17
THE DARK DOOR
KINGFISHER
THEY ROLLED IN on a skittering black tide.
Up the steps. Over the walls. Crawling out of the stonework.
Hundreds of them. Thousands.
Vorath Shah threw back his head and laughed as they came. He knew they wouldn’t hurt him . . . but the same couldn’t be said for us.
The first prick came at the back of my neck. A trail of fire blazed up into my head, fireworks going off right between my eyes.
“Ahh! Shit!” Carrion hissed, his body jolting as he, too, was stung. His hands were still glued to the ground in the entrance of the octagonal room, though, so he couldn’t brush the scorpions away as they crawled up his arms and into his hair. “Kingfisher!” he called, a note of panic rising in his voice. “A little help?”
But I couldn’t help him. The scorpions were under my armor, crawling up my back, stinging me as they went. Each individual sting was like a hot bolt of lightning, racing along my nerve endings, stealing my breath.
The scorpions were many, but they were also one. The demons of old weren’t spoken of very often anymore, but I still knew of them. I’d spent countless afternoons in my mother’s library while the rain hammered at the windows of Cahlish, reading the books my mother set out for me. Old legends.
Tomes on old magics, written in Old Fae. Tales of grand heroism and good
prevailing over evil. And then stories about the old demons who had once plagued the lands of Yvelia. She had read them to me over and over again, giggling with me as she’d tucked me into bed, pretending to be one demon or another as she “attacked” me.
When she had been Joshin, demon of the desert, fractured into his multitude of stinging scorpions, she had pinched me lightly, tickling me, all the while demanding as she always did, “And how will you stop me, sweetheart?
What will you do to send me scattering into the dark?”
I hadn’t been able to breathe then from the tickling.
I couldn’t breathe now from the pain.
As a boy, I had panted, “The—the li-li—”
Now, I did the same. “We need to let—let in the li-light!”
Joshin, Lord of the Desert, King of the Dark Dream, couldn’t bear the light.
That’s why he had chosen to hide inside this black, windowless tower. Why the demon trap had been laid for him here on the floor as well. Whoever had etched the Alchimeran runes into the floor of the room up ahead had known this would be the only place a beast like Joshin could seek refuge.
“Light,” I gasped. Gods, even being eaten by Morthil in the maze hadn’t been this painful. “We need . . . light.”
Shah cackled. “This place is a tomb. No cracks in the walls. No holes in the floorboards. Joshin will come! Joshin will feed!”
Ahh, fuck this. I wasn’t being eaten by another demon. Not this time, when the magic of Malcolm’s cursed maze wouldn’t bring me back from the dead.
Carrion sprawled out on the floor and started screaming. The pain was total. No breath. No thought. No way out. The smuggler wasn’t used to it.
A carpet of glistening, oily black carapaces and vicious pincers swept over him, swallowing him from view. And then he was gone.
Fuck.
We didn’t have much time.
I wasn’t trapped by the snare that had been etched into the floor. Not yet.
Two paths stood before me: I could turn, and I could run. Or I could enter the demon trap and commit to the dark nightmare that was already unfolding in my blood.
If I left, I could find the silver on my own. I could find Hayden Fane and drag his ass back to Yvelia. But if I left, the smuggler would die a horrific death —one I knew all too well—and I would have to explain to Saeris that I had abandoned her friend.
“Orillith ken mas cree, Carrion Swift,” I spat under my breath. I hadn’t cursed in Old Fae in centuries, but sinners, did the situation warrant it.
I stepped over Swift’s prone body and into the demon trap.
The ground seethed, lit up by the glowing runes. With every step, I felt the crack and the give of the scorpions beneath the soles of my boots.
Now that I’d entered the demon trap, I saw the trunks stacked high on the other side of the room. Ten of them. More. Jewels, coins, and beaten golden cups spilled out from the closest trunk, reflecting the light cast off by the shining marks etched into the walls. The body of a man lay curled in the fetal position close by. His clothing was torn to shreds. Flesh still clung to his bones.
