by T. H. Lain
"How can you tell?" she asked.
Tordek pointed to the flagstones. Their creases were filled with dust and grime. "See how much space is between them? That's because they're on a balance of some sort. If they were meant to be firm, they'd be mortared."
"All right," said Lidda, stepping carefully back. "I see it now. You had a dwarf advantage on that one."
"Aye," agreed Tordek. "Still, I couldn't figure out how to disable it if I tried."
"Bet I could," said Lidda.
"How much?"
"What?"
"How much would you like to bet?"
"You never bet!"
"I will this time," said Tordek. The more incentive he could give her to concentrate on something other than Devis and Vadania, he reckoned, the less likely she was to sulk, complain, or otherwise irritate him while he stood watch.
"A hundred gold," she said with her chin held high.
"Done," said Tordek.
"Damn. I should have said two hundred."
"Do you have two hundred?"
"I will when this bet is settled," she replied.
"One hundred it is. I'll get out of your way and keep an eye on the door."
For the first time in hours, Tordek breathed easily. He could still feel the strange, dead core through his lung where the hammer's accursed power sealed his wound, but at least it didn't hurt or seem to be spreading. He walked toward the door and found a comfortable seat on a block of granite that had been an elegant bench before something smashed one end. Gulo was curled up nearby. He opened one wary eye as the dwarf approached.
Tordek knew that Vadania's bond with her animals did not necessarily include her two-legged companions, but he had met Gulo when the wolverine was little bigger than a wolfhound. He reached out a cautious hand and stroked the big animal's head. Gulo made a contented sound and closed his eyes. Tordek smiled but withdrew his hand. Better not to press his luck.
"I think I've done it," said Lidda an hour later. Rather than pleased, she sounded weary and sullen.
"You didn't try one of the doors, did you?"
"Of course not," she said. "Not while both the healers are… sleeping."
Tordek looked past the halfling to see Vadania nestled under Devis's arm.
"Besides," she said, "I thought you weren't interested in finding treasure here."
"I didn't say I wasn't interested," said Tordek. "It's just not as important as stopping Hargrimm."
"Yeah," said Lidda. "About that, you have any ideas how we're going to do it?"
"I don't know," sighed the dwarf. "I wish we had a small army."
"I wish we had a big army," said Lidda, "with tall feathered hats. We could make them march."
Tordek shook his head and turned his eyes up to the heavens.
"See?" she cried after him. "Me, funny. You, crabby."
"All right," said Tordek. "I concede the point."
"You'll give me a hundred gold, too, once we open one of those vault doors."
Tordek nodded, glad to see Lidda thinking of something other than that foolish bard. It wasn't a great surprise that the fun-loving halfling had gotten her head turned by Devis's silver tongue. What surprised him was Vadania. The elf was older than he by considerable years. She should have known what trouble such trifles could cause among a small group that depended on each other so much. He would have to broach the matter with her later, in private.
They kept watch silently for an hour and then whispered for a while concerning theories about how the vault doors must open. Lidda identified the particulars of the trap. The pressure plates triggered a battery of spikes or spears from the floor. As if that weren't enough to deter a thief, it appeared that the ceiling was rigged to fall on the skewered intruders moments afterward. The more she described the mechanisms she had perceived from the hidden clues of the stonework and vault hinges, the less Tordek wanted to explore the treasures that lay beyond the trap.
Vadania sat up, gently setting Devis's arm aside as he snored. She blinked a few times and stretched her neck, but then she appeared as alert as if she had never closed her eyes. Tordek had seen her go from seeming slumber to action in the time it took a stone to fall from shoulder height. These elven reveries were yet another way in which the fair folk were set apart from the other races, as well as another excuse for those who feared and hated them.
Lidda had never been one to shun elves, but she sniffed and turned away as Vadania joined them on the broken bench. Tordek moved over to make room for her.
"Shall I make a fire?" she asked Tordek.
"Not on my account."
He noticed that she did not make the same offer to Lidda. So did the halfling, judging from her arched eyebrow.
