“Impossible,” Hazoth said. “You lack the will for something like this.”
“I… swear,” Malden said as the pain radiated outward, toward his extremities. Red blood stained his vision. “It was wholly… my own… notion… I-”
“It was Croy!” Cythera shouted. “Croy paid him to help me!”
The pain left Malden as quickly as it had come. He dropped to the marble floor, still writhing with the memory of it.
Hazoth turned to face Cythera. “Truly? I suppose I can believe that.” Hazoth looked almost disappointed. “I had thought I might discover the name of my fellow schemer. Hmm. But yes-yes, Croy would be foolish enough. Very well.”
He shrugged and came over to where Malden had curled up on the floor.
“So. We have reached the end of our experiment. The subject has failed to justify the hypothesis. There remains nothing to say,” Hazoth said. “And there are other matters that require my attention. There is a knight errant on my lawn, brawling with the hired help. I think I need to go boil him in his own blood.”
“Croy,” Cythera said, one hand to her mouth. “No-you can’t…”
Hazoth looked over at her. “You know perfectly well that I can,” he said. “And now, by telling me he was behind this intrusion, you’ve given me every reason to do so immediately.”
She went pale beneath her tattoos. “I meant-I meant to say-you may not,” she said. “I won’t allow it, Father.”
Malden’s eyes went wide.
“Father?” he said aloud. “He’s your-”
“I did not say you could speak!” Hazoth screamed, and Malden’s voice was lost.
It didn’t matter. His own thoughts were louder than anything he might have said.
The demon is his child, she had said. It is not his first.
He had assumed she meant he’d sired other demons.
Not all of his protections are magical, she had said.
He’d assumed that meant the very human retainers he kept to guard his gate. But perhaps she’d meant, instead, that he had a hold on her that was more complex than a mere contract of employment. She had betrayed him, Malden, and now he knew why.
In truth, he had never trusted her completely. Even when he’d kissed her, he half expected her to destroy him with her stockpile of curses. He had made sure she only knew half of his scheme. Now he understood that he could not expect her aid any longer. That she was not going to rescue him at the last minute.
He had, in a way, expected this.
It still hurt. It still cut him to the core.
“I will do as I please,” Hazoth said, as cool as an autumn day. “As for you, rodent, I’m afraid you have to die. I know your simple brain will have trouble accepting this fact. You’ll think there must be some way you can defeat me, no matter how desperate it may seem. I can assure you you’re wrong. Please try to think of it philosophically. You had, what, a few decades left to live anyway? Eyeblinks, compared to my life span. The tragedy of your death will last as long as it takes a single tear to roll down Cythera’s cheek.”
“Very well,” Malden said, thinking, Not quite yet. “And how shall I die? Are you going to curse me to death, or open up a crack in the earth and send me down to the pit?”
“Wasteful, and quite beneath me,” Hazoth said. “I’m going to give your existence a purpose, albeit a small one. I’m going to feed you to my son.” He reached up and slapped the iron egg with the flat of his palm. It rang like a bell.
And then it began to crack.
Chapter Eighty-Seven
“Glorious! When it is finally born, there will be no power in this world that can stand against me,” Hazoth said.
Red lines of infernal fire appeared on the surface of the iron sphere as a cascade of rust fell to the floor. The egg rocked slightly on its stand as the demon inside hammered again and again at its shell, trying to break out.
“The Ancient Blades will stop you,” Malden insisted, more for his own benefit than to intimidate Hazoth. “They know how to slay demons.”
“Luckily for me I have one of their number on my side,” Hazoth pointed out. “Bikker will gladly slay all his old comrades, if I pay him well enough. It’s important, rodent, to consider every angle of a problem. That’s where you failed. You made a clever try of things, but you just didn’t think them through deeply enough.”
“And you have? This is madness,” Malden said. “To release a demon on the world…” He thought of the beast that nearly killed him in the palace tower. Unless it was kept wet it grew at a furious rate and would never stop. “It is a creature not natural to this world,” Malden said. “What will it do, once released? Will it eat every man and woman in the city? Or will it burn us all with hellfire?”
“Nothing so dramatic,” Hazoth said. “Perhaps, when he is fully grown, he will have the power to do as you say. But my son is not ready to be born. When he emerges he will know nothing but pain-and there is only one way to quench that agony. He must devour the first living thing he encounters. Please, don’t get any foolish notions. Cythera and I will be perfectly safe, as the demon will know his own blood. But he will swallow you whole, and that will give him strength to return to his egg and resume his gestation.”
A thin shard of iron slid free from the shell and clattered to the floor. Red light shot out of the gap thus made.
“He will not rest until he has devoured you,” Hazoth went on. “Night and day he will chase you. He could follow your trail for hundreds of miles, even if you do manage to escape this room. I don’t think there’s any reason why Cythera should have to watch you die. She seems quite taken with you. So I’ll leave you to your fate.”
Malden shrank back from the egg as it rattled and shook and more shards of iron fell away. “Hazoth!” he shouted. “You said that after eight hundred years, magic had corrupted the Burgrave, yes?”
The sorcerer frowned. “I suppose.”
“What of the enchantments on your own self? After so many centuries, what have they done to your soul?”
Hazoth lifted his hand in the gesture that would transport him and Cythera out of the room. “An interesting question, but one that seems quite moot. You’ll never learn the answer, I’m afraid.”
Malden threw his arm across his eyes as light burst all around him. When it faded he was alone in the great hall.
Though not for long.
The egg continued to hatch as he watched, horrified. For a moment he couldn’t move, so transfixed was he by the spectacle of the demon’s birth. Then the thing inside the egg howled in utter pain, and he found his feet once more.
Many doors led away from the great hall. The obvious choice was the massive portal that opened onto the front lawn. If he could get out there he could get a head start before the demon came in pursuit.
That would, of course, only delay his doom. Besides, he had another scheme in mind.
He hurried to a door on one side wall, between two statues. It was the door that led eventually to the library, the same way he’d been taken on his first visit to the house. The door was locked but the mechanism was quite simple and perfectly ordinary. Malden hurriedly unwrapped his picks and wrenches from the hilt of his bodkin.
Behind him a clawed hand emerged from the egg and stretched raw flesh in the cold air. The demon started hauling itself out of its prison.
Hands shaking in fear, Malden stared at the rakes and hooks he held. Then he dropped them and kicked at the door until the flimsy lock shattered. When the door swung free he turned and glanced once more at the cracking egg, for a spare fraction of a moment.
What he saw made him yelp in terror.
