Acidtongue jabbed past his face, and he batted it away like a cat batting at a piece of string-and just as effectually.
He was going to collapse.
Yielding parry-catching Acidtongue just before it cut his throat, taking Acidtongue’s foible with the shortsword’s forte. A classic parry perfectly executed, which should have given him an ideal chance to counterattack. By the time he saw the opportunity, however, Bikker was dancing away.
Croy knew he was doomed.
Acidtongue came rushing toward his shield. It might be a feint, which he should ignore. He lacked the strength to turn into the rush. Acidtongue picked apart the shield, scattering its pieces. Croy’s left was suddenly exposed and undefended. Bikker howled in joy and twisted around, whipping Acidtongue about and building to a slash that would cut open Croy’s belly and spill his guts on the ground.
One last shred of strength remained in Croy’s body. He used it up stabbing downward with the shortsword, driving its point into the ground to make a wall against Acidtongue’s slash. The shortsword wobbled, good dwarven steel pushed past its limits of flexibility. Acidtongue cut through it like a ribbon. Fragments of steel flew everywhere, one of them cutting through the skin of Croy’s cheek. The sword that remained was nothing but a hilt with a jagged inch or two of blade sticking out of it. He dropped the hilt, then closed his eyes and sank down on one knee.
He couldn’t lift his head. His neck was perfectly exposed. Acidtongue could cut through flesh without resistance when it was hot and singing with battlelust. One cut and Bikker could take his head off.
Croy couldn’t lift it. He was just too tired.
Cythera, he thought, I love you. I am so sorry.
The blow didn’t come.
Croy opened his eyes but still couldn’t move. He looked down at the grass beneath him. It looked very soft, and he thought it would be nice to fall, face forward, into its green embrace. One shard of his broken sword lay on the ground there, etched but still shining with polish.
Bikker still hadn’t killed him. What was he waiting for?
“Look at me, Croy.”
Slowly, painfully, Croy lifted his head and met his foe’s eyes. Bikker’s face was wild, his eyes mad. Froth flecked his lips.
“Good,” Bikker said. “That’s taken care of. Draw Ghostcutter. Playtime is over. Now we’ll fight like men.”
Chapter Eighty-Six
Malden kept his eyes shut until he was sure the hellish light of sorcery had drained from the room. His hand clenched tight at the hilt of his bodkin, and he started to draw it, careful not to make a sound.
When the glare faded from the inside of his eyelids, he opened his eyes again and saw Hazoth still before him. Something had changed, something he noticed only in his peripheral vision, but he focused entirely on the sorcerer. Hazoth was breathing heavily and his hands were down by his sides. Malden bent his legs like springs and then jumped, thrusting the bodkin before him so it would cut right through the sorcerer’s belly and come out the other side.
He fully expected Hazoth to turn and glare at him, eyes blazing with some spell that would tear his flesh from his bones. Or perhaps Hazoth would simply vanish before he could reach him. Instead he caught the magician completely off guard. He felt the point of the bodkin part the fibers of the sorcerer’s nightshirt, felt it sink into the hated flesh, felt it scrape on bone. He pushed and shoved with all his might until it broke free from the sorcerer’s back. He did not feel hot blood pour over his hand, but that surprised him less than the look on Hazoth’s face.
The sorcerer simply looked disappointed.
Malden fell backward, pulling the bodkin free. He stared down at the length of iron in his hand and saw no blood on it, nor ichor nor living fire nor any of the things he supposed might flow through a sorcerer’s veins. He looked up and saw the hole he’d cut through the nightshirt… but the flesh underneath wasn’t even scarred.
“A violent response to a threatening stimulus. The hallmark of an unenlightened being. Rodent, you have surprised me so many times tonight-now you prove that there is a limit to what a primitive creature can do with cunning. Ah, well. I suppose even the most advanced of the species must eventually revert to rodentlike behavior. Oh, and now look at what you’ve gone and done.”
Cythera cried out. Malden looked over at her and saw her staring at the palm of her left hand. The ink there looked like it was boiling. Flowers bloomed and their petals fell away, driven up her arm by a howling wind entirely contained within her skin. Vines circled around her wrist so tight they looked like they would constrict her pulse. On her face a hundred snowdrops wilted, while roses erupted in blossom across her shoulders, their thorns gleaming with painted poison.
It would seem the link that bound Cythera to Hazoth wasn’t just for inimical magic. It could absorb physical damage as well.
“Cythera!” Malden shouted. “No-please, forgive me, I didn’t know-”
“It’s… all right, Malden,” she said, straightening up. “It doesn’t pain me. It just startles me a bit when it happens, that’s all.”
Hazoth looked from one of them to the other. Then he clucked his tongue and faced Malden again. “You interested me, briefly. That’s why I’ve let you live for so long. But not for your animal passions, rodent. For the way you seemed to exceed the limitations of your upbringing. But now I see you’ve only been so clever, so brave, for one thing-that prize Cythera keeps between her legs.” He shook his head sadly. “Pathetic. I’m afraid that attacking me was the last mistake I can permit you.”
Malden’s blood curdled in his veins. He knew he’d never been closer to death than this exact moment. His brains turned over in his head, desperately trying to imagine what to do next. He could think of only one thing: obfuscate. Stall for time. “I beg to disagree,” he said. His mouth was so dry he had trouble forming the words. Hazoth had not given him leave to speak, but he knew it no longer mattered. Silence at that moment would have been his death warrant.
“What’s that, rodent?”
“You suggest that my logic was faulty in some way. That I made an irrational decision by attacking you. I would say instead that my information was merely incomplete. I did not try to stab you before, when you caught me. I did not try to do so when your back was turned. I waited until your magic had drained you and distracted your attention to the point where an attack might logically succeed. You see, I thought very carefully before I struck that blow.”
Hazoth looked upward, as if consulting a higher power. “Almost clever,” he said. “There is one flaw, however. One place where your logic falls apart.”
“Yes?” Malden asked, in the tone of a scholar asking for a gloss on a particularly thorny text.
“You,” Hazoth said, “are the human equivalent of a cockroach. I am a being of extraordinary power. You should have recognized that someone like you could never, under any circumstances, harm me. The intelligent thing to do in this situation would have been to curl up and die. It would at least have saved you from what comes next.”
Hazoth walked a few yards away from Malden and looked up again.
For the first time, Malden saw what had changed. When the sorcerer had cast his spell, Malden did not know what effect it might have. Now he understood. He had been transported from one place to another, without traversing the intervening distance. He was no longer in the sanctum.
Hazoth had delivered the three of them to his grand hall. They stood in the shadow of the iron egg.
“Now, I’ll ask again. Who sent you here?”
Malden looked away. “I came on my own-this was all my plan,” he insisted. Why implicate Cutbill? It wouldn’t save his own life, and it would only make trouble for the guildmaster of thieves. If he could spare Cutbill that, then perhaps he could earn a little something with his death. “I need the crown or Anselm Vry is going to kill me.”
Magic buzzed through the air toward Malden like an angry insect. An invisible stinger jabbed him in the chest, causing a bright blossom of pain to stretch its petals all the way around his rib cage.