"You look a little stiff," said Tordek, nodding to the bloodstained wound on her shoulder. All of her cure spells were expended on Devis. She had made do with a simple bandage.
"I'll be fine," she said. "In a few hours, I'll be able to mend it. Or perhaps Devis will do me the honor."
Lidda snorted derisively. "Is that what you elves call it?"
"I don't know what you are talking about."
'"The honor'," Lidda mugged like a child. "It's a wonder he didn't 'do you the honor' right there in front of the rest of us, after you rubbed yourself all over him."
"Lidda," admonished Tordek.
"No, let her speak," said Vadania. "She is obviously troubled by the attention Devis shows me."
"Shows you!" Lidda sputtered. "I'm the one he was singing to. I'm the one who got us in here so he could sleep."
"Whu?" said Devis, stirring from his slumber.
Tordek held his head in both hands.
"Well, you've put an end to that, haven't you," said Vadania. "If I knew how irrational and jealous you would be, I never would have invited you on this quest."
"Invited?" said Lidda. "Why, you practically blackmailed me into this. Devis, too. I have half a mind-"
"That's the main problem," interjected Vadania.
"Ladies, ladies," said Devis, gesturing for calm. "There's no need to fight over me. I'm perfectly willing to-"
"This has nothing to do with you, minstrel boy!" spat Lidda. "Butt out."
"Yes," agreed Vadania. "This is between me and the brownie."
"Who are you calling a brownie, you green hag!"
Tordek made a tactical withdrawal behind Gulo, who was already snuffling as the loud voices jolted him from dreams of slapping salmon out of the river-or so Tordek imagined. The thought of standing in an icy river was appealing to him, too, at the moment, as long as it was far from here.
The combatants circled each other while trading verbal barbs. Tordek shot an accusatory look at Devis, expecting him to do something to stop this quarrel. The bard only shrugged with a conceited little smile as if to say, Can't help it.
"If you weren't a friend of Tordek's," said Lidda, working up a good head of steam, "I'd…I'd…" She thrust her finger at the elf, just short of poking her in the chest.
Vadania gasped and arched her back, her head whipping back.
"Don't you mock me, elf!" cried Lidda. "I won't stand for it."
Vadania stumbled forward onto her hands and knees, and they all saw the gashes in the back of her armor and the blood dripping down the leather.
"I didn't do that!" Lidda unsheathed her blade, peering behind Vadania for some sign of her attacker.
Devis hopped up and grabbed his sword. Tordek already had his axe in hand. He swung it before him like a blind man walking through an unfamiliar room, seeking the unseen intruder.
Vadania recovered quickly and scrabbled to her feet while reaching for her scimitar, but then she let out a little shriek as another pair of slashes appeared on her sword arm. For an instant, Tordek saw the pustulant little fiend from the forge room appear beside her, but the creature vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. Its mocking laughter rang out briefly, then Tordek heard its scabby feet running across the floor.
Gulo sniffed and
growled as he caught the thing's scent. The big wolverine stalked forward, then snuffled the floor. He turned from side to side, unsure which way the thing had run.
Vadania fell again to one knee. Her body shook as the quasit's venom worked its way through her veins toward her heart. Lidda moved beside her, sweeping her short sword in all directions in the vain hope of cutting the invisible foe.
"You ridiculous, pathetic fools," cackled the voice. Tordek stalked toward the sound, but then it spoke again from another location entirely. "Hargrimm promises the next of Andaron's blades to the one who brings back the hammer, and that will be Yupa!"
Tordek lunged for the voice, swinging wildly but cutting only air. Devis did the same, more cautiously and with his back against the wall. Lidda stood guard over Vadania as Gulo lurched first this way, then that. All the while, the quasit mocked them from the shelter of his invisibility.
Gulo roared and twisted around to slap at his tail, which suddenly bled from a jagged wound. The quasit appeared for less than a second before scampering off again. Gulo tracked it for ten or twelve feet across the rubble then darted to the side, confused by the quickly moving scent trail.
