The knocking on the door grows in intensity, and is then stilled.
Muffled voices filter through the wardrobe doors: Isilda's, and a man's.
Hoping to hear better, he cracks the doors.
"I did not like that at all," she says. "You will not knock like that again. Perhaps I will withdraw your right to knock at all."
Of the male voice, he can puzzle out only its scoffing tone.
"You knock as if you have the right to enter," she says.
In response, he hears surprise and protestation.
"You forget your place here, Fraton."
Fraton?
The new arrival has, Gad presumes, entered the room. Now Gad can hear him.
"I am sorry, my darling. The rigors of slaughter exhaust me. I have speckled sword and shield with the blood of a hundred champions. So naturally my next thoughts went to you." Now Gad can not only place but make out the voice. There is no mistaking it: it is Fraton. Fraton, cultist and traitor.
"I had to have you right away," he says.
Calliard and Vitta follow Jerisa into the limitless dark. She reaches out with Hendregan's fire-staff. Burning light throws into relief an inky labyrinth of narrow corridors. The walls roil and bend. Within their blackness, there are pools of still deeper darkness. She signals the others to move forward.
And walks into a wall. Staggering back and clutching her face, she bumps into Calliard.
"What the hell?" she whispers.
She motions for stillness as she waves the fire-staff across their path. In a dizzying play of impossible angles, the walls rearrange themselves. Gesturing for Calliard and Vitta to remain in place, she tentatively kicks at the join between wall and floor. The impact does not come. The corner is already somewhere else.
"The maze is moving around us," Vitta says.
"No," says Jerisa. "Wait."
She causes the fire-staff to snuff itself. Utter blackness comes. Calliard can't see the hand in front of his face.
"The wall ...what it's made of ..." she says, "We've seen it before. An object should either be dark, or illuminated. You can't get blacker than black. But you saw the way it swirled. A darkness that is absolute, and yet in places more absolute still."
"A contradiction in terms," says Vitta.
"Yes," says Jerisa. "Calliard, you know it."
Calliard allows himself an anxious clearing of the throat.
"The demon that led the attack on my castle," Jerisa says.
"Yes, I recall it," says Calliard.
"It was made of shadow. Same as this maze."
"Chaos shadow, from the depths of the Abyss," Calliard acknowledges.
"It's a demon, then?" Vitta asks.
"Insofar as it is part of the tower, and the tower itself is a demon," says Calliard. "Yes."
"I don't know about that," says Jerisa. "But this is how we navigate a labyrinth of shadow. Vitta, take my hand. You grab Calliard."
Vitta complies. With his free hand, Calliard reaches out, feeling the wall. It remains in place under his touch. They inch along, Jerisa pulling them through the dark.
"Shadows move," Jerisa says, "in harmony with a light source which is also moving. By carrying a moving source, like Hendregan's staff, I was causing the maze to shift. The only way through is without light of any kind. Without the moving light, the walls stay put."
"And how do we travel a maze we can't see?" Calliard asks.
"Vitta can answer that one."
"By memory," Vitta says, "and consistent right turns."
Time stretches forever in the black as Jerisa feels their way through. They see a green glow and head toward it. Finally the shadow walls open and they find themselves in a dripping cavern.
At the end of the cavern stands a sheer, partially translucent wall. Jerisa activates the fire-staff. Alert for traps, they inch their way to the wall. The surface of the wall flows and clicks and rattles. A series of locks and dials swim within it.
"It's a vault door," says Vitta, hushed.
Through its glassy substance, a crystalline orb can be seen. It hovers above a twisted, asymmetric pedestal that sluices forth a milky substance.
"The orb," Calliard says.
"Yes," Jerisa affirms. "That's it."
As they observe the vault door, it undergoes an accelerating metamorphosis. The familiar shapes twist and bend. The door becomes a ball, becomes a strip, becomes an ever-devouring recursion. Geometry devours itself, surrendering to a void of corruption. Perception fails.
Vitta falls to her knees, staring. "I can't open this," she breathes.
Jerisa doubles over, retching.
Calliard tries and fails to tear his gaze from it.
