by T. H. Lain
It was all Vargussel could do not to jump for joy.
Oh, he thought, to the Abyss with it.
He jumped for joy.
The spell he stored in the shield guardian had worked better than he had any reason to hope it would. Chain lightning was a powerful spell but it could be finicky and unpredictable. Though it had spent much of its energy on meat hooks and, at least by the sound of it, shattering the stairs behind Regdar, it had killed all of the watchmen, wounded Regdar himself, and knocked the young mage momentarily senseless.
Vargussel laughed out loud. Killing them was enough but to do it so spectacularly pleased him to no end.
Regdar? the woman called weakly.
Vargussel watched her crawl to the top of the stairs. She peered into the mist but her eyes settled on nothing.
Naull, the lord constable replied. Vargussel liked the sound of his voice. It was weak, quavering. Is anyone else alive?
No, the woman answered.
Vargussel laughed again and squeezed the amulet.
Kill them, he commanded the shield guardian. Kill them slowly…
Regdar's heart sank at the news that he had lost his entire patrol but he didn't have time to grieve.
The huge shadow in the mist stepped forward, turning at the waist and shoulders, and it pulled back one massive arm. Regdar, knowing it was about to strike him, stepped in the direction of the blow, his own arms back, holding his greatsword over his right shoulder and waiting for the thing's arm to come to him.
The behemoth obliged, and the punch came fast and straight at Regdar. The lord constable set his jaw, narrowed his eyes, waited half a heartbeat, then slashed at the thing's wrist.
When his heavy, enchanted steel blade met the creature's wrist, the impact sent waves of painful vibrations through Regdar's arms, then the rest of his body. His eyes snapped shut and tears squeezed through the lids. He became conscious of each of his ten fingers peeling off the pommel of the greatsword one at a time. The punch never landed, though, and he knew that even though the impact had twisted the sword out of his grip, he'd felt resistance before it came to a full stop. He'd cut the thing.
Regdar let himself fall and rolled away as soon as his back hit the floor. There was a deafening thud when the thing's foot came down, and the floor shook under him, but Regdar kept rolling.
He opened his eyes just as he rolled out of the mist. He blinked at the corpse of Lem, the watchman's eyes ruined, his armor scorched, but Regdar had the wherewithal to take up the enchanted long sword that had once belonged to Lorec and done Lem no good at all. Regdar smelled smoke. He craned his neck to see a black, sooty cloud billowing up from the ruined platform.
Fire, he thought, like we don't have enough to worry about.
"Regdar!" Naull screamed from above.
The lord constable looked up and saw Naull peering over the splintered edge of the platform at him, a nasty burn reddening one side of her face.
"Can you walk?" he shouted to her.
Naull nodded.
"Can you cast?" he asked next.
She nodded again. Regdar was about to tell her to wait for the thing to come out of the mist when a huge hand of steel reached out of the wall of fog and wrapped itself around Regdar's head.
He heard Naull scream his name again, but that was quickly drowned out by the rush of blood in his head. Regdar heard something squeak and was terrified to realize that it was his own jaw. He pulled in a breath and managed to actually get some air, but the inhalation was quickly forced out of him when the behemoth jerked him toward itself.
Regdar didn't want to imagine what the thing meant to do-squeeze his head off if he was lucky, eat him slowly if he wasn't. Not willing to wait and find out, Regdar whirled the long sword in his right hand and dragged it across the beast's wrist. When the blade slipped into a gap, which Regdar trusted was the wound from his own greatsword, he yanked the blade up and into the wound.
Lorec's enchanted blade was sharp indeed, so that even as the thing increased the crushing pressure on Regdar's head, the warrior managed to saw through its wrist until its hand popped off.
Regdar fell. The weight of the thing's hand nearly broke his neck. He had no choice but to drop the long sword so he could use both hands to pull the severed hand from his head.
After watching Regdar being dragged back into the fog by his head, Naull scrambled to her feet and ran to the stairs. She almost fell on her face trying to stop when she remembered the lightning bolt and the sound of exploding wood. She couldn't see through the fog but she had every reason to believe that the stairs weren't there anymore.