Joshin had obviously been savoring his last meal.
“Fisher!” Carrion’s cry was panicked.
Darts of agony struck all over my body. The scorpions stung through my pants. They were in my boots. In my hair. I crossed the room, slowing with each step, bile rising hot up the back of my throat.
“Hate to be . . . a bother,” Carrion wheezed. “But if you’re not in a position to . . . save me right . . . now, then . . . could you possibly kill me instead? This . . . really sucks.”
Gods, how was he still talking? I couldn’t even think.
“Oh no, he can’t kill you. No, no, no,” Shah chattered. “Joshin wants his prey alive. Joshin prefers it that way.”
I was going to flay Vorath Shah. Just as soon as I tore a hole in the side of this bell tower. See if I didn’t.
The very fibers of my being were alight and burning by the time I made it to the wall. Tears streamed down my face, but even so, I could see Vorath had been right. There were no cracks in the stonework. No seams between the blocks of sandstone. The room had been sealed by magic. The only thing that could counter this kind of magic was magic itself—the kind of magic that would hurt.
I drew back my fist and took a deep breath.
“It won’t work,” Shah said in a sing-song tone. “Joshin couldn’t break the wall. That was before he knew, though. Two suns. I told him, I did. Two suns and no night. No safety from the light. A thousand years, he tried. I heard him pounding from the tunnels. That’s how I found him. Boom. Boom. Boom.”
I had thought he was just evil, but there was more to it. Vorath Shah was mad. He crowed with delight as I brought my fist forward and sent it crashing into the wall.
“Joshin didn’t have . . . my magic,” I grunted. My shadows could only do so much. They could either protect my fist from the impact, or they could shock the magic that was spelled into the walls.
I sent all my power into the wall.
“Oh gods. Fisher?” Suddenly, Carrion wasn’t screaming anymore. He sounded very concerned.
I brought my fist back and smashed it into the wall again. A ripple of shadows fanned out over the stone, and an answering ripple of black energy chased after it. I frowned at the sight, not trusting what I was seeing. Why was my magic pulsing twice?
“Kingfisher. The scorpions,” Carrion rasped. “They aren’t stinging me anymore. They’re . . . they’re leaving.”
Again, I drove my fist into the wall.
Again, a shock wave of my magic shot across the surface of the wall, and again, a secondary wave of shadows chased after it. I gritted my teeth against the rope of pain that shot up my arm, into my shoulder, my jaw. “They’re not
leaving, Swift,” I said grimly. “They’re coalescing.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
I reached deep and commanded my shadows to gather. I gave the strike everything I had. My knuckles split open this time, leaving my blood smeared on the sandstone when I drew back. I was going to break bone at this rate.
From head to toe, I was raw. The throbbing behind my eyes intensified, making my vision swim.
“They can be many,” I said through gritted teeth. “Or they can be one. Right now . . . they’re becoming one.”
“I do not like the sound of that. Should I be worried?”
I pulled back and hurled my fist at the wall. “Most definitely.”
“He is magnificent. You should both be honored by his presence,” Vorath said in an awed tone.
I knew what it would look like—the mass of writhing flesh and bone in the darkened corner of the room. I shouldn’t have looked. But I did.
If my mother’s books had contained illustrations of the demon, she hadn’t shown them to me. It was a horrible vision, all forming teeth and twisted, wet, glistening meat, pulsing and fibrous. The scorpions scuttled up the growing mass and split open along their backs, fusing with the gathering, bleeding shape.
Arms were forming. Legs. A bulbous body, rising into a vaguely humanoid- shaped torso.
“Ugh. I think I’m going to throw up,” Carrion groaned.
He would definitely be throwing up soon. He had just been hit with a monumental amount of venom. It was a wonder he wasn’t hallucinating already. The edges of my vision were dancing with a shimmering green light that did not bode well for the next few hours, and Carrion had been stung way more than me.
