A Thief in the Night

chapter Sixty

Outside the throne room, Mörget and Croy hid behind thick marble columns and did their best not to make a sound.

The patrol that sought them—the demon’s smaller twin and the two armored revenants—was getting close. Close enough that Croy could hear their footfalls echoing. From his place in the shadows he got occasional glimpses of them as they moved around the room, poking their swords into various shadows and hiding places. So far they had failed to find anything, but they seemed resolved to check the entire chamber. As they drew closer, he wondered what he should do if he was discovered.

Every one of his sinews and tendons were tensed for him to jump out from behind the pillar and attack. He longed for the fight. He had taken vows to slay demons wherever they were found. Yet he had taken other vows as well. Vows of love.

He must find Cythera. He must get her out of this terrible place. And that meant that no matter what else, he had to keep himself alive.

He still felt weak from his last encounter with the formless demon, when he had nearly been devoured. His face and hands still stung from the touch of the creature’s blood. He was in no shape for a desperate fight now. And even if he prevailed against this patrol, how many more of them would there be? How many revenants, hiding in the deepest recesses of the Vincularium, waiting for the proper moment to spring forward and take their revenge—and how many demons?

Just on the other side of his pillar, the new, smaller demon stopped moving forward. Its substance bunched up in the middle and it grew taller. Faces appeared under its skin, stretching outward as if they sensed something.

A few feet away, protected only by shadows, Croy held his breath and waited. Then he glanced over at Mörget.

The barbarian had Dawnbringer half out of its sheath.

Croy shook his head violently. Mörget frowned and lifted his sword another few inches clear of its scabbard. No, Croy thought, desperately trying to communicate with the barbarian. No, not now. He wasn’t in any shape for a desperate fight. One demon had nearly butchered him. Backed up by undead elves, another might succeed. If he was slain now, what hope would Cythera have? She was trapped down here, surrounded by nightmarish creatures and unknown dangers. And she had only Malden to protect her.

Croy stared directly into Mörget’s eyes and pleaded with him silently. He reached out and grabbed Mörget’s sword arm. He felt the barbarian’s arm tense, and for a moment thought the bigger man would attack him rather than the elves. But somehow Croy’s desperation won through. The barbarian relaxed his arm. Croy held up a hand for patience. Mörget looked deeply disappointed but nodded and put his sword away.

Croy let out a breath in relief. He was careful to make no noise.

Still, it was enough to give them away. One of the revenants froze in place, then turned slowly to face the shadows where Mörget and Croy hid, its eyes scanning the darkness. The other moved back to cover it while the demon stayed where it was, its faces craning toward the shadows.

It was over. The revenants had found them, and Croy knew he could not win. He reached for Ghostcutter’s hilt anyway—

—but did not draw it. The revenant took a step into the darkness. Croy felt like it could reach out and grab them, like it would lunge at any moment. Yet it waved its sword around ahead of itself as if it were blind in the dark.

How was that possible? The revenants they’d seen on the top level had no trouble seeing in the dark. None of them even had eyes. Why was this one so tentative? It almost seemed afraid of finding them.

In the shadows, Croy could barely make out its features. Yet he sensed there was something different about this one. It wore the same bronze armor as the revenants he’d fought, and it carried the same bronze sword. Yet it didn’t move like they did. It was at once more graceful and less resolute. As its sword came closer, pointing almost directly at him, he squinted hard and studied its face, and got quite a shock.

Its skin was intact—he couldn’t see the bones breaking through rotted flesh. Its nose was unscarred by time, its lips not even cracked. And its eyes glinted with the few stray beams of red light that made it back into the hiding place.

In fact, it didn’t seem to be dead at all. It seemed . . . alive.

It looked almost exactly like Croy’s idea of what a living elf would look like.

Of course, at that moment its looks mattered far less than the fact that it was about to stab him through the vitals. He pressed himself back against a wall and prayed to the Lady that he would not be discovered.

“Aengmar!” someone called from out in the main room. “Over here!”

The revenant—or whatever it was—in front of Croy turned and looked over its shoulder. “I thought I heard something over here,” it shouted back, its voice enormous in the shadowy hiding place. It had an accent Croy didn’t recognize, thick enough that he had trouble understanding even the simple words. Yet he knew one thing for sure. The revenants didn’t talk. They couldn’t speak.

“Never mind that! Quickly!” the other cried.

The revenant—the elf—Aengmar—turned away from the hiding place and dashed off to catch up with its partner. Leaning out of hiding—exposing himself a little to the light—Croy saw the demon and the two armored figures run into the throne room, out of sight.

Croy gestured for Mörget to emerge from their hiding place. Still keeping silent, the two of them moved away from the arch, their only light the reddish glow that spilled in through the gallery ahead of them. Croy moved cautiously around a building with high marble walls and headed to his left, looking for any way out of the level. He found a side passage leading along another gallery. It looked deserted. When he was reasonably sure they were alone, he leaned close toward Mörget’s ear and whispered, “Did you see that thing? It was no revenant.”

“Aye, I agree. But so what?” Mörget asked.

“So what? I think we both know what those were. They were alive. That woman we saw swimming in the central shaft—the girl you saw back at the mushroom farm. It adds up, now, to only one thing. Those weren’t revenants. They were—Lady preserve us all—they were living elves!”

The barbarian shrugged. “Probably easier to kill than the dead kind.”

Croy shook his head in frustration. Didn’t this mean anything to Mörget? The fact that there were living elves in the Vincularium was extraordinary! It meant—it meant—

“It means nothing to us,” Mörget pointed out. “We are here to kill demons. Any other inhabitants of this place are merely in the way. Now I understand you wished to avoid detection back there. At first I thought you were a coward.”

Croy’s brain was so wracked with understanding what living elves could mean that he didn’t register that at first. Only slowly did the heat of anger light up the chambers of his heart. “I beg your pardon?” he asked, very carefully. If Mörget said that again, it would be a slight that had to be answered.

“I thought it briefly, but then realized the truth. You simply wish to lay an ambush for them, yes? It makes sense. You do not let the enemy come for you. You lay in wait for them! I am learning so much from you, western knight.”

“You thought I wanted to . . . no,” Croy said. “No, no—we can’t fight those things now. We must find the others. If there are more of these elves here, then—”

“You think a thief, a dwarf, and a witch’s useless daughter will be any help against them?” Mörget demanded.

Croy studied the barbarian’s face. “Not at all,” he said. “But that’s exactly the point. We must get them to safety.”

“And postpone my glory even longer,” Mörget said. “I like it not.”

“I like nothing about this,” Croy said. “But I know my duty. Innocent lives are at stake.”

Mörget snarled in disgust. “Innocence is not a quality admired by my people,” he said. “It’s just another name for weakness.”

“I’ve taken a vow to aid those who can’t help themselves. If you want my help with your demons,” Croy said, “you’ll have to do this my way.”

The barbarian glared at him, clearly estimating how much he valued Croy’s help after all. Croy very much hoped he would come around and see reason. He had no desire to split up, not as weak and tired as he felt. He did not want to have to leave Mörget here and go looking for Cythera on his own.

But if that was what it came to, so be it.

Luckily the barbarian was still capable of seeing reason. “All right,” Mörget said. “All right! We’ll do it your way.”