The balcony above was quickly secured as well, with Athrogate and his mighty swipes launching yet another gargoyle into the air. That one almost hit Entreri as it crashed down, but he managed to get back behind the falling creature. It hit the floor right in front of him, and the flesh golem, closing in, tripped over it.
Charon’s Claw cleaved the lunging golem’s head in half.
Entreri darted out to the right, staying under the balcony. He saw Mariabronne and Ellery on the stone stairway that lined the tower’s eastern, outer wall, driving a battered and dying gargoyle before them.
The gargoyles saw them too, and one rushed their way.
Entreri made short work of the other, taking off its one working arm with a brutal sword parry, then rushing in close and driving his dagger deep into the creature’s chest. He twisted and turned the blade as he slid off to the side, then brought Charon’s Claw across the gargoyle’s throat for good measure.
The creature went into a frenzy, thrashing and flailing, blood flying. It had no direction for its attacks, though, and Entreri simply danced away as it wound itself to the floor, where it continued its death spasms.
Entreri came up behind the second gargoyle, which was already engaged with the ranger, and drove his sword through its spine.
“Well fought,” said Mariabronne.
“By all,” Ellery quickly added, and Entreri got the distinct impression that the woman did not appreciate the ranger apparently singling him out above her.
She didn’t look so beautiful to Entreri in that moment, and not just because she had taken a garish hit on one shoulder, the blood flowing freely down her right arm.
Pratcus hustled down next, muttering with every step as he closed on the wounded woman. “Sure’n me gods’re getting sick o’ hearing me call,” he cried. “How long can we keep this up, then?”
“Bah!” Athrogate answered. “Forever and ever!”
To accentuate his point, the wild dwarf leaped over to one broken gargoyle, the creature pitifully belly-crawling on the floor, its wings and most of its torso ravaged by the flames of Canthan’s fireball. The gargoyle noted his approach and with hate-filled eyes tried to pull itself up on its elbows, lifting its head so that it could spit at Athrogate.
The dwarf howled all the louder and more gleefully, and brought his morning stars in rapid order crunching down on the gargoyle’s head, flattening it to the floor.
“Forever and ever,” Athrogate said again.
Entreri cast a sour look in Jarlaxle’s direction as if to say, “He’ll get us all killed.”
The drow merely shrugged and seemed more amused with the dwarf than concerned, and that worried Entreri all the more.
And frustrated him. For some reason, the assassin felt vulnerable, as if he could be wounded or killed. As he realized the truth of his emotions, he understood too that never before had he harbored such feelings. In all the battles and deadly struggles of the past three decades of his life, Artemis Entreri had never felt as if his next fight might be his last.
Or at least, he had never cared.
But suddenly he did care, and he could not deny it. He glanced at Jarlaxle again, wondering if the drow had found some new enchantment to throw over him to so put him off-balance. Then he looked past Jarlaxle to the two Palishchuk half-orcs. They stood against the outer southern wall, obviously trying to stay small and out of the way. Entreri focused his gaze on Arrayan, and he had to resist the urge to go over to her and assure her that they would get through this.
He winced as the feeling passed, and he dropped his hand to Charon’s Claw and lifted the blade a few inches from its scabbard. He sent his thoughts into the sword, demanding its fealty, and it predictably responded by assailing him with a wall of curses and demands of its own, telling him that he was inferior, assuring him that one day he would slip up and the sword would dominate him wholly and melt the flesh from his bones as it consumed his soul.
Entreri smiled and slid the sword away, his moment of empathy and shared fear thrown behind.
“If the castle’s resources are unlimited, ours are not,” Canthan was saying as Entreri tuned back into the conversation. From the way the mage muttered the words and glanced at Athrogate, Entreri knew that the dwarf was still proclaiming that they could fight on until the end of time.
“But neither can we wait and recuperate,” Ellery said. “The castle’s defenses will simply continue to regenerate and come against us.”
