But of course he would not be allowed to enter the house, not yet.
Bikker was leaning against the side of the building. His arms were folded across his massive chest. Croy could see the cowl of a chain-mail hauberk emerging from inside his tunic. The big swordsman’s face glowed with ruddy health.
“Croy,” Bikker said, and stepped away from the wall. “Might I have a moment of your time?”
Chapter Eighty-One
Hazoth’s sanctum was a long room with high vaulted ceilings shrouded in darkness. As Malden entered, the only light came from the rose window at its far end, a massive round piece of stained glass that cast long ribbons of red and blue illumination across the floor. After the gloom of the corridor and its dark illusions, it was almost enough light for him to see clearly by-he almost welcomed the eerily hued light that streamed into the room. Peering forward, he sought what he’d come for, though he wasn’t sure what it would look like.
Vague shapes of furniture and magical equipment were all around him. Every corner of the place was cluttered with gear and apparatus, and he was careful not to step forward until he was sure he wouldn’t trip over something baleful or disgusting. Once he’d taken a few strides, he began to make out more distinct shapes. He could vaguely see the silhouette of a tree in the middle of the room, its branches raised high like the beseeching arms of a woman in distress.
That must be the witch Coruth. Cythera’s mother, who had transformed herself into the shape of a rowan tree, to avoid torture at the hands of the sorcerer.
Malden took a step toward the tree-and the room erupted in light.
Red fire leapt up all around him, from braziers and cressets and dozens of candelabra on high stands. The flames danced wickedly-these were no normal flames, but tongues of fire summoned straight from the pit. They lit up every detail of the room but gave the place a ruddy cast that made everything look stained with blood.
The walls of the room were lined with bookshelves-he had thought Hazoth’s library on the first floor impressive, but here there must be ten times as many books, scrolls, palimpsests, and fragments of stone tablets. Standing before the bookshelves were worktables covered in magical implements: athames, compasses and calibers, goblets, wands, styli of bitumen, silver chains, bundles of herbs tied together, ready to be cast into the magical flames. Incense burned from a dozen censers. The mummified body of a lizard with a long, toothy snout hung in chains from the ceiling.
On one of the tables stood a glass dome on a carved wooden trivet. Inside the dome a thing perhaps nine inches tall scratched at the glass with tiny pincers. Its face was almost human but its body was
… not. Malden chose not to study its form too carefully. Looking away, he saw that on another table stood a bowl full of what looked like quicksilver. When he walked past it, its substance stretched upward until a cluster of argent eyes stared at him, mounted on a thin stalk of liquid substance. It made no attempt to molest him, so he showed it the same respect. A third table held the body of a small demon, pinned to the boards with long iron needles, its lights and guts exposed to the air. The demon’s seven eyes blinked and quivered, and Malden knew it was still alive. He shuddered as it beseeched him with its alien gaze, begging him to free it. For all of its alien form, he might have done just that if he hadn’t known better, and if not for far more pressing errands waiting him. He looked away again and scanned more of the room.
Skulls inscribed with tiny writing sat in a heap. Charts of the heavens, with the constellations picked out in gold, lay half unrolled on the floor. A thing like a clock made of brass lay in pieces across one table. Its numbered face did not measure time in any fashion Malden recognized.
A scholar of the arcane might spend a lifetime cataloging all the oddments in the room. Malden had so little time he barely bothered to glance at the assembled paraphernalia. He moved quickly to the magic circle in the center of the room, where Coruth stood imprisoned. The circle was merely a diagram in chalk inscribed on the floor, a double circle with runes and sigils drawn between its concentric lines. It looked like a child’s scrawl on a pavement, not like an inescapable prison for a powerful witch. Then again, Coruth’s appearance was deceiving as well.
In the red light she looked far less like a woman and more like a normal tree, though she lacked foliage even now in the height of summer. There was a vague suggestion of a face in the bark of the rowan, but it did not open eyes or whisper secrets to Malden as he approached. If he had not known otherwise, he would have thought it a perfectly natural tree. It was strange, perhaps, that its roots were driven into the wooden floorboards of the room, or that they spread to fill the circle to its full extent but never edged outside the chalk lines inscribed on the floor.
Far more important, and thus absorbing all of his attention, was the leaden coffer half tangled in those roots. It was a simple box traced with a few simple runes, four feet long and two feet high and wide. It had been sealed with great heat so that its lid was fused closed.
Malden knelt down just outside the magic circle and reached tentatively toward the coffer. He knew he had to free Coruth, but the crown was in there! He could almost hear it speaking inside his head, and it demanded to be released. His fingertips passed over the outermost chalk mark of the circle and – he pulled his hand back instantly. He had expected the circle to burn him, or perhaps to grab him and hold him like the magical barrier outside. Instead, it only deflected him. He felt no resistance, suffered no pain. His hand was merely repelled, gently, without apparent force. Just enough that he could not have overcome the resistance no matter how hard he tried. He could tell it would be physically impossible for him to reach across the circle and touch the coffer.
There must be some way to break the circle. There had to be some tool for that in this room, some combination of herbs that, when burned together in a flame, would release the circle’s captives.
Before he could find them, however, the red flames that lit the room jumped high, and burned a furious white so bright they overwhelmed his vision and blinded him completely.
Chapter Eighty-Two
Bikker made no move to draw Acidtongue from its glass-lined scabbard. Croy left his own swords in their sheaths.
There was an etiquette to these things. When two swordsmen met in single combat, the resultant duel was known as a conversation. Typically it began with exactly that-a verbal back and forth, designed to test the will of the opponents. Such contests could often be resolved long before the first sword was drawn. Croy knew better than to think he could drive off Bikker the way he had frightened the guards or reasoned with their captain. No, it would never be that easy-for Bikker knew about bravado as well. Yet he could score some points against the man with a clever quip or a daring taunt. He might infuriate his hirsute opposite number and goad him into an ill-timed attack. He might chip away at Bikker’s confidence, and convince him to spend more effort on defense and thereby avoid a devastating attack. Or he might simply gain some honor by calling Bikker the cur that he was.
“Hello, old friend,” Croy said. “I don’t suppose you’ve come around and regained your honor, have you? Care to apologize to me, offer a prayer to the Lady, and be on your way?”
Bikker laughed. “Oh, and is it that easy for a dog to change his spots? I suppose I should make some act of contrition as well. Some penance for my evil ways. Yes, I suppose I could give in to your outmoded notions of honor and chivalry. Or I could just kill you-crush you like a gnat that buzzes in my ear, and then go back to my debauchery. Like any sane man living in the real world would do.”
Croy smiled, though it pained him. “You know, in some strange way it’s good to see you again. It takes me back to better days. You remember, back when you were young and you were at your best.”
“I’d like to say it’s good to see you, too. Except that you don’t look well, Croy,” Bikker said, frowning as if this saddened him. “How much blood is left in you?”
“Enough yet to boil, old friend,” Croy said. Enough to keep me standing for perhaps a moment or two longer, he hoped. “Enough to best a dozen men, just now.”
Bikker nodded in respectful appreciation. “Yes, you certainly showed those dogs how a real man fights. By
