There was a countermove left.
In an instant Lady made the cruelest decision of her life. She would regret it forever but knew the choice she made would leave her with the least painful long-term wounds.
The Lady of Charm had centuries of practice making terrible decisions quickly, and just as many years of practice living with the consequences.
From her belt Lady drew a memento of her brief passage as Captain of the Black Company. The dagger’s pommel was a silver skull with one ruby eye. The ruby always seemed to be alive. Lady lifted the blade slowly, her gaze locked with that of the Daughter of Night. The sense of the presence of Kina grew ever stronger between them.
“I love you,” Lady said, responding to a question never asked, existing only within the girl’s heart. “I will love you forever. I will always love you. But I won’t let you do this thing to my world.”
Lady could do it, in spite of all. She had slain as dear before, when she was not yet as old as the child lying beneath her knife. And for less reason.
She felt a madness creep through her. She tried to concentrate.
She could kill because she was filled with a conviction that there was no better thing she could do.
Kina and the Daughter of Night both strove to crack Lady’s terrible will. But the dagger descended toward the girl’s breast, its progress inexorable. The Daughter of Night quickly became the hypnotized prey, unable to believe that Lady’s blade kept falling.
The tip of the knife touched cloth. It passed through, found flesh, then a rib. Lady shifted her weight so she could drive the blade between bones.
She never sensed it coming. The blow, seemingly struck to the right side of her head, was powerful enough to hurl her sideways a half dozen feet, into a wall. Darkness closed in. For an instant there was a living dream in which she saw herself trying to strangle her child instead of stabbing her.
The Daughter of Night felt fire rip across her chest as her would-be killer flung toward the wall. She screamed. But the agony that moved her was not that of her wound. It was a black explosion inside her mind, a sudden tidal wave of knifelike shards of a thousand dark dreams, of a scream harsher than ten thousand whetstones sharpening swords, of a rage so vast and red it could be called the Eater of Worlds.
That blow was violent enough to fling her upward and to one side. She came down sprawled across the still form of her birth mother. But she did not know. She was unconscious long before gravity placed and posed her.
A whiff of old death, of graveyard mold, hung in the air of the room.
136
Fortress with No Name:
Godstalking
Goblin was too eager. Twice I felt compelled to yell at him to slow down. He plunged down the dark stairwell at a pace I could not match. Even wearing the Voroshk apparel the bruising impacts with the walls became too much for my nerve.
We had not yet gone as deep as the ice cavern where Soulcatcher lay when I bellowed an order to stop. Wonder of wonders, this time Goblin heard me. And listened. And responded when I told him we had to go back up.
“What?” He turned the word into a two syllable whisper from an old tomb.
“We can’t do this in the dark. We’ll beat ourselves unconscious before we get down there. Or at least get there too beaten up to think.”
He made a sound that signified reluctant agreement. He had had a few unpleasant collisions of his own.
“We have to go get lights.” Why had I overlooked something so obvious? Because I was too damned busy looking for the subtle and the sneaky, I suppose.
The stairwell was much too tight to turn the flying posts. We had to back them up. That was a slow, humbling, sometimes painful task. And things did not get much less humiliating when we did reach the top.
The girls and the white crow awaited us. In attitudes so smug they could be read even though the ladies were clad for action. Arkana swung a lantern back and forth.
For an instant I suffered an entirely irrelevant worry because I had not brought my Widowmaker costume. It seemed appropriate to the situation. But definitely not necessary.
All that armor ever was was a costume.
Now Shukrat waved a lantern back and forth. And laughed.
“Not a word,” I grumped.
“Did I say anything?”
“You’re thinking it, darling daughter.”
She raised her lantern higher, the better to see what I was wearing. My apparel was in slow, creeping motion all around me, repairing extensive damage. “Not a word from me, old-timer. You know your Shukrat. Honors her elders to a fault. But I’m going to laugh, now. Please don’t jump to conclusions and think that it’s at you.”
Arkana laughed harder.
Goblin made a series of noises, depleting his vocabulary fast.
“He’s right. Give us those lanterns. We need to get this done.” I hoped my dimwit failure to consider the need for light would not be the one little thing that got us destroyed. And that that was the last little thing I had been dumb enough to forget.
Goblin took the lantern from Shukrat. He headed down into the earth again. He was not nearly so hurried this time. Possibly his lust for revenge had begun to cool.
I took Arkana’s lantern. The white crow flapped over to the tip of my post. Before I finished telling it that traveling with me might not be a good idea. Shukrat had another lantern going and was helping Arkana get herself another lit.
The girls had been ready for us.
I bickered with them all the way down to the ice cavern. They had fun with me all the way. They refused to listen to my warnings.
The white crow decided the cave of the ancients would be a fine place to detour. I bellowed, “Don’t touch anything in there! Especially don’t touch yourself.” I continued, mumbling, “When will I learn to keep my big damned mouth shut?” It would be a great and wonderful irony if the bird’s touch was Soulcatcher’s undoing, after all her lucky years.
Goblin got the hurries again. When I tried to slow him down he told me, “There’s something going on with Kina! She’s starting to stir.”
“Shit!”
Keeping up was impossible, until we reached the black barrier. There Goblin’s nerve failed him. There he froze, recalling the horror of the years he had spent on the other side.
“Goblin. We’re almost there. We’ve got to do this. We’ve got to do it now.” Numb as I was to things supernatural even I could sense Kina’s proximity and her heightened awareness. Which must not be our fault. Her attention was focused elsewhere. “Now!” I said with more force.
Behind us the girls had begun whispering, troubled. They sensed much more than I ever could.
I told them, “You two go back upstairs now. I guarantee you that you’ll be glad you did. Especially if things don’t work out for us. Goblin.”
He reclaimed his courage. Or maybe just found his hatred again. His face hardened. He started forward.
“Don’t rush,” I stage-whispered as he passed through the black barrier. “Girls, I mean it. Start running now. There have to be some survivors.” I pushed through the terrible barrier behind Goblin, nearly messing myself with the fear. Despite what I had told the little man this was no time to be slow or tentative. Once we breached the barrier Kina knew that we had come. Her slowness would be our only ally.
Once I breached that barrier I flung myself into the anteroom area outside the entrance to Kina’s prison.
