“Triss, I need an edge!” Then I stepped in, set my feet, and swung a double-handed blow right at the base of the thing’s neck.
It was like hitting a tree trunk. The shock of the impact numbed my hands and nearly sprained my wrists as the sword tried to tear itself free of my grip, but Triss came through. With the essence of the everdark transforming my sword’s edge into a sliver of deadly night, the blade slowed but never quite stopped, plowing through undead flesh and bone to behead the monster.
Not that that killed it. The head was still angrily snapping its jaws as it rolled away, while the body kept right on going in a straight line. It would take a long and hot fire or powerful and properly tailored magic to fully destroy the thing. We had time for neither, as a crossbow quarrel struck the cobbles near my feet and shattered just then. One of the other guards had gotten into firing position.
“We have to get under cover!” I yelled.
Maylien had ended up back by the low window into the dungeon, and she turned to it now. Calling Bontrang to her, she moved her hands through a quick and intricate pattern that left lines of magical light behind in a beautiful cat’s cradle for those that had the eyes to see it. Then she touched the palms of her hands to the two closest bars and spoke a word of opening.
Blue light erupted from the point of contact with a tremendous shattering boom like someone had broken a bottle filled with thunder. Maylien flew back and away from the window at the same time that the bars ripped free of their moorings and fell inward. A second quarrel struck the place she’d just been crouching even as Maylien—who had landed neatly on her feet—started back in my direction.
“Go!” she shouted, and I went, diving to slide headfirst through the gap she’d opened in the bars.
She followed a moment later, dropping down beside me out of the line of fire. She had a satisfied smile on her face and gave Bontrang an appreciative scritch on the top of the head.
“Pretty fancy spellwork for such short notice,” I said as I started to check over the places the risen had touched me—if it had drawn blood, the wound would need to be cleansed with fire.
“Thanks.” Maylien’s breathing sounded ragged. “Bontrang and I practiced, though I wish it took less out me—I need to sit for a moment.”
“Gotta check for risen contamination anyway,” I responded.
Maylien spoke again as she checked herself over. “That spell’s what I’d intended to use when I came to get you out of that dungeon in Tien. But then Devin dropped a net over Bontrang, bopped me on the head, and carried us both off as easily as a couple of sleeping children.”
I looked away for a moment. “I’m sorry I didn’t come after you right then. I wanted to, but I just didn’t have anything left to do it with.”
“I wouldn’t have let you if you’d tried,” interjected Triss before turning to Maylien. “Aral was overtapped, inches from dying.”
“It’s all right.” Maylien put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “Best thing you could have done, truly. Devin had a bunch of traps laid for you. He really wanted to capture you for something though he wouldn’t say what, and he was furious when you didn’t come after him right away. It threw his plans off.”
“Do you know that those plans were?” I asked, feeling a little sick—what else had my old friend intended to do to me?
“No. He ranted a little about how you and Sumey were both making things hard for him, but he wasn’t dumb enough to spell anything out for me. Sorry.”
By then we’d both finished checking for cursed wounds, and I noticed how very sad she looked though I didn’t know why, so I reached up to cover her hand with my own. For a moment we sat silently like that, then she pulled gently away. Before I could do or say anything in response, we were interrupted.
“I don’t know where they went.” The voice was outside but close by. “That big flash blinded me, and they were gone when I could see again.”
“Just get out of the courtyard, you idiot!” someone yelled back from somewhere above. “Another of the baroness’s pets is on the way in from the moat, and you don’t want to be there when it arrives.”
“Oh shit! I—” The other voice rose into a scream, then cut off suddenly.
Fuck.
“I think it’s time we got moving again.” I climbed to my feet. “Too bad we can’t put the bars back.”
Maylien nodded and followed as I started quietly across the room. In addition to duplicating the equipment of the other torture chamber, this one had a large rack, an iron maiden, and a cauldron full of oil atop a fire grate. And just inside the door we found a huge, red marble tub and a large copper for heating water.
“What the hell is that for?” asked Maylien.
“I don’t know.” After glancing into the empty hallway beyond the door’s narrow barred window, I bent to work on the lock with Triss’s help. “Maybe your sister likes to lounge in a hot bath while she watches people have their fingernails pulled out.”
“I wish I could put it past her. Or pretend she wasn’t my full sister.” Maylien shuddered and hugged herself. “But blood-madness runs in my family. First my father, then my sister, and lately my uncle. Sometimes I wonder when it will take me.”
I felt the lock give and stood up. “You seem to be doing all right so far.” It was an inadequate response, but I was too horrifyingly aware of the possibility that she was right to make a better one.
As I started to open the door, something smacked into it from the other side and slammed it back shut. Before I could force it open again a solid thunk announced someone’s dropping a heavy bar into place. I glanced through the tiny window again, but couldn’t see anything.
“Triss,” I said, my mind racing ahead to try to anticipate the kind of resistance we’d face after he took the bar off for us—crossbows certainly, maybe woldos or other pole arms, possibly attack from two sides . . . “You’re going to have to—”
Maylien tugged on my sleeve. “I hate to interrupt but another one of those things just came in through the window.”
“Always wondered what it’d be like to see someone ripped to pieces by the pets.” A man’s face appeared in the window, leering evilly through the bars as he spoke. “Give us a good show, won’t you, love?”
“Watch
this
.” Maylien slapped her hand against the bars and sent a blast of magefire through the narrow opening.
The man on the other side shrieked horribly and fell away, which gave me an idea for the risen. I started back across the torture chamber toward the window.
“Follow my lead,” I called over my shoulder as I raced to get into the right position.