"Leave now," cried the shrill and hateful voice. "Leave the hammer behind, dwarf, and flee. It is the only way to avoid joining your brother's bones in my master's belly!"
"You couldn't lift Andaron's Hammer, you troglodyte dropping," spat Tordek. "How will you carry it away?"
A sudden, pungent sensation surged through the room. It was a stink that was not scent, a cold, liquid urgency beyond feeling or taste or sound. Tordek swallowed hard, trying to smother the sudden urge to flee.
Vadania curled into a ball on the floor.
"Oh, good gods," babbled Devis, He almost dropped his sword as he pressed his back harder against the wall. His gaze darted from side to side, finally fixing on the front door. Tordek saw that he would bolt from the place if he could work up the nerve to leave the safety of the wall.
"Tordek!" cried Vadania. "Whatever you do, don't let that thing near those levers or we're doomed!"
He hesitated only an instant before catching her meaning. "Oh, no!" he yelled, a bit stiffly. He balked as if torn by two opposing fears, then he ran-not too quickly-toward the trap levers.
"Too late!" cried the little fiend's voice. One of the levers shot down with a clang.
Nothing happened.
Tordek took a step back and looked up at the ceiling. He half-expected the roof to fall in on them all.
"Oh, no!" shouted Lidda. "He's going to pull the second lever!"
"What?" said Tordek. "Oh, oh no!"
With a gleeful cackle, the invisible quasit pulled the next lever. Eight spears shot up from the floor just in front of the vault doors. The one nearest the levers dripped with ichor for an instant before they plunged back into their sheathes in the floor. A wet mess began pooling on the floor beside the levers. Something burbled and gasped as it made halting trails in its own blood.
"Stand back, everyone," warned Tordek, heeding his own advice by hustling away from the vaults.
Eight granite blocks fell from the ceiling. Their crash silenced Yupa the quasit's frightened squeak.
Devis held a hand to his chest as though to keep his heart from leaping out. Tordek knew just how he felt, but he managed to hide it better. Lidda seemed completely nonplussed by the infernal terror as she knelt beside the elf and popped the cork from a pewter vial then held up Vadania's head to help her drink.
"There, there," she said. "This will fix you up."
Vadania licked the last drops of the curing potion from her lips and sighed in relief. "Thank you," she said.
"Hey," replied Lidda, slipping the vial back into her belt pouch. "Anything for a friend."
"Friend?" said Devis incredulously. "Just a minute ago-"
Before Tordek could warn him, both of the women turned on him with squinty eyes.
"Mind your own business," said Vadania.
"Yeah," agreed Lidda. "Stop causing trouble, Bunny."
"I can't believe I let him snuggle with me," said Vadania.
"You think that's bad?" asked Lidda. "He kissed me, and I've seen where that mouth was recently."
"Hey!" said Tordek and Devis. They looked at each other, then they looked uncomfortably away.
"Men," said Lidda.
"Boys," corrected Vadania, and they both nodded in sympathetic understanding.
ANDARON’S TOMB
Lidda flung a handful of gold coins across the vault. They clattered into a dusty corner and rolled back out onto the granite floor. "This stinks!"
After digging through the rubble that fell on their quasit foe, they had found the secret locks to the treasury vaults. Lidda spent nearly three hours searching for further traps, disabling them, picking open the locks, and doing the same again once they found the second and third doors. When the inner seals opened with an inexorable groan, she cheered her triumph until the others did the same.
Inside they found only a few gold and silver coins spilled at the back of the vault shelves, along with the meager remnants of a much larger, long-absent trove.
Tordek and Devis inspected a row of armor and weapon racks. Most of the sagging wooden frames were bare, their timbers old and dusty. The dwarf frowned as he examined the remaining swords, axes, and hammers. They were serviceable weapons but nothing more.
"Well," said Devis, poking at a gold-plated breastplate adorned with semi-precious stones, "at least some of this stuff is pretty enough to fetch a few more coins."
