by Jean Johnson
“Well done,” Kerric praised. He tipped his head at the portrait next to him. She nodded, so he touched the lady’s fingernails. The frame clicked and swung open, and the two stepped through into a foyer. There was no other word for it.
Tiled marble squares had been laid in the floor, shading from light in the middle where the plaque-topped pedestal sat, to dark at the edges in a faint checkerboard pattern, and dark polished granite around the edges. Potted plants sat under pools of suncrystal-focused light—real ones, since there was no hint of a faint glow to them. Three sets of double-panel style doors awaited the two adventurers, and a small bronze plaque had been hung next to each set of doors with two buttons set in it, one with an embossed arrow pointing up, one with an arrow pointing down. A larger, fourth plaque had been set between the middle and left lift doors.
“If they follow us,” Kerric murmured, mindful that the mage in the group behind them was no doubt still trying to track their path, “then they get what they deserve. Topside Control told everyone to stay put, even the Maintenance crews.”
Myal nodded. While he pressed the middle of the up buttons, she read the plaque. In three neatly cast lines it said:
I will eat you! Eat or be eaten? I am eaten.
The last time she had stepped into the lift-box, she had nearly killed one of her traveling companions. The rage of the Wolf had swept through her, making her draw her sword against her target, the one overcome by the conflicting desires of the Goat, who wanted to destroy the Cabbage, but was terrified of the Wolf. The Cabbage had crammed himself into a corner and cried, cowering in fear from the Goat even as she, the Wolf, had backed the other woman into a different corner.
Only the last-moment grappling of one of the other two in their five-man party had turned the blade in her hand so that the flat struck the woman’s head, not the edge. The moment they had wrested it out of her control, the Goat had gone for the Cabbage with fists swinging, and since it took both of the non-affected members to hold Myal down, the man who was the Cabbage had been badly beaten before the doors finally opened and they were able to toss Myal through and go after the girl afflicted by the Goat part of the spell. The male adventurer who had been the Cabbage had needed several healing spells, and had ended up refusing to go on any more runs. Even Myal had hesitated after that one.
This would be a nasty trap for just three adventurers, who had no one sane on hand to try to separate the rest, and even nastier for six, since that meant two sets would be affected. Both Goats would go after both Cabbages, not just one of them, and so on. The one time she had seen the attack be a non-lethal one, viewed on a scrying mirror in the Adventuring Hall that was replaying great moments recorded in the Tower’s history, still stood out in her mind.
The intent of the spell was to make either the Wolf or the Goat want to “devour” the Goat or the Cabbage respectively, and the adventurers playing the Goat and the Cabbage had been lovers, so the Goat had frantically kissed the crying, cowering Cabbage instead of attacking her while the others in their party had restrained the Wolf. But that was a rare instance. Normally the Wolf had to be forcibly restrained from killing the Goat, and the Goat kept away from the Cabbage, with no such bond of love between the pair to morph the “devour” imperative from killing to kissing.
The lift dinged, the far right frame lighting up in a pale green. The green, she knew, meant up. Pale pink meant down. The box-like little room inside, which slid up and down a long shaft in the Tower, was now here.
Following Kerric inside, she felt her shoulders tense in anticipation, and had to remind herself there were only two of them. Thinking about that time when Goat and Cabbage had kissed made her think about the kiss she was owed. She waited until he selected the right button from all the dozens displayed on the panel, though, letting the doors shut and the box of a room sway as they headed up.
“So. Is this where I get my kiss?” At his inquiring look, she reminded him, “I did solve the riddle before you touched the painting.”
To her surprise, he winced, blushing, and covered his face with his palm. “Tinnea and Jathris . . . oh, Gods . . . Two workers from Middle Maintenance.”
“What?” Myal asked him, confused.
Kerric wrinkled his nose ruefully. “They shut down the lift doors under the pretense of ‘maintenance needs’ and rode it up and down several times while making love. I had to fire them, because this thing was supposed to be in use for an adventuring group. That was back in my first year of managing this place.”
