The Worldwound Gambit

by Robin D. Laws

  Vitta hisses his name.

  He steps out to greet the travelers.

  They back themselves into a circle, brandishing crudely fashioned weapons—a notched sword, a wooden stake, a rusted pitchfork.

  He replaces his sword in its sheath.

  "What is he doing?" Vitta whispers to Tiberio.

  Gad holds out his hands.

  "You," says the woman with the wounded hand.

  "Vasilissa," says Gad.

  She turns to her companions. "Lower your weapons," she says. "This is the one!" She points at Gad. "I knew we were doing the right thing in coming here. We are guided by Iomedae's hand!"

  The others' weapons stay up. They regard her with confusion.

  She seizes the end of the pitchfork and pushes it down. "This is Gad. The one who found me in the wilderness. Who told me I was not bound by the demon's words. That my soul was still my own, had I but the courage to resist!"

  Reluctantly they withdraw their scavenged weapons.

  Gad keeps his hands out. "I have some friends over there. They're going to come out now. And then we'll all have ourselves a talk."

  Tiberio approaches first. Vitta hangs back.

  "This is Tiberio, Hendregan, and Vitta." Gad pauses, waiting for a response from the disfigured woman.

  A dazed perplexity works across her face.

  Finally he says, "Why don't you tell me who your friends are, Vasilissa?"

  She introduces them. The part-elf carrying the notched blade is Elechan. The gnome who wields the pitchfork is Maleb. The two other women are Prebrana and Krasa.

  Deep, raking scratches cross over Elechan's jawline and down his neck.

  A filthy bandage wraps around Maleb's right thigh.

  Another encircles Krasa's torso.

  Part of Prebrana's ear has been torn away.

  "What are you doing here?" Gad asks.

  "We have come to do as you said," says Vasilissa. "To fight the demon."

  "He wouldn't have told you that," Vitta blurts.

  Dismay ripples through the motley band.

  Vitta bites her lip.

  "Why don't you," says Gad, "tell me how you and your friends came to be here?"

  "You told me that I didn't have to give in to the demon." Vasilissa proclaims proudly. "That my soul could still be my own. I believed you, and yet I didn't. I didn't think I would be strong enough to resist. Through the woods I fled that night. I ran until exhaustion took me, and then I fell. On the cold ground, I dreamed. I dreamed of a terrible tower. I saw it, and I saw the twisted land of the Worldwound all around it. I felt its call. It wanted me to come here, to join the others as part of its army, and worship at a bloody altar. The weak would be sacrificed. From them I would gain strength. And if I myself weakened, I would lend strength to others so that all who had denied the power of chaos, the exultation of evil, would be punished for their imbecility. All this I knew simply from gazing at the tower, which I saw as if from a great height.

  "Then in my dream I wandered through its hallways. Endless and winding they were. Not ordinary passageways as you'd get in a true building, but a maze of slippery, twisting, growing, breathing corridors. Each night since then I have dreamed of it, as have all of my comrades here. It changes its arrangement from night to night. But I feel that when I arrive there, I will remember my way around it, as I do the placement of cottages in my home village."

  "You've jumped ahead," says Gad. "Go back to the night after we spoke. You woke up from this dream of yours ..."

  "I woke up from this dream and felt the pull of the tower. You told me to be strong, to fight. And you meant that I should fight within myself, to hold true to virtue and not give in to the demon's false promises. But the pull was great. I searched inside myself for the strength you said I had. Nowhere did I find it. So I listened to the tower instead. Through the Mendevian plains I stumbled. A demon came out of the sky at me, a thing of eggs and feelers and of strangely whirling wings. Down at me with feathered tongue it swooped.

  "This is my salvation, I told myself. I haven't done anything bad yet. Yes, I've wandered in the direction the tower wants of me. But wandering is not a sin. I have committed no murders, no betrayals! I haven't even told a lie. Now this demon will kill me, and I'll die in fear and pain. But my soul will remain untainted, will fly free to whatever rest I deserve. It will not go to the Abyss, to become demonstuff."