I gathered my shadows faster, whispering to them, urging them to help me break the magic that protected the wall. I struck the stone again, again, again, and finally felt the bones in my hand give way.
“Wendalith cohmerin tas.” The rumbling sound shook the entire tower— many rushing, whispering, shouting voices, intertwining and layering on top of each other. It didn’t resemble the voice of any Fae or human. This voice belonged to something far, far older. A creature not born but constructed from the base elements of hell itself.
The demon’s head was not yet formed. Its lower and upper jaw were there, as were two narrow slits where a nose might have been . . . but the rest of its face was nowhere to be seen. Tiny stingers probed and struck at the air, rising up from the demon’s half-formed head. Its left arm terminated in a hand— normal, for all intents and purposes—but its right ended in a huge, glossy hard- shelled pincer that snapped open and closed reflexively. Its lower half was all scorpion, but nightmarishly large. Eight legs. A long carapace. A curved stinger
dripping with venom.
Great.
“Wendalith cohmerin tas,” the demon repeated, spittle flying from its mouth as it spoke.
I turned from it and gave my attention to the wall. We were officially out of time. If I didn’t break this thing open soon, we were so fucked.
“What the hell is it saying?” Carrion called.
“He’s singing to you,” Shah cooed. “Listen to him sing.”
I snorted. “It’s asking who stands before it. Who walks its path. Something like that. It’s speaking Old Fae, which it should not know,” I said pointedly, throwing those last words over my shoulder at the ancient monster.
Click, click, click.
It scuttled forward.
“I know many languages I should not know,” it rasped. “I hearrrrr them through the walls.”
“Great. It speaks Common Fae, too. Perfect,” I muttered to myself as I drove my fist into the wall again, staining the stone even redder with my blood.
“Two souls, I sense. Two strong bodies, too. A feast for a weak prince such as myself.”
“You’re no prince,” I growled. “You’re an abomination. One I’ll gladly be sending back to hell momentarily.”
“Don’t antagonize it,” Carrion hissed. “Its teeth are really fucking sharp. I do not want to get eaten!”
“Be quiet, Swift. It can’t eat you if it can’t find you.”
It was true that most demons didn’t have eyes. There were tales of how this had come to pass, but many agreed demons resided in darkness and didn’t need to see to torment their victims. That had certainly been the case with Morthil.
But according to lore, Joshin was different. It didn’t share the same abilities its siblings had been gifted with. It was dangerous, yes, but it possessed no
heightened spatial awareness.
Boom! Boom!
The bones in my hand splintered, but still I pounded against the magic that held the wall together. I watched my shadows roil across the stone, shivering as a second wave came again and again, rolling after my magic and merging with it. It made no sense. My shadows should be having some effect. The old magic that formed the demon trap should have weakened a little, but it wasn’t even reacting. At least not how it should have been. It was almost as though— Click, click, click, click, CLACK.
“Fisher! Holy gods, fuck me, Fisher. Do something!”
I fell forward against the wall, exhausted. Turning, I found that the demon was steady on its eight legs now and venturing forward in search of its prey.
“Here, Master. This way,” Vorath coaxed. “Follow the sound of my voice.”
Gods curse it all. I’d had enough of this human. I shoved away from the wall and staggered forward.
And suddenly, there she was. My mother, standing next to me.
She wore her favorite dress. Blue, with birds embroidered onto the skirt. I realized with a start that they were kingfishers. Their wings flashed metallic blue; their proud chests were painted umber. She looked as she had always looked: beautiful and sad. Her long black hair fell in waves to her waist, blowing on an invisible wind.
“Where are you going, sweet boy? Have you lost your way?”
The soft lilt of her voice. Gods, how I had missed the sound of it. I shook my head. “I’m not lost. I’m going to kill that fucking human.”
A deep sorrow filled her eyes. “Who is he to trouble you? Great and mighty Kingfisher. Leave him be, my love.”