“Ye have a better plan, do ye?” asked Pratcus. “Not many more spells to be coming from me lips. I bringed a pair o’ scrolls, but them two’re of minor healing powers, and I got a potion to get yer blood flowing straight but just the one. I used more magic in the wagon run from the flying snakes and more magic in the fight on the hill than I got left in me heart and gut. I’ll be needing rest and prayers to get any more.”
“How long?” asked Ellery.
“Half a night’s sleep.”
Ellery, Mariabronne, and Canthan were all shaking their heads.
“We don’t have that,” the commander replied.
“On we go,” Athrogate declared.
“You sound as if you know our course,” said Ellery.
Athrogate poked his hand Arrayan’s way. “She said she found that book out here, over by where that main keep now stands,” he reasoned. “We were going for that, if I’m remembering right.”
“We were indeed,” said Mariabronne. “But that is only a starting place. We don’t truly know what the book is, nor do we know if it’s still there.”
“Bah!” Athrogate snorted.
“It is still there,” replied a quiet voice from the side, and the group turned as one to regard Arrayan, who seemed very, very small at that moment.
“What d’ye know?” Athrogate barked at her.
“The book is still there,” Arrayan said. She stood up a bit straighter and glanced over at Olgerkhan for support. “Uncle Wingham didn’t tell you everything.”
“Then perhaps you should,” Canthan replied.
“The tower … all of this, was created by the book,” Arrayan explained.
“That was our guess,” Mariabronne cut in, an attempt to put her at ease, but one that she pushed aside, holding her hand up to quiet the ranger.
“The book is part of the castle, rooted to it through tendrils of magic,” Arrayan went on. “It sits open.” She held her palms up, as if she was cradling a great tome. “Its pages turn of their own accord, as if some reader stands above it, summoning a magical breeze to blow across the next sheaf.”
As Canthan suspiciously asked Arrayan how she might know all of this, Entreri and Jarlaxle glanced at each other, neither surprised, of course.
Entreri swallowed hard, but that did not relieve the lump in his throat. He turned to Arrayan and tried to think of something to say to interrupt the conversation, for he knew what was coming and knew that she should not admit …
“It was I who first opened Zhengyi’s book,” she said, and Entreri sucked in his breath. “Uncle Wingham bade me to inspect it while Mariabronne rode to the Vaasan Gate. We hoped to give you a more complete report when you arrived in Palishchuk.”
Olgerkhan shifted nervously at her side, a movement not lost on any of the others.
“And?” Canthan pressed when Arrayan did not continue.
Arrayan stuttered a couple of times then replied, “I do not know.”
“You do not know what?” Canthan snapped back at her, and he took a stride her way, seeming so much more imposing and powerful than his skinny frame could possibly allow. “You opened the book and began to read. What happened next?”
“I …” Arrayan’s voice trailed off.
“We’ve no time for your cryptic games, foolish girl,” Canthan scolded.
Entreri realized that he had his hands on his weapons and realized too that he truly wanted to leap over and cut Canthan’s throat out at that moment.
Or rush over and support Arrayan.
“I started to r
ead it,” Arrayan admitted. “I do not remember anything it said—I don’t think it said anything—just syllables, guttural and rhyming.”
“Good!” Athrogate interrupted, but no one paid him any heed.
“I remember none … just that the words, if they were words, found a flow in my throat that I did not wish to halt.”
“The book used you as its instrument,” Mariabronne reasoned.
“I do not know,” Arrayan said again. “I woke up back at my house in Palishchuk.”
“And she was sick,” Olgerkhan piped in, stepping in front of the woman as if daring anyone to make so much as an accusation against her. “The book cursed her and makes her ill.”
“And so Palishchuk curses us by making us take you along?” Canthan said, and his voice did not reveal whether he was speaking with complete sarcasm or logical reasoning.
“You can all run from it, but she cannot,” Olgerkhan finished.
“You are certain that it is at the main keep?” Mariabronne asked, and though he was trying to be understanding and gentle, there was no missing the sharp edge at the back of his voice.
