M
alden 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 she’d done. If there were anything less than Slag’s life at stake, it would have been unforgivable. The spirits she spoke of were demons, he was certain. Denizens of Sadu’s pit of souls. The creatures Croy was oath-bound to fight against. The demons Acidtongue had been made to slay.
“No,” she said, though it sounded like she wasn’t entirely sure. “I needed their knowledge, not their physical forms. I was able to convince them to tell me what I needed to know without freeing them.”
“Then you did the right thing,” Malden assured her.
“It was difficult. The dwarves spurn all nature of magic,” she said, her voice the whisper of a page in a book being turned by an index finger, nothing more. “The . . . spirits were loath to help. I didn’t have the strength to convince them. So I compelled them. I compelled them, Malden. A witch does not compel. A witch bargains, cajoles, begs, tricks, cheats—never compels. Mother taught me that much. She didn’t teach me this.”
Malden understood only a little of what she was saying, but he knew she was distressed by what she’d done. He placed a hand on her back, intending to comfort her.
She flinched away from his touch.
Then she turned to face him. He saw that a streak of white had appeared amidst her sable hair.
He had seen practitioners of magic—sorcerers, not witches—deformed by congress with demons. Their faces and bodies had been distorted to perversions of the human shape. This was a very mild alteration compared to some he’d seen. Yet he understood. These slight changes were only the beginning. The process was gradual, but irreversible. Every time she used this kind of power, the changes would become more salient.
“I had a father to teach me as well,” she said.
Malden remembered holding a dagger against her naked breast. He remembered Coruth’s command, that Cythera must be slain if she chose the path of sorcery instead of the path of witchcraft. Her father’s path, rather than her mother’s.
He remembered the words Coruth had whispered to him, after she and her daughter fought off the barbarians scaling the wall. Coruth had tried to warn him that Cythera might follow her father’s path. And tell him it was not too late, even now, to put that knife through her heart, to stop her from becoming like Hazoth.
“Cythera,” he breathed.
“Do you still find me beautiful, Malden?” she asked. “Can you even look me in the eye?”
Her voice was so harsh Malden was fearful that maybe he couldn’t—that maybe even meeting her gaze would kill him on the spot. He forced himself to take her by the shoulders and look into her face. He saw nothing diabolic there, nothing dangerous. She was still Cythera. Still the woman he loved. “You’re as beautiful as ever,” he said, and he meant it.
She gasped as if he’d utterly surprised her. Then she turned away and shook her head. “Soon I’ll have to start wearing a veil,” she told him. Veils were the traditional garb of sorcerers. Her father had worn one.
“No. Just promise me you’ll never use that power again.”
“What if it had been you lying on that table? Or Croy? I wouldn’t have hesitated. I won’t, when your time comes.”
Malden looked past her, to see Slag lying in a peaceful sleep on the table. His burns were still pink and tender, the color of fresh scar tissue. Many of his hurts were gone altogether. His skin was pale white, the color of a corpse—but that was just the skin tone of a healthy dwarf.
Where his left arm had been, where there was only ragged meat before, there was now smooth flesh, free of scars or blemishes. It looked like he’d been born with only one arm.
“You did what you had to do,” Malden said. “You did this because I asked you to.”
“He’s my friend, too,” she told him. He tried to hold her but she pushed him away. “Look,” she said.
Slag’s eyes fluttered open. For a moment they remained unfocused, and Malden thought the dwarf would lapse back into unconsciousness. Then a weird vitality seemed to wash through him, all his muscles jumping at once, his eyes rolling wildly in their sockets. His lips pressed together, then opened again. He sat up and started to babble.
“The vessel, it’s cast but—but I didn’t have time to sound its impurities, it could shatter under the stress. And no time to make the projectile, I’ll have to use—but the overpressure—wadding, maybe, perhaps a striking plate, except—except—the tunnels! We have to check the tunnels!”
