The Thief Who Spat In Luck's Good Eye (26 page)

What foulness is this?
said Tha-Agoth. He was standing over one of his slain warriors, dribbling blood from his freshly cut palm into the gaping mouth of the corpse. Nothing was happening.

“
Looks like the Shadow King has found a way to kill permanently,” I croaked.

Impossible. My blood is life eternal.
He tore at his wrist with the head of a snapped spear and let the resulting gush of blood coat the man's gaping chest wound. There was no change.

Holgren wobbled over to a pile of dust that had been one of the Shadow King's beasts. He touched two fingers to the giant blade that lay nearby, then drew his hand back as if it had been scalded.

“
There are foul magics woven into this blade. The Shadow King has found a way to destroy souls.” He looked up at Tha-Agoth. “You won't bring any of them back. There's nothing to bring back. I'm afraid.”

Tha-Agoth rose from where he knelt next to the slain soldier, starlight eyes afire.

He is a scourge, a blight on the world. He must be destroyed.

“
He also seems to know your line of march,” I said. “Perhaps we should deviate from it a bit, just to keep him guessing.” I didn't want to catch a stray blade. I might not have much of a soul, but what I did have I wanted to keep. And since it seemed that Holgren and I would be twitching on the ground every time there was a skirmish, I'd just as soon avoid any more violence along the way.

Tha-Agoth had other ideas.

Let them come in their hundreds. I will destroy them all.

“
Holgren and I along with them, most likely.”

Perhaps. That is not my concern.

“
Well, it is mine. But forget about us. How many more of your men are you willing to see die? Did you bring them back after a thousand years, just to blithely see them perish?"

I will not let the Shadow King sway me from my path.

“
Then you're a fool,” I said. He didn't bother to respond.

We went through three more ambushes by the umbrals that night. Each time, we spent most of the melee twitching on the ground, waiting for death. It was one of the darkest nights I've ever lived through. I can think of little worse than the feeling of utter powerlessness that possessed me that night.

By the third attack, Tha-Agoth had lost more than half his troops. Perhaps thirty remained. Those left still wore those beatific, untroubled looks on their faces. They were serving their god, sure of their destiny despite his inability to bring them back to life. They were idiots, led by a dangerous deity.

After the last umbral attack, Holgren took me in his shaky arms and buried his face in my neck. “Leave, Amra,” he whispered. “Walk away now. Go back to Lucernis and leave all this behind. Go home.”

I raised up his head and put two fingers to his lips. Then I put my hand over his heart. “This is my home now,” I said. “No more talk of me leaving, Holgren. I'll see this through to the end.”

“
You're a damned fool,” he said, and a thin smile touched his lips.

One thing I couldn't figure out was why Tha-Agoth didn't just destroy the umbrals himself. After what he'd done to the death lands, I thought it should have been child's play for him.

“
I believe he only wields that sort of power in Thagoth,” said Holgren when I mentioned it. “If you remember, he said something about that place being special to him because of the blood he shed to protect it.”

“
So he isn't the all-powerful being he seemed this afternoon.”

“
I really don't think he is, else he would have had the entire world under his sway a thousand years ago.”

“
Let's just hope he's powerful enough to finish the Shadow King,” I said.

We suffered no more attacks from the shadowy umbrals that night. As dawn approached I began to believe we might be safe for another day. I should have remembered the mother of monsters. Shemrang.

Athagos. You are close, now
, said Tha-Agoth to himself.
I feel you
.

He stood staring through the dark to the east.
I feel you, moving through the night, a shadow among the shadows. I can almost smell you. I can almost hear your breath ...
He shuddered, the longing plain on his face.

I didn't pretend to understand what strange emotions they held between them. Forgetting the fact that she was his sister, how could he want her when she had betrayed him and doomed him to agony for a thousand years?

Neither was human, I finally decided, and human morals, human emotions and motivations simply did not obtain.

After a time he shook himself and ripped another hole in reality.

Inky tendrils of distilled night shot through the opening and tore him in half.

Tha-Agoth screamed. The rift began to collapse. The tentacles pulled Tha-Agoth's upper half through the collapsing rift as the smaller nightmares poured through to finish the soldiers. They were hideously fast, faster than they'd been when we'd encountered them in the Flame's halls.

Holgren had to stay with Tha-Agoth. If he didn't he was finished. I shoved him through the closing rift and prayed as Tha-Agoth's shrieking soldiers lay me flat and twitching. I hit the ground hard, facing east. The rift closed completely.

I waited for death to come in the form of one of Shemrang’s offspring. Out in the distance, perhaps two miles away I saw a great blossoming of light, pure white mixed with warm gold, and prayed that Holgren had been able to drive Shemrang and her children away again.

The Thagothians dispatched all of the creatures that had swarmed through the gate, but at a high cost. Only twelve of Tha-Agoth's men remained. I survived, I think, mainly because I wasn't a moving target. They likely mistook me for dead.

Once the shrieks died away and control returned to my body, I stood on shaky legs and tottered off to the east.

“
Let him be alive,” I muttered to myself. Behind me the Thagothians heaved up the lower half of their god on broad bronze shoulders and followed me. Or at least they moved in the same direction as I did.

The sky was lightening in the east. Soon the Shadow King’s creatures would have no power above ground. If Holgren still lived, we might be able to make it to Shadowfall before night and destroy the massive black block that I suspected housed all the Shadow King’s power. If Holgren was dead…. He wasn't. He couldn't be. Completely unacceptable.

I stumbled into a shaky run.