It is a spider a cancer a purulence a shimmering an unknowledge a strangulation a curse a destruction acidic gout fat wrapping encircling eating defecating undoing screaming intertwisting improbable exploding imploding parasitic a rotting a
corpsemetal
painflower
angeldeath
massacrestructure
voidhowl
"I can't even see this," says Vitta. "I'm looking but I can't see it. No, I see both everything and nothing at once. This is—this is—this is ..."
"Pure irrationality, given solid form?" suggests Calliard.
"It's in my brain," whispers the halfling. "The more I see it, the less I ..."
Calliard squats beside her. What worries him is that the door, this manifestation of chaos distilled, worries him so little. He feels his blood harmonize to its vibrations. The mesz in his body finds attunement with the vault. If he knew a lock from a hole in the ground, maybe he'd be able to help. "It's just a lock," he says. "Just another puzzle."
"No," she says.
"In its illogic, there must be a hidden logic of its own."
"Those words hold no meaning here," she says.
"They do, they do; it's just different, that's all."
"It's the end of locks, the death of keys ..."
"No, no, no, remember who you are. Remember how your mind works."
"It doesn't, not here."
"There has to be a way," he tells her.
"I can't," jabbers Vitta. "Can't can't can't can't can't can't can't ..."
Chapter Nineteen
The Wild Card
Isilda drops her voice. Now Gad can make out neither her words nor Fraton's. He catches only the shifting tenor of their volleying persuasions. The traitor paladin implores, wheedles, charms, jokes, demands. The Yath-priestess deflects, temporizes, warms, chills, commands, dismisses ...
Gad thinks about his shirt. Which room is it in? She took it off in her receiving room. Did she have the sense and subterfuge to kick it into her bedchamber? If so, it's likely safely concealed among her own messily heaped garments.
Suddenly, he is not sure where his dagger is. Did she take off his belt, and with it, his scabbard? He checks. No, he still has his weapon.
He prepares himself for what will happen if Fraton opens the wardrobe door. He draws the dagger. Envisions the angle of attack. Tries to recall how tall the paladin is. The dagger must be buried in Fraton's neck before he understands what's happening to him. He's too good to face in a head-on fight. Three times they've traded blows, and three times Fraton has triumphed. That gives Gad one strike. If he misses, he's lost. Unless Isilda intervenes on his behalf, and that's not a possibility he's prepared to bank on.
It will grant his blow extra force if he pushes off from the back of the wardrobe at Fraton. Gad leans against it, testing it to see if it will support his weight.
With a wooden thunk, the back of the wardrobe slips. It comes away to reveal an entrance to a hidden chamber.
Jerisa blocks Vitta's view of the vault door, bre
aking its hold on her. She reaches down, interlaces her slim fingers around the halfling's deftly stubby ones, and pulls her gently to her feet. Calliard follows. Jerisa douses the fire-staff. Taking the lead, with Vitta in the middle, she feels her way back through the shadow labyrinth.
They reach the wall of sculpted heads. Hendregan holds its collective gaze; they are as helpless to break with him as Vitta was from the vault door. Without looking away from the sculpted heads, he mouths the words, I'll meet you around the way.
Jerisa nods. They move into the low-ceilinged tunnel and wait. A thwarted chattering rises through the corridor. Frustrated, inhuman bayings reach a crescendo and fall silent.
Hendregan appears. He holds out a hand to reclaim his staff. Jerisa gives it to him.
"They were sad to part with you?" Jerisa asks.
Hendregan puffs out his cheeks and sticks out his tongue.
Jerisa tilts her head in weary disregard. They reach the wet slope. She fights for balance, working her way up it. She finds a horned projection jutting down from the arch above the slope and tests it for strength. Judging it sufficient, she ties a rope around it. She whistles to the others. Hendregan goes first. Calliard urges Vitta on. She takes second position with him behind her.
Hendregan disjointedly hums.
"You're doing that out loud," says Calliard.
"Yes," says the fire magician. He hums a few bars longer, then stops.
