The doom of Kings

CHAPTER FOUR

Moonlight fell across the stairs leading from the lower gallery down to the main floor. As Ashi watched, a figure moved through the patch of brightness. The pale light drained color and detail, but she could make out that the thief was tall and lean, wearing dark leathers and with a hood pulled up over his head. Down the stairs and onto the ground floor, he skirted the shrine and vanished again into the shadows. Ashi stepped back and made her way to the stairs as well, moving slowly and carefully to avoid stumbling over anything in the darkness. On the lower gallery, she paused again, assessing her options. She could just make out the thief as an indistinct figure moving from cabinet to cabinet as if looking for something inside one of them.

The thief had no light-if he was examining the contents of the cabinets, he must have had some magic or natural ability allowing him to see in the dark. She would be at a disadvantage in the deeper shadows. She needed to get the thief into better light. Approaching across the ground floor would put her in danger of being spotted, either as she crept around the dim perimeter or as she crossed the open center through the candlelight of the shrine.

But there was another way. She left the stairs and crossed along the gallery in the direction of the thief, taking care to stay well back from the gallery’s edge. She was partway around the gallery, almost above the place where she had seen the thief, when she heard a soft murmur of satisfaction from below. The thief had found whatever he was looking for. Ashi paused and heard the scratching of metal on metal. He was trying to open the lock on a cabinet. She moved back to the rail of the gallery, then oriented herself on the thin sound. When she judged she was nearly directly over the thief, she glanced down. The floor below was empty. Ashi swung herself silently over the rail and, gripping tight, lowered herself hand over hand down its stout spindles until she dangled in the air. The thief was a few paces in front of her, hunched over his work.

She took a quiet breath and dropped. The floor met her, but she rolled as she landed, coming up in a crouch and drawing her sword in one smooth movement. She caught a brief glimpse of the thief whirling in surprise. The cabinet behind him stood open.

“Hold!” Ashi shouted. “Hold in the name of-”

The words weren’t out of her mouth before the thief reached back into the cabinet, grabbed something, and hurled it at Ashi. She didn’t see what it was, but she jumped to the side to avoid it. Whatever the thief had thrown whistled past her to shatter on the floor. Even as she jumped, though, Ashi recognized it as a distraction. In the moment that she was off-balance, the thief’s hands shaped an arcane gesture and a husky, almost musical whisper rippled from his lips. A spell. The thief was more than he seemed! Ashi didn’t have any chance to dodge. The magical energy formed around her-

Then slid away like beads of water on a hot iron as it met the shield of her dragonmark. A tingle passed across Ashi’s scalp, but nothing more. Gritted teeth turned into a grin and she flung herself at the thief with a shout. The only way to deal with a spellcaster was to stay too close to give him time to cast.

The thief recovered quickly, though, drawing a heavy dagger and falling back into the shadows. Ashi aimed her first blow not at the thief-she wanted him alive-but at the dagger. If he faded too far into the darkness, the last thing she wanted was an unseen blade plunging between her ribs. Her honor blade flashed, reflecting what little light there was, as it struck hard against the dagger, and the shorter weapon jumped out of the thief’s grasp. Ashi stepped in behind the blow to grab the thief’s shoulder. With a twist and a shove, she sent him staggering back toward the center of the memorial and the light that shone from the shrine.

Except that he grabbed her arm as well, pulling her with him. He staggered into the light, but Ashi crashed into another display cabinet. Wood cracked, glass smashed, and artifacts from the cabinet rained to the floor in a metallic cascade. Ashi cursed and pulled herself free, turning to face the thief as he regained his balance. The light silhouetted him, obscuring his features further, but Ashi could see that he was, like her, wearing a scarf under his hood. Her glimpse was brief, however. Drawing himself up, he spat another musical word of magic.

Like ink on wet paper, the outline of the thief’s body seemed to run and blur. Every movement left a confusing streak on the air. Ashi hissed under her breath and leaped at him, but what should have been a clean blow passed through empty air. A smudged leg lashed out and she skipped aside to avoid it. The thief whirled and dashed across the memorial-straight for a rack of old weapons, rusted polearms standing like aged soldiers in drill formation.

“Betch.” Ashi ran after the thief, snatching up a wide-mouthed bronze vessel resting atop a low cabinet as she ran. She’d thought to hurl the vessel at her opponent or maybe hit him with it, but it was heavier than she expected, and it rattled when she grabbed it. Ashi glanced inside, then, instead of throwing it, grasped one side of the rim and scattered the contents across the floor.

Hundreds of small knucklebones-soldiers’ dice-bounced on the stone, spreading out in a dry rattling wave that swept around and under the thief’s feet as he tried to stop and grab one of the polearms. Some of the old bones crunched into powder, but others held their strength and rolled. The thief’s momentum on the unsteady footing kept him moving forward and right into a cabinet with a very solid smack. Thief and cabinet slammed to the ground, dragging down half the rack of polearms as well. Ashi went around the treacherous field of bones and tangled staves with long strides. “In the name of Deneith,” she said hoarsely, “surrender!”

The thief answered with a savage growl. He twisted and came to his feet with one of the polearms in his hand-or rather a length of one of the polearms. The ancient wood had splintered like a twig. The thief flung it at Ashi, but the throw was neither hard nor accurate and Ashi grabbed the spinning wood out of the air and flung it back at him. Magic still blurring his form, the thief ducked.

