A Thief in the Night (36 page)

Chapter Sixty-nine

C
roy barely noticed the brass lift. It was magical in nature, of course—some kind of invisible spirit of the air carried the cage on its back, he imagined, its labors spurred on by the simple ritual of pulling on a chain—and therefore of little interest to him. He was far more intent on finding Cythera. Balint had given him some veiled hints that he might not like what he found, but he had to see for himself.

In the foundry level, he lifted his candle high and stared at a sticky black stain that spread across the floor. It couldn't be blood. He was certain of that much. It wasn't Cythera's blood.

It couldn't be.

He registered the threads hung from the walls and the various pry bars scattered outside the door of some vault of treasures. He saw the piles of scrap metal and the incomprehensible machinery of dwarven manufacture. The odds and ends strewn from torn-open knapsacks. These things meant nothing. The black stain, well, it meant nothing as well. It couldn't be blood.

He knew, with a perfect certainty, that it was not Cythera's blood.

“Show me what we came here for, Balint,” he said, growing impatient. Clearly Cythera wasn't here. He needed to find her as soon as possible, before she ran afoul of the elves. That was what was important.

The knocker ran around the room in circles, tapping at the floor, the walls, the trash strewn across the flagstones. Balint turned to face Croy. “Smells like someone's guts exploded, doesn't it?” she asked, wrinkling her nose. “Look, my blueling found something. What's this?”

The knocker had found a knife tossed haphazardly into one corner of the room. Croy took it from the diminutive creature and recognized it instantly. It was Malden's little bodkin. Little more than a belt knife, but the thief treasured it.

“I see no sign of Acidtongue,” Mörget announced. The barbarian sifted through some other detritus. It looked like Malden's pack had been rifled and its contents discarded when they failed to prove valuable. “The elves must have taken the blade.”

“They must have gone through your friends' belongings, taking what they counted valuable, discarding the trash. Now, what's this?” Balint said as the knocker handed her more objects. “Ah, this is a little hammer. This must have belonged to your Slag.” She held it out toward Croy. He glanced at it. Shrugged.

“Something else, maybe,” Balint said. She sent the knocker forth again and it returned with a small piece of worked horn. Croy thought he might recognize it, but he didn't look very closely.

“Ah,” Balint said. “Now, what have we here? A lady's comb.”

Croy grabbed it from her.

For a while he didn't look at it. He couldn't.

“It must have belonged to the thief's bit of tail.”

Croy's hand ached and he realized he was crushing the comb. Its tines dug into his palm until one of them snapped off. He forced his fingers to relax. “You won't speak of Cythera like that again,” he told Balint. “She is my betrothed.”

The dwarf looked confused. “Really? I could have sworn she was spreading her legs for the craven.”

“You . . . were wrong,” Croy said, his teeth grinding together. She had made a mistake, that was all.

Just like she was mistaken in thinking Cythera was dead.

“Your woman, eh?” Balint asked. There was a gleam in her eye Croy did not care for at all. “I'm sorry, then. This must be very hard for you, knowing the elves got to her. Took her here.”

“There are no bodies in this room,” he said. “No blood either. That stain . . . is not blood,” he insisted.

“You saw what the porridge monster did to my Murin,” Balint told him. “They eat our dead, and leave no bodies behind.”

“Perhaps,” Croy said, squeezing his eyes shut at the thought. “But—”

When he opened his eyes again, Balint was staring at him expectantly. Across the room Mörget watched him with the dead, emotionless eyes of a hunter.

“Yes?” Balint said.

“What? What, blast you?”

Balint rubbed at her furry upper lip. “You said ‘but' as if you had some point to make. But then you said nothing more.”

“There was nothing more to say. Cythera is not here. We should go. We should go and find her, wherever she is.”

“I know you don't want to hear this,” Balint told him, sounding almost compassionate. “It might be easier to deny that it happened.”

“There's no need to deny anything. I'll admit it looks like Cythera was here at some point,” Croy said, trying to stay calm. He needed to think this through. He needed to think, period. It was hard when a little voice in the back of his head wouldn't stop screaming in terror. “Cythera, and Slag, and—and Malden. And clearly they were surprised by—by something. Something that searched their packs. Beyond that—”

“It was elves. You know it was,” Balint said.

Mörget nodded. “Revenants wouldn't have searched their things. Nor would the demons.”

“And you know the elves, at least by reputation,” Balint went on. “You know what all the stories say they used to do to their human captives.”

“Be silent!” Croy thundered. Then he calmed himself. Forced his passions to cool themselves. “Please.”

“I don't think there's two ways to read this,” Balint said. “I'm sorry, but you must see it, too. The elves slew your woman. Your beloved.”

Croy wished she would let him think. “You can't know that. You can't know for sure that she's dead—”

“Tell me, human. If the elf who butchered her was standing right here, right now, would you hail him and say, ‘Well met'? Or would you stick your sword so far down his throat it would come out brown on the other end?”

“That sounds reasonable,” Mörget pointed out.

