“Oh, any knot I tie will hold the fucking moon down,” Slag insisted, perhaps thinking his workmanship was under question. He did as Malden asked, then handed the free end of the line to the thief.
“Look,” Malden said, “how this end of the bridge is so well supported.” He lay down on the basalt and peered underneath the bridge. A buttress of ornate stone scrollwork held it up. “Yet on the far side-it’s not as strong.” The buttress there was cunningly carved to look much the same as its brother, but a close inspection showed it was made of thinner beams and the scrollwork looked lighter and finer. “Morget,” he said, “take hold of this line and pay it out as I instruct.”
The barbarian did as he was told. Malden crawled forward and lowered himself carefully over the edge of the crevasse. Just as he’d thought, he was unable to find handholds in the smooth rock, and could only hang from the rope like a sinker on a fishing line. As he dangled, one foot against the wall to keep himself from spinning, he looked up at the near buttress from underneath.
In his lantern light there were clear seams in the scrollwork.
Also just as he’d thought.
“Give me six more feet of line,” he called, and his body jerked as the barbarian let the rope slacken and he dropped another six feet into the fissure. He had a moment of panic as he heard the hemp rope creak, but it held his weight. “All right, that should be enough.”
He put both of his feet against the stone wall of the crevasse and bent his knees up to his chest. Then with one quick spring he pushed against the wall and swung out on the rope, toward the far side of the gap. His fingers splayed outward to try to grab the far buttress, but he missed entirely and swung back, barely catching himself against the near wall before he smashed his teeth out on the rock.
“Malden!” Cythera cried, her face popping over the edge so she could look down at him.
He smiled with all the bravado he could muster and gave her a cheery wave.
“All’s well,” he said. “I just misjudged the distance. Morget, give me another three feet.”
The rope creaked again as Malden dropped deeper into the fissure. He braced his feet once more and pushed hard for another swing. This time he managed to grab onto the far side of the crevasse and haul himself up onto its rim before the rope swung back. “More rope,” he called, “and Slag, toss me a spike and your mallet.” Morget paid out the line and Malden tied it off on the far side, yanking it tight so it stretched across the fissure like a bowstring. “Now,” he said, “everyone stand back.”
On the far side the others did as he said. Malden approached the bridge and tapped it with his toes. It held-he expected it to-but he made a point of not putting his full weight on it. He found his balance and struck it with his foot again, this time bringing his foot down as hard as he dared.
The bridge dropped under his blow, the whole span of it falling away as it swung down into the crevasse. The side of the bridge closest to Malden had been held up by only a weak latch, while the scrollwork buttress on the other side was in fact a massive hinge.
Malden looked down into the crevasse and saw swirling darkness below. Twenty, maybe thirty soldiers could have gotten onto the bridge before it fell, and all of them would have fallen to their deaths. They would have been the best knights the elves could muster, the vanguard of their army. The message would have been very clear.
Malden walked back across the crevasse on the tight rope he’d strung between the two spikes. Foot over foot, his arms held out at his sides for balance. He’d done it before a million times. He made a point of bowing toward Cythera before he leapt back to the safety of the basalt.
“The rest of you will have to go hand over hand, I’m afraid. A less dignified method to get across, but far safer,” he said.
They divided up the supplies into five knapsacks. Morget took the largest share without complaint. Anything they couldn’t carry they left behind as a cache for later. That significantly increased their mobility, but still it took the better part of an hour to get everyone across, each of them crawling along the rope, hand over hand, helping each other as much as they could. Cythera, surprisingly, had the hardest time of it. She was nimble enough, and so light the rope barely sagged under her weight, but she had to cross with her eyes clenched tightly shut. Malden knew the signs of someone with a fear of heights, and he spoke gentle words to urge her across before she opened her eyes and looked down. If she did that, he knew she would freeze up and be unable to cross at all.
He had a bad moment when Morget started swinging across like a monkey, hand over hand with his legs dangling over the drop. The rope creaked and sagged as he stretched out its fibers and Malden worried it might just snap. Which he found he truly didn’t want it to do. True, if Morget fell here and perished in the water below, then his own life would become a jot less dangerous. But it would also mean he would have one less warrior on his side when they eventually met the demon.
No, let Morget kill his beast-and then all bets were off, and the barbarian could get himself killed however he pleased. Until then, Malden thought, he would do his best to keep him alive.
The rope held, despite Morget’s antics. It was stout, strong stuff from the best of Ness’s ropewalks, and it had never gotten wet or been coiled improperly. Malden had taken care of it himself during their journey-every thief knows that his life will some day depend on a strong rope, just as he knows he may one day swing from one. All of Cutbill’s employees treated ropes with respect.
However, when they were all across, Croy looked back with skeptical eyes.
“It’ll be hard getting back across the same way on our way out,” he said. “Especially if we’re in a hurry.”
“You expect ghosts to chase us off?” Malden asked.
“Just considering all possibilities. That’s something I learned from you.”
