The Paladin Caper

by Patrick Weekes

  “Nothing,” said the scorpion. “Current setting, grapple-line.”

  The leather coil jerked in Hessler’s hand, three times.

  “Okay, that’s a valid point,” Tern said, “and finally, rockslide-victim-says-what?”

  “What?” the bony woman asked.

  Hessler lifted a hand to the end of the leather tube and focused upon it.

  The magic in his hand, aimed at producing the brightest, flashiest magical radiance Hessler could manage, looped through the coils of the leather tube faster than the eye could follow, glittering radiance zipping up the side of the canyon wall and into the tunnel.

  Looking up, Tern saw Icy leap from the collapsed tunnel just as the loudest noise Tern had ever heard reverberated from the canyon walls.

  Then Hessler was pulling her into a frantic run as the rocks came pouring down.

  Arikayurichi spun himself in the golem’s hands as he came at Loch. “Do you have any last words, Urujar?”

  “Someday I’ll find out,” Loch said as the tip of a ruby-red wooden blade sprouted from the golem’s chest. “Not today, though.”

  The golem stumbled, and Irrethelathlialann pulled his blade free. “So much bravado,” the elf said, and then dove back as the golem spun, bringing Arikayurichi up with a strike that would have chopped the elf in half.

  “Find Project Paladin!” Loch snapped. “I’ve got the ax.”

  Kail darted past them. Irrethelathlialann raised an eyebrow at Loch, then followed after him.

  “You’ve got the ax,” Arikayurichi said as the golem turned back to Loch. Sparks of energy crackled from the wound in its chest, but the Hunter seemed to move as quickly as ever. “You? Perhaps dying has clouded your memory of our last encounter.”

  He lunged at her, and Loch came up with the walking stick, hooking the blow aside as she gave ground. The golem spun with the movement, one leg coming up to lash out with a kick, and Loch stepped in instead of out, catching the golem’s hip with her knee and smashing the butt of the walking stick into the back of its head.

  “You mean when I beat you?” Loch kicked the golem’s other leg behind the knee, sending it crashing to the ground. She lifted the stick and came down at the golem’s back, aiming for the tear in its ringmail.

  The golem rolled, recovering faster than any human could have. Arikayurichi knocked the blow aside and then came up with a lunging blow that flung the golem to its feet and sent Loch diving back.

  It left her on her heels, and the golem spun into a kick that caught her on the shoulder and slammed her into the side of one of the moving belts.

  “You beat me?” Arikayurichi chuckled. “I rode a corpse. You wielded Ghylspwr, a warrior almost as great as I am. And even then, he asked me to let you win.” He spun in the golem’s hands again. “Do you know how insulting that was, that I should fall to you?”

  “Getting an idea.” Loch caught the top of the moving belt to pull herself up, felt it slide under her fingers, and then rolled onto it with a grunt.

  “He wanted you spared.” Arikayurichi’s voice dripped with contempt. “He thought you were worthy of serving the ancients. And most importantly, Isafesira de Lochenville?” The golem took two steps and leaped onto the moving belt as well. “He is not here right now.”

  Loch kicked as it landed, catching the golem’s ankle and sending it slipping on the crystals that rode the belt with them. She thumbed the catch on the walking stick and slid the blade free as she dove at the golem, slashing across its arm.

  Blade cleaved through metal and crystal and sheared the arm off just above the elbow. For one moment, Arikayurichi tumbled free.

  Then the golem’s other hand closed on the ax, catching it and spinning it up with a strike that hissed past Loch’s face.

  “That’s a good blade,” Arikayurichi said as the golem kicked Loch in the gut. She dropped, rolled, and used the sheath-stick and the blade together to catch Arikayurichi just behind the head as the ax came down. “It must date back to the ancients. Stole that from Westteich, did you?”

  The golem had only one arm, but Loch was on her back, and the head of the ax hovered a few inches from her throat.

  “A lady never tells.” The moving belt was carrying them toward a massive contraption, a crystal that hung from the ceiling and shone a beam of energy down onto the smaller crystals passing under it. The beam made Loch’s ears ring, unless she’d hit her head while landing.