She could imagine why such a thing would bother him. Kerric was a conscientious Master. Taking his wrist, she gently pulled his palm down from his face. “That was then. This is now,” she stated, leaning down for a kiss. “That’s one from me. You still owe me one from you.”
Chuckling wryly, he hooked his free hand around the back of her neck, tugging her back down for another kiss. He didn’t release her until the lift bell dinged again. When he did, he murmured, “Block the doorway, will you?”
She stepped into the foyer—nearly identical to the one down below, save that it had three plain doors, not one, and just one lift, not three—and stretched her arm over the opening. The lifts had two sets of doors, an inner set that traveled with the box and an outer set that kept the shaft from being accessed. There was some sort of magic in the tiny gap between that not only raised and lowered the boxy room, but kept the doors from closing and crushing her arm. While she waited, Kerric patiently pressed every single button, starting with the floors higher than this one, and then hitting the button this floor again . . . and all the ones leading back down to the bottom-most floor. Myal smirked, realizing why. His words confirmed it.
Satisfied, Kerric shooed her into the foyer, allowing the lift doors to close. “If nothing else, that will delay them a good ten minutes waiting for that thing to get back. The Maintenance crews call that a shavott-delay. I’m not sure what language shavott comes from, but it means making the lifts stop on every single floor. Torven, the traitor, will want to push the up button if he and his crew are following us. The doors will open, but if they don’t realize it’s going down, that’s an extra-long stretch of time where they’ll have to ride it all the way down and back if they get in.”
“Yes and no,” Myal pointed out. “With every button pressed, all the other two have to do is shove the three affected ones out the nearest door—the Cabbage, if no one else, since they’d just cower in a corner. Push out the Cabbage, and the Goat will follow.”
“And the Wolf will follow the Goat . . . and the spell controlling their emotions will be broken,” Kerric agreed. He picked up her hand and kissed it, then twined his fingers with hers. “You, milady, are quite smart. Now, let’s hit the refreshing room while we can, and while we have a little bit of a delay.”
Which of the three led to a refreshing room was obvious. All refreshing rooms had a large, friendly, masklike face carved and painted onto their doors. Their layouts varied a bit, but there were always at least three rooms: the lounge, where there were long couches, stasis-preserved food in vending cabinets, and sometimes banking depository boxes to alleviate adventurers of loot-based burdens on long gauntlet runs; the ladies’ refreshing room; and the gentlemen’s refreshing room.
Those latter two rooms had little stalls with water-flushed privies, counters and sinks with toweling cloths and soap, and at least one stall in a corner with a clever showering pipe in the exotic Natallian style, a horizontal pipe pierced with holes that would rain water down on an adventurer who needed to get cleaned up for some reason. Similar stalls were available in the changing rooms of the Adventuring Hall for post-practice cleanups.
There was no bank depository box in this particular refreshing room, but there were four people in the lounge, two men and two women. They were seated around the low table in front of one of the couches, playing a card game. Three had the dark skin and dark hair of the southern coastline, where civilized kingdoms thrived in spite of the collapse of the old
Empire, and one had the reddish hair and freckles of someone from the far northwestern coast, or perhaps from overseas to the east.
Her companions merely had to look up, but with her back to the lounge door, the redheaded woman had to twist around from her seat on a cushion laid on the floor, just to see who had entered. Once she did so, her hazel eyes widened in recognition. “Master Kerric!”
She wasn’t the only one to scramble to her feet at that. The others widened their eyes and swiftly stood, too. Hiding the urge to grimace, Kerric turned it into a wry smile instead.
“Please, sit down. Relax,” he told them, gesturing for them to return to their card game. Their faces were familiar, but he couldn’t remember their names off the top of his head. “If you hadn’t noticed my armor, well, I’m afraid I have some bad news and some good news. The bad news is, what’s wrong with the Tower is bad enough, I have to go in personally to fix it. The good news is, at least this way you know it’ll get fixed right the first time, eh?”