Malden sketched a bow in his direction. “You are too kind. All right, from here I think we’ll be safe. That should be the last of the traps.” He strode across the basalt flagstones to a door in the far wall. This one stood barely five feet high. As Malden flung it open, he stepped back to bow and gesture through the door with one hand. “Morget,” he said, “do watch your head.”
Had he not been so cavalier, he would have walked right through the doorway-and impaled himself on the iron spikes that came slamming through to meet him.
Chapter Thirty
Croy called out in shock, but Malden was already in motion, dropping to a crouch and rolling out of the way as the spikes slammed through the doorway and bit hungrily at the air where he had been.
Malden scuttled away from the spikes on his hands and heels. When it was clear they weren’t going to shoot outward from the door or knock back into the crevasse, he shook his head in relief.
The spikes were six inches long, protruding point first from a wooden board. A complicated arrangement of springs sent the board flying into the room when the door was opened. The tip of each spike glistened with droplets of liquid.
“Poison, almost certainly,” Malden said as he rose to his feet. “Interesting. I wonder why it was set to trigger from this side? Surely-”
A loud, rhythmic clanging noise interrupted him. The noise ratcheted up in volume, and then the five of them jumped in surprise as the board began to retreat back to its previous position, drawing back through the doorway. A spring mounted to the back of the door slammed it shut again once the spiked board had returned to its starting state.
There was a very loud click, like a dead bolt being shot into place, and then silence reigned once more. It was as if Malden had never opened the door.
“Ah,” he said.
“Fucking brilliant!” Slag cried.
“Ingenious, definitely,” Malden agreed. “But it raises a question. If we want to proceed, how do we get through that door?”
The dwarf pondered for a moment. “Trigger it again. Then we wedge something in between the board and the doorjamb. Something strong, like one of Morg
et’s weapons. He’s got a whole fucking wardrobe of the things under his cloak, surely he can spare one, right? Then we all heave on it until something breaks.”
“Something inside the mechanism that propels the board?”
“Or the weapon. In which case we try again.”
Malden nodded, seeing the wisdom of this plan. “Very well. In that case-”
He stopped because Morget was already standing to one side of the door and pulling on its latch. Malden jumped back as the board of spikes came bursting into the room again, exactly as before. Morget roared and jumped between the board and the jamb. Instead of sacrificing one of his weapons, however, he got his own shoulder into the narrow space.
The clanging, ratcheting noise came again as the trap tried to reset itself. Morget’s face twisted into a grimace of pain as the back of the board tried to crush his body. Yet he was braced well and he pushed back with the arm he had thrust into the mechanism. The ratcheting noise made a pathetic series of clicks as the barbarian heaved and shoved, sweat breaking out across his forehead and running down across the red stain around his mouth.
And then something broke.
Malden couldn’t be sure at first if it was the mechanism or one of Morget’s bones. But a moment later the barbarian screamed in rage and gave one last heave, and the board tore away from its springs. It went flying across the room, inches from impaling Cythera, and then slid over the edge of the crevasse to disappear from sight. A moment later Malden heard it splash into the river below.
“Grab the door,” Morget howled. Croy rushed in to grab it before it could slam shut on Morget’s body. Slag ducked under the knight’s arm and attacked the spring on the door with a wide-bladed screwdriver. In a moment he had that spring disabled as well.
Morget stepped away from the mechanism and rolled his shoulder as if it was slightly sore.
“My way works, too,” he said.
“So much for the element of surprise, though,” Cythera pointed out. “That made enough noise that I’m sure even the demon heard it. We’d be wise to press on now and get away from here as quickly as possible, before it-or anything else-comes to investigate.”
“You mean the ghosts of elves?” Croy asked. “Do you sense them?”
Cythera shook her head, but she didn’t look particularly sure. “No … but… there’s something here. Something that doesn’t want us to go any further.” She gave them all a weak smile. “Perhaps I’m just jumping at shadows.”
“Some shadows are more dangerous than others,” Morget pointed out. “The woman is right. We need to keep moving.”
Malden approached the open door and held his lantern inside. He could see the clockwork that had operated the trap, much of it now broken and bent out of shape. Beyond, there seemed to be a large open space. He crawled over the gears and into the room there, and then called back for everyone else to follow.
The room beyond the door had a low ceiling, though Morget was able to stand upright once he was inside. It was broader than it was deep, and the walls were of finely dressed stone. A pair of broad doorways led out of the room, farther into the city, but they could not be reached immediately because someone had constructed a barricade before them. It was a clumsy affair of broken furniture and low walls made of sacks filled with sand, studded all over with wooden spikes. The spikes pointed toward the door Malden had just come through. He approached one and gave it a push, and the wood collapsed under his finger, rotten through and as soft as paper. In fact the entire barricade looked like it might collapse into dust if he gave it a good kick. The furniture was falling apart and the sacks of sand had been nibbled at by insects until they leaked in a hundred places. “Ah. Well, this explains one thing,” he said.
“What’s that?” Croy asked.