  She bucked, pushed hard, and slid forward, letting Arikayurichi slam into the belt over her head as she kicked up between the golem’s legs. On a man, that kind of kick might have ended the fight. The golem stumbled, at least, and Loch slashed with her blade, opening up the ringmail across its gut and baring the crystals underneath.

  Loch started to roll from the moving belt, then caught herself. To the side was a vat filled with a thick liquid. Its acrid fumes stung her nostrils, and she rolled back the other way instead.

  Too slow. The golem’s stump smashed down across her jaw, slamming her head into the belt, and the Hunter pulled Arikayurichi free. A vicious kick caught her wrist and sent her blade sailing away.

  “A lady,” Arikayurichi said as another kick caught her in the side. She’d felt it coming and tucked her arms in, but it still caught the old memory of where she’d broken a few ribs months ago. “You might have the title, but you are hardly a lady. You’re a rodent scurrying through the affairs of your betters, befouling plans you don’t even understand.”

  Beneath her body, Loch felt the sudden rumble in the earth.

  “The word,” Loch said, “is scout. You know what your problem is?”

  “What?” Arikayurichi asked as he came up over Loch’s head. “My cruelty, by your limited understanding? My love of order and hatred for those who oppose it?”

  “You forgot to close the door that kept the ambient magic out,” Loch said, and the golem turned as the ground shook and fire billowed into the room.

  The shock wave sent crystal flying and made gears groan. Loch covered her face and felt heat wash over her, a quick wave followed by a rushing wind that flung the golem over her. She looked up to see that it had landed beneath the great crystal, and the still-firing energy beam scored a trail of black into its torso.

  Loch hauled herself up as the golem rolled over, sparks hissing from the line of black. She got back to her feet at the same time that it did.

  “I should have killed you,” Arikayurichi said as the golem limped toward her, one leg scorched and twitching.

  “Yep.” Loch’s blade was gone, but she still had the stick-sheath, and she shifted it to her good hand and spun it once. “That was my friends firing the ambient magic all throughout the mines. Wonder how much damage they did to that room down below?”

  Arikayurichi roared wordlessly as the golem lunged forward with a great blow that, even one-armed, would have cut Loch into pieces had it struck home.

  Loch stepped back, cracked down with her stick on the golem’s wrist, and kicked the ax from its grasp.

  Arikayurichi flew from the moving belt, splashed into the chemical vat, and sank with a plume of hissing purple smoke.

  The golem’s arm clamped around her throat from behind. “He was a poor example of the ancients we serve. Nevertheless, I am sworn to obey them, and I must avenge his death.”

  Loch kicked back at the golem’s knee, then stabbed blindly behind her with the stick. Neither did any good.

  “I prefer to believe that most ancients are beneficent,” the golem said as its grip around her throat tightened and black flickered at the edge of Loch’s vision, “despite the means they employ to ensure their return. It allows me to see my work as good, which has been a commmforrrr—”

  It broke off.

  Loch heard the high-pitched ringing in her ears, realized what it meant, and flung herself forward as the great crystal’s energy beam seared through the golem, slicing it into two smoking halves. She scrambled forward, past the vat where Arikayurichi still hissed an
d bubbled, and then rolled down off the moving belt, coughing and holding her throat as she landed.

  A dozen more black-coated nobles had come out from a door at the far side of the processing center while she’d been busy with Arikayurichi. Kail and Irrethelathlialann were dealing with them across the room, the scout dodging and jabbing with his stolen staff while the elf darted to and fro, his blade always moving.

  “Well, Captain Loch,” came a familiar voice, and she looked up to see Westteich among more black-coated men. He smiled. “I see you dealt with the ax . . . and Commander Mirrok, who I will honestly miss a great deal more.”

  Loch saw her fallen blade and scooped it up. It hummed in her hand, probably responding to the magic coursing through the room. She stood up, still catching her breath, and raised it to Westteich, whose smile faded as he saw it.

