“Where is everyone?” Miranda said, stepping out into the dim light.
“Probably still fighting the fire,” Eli said, cocking an eyebrow at Nico. “I really hope you didn’t underestimate the situation. Henrith won’t thank us for getting his throne back if the castle burns down.”
“It won’t.” Nico glided silently through the gloom.
“That furnace wasn’t smart enough to manage anything as spectacular as burning down an entire castle.”
“Comforting words indeed,” Miranda said, shaking her head. “Come on. The throne room is this way.”
They half walked, half ran the length of the long promenade. The golden doors to the throne room loomed large, glowing silver in the dim moonlight, and, as they discovered when they reached them, locked tight.
“Not even locked,” Eli said, running his hands over as much of the ornate gold work as he could reach. “The doors themselves have been sealed somehow.” He got down on his knees and tried to peer underneath, but the doors were set flush with the marble floor, without so much as a hair crack to look through.
“Nico,” Eli said, stepping back. “If you would be so kind.”
Nico nodded and shook her hands free of her bulky sleeves. Bracing her boots against the slippery marble, she slammed her palms against the metal and started to push. The doors groaned under the pressure and began to bow inward. Cracks sprouted in the carved gold, growing in cobwebby spirals as Nico pushed harder. With a soft, peeling crack, large sections of the gold began to flake off, revealing the dark metal beneath. The door squealed, and the marble under Nico’s feet began to crack under the pressure, but the iron core of the doors beneath the soft gold did not budge. Nico gritted her teeth and pushed harder still, growling under her breath. The stone supports around the doors began to creak. Grit fell from the ceiling. Small showers of dust at first and then fist-sized bits of stone started coming down like hail.
“That’s enough!” Eli shouted, ducking the falling rocks. “You’re going to bring the ceiling down on our heads!”
Nico stepped back, panting. The doors, though mangled and dented with two Nico-hand-shaped craters, remained defiantly shut. Miranda bent down and picked up one of the larger flakes of gold leaf from the debris scattered across the floor. “The great, golden doors of Mellinor,” she said and handed the piece to Eli. “Just a gilded fake.”
“Gold is an impractical material for making doors, anyway.” Eli crumpled the gold foil and deftly slipped it into his pocket. “Well,” he said, “I wanted to be quick about this, but I guess there’s no choice.”
Nico stepped aside, and Eli took her place in the marble crater that had been smooth floor a minute before. He laid his hands on the dented metal and began whispering in the gentle tone Miranda had labeled his spirit sweet-talking voice. He was barely two words in when he jerked back, clutching his hand as if he’d been burned.
“We have a problem,” he announced. “I can’t talk to the doors.”
“What’s wrong?” Miranda picked her way through the rubble toward him.
Eli gazed grimly up at the twisted metal, shaking his hands vigorously. “They’re terrified. So terrified, in fact, I’m surprised they’re still standing.”
Miranda looked at Nico, but Eli shook his head. “Not her. Demon fear is different, vindictive. This is enslaver work. Renaud’s scared them shut.”
Miranda raised her eyebrows skeptically and brushed her hands against the doors. As soon as her fingers made contact, white-hot pain shot up her arm. It went through
skin, muscle, and bone and straight to the core of her spirit, and it was all she could do not to burst into tears. Her hands jerked away of their own accord, taking shelter in the cool, smooth cloth of her skirt. The burning remained, however, and with it an echo of terror so great that it made her legs watery. In the moment she touched the doors, one ironclad command had overshadowed everything. It rang through the metal, greater than the fear and heavier than the pain, an unbreakable order: Don’t move.
“That bastard.” Miranda looked up at Eli, her face pale with fury. “We have to stop him. I don’t care if he’s after Gregorn’s Pillar or not. Anyone who would do this to a spirit can’t be allowed to live.”
“For once, we agree.” Eli reached up and began to unbutton his valet jacket, and then the white shirt underneath. “I hadn’t meant to use this just yet,” he said, “but I can’t let Josef find us standing around, can I?”