The stick whirled over his head and swept across the shrine in the center of the memorial. Candles, ritual objects, and the accumulated offerings left behind by visitors to the memorial went flying everywhere in a tinkling, crashing cascade. Ashi winced. She wasn’t particularly religious, but the thought of disturbing the shrine, even accidentally, crawled across her skin. If it was possible, the gods of the shrine were already taking petty revenge-only one of the candles remained upright in its holder. The others tumbled and rolled around the memorial. Their magic kept them burning, but their dim light was spread even more thinly, and the shadows they made jumped and wavered crazily.

The thief dove through one of the shadows and emerged with something else that had been knocked off the shrine: a short sword, its design old but the edge of its blade still gleaming. This time his grip on the weapon was sure and his stance solid. Ashi clenched her jaw and closed in warily. For a moment, she and the thief faced each other, blades wavering, balance shifting.

Ashi struck first and struck hard. She had to-if the thief took control of the fight, she had a bad feeling that she’d quickly find herself forced back into the darkness. If she took control, she had a better chance of keeping the fight where she could see.

The thief twisted and caught her sword on his, parrying the blow. Ashi let him bear her blade down for a moment, then whipped it up again and thrust hard. Only the blurring effect of the thief’s spell kept him from ending up on the blade. Instead, Ashi’s bright blade sliced through leather and nicked flesh. She heard the thief hiss in pain. He tried to push back with a lunge, but Ashi slid aside easily. The thief was a good fighter, but she was better. Eight months with House Deneith might not have made her much of a lady, but it had honed her fighting skills like a whetstone honed a fine blade. She let her opponent try another strike, then she unleashed a flurry of blows that kept him on the defensive and forced him to yield ground. Step by step, Ashi bullied him across the memorial. The clash and shriek of their blades filled the darkness, ringing and reverberating inside the hollow tower.

Beneath her scarf, Ashi grinned in satisfaction at the fight. A thrust from the thief slipped past her attack. She swayed away beyond the point of his sword and answered with a sharp kick that sent the thief hopping back. They were past the shrine now. Ashi lunged, then lunged again, not giving the thief a chance to recover his balance, always driving him backward. She slashed at him and he hopped back one more time-slamming into the doors of the memorial hard enough to make them shake.

Ashi checked her next blow, holding her sword back. “Surrender!” she said. “You have no right to be here!”

Eyes flashed deep in the hooded shadows of the thief’s face. “You have no right to what is kept here!”

The voice, like smoke from burning cedar wood, was a woman’s. Ashi blinked in surprise-then blinked again at the sound of another voice, this one on the other side of the door.

“Get it open! By Dol Dorn’s mighty fist, get it open! Swords ready!”

Keys scratched at the locks on the doors. Karrlakton’s night watch had finally arrived. Ashi raised her voice. “Easy! I have everything-”

The thief moved. Bracing herself against the doors that trapped her, she reared back and kicked out. A boot caught Ashi in the gut and she hunched over, her sword dropping. The thief darted past her. Ashi turned after her, struggling to catch her breath, but the thief paused just beyond her reach and spoke the word of another spell.

A sound like a massed chorus of voices mixed with the roll of thunder erupted around Ashi, pummeling her with its force. On the other side of the door, the men of the night watch cried out, some of them in alarm, at least one of them in command-the sergeant, urging his men to action. Ashi shook her head and forced herself upright.

The thief was back on the other side of the memorial, back at the cabinet she had initially opened. One of the candles from the shrine had rolled in that direction and Ashi finally saw what the thief had come to steal. Gloved hands reached into the cabinet and lifted out- almost reverently it seemed-a small casket only a handspan long and wide, made of age-darkened iron bound in bright gold. Cradling the casket, the thief turned to the stairs and her escape.

Ashi pushed herself into motion. She had only moments or the thief would be gone. No time to go around the shrine. A jump put her on top of it, scattering anything still left there. A leap and the wild fluting battle cry of the Bonetree hunters set her into the air.

The thief half-turned in response to the cry. Ashi saw her stiffen, her arms wrapping protectively around the cask, then she slammed into her and both of them went down. They tumbled across the floor in a tangle of arms and legs, the thief struggling to protect her prize, Ashi fighting to stay on top-which was how she landed when they finally came to a stop. Her hands were on the thief’s shoulders and her weight over the other woman’s hips, pinning her down. Ashi’s scarf had finally come loose and it hung around her face, puckering and billowing with each panting breath that she took. “Surrender!” she gasped.

The thief’s eyes, however, had gone wide. “Ashi?” she said.

The blurring effect vanished. Ashi stared down at amber eyes in a lean yellow face. The thief’s hood had fallen back to reveal orange-brown hair pulled back in a knot and a hobgoblin’s wolf-like ears. Ashi lifted one hand and tugged down the scarf that had covered the thief’s face.

“Ekhaas?” she asked.

Then the doors of the memorial slammed open and the intense light of everbright lanterns flooded over them. The slap of boots and the hiss of drawn swords filled the ruined space. “Don’t move!” roared the voice of the sergeant. “Under the authority of Karrlakton, you’re both under arrest!”