  “Project Paladin,” she said.

  “You’ll find out more about it,” Westteich said, taking a few steps back toward the long table under the bright lights, “very shortly. But in the meantime, I would prefer no more random explosions.” He raised a control wand and pressed a button, and the door leading out to the mine proper slammed shut, with the sound of many mechanical things locking it into place. “And since you like golems so much . . .”

  He raised a small control wand, and the processing center golems all stopped what they were doing, raised their lensed faces, and looked at Loch.

  Westteich’s smile returned. “I would like her dead, and my family blade returned, please.”

  Seven

  AS THE FLAMES of the enormous explosion cleared and boiled away to little plumes of smoke, Desidora and Ululenia shared a look with the miner who stood in front of them on the main dock.

  “As the wolf scents prey on the summer breeze, we should investigate what happened,” Ululenia said, smiling at the miner.

  Desidora, as a former love priestess, knew sexy smiles when she saw them. This had the dangerously excited twist that made targets think about breaking the rules and threats and stress and how all of those things made the heart rate speed up and put the body into fight-or-flight mode, although “fight” was not precisely the right word here.

  “Um,” said the miner, a young Urujar man, “in the event of a magical explosion, we’re supposed to arrogant apple, babbling brook . . .” He trailed off uncertainly.

  “I hear mines are exciting,” Desidora said, breathing with a bit more chest than necessary and rolling her shoulders, since apparently that was how they were playing this one, “and we’d be so careful. You’d be in charge of both of us.”

  “We’d do whatever you say,” Ululenia added.

  “Well, I guess as long as we go creeping in like cats, we’d be all right,” the miner said, stammering a little, and Ululenia took his hand and led him from the dock into the mine.

  The door to the processing center closed ahead of them as they entered the mine area, and the miner led them over to the right, where a massive lift led down to the lower tunnels. It was scorched from the explosion, which was not how Desidora preferred anything that was to support her weight to be. Nevertheless, the miner stepped on without a second thought. His first thought was likely related to how Ululenia was running her fingers up and down his arm and making little “hmmm” noises.

  The lift clanked into motion, descending with a shuddering rattling motion that made Desidora’s teeth chatter.

  “So, Jerval, what do you do for fun so far from all the cities?” Ululenia asked, still doing the arm thing.

  “I, um, well,” said the miner, presumably Jerval, who was almost certainly a virgin given how much attention Ululenia was paying him, and who really had no chance whatsoever at this point. “We play suf-gesuf and sing, most nights. The airships fly us back to the city every few weeks for a break.”

  “All of you?” Desidora played with her hair a little and leaned against Ululenia. “Even the guys at the processing center?”

  “Oh no, not them,” Jerval said quickly. “They mostly keep to themselves. They have official Republic business. We’re not supposed to bother them at all. In fact, if this is something that might concern them, we can decadent doves . . .” He blinked and went silent.

  “I can’t wait to see this mine!” Desidora said into the silence. “If it’s dark, can we all hold hands?”

  Ululenia giggled and squeezed the fingers holding hands with Jerval, who flushed and looked away. Desidora took the chance to shoot Ululenia a look, eyebrows raised. What happened to dawdling duck? she thought as loudly as she could.

  As the hare sheds her plain winter coat with the warmth of the coming spring, so all of us must grow up sometime, Ululenia said in Desidora’s head.

  The lift descended in silence, passing by level after level with the walls growing a bit brighter as they went. Each level had one or two long mining tunnels leading off into the red-lit distance. Desidora felt the magic prickling at her skin now. She had expected the explosion to have burned most of it from the air, but it emanated from the walls so strongly that the priestess could almost see waves shimmering before her. The walls themselves shone with an even brighter glow than outside, a clean ruby light so luminous that glowlamps weren’t needed.

  It was the same ruby-red glow Desidora had seen in the makeshift golems she had fought months before. It made sense, of course—if these were the crystals in their natural form, then the process by which the crystals were wiped of any attunement must return them to their natural color as well.