False dawn had taken the sky before I arrived at where I thought I'd seen the magelight flare, allowing me to take in my surroundings more fully. Snow had not fallen this far east. I realized we were fairly near the river where Holgren and I had first met the umbrals. We'd traveled much further than I had realized.

We were on the edge of the great expanse of grassland that led down to the river in an area of thorny shrubs and scattered, wind-twisted trees. The ground was uneven. I stumbled more than once. All the while I scanned the horizon for some sign of Holgren or Tha-Agoth. I saw nothing, had seen nothing since that burst of light.

I found them in a shallow depression nearly hidden by the surrounding brush. The upper half of Tha-Agoth lay bleeding in sparse graying grass. His eyes were closed. Holgren lay not far away. At first I thought he was dead, and a stabbing pain ripped through my heart. Then I saw the slow rise and fall of his chest.

He drove the creatures away. It cost him dearly.
Tha-Agoth regarded me with his starlight eyes. I ignored him. His followers would arrive soon with his lower half and he'd be as good as new.

I went to Holgren and turned him over. His face was bloody, his clothes shredded. Shemrang or her children had gotten hold of him, at least briefly.

“
He saved your life,” I said. "Heal him.”

No.

“
How can a god be so petty?” I asked. “How can you refuse aid to someone who freed you from a thousand years of torment?”

If he lives, I will forgive him his betrayal. More I will not do.

The others arrived. Tha-Agoth busied himself with putting his body back together. I cradled Holgren's head in my lap and wiped the worst of the blood from his face. He breathed, shallowly, but did not wake.

Tha-Agoth and his men were ready to go in less than half an hour. Holgren still hadn't woken.

“
Tha-Agoth,” I said. “I need your help. If you won't heal him, at least have your men carry him. If he gets too far from you, he will become the Shadow King's creature. It will be another victory for your enemy.”

At first I thought he would refuse even this, but he simply nodded, tight-jawed, and one of the soldiers discarded his shield and threw Holgren over his shoulder.

Tha-Agoth stared off to the east, into the rising sun.
She fords a river,
he said.
She is very close now.

“
Then she's also very close to Shadowfall.” I said. “We should be able to get there long before dark, and take the Shadow King at his weakest.”

First my sister,
he said,
then my enemy
.

“
What if she doesn't want to go back to Thagoth?” I asked him.

She will do as I say.
But he sounded less than certain.

“
If you say so.”

She will. She must. It is only the necklace that forces her away, the filthy necklace that you put on her.

I said nothing, but began to wonder. A thought occurred to me: Just who had bound her to the Tabernacle grounds, and why? I had suspected things were not as they had seemed, and never had been. The feeling grew in me.

The next rift opened on the bank of the river where I'd had a mule's head staring back at me as I'd bathed. It was the last Tha-Agoth would open.

From here we follow solely on foot. She is very close now.
He forded the river, and we all followed. Once across the water and into the trees, he stopped and sniffed, like some predator tracking its prey. Tha-Agoth moved forward, a little to the south, and we followed.

I kept an eye on Holgren, checking periodically to make sure he was still breathing. It ate at me that there was nothing more I could do for him. That Tha-Agoth would do nothing for him I tried not to think about, as the rage it engendered made me want to plunge my knife into his godly back.

We moved through the woods. After a time I thought I began to recognize where we were heading. It wasn't anywhere I wanted to go. My suspicions were confirmed when we emerged into the clearing that had once contained the Flame's pyramid.

She has gone to ground there,
said Tha-Agoth, pointing toward the gaping hole I'd helped create.

“
That's what I was afraid of,” I muttered. More than likely it was also where Shemrang and her vicious children had gone to ground as well. Tha-Agoth might be able to survive being ripped in half, but Holgren and I wouldn't.

I tried again to reason with him. “Tha-Agoth, please listen to me. Let me lead you to Shadowfall now. If you destroy the Shadow King, Athagos will be free, not to mention Holgren. You don't have to waste time getting rid of the necklace if you destroy him. Going down into that pit is only asking for trouble.”

No. Athagos first. I will deal with the Shadow King only after I’ve found my sister.

I sighed. Exactly what I'd expected, but I had to try. “Be ready to deal with Shemrang and her offspring again, then. Only this time Holgren won't be able to drive her off, since you won't heal him.”

He said nothing, only climbed down into the darkness. The rest of us followed. I had no doubt it was going to be bad down there in the dark. I just didn't know how bad.

Kerf & Isin, Part the Third

On the plane of deities, Isin was berating Kerf.

“
How do you know it isn't the Shadow King's reign that is about to begin?” she asked. “If we had taken care of the Twins ourselves as I suggested, none of this would be happening. His influence would have been limited to those he could trick to coming to him. In time he would have faded away as magic did. Now he's poised to usher in an age of death and darkness!”

Kerf leaned heavily on his crooked staff, the weight of worlds seemingly settled on his uneven shoulders.

“
Isin, calm yourself. Death and darkness are
always
waiting to sweep down on an unsuspecting world. Sometimes they even prevail. But it is our function to aid mortality, not protect it from all possible harm. Free will entails responsibility, oh goddess of the kind heart and lovely smile.”

“
Don't try to flatter me, Kerf. The fact remains that the Twins are our responsibility. They aren't mortal. They were destined to join us. I should never have let you persuade me to let those poor mortal dears try to settle the matter.”

“
You've grown attached to them, is all. You have a sentimental investment in them. So do I. I've taken a real liking to that foul-mouthed, foul-tempered woman and her partner. But the very nature of heroism entails just such life-or-death endeavors as they're undertaking. When this is over, they'll be stronger, wiser, and more fully human than they ever would have been had I not set them on the trail of Thagoth.”