A Thief in the Night (21 page)

Chapter Thirty-six

“D
o you hear any more of them?” Mörget asked, when they'd all had a chance to catch their breath.

Croy shook his head and went back to tending Cythera's hands. She clenched and opened them stiffly as if they pained her greatly, letting out a little gasp with each motion. The skin under the tattoos was red and irritated. He blew on them and then rubbed them briskly, surprised to find them still ice cold.

She favored him with a smile. “They're already warming up again.”

“I hate to see you suffer, even for a moment,” Croy said, and delighted in the way her face lit up. “Tell me—how did you do that? I thought you knew only a few simple magics, but you worked a little miracle there.”

She shrugged her slim shoulders. “It occurred to me that a revenant is, in essence, a walking curse. There is no curse I cannot absorb with my gift.” She laughed, a little. “It was worth the attempt, anyway. I did not expect it would hurt so much, though. I could feel the thing's hatred when I touched it. It despises all life—wants nothing but to destroy us and all our kind. They would never have stopped if we hadn't fought them off. That kind of retributive magic is dangerous stuff.”

“Will you be all right?”

She closed her eyes and leaned her head against his chest. “I think so. But Croy, this worries me. The kind of magic I felt there—it's not natural.”

“There can be nothing natural about the dead coming back to life,” Mörget said. “Death is my mother, and I know her ways. I've looked into the eyes of many men as they perished, and—”

“Please,” Cythera said, interrupting him. “Let me finish. The magic I touched wasn't human magic. Not witchcraft, or sorcery.”

Croy frowned. “But isn't that to be expected? They're revenants. We all know the old stories about such. It takes no spell to call forth a revenant. When a man—or an elf, presumably—dies as the cause of gross injustice, sometimes his soul refuses to depart this world. It reinvests its mortal form, and though it cannot stop the inevitable decay of the flesh, it can grant some semblance of life, for just long enough to claim vengeance.”

Cythera nodded. “Aye, we know the story. Yet I always thought it was just that. A story. It occurred to me the first time I heard it that if every man who ever died by foul play came back as a revenant, the world would be choked with them by now. No, I don't think those were simple spirits of justice we faced. Or rather, it was not the circumstances of their death that brought them back. I'm certain that magic had some part in it. But that only raises another question. Who cast the spell?”

“Questions that perhaps will be answered in the fullness of time,” Croy said.

“But perhaps we've gained one answer,” Malden pointed out. “We know someone tended the trap we found at the first doorway. Now we know who it was.”

“Are you sure?” Slag asked. “They didn't seem like the mechanical types, if you ask me.”

“I'm certain,” Malden said. “We knew there was something active down here. Something that wished us ill. Now we've found it, and overcome it. We should find no more resistance after this, I think.”

Croy wished he shared the thief's optimism. “I'm just glad we all survived, and that we're safe. We can rest now, I think, and—”

He stopped speaking then, because he could have sworn he heard something.

Something moving, out in the dark.

Again.

“There. And there,” Slag said. The dwarf pointed outward, into the darkness. He turned about on one heel and pointed in another direction. “And over there. More of them.”

Croy froze in place and tried not to breathe. He listened, hard. In a moment there was no denying it. More revenants were approaching.

A vast horde of them.

Croy could hear their clumsy feet slapping against the cobblestones, their weapons dragging behind them. The occasional scream of a tortured soul split the dark. Long before he could see them, he could hear them.

And then the first of them came into the light. Some were mutilated beyond recognition, with limbs hanging by shreds of muscle, or missing entire body parts. Some wore armor that had already been hacked to bits centuries ago. Others wore no armor at all, but only robes and cloaks and tunics that had rotted away to bare threads.

Their faces were twisted, grotesque, withered to parody. A clot of greasy hair spilled down over an empty eye socket. A pointed ear gnawed on by rats stuck up from an otherwise bare skull. Noses were missing or had decayed to pustulant blobs of flesh. Teeth stuck out of battered jaws in random directions. Time and death had not been kind to the army that now approached.

That army did not care about its appearance. Croy felt like he knew their inner thoughts: they had only one goal, one desire, which was long-frustrated revenge. Their ancient enemy, the humans (and one hated dwarf, betrayer of their people) had come into their resting place and disturbed the silence. The intruders must be destroyed.

How long had they been down here, lying motionless on the cold cobbles, waiting for the chance to enact their terrible rage? How many years had passed since they died here—abandoned, starving, with no light even to show them each other's faces?

The dark air around Croy seemed to pulsate with their hatred. As if it were a demon itself, ready to swallow them all as soon as their light flickered out. Of course, the revenants would get them first.

