Royce dodged backward as Barihash leapt at him, but he almost wasn’t fast enough. The huge, twisted man was faster than he looked, his clawed hands slicing the air where Royce had been. He swung for Royce again, and Royce parried with his obsidian sword, but the strength behind the blow was shocking.
“Weak thing, foolish thing! You do not deserve what’s mine!”
He swung at Royce again, the blow wide, with his fingers spread. Royce managed to dodge this one, striking back with a blow of the obsidian blade to his arm that cut deep, almost to the bone.
Almost as quickly as the wound had formed, Royce saw it close again. He stood there staring in horror at the sight of sinew and muscle knitting itself back together. He stood there for so long that he only barely dodged the next blow.
Royce struck again and again, lancing his sword at the monstrous man’s torso, then hacking across his hamstrings in an effort to bring him down. He even thrust it through Barihash’s throat, as much to stop the deep cackling of his mad laughter as anything.
“You think that you can stop me?” Barihash demanded, as his throat wove itself back together, exactly as it had been. “Do you think that the thieves of the city didn’t try to kill me when they came for me? All they could do was imprison me, and you can’t even do that!”
The big man flung himself forward, and although Royce managed to avoid his claws, the sheer momentum of him struck Royce, knocking him sprawling. Royce rolled to his feet, struck out with the obsidian blade, and all but skewered Barihash. It didn’t seem to make any difference.
“Your father tried to kill me too,” Barihash said. “Tried to pierce my heart with an iron blade, but iron knows nothing against the heat of the volcano. Fool.”
He struck out at Royce, and the blow sent Royce flying through the air, carried by the sheer force of it. He landed in the water, the impact of it knocking the breath from his body. He could see Barihash advancing, the sword still sticking from his chest.
Royce forced himself back to his feet, feeling the pain of claw wounds burning like fire on his side. There was blood in the lake’s water now, and Royce knew there would be far more soon if he wasn’t careful.
“I’ll tear you apart piece by piece,” Barihash said. He pulled the obsidian sword from his flesh and flung it into the lake. It sank without a trace as he advanced.
Royce circled away from him, trying to think of a way to win, even to survive. He circled away, around the edge of the lake, feeling the water lapping against his ankles as he did so. With another man, he might have closed the distance and tried to grapple, but with something so huge and so monstrously inhuman, it seemed like suicide.
Even so, what choice was there? What else would work?
Royce dodged to the right as Barihash leapt again, rolling to come to his feet. It seemed that the monstrous creature had more tricks than just his raw size, though, because he picked up a lump of rock, cradling it in his hands the way a mother might have held a child. It glowed then, with all the heat of the mountain, and he flung it straight at Royce.
Royce threw himself flat, feeling the raw, improbable heat as it passed overhead. When it struck the water, it hissed and steam came up. Royce rose to his feet just in time for Barihash to seize another rock. Royce dodged again, and then again, as more of the flaming rocks singed their way past him, far too close for comfort.
It seemed in that moment as though all Royce could do was run, and maybe that was enough. Still dodging the rocks, not even trying to move close to the mirror, he made his way to his father’s few belongings. He snatched them up, and Barihash swiped at Royce in the same moment, leaving him holding only one scrap of paper.
Whatever you do, don’t look in the mirror.
His father’s symbol sat next to the words, and Royce couldn’t decide if they were a reminder for himself or for Royce. It didn’t matter right then, because the mirror sat well away from him, on the floor of the cave. Royce had no interest in the mirror if his father wasn’t here, so there was no reason to look in it. There was no reason to stay here.
He ran for the exit of the cave, because right then, the only option he could think of was the one that the people of the city had taken. There was no way that Barihash could fit through the tunnel Royce had come through, and if he was able to get out some other way, wouldn’t he have already done it?
“Run if you want, thief!” Barihash called after him. “I’ll deal with you and your friends the way I dealt with the city. My home will wipe you all out!”
As if in response, the volcano rumbled.
Royce stopped, turning back toward the monstrous thing that had once been a man. He had no doubt that Barihash could do what he’d threatened. He’d seen the image of the city dying, had almost led his friends right into it. He’d led his friends here too, to these islands, and to this island specifically. He couldn’t let them die, even if it meant his own death.
“You could have let me go,” Royce said. “Instead, you threatened my friends.”
He charged for Barihash, ducking in under a sweep of those powerful claws and leaping at the huge creature. He spun behind it, jumping up onto its back, using the ragged robe for handholds the way he might have used trees growing from a rock face.
He wrapped an arm around Barihash’s neck and started to squeeze.
Claws came back toward him, and Royce ducked his head, feeling them scrape along his back. He ignored the pain, his arm latched onto the monstrous former man’s throat, squeezing with such force that he was sure another man would have already been unconscious. Instead, Barihash stood there without seeming to care about the grip on him. He even laughed.
“Foolish thief,” he said. “Even that can’t kill me.”
He flung Royce off then, throwing him toward the lake, and not toward the shallows, this time. He flung Royce as easily as he’d thrown the obsidian sword before, and it was all Royce could do to turn the tumble into a dive, hitting the water and plunging down deep into the water.
Because it was so clear, he could see the obsidian sword sitting there, lying on the floor of the lake. Royce dove toward it, reasoning that any weapon was better than none, and thinking…
Barihash had said that his obsidian heart was immune to the touch of steel, but what about a weapon crafted from the same volcano? Royce kicked hard, swimming down toward the sword, reaching out for it.