“This is his fault.” I was sweating again, even worse than before. My skin was prickling all over. “If he hadn’t brought us here—”
“Excuses,” my mother said sharply. “You always were one for excuses.”
I felt it then—the sick twist in the pit of my stomach. The nausea had taken a back seat to the pain, but my limbs were turning numb now. My hand barely even ached, even though it was badly broken. Fuck, I was going to throw up.
I doubled over, the room seesawing as I emptied my stomach onto the
ground.
“And so it begins,” Joshin said.
Click. Click. Click.
He wasn’t heading for Carrion anymore. He was coming for me.
“Even as a child, you were a nuisance. Always following me like a pathetic little puppy. I never had a moment’s peace. You were the reason your father went away, you know. You were the reason he died.”
I straightened and found my mother’s face twisted with disgust.
“Look at the mess you’ve made. Always making such a mess. And now you want to hurt that man? Why? Because you were stupid enough to follow him into this tower? Because you weren’t paying attention, hmm? Because you were lazy and too distracted by thoughts of the half-breed you left back in Yvelia to pay attention to the task at hand?” The words spewed out of her in a torrent, dripping with disdain. “What sort of male have you become? I don’t even recognize you. I’ve never been more ashamed.”
And at that, the room and the situation snapped into focus.
The figure standing beside me looked real. I bet that if I reached out and touched her, she’d feel real, too. But my mother was nothing like the cold- hearted illusion that stalked after me as I turned away from Vorath Shah and
went back to the wall. My mother was too kind and too sweet for such harsh
words.
The dark dream had begun.
“Where are you going? What are you doing?” She hurried after me, her skirts swishing over the glowing runes at her feet. “So now you aren’t going to kill the human? Weak. Weak in your convictions. Weak-willed. That’s all you will ever be, Fisher. Weak.”
Her words flowed over me and fell away, having no effect.
My mother knew I wasn’t weak. She’d made sure of that herself. And I’d had way too much practice closing my mind off to the madness of the quicksilver to be affected by any vision that Joshin’s venom could show me.
I went back to work.
The section of the wall that I had struck just now was glowing softly. I hadn’t noticed before, but now that my eyes were clearing, the room sharpening, I was picking up things I hadn’t seen before. It was . . . it was glowing because of the blood.
“Not content with leaving your dinner on the floor? You need to smear your blood all over the walls as well?” the female who was not my mother said.
“Just give in already. Haven’t you had enough of all this? The constant challenges, and the pain, and the sacrifices. Always you. No matter what. You are the one who must give up his freedom. You are the one who must tolerate the pain. You are always the one who must sacrifice, when there are other people in the world who could be called upon every once in a while. Aren’t you tired?” She sounded incredulous.
“Oh, yes. I’m tired,” I admitted. “But I doubt that’s going to change. And what’s the alternative? Death?”
“Rest,” the female wearing my mother’s face countered. “Peace. Isn’t that what you crave? No more pain. No more worry. No more—”
The gods only knew what other weak reasoning she came up with. I had stopped listening. I was dragging my finger through the blood I’d left on the
wall, tracing out the lines of a very specific rune.
The rune meaning break.
As soon as the final line was drawn, the hallucination shook her head.
“Well, there you are. You’ve done it now. I hope you’re happy.”
I stepped back, observing my handiwork. “I am actually.” The rune lit up, blazing and white. It sank into the wall, its lines forming deep grooves in the stone. The magic that shielded the wall stretched thin. A veil of shadows shivered over the stonework—strange, since I hadn’t even reached for my magic —and I watched (and felt) the ward that protected the demon’s trap splinter and come apart.
“Gottith man soh frayah!” Joshin crowed.
The dark door is undone!
