe and die separately on the ground.

Acidtongue looked like a piece of rusted old iron, like a sword cast aside in a field, left out in the sun and rain for centuries. Yet when its wielder slogged into battle its true virtue made itself known. It secreted a concentrated vitriol more powerful than any alchemist's
aqua regia
, an acid that could cut through any substance known to man. The sword had to be kept in a special glass-lined scabbard just so it didn't eat its way through and burn the man who wore it at his belt. It was one of the most powerful weapons in the world, and Bikker was a master at its use.

Croy had to admit, not without a twinge of professional jealousy, that it made short work of the demon that had nearly overwhelmed him.

“Now,” Bikker shouted, and Croy ducked under a flailing arm and into the gap Bikker made. A seeming wall of severed stumps lay before him. The demon had continued to grow even after the tower fell on it, and now it seemed as big as the palace. Severed arms beat at his head and shoulders, and smaller tentacles reached to grab his arms and legs, but Croy laughed as he brought Ghostcutter around with both hands wrapped about its hilt. He brought it up to his shoulder, then drove it down with all its might into the join between two tentacles. The blade met some resistance at first but then pierced the tough skin and sank deep into the demon's body, all the way up to its quillions.

That, it turned out, was enough to make the demon scream.

Its voice was high and chirping like a bird's, but loud enough to shatter glass windows in the palace. Its scream was wordless and atonal, a simple heart cry so pure and piteous that it could mean only the creature's death. It screamed with its mind, not with any audible voice, like many demons of Croy's experience. His brain was battered by a trillion small voices speaking gibberish, but pleading, begging, beseeching him to withdraw his sword. When Croy refused, the demon tried to pull back physically, to roll away from the sword, to thrash itself free. It redoubled its attacks, its arms wrapping around Croy's body so thick they covered him head to toe. But its strength was already ebbing and he only held fast, grunting in pain. By the time Bikker reached him and cut him free, the demon was already dead and its tentacles slithered off of him as if he'd been buried in a pile of so much rope.

Croy stumbled over its severed arms where they littered the courtyard and out into the moonlight, gasping for air. When he had a little breath back, he started to laugh. Bikker slapped him hard on the back and he nearly went down on one knee.

By the mercy of the Lady, that had felt good. To do the thing he was sworn to do, once more. Demons were so rare upon the land these days that he'd had to find other uses for Ghostcutter's puissance, and not always things he was proud of. He'd nearly forgotten the purity and the clear conscience that came from fighting demons.

Beside him, Bikker looked possessed of the same emotion. He was smiling from ear to ear, all malice gone from his eyes. Perhaps, just perhaps, there was something of the hero in the man yet. Perhaps the man who Croy had once know was not yet dead. He'd thought Bikker lost to the tide of cynicism and shifting morality that sullied this world, but perhaps . . .

The castellan came running from the palace, pulling a dressing robe around his withered frame. “Water!” the old man cried. “The Guardian must be doused in water, or it'll keep growing until it chokes the world! Fetch water from the well, bring more from the river! Water! Water!”

Eventually the castellan saw the corpse of the demon—his eyes had never been very good, and age had worsened them—and stopped his shouting. “Water,” he said with a dejected air. “Water would have made it shrink.”

“Cold iron and acid seem to work, too,” Bikker said, taunting the old man. He laughed heartily. “Don't tell me, castellan, that you've been harboring a demon inside these walls. Don't tell me you made a pet of a pit fiend.”

The three of them stared at the body as it began to smoke and dissolve. It was not a creature of this world, and lacking now its vital force, it had nothing to protect it from the abhorrence of nature. In moments its corpse would resolve to nothing but a stink of brimstone and a blackish residue on the stones.

“It's the Guardian of the—the—” The castellan's face turned dark with congested blood. It was a high crime for any man to summon a demon or to keep one hidden. For decades Croy and knights like him had been hunting down sorcerers capable of performing the necessary rituals. Now only a handful of them remained, and all of them closely watched. If it could be proved that, say, Hazoth had summoned this demon, he would be burnt at the stake. Even for one as powerful as the Burgrave, harboring a demon could be a hanging offense. Should Bikker or Croy bring news of this to the capital—

But then the castellan's face creased with shrewdness. He pointed one long and trembling finger at the two swordsmen.

“You are an escaped prisoner. And you have no right to be here,” he said.

Croy looked at Bikker. “I'd hoped when we saved the palace from the demon, all might be forgiven.”

Bikker grinned wickedly. “Did you expect justice in this life, lad? Have you learned so little of my teachings?”

“Guards!” the castellan shouted. “Take these two under arrest!”

Suddenly the walls of Castle Hill were crowded with archers, while men of the watch in their cloaks-of-eyes came streaming in through the Market Square gate.

“I had hoped to talk to you more. But we'll meet again,” Croy said.

“You may be assured of it,” Bikker agreed.

And then they split up, running in opposite directions as fast as their legs could carry them.