M
alden looked to Cythera. She was drained, and worse than that, she was wrestling with something inside her he couldn’t begin to comprehend. She couldn’t meet his eye, couldn’t so much as look at him. What had he done to her? What had he done to Slag? He had wanted to save Ness. Was it worth destroying everyone he loved?
“Lad! Come with me! We must check the tunnels—there was something—something,” Slag said, bubbling with new strength. With desperation, too. “Something different. We need to go. We need to go now.”
Malden reached for Cythera’s arm.
“Go with him, Malden. Go do what you do best,” she said.
“And what in the name of all that’s good in the world is that?” he asked her.
“Go be smart. Be devious. Find the way to save us all,” she told him.
“Lad! Come with me, now!” Slag insisted.
Malden went with the dwarf. What else could he do?
They hurried through the streets, Slag leading the way, still muttering to himself about dangers and fears and the rate at which burning gases expanded in a closed vessel. Malden heard none of it. He allowed himself to be led and asked no questions.
“Make a big show of it,” Slag said. Whatever foul magic Cythera had used to save his life seemed to be burning within him still, disordering his thoughts even as it filled him with boundless energy. “Maximize the surprise involved—only way to benefit from—they’ll think twice, is what it’s worth. My arm,” he said, suddenly. “I’m missing a fucking arm.”
Malden’s thoughts came to an abrupt stop. He stood there in the cold air and stared in horror at the dwarf. Had Slag just noticed his arm was missing? Perhaps he had forgotten all about the explosion. Perhaps it had been a mistake to wake him.
“There was a great fire in your workshop,” Malden explained. “Like an eruption of the pit. I pulled you out of there but you had already lost your arm. Cythera couldn’t give you a new one.”
Slag stared down at his shoulder for a while, as if he could find the arm there if he looked for it hard enough. Then he sighed, and some of his manic energy drained from him. “I remember, lad. I remember the light, the heat of it. This is what it cost me, eh?” Then he looked up at Malden with a wicked grin. “Good thing I have a spare. Come on, we’re wasting time.”
The entrance to Slag’s countertunnel was in the cellar of a house on the western edge of the city, hard by the Ryewall. Once, the cellar had been used for storing roots and preserved meat against winter’s hunger, but all that food had been commandeered long since. Now the room was given over entirely to sacks of dirt, tailings from the tunnel below. If the barbarians broke through into the countertunnel and tried to use it to enter the city, the sacks could be toppled down into the tunnel mouth, sealing it instantly.
Slag took a lantern from a pile by the mouth and held it while Malden lit it. Then the two of them headed down the steep slope into the countertunnel. Its ceiling was so low Malden had to stoop, its walls rough, as no effort had been made to smooth them. Tree roots reached out from those walls to snatch at his cloak as they hurried along, squeezing past the hastily placed timbers that kept the tunnel from collapsing under the weight of the earth above them.
The countertunnel was not particularly long. It didn’t need to be. The barbarian sappers had already tunneled under the city wall, and were working, Slag had told Malden, on digging a series of parallel tunnels that would further weaken the stones above. As they came to the end of the countertunnel, Malden saw a number of bowls full of wine set upon the floor.
Ripples formed on the surface of each, then the wine stilled again. After a moment new ripples formed, and then stilled. The pattern repeated without cease. “They’re digging right now,” Malden said.
“Aye,” Slag told him. The dwarf grabbed a pick from where it lay on the floor. “Day and night. They’re in a hurry.”
“Shouldn’t our own diggers be working, too, then?” Malden asked.
“No need. I sent them all home. We’re ready now.” The dwarf took a step back, then ran at the far wall and struck it a mighty blow with his pick. Clods of dirt and small stones cascaded from the wall. Slag struck again, and again. “It might help, lad,” he said, breathing heavily, “if there were two of us at this.”
Malden grabbed a mattock from the floor and struck at the wall as hard as he could. After a few more blows he broke through. His mattock met nothing but air. They had breached the barbarian tunnels.