“Cythera isn't dead,” Croy insisted. He could feel the blood burning under his skin. “She lives, still. I would know somehow, I would feel it in my bones if she had perished. The love we share is so strong that I am bound to Cythera by holy chains. It was my sacred duty to protect her. If I had failed her so thoroughly, the Lady would strike me down with lightning out of heaven.”

“Maybe She's just waiting till you're outside,” Balint interrupted. “Hard to throw a levinbolt through a hundred feet of solid rock.”

“My soul would have shriveled inside me,” Croy stated. “My heart would have broken. I would feel—”

“The world doesn't work that way,” Mörget growled.

“I would feel—something.”

But he did feel something, didn't he? He felt doubt. For the first time since they'd been separated, he truly doubted that Cythera was still alive.

“I feel—I feel—”

“These are elves we're talking about,” Balint said. “They probably had her sixteen different ways before they let her die.”

He knew he was being goaded. He knew she was manipulating him. It didn't stop him from feeling the guilt. Guilt, for letting Cythera come to this haunted place at all. Guilt for not protecting her better. Guilt for leaving her side, even for an instant.

“I—feel—”

“Do you think she was the kind to scream when they tortured her, or would she not give them that satisfaction?” Balint asked.

“I—”

But Croy couldn't finish the thought. His vision went red. His sword jumped from its sheath and he slashed at the air in front of him, not caring what he struck, only needing, desperately, to cut and thrust and stab anything that was in front of him.
For Cythera
, he howled in his head.
For Cythera. For Cythera
.

“That's the spirit,” Balint said, with a nasty laugh.

He could barely hear her over the roaring of the blood in his ears.

“What do you want from me?” he demanded. “Why do you torture me like this?”

“I want revenge,” Balint told him. “Against the arseholes who killed Murin and Slurri. I might need your help to get it. So I'm asking. Do we team up and get our revenge? I aim to pull their giblets out their arses and strangle them with their own guts. What say you?”

“I say yessss,” Croy hissed.

“And you, Mörget?” Balint asked. “You have no reason to love me. But will you help?”

“This design of yours, to slaughter elves. Does that extend to their pets as well? Their demons?”

“Of course,” Balint told the barbarian.

“Then my axe is yours,” Mörget told her.

Chapter Seventy

T
he elves took them down a crude flight of stairs carved out of the rock of the winding tunnel and down to another brick door. By that time Slag was able to walk a little on his own. Malden's feet were sore with the constant marching, and his arms ached from carrying the dwarf, but those pains couldn't compete with the searing agony in the muscles of his back.

He was afraid. Terrified, in fact. His back hurt because his body was in a constant state of tension. It had steeled itself for the blow it thought was coming, the moment when the elves turned on him and started to torture him.

His rational mind could not compete with the part of his brain that knew he was going to die, and that it would happen in the most horrible way imaginable. The part of his brain that only wanted to run away, to hide, to curl up and perish on its own rather than face that torment.

He tried to keep cheerful, to laugh and smile and raise the spirits of his companions. To help alleviate the fear he knew they felt as well. Yet he knew once they passed through this last door, only gruesome fate and inevitable death awaited him.

One of the soldiers rapped on the door with the pommel of his bronze sword, and it swung wide on its hinges.

Light, warmth, and music spilled into the tunnel. Malden smelled meat roasting over an aromatic fire. The elfin guards stepped aside and gestured for the prisoners to step forward, into the hall beyond.

“Let everyone have a good look at you,” one of them told Cythera. “This should be quite diverting.”

Malden watched her walk through the door, with Slag leaning on her arm. She craned her head upward to see her new surroundings, and her mouth fell open in awe. Malden followed close behind and could scarcely credit what he discovered.

The darkness of the Vincularium gave way to dazzling light. Standing lamps lit this room, just as they had the dormitory, but here their reddish light was mellowed by the yellow glow of a thousand candles that chased every shadow out of the hall. He could not imagine what the room might once have been used for, as no sign remained of the cold, cyclopean stone halls of the kind favored by dwarves. The elves had made this room their own, paneling the walls with elaborate wooden carvings or hanging them with rich, warm brocades that spilled out across the floor to become luxurious carpets.

Musicians in motley and crimson danced through the room, no two playing the same instrument. They seemed to be competing with one another yet their melodies wove together seamlessly, filling the air with bright piping and vigorous drumbeats. Jugglers lofted blazing torches high in the air, catching them behind their backs as they bowed to passing ladies in diaphanous gowns that trailed unheeded across the floor. Elves in heavy plate armor bashed away at each other with wooden swords, laughing as their armor rang, again and again. A groaning board ran the full length of one wall, laden with meats and wheels of cheese and enormous flagons of brown liquid.

Malden realized his jaw was hanging open, and he forced it to close. He caught Cythera's eye and imagined his own face looked much like hers—wide with uncontrolled surprise.

