Of Deeds Most Valiant: A Poisoned Saints Novel

Cleft is moving before I can, running down the stairs five at a time. I don’t dare let him get to Victoriana first. Not with her back unguarded. I see him in my mind’s eye smashing her with his stone fists and it spurs me to action.

I fly down the first ten steps, nearly tripping in my haste, and then I scramble over the banister and drop over the side. My landing is awkward, my muscles exhausted from being forced to run and fight and run and fight on little sleep and no food.

I see her immediately, standing in the fountain, soaking wet, her hair plastered to the side of her face and tears streaming down as she clutches her massive dog to her chest, awkward with the weight of him.

To my utter relief, Brindle is dead.

Which means the demons are gone.

Which means … with a mighty crack, the floor splits in two. I glance over my shoulder and I break into a run again. Cleft is behind me, racing across the ground. Whatever he means to do, I must not allow him near my lady paladin. She’s earned her right to flee this place if any of us have.

I glance at Sir Sorken’s body as I run past it and stumble when he meets my eyes. His legs are dead, unmoving, but his hands claw forward and his eyes are burning.

“Look on what you’ve done, paladin,” he croaks as I pass.

I shudder as his voice claws up my spine.

I reach Victoriana just as she’s stepping out of the water, as a piece of one of the statues falls and hits the edge of the fountain. We both look up instinctively.

I want to catch her up in my arms. I want to tell her she’s done so well.

I do not. There’s no time.

I revel instead in the brief catch of our gazes, on the way our hearts interweave in that intangible touch. I dare not savor it. I spin, sword up. It’s only just in time as Cleft brings his fist down.

I barely deflect it. My sword shatters, sending a terrible shudder down my arm.

I find my lady paladin’s gaze one more time.

“Run,” I say calmly, and then I dance to the side, drawing Cleft after me. “I’ll be right behind you.”

I have nothing but a stub of a weapon to defend with, but it hardly matters. This is a game of ducking and leaping, a game where stamina wins. And I have none left.

I catch a glimpse of Victoriana as she passes me. She’s a strong woman, but she’s stumbling and panting with the effort of carrying a dog that surely must weigh as much as she does. I hope she’s strong enough. I hope her feet fly with a strength beyond what she has.

“Merciful God, make it so,” I whisper as another chunk of ceiling falls down, narrowly missing me.

A second chunk hits Cleft and he stumbles.

“This whole place is coming down, Sorken,” I call out. “We ought to flee.”

“We?” Sorken laughs, a wracking, coughing laugh. He hasn’t moved more than an inch, if that. His back is surely broken.

I look to the golem, meet his glowing eye with mine.

“We must go, golem. Bring your master.”

Sorken’s laugh is punctuated by wracking coughs again. When he runs out, he wheezes in a gasp and then he speaks very clearly.

“Cleft. Kill him.”

My gaze is still locked on the golem. And I do not know if there is a person in that rock. Even after everything, I still don’t know. I do not know if he aches as we do, fears as we do, if he realizes how he is being used, or if he is only a mindless tool, but I know that if he redoubles his efforts, I will die here. And he has been ordered to do just that.

He lifts his fist and I draw in a breath, ready to try to leap and run again.

And then — slowly — he lowers his fist and stops.

“Deny your master and you will die,” Sorken says in a low voice. “You know this.”

But still, the fist does not move.

Cleft turns his head slightly, looking me full in the face, and I feel a rush of cold run over me as I realize what is happening. He has made a decision. He has chosen mercy.

It almost steals my breath away. Not a tool then. Not a tool.

My lips part and I begin to reach out a hand to him.

And then Sorken curses and the light vanishes from Cleft’s eyes. Suddenly. A candle snuffed out.

For a heartbeat, I can’t breathe.

I’m shocked by how watching that feels just like watching Owalan fall dead to the floor. A person. He was a person all along. I’m so stunned by it that it takes a second cracking sound for me to remember that the monastery is coming down around us.

My eyes linger on Cleft for a moment longer and then I’m moving, running to Sir Sorken, and sweeping him up into my arms. He screams — broken back — and I want to scream with him as the pain in my ribs where his knife scored me and the dog bite in my neck flare with the extra pressure of Sorken’s weight. It will have to wait. All pain will have to wait. I can heal him but I will not remain conscious if I try it, and who knows what this madman will do if I am at his mercy. Likely he’ll let us both be swallowed by this place.

I run, stumbling, my every muscle screaming. Sorken is old, but he is heavy — my weight plus another half if I’m any judge. And I am exhausted, blood flowing from my side.

Chunks of ceiling fall around us and the cracks of the floor are widening. Who knows how far down this place goes. If it’s anything like the rooms the trials were conducted in, then it will be a very long drop.

As I pass them, two of the gears in the floor pull apart. I have to leap over their teeth — well, more like barely stumble over them. My heavy burden is dragging me, pulling my strength, sapping my energy.

In my arms, Sorken lets loose a steady stream of curses, growing more vile the farther we go. I ignore him as I should have all along.

Ahead, Victoriana has reached the door. She looks over her shoulder at me. She is a black silhouette against a light more bright than I’ve seen in days. It blinds me.

“Go!” I call.

She hesitates, as if she will come back for me.

“Do not wait for me,” I order her, but even I can hear the strain in my voice. My strength is failing.

Her eyes widen, looking at something behind me. Likely, she’s watching the entire staircase collapse. I stumble two more steps, yelling, “For the love of the God, go, Victoriana!”

She leaps through the door with her dog, tumbles out of sight, and I breathe out a sigh of relief.

I can’t help myself; I look over my shoulder.

Where the stairway had been there is a yawning pit. Where the ceiling above it had been, most has fallen through, the ruins that were once above now falling to below. The Saints that ring the room are leaning forward — and once more they have changed. They no longer look like us. Their eyes are haunted. Something that looks like vines ripples through their skin and flesh, entangling them. They have too many mouths. Too many hands. Too many eyes.

I tear my gaze away as the first one tumbles, chunks of it breaking away. I have the most terrible feeling that the hands and feet depicted in stone are trying to claw out and stop its fall.

Looking back was a terrible mistake. The floor in front of me cracks and I trip, falling to my knees, dropping Sorken.

He screams and the crack parts so quickly that his lower body falls with it. His hands cling to the edge of the floor. Beneath him, the gears that turned the floor and the huge axle they theorized about are exposed. He dangles over them, eyes wild. And I do not see the murderer. I see only the man. I reach for his hand.

His eyes meet mine, harden, and deliberately, he lets go.

I do not watch his drop. Perhaps I should. Perhaps it would honor him. But I do not.

He does not scream. His death makes no difference at all.

I drag myself to my feet, my steps slowed by pain and exhaustion. My hand finds my side and comes back slick with blood. I look at it, step into the doorway, and look at the ruins behind me falling away into nothing.

A terrible sense of futility seizes me.

Eleven of us walked into this place. Eight are left in it forever. What madness. What terrible, clawing madness.

I don’t think I’m thinking straight. I’m not sure why, but I feel almost like laughing as I turn my back on the yawning space behind me and fling myself into the icy grey water of the sea.

I taste the brine when I enter, and it’s life, oh, it’s life to me.