  They still reminded her of things with blades and hooks for hands trying to kill her.

  And of Ghylspwr, whom she had trusted, controlling them the entire time.

  Heat pricked Desidora’s face and arms, and she looked down to see that her skin had gone pale. The air around her stung like a sunburn, the ambient magic reacting to the power of her death-priestess aura with the beginnings of another explosion.

  With Ululenia’s wide and ostensibly innocent eyes upon her, Desidora let out a long, slow breath and released the anger. The magic swirled away, and she was a love priestess again, feeling Jerval’s confused but very excited aura reacting to Ululenia.

  The lift finally stopped in a massive circular chamber from which multiple tunnels led off in every direction. Mine-cart tracks were laid down through most of them, although in some cases the tracks were clearly in a state of disrepair, inhabiting tunnels that had been boarded over.

  Desidora saw that they were not alone. In the strange ruby-red light of the mine, it was hard to guess at size, and everything was either red or black, but she guessed that the figures would only come up to her waist. They moved around at what could best be called a scamper, some walking, some leaping on all fours with furry tails flitting behind them. She thought they had fur, and their faces looked like something between fox and human.

  Desidora could feel the inherent life energy of every natural living creature. Humans and elves and dwarves had auras, with the elves feeling brighter and sharper and the dwarves feeling more solid and stable. Fairy creatures had no auras at all. The question of whether something had an aura had never been a confusing one.

  Until now. Looking at the creatures, she saw energy, the beginning of a familiar pattern, and then it . . . went somewhere else, her eyes sliding over the blank space back and forth uncomfortably like a tongue worrying at an aching tooth. The energy didn’t end. She would have been able to sense that. Instead, it was as though it went to some place Desidora could not follow, like a road twisting out of view behind the trees.

  “Oh, those are so cute!” she chirped, feeling the magic around her and working out how to draw upon that power without immolating herself if need be. “What are they?”

  “Kobolds,” said Jerval, looking nervous. “You’re supposed to be nice to them. Miners who aren’t nice have accidents.” He lifted the hand that didn’t have Ululenia all over it, counting. “Usually only see one at a time, if that. Maybe the explosion brought them out, or . . . No, this isn’t
right. We shouldn’t be down here. Come on, I’ll take you erotic eggplant.” He shook his head again.

  “Jerval,” Ululenia said, coiling her arm around his waist, “I bet there’s one mine where nobody has gone for a long time, and there are rules about it, even more than the other ones that are shut down, and, Jerval, if you could point me at that mine, I would be sooooo grateful.” Her leg was hooked around the back of his knee, almost like they were dancing.

  “I . . . um . . .” said Jerval, “fondling fern,” and pointed at one of the tunnels.

  “Mmm.” Ululenia leaned in with a kiss that twined around Jerval like a warm summer breeze, and the virgin sank to the floor of the lift and did not move when Ululenia stood up.

  “So at least fondling fern stayed the same,” Desidora said, stepping off the lift and into the mine.

  “I saw no reason to change it.” Ululenia followed her, and Desidora heard a faint hiss followed by, “Damn it!”

  “Horn reacted to the ambient magic?”

  “As the wasp stings my forehead,” Ululenia muttered.

  The kobolds scampered away as the two women walked toward the mining tunnel Jerval had pointed at. They watched from the edge of the room. Looking carefully—there were no shadows, which made it hard to tell for certain—Desidora thought that some of the kobolds watched from in the walls.

  “Have you heard of them?” she asked. The magic still pulsed around her, but she had gotten the feel for it now. Outside, she had pulled magic from the wall itself. Here, she might be able to do it from the air, if need be. “The kobolds?”

  “Never,” Ululenia said. “Fairy creatures have little use for mines. But the feel of them is . . .”

  “Wrong?”

  “Yes.”

  Whatever they were, the kobolds stayed carefully distant. Their eyes tracked the women as they crossed the floor and came to the tunnel Jerval had pointed at. It was boarded off like the rest, but Desidora saw that the boards had been built into a simple door, and the mine-cart tracks were clean and functional.