One of the two men chuckled, his teeth gleaming white against his brown lips. “Aye, I remember the infamous Refreshing Room Break from three years ago—two teams got into a heated free-for-all, and all the water mains broke, sewer as well as freshwater, on the, what, sixty-seventh floor?”
“Ninety-seventh . . . and the ninety-sixth, and the ninety-eighth, and a couple of rooms got flooded on the ninety-fifth floor, too,” Kerric half-joked.
“What sort of problem is it, Master Kerric?” the other woman asked. “Is there anything we can do to help?”
Kerric only knew this quartet somewhat. They were steady adventurers, but not flashy, attention-catching ones. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Myal gesturing at the ladies’ half and nodded slightly, letting her know he had seen her intention. Most of his mind was on the redheaded woman’s question. Quelling panic on the outside of the Tower was one thing, where there were far too many civilians, opportunists, and more. These men and women were in the Tower, at a particularly dangerous time.
So he gave them a half-truth. “Well, I’m not going to go into details of how or why, but the Tower thinks it’s under attack, which means it’s removed a very large number of the safety features that are normally put in place to prevent unnecessary and excessive risks to life and limb. This is why even the normal Maintenance crews have been asked to find a safe place and stay put.”
The redhead gave him a bemused look. “But—begging pardon—you’re not an adventurer, milord.” She peered at the door to the ladies’ half, then at the entry door behind him. “And you’re here with only one other person? Or are the rest waiting outside?”
He spread his hands, shrugging blithely. “Well, I am the Master of the Tower. That counts for a lot more than you’d think. And you saw who I came in with. The two of us make an effective team.”
The man on the couch, the one who had chuckled, grinned outright. “Myal the Mendhite? Prettiest beanstalk in the valley? How much of her presence is because you want to climb the Tower, and how much because you want to cli—”
Two sets of cushions whacked him from either side, both from the other two south-coasters. Kerric chuckled, not too offended. “Well, she is lovely, but it’s her adventuring talents and her quick wits that please me—you know, there is something the four of you could do. There’s a certain group of adventurers that have been trying to kite in on our heels, take advantage of the Tower’s prizes while the system’s broken. If they get up here, can you delay them?”
“Delay them? How?” the redhead asked. Like the others—like most of the adventurers who came to the Tower—she was clad in leather armor. Partially clad, since most of it was stacked at the end of the couch with her partners’ gear. She glanced at it, then at Kerric. “As in fight them?”
“Preferably not,” Kerric stated flatly, holding up his hand. “I’ll deal with them once I’ve fixed the problem with the Tower. There’s no need for anything other than a Tower trap to deliver an admonishment until then. Just . . . talk with them, delay them politely, ask them questions, that sort of thing. Even a few minutes’ delay will help. There’s no need to confront them aggressively, and that’s only if they make it this far. Above all, don’t risk any of these traps yourself.
“As I said, the Tower thinks it’s under attack, which means a previously mild jolt from a lightning spell will now stop your heart. Your first priority is to secure your safety,” he reminded them. “These idiots are thinking only of getting riches; they aren’t thinking of keeping themselves alive long enough to enjoy them . . . and if they keep following the Mendhite and me, the odds are, they won’t survive.”
“Do we get paid for this?” the second man, the one who hadn’t spoken yet, asked Kerric with a touch of dry humor to leaven the request.
Kerric shrugged. “I’d pay you a gold each per minute you delayed them, but I’d have no idea how well or how long you’d delay them. Even the scrying mirrors have been cut off by now.”
“Only a gold a minute?” the first man asked, giving Kerric a dubious look.
“Well, I’m not asking you to fight them, just talk with them to delay them. Anyway, it’s up to you, but just keep in mind how dangerous it is now, out there,” he warned the adventurers, tipping his head at the outer door. Not the one behind him, but the one ahead, the other door out of the lounge at the far end of the room. “Don’t stray too far from this refreshing room. You’re in the safest spot in the Tower right now, and that’s the most important thing. Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s been a long climb, and it’s only going to get longer if I don’t . . . you know.”
