The Crooked Key, Chapter 4: The Mollusk Knight
The Crooked Key by Kyle Marquis
Chapter 4: The Mollusk Knight
Though he was on an adventure intended to connect him with his savage and warlike ancestors in the eyes of the common people, Duke Uleino was also a well-educated man at home in the modern world. He studied his map, took out his golden pocketwatch, and led his company well. They never stumbled into water or brambles, and only once had to double back after reaching a dead end. There was some confusion then, but it was quickly resolved when the hexguard captain, Aklurian, noted that an elevation marker on the duke’s map was actually a mustard stain.
The company consisted of the duke and a personal valet (a man of some political importance, though Eilo had no idea who he was), six High Guards, fourteen hexguards (including Captain Aklurian), the banisher himself, Skaithness, Lord Gloce, his servant, and two villagers, each riding a mule. This was, the duke had explained more than once, merely a scouting expedition: if a new temple had arisen in the swamps, then someone had built a structure on the duke’s land, and he was entitled to tax it. Even if some spirit had conjured the temple, it was still subject to tax. And if it were the work of some witch or demon, he would organize a company of a few hundred crossbowmen with fire-hardened wooden bolts and destroy it with the help of the hexguards.
It was a tidy, legalistic argument, but every time Eilo thought of legal matters, he glanced at Lord Gloce. The old gentleman kept his gaze fixed on the duke, as if he could burn a hole in his back and kill him that way. Eilo had not yet told him about Medru—had not told him about what really happened. He rode up to the old man, hoping that sorrow would cool his rage.
“You saw the head,” he said. “It was one of your dogs, the one the hexguard stole away three years ago. It had fox spirit blood—strong enough that it had learned to take the shape of a man—so the hexguard killed it. But it came back.”
“And all the others, all my beautiful hounds…will they come back, banisher?” the gentleman said, his voice low and furious.
“The hexguards insured that they would not,” the banisher admitted. “The hexguards are reckless. I try to tell people that they just make everything worse, but there are hundreds of them all over the Duchies now and just one of me. I guess we lost that argument.”
“The duke permitted it,” Lord Gloce said. “No, he ordered it. He had them killed.”
“Medru is dead,” the banisher said.
“What?”
“She was also descended from the fox spirit. She was the sister, I think, of the one that came back. They planned to—”
“You killed her?” Gloce asked, his voice breaking.
“The dead hound killed her,” Eilo said. Banishers were not obligated to tell the truth, but that was near enough to a lie that Eilo winced when he said it. Still: “I tried to reason with him. With the dead hound. I tried to calm him down. But the dead…their minds rot even when their bodies do not. I am sorry. I wish I had been smarter. I wish I had figured it out faster.”
“Even if you’d figured it all out, she’d be dead now anyway,” Gloce said. “Shot like a swamp-wolf with the rest of them. Oh, gods to come…”
He hid his face behind his hat.
“There!” the duke shouted a few minutes later.
And there it was, at the end of a muddy path through the swamp: a twisted pyramid of slippery-looking green stone, like serpentine or jade. It rose out of the muck, three times the height of the broken structure where Eilo had found Skaithness. It was not as obviously broken as that structure, but it was crooked, following a skewed internal logic that no castle built by mortals would ever consider.
“It looks like math,” Skaithness said. Eilo sort-of understood her: the Mollusk Temple was built along the lines of geometrical formulas that Eilo had studied once as a boy and then forgotten as quickly as possible. Its form held a mad rage for order, an obsession with mathematical purity that made it as alien and uninviting as a tomb.
But it was not a tomb: vines covered its slick green surface, and the air around it felt warm and wet, as if the rotting vegetation here were so potent that it could beat back the coming winter. The setting sun looked huge and prematurely red. Even as the banisher watched, the water around the temple churned, and it seemed to gain a few inches of crooked and lopsided height. Shifting vines nearby revealed another, smaller building made of the same stuff: a small, domed structure with an open gate like a black maw.