He turned, and Miranda cringed before she could stop herself. His jacket and shirt hung open, revealing his bare chest. A series of angry red burns ran in a swirling pattern from his collarbone to just above his navel. Before she could ask what caused such an injury, the burns began to hiss. Smoke rose up from the marks in a white plume, curling into a cloud that smelled faintly of charred flesh. The temperature in the room began to rise. It was a pleasant, dry heat at first, but it increased exponentially with every breath Eli took. The ball of smoke above the thief’s head blackened as the heat grew. Sparks flashed at its center, faintly at first, then more violently, until the cloud was popping like a greenwood bonfire. Despite the fire show happening less than a foot above him, Eli’s face
was calm and his eyes were closed, as if he were asleep. The cloud was as hot as a smelter now, and Miranda took a step back as the hissing and snapping reached a crescendo. With a final crack, a tremendous blast of hot air and smoke shot out of the cloud, and every lamp in the hall snuffed out at once.
For a moment, the world went black, and then bright red light, more intense than any fire, blossomed in the air above Eli. The light swirled and grew, blending smoke and fire to form feet, then legs. A broad-barrelled chest three times as tall as Miranda flashed in the darkness, growing muscular arms, boulder-sized fists, and shoulders like fiery mountains. Finally, with a new burst of heat, the remaining light condensed into an enormous flame-wreathed head whose pointed crown brushed dangerously near the peak of the hall’s vaulted ceiling. Fully formed, the creature stretched languidly, sending a shower of sparks down around him. Red light rippled along the new-made muscles, tracing the intricate connections between limb and trunk as the creature’s surface hardened from smoke and fire into red-hot stone. When it was done stretching, it tilted its enormous head down. Glorious, fiery swirls moved like weather fronts across its face as the great hinge of a mouth opened wide, dripping fire.
“Eli,” it said. “It is good to see you.”
Eli pulled his coat closed, covering his now unmarred chest. “You, too, old friend.”
Miranda could not believe what she was seeing. The enormous spirit glowed like the heart of a smith’s fire, but the solidity and weight reminded her of Master Banage’s great stone spirits. The heat coming off it was
more powerful than Kirik’s at full burn, and the giant hadn’t even done anything yet.
“A lava spirit,” she said, not bothering to hide the amazement in her voice. “I’ve never met a wizard who could take one as a servant, not even Master Banage.”
“You still haven’t met one,” Eli said. “Karon isn’t a servant. He’s my companion.”
“But,” Miranda gaped, “how do you control him?”
“I don’t,” Eli said, grinning. “I ask.”
The enormous, burning spirit looked from Eli to Miranda, then back again. “You’re keeping strange company these days,” he rumbled.
“Only temporarily,” Eli assured him. “Now, I was hoping you could do me a favor. I need these doors open.”
Karon glared at the doors. “That’s a powerful command they’re under. I may have to kill them.”
“At this point, that might be a mercy,” Eli muttered. He looked at Miranda, whose distress was obvious, and he sighed. “Be gentle, if you can. The Spiritualists have always been a bunch of bleeding hearts.”
Karon nodded and turned to the doors. Miranda could feel them shaking through the marble, still too scared to open even when faced with death. As the lava spirit stepped forward, Nico and Eli retreated behind one of the support pillars, and, a moment later, Miranda followed. The hall shook as the lava spirit positioned himself in front of the trembling doors. Karon pounded his fists together a few times, getting them white hot. Then, with a hiss, he slammed his glowing hands into the quivering metal. The doors screamed when he made contact, filling the air with the bloody stench of iron. Melting gold flowed in glowing rivers down the door’s surface
as the remaining scrollwork and flourishes dissolved under Karon’s fire like marzipan dipped in steam. Karon ignored the wealth flowing around him and wedged his glowing fist deeper into the iron’s screaming heart. At last, the terrified metal could hold no longer, and the doors began to slip away. Iron dripped like wax from Karon’s fingers, falling in large, hissing black drops to splash against the stone floor. Back in the hall, Miranda huddled behind Eli, cringing away from the splatters of liquid metal and the smelter blast of Karon’s heat. Her left hand clutched the empty finger where Allinu’s ring normally rested. Never in all her life had she wished so hard for her cool mist spirit.