There were hundreds of revenants. Perhaps thousands. In the dim light there was no way to count them all.

And no chance, whatsoever, of standing against them.

Croy looked down at Ghostcutter in his hand. It was a good weapon, and had served him well more times than he could count. Yet he knew it was no match for an undead army.

“We need to get out of here,” Malden said. The thief held Acidtongue like a talisman, like it would protect him somehow. It dripped its caustic bounty to fall, hissing and useless, on the cobbles.

Mörget studied the serried ranks before them, then turned to face Cythera. “You,” he said. “Witch! Do something.”

She shook her head. “I'm no witch. I'm just a witch's daughter. I know a few simple tricks, but—”

“Then try them now!” Mörget commanded.

Cythera scowled at him. Then she vanished into thin air.

“Ah,” the barbarian said. “Not what I had in mind.”

Croy sighed. They had come so far. There was no denying they were outmatched now, though.

“Mörget,” he said, “I think it's time to retreat.”

“There's no such word in my language,” the barbarian told him. Then he shrugged. “Luckily we are speaking yours. But where shall we go?”

“We'll hack a path through them, get back to the barricade room. Find any way we can to slow them down, then leave. Reseal the Vincularium. Find some other way to slay your demon, at some later date.”

“A meritorious plan. I see no error in it, save one.”

Croy frowned. “You don't think we can carve our way through them?”

“Not all of them.”

Croy nodded. He'd thought of that himself. But he could hardly surrender. The revenants would not take them prisoner. They would offer no quarter, no matter how hard the fight went for them. They would slay him and his companions without remorse and then return to their graves and sleep a righteous sleep. “We have to at least try. Better to die trying to save one's life than lay down weapons and commit suicide.”

“Oh, I heartily agree,” Mörget said. He dropped his axe to clatter on the floor. Croy stared at the weapon, then back at the barbarian. “Fear not, little knight. I'm merely freeing up my hands.” He drew Dawnbringer then, the length of iron singing as it pulled free of its scabbard. “I need my best tool for this task.”

Chapter Thirty-seven

I
n the darkness, the revenants began to scream for blood. Croy could see more of them—a vast throng now, swarming around them, converging on their presence. Outside a narrow circle of light, they were everywhere. He could just glimpse them moving, stirring restlessly. They made him think of ants toiling ceaselessly in their warrens, climbing all over each other, heedless of jostling their neighbors. Never pausing, never resting.

Utterly silent.

He brought Ghostcutter up into a guard position. A position from which he could attack or defend instantly. Thus when something appeared just to his left, he very nearly slashed out at it, just by instinct.

Croy managed to stay his hand just in time. Cythera reappeared as mysteriously as she had vanished.

She grabbed his arm. “This is your plan? To go down fighting?”

“I don't see any option,” he said. “I'm sorry, Cythera. I failed you. When I first agreed to let you come along, I failed—”

“Oh, be quiet!” she said. “There's still one way out.”

“Point to it,” Croy begged. “They come from every direction—”

“Of course! Every direction save down,” Malden said. He sheathed Acidtongue, pulled off his knapsack and searched inside until he found a coil of rope. “There's a gallery about three levels below us in the shaft. If we climb down there, perhaps they won't follow.”

Croy shook his head. The revenants were getting very close. “But our exit will be completely cut off—the revenants may not follow, but they'll remain here, waiting for us to return. If we go down there we'll be trapped.”

“Better trapped than fucking dead,” Slag pointed out. With Malden, he threw a rope over the massive chain that stretched away over the mouth of the pit. “Let me show you a proper knot, lad,” he said as Malden kicked one end of the rope over the edge.

The closest of the revenants began to charge. Croy rushed forward to meet them, to slow their advance as best he could. It was too late—there was no way they could all get down the rope before the dead elves overwhelmed them. Croy hacked all around him with Ghostcutter, dodging blows. A bronze mace took him in the thigh and he nearly went down. A sword came at his face and he felt hot blood slick down his cheek.

Mörget waded into the melee, kicking randomly at the attackers, and sliced through a pair of skeletal hands reaching for Croy's throat. When Dawnbringer touched the undead flesh it burst with light, nearly blinding Croy.

The effect on the revenants was far more dramatic. They howled, not with rage this time but with pure mindless pain. They had no eyes, but that light, the light so similar to that of the pure sun of the upper world, seared their flesh wherever it touched them.

For the barest of moments the charge was broken and the revenants stopped attacking. They drew back, knocking down those behind them, as if a great wind had driven them there. Mörget boomed with laughter as he brandished the glowing blade high over his head. The revenants writhed and clutched at each other in terrible fear. One by one, though, they began to rally.

