Mark Lawrence - The Liar's key

Edris watched his blood patter on the floor, in shock at his reversal of fortune. He raised his hands, dripping, and looked up at me, dark crimson welling from his mouth. The fact that he then smiled, showing bloody teeth, rather took the wind from my sails, but I carried on, trying not to let the uncertainty colour my voice. I knew enough about wounds to know the one I’d given him was fatal. “The necromancer who gives you your orders. . she won’t be pleased. I can’t see your corpse getting a decent burial.” I tried to smile back.

“That.” Edris drew a rattling breath, some of it sucked in around my steel, bubbling blackly. “Was a mistake.”

“Damned right! And the first mistake you made was going up against m-” A horrible thought interrupted me. I realized Edris had me trapped weaponless in the cell. . “You’re hoping when you die the necromancer is going to stand you up again to finish the job!”

“Are all royalty this stupid? Or did that bitch mother of yours breed with her brother to make you?” Edris straightened away from the door jamb, grinding his teeth against the pain, and took hold of the hilt of my sword where it jutted from his body. “There’s no necromancer watching from the hills, you moron.” He pulled the blade clear and the wound bled black. “I am the necromancer!” A laugh or a cough tore from him spattering blood between us. A few droplets hit my upraised hands and burned there like hot metal poured from the crucible.

My only chance lay in speed and agility. Edris might be gaining strength but he still moved with a certain stiffness, awkward around his injury. I backed a step, another, and prepared to spring when he cleared the doorway. Something caught in the back of my tunic. I tugged but found myself firmly snagged. Edris stepped into the cell, my short sword black and dripping in his fist.

“The closer to death we are the harder it is to kill us.” He smiled again, his face in shadow with just the glimmer of his eyes to hint at the murder there.

“Now-wait, just let’s stay-”

He didn’t wait but came on unhurried, sword held without a tremor, point level with my face. In desperation I risked a glance back to see what I’d caught myself on. Tuttugu glared at me from the table, the familiar hunger of the dead burning in his eyes. The hand secured closest to me at the corner of the table had twisted inside the metal band about its wrist and locked fingers in the loose material of my tunic.

I pulled harder but I’d paid handsomely for the garment and the linen wouldn’t rip. Looking back toward the door I found Edris directly in front of me now, sword arm drawn back ready to punch my own short sword through my head.

“No!” A hopeless wailing appeal for mercy as I fell to both knees, head bowed in supplication. Not perhaps the best way for a prince of Red March to die, but all my audience were dead or halfway there. “Please. .”

The only answer I got was the wet thunk of steel cutting flesh, and blood spilling about my shoulders. The pain came intense and searing, a burning that engulfed my neck and back, blood ran everywhere, and immediately a sense of faintness engulfed me, a deep weariness reaching up from somewhere to drag me down. I stayed where I’d fallen, waiting for the light to fade or beckon or whatever it’s supposed to do in your last moments.

“Bitch.” Edris, but in a choking voice.

I puzzled over “bitch” but realized I had to let go of questions and slip away. . The legs before me moved, perhaps to let me fall, but beyond them I saw another pair. . more shapely. . emerging beneath a dirty skirt. That made me look up. Edris had moved toward the doorway, his neck at an uncomfortable angle and spilling blood from a cut that looked to have made a decent attempt to reach his spine. Kara circled with him, sporting a magnificent black eye and holding her own stolen short sword, as black with gore as the necromancer’s.

The blood that drenched me had belonged to Edris, burning me with its necromancy. I remained on my knees, blood dripping from my hair and hands, still anchored by Tuttugu’s grip.

Despite his second mortal wound Edris took a quick step toward Kara, sword questing before him.

“Better run, Edris Dean, or I’ll finish the job. Skilfar always told me how it would please her to drink from your skull and toast the Lady Blue.” Kara swatted at his blade, the two swords clashing.

Edris made some reply but the words he gargled from his throat came too broken to interpret.

Kara laughed. A cold sound. “You think dead things scare me, Dean?” And as she spoke the lantern grew dim, every shadow thickening and reaching, the darkness writhing in each corner as if the blackest of monsters stirred from slumber there. Edris feinted to the right, threw the short sword at her, then staggered, ungainly, toward the doorway. Kara made to follow, her own blade ready to thrust into his back but she stopped short, fixated by something on the wall opposite. Another mirror, identical to the first. Quite how I’d missed it I didn’t know. She seemed fascinated by her reflection. Glancing at Edris I saw him slowing, starting to turn. A third mirror hung above the doorway, I caught a glimpse of something blue, darkly reflected, a swirl of robes?

“Jalan.” Kara spoke between gritted teeth, adding nothing to her declaration of my name.

“What?” Looking to the left I saw more mirrors I hadn’t noticed, two of them hung at head height. Edris completed his turn. He would have been facing Kara if she hadn’t been staring at the mirror that first caught her attention. Edris grinned, black blood welling over his jaw. He started to draw the knife at his belt, a wicked bit of Turkman iron, nine dark inches of it, thin and notched.

“Break. The. Mirror.” Kara forced each word past her teeth as if it were a struggle she was barely equal to.

“Which mirror?” There must have been a dozen and it made no sense. I couldn’t have missed them. “And with what?” I caught sight of blue robes again, fleeting reflections, here, then there, and eyes, eyes in the shadowed infinity behind the glass, just a gleam, but watching.

“Now!” All she could manage.

Edris had the blade out, arm awkward from the large hole I’d put through his pectoral muscle.

With a lunge, still held by my jerkin in Tuttugu’s dead hand, I caught hold of the broken jug on the floor, and spun to throw it at the mirror I first saw. At least six mirrors hung there now, clustered together. Their reflections showed nothing of the cell but instead revealed some other dark space where candles burned, as if each mirror were some small window onto a chamber beyond. Those half-seen eyes found me, made me their focus, robbing the strength from my arm, fogging my mind with a blueness deeper than sea, brighter than sky. I threw anyway, blind, guessing my target. The sound of shattering glass came loud enough to knock me down if I’d not been on my knees already. I threw my arms up, expecting to be drowned beneath a deluge of shards. But nothing came.

I looked around and found Kara halfway across the cell still looking dazed.

Edris stumbled out through the doorway.

“Hennan’s out there!” I shouted, intending it for Kara but realizing as I said it that I’d just reminded the necromancer too. Without pause, Kara went after him-decent of her since the last thing the boy did for her was slug her around the back of the head with a sock full of florins.

Her exit left me on my knees in a pool of my own distress, belly on display to the world with my tunic hitched up under my armpits, a handful of it still gripped by the dead thing secured on the table. I glanced around wildly, looking for the black shape of Loki’s key, lost amid the filth on a floor cast into deep shadow. By luck, sharp eyes, or some trick of the key itself, I saw it, tantalizingly close but out of reach. I strained, stretching my arm until the joints threatened to pop, waggling my fingertips as if that would close the six-inch gap.