Together he and Slag worked quickly to clear an opening big enough to wriggle through. In the tunnel beyond, Malden found he could stand up straight. “Their tunnel is bigger than ours,” he said.
“The barbarians are bigger’n you,” Slag pointed out. “There’s also the fact that I was trying to
not
bring the wall down.”
The timbers shoring up the barbarian tunnel were more slender than those Slag had used. They were propped up almost haphazardly. Shoddy workmanship—but then, as Slag had pointed out, this tunnel had not been built to last. It ran perpendicular to Slag’s countertunnel, headed away in both directions into utter darkness. Slag looked both ways, then seemed to pick a direction at random. He handed Malden the lantern and placed one finger across his lips for silence.
They moved quickly down the tunnel, all of Malden’s senses alert and searching for any sign that they were about to stumble into a barbarian work party. He could just hear, faint and distant, the sound of heavy iron tools biting into the earth with a series of soft thuds. He knew from past experience that sound carried strangely underground, and was not reassured by the far-off quality of what he heard.
Had he not been paying such close attention, he might have missed the trap. Slag came very close to stumbling right into it. At the last moment Malden grabbed the dwarf by the collar of his tunic and pulled him back.
Ahead of them stood an especially thin timber, propped up to hold a place where the ceiling sagged down toward them. At the base of the timber a web of thin copper wires stretched toward the walls, partially buried in the rough dirt of the floor. The wires were held at tension and bolted to the base of the timber.
Anyone who walked into one of those wires would yank the timber out of alignment. Probably not by much, just an inch or so. Malden had no doubt that would be enough to bring the whole ceiling down on top of them.
He pointed out the wires and Slag nodded, a look of great consternation on his face. “Good eyes, lad,” he whispered.
Malden just shrugged.
They headed farther down the tunnel, keeping an eye out for any more traps or dangers. After perhaps fifty feet, they came to where the tunnel ended at a junction with two more passages. The sound of men digging was much louder there. Malden thought the work crew might be right around the corner. He could hear the barbarians talking among themselves in their guttural language. Then he heard someone else addressing the laborers.
“If you dug with half as much strength as you use pulling your tiny little manhoods, we’d be halfway to Helstrow by now.” This other voice spoke the language of Skrae, with a distinct dwarven accent.
Malden knew exactly who it belonged to. Judging by the look on Slag’s face, he did, too.
“Keep at it,” the voice said. “Don’t think you can take a break. Mountainslayer will personally eat the first man who shirks down here, don’t forget it. I’m going to go drop my breeks and make some tailings. Don’t let me catch any of you looking, neither.”
Malden and Slag looked at each other. They were in perfect agreement. Malden blew out the flame of their lamp, leaving them in darkness.
A few moments later he held his breath as he heard someone coming toward them. He saw her light—a low and guttering candle—paint the tunnel wall near him.
It was Balint, as Malden suspected. The barbarians wouldn’t know how to build trebuchets, or dig a sapping tunnel. Slag had even figured out they must have a dwarf working for them. What dwarf other than Balint would ever help such a monster as Mörget? There was something strange around her neck, though, like a ruff but made of iron. A badge of office? Jewelry that Mörget had given the dwarf as a gift for her service? Malden couldn’t figure it out.
She didn’t see them until it was too late. Slag grabbed one of her braids and yanked her off her feet so that she fell on her back on the tunnel floor. Her eyes opened wide and her mouth began to form the syllables of a cry for help.
The law said that Slag could not use violence against anyone, not even a fellow dwarf. Malden was happy to do it for him. He used Acidtongue’s pommel to knock her unconscious.
The law was
very
clear on what penalty Malden faced for assaulting a dwarf. It said he should be roasted alive for striking her like that. Of course, he
was
the only law within a hundred miles, and he had struck down capital punishment in Ness.
Malden picked Balint up and carried her back to the cellar and the city beyond, Slag following close behind. By then she was starting to come around again.