“The light!” Croy shouted. “It hurts them, somehow. They are creatures of darkness . . . perhaps, Malden . . . Get everyone down that rope. I'll hold them off as long as I can. If I don't make it, get Cythera out of here. At any price, keep her safe!”

“That goes for the fucking dwarf, too,” Slag insisted. Then he grabbed hold of the rope and jumped over the edge of the pit. Malden and Cythera followed as quick as they could. Croy saw the rope twitch under their weight.

“You bought us a moment's grace,” Croy said to Mörget. “Now, while they're dazed—get to the rope.”

“And leave you here to die a glorious death—without me?” the barbarian laughed.

A revenant, faster to recover than his fellows, came running at Croy with his hands outstretched. A long dagger remained in its sheath at his belt—clearly he meant only to strangle the knight. Croy jumped to the side and cut the elf in two. Even before it hit the ground, the torso of the revenant started clawing its way toward him again, its hands going now for his ankle.

Croy stamped on it until it stopped struggling.

Instantly, though, there were a dozen more to take its place.

Mörget growled like a bear and brought Dawnbringer around in a fresh attack, the blade lighting up like a torch. The revenants drew back from the hated blade, but this time the light was not so effective. As the revenants directly before Mörget clawed at their skin and dropped their weapons, a new wave of them came shoving through, axes and cleavers and morningstars raised high in the dark air.

“The rope!” Croy called, because he saw something to waken new dread in his heart. A revenant had broken off from the main ranks and was clambering down the line, hand over hand.

“I see it,” Mörget said, and scooped his axe up off the cobbles. With a good, hard fling, he severed the rope and sent the climbing revenant falling down into the darkness with a screech.

Croy could only pray that Cythera was already on the gallery, and not hanging from the rope when it was cut.
Lady
, he prayed,
give me strength to die as befits your servant
. He laid into the revenants, left and right and before him, with one last surge of courage. “This is it,” he shouted. “This is how we die.”

Yet even before his third blow fell, he felt a thick arm wrap around his waist and suddenly he was off his feet. “They want justice,” Mörget shouted. “I deny them!”

And with that the barbarian jumped over the edge of the pit, pulling Croy with him. They fell through utter darkness for what seemed like hours but must only have been seconds. Without warning they struck black, icy water that filled Croy's nose and mouth and tore away his consciousness.

Chapter Thirty-eight

M
alden was halfway down the rope when he looked up and saw the revenant crawling after him. It had no eyes, but he could feel it looking back down at him—looking into him, with a hatred that could never be quenched.

The thief yelped in panic and scurried faster down the rope, toward the gallery where Cythera and Slag already waited. It was a narrow ledge of stone that jutted out from a wide opening in the side of the shaft. Clumps of fungus stuck to it in knobby shapes. Only darkness lay beyond that ledge, but to Malden it looked like safety, like life, and he had never been more desirous to crawl into a dark place and hide. The ledge was twenty feet below him, and if he jumped to it now he would probably break his legs.

Above him the revenant scuttled on the rope like a spider. It howled in malevolent fury and redoubled its speed. One of its bony hands reached to snatch at his hair.

And then the rope broke.

For a moment Malden felt as if he weighed nothing. As if the rope and the revenant would fall away but he would remain, pinned to the air, not falling but with nothing to climb down either. That he would hang there forever caught between death and life. Then gravity caught up with him and he began to plummet. Panicking, he threw out his arms and his legs, trying to clutch to anything that would hold him. The ledge came shooting up toward him and he thrust his hands forward, not caring if his fingers shattered on the impact. It would be better than falling into the abyss—he had no idea what was down there, and didn't want to find out. He spread his fingers wide to catch any part of the ledge that offered itself—and missed it entirely. His fingertips just grazed the rock and went on past.

“No!” he screamed, thinking he might fall forever. Before the word was out of his throat, though, something grabbed at the pack on his back and he was jerked upward, his whole body pinwheeling madly. Thinking the revenant had him he struggled like a cat in a sack.

“Stop fighting me,” Cythera demanded. Malden looked up and saw her face, a pale oval in the darkness. She was sprawled across the gallery, holding him up with her own bare hands. Her face was a mask of strain as she tried to pull him upward, and her arms were stretched to their limit.

He grabbed not at her but at the stone ledge and hauled himself up. He saw that Slag had helped her by holding her feet—without the dwarf's extra weight, he might have pulled Cythera right over the edge with him.

“You saved me,” he said once they both rolled to safety on the gallery floor. He leaned in close and kissed her passionately, and he didn't care who saw it.