"It is all gilt and ornament," said Tordek, "the sort of thing some men call 'parade armor.' No warrior-smith would have any use for such frippery. Even were you to find some fool to buy it, the price would not be worth the trouble of dragging it out of here."
"Someone must have broken in before we did," suggested Vadania mildly.
"Nay," said Tordek, "but we are meant to think so." He considered the possibility that plunderers penetrated the vaults previously, despite the absence of any signs of their entrance. The dwarves used many strategies to thwart thieves, and not all of them involved traps and locks.
He paced the dimensions of the vault and made the mental calculations comparing its size and shape to that of the exterior of the building. He rapped on the shelves, crept along the floor, and listened to the walls.
The others followed his example. Devis and Vadania peered into the high corners for any sign of concealed passages while Lidda climbed the shelves to run her fingers along the ceiling as far as she could reach.
"Here," said Tordek at last. The others joined him where he stood at the innermost wall. He tapped its granite surface with the butt of his axe. To his ears, there was no mistaking the sound of an empty space beyond. When he saw that his non-dwarven companions did not hear the same clue, he explained, "This is a barrier, not a support. Something lies beyond."
"There's no way we can break through that much stone," said Lidda.
"Maybe if we constructed a ram from the fallen timbers?" suggested Devis.
"No," said Vadania. "I have not yet meditated for my spells today, and it is nearly dawn, by my reckoning. If the rest of you would fetch me some of that clay from outside, I have something that might serve."
She asked Tordek to confirm which way was east, then she sat facing the rising sun. No matter that she could not see it, Tordek knew, it was the gesture that aided her communion with the world. He had seen her perform this ritual dozens of times before.
Tordek and Lidda went to the clay stream and scooped up handfuls of the thick stuff onto a wooden door, which they then pulled back to the treasury like a sledge. Devis awaited them at the entrance, where he and Gulo kept watch over the meditating druid and the approach to the building at once. They would not be caught unawares again after the lesson that Yupa taught them.
Vadania concluded her meditation by rising silently to her feet in a way that seemed to defy gravity. Tordek knew elves could perish and druids molder
unto dust, but something about the fey folk-especially one so closely bound to the earth and wood-left him feeling by comparison vulnerable, fragile, and altogether mortal.
When Vadania saw the makeshift sledge, she nodded approvingly. "That should be plenty. Bring it over to the wall."
She rolled the soft clay into long ropes and pressed them against the wall until they stuck. One by one, she added more ropes to form a rectangular frame upon the wall, pausing only to ask Tordek how thick he estimated the wall must be. When she finished, she had created a border slightly more than two feet high and wide, complete with a handle protruding from one side.
She placed both hands within the frame of clay, a sprig of mistletoe in the crook of her middle fingers, and she began humming. The sound was high and sweet at first, much like her voice.
Soon the stone began resonating, answering the druid's call with its own deep, eternal voice.
Tordek nodded as the clay outline glowed orange and flowed into the wall, leading the stone in its own transmutation. The fragile clay handle drew out the hard matter of the wall to form a sturdy grip. An instant later, the wall became a simple door.
Vadania stepped back and spoke to Gulo. "Wait here, old friend," she said. "We'll be back soon."
Tordek pulled the door open with a dull scraping sound.
They plunged their lights into the gloom beyond and saw a low passageway, the work of dwarven chisels rather than the slow tearing of the mountain. Tordek squeezed through the small door and led the way. The walls were cool and faintly damp, but flickering light spilled around a corner ten feet ahead. After turning once, the hidden passage became a railed spar jutting into the center of a cavern so vast that the lights revealed only the wall behind them as it soared upward into darkness. The bridge into empty space ended in a circular platform ringed by a crenellated wall upon which blazed perpetual flames in six braziers.
On sturdy stone tables, heaps of octagonal coins filled bronze bowls ringed with images of dwarves in the mines, at the forge, and beside the anvil. Chalices and cups overflowed with rubies and topazes and gems of all the colors of fire. Plates forged with the faces of bears and badgers, ale horns capped with silver, armors and helms and shields and weapons shaped by a master's craft hung from every wall.