With a polite nod, he headed for the gentlemen’s half of the actual refreshing rooms. Thankfully, no one was in there at the moment. It gave him a few minutes of privacy to slump his shoulders, scrub his face, and regather his wits after he attended to his body’s needs.
Facing himself in the scrying-warded mirror over one of the sinks, Kerric stared into his gray eyes, bracing himself for the next stage of their climb. The riddles would still be a mix of easy and hard, but the closer they got to the heart of the Tower, the traps would grow closer together. Some would be overt, some would be insidious, and too many of them would be lethal to the unwary and unprepared.
But at least I have Myal with me. I’ll need to step up the romance—no hardship there, he thought, a smile breaking through the gloom of having to fight his way back into his own stronghold. She’s bright, quick, tall-dark-and-lovely, and doesn’t seem to mind me flirting with her. Always a bonus. Frowning in the next moment, Kerric eyed his face, wondering if he should shave away the hint of stubble dusting his jaw.
A rub of his hand convinced him it was getting a bit raspy, this late at night. While he didn’t mind wearing a beard in the winter, this was summer, making even the thought of one too hot and itchy. It also wouldn’t do to abrade a woman’s skin with excessive beard-burn. The spell was nothing more than a cantrip, so familiar and so easy, it just took a moment of thought and a snap of his fingers. Jawline now stripped smooth with nothing more than a brief, stinging tingle, he focused on reviewing the next set of steps in his head while he washed his hands.
We’ll have to fight our way through the Flying Flaming Poodles Of Doom, then disable the Party Parter trap, followed by the Garden Of Misfortune—I must remember to pass Myal an apple from my pack, he reminded himself, and eat one as well, myself, so we aren’t tempted to pluck and eat any of the fruits in that one.
So many traps ahead of them, and so little time, with that damned Maintenance mage on their trail. Kerric had only given him a cursory interview, leaving the testing of Torven’s magical abilities to others in the Maintenance staff. He wouldn’t have thought the man strong enough to endure the surging powers of a Fountain, but then he wouldn’t have thought the man ambitious enough to enter the Tower when it was forbidden, either.
If they were here for the wealth hidden away in the Tower’s many rooms and chamber, well, he didn’t give a damn about the money, or
the jewels, or whatever they might run across. Such things could be easily replaced once the Tower was scrycasting again. He’d have to arrange for some sort of special gauntlet run, a scrycast for free to make it up to all their patrons for the lost viewing time, but they would be back to business as usual soon enough.
If, however, that group of five adventurers was in the Tower to get Torven all the way to the Fountain Hall, to attune Torven to the energies of the singularity, that was a danger Kerric could not allow. It was possible the other mage had hidden how strong he was from his testers, appearing to be weaker than he really was. If that was so, Kerric had to get to the Fountain first, to attune himself and command its energies once more.
The Tower was big business, too big to be managed by an ambitious upstart who had only been working here for a few months. Kerric had originally come here seeking to learn about the way adventurers were transported seamlessly from one room to the next, one corridor to the next. It was a small-scale version of the great Portals everyone had lost with the Shattering of Aiar, and the resulting damage to the world’s aether. They were permanent, unlike mirror-Gates, but they could be rearranged at will by the Master of the Tower like a mirror-Gate. Fascinating magic, really . . . but then he had been tapped to apprentice to the previous Guardian as more than just a Gating technician, and that was that.
A Master had to be compassionate toward the adventurers running the gauntlets of all those tricks and traps. He—or she, since there had been Mistresses of the Tower before, and there would be again someday—had to be able to promote new adventure scenarios, and placate sometimes touchy patrons. He had to be able to direct others in the maintenance and repair of all those tricks and traps, and be able to step in to manage their restoration himself.