carve the old man like a goose.
Before he could reach the scold, though, a peal of thunder rocked the earth and Morget was thrown into the snow. Balint lay next to him, struggling to get up.
He looked at the walls of the city and saw a great pillar of smoke rising toward heaven. “What in the name of Mother Death just happened?” he demanded.
The dwarf looked where he pointed. “Perhaps they’ve decided if they can’t hold their city, they’d rather burn it down.”
“If I take Ness, only to find it a burned-out husk,” he said to her softly, “they will write songs about my folly. And I will never become Great Chieftain. You get that wall down.”
“Work’s going on apace, but you can’t hurry a shit or a siege,” Balint insisted.
“You can,” he told her, “when the option is having your belly slit and being dragged behind a horse by your bowels.” He grabbed her collar. The spikes dug into his hand until it bled. “You bring it down on the morrow. Use every man in this camp, force on them every pick, every shovel. Dig with your broken fingernails if you must. You bring that wall down before one more chieftain decides to follow my sister. Do it or I will use your defleshed skull as a codpiece.”
The vulgarity of his oath seemed to get her attention. She ran toward the mouth of the tunnels faster than he’d ever seen a dwarf move before.
Chapter One Hundred Five
Malden ordered Velmont to search for other survivors in the university cloister and organize teams of bucket-bearers to put out the fire. He picked Slag up in his arms and carried him away from the rubble. The dwarf’s body was no great burden-dwarves were slender creatures to start with, and now, missing an arm, burned over so much of his body, Slag felt as light as a child.
The dwarf spoke no more as Malden staggered through the snow-clogged streets. Before they had gotten properly out of reach of the dizzying fumes of the fire, Slag had fallen unconscious in Malden’s arms. It was quite likely he was already dead.
Malden did not have the heart to find out for sure.
He did not know how far he walked, carrying that slight burden. He was not aware of where he was, exactly, when Cythera found him. He heard her speaking and saw her mouth move, but her words entered his brain and got lost there in the same maze that had confounded his own thoughts. He realized suddenly that she was trying to take Slag away from him. He resisted her, though he could not have said why.
Cythera gestured for him to follow her. She went to the door of the nearest house, the mansion of some great merchant. The door was boarded over but all the windows on the second floor had been smashed in-probably by thieves, back when there was still something to be looted in the Golden Slope. Malden started to climb up the side of the house but couldn’t get far with Slag in his arms. Cythera shook her head. Then she lifted a hand and the boards across the door creaked and their nails glowed red hot, then dripped like candle wax. The boards clattered into the street.
Her witchcraft was weak, she had said. Her powers still untested. He wondered what marvels she would perform when she had learned some more.
Inside, the house was cold and empty and silent. They went into the kitchen and Cythera convinced Malden to lay Slag down on an oak table there. She pointed at the fire, and a small flame leapt forth from the cold ashes. “Get fuel, or it’ll go out again,” she told him. She had to repeat the instruction three times.
Malden went and fetched the boards from where they lay in the street. He fed them to the fire. When they didn’t catch right away, he found an expensive-looking chair in the front room and smashed it for kindling.
By the time he had the fire going properly, Cythera was already at work on Slag’s broken body. She washed the soot and blood away from his many wounds, and for the first time Malden saw just how badly Slag had been hurt. He had to look away. He couldn’t breathe.
“It’s… it’s bad,” Cythera told him. Her voice was thin and ready to break. “He lives, but his heart is fluttering like a bird in a snare. He has perhaps a few minutes left. He’ll stop breathing soon, and then he’ll convulse, and eventually he’ll just… stop. Ah. Oh, Malden. It’s happening. He’s dying.”
“Please. He’s my friend. There must be something you can do. Maybe-Maybe just make him comfortable. Take away his pain.”
Cythera stared at Malden with desperate eyes. He didn’t understand-she was wasting time, time Slag didn’t have.
“You’re a witch now. That has to count for something,” he begged.
“It counts for a great deal. And it’s why I can’t-”
“Stop this! I can see in your eyes that you have the power,” he said. “Don’t you care about Slag? How can you look at him like this and not help him?”
“I’m supposed to stay detached,” Cythera said, but it sounded like she was trying to convince herself.
Malden had no idea what her words meant. He didn’t care. “Don’t you love me anymore? Do this for me, Cythera. Save him because you love me!”
“You have no idea what you’re asking.”
Her words were defiant but he knew he’d moved her. She would do it, he was sure of it. He opened his mouth, intending to renew his entreaties, but something in her countenance warned him not to speak. Eventually she broke his gaze.
“This is it. The moment Mother foresaw, when I break my promise to her,” she said. The words were not for Malden, so he did not question them. “I thought it would be easier to resist. But some temptations are bigger than us, aren’t they?”
“Cythera,” Malden moaned. “He’s dying.”
“Yes,” she said. “Even Coruth couldn’t save him now.”
But then she began to incant, speaking words that didn’t sound human at all. Malden smelled a sudden reek of brimstone, and red light played across the walls. He felt something move in the room behind him and he turned to look, expecting-well, he didn’t know what to expect. There was nothing there, of course. He started to turn back to face Cythera and Slag but the air felt like it had frozen solid and he could barely move.
“Don’t look at me,” Cythera commanded, and he might as well have been made of marble. His neck wouldn’t turn at all. He could only stare at the red-lit walls and wonder what was going on.
“Cythera-” he tried, but she interrupted him.
“I’m going to save his life. But there will be a price to be paid.”
“Anything,” Malden told her. “Do you need gold? Rare medicinal herbs? The powder of crushed diamonds? Tell me and it’ll be done.”
“It’s not your price to pay,” she said in a voice that was almost gentle. “Malden-is it wrong to heal? Is it ever wrong to heal?”
“I don’t think so,” he told her. “What is the price?”
She wouldn’t answer his question.
“I can do it,” she said. “I can.”
She worked for nearly an hour. Malden stayed frozen in place the whole time. He heard… things, unguessable, unspeakable things moving about the room. He heard them whisper utter foulness to Cythera.
He heard her answer them back in kind.
As impossible as it seemed, as terrified as he was, Malden started to drift off into a kind of doze before it was done. Yet when she finished, he snapped instantly awake and realized he could move again. He spun around and found her slouched over the table, leaning close over Slag’s body as if praying over the dwarf. Her back heaved as though she’d been drained completely of her vigor.
“I had to call on certain… spirits. Creatures that haunt the ether, always looking to enter our world, to find any way out of their prison. It is forbidden to open a way for them.” She was silent for a while. He heard her gasping for breath.
“Did you let them in?” Malden asked. He didn’t care if she had, though he had begun to understand what
