The fear of death was nothing new to Malden. At their first meeting Cutbill had threatened him casually enough, and he stood up to the promise of death without quaking in his boots. That had been different, however. The threat was meant as a spur, to make him take the action Cutbill desired. It was understood by all parties that he retained an option, that he had a chance to save himself. That had just been good faith negotiation. There were countless other times over the years he’d been in mortal danger, and every time he’d kept good cheer and found the way through. Even in the Burgrave’s palace, when he faced instant death from the traps and the demon, he had known there was a way through if he was clever enough to find it.

Stealing from Hazoth, though, was another matter.

Bikker would slay him the moment he walked through that gate. There was an enchantment over the entire house—he had watched the footpad lifted into the air and held there like a starling impaled on the claws of a cat. There were armed guards all over Hazoth’s estate, and no diversion to draw their attention.

Worst of all, should he succeed, and find some route into the sorcerer’s inner sanctum—he would then be prey to magic.

No man was wise who flaunted wizardry. Magic was unpredictable at the best of times. Students of the arcane were more liable to blow themselves up—or drawn down bodily into the pit by angry demons—than to live long enough to ply their trade. Those who did succeed in their studies, however, became powerful. They gained access to abilities normal men could scarce imagine. And Hazoth was one of the greatest sorcerers of history.

Malden had begun to believe all the stories he’d heard about the sorcerer. There was the tale of how Hazoth drove the elves away from southern Skrae by making every tree for a hundred miles wither and die in a single night. Old men sometimes spoke of the day Hazoth wiped out an entire barbarian army almost single-handed, how a simple wave of his hand rooted the painted berserkers to where they stood so they could do nothing but rave and curse as the knights of Skrae cut them down at leisure. The stories of what Hazoth had done to men who crossed him were too gruesome for Malden to want to remember.

The sorcerer might place some dread curse on him that would make the rest of his life a living hell. Hezoth might make his skin turn inside out. He might boil his stomach inside his body, so he died shitting out parts of himself over a course of days. Or he might simply flay the flesh from his bones with a word and a wave of his hand.