“What do you make of it?” the duke asked Captain Aklurian.
“Demons have made this,” Aklurian said without hesitation. “Though I cannot say what kind. Look, there are raised walkways most of the way around it. We can get a little closer.”
“You’d have to go single file,” the banisher said. “And anything could be in that water. We’re already being watched.”
“Don’t be ridic—”
“You can all feel it, just like I can,” Eilo said, raising his voice only a little. “That whole place is watching us. It knows we’re here. And we’re easily within bowshot already, standing on a pathway through the swamp that’s barely wide enough for two horses. My lord duke, you’ve done it: you know where this place is, and an army waits for you back at Baristoc to deal with it. You can either declare your mission finished now, or draw your sword and fight whatever waits inside. But more ‘scouting’ is pointless.”
“I don’t like the sound of ‘bowshot,’” one of the other hexguards said. That struck Eilo as unexpectedly cowardly for a hexguard. Aklurian glared at the man in disgust before returning his gaze to the temple. But the other hexguards looked petrified. They reached for, and loaded, their crossbows.
“What the hell are you rats doing?” Aklurian snapped.
“They are making peace with what is happening to the world,” someone said. The voice felt like a cold slug gliding across Eilo’s forehead, and he shuddered. The horses whinnied unhappily.
The Mollusk Temple did not seem to hold many of the structures Eilo expected from a fortress, but when a man suddenly appeared on the walls, the banisher realized he was looking at a balcony of green stone. Perspective played tricks with the eyes, but Eilo could see that the man was tall—almost enormous—and that he wore tattered armor of hexagonal scales, covered in moss and muck.
A hexguard. Though perhaps not anymore, since over his head, he wore an irregular spiny shell, like that of a conch but infinitely more convoluted. It was the orange-pink of coral, blue at the tips, and shimmered whenever he moved.
“It’s him,” Skaithness said, her voice holding more amazement than fear. Then, quick as an adder, she reached out and yanked one of the hexguards from his horse. He had been aiming his crossbow at Captain Aklurian.
“Kill them!” another hexguard screamed. Crossbows twanged and quarrels thunked into the purple robes of the High Guards. Eilo hurled himself off his horse, felt a quarrel fly past his head, and landed in a chaotic tangle of horse legs. A High Guard—one who had shared a drink with the banisher not an hour ago—fell into the inch-deep water beside him, a quarrel in his brain. Lord Gloce’s servant fell alongside him, killed by an ivory-tipped spear—not ideal for killing mortals, but certainly adequate. Gloce landed beside him, his saber skittering from his hands. One final crossbow hit Duke Uleino’s horse, and it lashed out in agony, kicking the last High Guard who was still on his feet. The man flew into the water and disappeared.
Another horse, hurt or just terrified, almost landed on the banisher. That gave him a half-second to hide, and then he was up with his glaive in his hand. All the High Guards were dead, and one of the treacherous hexguards bore down on Eilo with a saber. The banisher drove the glaive up under the hexguard’s arm so the spear-tip burst out the back of his head. He twisted the glaive, flinging the dying man onto another hexguard armed with a steel dagger, and they both went down.
The narrow bridge of mostly dry land was in chaos, as men and horses struggled, fought, and fell into the mud. Hexguards were mostly exterminators who kept a distance from their prey, but banishers were used to mixing it up with beasts and spirits, sometimes with their bare hands if necessary, and Eilo knew how to fight in a scrum. He stabbed another hexguard in the face, pushed him into the man Skaithness had yanked off his horse, then almost stabbed another in the back until he realized that Captain Aklurian was fighting for his life against two of his treasonous men. When they battered Aklurian to his knees, Eilo swung his glaive like a great two-handed sword, severing a hand and slashing open a cheek. The man who could still fight reeled back and Aklurian lunged for him. They grappled together with daggers for a moment, then both pitched sideways into the mud and disappeared.