Approaching the guard station, Jerisa finds a flat and bony rock. She pours a heavy oil from a flask outfitted with a specially formed lid. It drips loudly onto the rock. The flask's lid allows her to precisely control the rhythm of the falling drops. The flask is the third of the three items Jerisa took from the monastery at Tala, the one she did not expect to find but liberated all the same.
To an unattentive listener, the falling drops join the general wash of sploshing and plopping that sounds constantly through the tower.
Tiberio knows the rhythm. It spells out his name in the old sound code of the southern pirate isles. He turns to the possessed guardsmen.
"This body needs sustenance," he announces.
"What of it?" jeers Baatyr.
"I hunger!" says Tiberio.
"Again, I say, what concern is that of ours?"
"Are there not rations here, to keep this meat alive?" He directs a meaningful gaze at a cask. He has seen them sneaking morsels of dried, discolored jerky from it.
They form a menacing ring around him. "What rations there are, we secured," says Aprian. "For ourselves."
"Xaggalm assigned me here. Surely he meant for me to share your provisions."
Baatyr guffaws.
"To one such as Xaggalm, the state of your gullet is surely of profound disinterest."
"How am I expected then to find food?"
All of them laugh.
"If I go for food, and Xaggalm seeks me, will I not be scourged?"
"Xaggalm never comes here, fool."
"Then I will go and hunt now. And what I find, I will not share."
"Go, dung-wrapper!"
He tromps away through the circular opening he used to come in.
The other demon-ridden men turn instinctively to their cask, turning their backs toward three of the four exits from their station. Jerisa nimbly steps into the room, throwing darts in hand. She urges the others through, then follows them out, unseen.
They reach the well-like vertical tunnel before Hendregan complains: "I could have burned those demon-men."
"You may get your chance yet," says Jerisa.
"The real people are still there, locked in those possessed bodies," says Tiberio.
"Even so," says Jerisa.
They climb up the rope.
The wardrobe door opens.
Gad wheels, stabbing outward, then stays his blow.
Isilda stands before him. He sees no sign of Fraton. She has wrapped herself in a velvet cloak, covering her revealing gown.
"You were prepared to murder him," observes the priestess.
"Obviously," he says.
Her smile is snakelike. "It is flattering when suitors fight."
Gad leaps from the wardrobe. "Where is he? I'll kill him still."
She peers behind him, seeing the dislodged back panel. "You didn't go back there."
"Thought about it," he says. "Didn't have time. Should I have been fleeing him, instead of waiting to stab him?"
She strokes his chest. "Are you asking me which one of you would win in a fight?"
He places his hand on hers, ending her caress. "I'm asking who that is."
"You're not to go after him."
"He's your husband, then?"
Isilda's giggle reminds him of breaking glass. "Husband?"
"If I'm the one hiding in the wardrobe, that makes him the husband."
"Hardly," she says.
He looks for a place to sit. There is only the bed. He stays put. "That was the knock of a man who reckons he has a claim on you."
"That was the knock of a man who has to knock."
With a slip of the shoulder she guides him out of the bedchamber and back into her receiving room. Gad masks his relief over the change of venue.
"Have I the right to knock?" he asks.
She drifts away from him. "You do not."
"He outranks me, then. In your affections, or as a soldier of Yath?"
Isilda turns. She studies his face.
Gad tilts his neck to show it at its most shockingly handsome angle. He sees this take effect on her.
She is pulled toward him.
Her tone falters. "I was about to say that curiosity ill becomes you. But you do have a way about you."
"A man discovers he has a rival. He'd be a fool not to learn as much as he can about him. You don't let many fools in here, I wager."
Suspicion blinks across her face. "There is more than one way to be a fool, Gad."
Now he moves her way. "I shouldn't have asked which one of us you favored more."
She stiffens. "There you are correct."
"That implies that you are a prize to be won. But you are more than that."
"What am I, then?"
"We are not creatures of petty morality. Whom we choose to couple with is no one's affair."
Though she lets his words hang in the air, they seem to mollify her.
"I am a man," Gad continues. "One who seizes what he desires."
"I sense that," she says.
"I am not accustomed to sharing."