“And why did you not speak up earlier?” demanded Canthan. “You would have us fighting gargoyles and fiends forever? To what end?”
“No!” Arrayan pleaded. “I did not know—”
“For one who practices the magical arts, you seem to know very little,” the older wizard scolded. “A most dangerous and foolhardy combination.”
“Enough!” said Mariabronne. “We will get nowhere constructive with this bickering. What is past is past. We have new information now and new hope. Our enemy is identified beyond these animates it uses as shields. Let us find a path to the keep and to the book, for there we will find our answers, I am certain.”
“Huzzah your optimism, ranger,” Canthan spat at him. “Would you wave King Gareth’s banner before us and hire trumpeters to herald our journey?”
That sudden flash of anger and sarcasm, naming the beloved king no less, set everyone on their heels. Mariabronne furrowed his brow and glared at the mage, but what proved more compelling to Jarlaxle and Entreri was the reaction of Ellery.
Far from the noble and heroic commander, she seemed small and afraid, as if she was caught between two forces far beyond her.
“Relation of Dragonsbane,” Jarlaxle whispered to his companion, a further warning that something wasn’t quite what it seemed.
“The keep will prove a long and difficult run,” Pratcus intervened. “We gotta be gathering our strength and wits about us, and tighten our belts’n’bandages. We know where we’re going, so where we’re going’s where we’re goin’.”
“Ye said that right!” Athrogate congratulated.
“A long run and our only run,” Mariabronne agreed. “There we will find our answers. Pray you secure that door above, good Athrogate. I will scout the northern corridor. Recover your breath and your heart. Partake of food and drink if you so need it, and yes, tighten your bandages.”
“I do believe that our sadly poetic friend just told us to take a break,” Jarlaxle said to Entreri, but the assassin wasn’t even listening.
He was thinking of Herminicle and the tower outside of Heliogabalus.
He was looking at Arrayan.
Jarlaxle looked that way too, and he stared at Entreri until he at last caught the assassin’s attention. He offered a helpless shrug and glanced back at the woman.
“Don’t even think it,” Entreri warned in no ambiguous voice. He turned away from Jarlaxle and strode to the woman and her brutish bodyguard.
An amused Jarlaxle watched him every step of the way.
“A fine flute you crafted, Idalia the monk,” he whispered under his breath.
He wondered if Entreri would agree with that assessment or if the assassin would kill him in his sleep for playing a role in the grand manipulation.
“I would have a moment with you,” Entreri said to Arrayan as he approached.
Olgerkhan eyed him with suspicion and even took a step closer to the woman.
“Go and speak with Commander Ellery or one of the dwarves,” Entreri said to him, but that only made the brutish half-orc widen his stance and cross his arms over his massive chest, scowling at Entreri from under his pronounced brow.
“Olgerkhan is my friend,” Arrayan said. “What you must say to me, you can say to him.”
“Perhaps I wish to listen more than speak,” said Entreri. “And I would prefer if it were just we two. Go away,” he said to Olgerkhan. “If I wanted to harm Arrayan, she would already be dead.”
Olgerkhan bristled, his eyes flaring with anger.
“And so would you,” Entreri went on, not missing a beat. “I have seen you in battle—both of you—and I know that your magical repertoire is all but exhausted, Lady Arrayan. Forgive me for saying, but I am not impressed.”
Olgerkhan strained forward and seemed as if he would leap atop Entreri.
“The book is draining you, stealing your life,” the assassin said, after glancing around to make sure no others were close enough to hear. “You began a process from which you cannot easily escape.”
Both of the half-orcs rocked off-balance at the words, confirming Entreri’s guess. “Now, will you speak with me alone, or will you not?”
Arrayan gazed at him plaintively, then turned to Olgerkhan and bade him to go off for a few minutes. The large half-orc glowered at Entreri for a moment, but he could not resist the demands of Arrayan. Staring at the assassin every step of the way, he moved off.