Its cry was elated. It felt the thin blanket of power removed at last from its tomb. The lifting of the ward meant its escape, its freedom after how many centuries, squatting and waiting in the dark. But I wasn’t about to let that happen. I didn’t love this realm, but it had produced someone I loved with a fierceness that took my breath away, and I was not going to leave this place worse off than when I had found it. For Saeris’s sake, I would protect it.
The demon trembled, individual scorpions jittering free of its mass and dropping to the floor. They skittered away in droves toward the stairs.
“Where do you think you’re going?” I asked.
“A city lies beyond these walls. A million beating hearts. A million humans to visit while they sleep. I will invite them all to the dream. I will . . . invite them all to sing!”
To dream meant to wander, trapped inside their nightmares.
To sing meant to scream out their fear so long and so loud that Joshin would feed from their pain for years before the city died.
The tunnels below Zilvaren were the perfect means of transport for Joshin’s scorpions. They could move in darkness. Discover ways to slip into people’s houses. They would sting them in their sleep, and the resulting symphony of fear it conducted would encompass the entire Silver City and sustain it for
years.
But only if more than half of his scorpions managed to leave this room.
I turned and I hurled my fist at the wall. This time, it shuddered. This time, it cracked. Dust rained down from the ceiling, hissing in waterfalls down the walls. The second time I struck the wall, it crumbled, a large section of the sandstone exploded outward.
Light burst into the tomb, cutting through the dark, and Joshin roared. The demon flailed, pitching sideways, half of its lower body already disassembled and running away from the light. It looked half melted, its form caught at the midpoint between scorpion and demon, its raw flesh exposed to the powerful light of the twin suns.
For the first time ever, I found myself happy to see Balea and Min.
“Ashelgrin Fas!” the demon roared. Make it stop. Smoke rose from its jellied form. It gnashed its teeth, scrambling to retreat out of the path of the light, but it had nowhere to go.
I had no qualms smashing another hole into the tower wall. My hand was already broken, and the pain paled in comparison to the burn of Joshin’s venom.
“Stop! You must stop!” Joshin wailed.
“Fisher? I—” Carrion was on his knees. His eyes rolled, wild and terrified.
Shah had him in a headlock, a crude blade held against his throat.
“Leave my master be, or I spill his blood,” he snarled, cracked, yellowed teeth on show.
Gods alive, I was teaching Carrion to take care of himself. I was teaching him to fight. I— Carrion rammed his elbow back into Shah’s stomach. He kicked out his leg to the side and twisted, sweeping Shah’s feet out from underneath him. A second later, the traitorous human had dropped his weapon onto the sand- covered stone, and Swift was wrestling him to the ground. Scorpions clambered over their thrashing forms, stinging them both as they scurried over their bodies and scuttled away down the stairs.
I assessed the situation quickly. This obviously wasn’t the first time Shah had fought for his life. He was quick, spinning in Carrion’s grip, slippery as an eel . . . but every time he almost pulled free and wriggled away, Carrion pulled him back. Swift was ghost-white, his face and his forearms dotted with bleeding puncture wounds from where he’d been stung. He wore a look of grim determination that I had seen many times before. The face of a male who knew he was about to kill and was set upon the task.
He put a knee into Shah’s chest, pinning him to the ground. The black- market trader spat, his hands scrabbling in the sand, trying to find the blade he’d dropped. He found it and quick as a snake slashed at Carrion’s leg, cutting his thigh open. I stepped forward, ready to intervene, but Carrion took Shah’s head in his hands and twisted sharply, breaking the bastard’s neck.
Fire lashed around my knee and up my leg, exploding into my hip.
“Fuck!” I looked down, and there was Joshin’s dagger-sized stinger, embedded in the side of my leg. I had been distracted. I’d let it get too close.
Clouds of steam rose from the demon as it twitched, burning in the light.
“Is your mind . . . a dark place, warrior?” Joshin’s lips trembled around the words. It was down on its side. I watched, horrified, as bloody, fibrous strands of its heavy pincer fell away and pulsed on the ground, transforming into scorpions the length of my thumb.