Groaning from a pain in her hip that stabbed at her when she stepped back the way she came, Naull ran three long strides, then dived for the rope that Lem and Samoth had used to climb down from the platform. She tightened her grip on the rope and would have closed her eyes if she could. Instead she had to settle for telling herself over and over again: It's not so high. It's not so high. It's not so high.
She forced fear-stiffened legs over the edge of the collapsed platform. When her full weight fell off the edge, she started sliding down the rope. The rough hemp burned what felt like an inch-deep gouge in her palms, and Naull's first impulse was to let go. She fought that and managed to squeeze the rope tighter, hoping to stop the painful slide. Instead, she just slid a bit more slowly, and her hands started to shake. Though Naull meant to squeeze even tighter, her hands opened on their own and she fell.
Eyes closed, jaw clamped shut, Naull braced for an impact that didn't come as quickly as she'd hoped. In truth she was in the air for less than a full second, but Naull felt as if she had an eternity to imagine what it would feel like hitting the floor-and she hit.
There was a cracking sound she hoped wasn't her leg breaking, a sudden stop, the feeling that her feet were caught in something, then a twisting cramp in her neck when she had to stop her head from snapping back onto the flagstone floor.
Groaning through clenched jaws against the pain in her neck, her side, and her hands, Naull tried to stand. She kicked at whatever was holding her feet and felt the sole of her left boot catch on something. When she pushed as hard as she could with her left leg, something snapped-wood-and pain cascaded up her right leg.
Spinning on her rear, she slid off the pile of broken, slowly burning wood and came to rest looking down at her leg. A huge splinter as big around as two of Naull's fingers protruded from her right leg, just above the ankle. Blood seeped out around it.
Another loud boom echoed from the fog, and Naull heard steel scrape against steel. That was all she needed to hear to remind her of the stakes, and she did her best to push the pain from her mind. She stood and found that her leg would still hold weight but the feeling of the jagged wood in her skin sent cold tendrils up her spine.
There was more smoke than fire from the rotten, damp wood smoldering around her, and Naull coughed. She held a hand over her nose and mouth, squinted in the stinging smoke, and was just able to breathe.
Naull limped past the body of Lem, not looking at the watchman. She started casting a spell even before she crossed the abrupt threshold of the roiling mist. Only two steps in, she saw two humanoid shapes. One was easily eight feet tall, so she aimed her spell at that one.
Three bolts of blue-green light shot from her outstretched hand and whizzed unerringly at the giant shadow. When they hit the creature, they burst in flashes of blue light, and the thing rocked back. It put one foot behind it, steadying itself with a great thud.
I hurt it, she thought, but not badly enough.
The smaller shadow-Regdar, but with a too-small sword-took advantage of Naull's attack to slash three times at the thing's legs. One blow connected with a steel-on-steel sound that set Naull's teeth on edge. Sparks arced through the fog.
The behemoth answered the slash with a kick that knocked Regdar back on his heels. Naull gasped, sure that her lover was about to fall backward and equally sure that he was dead.
A lo
w growl rattled deep in Vargussel's throat as he peered through the spell, focusing and unfocusing his eyes on the conjured image in a vain attempt to see through his own obscuring fog.
"Damn it all," he grumbled aloud.
He tried every trick of the spell he could to make out more detail, to shift his perspective closer, higher, lower, around to the left, back to the right, waiting for any detail to reveal itself. He could see that one of the shield guardian's hands was missing, and that worried Vargussel as much as it infuriated him.
The spell that the young mage cast when she stepped into the fog was a simple one that revealed her relative level of expertise, but it had managed to further damage his construct.
Time to end it, Vargussel thought.
Closing his eyes, wrapping his fingers tightly around the amulet, the mage sent a new set of instructions to the shield guardian, along with a mental image of Regdar.
The rod, he sent. The death ray. Now!