The monster met me halfway, charging forward in the same eager and powerful but uncoordinated manner as its predecessor. That was just what I’d hoped for. As its bony hands reached for my chest, I caught it by the wrists, dropping onto my back and pulling. It lost its balance, falling toward me, and I planted both feet in its stomach, lifting and thrusting so that it passed over me and went sailing through the air. It landed headfirst in the big cauldron with a splash. For a moment, only its lower legs stuck out above the surface.
“Maylien!” I yelled but she had already anticipated my request, blasting the oil-filled cauldron with magefire.
The oil ignited with a whumpfing sound, and further trails of fire radiated out around the cauldron from the risen-spattered oil. Burning undead hands rose from beneath the oil’s surface and clutched at the edge of the cauldron. Maylien grabbed a heavy cleaver from a nearby table and brought it down with a sharp whack that severed the thing’s left hand. Unbalanced, the risen fell back into the flaming oil. When it tried to get out again a moment later, Maylien removed the right hand as well.
The burning hands started to crawl away. Since I wanted a closer look, I skewered them on the end of one of my swords instead of just flicking them back into the cauldron. This risen—and a close look showed it was definitely one of the risen—seemed further gone than its predecessor. What little flesh was left on its bones stretched out in narrow ribbons of muscle and tendon. The fingernails were gone completely though it looked like someone had filed the finger bones themselves to ragged points. It was harder to get a fix on the thing’s head, as we didn’t dare let it get out of the cauldron, but in the brief moments it was above the surface it, too, seemed more stripped down and skull-like.
After a couple of minutes of our shoving it repeatedly back into the fire, the body seemed to lose the coordination necessary to make a serious attempt at escaping the cauldron, though it continued to thrash and flail feebly. That was right about the time a badly aimed crossbow quarrel came sailing in through the window of the inner door and gonged off the cauldron. Maylien sent a burst of magefire at the door while I scraped the hands off my sword and back into the cauldron.
I would have liked to let the risen cook a little bit longer, but the guards had just become the bigger threat, so I slid my swords under the edge of the cauldron and levered it over. A cascade of burning oil washed across the floor, quickly lighting the door and every bit of wood near it on fire. Since that included a couple of major support posts, I figured it would make for a hell of a distraction. I hated to use fire under most circumstances, but I figured the people guarding this chamber of horrors had earned it.
Rather than attempt the rapidly growing inferno around the door, we reversed course and went back out the window. Between the smoke pouring out of all the lower windows and the distraction of the angry headless risen that was still staggering around the courtyard, nobody noticed us at first. We made it back to the rope we’d left on our way in and most of the way up the wall before the first crossbow was fired our way.
“Do you think there are any more of those risen in the moat?” Maylien asked as she dropped down on the roof of the little tower.
“Why?”
“Because if we stay here, someone’s going to think to use one of the catapults on the other towers to lob something a lot more lethal than a few quarrels at us, and if we try to climb down that line I crawled up, we’ll be easy targets.” She shrugged. “I guess there’s only one to find out.” Then she vaulted over the parapet.
“Crazy woman!”
“But you’re going after her, aren’t you?” Triss sounded resigned.
“Of course I am. What if there
are
more risen? She’ll need help.” I followed Maylien over the parapet and into the water.
Before I’d taken three strokes, Triss made a little relieved sound. “I can’t taste them in the water anymore. I think we’re clear.”
Maylien was already out of the water when I reached the shore, and she offered me a hand up.
“That was insane, you do know that, right?” I asked as she pulled me up.
“A little, maybe.” She grinned and her teeth shone white in the darkness. “But then, so’s this.” She stepped in very close and put her arms around my neck. “Don’t you think?” Then she gave me a kiss that just about melted my knees—enough so that Triss had to steady me.
“I dunno. Seems like a great idea to me. But I thought the future baroness wasn’t supposed to do things like that.” I’d intended it as a joke, but it came out sharper than I’d intended—I guess I was still stinging from her earlier rejection.
Maylien’s cheeks flushed. “I’m sorry about that but . . . well, I’m
not
supposed to be doing things like this. Heyin would tear his hair out if he could see us here, but I’m not going to worry about that right now if you won’t. Just for tonight, I’m going back to being the Rover I spent most of my life as and letting the future baroness take a well-earned break. We could easily have been killed back there, and confronting my sister’s going to be even more dangerous. So the chances are pretty good I’m going to die rather than become a baroness anyway, aren’t they?”
I nodded because she was right, though it hurt me to acknowledge it. I was quite certain I could kill Maylien’s sister if I needed to. Getting Maylien into position to do it herself after sending a formal warning to Sumey that she was coming and when? Not so much. For that matter, even if I got her there safely, Sumey might simply turn out to be the better swordswoman.
“If I don’t die,” continued Maylien, “I’m going to have plenty of time to wear the shackles of baronial etiquette later on. So, right here, right now, I intend to do something just because I want to do it and not because I’m supposed to do it, maybe for the last time.”
I glanced over my shoulder to the place where flames were starting to crawl up the side of the keep. “What about the keep?”
Maylien nipped my earlobe. “The way its going up? It’ll just add to the afterglow.”
“Crazy woman . . .”
“Uh-huh. Does that mean you’re turning me down?”
“No, but let’s get a little farther away first.”
“Fair enough.”
When we’d put some distance between us and the fire, I pulled her in under the shadow of a pine and gave her a kiss. She returned it in a way that left me breathless.
“It’s been an awfully long time for me,” I husked. More than five years.
“Me, too.” And she sounded more than a little breathless herself. “Since I returned to Zhan, actually. All right for the future baroness perhaps, but not easy for the Rover I used to be.” We kissed again.