  The woman called Krasa weeps.

  Each of them could tell a similar tale, Gad guesses.

  "But as the tongue flickered all around me, I heard the demon's voice in my head." Agitation builds in Vasilissa's voice. "You are already marked, it said. You are already ours. It flew away, and in my heart I knew I was destroyed. I tried to remember your words, but in that moment they flew away from me. That night I fell again into the open plain and dreamed of the tower. And I forgot what you had said. Or rather, I recalled your words, but they scourged me, because I knew I was too weak to make them come true. You had chosen the wrong person to speak them to. I was just a poor woman from a poor village. Not a hero. A weakling. And as a weakling, I would make the trek to the tower, and there I would be sacrificed. I would not even make war for the demons. I would only be a spark of fuel for their Abyssal fire.

  "Then later that day, I came upon Krasa here. She had found the body of a warrior, freshly slain—perhaps by the very demon that inspected me the day before. Krasa crouched over the body, searching his pack for food."

  "I stole from the dead," Krasa says.

  "You did as you needed, to survive," snaps Vasilissa. "He had but little food on him—some nuts, a dried sausage—but she held it out to me, to share. I could tell we were sisters, joined by the same misery. And she told me her story, which was also mine: a demon had imposed itself on her, told her she was his, and demanded her obedience. Once it left, she dreamed, and thought choice had been torn from her. She could only go to the tower, and sacrifice, or be sacrificed.

  "It was then that your words returned to me," Vasilissa says. "I found myself repeating them. The resolve I could not find for myself, I found for her. As you told me, I told her. Our souls were our own. The demon's words were tricks. We swore to lend each other courage. But then we asked ourselves, where do we go? We can't risk returning to our homes. Each of us needed the other's shoulder, to lean on. Separated, we were nothing. And if weakness struck us again, it would be best to be far from our loved ones, where we could not hurt them. Or worse, lead them into corruption.

  "And then I had a thought, one that in my heart I credited to you. The pull of the tower on us would not yield. To resist it would break us. So we would accept it, but falsely. As the demons sought to ruin us with lies, we would do the same to them. Turn the tower's pull against it, and against whatever demon king dwells within it. We would find others like ourselves. We would lend them bravery, and borrow theirs. We would find the tower, enter its dripping gates, and once inside, find the demon king and stab it through the heart."

  "And so along the way to the tower, you met the others," Gad says.

  "First Maleb. Then Prebrana and her husband, Obida. These we met before crossing the border. Then another, named Knoroz. And finally, in the Worldwound itself, we came upon Elechan, and another named Lishnii."

  From the travelers' expressions when the names are mentioned, Gad can tell that Obida and Knoroz were lost. "Prebrana," he says, "tell us what happened to your husband."

  "We were wrong to trust the one called Knoroz," she says, her features hardening. "He seemed less sure than the rest of us. But by the time we met him we wanted to believe. One night as he and my husband stood watch, madness took him. He stabbed Obida in the throat, and tried to murder us as we slept and tossed. The tower told him to do it, he said, when finally we captured him and held him down."

  "You
slew him?"

  "With these hands," Prebrana says. Blue veins dance on her arms as she thrusts them out. "No one else did. I do not think it counts as a sin to kill a killer and a slave to demons. But if it is, only I am damned, and not the others."

  "And the other you mentioned?" Gad asks.

  "Lishnii?" says Vasilissa. "He starved."

  "Just yesterday," Prebana adds. "He knew a great many jokes, and told them to us whenever hope grew dim."

  "And from here you plan to go to the tower," says Gad.

  "It is very close now," answers Vasilissa. "We travel by night now. The dreams exert a lesser hold on us if we sleep during the day."

  "The nearer we get to it," says Prebrana, "the more readily we can see in the darkness."

  "And your dreams tell you how to navigate inside it?" Vitta asks.

  "Yes," says Vasilissa.

  "So if we took you there, you could guide us?"

  Gad resists the urge to wince. "Pardon us for a moment," he says to the strangers. "My companions and I have a matter to discuss."