Regdar rolled away the second he hit the floor and managed to just barely avoid the thing's massive foot, which slammed onto the flagstones less than an inch from his left hip. Without bothering to stand, Regdar slashed at the creature's leg and left a good-sized gash in its calf. His sword stopped when it met the solid steel shinbone within. Fearing the worst, Regdar tried yanking the sword from the behemoth's leg only once. The blade didn't budge so Regdar let go. A gouge across the thing's steel thigh struck Regdar's eye. It was the scar he'd given it at the Thrush and the Jay.
I'll kill it piece by piece, he told himself, if I have to.
He scanned the floor for his greatsword while keeping one eye on the behemoth. The monster stepped back and brought its only remaining hand up to its shoulder. It looked to Regdar as if the beast meant to draw a greatsword of its own, and the prospect of facing the thing armed made Regdar redouble his efforts at finding the sword.
Regdar knew that the magic that had briefly staggered the thing must have come from Naull. He could see her shadowy outline deep in the fog. She was well enough away from the thing that – there it was!
Leaving any thought of decorum far behind, Regdar scurried, crawled, rolled, and squirmed his way to his fallen blade. His fingers wrapped around the pommel, and he looked up at his opponent. It was indeed drawing a weapon of some sort from its back but in the dense fog it was impossible for Regdar to see in detail exactly what it was. It looked like a staff made of steel-no, not steel, platinum. The behemoth leveled the rod at Regdar as if it was taking aim with a crossbow.
Regdar scrambled to his feet and kept his heavy blade in front of him, momentarily unsure what to do. He heard Naull begin the nonsensical chant of a spell.
The two things that happened next were indistinguishable in Regdar's mind, so perfectly were they timed.
A blinding flash of light illuminated the fog around them so that Regdar felt as if he was bathing in its luminescence-and Naull was in front of him. She hadn't stepped in front of him or jumped in front of him. She was just there, between Regdar and the burst of light. Naull's body flashed in perfect silhouette before him. He heard a sort of thump, like something heavy but soft hitting the floor after a long fall, but it wasn't Naull falling.
The young mage froze as if a great, invisible hand reached up from the ground, stopped her in mid step, and crushed her in its grip. Regdar heard her bones snapping, her breath being forced from her lungs. Her flesh quivered and stretched over ribs that snapped under the force of her own constricting muscles like dry twigs in a giant's hand.
Regdar wanted to scream, or cry, or do anything, but he couldn't. All he could do was wait the few short seconds it took his reeling mind to realize that the woman he loved was dead. Again.
25
Vargussel's body was locked in a spasm of conflicting emotions as he watched the lord constable go berserk.
Blood pounded in the wizard's head, and the scrying spell darkened, faded with every fevered heartbeat. Regdar's huge sword became a blur in the fog, moving so fast and so hard that whirls of vapor spun around its tip. The shield guardian hit at the blade, blocked the slashes, hacks, and jabs as best it could, but managed to turn away less than a third of the lord constable's furious attacks.
The scrying spell darkened again but didn't brighten. Regdar thrust his greatsword through the shield guardian's chest, burying the blade in steel up to the hand guard. The construct's arms quivered at its side. Its chin turned up, and its head slowly lolled to one side.
The scrying spell lasted just long enough for Regdar's bellowing battle cry to echo in Vargussel's head, just long enough for the wizard to see his shield guardian fall, the death ray still clutched in its dead hand.
The spell was gone, and Vargussel's sight blurred, spun, then came to rest in the very real surrounds of his private study.
The wizard clenched his teeth and slammed a fist onto his desk. The lord constable had not only survived but had destroyed the shield guardian. The death ray was in an enemy's hands, and all of it would lead back to Vargussel soon enough. He had very few options left, but all of them spilled into his head at once.
Already muttering the words to a spell that would grant him the gift of flight, Vargussel grabbed his staff and pouches and ran from his study to the nearest exit, a high balcony he rarely visited, where he took to the sky.
Ahead of Vargussel was the stinking sprawl of the Trade Quarter and the only man in New Koratia who could destroy him.
