and Aethil directed the others to head down the mountainside as fast as they could run.
The elves looked startled as they emerged, unable to understand where they were or what it meant. Malden figured that their confusion might just save them. If they stopped to think about what had just happened, they might despair and stop moving.
And that would be fatal. The whole mountain shook, again and again. High overhead snow and rocks were cascading down. The peak of the mountain looked far different to Malden than when he first saw it. Cloudblade, Croy had called it-now it looked more like a dozen blades, tilting against one another. As he watched, terrified, one of the blades collapsed and shattered as it struck the slope beneath.
“That’s the last of them, son,” Slag shouted over the deafening rumble of a mountain taking itself to pieces. “Everyone’s clear! Now, scarper for dear fucking life!”
Malden didn’t have to be told twice. He ran down the slope, jumping over rocks and rolling every time the shaking earth threw him off his feet. He whooped in panic but kept moving, running, always downward, always away from the rocks that came bouncing and shooting past him. A stone the size of his fist shot past his ear fast as an arrow from a bow. Grit filled his mouth and nose so he could barely breathe.
He didn’t stop running until he was suddenly going uphill again, and then only because he was at the end of his physical endurance. He kept climbing, as fast as his muscles would let him, even as the top of Cloudblade disappeared in a vast roil of dust and vapor, even as the earth bounced and heaved underneath him. He kept climbing long after his fingertips bled, long after the pain in his side, in his lungs, in his cuts and bruises and countless scrapes, had devoured every rational thought in his head.
And then-finally-he climbed up over one last rock and before him stood an open fortress gate, beyond which hundreds of angular elfin faces looked out at him. Elves, and Croy and Cythera, and Slag-and Herward.
He had made it to the fort that Herward the hermit called his home.
Malden hurried inside. The gate was slammed shut behind him. He threw himself full length on the ground. The world was still moving, though not as violently as before. And then he did nothing for a long while but breathe, and stare up at the smoke and dust in the air, and finally-finally-long after the rumbling and the shrieking of broken rock and the howling winds of dust had ground away, he looked up once more, and saw blue sky over his head.
Nothing but blue sky above him, as far as he could see.
When he could hear again, he heard the lamentation of the elves. They had lost everything-their home, their ancestors, their Hieromagus. Everything but their lives. He heard someone sobbing then and he turned his head to the side. Across the courtyard of the fortress he saw Cythera weeping by herself.
He went over and squatted next to her. He did not speak.
“He knew,” Cythera said quietly. “The Hieromagus had seen the future. He saw this, all of this. In his last moments, his mind spoke directly to my mind. For an instant I saw into his heart. He knew that what he’d seen could not be changed. That this was the only way for his people to survive.”
“What are you saying?” Malden asked her.
“He wasn’t our enemy. He was never our enemy. Everything he did was to lead us to this moment. He was deeply confused, Malden, lost in time-so lost he couldn’t just tell us what he was doing. So it looked like he was our enemy, but… no.”
“Then why did he resist us so fiercely?”
“But that’s just it-he didn’t. He helped us every way he could,” she explained. “It was he who gave Aethil the love potion-so that when the time came, when Slag called on her to be a true queen, she would listen. His idea to release us from the gaol, and let us see so much of his domain-so we would understand, and know his people were not evil. That once we lived together, and could again.” She shook her head. “Even at the end, even in the passage back there. He wasn’t trying to hurt me when he poured those curses into me. Malden! He knew it was the only way to open the passage. He knew only I could do it. He spoke to me, in silence, with his last thought before he died.”
“What did he say?” Malden asked.
“ ‘Save my people. Show them a forest, and let them live there.’ He knew, the whole time, how this would end. And he sacrificed everything to make sure we lived.”
Croy came over and held Cythera close and kissed the top of her head. “He was a true leader, willing to die for what he believed in. Not evil at all. Just like Morget, who died to destroy the demon he’d pledged himself against. They were both heroes.”
“If you like,” Cythera said.
Malden watched them clutch each other tightly and tried not to let jealousy overcome him. He walked away, to a corner of the courtyard where he could be mostly alone. Then he took the piece of parchment out of his tunic. The one he’d found on Prestwicke’s body.
He started to unfold it, but before he could Aethil stood up in the center of the courtyard and called out, “Sir Croy? Where is Sir Croy?”
Before Croy could answer her, Slag jumped up and waved his arms in the air. “Over here, darling,” he called back.
Aethil ran to the dwarf and lifted him off the ground in a passionate embrace. “Sir Croy, you are a noble knight indeed. You have saved my people from utter destruction. The time ahead will be fraught with difficulties. We will need to learn once more how to live above the ground. But we will live. We will live, thanks to you. My love, I cannot repay you, ever, for all you have done. Ask of me any reward you would have, any favor, any liberty you desire-”
The real Croy cleared his throat.
Malden saw Slag’s face flush red. “Aethil, my, uh, my dear, sweet, forgiving Aethil,” the dwarf said. “Let’s go somewhere private.”
“Oh, yes!” Aethil exclaimed.
“To… talk. There’s something I need to tell you.”
Malden smiled, but could not bring himself to laugh.
He had other thoughts on his mind. Carefully, he unfolded the parchment, and studied the words written on it. There weren’t many. There was a short description of his own physical appearance, and a list of the taverns in Ness he was known to frequent, and that was all. Information that might be useful to an assassin looking to track his target. There was no formal warrant for the thief’s death, no flowery language about why it was justified. No explanation at all as to why he had to die.
Nor was there any signature. Yet at the bottom of the page there was a small mark, a crude drawing. It showed a heart, transfixed by a key.
Epilogue
The water surged furiously, smashing its way back and forth through the submerged shaft. Pebbles and small stones went streaming past like shots from a thousand slings, smashing into his body and cutting his skin to ribbons. The last trapped breath in his lungs, long since gone stale, sought desperately to get out. It pushed at his battered rib cage and filled his mouth, yet opening his lips now would mean certain death by drowning.
It was impossible to swim up the shaft. It shook wildly every second, and he could feel the immense pressure of water building behind him as parts of it collapsed. His cloak wrapped around him like the coils of a constricting serpent. He tore it away and kicked to propel himself up the passage, the water pushing him from behind like the cork in a bottle of shaken beer.
He bounced off the walls of the shaft many times, hard enough that he could barely feel his arms as he was launched out of the mouth of the shaft, back into the clean sunlight of the surface world. The shaft was set into the face of a sheer cliff, and the water that came spurting out fell away into open air. It was all he could do to grab at the edges of the shaft’s mouth to avoid being hurled into the chasm below. With fingers like iron claws, he dug into the rock and held on for dear life. He could only watch as the body of a dead elf was ejected from the shaft and went spinning down into empty space below. When he heard the crunch of the elf’s eventual impact, he winced and looked down to see the corpse in a heap on the rocks far below.