The banisher could see the way back. Even better, several horses had fled, panicked, in that direction, including his own. But when he ran that way, two more hexguards rose up to meet him with boar spears, corralling him away from his escape route. They pushed him toward the water as a third, behind them, reloaded his crossbow.
Then Skaithness appeared behind them. Unarmed, she simply battered one man into the mud. When the other turned and abandoned his spear for a steel dagger, she caught him around the throat. He stabbed again and again with the blade, and it just bounced off her cuirass. Her gauntlet suddenly tightened, snapping his neck. She spun as gracefully as a dancer and hurled the dead man one-handed into the hexguard with the crossbow.
Then she stumbled and sank hip-deep into the muck. Eilo reached with his glaive and she grabbed hold of it. After twisting around in the sucking mud to get a better grip, the armored woman used it to haul herself back onto the narrow stretch of solid ground. But by then more hexguards were between them and the horses. They started to approach with their spears raised, while—once again—the back ranks reloaded their crossbows.
“This way!” someone shouted. A crossbow bolt flew out of the darkness, hitting the closest hexguard in the hand; the banisher reacted instantly, lunging and driving the glaive into the man’s neck. Then he ran in the direction of the voice, not sure what else he could do.
It was the duke, wounded but alive. He stood in the round black mouth of the dome-like building. It appeared to lead straight ahead into a narrow tunnel. Without time to test it with his glaive, the banisher just ran, and Skaithness followed. A crossbow bolt flew past them into the darkness; they ran until the light dwindled to nothing, with the surviving hexguards somewhere behind them.
“Can’t…see a…” Duke Uleino said, gasping for breath. The banisher could hear him struggling to reload the crossbow in the ankle-deep water.
“I can help,” Skaithness said. A moment later the front of her breastplate started to glow with a clean blue light. It cast an arc of illumination into a slimy green-stone room that contained only vines and still water. The room had no real shape, but two pathways stretched out of it, one to the left and more or less level, one to the right and sharply down. Eilo hated the idea of going down, but the ground there was covered in a gentle layer of pale gray-white vines, while the straight path had more water…water that would splash, make noise, and reveal their position.
The hexguards were at the mouth of the structure, shouting for someone to bring a lantern.
The duke leaned against the wall, hands trembling on the hexguard crossbow, though he had managed to load it with another bolt. Eilo leaned his glaive against the wall and took the crossbow.
“Skaithness, both of you should hurry down that passage until you’re out of sight from the entrance,” the banisher said. “I’ll join you soon.”
Skaithness led the exhausted duke down the slope and the light diminished, leaving the banisher in almost total darkness except for the pale red light from the cave mouth. Five hexguards crept inside, all with spears raised. One more held a lantern.
“Which way?” one of the closest hexguards asked the other as Eilo crouched in the shadows where the paths divided. He cradled the crossbow.
They crept closer, careful not to enter total darkness.
Eilo raised the crossbow and fired down the straight path. The bolt echoed wonderfully off the green stone, bouncing and ricocheting before ending its flight with a splash into the water.
“There!” two of the hexguards shouted, racing down the straight path as the lamp-bearer shouted for them to slow down. The hexguards ran past him, splashing and stumbling in the darkness. Before the lamp’s light could reach him, the banisher retrieved his glaive and dropped carefully down the spongy, root-covered slope.
A few minutes later, he saw the blue glow of Skaithness’s light. She and Duke Uleino stood in an irregular chamber full of crooked green pillars. The duke looked exhausted but only lightly injured—a crossbow bolt had clipped off his breastplate, and a dagger had cut his arm, but not deeply. Skaithness’s armor showed a few scratches and a great deal of blood, none of it hers.
“Why?” Duke Uleino asked. “Why did they want to kill me?”
“Politics,” the banisher said as he looked for other ways out. “If you die, your grace, who inherits your throne?”
“My son Ulcan,” the duke said. “Assuming I die with honor, of course.”