  "Of course," says Vasilissa, gazing at Gad with an admiration her friends clearly do not share.

  Gad leads his companions behind the briars. "We're not taking them with us," he says.

  "You heard them," says Vitta. "They know the inside of the tower."

  "From demon-sent dreams," says Gad.

  "Unreliable, yes, but better than what we have, which is nothing."

  "They can barely stand," says Tiberio. "They're starving and we don't have enough to share."

  "Leaving them to fend for themselves won't get them fed."

  "They're not up to it," says Gad.

  "How can you be sure about that?" Vitta asks.

  "You're not seriously asking me that question."

  "They don't look like much, but they got this far. Demons breathing down their necks, and they kept themselves right. Maybe they've got more in them than you think."

  "They don't," says Gad.

  "Maybe they'll surprise you."

  "They won't."

  "Because you can meet someone and talk to them and know to a certainty exactly what they're capable of."

  "That's right," says Gad.

  "They're going to die out here anyway," Vitta says. "Let them die for us."

  "Good point!" says Hendregan.

  "No," says Tiberio.

  "This is no time to be ruled by sentiment," says Vitta.

  "Let them die for Mendev," says Gad.

  "Yes, that's the better way of saying it."

  "That's not what we're going to do."

  "Why not let them decide?"

  "They mean well, but we can't depend on them," says Tiberio.

  "Perhaps not," says Vitta.

  "I'll put my life in your hands, or Gad's, or Calliard's," says Tiberio. "Jerisa's too. But not theirs."

  Hendregan counts on his fingers, as if wondering whom the half-orc has omitted from his list. He opens his mouth as if to object, then reconsiders.

  "I concede the point," says Vitta.

  "Good," says Tiberio.

  Hendregan shuffles off to start a fire. He gathers oily leaves and ignites them by muttering the simple words of a magical cantrip. They burst into smoky flame.

  "So the two parties remain separate," says Vitta. "There must still be a way to use them."

  "Use them?" says Tiberio.

  "As a stalking horse."

  "No," says Gad.

  "They're going in regardless," says Vitta.

  "I'm going to talk them out of it."

  "They appear determined."

  "I can try, at least."

  Vitta shrugs.

  Gad returns to Vasilissa and her companions. Vitta and Tiberio stay where they are.

  He addresses her. "You might be wondering why we're out here," he begins.

  The gnome, Maleb, interrupts. "That we were," he says.

  Gad sets his shoulders. A group is ten times harder to sway than an individual. He will have to slowly tease it out. To identify the leaders, pick out the sides, read the unspoken shifts, and lever his way into the differences between them.

  He looks past the gnome, testing him to see if this offends him. "We're here for the same reason you are."

  And yes, the gnome seizes the group's authority. He steps between Gad and Vasilissa. "So you too have been dreaming of the tower?"

  "No," says Gad.

  "Then why have you come?"

  "Because I saw what the demons did. First in Krega. Then I saw what they did to your friend. And I decided that it had to stop. So I gathered a team. Each one of them greatly skilled, and accustomed to danger. What were you, Maleb, before the demons stole your life from you?"

  He shrinks a little. "A potter," he says.

  "And the rest of you—farmers and tradesmen, yes?"

  They reluctantly nod.

  "Your courage moves me. You know why?"

  None of them wants to answer. Finally Vasilissa says it: "Why?"

  The gnome eases away.

  "It moves me because it's what you have. My team and I, we don't need to be brave. We're trained. To fight, to find our way, to survive in the wilderness. The wizard over there, he can call into being a fireball big enough to engulf a dozen demons. Of all of our swordsmen, I'm the least. But if you came at me with those weapons—even all at once, none of you would have a chance. Yet still, rather than give up your souls, you're ready to die.

  "There's no mistaking how much you've achieved by making it this far. You've tramped through a land of horror and madness, and here you still are. There is no place more terrifying than the tower of Yath, yet you're eager to go there.

