The Dire King (Jackaby #4)(38)

With much bumping of elbows and treading on toes, we spilled out of the corridor of bookshelves. Jackaby took the lead, pulling open the door to the library and nearly bowling over a woman who stood outside. She was dressed in blue robes, and she had honey blond hair and an ivory scar that cut across one cheek.

“Serif?” Jackaby said when he had recovered his footing. “What on earth are you doing . . . on earth?”

“My Lord Arawn has requested a report of your progress,” she answered stiffly. “I am here to collect it. Your duck let me in.”

“Excellent timing!” Jackaby’s unfiltered enthusiasm made the corner of Serif’s lip twitch where it met the scar on her cheek. “Because while your Lord Arawn has been misplacing instruments of Hafgan, we have been placing them. We’ve secured Hafgan’s spear!”

Serif followed him as he swept past her and into his office, the rest of us hurrying after. There, on the bookshelf, right where Jackaby had left it, Morwen Finstern’s black blade . . . wasn’t. The shelf was empty. The sword was gone.





Chapter Fifteen

The sword . . . the spear—” Jackaby stammered.

“The spear grips the hand,” said a very small voice. All eyes spun until we locked on to an unassuming little lump of hair sitting in the corner of the bookshelf. The twain rolled itself up to sitting. He was as physically intimidating as a boiled potato, but something about the diminutive fellow gave me the shivers.

“You are in alliance with a twain?” Serif put a hand to the hilt of her sword, her body suddenly tense and battle-ready. “Whose side are you on?” she demanded.

Jackaby held out a calming hand. “This is not an alliance. This is”—he turned back to the little figure on his desk—“I’m not certain what this is. The spear grips the hand. You said that before.”

“It’s from an old poem,” the twain said.

“I know it,” growled Serif. “I’ve heard it said that Hafgan wrote it himself.”

“He didn’t,” the twain said. “The Dire King never bothered with poetry, but he liked it. It was probably his minstrel, Pughe. That one was always good with words.”

“I’m sure he was. Where is my blade?” Jackaby asked.

The twain sighed. “It’s yours now?” he tutted. “Shame.”

“Ach, did’nae I tell ye?” Nudd burst out. “Ne’er trust a twain! Where’s yer wee partner, then, twain? Off givin’ th’ blade to th’ Dire King hisself?”

“She is dead,” said the twain, flatly.

“His partner?” I asked.

“A twain always has a partner,” Serif confirmed. “They are born together. Bonded.”

“Thass where th’ name comes from,” added Nudd. “They’s always twain, ne’er a single. I don’ trust him a brownie’s breath. Twain don’ jus’ die. Not alone. They’s near enough ta immortal, them.”

“It is true,” the twain said.

“How’d she kick it, then?”

The twain offered Nudd a hollow gaze. Not empty-acorn-shell hollow; it was the sort of hollow gaze into which one might drop a pebble to gauge the distance to the bottom and then never hear it land. “She gave up her life,” the twain said at last, “in the service of our most venerable ruler. She believed in him. I believed in him. She had given him much already. He needed more power, and so she gave him power. She crafted tokens to focus his will and channel his might.”

“Tokens?” Jackaby asked.

“A crown, black as midnight. A spear, black as pitch.” The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. “They were not enough. In the end she gave herself. ”

“You,” I said, taking a step backward, “you serve the Dire King?”

“Know’d it!” Nudd pounced. He slammed into the bookshelf headfirst, his hands slapping together on empty air. The shelf gave way and Nudd collapsed to the one below it, which gave way in like fashion, until Nudd was deposited gracelessly onto the floor in a slough of loose papers and curios. His top hat slid across the floor.

“No. We followed Hafgan,” said an unperturbed voice behind us. We all spun around. The twain was sitting cross-legged on top of Jackaby’s heavy safe. “We made the Dire King.”

“Explain,” demanded Jackaby. “How did you make the Dire King?”

The twain seemed to regard the command with detached interest.

“It is the most sacred act of their kind,” Serif filled in. “They can live practically forever, or they can give their life to another.”

“When we cease to be,” the twain said, nodding, “it is so that a worthy life may burn all the more brightly, or so that one that has been snuffed out before its time may be rekindled.”

“You can raise the dead?” Jackaby’s eyebrow shot up.

“We can.” The twain nodded. “And not in the shallow pantomime of life that you have seen in your world of late. We bestow real vitality to the body, mind, and soul. It is our ultimate sacrifice. Our greatest gift.”

There was a flash, and Serif’s sword was suddenly slicing through the air toward the twain. I blinked.

And the cold night air bit my cheeks and my shoes sank down into the sod. I gasped. Serif’s sword lopped the azalea bush in two and she toppled into the grass. There were exclamations from the rest of our party as we took stock of our surroundings.