Book of Iron

Eight

Prince Salih glanced at Maledysaunte. “What’s to stop us from just walking up and grabbing her?”

“There’s magical energy accumulating with every blow of that hammer,” she said. Her pale face drew in over the bones beneath it, collapsing as if each strike against the anvil pulled blood and strength from her. “I can contain it. I will contain it. But the longer you wait….”

Salamander stepped forward. “Mom,” she said.

She paused at the edge of the hammer’s swing. Liebelos didn’t hesitate.

“Mom!” Salamander yelled, more forcefully.

The hammer came down ever harder. Bijou could see the ropes of Liebelos’s muscles moving under sweat-slick skin. The sweat flew from her face, dripped from her nosetip to sizzle on the anvil. The blows reverberated within the enclosed chamber, dizzyingly loud, like the pound of a heart if you stood inside it. The anvil itself grew hot, hotter with every blow. The shimmering shape upon it resolved, clearer and clearer, like an image on a photographic plate emerging under the developer.

It was, of course, a book. A folio volume, as tall as the reach of Bijou’s arm, bound in hammered iron, the cover hinged more like a door than like the spine of a book.

Bijou saw Salamander nerve herself. She saw the moment when the white Wizard made the decision to step forward, under the hammer-blow. She saw Maledysaunte sagging, dropping to one knee in the limestone-laced mud of the cave floor, her head drooping as if her neck were a wilting flower’s stem.

And she saw Prince Salih step in as Liebelos drew the hammer back to her heels for one more tremendous swing, and catch the haft in his right hand.

“No more,” he said.

Liebelos tugged. The hammer would not come free. She released the hammer haft and whirled on the prince. “You must let me continue,” she said. “The fate of worlds hangs in the balance.”

“A life hangs in the balance,” Prince Salih said. He lifted the hammer one-handed, reversed it, and let the head rest on the floor. Upon the anvil before him, the book began to fade.

Maledysaunte lifted her head. She gasped in a breath, harsh and rattling.

“No,” said the guardian, in his voice without echoes. “This is not what happens now.”

He reached out, a gesture as effortless as the flow of oil across water, and grasped Salih’s right forearm. His hand closed. Bijou heard the sharp wet snap of a bone breaking.

Another man might have gone to his knees. Salih released the hammer-haft; it stayed steady for a long moment before falling sideways. Before it touched the mud, Salih had a pistol in his left hand, pressed against the guardian’s abdomen below the ribs.

He fired.

Pain as if someone had clapped a spiked palm to each of Bijou’s ears lanced through her head.

The guardian’s flesh jumped away from the impact as if the bullet had been a stone thrown into still water. The bullet thudded against the far cavern wall. Limestone powdered in the impact. The sound was lost in the thunder still ringing in Bijou’s ears. Then it collapsed back as seamlessly, leaving him whole and untouched.

He looked at Prince Salih as if terribly disappointed in him. The prince, dazed by his own gunshot or the pain of his broken arm, shook his head.

Carelessly, the guardian extended his arm and threw Prince Salih against the far wall. Bijou did not see him strike. She was already moving forward, Ambrosias at her side.

The guardian fixed her with a stare from the bottomless, lusterless black pools of his eyes. “Don’t.”

Bijou froze. She couldn’t hold his gaze; she twisted her face aside to see Maledysaunte climbing to her feet, the dead bard supporting her. Salamander crouched down, clutching her knees as if trying to make herself impossibly tiny and so go unnoticed. Kaulas stood over her, the picture of a protector, his kaftan flaring wide in the cavern’s constant breeze.

Bijou couldn’t hear his voice, but she wouldn’t even had needed to read his lips to know what words they were shaping. “I said not to trust him.”

“We didn’t,” Bijou snapped back, her words muffled and dull inside her own head.

The guardian’s words were not lost in the crashing thunder ringing through Bijou’s ears. They sounded just as flat as ever, and just as pellucidly clear.

“Dr. Liebelos,” he said, “pray pick up your hammer again.”