I hissed as its oversized stinger drew back, pulling out of my thigh. My legs went weak, threatening to give out, but I steadied myself as blood spurted from the wound the barb left behind.
“You are a creature of shadows. Yes, I know your kind well,” the demon said, in a wheedling voice. “A mind full of shadows is a dangerous thing. When you already live in the darkness, hell is right there at your fingertips. So thin, the veil. Are you re-ready for the dream, shadow weaver? Will you have . . . the strength to wake?”
The demon’s tomb pitched. I could already feel the dream—the nightmare— closing in around me, fighting to take shape before my eyes.
“We need to go. The guardians will be here any second. We need to kill it.”
Carrion swayed, dragging his right leg behind him as he crossed the tomb. With the sun hitting him square in the face, his hair shone brilliant copper and gold.
There was blood on his hands. Blood on the blade he carried. Blood staining his clothes and running down his forearms. His cheeks had a sickly greenish cast to them, the blue of his eyes too pale. He raised his dagger, about to bring it down on Joshin’s weakened form himself, but I caught a hold of his wrist.
“No. Wait.”
“This piece of shit is dying. Fisher. Now. Do not tell me you’re experiencing
an uncharacteristic bout of mercy.”
“Not in the slightest.”
Crackling laughter filled the tomb, dry as the desert wind. “He will not kill me,” Joshin said. Its many-layered voice was weak but still sent shivers chasing through my body.
“Believe me, he will.” Carrion kicked away a scorpion that was trying to scale the toe of his boot, stomping on it. “And if he doesn’t, I sure as shit will.”
“I am older than this city. Older than the wheels of fate that turn your tides, princeling. The secrets I know are more valuable to him than revenge. And I must live if you hope to do the same. At least for now.”
A wave of nausea rolled over me, gathering in the pit of my stomach like a spiked ball. More than anything, I wanted to be sick, to rid myself of the poison in my gut, but I swallowed down the urge. “It’s right,” I admitted. “We need it
alive.”
“Bullshit we do!”
“Are you feeling tired yet?” I asked wearily. “I am. Soon, you won’t be able to fight it. You’ll have to sleep, and when you do, you’ll be walking straight into the kind of hellscape that will make you want to curl up and die. The demon’s venom is systemic. It’ll stay in our bodies for the rest of our lives if we don’t get rid of it. We’ll wake from our sleep, yes. But from this point onward, every time we pass out, we’ll be thrust back into that hellscape. The nightmares will get
longer. Eventually, either we won’t wake up, or we’ll go mad and kill ourselves.
Is that what you want?”
“Sure. Sounds like a vacation in paradise.” Sarcasm dripped from Carrion’s words, but there was fear there, too.
“We need to make an anti-venom.” Gods, it would be so easy. To sit down.
To fall asleep right here. Right now. I breathed deep, blinking hard. “And to do that, we need a dose of venom from the demon.”
Joshin laughed, ropes of saliva dangling from its sharp, needle-sharp teeth.
Out of nowhere, the walls and the floor shook as a deafening
DONNNNNNGGGG! reverberated overhead.
Loud. So loud.
The thunder of it resonated in my bones. Rattled my teeth.
Carrion clapped his hands over his ears, shielding them from the head- splitting sound. “Reckoning!” he shouted. “It’s midday!”
The Twins didn’t go down in Zilvaren, but they did peak in the sky. At midday, they drew close to each other, close enough for the sisters to hold hands, and the temperatures spiked to unbearable degrees. My mother’s books had told me so.
The bell above our heads must have been massive. It only tolled once, thank the gods, but the thunder of it echoed in my blood and rocked the ground for a full minute afterward.
I was first to speak. “Does the trader have some of your venom?” I demanded.
The demon laughed—the sound of rock scraping on rock. “And I would tell you this? Just give the information to you freely? I think not, warrior.”