At last, the heat faded, and Miranda felt the thunderous stomp of Karon stepping back. She peeked around the corner. All that was left of the golden doors of Mellinor was a gaping hole, its melted edges bleeding liquid metal onto the blackened, cracked floor.
Karon looked over at Eli, who was admiring the wreckage from a distance.
“Good work,” the thief said, nodding.
The lava spirit’s face rippled in what Miranda guessed was a smile. Eli strolled forward, stepping without hesitation over the still-smoking metal. “Very good work indeed,” he said, grinning up at Karon. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like it if you could hang around a bit longer. I have a feeling I’ll need your help again sooner than I’d like.”
Karon nodded and squatted by the ruined doors, watching with intent as Eli stepped over the smoking threshold.
Beyond the circle of Karon’s ambient glow, the throne
room was as dark as the treasury had been. Miranda stepped forward, squinting against Karon’s glare, and, as her eyes adjusted, the room began to take shape. The first thing she noticed was that the royal banners that had lined the far wall were gone. So were the elegant lamps, chairs, and end tables that had once ringed the open room. In their place, the entire contents of the treasury—golden statues, jewelry, weaponry, overturned chests of embroidered silk, everything—had been stacked along the walls in sloppy piles. But most upsetting of all was what lay directly ahead of them. At the far end of the room, at the foot of the dais steps, the gilded throne of Mellinor lay on its side, broken and splintered, as if it had been kicked off its perch. In its place, standing like a trophy at the top of the tall dais, was a squat, gray pillar.
T
he two swordsmen stared at each other long after the sounds of the footsteps of the fleeing wizards had faded. Coriano held his white sword delicately in front of him, the blade shimmering with its own pearly brilliance. Brighter than the lantern at the bounty hunter’s feet, the sword glowed like the moon in the dark, empty treasury. Josef kept his eyes even with it, letting them adjust to the light.
Coriano took an experimental step forward, but Josef’s only response was to tighten his grip on the heavy beam and hold his ground. Coriano stepped back again, resting his sword wearily on his shoulder. “You can drop your oversized matchstick,” he said. “I’m not going to roll over when you come swinging like those fools in the hallway. Draw your sword.”
“You set all this up just to fight me,” Josef said. “Well, here’s your chance. Come when you’re ready.”
Coriano chuckled. “You think this is about you? Don’t flatter yourself, Mr. Liechten. You are just the trappings.
You know what I’m after.” His good eye flicked up and focused just above Josef’s left shoulder, where the Heart of War’s hilt waited. “Draw.”
“The Heart is my sword,” Josef said. “It chose me, so I’ll decide when to draw. If you’re so keen to cross blades with it, make this worth my while.”
Coriano’s eyes narrowed, and there was no hint of humor in his expression when he raised his sword again. “Have it your way.”
Coriano lunged, and Josef raised his beam just in time to keep the white blade from burying itself in his neck up to the hilt. The sword cut through the solid hardwood like it was taffeta, and Josef was forced to duck as the swing carried over his head. But Coriano was waiting. As soon as Josef’s head went down, the swordsman’s knee hit him square in the ribs. The blow opened Josef’s chest wound and sent him sprawling. He hit the stone floor hard and brought what was left of the beam up just in time to save his stomach from the next blow. The sword sliced clean through the wood again, but this time, Josef was prepared. At the split second when the white edge was buried deep in the beam, he twisted the beam. The blade caught, and Coriano’s eyes widened as, with one enormous heave, Josef sent beam, blade, and swordsman hurtling through the air.
Coriano ripped his sword free and landed neatly. The beam clattered to the ground behind him, sending a shower of dust and splinters into the air. Josef struggled to his feet, clutching his chest, which was bleeding freely again. He drew his short sword and dropped into a defensive position.
“You can’t be serious,” Coriano said, sounding almost
annoyed. “You can’t really expect to beat my Dunea with that metal hunk. She was made by Heinricht Slorn himself, the greatest master of Shaper wizardry the world has ever known. She was forged to be a killing blade in the hands of a master swordsman. This is her purpose, her nature, and you would face her with a sword so deep asleep, it doesn’t even know which side its edge is on? Be reasonable, man. You won’t be able to land a touch, much less a blow.”