Despite what the elfin soldier had told them, the gathered elves did not seem at all shocked to see humans enter their home, nor curious to get a good look at the newcomers. They seemed too enveloped in their own revelry, too devoted to their own amusement, to even notice a change in the hall, or the arrival of three beings whom they had reason to hate. Malden was glad enough for that. He saw no instruments of torture in that place, no real weapons, even, other than those carried by the guards that brought them hence. If the three of them were to be tortured to death, it seemed they must wait until the party was finished.

Above them a wide balcony let out onto the hall, its far side hidden by thick red curtains. One of these curtains twitched aside and an elf strode out onto the balcony to stare down at the prisoners. Malden could see at once that this one was different. He had an aura of command about him, and Malden thought the elf must be their king or maybe some kind of high priest. He wore a black garment that started as a cowl around his head, revealing only his face, then fell without seam or fastening to the floor, as if he were covered in a sheet with a hole cut out for him to see through. Small bells were sewn everywhere onto this mantle, and they rang with a shrill sound as he moved. He was tall and his face was sharply featured, but his eyes were strange. From a distance it was difficult for Malden to tell, but he thought one of the elf's pupils was much larger than the other.

“Silence,” he said, in a voice that conveyed no emotion at all.

Instantly the clamor in the hall ceased. The musicians stopped playing in mid-chord. The jugglers caught their torches and held them. The warriors drew apart and came to attention. The ladies stopped exactly where they were, and lowered their hands to their sides. Around Malden, Cythera, and Slag, the guards all stood up very straight and held their arms down at their sides.

“What,” the black-robed elf asked, “are these?”

As if noticing the newcomers for the first time, the gathered elves all turned to stare at the two humans and the dwarf. They grabbed at one another's arms and pointed. Some pressed hands to their mouths, or their nostrils flared in surprise. None of them made the slightest sound.

The soldier who had threatened to kill Slag if he couldn't walk hurried forward. The clattering of his armor sounded very loud in the still room. He dropped to one knee and raised his hands in supplication.

The black-robed elf stared down at him for a moment as if he had no idea who the guard was. Then his face cleared as if he'd suddenly remembered something. “You . . . may speak.”

“Your excellent presence be preserved, your beneficence praised in every quarter, Hieromagus. These are the human trespassers you sent us to retrieve.”

“I sent . . . you? Trespassers?”

Malden started to quake. He remembered the elf—the one who'd been so horrified by Slag's vomit—say that a Hieromagus had ordered them to be brought in alive. The only reason they hadn't been killed already was because of this elf's command. If this Hieromagus couldn't remember why he'd wanted them alive, they might very well die in the next moment.

“Hold,” the Hieromagus said. “It is time for my sacrament.”

The curtains behind him moved again and an elf hurried out. She wore a shift made of patches and rags. In her hand she held something small and dark. The Hieromagus opened his mouth wide and she placed the thing on his tongue. Before he closed his mouth again, Malden saw that it was the cap of a black mushroom. The Hieromagus swallowed it like a pill.

“I sent you,” he said. “I sent you to retrieve the trespassers. That happened in the past. Yes. I have it now. I see again their future. Very . . . very important, that they are . . . alive. It will be very important. Though . . . though . . .”

He fell silent then. Seconds passed but he said no more.

One of the soldiers, standing just to Malden's left, moved his hand very carefully up to his face. He scratched his nose discreetly, then very quickly lowered his hand again, as if afraid someone would see him moving.

The Hieromagus suddenly slumped forward, leaning hard on the railing of the balcony. His eyes opened so wide Malden thought they might fall out of his head. His mouth twisted in a grimace of utter horror and his whole body convulsed.

Then, a moment later, he stood back up as if nothing had happened. In a quiet voice, the voice of a boy asking for a candy, he said, “Is it time for my sacrament? Why is there no music? When there's no music I hear . . . I hear everything . . .”

The musicians launched back into their riotous song. The jugglers tossed their torches in the air. The warriors began to fight once more in jest. The ladies giggled and whispered among themselves. None of them looked at the newcomers anymore.

The Hieromagus walked through the curtain, not even bothering to lift it away from his body. With a sigh, the leader of the soldiers rose to his feet and gestured at his warriors. “Take them inside and lock them away. Maybe he'll remember what he wanted them for, or maybe he'll order their deaths. Who knows? I can't say I find this game entertaining, either way.”

“That fellow's in charge of our fates?” Malden asked. “I cannot describe the depth of relief that I feel.”

The guard behind Malden jabbed him in the back with a spear. The three of them were marched forward, only to stop again after a moment as the leader grabbed hold of Malden's sleeve. “Don't be fooled,” he said. “The Hieromagus sees everything—the past, the future as well. His sacrament allows him to confer both with his ancestors and his descendants. If he seems scattered about the present, it is only because he sees so much.”

Malden knew enough to stay silent, yet he had so little left to lose. “He didn't seem scattered,” he answered. “He seemed insane.”

He fully expected the soldier to strike him with a mailed fist and break his already bruised jaw. Yet the soldier only laughed. “Right now his madness is the only thing keeping you alive, human.”