“You opened the book and you started reading, then found that you could not stop,” Entreri said to Arrayan. “Correct?”
“I … I think so, but it is all blurry to me,” she replied. “Dreamlike. I thought that I had constructed enough wards to fend the residual curses of Zhengyi, but I was wrong. All I know is that I was sick soon after back in my house. Olgerkhan brought Wingham and Mariabronne, and another, Nyungy the old bard.”
“Wingham insisted that you come into the castle with us.”
“There was no other choice.”
“To destroy the book before it consumes you,” Entreri reasoned, and Arrayan did not argue the point.
“You were sickly, so you said.”
“I could not get out of my bed, nor could I eat.”
“But you are not so sickly now, and your friend …” He glanced back at Olgerkhan. “He cannot last through a single fight, and each swing of his war club is less crisp and powerful.”
Arrayan shrugged and shook her head, lifting her hands up wide.
Entreri noticed her ring, a replica of the one Olgerkhan wore, and he noted too that the single gemstone set on that band was a different hue, darker, than it had been before.
From the side, Olgerkhan saw the woman’s movement and began stalking back across the room.
“Take care how much you admit to our companions,” Entreri warned before the larger half-orc arrived. “If the book is draining you of life, then it is feeding and growing stronger because of you. We will—we must—find a way to defeat that feeding magic, but one way seems obvious, and it is not one I would expect you or your large friend to enjoy.”
“Is that a threat?” Arrayan asked, and Olgerkhan apparently heard, for he rushed the rest of the way to her side.
“It is free advice,” Entreri answered. “For your own sake, good lady, take care your words.”
He gave only a cursory glance at the imposing Olgerkhan as he turned and walked away. Given his experience with the lich Herminicle in the tower outside of Heliogabalus, and the words of the dragon sisters, the answer to all of this seemed quite obvious to Artemis Entreri. Kill Arrayan and defeat the Zhengyian construct at its heart. He blew a sigh as he realized that not so long ago, he would not have been so repulsed by the idea, and not hesitant in the least. The man he had been would have long ago left Arrayan dead in a pool of her own blood.
But now he saw the challenge differently, and his task seemed infinitely more c
omplicated.
“She read the book,” he informed Jarlaxle. “She is this castle’s Herminicle. Killing her would be the easy way to be done with this.”
Jarlaxle shook his head through every word. “Not this time.”
“You said that destroying the lich would have defeated the tower.”
“So Ilnezhara and Tazmikella told me, and with certainty.”
“Arrayan is this construct’s lich—or soon to be,” Entreri replied, and though he was arguing the point, he had no intention, if proven right, of allowing the very course he was even then championing.
But still Jarlaxle shook his head. “Partly, perhaps.”
“She read the book.”
“Then left it.”
“Its magic released.”
“Its call unleashed,” Jarlaxle countered, and Entreri looked at him curiously.
“What do you know?” asked the assassin.
“Little—as little as you, I fear,” the drow admitted. “But this …” He looked up and swept his arms to indicate the vastness of the castle. “Do you really believe that such a novice mage, that young woman, could be the life-force creating all of this?”
“Zhengyi’s book?”
But still Jarlaxle shook his head, apparently convinced that there was something more at work. The drow remained determined, for the sake of purse and power alone, to find out what it was.
CHAPTER 16
IMPROVISING
With Entreri moving off ahead of them, the group passed swiftly out of the corner tower and along the corridors of the interior eastern wall. They didn’t find any guardian creatures awaiting them, though they came upon a pair of dead gargoyles and a decapitated flesh golem, all three with deep stab wounds in the back.
“He is efficient,” Jarlaxle remarked more than once of his missing friend.
They came to an ascending stair, ending in a door that stood slightly ajar to allow daylight to enter from beyond it. As they started up, the door opened and Artemis Entreri came through.
“We are at the joined point of the outer wall and the interior wall that separates the baileys of the castle,” he explained.
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