"Few here are."
"This is what I understand you to be saying: where you are concerned, Isilda, I must accustom myself."
"You must not think of him at all."
"Because he holds power here? Not only with you."
"His name is Fraton. You think yourself a clever fellow?"
"The word clever is always a condescension."
"Nevertheless, be clever. Strive to remain unknown to him."
"It will help me to do that if you tell me who he is."
She pokes the tip of his nose. "You are a clever fellow. Now begone. My moods are quicksilver, and a weariness descends upon me."
"When will I see you next?"
"When you are summoned."
Isilda gives him her back. He heads for the door.
In their absence, the room they've appropriated has exuded a coating of pulpy saliva. Vitta assembles the pieces of a metal shovel from her pack and uses it to sweep the exudation into a corner. Jerisa examines the soft beginnings of an orifice that seems ready to open near the ceiling.
Gad paces. "So, then. Fraton."
"We should have guessed," says Jerisa.
He shakes his head. "There're plen
ty of priests and paladins who'd like to see us hang," he says. "That doesn't make them servants of Yath."
"That we know of," Jerisa replies.
"We have no idea when they turned him," ventures Vitta. "He could have been honestly persecuting us for years."
"Then he got to like how it felt to interrogate a sinner," says Gad. "First it starts with harsh words. The fiery rhetoric of unswerving virtue."
"Fiery," says Hendregan.
"It starts to excite him," says Gad, "to see the fear he puts in his prisoners. It's for their own good, he tells himself. Terror of sin will lead them to the gods of light. But the pleasure of it grows. Then one day he gets angry. He finds himself in a cell with a hardened prisoner. One who doesn't fear him. Maybe with a smart mouth."
"Someone like you," says Jerisa.
"For example during the Bolchev rip," suggests Vitta.
"It would be before then," says Gad. "He hit me like a man who was used to it. But the first time he lashes out, he doesn't mean to do it. Guilt haunts him afterward. Maybe he prays for guidance. Maybe he tells himself he won't do it again."
"But then he does," says Tiberio.
"But then he does. And he can't escape it this time—he liked it. And the next time he's quicker to remove the gloves. So he has to tell himself it's right. Iomedae needs her warriors to be strong. To be ruthless. To win. And when it's right to slap, or punch ..."
" ...it must then also be right to haul out the hot tongs and the thumbscrews," says Jerisa.
"And then one night he calls down Iomedae's powers. He tries to heal a comrade, or to sense the presence of an enemy."
"And nothing comes," says Jerisa.
"And nothing comes."
"She won't answer him any more. He's lost his righteousness."
"But he won't admit it."
"He's too arrogant for that."
"And eventually, one day, something does come in answer to his prayers. Something that is not Iomedae at all."
"A demon."
"A demon," Gad says. "If this happened not so long ago, in the past few months, maybe it's a servant of Yath. If Fraton's been turned for longer, maybe it's a sending from one of the demon lords. We could guess all day and not know which one. And it whispers into his ear: You know, Fraton, all these months, you've already been serving us. You just couldn't see it. Well, now you do see. And Fraton, you have two choices. You can repent your sins, unburden yourself to Iomedae's grace. Throw off all your prestige, your leadership of the Everbright Crusaders. You can scourge yourself and go off on an arduous quest of atonement. Or you can bow before me, and keep all the power you had before, and more besides. Continue to take the pleasures you've learned to love. The ones that celestial bitch Iomedae would humiliatingly strip you of. She'll humble you. We'll elevate you to a terrible throne. When we win, as we are about to do, you won't have to settle for the fear of a few wretched prisoners. All of Mendev will fear you. And you won't have to hide who you are. All you have to do is carry on as before. Win the trust of the other paladins. And one day, when the wound has opened far enough, we'll ask you to bring them to us, assembled into a single, shining army. And then we'll chew them to pieces. And then, with the defenders of Mendev gone, you'll lead your true army, an army of demons and demon worshipers and the demon-ridden. At its head, you'll ride into Mendev, lay waste to it, and claim your magnificent destiny."
The Worldwound Gambit Page 22