He saw a dark shape swimming toward him through the water, and he had a moment to recognize Barihash, moving far more gracefully than he ever did on land. Then Barihash’s hands closed around him, his bulk pressing Royce down to the floor of the lake and holding him there.
The monstrous creature held him there as easily as Royce might have held onto a newborn lamb, in spite of Royce’s attempts to struggle free. Royce kicked at him and wrenched at those claw-like hands, but it didn’t make any difference. On land, Barihash had been terrifying, but here in the water he felt unstoppable.
He stared down at Royce with obvious glee, and Royce could guess what his plan was: he would simply hold Royce here until Royce ran out of breath. Already, he could feel his lungs complaining at the effort of trying to keep from breathing. His body begged for air, his head throbbing with the lack of it.
Even as Royce’s body started to give in to blackness, the monster seemed perfectly comfortable down here, but that made sense; hadn’t the mirror been propped down here, where Barihash could stare at it beneath the surface?
Royce could feel himself fading, his body losing strength, his vision growing dark. In that vision, he found himself thinking of Genevieve. He wished he were with her, rather than here. He wished… he wished all kinds of things. He wished that things had been different, that he’d been able to pull her away from Altfor’s grasp before the battle, that he’d been able to keep her safe. He hoped she would be safe once he was dead.
No he couldn’t die; too many other people’s lives depended on it.
Royce forced himself away from the blackness through a pure effort of will. From the corner of his eye, Royce saw the obsidian sword, wedged point down into a gap in the rocks. Barihash didn’t seem to care as he reached for it, his hand wrapping around the material of its makeshift handle.
Royce grabbed the obsidian sword and pulled, feeling it catch against the rocks. It stuck for a moment, its weight too great for his fading strength. Putting every ounce of strength he had into it, he yanked at the blade and felt the rocks around it give way.
He snatched it up without hesitating, and thrust forward. In the water, it seemed as though the whole movement was taking place in slow motion, but it was still enough to thrust deep into the hole in Barihash’s chest, and into the obsidian heart there.
Even underwater, Royce heard Barihash’s scream.
He felt the obsidian heart give way under the impact of the blade, shattering into a thousand pieces. Light flared in the water, in a burst of power that threw Royce away from the monstrous man, almost all the way to the lake’s shore. He saw Barihash clutching at his chest, arcing back in agony.
The monster didn’t collapse. Instead, obsidian spread up over him from the lake’s bed, covering him and transforming him even as he died. It sped over him the way frost might speed over a metal post, but this was far harder, and far more permanent. In a matter of seconds, there was nothing there except a lump of obsidian so large that no man would ever be able to move it.
Royce was more concerned with moving himself then. He pushed up toward the surface, and even though it was shallow, it still took everything he had to bring him staggering from the lake. He crawled forward on hands and knees, and Royce realized that the mirror was just ahead of him.
A rumble came from above him, and rocks fell from the lip of the volcano, landing in the water with a splash. Despite that, Royce felt the almost overwhelming urge to sit there and stare into the mirror. Think of all the things that it could show him, all the answers it could give. It could tell him where his father was. It could tell him all of the tactics his enemies might use. It could tell him who his enemies were…
Just in time, Royce remembered the words his father had written. He’d warned Royce not to look, and Royce found himself thinking of Barihash. He’d seen how mad the former man had been. How much of that had come from looking in the mirror? Had he truly been the great king he claimed?
Maybe it was true that someone worthy could look into it, but Royce couldn’t take the risk. Running over to the scraps of his father’s belongings, he realized that the greatest gift his father had left him there wasn’t anything he’d written, or any of the supplies: it was the large cloth bag that he’d kept them in. Taking it, Royce quickly moved over to the mirror and covered it. Briefly, he thought he caught a glimpse of his own reflection wearing a crown, but he looked away.
He lifted the mirror, and as he did so, more rocks started to fall from the roof of the grotto. Some plunged into the pool, while others slammed into the ground around Royce, shattering as they fell and spraying shards of obsidian everywhere. One nicked Royce’s arm, sending a sharp burst of pain through him as it cut him.
It seemed that the volcano was falling apart without Barihash there at its heart, starting to collapse in on itself a piece at a time. Royce looked up once at the falling rocks and then ran, plunging into the tunnel. He thought he could feel it squeezing in toward him, and in the spots where the tunnel grew narrowest, it seemed that the whole crushing weight of the mountain was there, pushing down on his chest. Royce squeezed through, ignoring the pressure, knowing that his only hope was to keep going.
He pushed his way through until at last the dim glow of the tunnel gave way to the brighter daylight of the tower beyond it. Royce put on one last burst of speed, rushing out of the tunnel while behind him the walls started to collapse. He threw himself out, coming out in the instant before the last of the tunnel collapsed. He stood there panting, and for a moment, Royce didn’t see the figure lightly descending the spiral staircase into the circle of daylight below.
Then he stepped down in front of Royce, and Royce recognized the man in front of him. How could he not, when the gray-skinned man had haunted his dreams? When he’d been the one to kill the people who had raised Royce, and who had caused so much other torment?
“Hello, Royce,” he said softly, almost gently. “My name is Dust. I’m afraid fate requires that you should die.”