Out in the street, Slag picked up a handful of snow and smeared it across her face. It was enough to fully rouse her.
She looked up at Malden first. And smiled merrily.
“Thank the ancients it’s you,” she said.
Malden’s eyes went wide. “You’re happy to see me?” he asked. “Do you even know how much trouble you’re in?”
“Not as much as I was. Mörget had me in thrall.”
“That’s your excuse? For building trebuchets so he could bombard the city? For trying to break through our wall?”
“If I didn’t do those things he would have cut me into morsels and eaten me raw,” Balint insisted. “I only stayed alive by doing his bidding. He was going to kill me eventually anyway. He kills everything he ought to preserve. That boy would bugger to death a horse he was riding on at the time, just to get his jollies. You’ve rescued me from that, and I’m grateful.”
“You might find me just as dangerous,” Malden said, putting a hand on the hilt of his sword.
Balint laughed. “Unlikely.”
“I have every reason to slaughter you!” Malden rasped. “You’ve played at evil for the last time.”
“Evil?” Balint shrugged. “What have I done, but it’s not the same as you?”
It was Malden’s turn to laugh. “You aided my enemies in a time of war.”
“Indeed,” she told him. “I also goaded him to kill his father and drive off his sister. I kept him burning for Skrae’s blood. And with good reason. I’ve never done aught but my duty to my own king. As long as the barbarians tarry down here in Skrae, they won’t turn their bloody eyes toward the dwarven kingdom. I’ve been protecting my people, at no small danger to my own beautiful arse.”
“Utter pother and nonsense,” Malden cursed. “You’re a villain pure and simple, and you live to do bloody mischief, you’re a—”
“Enough, you two! The tunnels,” Slag insisted, waving his one hand in frustration. “Balint—tell me fucking true. How long until they’re finished?”
The female dwarf had no reason to tell the truth—but perhaps no reason to lie either. “Oh, they’re done now. I was just adding a few flourishes for a more pleasing aesthetic effect. I’m a bloody artist, I am. The wall comes down at dawn. Mörget insisted on that.”
Cold fear gripped Malden’s heart and he thought he might lose consciousness. That soon? “How can we stop it?”
It was Slag who answered. “You can’t, lad. I saw enough down there to know it’s truth she’s telling.”
Malden spat out the bile that had seeped up into his mouth. “So that’s it? We’re finished?”
“Aye,” Balint crowed.
“Maybe so,” Slag said. He turned to look at Malden. “You want to just give up, then? Fucking surrender and ask for terms?”
“From Mörget? He’ll offer nothing,” Malden said. He knew it was true. He’d spent enough time with the barbarian to know he would slay every man, woman, and child in Ness, just for having given him such troubles already.
“Then we get back to work. Nothing’s changed,” Slag said. The look on his face betrayed him, but he remained adamant. “Nothing’s fucking changed. You going to kill her now?” he asked.
Malden studied Balint’s face. There was no fear there—as if she already knew he couldn’t kill her. That he wouldn’t. Was he really that predictable? “I wouldn’t kill the child-murderer. I wouldn’t kill the priest of the Lady, or even Pritchard Hood. No. I don’t kill anyone except in self-defense.”
“Good,” Slag said. “Because I can use her.”
“On your secret project?” Malden asked. “Why would she help with that?”
“Because she’s an arsing dwarf, that’s why.”
“Fuck you,” Balint said. For once it seemed the limit of her crudity.
It was Slag’s turn to smile. “Oh, milady, you’ll sing a different tune when you’re in on the game. I know our kind. You won’t be able to resist when you see what I’m building. It’s just that clever.”
Malden stared at the two of them. “You seriously believe she’ll work nicely with you?” he asked.
“Oh, I do, lad,” Slag said. There was something funny in his eye. A certain twinkle. Balint must have seen it, too, because she started giving the one-armed dwarf a shrewd look that on a human face would have meant only one thing. If Malden didn’t know better, he’d have thought—