Belatedly, it occurred to Bijou to wonder how it was that he spoke their language, if he was a creature of ancient Erem.

Bijou could not spare a glance for Prince Salih. She hoped he was alive. In her peripheral vision, she saw Maledysaunte struggling to stand, propped by Riordan on one side. Kaulas moved forward to assist her, coincidentally screening Salamander from the guardian’s view. Behind him, Salamander—still hunched piteously—dug her fingers into the sand.

The ringing was dying down, though not fading away completely. Through it, Bijou heard Salamander saying over and over, “Don’t hurt my mother. Don’t harm my mother.”

Dr. Liebelos approached cautiously, crouching and reaching out to hook the haft of the hammer with her fingertips and slide it toward her. Mud and grit stained her trousers to the knee. Her fingers blanched white where they pressed the haft. She stood, dragging it toward her, and turned back to the anvil.

She swung the hammer high.

“Guardian!” Bijou cried, stepping toward him just as the hammer crashed down.

His head, only, swiveled, the rest of his body as motionless as a praying insect’s. “Do not interfere,” he said.

Bijou stopped beyond his reach. She sidled one step, another. “What Dr. Liebelos said about saving the world. You have to get the book out of Maledysaunte, is that right?”

He simply regarded her. Gasping, Dr. Liebelos drew the hammer back for another effort.

“Because it will corrupt her?”

The corners of his mouth twitched.

She sidled another step. Now his back was to Salamander and the ragged Maledysaunte, who seemed now to choke on every breath. She had gone to her knees again. She clutched her throat, and with the second hammer blow fell to her side, legs kicking as if she were suffering a seizure. Perhaps she was, but Riordan and Kaulas were beside her to guide her down.

“You don’t care about saving the world,” Bijou said. Of course there was no point in explaining his own objectives to him—but she needed to keep his attention, and Prince Salih had already demonstrated that a direct assault was not the way to do it. And even constructs loved to talk about themselves…

The hammer rang again. Bijou didn’t steal a look. She knew the book—or the Book—would be taking shape on the anvil. It didn’t matter.

What mattered was keeping the guardian’s attention.

She said, “I think I understand you better than that. You don’t want the book out of Maledysaunte because it will make her some kind of witch-queen. You want it out of her because it won’t. Isn’t that the truth? She’s strong enough to live with it. And as long as it’s in her, it’s not destroying anything else.”

She was guessing, and his expressionless mask of a face gave her no advice as to whether she was guessing correctly. The hammer fell again; this time the thud was duller, as if something interposed between it and the anvil.

Maledysaunte arched against the mud, gagging on a scream. Kaulas leaned above her, holding her shoulders down. Her feet kicked brutally, leaving long gouges where the bootheels scraped.

“O Child,” said the Guardian. “You are blind.”

“Fine,” Bijou said, irritation rendering her incautious. “So tell us what you do want. Did it ever occur to you to ask for help?”

It certainly never occurred to me, a little voice mocked.

“The book must be destroyed,” he said. “That is the only way I can be free of this existence.”

“You must have had centuries to destroy it,” Bijou shot back. “Just getting around to it now?”

“I cannot wield the hammer,” he said.

“And if it can’t be destroyed?” Riordan said, rising up and leaving Maledysaunte to Kaulas.

Oh, Kaalha, she prayed. Don’t let him make the guardian turn around. If he caught sight of Salamander…

But Riordan came around a circle to confront the guardian at her side. “Then better to have it out wreaking havoc in the world than in safe containment, aye? In the witch’s head, it can sit safe forever. Where’s its mischief, in hands like hers?”

Whatever the guardian might have replied, it was lost in Salamander’s scream as she suddenly stood up and hurled her arms over her head. It wasn’t any kind of magic, just sheer stagecraft.

The guardian turned in his footprints, a hand coming up as if he meant to reach out and grab Salamander by the throat.