Regdar dragged Naull's body out of the fog and smoke and sat with her. With tears streaming down his face, his body racked with pain and sick, desperate grief, all he could do was sit for as long as it took him to start breathing again. He didn't bother speaking. She couldn't hear him, even if he could put what he felt into words.
She couldn't hear him but there were people who could.
Regdar reminded himself of his position, of where he was, and of the resources at his command. Naull died in the service of the duke. She was the future wife of the lord constable. That had to confer some privileges.
Regdar dragged himself to his feet, sheathed his greatsword, and hefted the limp body. He hated the idea of slinging her over his shoulder like a sack but it was the easiest, fastest way to get her away from the slaughterhouse-and he had to get her out of there. The lord constable had no idea how Naull had so suddenly come between him and the behemoth. He had to assume that she used her magic to appear between them in some silly effort to shield him. He had never seen her do that before but her spells always struck Regdar as a confusing bag of tricks, sometimes unreliable, frequently running dry at the worst times. Ultimately, one of those spells allowed her to make a rash decision that cost her her life.
Regdar scanned the huge room and saw that the fog was fading away. An old, stone ramp rose from the center of the room, ending in a fall of timbers, brick, and plaster at the ceiling. The bottom of the ramp emptied into the wooden chutes. The place was a slaughterhouse, and the cattle must have been driven down the ramp from the street above, through the chutes, to be killed at the end of each passage. Their carcasses then were hefted up on meat hooks and rolled along tracks to the butchers. Underground, the disturbing sounds and smells of the killing floor would be hidden from the city around it, and the whole affair would take up less valuable space.
He turned toward the ramp, seeking the most direct path back to the street, but stopped long enough to spare a glance at the thing that had murdered so many of the city's best people.
It was a made thing, not a living being, put together mostly with steel. It was dead, whatever that meant in its case, but there was no blood. Its only adornment was a steel carving on its chest, inlaid with two rubies. The rubies formed the eyes of what might have been a dog, a bear, a horse, or some other animal's face. Regdar's eyes stopped on the carving. He'd seen it before. That stylized, simple, but distinctive shape with its two rubies was familiar, but from where?
Regdar stepped closer to the dead construct and his eyes settled on the platinum r
od still gripped in its remaining hand. That bar was pointed at him when the flash went off-the flash that killed Naull.
"It's not the behemoth," Regdar muttered, thinking aloud.
Groaning with pain, and careful not to drop Naull's body, Regdar squatted and slid the platinum rod out of the dead thing's hand. It wasn't easy but he managed to secure the rod in the straps of his pack, against his scabbard.
The behemoth wasn't the murder weapon, he concluded silently. The behemoth wielded the murder weapon.
Regdar turned to the ramp again with Naull hanging from his shoulders, and he started climbing. Already her body was growing cold.
The jumble of structures so far below him confused Vargussel, and it took him a precious few minutes more than he expected to find the slaughterhouse. When it came clear below him, Vargussel dropped from the sky onto the street in front of the dilapidated structure. From above, Vargussel could see that the slaughterhouse was crawling with watchmen. Most were just milling around, waving on the occasional passerby who paused to wonder what they were doing.
A few of the watchmen took note of the wizard slowly descending from the deep gray sky, drenched in the rain that fell around him. They drew their swords but stepped back, afraid and on guard. One of them, a sergeant, stepped forward and as Vargussel's feet came to rest on the cobblestones, the watchman approached him. The wizard didn't recognize the sergeant but the man seemed to know him. The sergeant sheathed his sword and gave a shallow, fast bow.
"Are you in command here?" Vargussel asked.
"No," the sergeant replied. "I mean, no, sir, not really. My men are charged with containing this corner of the building."
"Do you know who I am?" the wizard asked.
"Lord Vargussel?" the sergeant replied.
"Correct," said the wizard, "and I have been sent by the duke with new orders."
"Sir?" the sergeant asked. "That's not usually the way we-"