  "But because you're brave, because you've survived so well until now, it hurts me to think you'll go through with it. I feel responsible. Vasilissa told you how I came upon her when the demon let her go, yes?"

  "Yes," they mumble.

  This is the hard turn, Gad thinks. He's scared them by praising their valor. Now he must give them a way out that leaves their pride intact.

  "When I said you were brave, Vasilissa, I had no idea what I was awakening. I wanted to give you the hope you needed to live, and to preserve your soul."

  "You did that," she says.

  "I did it too well, because I never meant for you to endanger yourself. I never meant for you to come here."

  "Not in so many words did you ask it of me," Vasilissa says. "But as I thought about what you said ..."

  "Don't mistake me. You've saved all these people here."

  "I wouldn't have done it without you," she says.

  "I don't think that's true," says Gad, "but I'll let myself believe it anyway. Now that I see who I'm dealing with, I have a tougher task for you. One that will take more guts than anything you've done so far."

  "What is that?" the gnome asks.

  "Go back to Mendev."

  "Never!" the gnome cries.

  "Hear me out," says Gad. "It's an awful favor to ask, having suffered so much. You're on the tower doorstep, and yearn to go inside. But just as we can disarm its traps and kill its warriors and wrench from it its occult secrets, you have it in you to do what we can't."

  "I'm onto you," the gnome says.

  "Show some respect," Vasilissa hisses.

  "His words, those are the trap," says Maleb. "He leads us down a path so that we can only answer as he commands. He says, You can do something we can't. And we're supposed to say, Oh what, oh what, O glorious stranger, tell us what!"

  "So you don't want to hear it?" says Gad.

  The gnome throws up his hands. "Go ahead, honey-tongue."

  "More cultists arrive here every day. Some are har
dened servants of evil. Others are still like you—frightened. Confused. Haunted. Buckling under the weight of demonic influence. The demons have the tower as their missionary. What do the demon-fighters have? They have you, if you agree to do it. The greatest blow you can strike is to find others like yourself, and lead them back to Mendev. Spread the word. Doom is not foretold. Mortals, no matter how humble, still control their destinies. Come back, if you must, to save more who are lost. But do not waste what you have by going to that tower. Leave that to us. If we fall, we can be replaced. We are thieves, my friends, thieves and troublemakers. We will never be in short supply."

  "Eloquent words," says the gnome.

  "Hush, Maleb," says Vasilissa.

  "Now it is our time to confer amongst ourselves," says Maleb.

  "Of course."

  Gad moves to Hendregan's fire to warm his hands. The sorcerer stares, mesmerized, into his own flames.

  Vitta hands Gad one of their last strips of flatbread. "How much of that speech did you have when you started?" she asks.

  "Most of it."

  "Most?"

  "I knew I had to give them a job other than saving themselves. But I didn't know what it would be until I got there."

  "Have they taken the hook?"

  "It's not in as far as I'd like."

  Vasilissa and the gnome exchange anguished gestures as the other ragged travelers look dumbly on.

  "Then we should kill them," Vitta says.

  Gad grimaces.

  "Think about it," Vitta continues. "What happens if they fail to swallow the gaff?"

  "Give them a chance to decide, at least."

  "Let's say they seem convinced as we bid them farewell. Then once on the trail they decide otherwise. That's possible, you concede."

  "They're not sure what they want. That makes them tough marks."

  "And it's not greed that animates them, so they're tougher still. So let's say we part on good terms, then once left alone they rediscover the virtues of their original plan. They go to the tower. Get themselves caught. Of course. Then what happens?"

  Gad watches them.

  "What happens," says Vitta, "is the demons torture them. Shred their flesh. Burrow into their thoughts. Slide like tapeworms into their dreams. And then they know about us. Either we're in the tower already, and the jig is up, or we arrive after them, and we're gutted at the threshold. One way or the other, it's over before it starts. We die. Or worse. Your entire plan, finished. All you've come here to prevent, proceeds. Mendev burns. The Worldwound devours its charred remains. Keeps on spreading. Tell me, how many die, if that's the way the story ends?"