Something pale and swift struck from the water’s edge, hurling its long length through the mud to sink needle-fine fangs in the guardian’s calf. Bijou had a brief, confused image of hissing and a flickering tongue, a muscular writhing and then a shape like a bent bow as the amphisbaena whipped its other head out of the mud and plunged the second set of fangs into his neck.

He flailed, a hand coming up to grab at the snake’s midsection, but it was already gone—whipping itself end over end to somersault into the darkness like a hurled stick. Bijou had a moment to observe the thin trickles of black ichor that oozed from the bites—something that had not happened when the bullet passed through him—before he turned away to face Salamander over Maledysaunte’s convulsing body and Kaulas’s back.

Kaulas, Bijou realized, wasn’t just holding Maledysaunte down. His hands were inside her waistcoat, rummaging.

Bijou might not be an expert in assessing the emotional states of demigods, but she knew Kaulas. He was looking for a talisman, whatever might hold the secret to Maledysaunte’s immortality.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Bijou spat. “In the middle of a battle? Kaulas!”

She shouted that last as a warning, but the guardian wasn’t looking at the necromancers. His gaze was fixed on Salamander. One hand was raised to his throat; ichor slipped between his fingers and trickled down his arm, dripping from the point of his elbow to the floor.

The hammer rang again. Bijou thought the blows were falling farther apart. Dr. Liebelos was tiring. Prince Salih was lying somewhere in the cavern, possibly broken and bleeding. But he’d proven that without the guardian, they could physically intervene with Dr. Liebelos.

“Riordan,” she said to the bard beside her. “Get the hammer.”

He asked no questions, just stumbling away up the slight incline to the anvil. The mud dragged at his bad foot.

Across the cavern, Salamander shouted, “Natural weapons!”

Of course. The snake’s teeth hurt him. Bullets did not. Fists and feet, then—

Bijou leaned back and kicked the guardian right in the small of the back. Behind her, sounds of struggle rose as the hammering ceased. Salamander bent down, scooped up a rock, and hurled it at the guardian.

Maledysaunte’s hands came up and grasped Kaulas’s fumbling wrists. “Off me, you whoreson sorcerer!”

He didn’t move fast enough to suit her. She twisted against him, using her hips to throw him off—and directly into the path of the guardian as he leaped toward Salamander. Maledysaunte dragged herself up, a terrible figure in her mud-soaked clothing, lurching toward the anvil.

“Can’t beat the guardian,” she snarled, falling in the mud up the hill. “Got to remove his reason for fighting.”

Whatever his other failings, Kaulas reacted to his unexpected impact with the guardian by latching on—and lashing out with feet and fists. Bijou fully expected him to go flying in a moment, as the prince had.

“Mother!” Salamander cried, racing after Maledysaunte. But Maledysaunte was already at the top of the incline, where Riordan had Dr. Liebelos by the wrist. She twisted to get away from him.

Natural weapons, thought Bijou, as Ambrosias reared up out of the muck and sank its pincers into the guardian’s neck, below the base of the skull.

The shearing bite would have paralyzed a human; on the guardian, it only succeeded in connecting because his arms were encumbered by Kaulas. The guardian hurled the necromancer off into the mud, where he crumpled.

Prince Salih came limping out of the darkness, one arm dangling limply, his face a demon’s mask of blood and mud. With his good hand, he leveled a pistol at the guardian.

The guardian reached over his head to grab the articulated centipede. Ambrosias dangled from his fist, rattling like a string of beads.

“No!” Bijou shouted, crouching to scoop up a rock as big as her fist. She wound her arm back—

The guardian stopped. His fingers opened. He dropped the bone and jewel centipede in the thrashed and slimy soil.

Bijou followed the line of her gaze.

Maledysaunte and Riordan stood beside the empty anvil, the hammer slack in Maledysaunte’s hand. Dr. Liebelos was a huddle at their feet. Salamander had stopped halfway up the hill, frozen in horror, hands spread wide as if she could arrest the moment.

“It’s over,” Maledysaunte said to the guardian. “Go back from whence you sprang.”

She let the hammer drop from her hand.