“Does being murdered by monster hunters count as dying with honor?” Skaithness asked.
“It does, even if I scream when they do it,” the duke said with a nervous laugh. “For the Emmer Dukes, by whose grace flows the authority of the New Clans…”
He waited for Eilo of Nysse, a member of the First Clans by blood and adoption, to say something, but the banisher didn’t care about those old racial and political disputes.
“Ahem, yes, it is the nature of the Emmer Dukes to be horns of plenty for their people,” Duke Uleino continued. “Legally speaking, our honor is in giving rather than taking—of never being in debt. Conveniently, I am not.”
“At all?” the banisher asked.
“The Ovarch inspects my holdings in the capital and elsewhere every year,” the Emmer Duke said. “I give more than I take. That’s why the people love me.” He smiled magnanimously. “So if I die, my ten year old son inherits the throne, as is proper, as is my wish.” Then the duke sighed. “Even though that means those bureaucratic pigs who surround him will essentially inherit the throne for ten years, until he comes of age. What if they trick him into going into debt? What if the Ovarch…” The duke then fell into muttered worries over inheritance and taxation that Eilo didn’t understand or care about.
The green stone temple resembled the malformed place where Eilo had found Skaithness, and he soon discovered a crooked stairway up that reminded him of that place, except on a much larger scale. Eilo’s mentor taught him many lessons in his childhood, and one of them was, “Never go down unless you have to.” He started heading back up, keeping far enough ahead of Skaithness that he could retreat if he heard voices or saw anyone.
“After him, who inherits?” Eilo asked.
“Wh-What?” the duke said after a while.
“After…How badly are you hurt?” The banisher turned to inspect the man, whose powder blue coat was nearly as bloodstained as Skaithness’s panoply.
“I’m not hurt, boy,” the duke snapped, “except these scratches. I just lost my childhood friend and six men who swore their lives to my service, and now my son is surrounded by the so-called Trusted Seven—the high guildmasters, who are all thieves and intriguers. That’s assuming I’m guessing right about those devils killing me to put my child son on the throne, and he’s not already dead too. So forgive my sour mood, banisher. If my son and I both die, my bitch of a sister inherits the throne. And she’s no better than the Trusted Seven.”
The stairs led up to a natural-looking cavern with pale roots trailing from the domed ceiling. They could hear rushing water, but the chamber smelled dry, almost dusty. More witch-signs hung from the roots. Dozens of them, in fact. A few scratches on the walls resembled script. The light of Skaithness’s armor flickered.
“Your sister?” Skaithness asked, nudging the light on her cuirass until it glowed brightly again.
“Lady Ryphonia,” the duke said. “Half sister. Barely more than a girl herself, or was the last time I had to look at her face to face. Spoiled little shit who wears her hair like a streetwalker, thinks herself an intellectual. Her mother sent her to five schools when she was a girl and they all threw her out…”
The banisher turned in surprise, because he knew Lady Ryphonia. He had known her as Rynne back when he was a boy at Castle Nysse, learning the arts of banishment from his mentor and the castle’s libraries (the public library, and the secret library, sometimes called the Scrolls of the Cat: left by a wisdom cat whose cunning had not saved her in the end). Rynne had spent a whole year in that ruined castle. Her parents were minor nobles—her father descended from a duke, her mother a rich merchant’s daughter—and great patrons of literature and the sciences. He had never learned why someone as high-born as Rynne had come to the ruins of Castle Nysse, but they had spent a year together studying history, natural magic, and fencing, running along the spirit-trails of the castle’s undulating tile roof and laboring to keep the walls standing. Then her mother had suddenly demanded her return, and that was that. Eilo spent a few minutes working through the genealogies and, yes, assuming that certain people had died, joined the Egg, or been disqualified for debt, Lady Ryphonia might actually inherit the throne of Baristoc.
“Who was the Mollusk Knight?” Skaithness asked.