“If Vorath had its venom, it’ll be back in his shop,” Carrion said. “We should just kill the monster and go there. It isn’t going to tell us anything.”
“Are you willing to risk it?” I wasn’t.
Carrion looked conflicted. He wanted to disregard my advice and destroy the hideous thing that had attacked us . . . but the prospect of an unending cycle
of nightmares rightfully gave him pause. “So, we don’t kill it yet. We make the anti-venom, and then we kill it.” It sounded as if this idea was the only thing keeping him going.
“You must have my . . . permission,” the demon wheezed. “The venom to create its cure must be given . . . freely.”
“Well, of course you’d say that.” Carrion made a face at the demon. “What if we just cut off its stinger and take it back to Vorath’s shop? The guy has everything we need to create a cure there. I’d put money on it.”
“You’re sure? Sure enough to risk it?” I let him stew on that for half a second. Thankfully, he lowered his dagger and sighed; I really didn’t feel like wrestling it away from him right now, with my gut churning and traces of light streaking across my vision.
“I am not dragging that melted carcass through the tunnels,” Swift said.
“Stop talking, Carrion,” I rumbled. “The grown-ups are about to strike a bargain.”
“Why the fuck are we bargaining with it?”
Giving the demon a hard stare, I worked my jaw, flaring my nostrils; the tomb smelled rank, like sulfur and death. “Because the Fae and demon kind have one thing and one thing alone in common. We are both bound by our oaths, aren’t we, fiend?”
Again, Joshin laughed, and it seemed as if all of Zilvaren trembled at the unholy sound. “Go ahead and . . . make your opening offer, shadow weaver. It . . . will not . . . be enough.”
“There’s no opening offer.” I shook my head. “There’s the offer. We will spare you and allow you to live if you provide two droplets of your venom to heal us.”
The demon shuddered with fury. “An uneven bargain. Two lives for one!”
“Are you equal to me, demon?” I snarled. “Are you not more powerful?
More important? More valuable in the eyes of your kind?”
“Infinitelyyyyy,” Joshin rumbled in a disturbing, guttural tone.
“Then the deal is unevenly weighted on your end, wouldn’t you say? In that case, you owe us one of your precious secrets, too.”
The demon snapped its teeth, caught out by its own pride. “What kind of secret?”
“One valuable enough to balance the scales of our bargain,” I answered, knowing what I was demanding.
The demon’s own vanity would require it to give us an impressive secret.
Something monumental. It peeled back its bloody lips and barked in derision.
“You ask for too much. A bargain has not been struck.”
“All right, then. So be it. Carrion, get ready to light this asshole up.”
The smuggler whipped around to look at me. “What?”
“Fire, Carrion. You’re about to get your way. We’re going to set this thing
on fire and watch it burn.”
“But I can’t—”
“And once we’ve made ash of it,” I said, cutting him off, “we’ll gather the demon’s leavings and sell it in little glass bottles to the humans. We’ll tell them it’s seasoning for their gruel.”
“Sacrilege!” Joshin roared. “I am a god! You cannot—”
I dropped into a crouch and stared the thing in its twisted, hideous face. Its flesh fluttered and rippled, distorting thanks to the poison in my veins, but I took a deep breath and focused. “Nightmares or no, you are whatever I say you are once you’re dead, demon. Maybe I’ll say you’re bonfire ash. Or the remains of a goat.”
“No! All right. One secret and my venom in exchange for my life. But you must agree to release me. I will not be imprisoned in another one of these traps for the rest of time.”
I thought about this. Scoured the deal for holes. It didn’t take long for me to find numerous ways to manipulate the bargain to my own advantage. “All right,” I said. “Bleed for it and be done.”
A piece of the demon’s shoulder came away, strands of flesh that morphed
and took shape, solidifying into a small scorpion. It tapped toward me, light on its eight feet . . . and I crushed it under the heel of my boot.
The demon hissed its displeasure at the rough treatment. “Now you, warrior,” it said. “Bleed.”