Her eyes went wide and she pulled back, shocked. “Malden!”

“I can only beg your pardon,” he said, “not your forgiveness, for I feel no remorse—”

“Malden! The revenant!”

A searing agony went through the thief's ankle as he felt bony fingers constrict around the muscle there. Malden's blood flowed out of his face as he sat up and saw the dead elf clutching to him, pulling itself up over the ledge using his body for handholds.

He kicked it in the face with his free foot, and its head came off its neck with a crackling sound. It didn't slow down at all. He kicked again and again as he tried to get Acidtongue out of its glass-lined scabbard.

The now-headless revenant grabbed his knees and pulled. Malden started sliding toward the edge, dragged by the undead weight. Cythera and Slag grabbed at his shoulders to pull him back once more but they couldn't help him fight. With desperate fingers Malden yanked the sword out of its sheath. The revenant grabbed his left thigh, its fingers sinking painfully into the muscle there.

“Get off me!” he cried, and jabbed forward with the sword. Droplets of acid flecked his clothes and he smelled burning hair, but the blade ran the revenant through. Malden jerked upward with the sword and the thing came in two, half of it sliding away into darkness instantly. The other half—a torso, an arm, and a leg—kept coming, the dead fingers snatching at the leg of his breeches. Malden hacked away at it until Acidtongue sizzled in the air and there was nothing left but a few bones twitching on the ledge.

He jumped to his feet and kicked the bones away. Behind him Slag and Cythera only stared at him in shock, as if they couldn't believe what he'd just done.

At that moment Croy and Mörget fell screaming past the gallery, dropping into the abyss like a pair of flung stones. Malden just had time to see Croy's face, his mouth stretched wide open as he shouted in panic. The two of them were gone in a flash.

He flinched.

“No,” Cythera said. Her face was blank of emotion. Malden knew that wouldn't last. “Croy—was that Croy?”

Malden bit his lip. He couldn't answer.

“No!” She rushed forward to the very edge of the gallery and stared downward. “No! Croy! Croy, are you down there? Croy! Answer me!” She pulled off her knapsack and dumped out its contents. A candle rolled free and went over the edge.

Malden didn't know what to do. He reached out a hand to grab her but then he thought better of it.

“Lass,” Slag said. “What are you fucking doing?”

“Looking for a rope. Do you have one? If we lower a rope, he can climb back up. Both of them can. Croy and Mörget. Croy! Can you hear me?”

The dwarf shook his head. “He's gone, girl.”

“I heard a splash, I definitely heard a splash,” Cythera said. She scattered food and climbing gear all over the floor. There was no rope in her pack, but still she kept looking for it. “They fell into water. They could have survived that fall.”

“It's a long way down—”

She turned on the dwarf and grabbed his shoulders. On her knees, she was face-to-face with Slag. She shook him violently. “They could have survived. If they fell into deep water, that could have broken their fall.”

“I suppose it's possible,” the dwarf said.

“Then we need to get a rope down there, so they can climb back up. Croy!” she shouted. “Croy! Do you hear me?”

The dwarf looked up at Malden as if he'd run out of ideas. The thief could only shrug.

“Croy! Croy! Mörget, can you hear me? Is Croy all right? Mörget! Are you down there?”

Malden had rope still in his pack. Knowing it would do no good, but unable to resist her horror and her grief, he threw one end over the edge.

“It's not nearly long enough,” Slag pointed out, “even if they—”

“Be quiet, Slag,” Malden hissed.

Cythera turned to face the dwarf with wild eyes. “They might have caught a ledge lower down. They might be down there right now, struggling to hold on, trying to climb up. Hold this rope! Hold it, damn you!” She grabbed the end with both hands and nodded at Malden, who did the same.

“Lass, we need to figure out where we are,” Slag tried.

“Hold this damned rope,” she screamed at him. Then she leaned over the edge. “Croy? Are you down there? Croy, answer me! I know you're down there! Croy!”

Malden held the rope, though his heart wasn't in it.

“Croy, just grab the rope,” Cythera shouted. “Croy, you bastard! Don't leave me like this! Don't leave me alone here!”

She kept calling. Malden held the rope, and so great was her panic and her hope that he kept expecting a tug from below, some sign that Croy or Mörget had grasped the rope and was climbing up.

No such signal came. Eventually Cythera grew hoarse and stopped shouting. And that was when Malden was forced to accept the fact that the three of them were alone, trapped inside the Vincularium. A thief, a dwarf, and a witch's daughter. If there were more revenants to face, or if they came across the demon . . .

“Croy,” Cythera wheezed. “Croy!”