“Oh, we’ve given him a little name, have we?” the duke asked. “The ‘Mollusk Knight,’ ha! That’s Nowan de Valc.”
“Wait, you know him?” the banisher asked.
“Not many sons of Emmer Dukes join the hexguards. Duke de Valc controls the vineyards to the west. You’ve probably had his wine, since it’s shit. There was a funeral for his son three years ago and everything, since we all thought he died here. But it looks like he…what is a mollusk, anyway? Is it like lobsters and crabs?”
So, three years ago the hexguard Nowan de Valc investigates a fox spirit, kills one of the dogs carrying the spirit’s blood, and then ends up in the swamp. A hexguard, fearful and angry as they always were, could have called all sorts of horrible things out of the swamp. Nowan de Valc must have called up this Mollusk Temple.
“Did you recognize the Mollusk Knight?” the banisher asked Skaithness as they picked their way down a narrow corridor of damp black earth that felt like it might collapse at any moment.
“He was wearing a shell on his head,” Skaithness says. “It’s definitely him, though I didn’t know he had been a hexguard or a duke’s son. We need to kill him so I can destroy the world properly, instead of the bad way that he wants.”
“What did she say?” Duke Uleino asked.
“Skaithness, kill the light!” the banisher whispered.
The tunnel plunged into near-total darkness. Men shouted and argued up ahead. They waited until the shouts died down, then crept toward the opening of the tunnel. They emerged on a low grassy hill above the swamp as the sun set, a huge red disc against the dead black foliage of the more distant marshlands. The banisher handed Duke Uleino the empty crossbow and crept around the circumference of the hill. Hexguards were visible farther down the hill, preparing to light torches and begin a nighttime search. And beyond them, things moved through the waters. The banisher could see the ripples they made, and feel how they swam through both water and earth.
“Guardian worms,” the banisher whispered.
“What are they?” the duke asked.
“Worms who guard places,” Eilo said. “We’re not scholastics, your majesty: banishers generally mean what they say. They’re moving through the water and the soil, looking for us.”
“How do you get around them?” Skaithness asked.
“You hobble a goat, then run for it,” the banisher said. “But we don’t have a goat.”
“Not all of those men are hexguards,” Skaithness said, pointing down the hill. Eilo caught a momentary glimpse of men in patchwork armor—mercenaries, perhaps. They disappeared into a copse of trees, but the banisher guessed there must be more than twenty of them.
But Eilo would rather face twenty mercenaries than one guardian worm.
“Can’t we run for it?” the duke said. “Look, there’s that Mollusk Temple.” And indeed, it rose below them, to the north. “And there’s the path back to the village. It’s clear. And if we can round up some horses, we’ll be back before the sun sets. Then I’ll raise an army that—”
“It won’t work,” the banisher said. “We’re not just fighting soldiers anymore, your grace. All that military strategy you know, that could get us past twenty mercenaries and all those hexguards, won’t do a thing against the worms. They go through walls.”
“What don’t they go through?” Skaithness asked. “What about those doors in town? The painted doors?”
“You’re right,” the banisher said.
“This is all nonsense,” the duke muttered, rubbing his cut arm and then wincing.
“Forgive me, your majesty, but you’re like a primitive chieftain who’s never seen an arquebus before, who doesn’t know why his soldiers keep falling down dead when no one can reach them with spears. You will defer to my expertise here or you will start walking home and I’ll learn something from how many steps you’re able to take before the worms get you.”
The duke fell silent.
“You’re right about the signs,” the banisher told Skaithness. “A well-made hex sign will stop a guardian worm as surely as a stone wall stops a robber.”
“Let’s draw one!” the armored woman said.
“I can’t draw one unless I know what kind of guardian worm is down there,” the banisher said. “And if I could get close enough to see the worm’s lineage marks, it’d already be too late. We need someone who knows the spirits here. We need a library. We need to go back.”
The banisher turned around and headed back into the cavern.
*