I wasn’t going to cut myself and seal our pact the polite way. No chance. I pierced my bottom lip with my canines, sucked the blood into my mouth, and spat it at him. “Your life for ours. A secret, and a promise that you will be released and not caught in another demon trap,” I said.
“Yes. Your lives for mine. The secret. The promise,” the demon chanted back. And it was done.
Carrion wrinkled his nose. He somehow managed to look sicker than he had a moment ago. “Like I said. You’re carrying it.”
“No, I’m not.” The floor felt like sand beneath my boots as I crossed the rune-etched stone, toward the trunks on the far side of the room. I had to step over the half-eaten body to reach my goal. Thankfully, I found what I was looking for quicker than I’d hoped. Inside the first trunk, nestled among a pile of coins and golden rings, I found a small wooden box. It contained gems.
Rubies, sapphires, diamonds. I dumped them on the floor and returned to Joshin. I didn’t ask for the demon’s permission; I stooped and picked up a scorpion from the ground, pinching it by its stinger.
Into the box it went.
I snapped the lid closed on it, and the demon cocked its head. “What are you
doing, shadow weaver?”
“The secret, Joshin.”
The demon inched back, pressing its back against the wall. “I will give you the secret once I am free.”
Grimly, I shook my head. “Now, Joshin. While you can still speak.”
“You can’t kill me!” it shrieked.
“And I won’t. As long as I have your little friend in this box here, you won’t be dead, will you?”
“Cheat! Liar!” Joshin spat. “You swore!”
“I am Oath Bound, Demon. I cannot lie. I cannot break my oath. Now tell me your secret, before you break yours.”
“If you destroy this body, it will take me lifetimes to regenerate,” he snarled.
“Sounds like a you problem to me.” I had no control over fire; it wasn’t my element to command. A part of me suspected that it might be Carrion’s, but he was in no fit state to try conjuring unknown magic. There would be time for that later. For now, I took out my tinderbox and struck the piece of flint against the wall, using the spark to light the dried moss inside. In seconds I had one of the old torches lit, and the hungry flames were throwing shadows up the walls.
“You wouldn’t dare,” the demon said.
I crouched down in front of it, closer than I would have liked, clenching my jaw as its half-formed head whipped around to face me. “You can smell me,
yes?” I asked.
The demon snapped its jaws.
“Then tell me, Joshin. You filled me with enough venom to take down three horses . . . but do you scent any fear on me? Do you think I am afraid to face my demons? I’ve faced them before. I know them all by name. I’ve conquered them and bent them to my will more times than the sun has risen over Yvelia in my lifetime. I’ll face your nightmares if I have to, and I will still be the most frightening thing prowling around in the dark.”
The slits in Joshin’s face flared, quivering as the demon tentatively sniffed— and then snarled, pulling away.
“The secret, Joshin,” I repeated. “It’s now or never.”
The demon let out a cry of frustration, but then it said, “Where there is light, there is always darkness, shadow weaver. To kill a queen, you will need to visit the darkest of all places. You will need to strike a deal far more costly than this one if you hope to succeed. And the beast who lies in wait for you there will not be so easy to trick as me. She will eat you whole, shadow weaver!” Joshin roared as I held the flickering torch to its body. “She will tear away your soul
and feed on it for decades!”
The demon lit up like a beacon. With a woompf, the flames swallowed what was left of its mangled torso.
Joshin screamed, and all around us the scattered scorpions that had shivered free from the demon’s body also burst into flames. Down in the tunnels, those that had escaped would be burning, too. Save for the invertebrate I shielded inside the wooden box, they all went up in flames. Their screams echoed through the tower, agonized and furious.
“Ahh, I get it now,” Carrion groaned, observing the horror of it all. “I’m already in the nightmare, aren’t I?”
I surprised myself by letting out a harsh bark of laughter. “No.
Unfortunately, that part is only just beginning.”