“I wasn’t expecting that last trap to be triggered from that side because I expected all the traps were meant to keep anyone from getting out of the Vincularium. Clearly, though, the elves wanted just as much to keep anyone from getting in. Tell me, Croy, would this make a good defensive point to ward off invaders?”
“Yes, certainly,” the knight said. “Presumably the trap on the door would stop the first one who tried to come through. The noise it makes would alert you that someone was trying to come in. The invaders would be unlikely to fall for the trap twice, but by the time they disabled the mechanism, you could have a dozen archers here, protected by this defensive works, and they could hold off all but the most determined attackers.”
“The elves thought they were going to be attacked,” Malden said, climbing over the barricade. From the far side he could see how easily a man could duck down behind the gathered junk and be shielded from incoming attacks. “They must have believed that the humans would come in here after them and finish the job. The last thing they expected was that they would be sealed inside and left to rot.”
“Sounds good, lad,” Slag said. “Too bad your theory is horseshit.” The dwarf was busy examining the clockwork that had propelled the spiked board.
“Oh?” Malden asked.
“Two reasons. No elf ever built something this complicated. They lacked the skill. Secondly, the buggers all died off centuries ago.” He ran one finger across the teeth of a heavy gear. “But the oil on this thing is fresh.”
Chapter Thirty-one
“Then-someone else has been here. And recently,” Cythera said.
“Most like they’re still here,” Slag insisted. “And they didn’t want us coming in.”
Croy frowned. “It doesn’t seem like Morget’s demon would be capable of building that trap.”
“It had no hands,” the barbarian agreed. “The woman had a sense something was here. Now we know it’s more than just intuition. There’s someone else in here with us.”
“But who?” Croy demanded. “This place has been sealed tight for centuries. The demon seems able to come and go, but only because it can flatten itself so that it fits through narrow cracks in the earth. We know no human has ever despoiled this place-the chains out front were still intact, and their enchantment had never been discharged. Moreover, if any man of Skrae had ever come here before we would have heard the tale.”
“Grave robbers, perhaps,” Malden said, though that failed to counter most of Croy’s points. It was all he could think of.
For a while they all just stared at each other, fear passing from one to another as their eyes met. This was not something they’d prepared for.
“Whoever they are,” Slag said finally, “even if they didn’t hear all that noise-they’ll probably come check their trap from time to time. And when they do, they’ll see that someone broke their fucking toy. They’ll know we’re here, too.”
Croy drew Ghostcutter from its sheath. “We need to be on our guard from this point forward.” He saw Morget’s axe jump into his hand. “Everyone,” the knight said, “get back behind this barricade, while we scout the way forward.”
Morget moved without instruction to one of the two doors leading deeper into the Vincularium. The barbarian shoved his helmet down over his shaved head and nodded to indicate his readiness. Croy moved to the other door and stood to one side of it. Whoever constructed the door trap might even now be aware that it had been triggered. He had no conception of what might come to check on it, but he was ready. Carefully, in case there were more traps, he pushed down on the latch of his door. It swung open easily, revealing only darkness beyond.
If anyone was out there, they needed no light to see by. Croy considered extinguishing his group’s own lanterns, but he had fought in darkness too many times to think that wise. A man fighting without a light was as likely to strike down a friend as a foe. He looked across at Morget, who opened his own door. No spikes jumped out, nor did the ceiling of the barricade room fall in, nor did the room fill up with boiling oil. All to the good.
Lantern in one hand, sword in the other, Croy stepped through his door. Beyond lay a room so large his light failed to illuminate anything but the wall
behind him. The floor was made of cobblestones like a city street, smoothed down by time and commerce until they were nearly as flat as flagstones. He took a few steps forward into the darkness but failed to find another wall. Soon he was standing in a rippling puddle of his own light, with darkness beyond him in every direction.
He turned to look behind him and could just see the door he’d come through. Standing next to it was its twin. Morget stood framed by the light coming in through that door-it seemed both doors opened on the same chamber. Croy wanted to call Morget out to join him but dared not make noise. He could hear nothing but the omnipresent sound of dripping water and the roaring of the air as it rushed past his ears. There could be a host of demons all around him, with slavering jaws and squirming tentacles, but if so they were not pressing their attack.
After considering his options for a moment, he headed back to the barricade room. “All right,” he whispered, “everyone, come with me. But we must remain absolutely silent!”
He had no idea what was out there in the enormous room. Yet it would be foolish to simply wait in the barricade room for the enemy to arrive. He would look for another defensible spot, one the unseen opponents wouldn’t be watching.
The five of them moved in absolute silence-or as close as they could manage. Morget’s arsenal rattled and clanged under his cloak, and Slag’s tools jangled in his purse. They headed left, along the one wall Croy had found, the outer wall of the barricade room. The wall was made of white brick, roughened here and there by centuries of dripping water. Croy had expected to follow it to another wall soon enough, but after a hundred feet or so he found nothing. The wall seemed to go on forever, featureless and unchanging save that every twenty feet it was braced with a massive column, ten feet square, that ran straight up into the darkness over their heads.
A thief in the night abt-2 Page 17