The Worldwound Gambit

by Robin D. Laws

  At first glance, Jerisa takes them to be grotesquely rendered statues. On a closer look it's clear that they're neither chipped from stone nor carved from wood. These are corpses, skillfully preserved. Stuffed and mounted like the hunting trophies in Suma Castle's great hall.

  Gilded letters affixed to each pedestal proclaim the names of the victims. The definite half-elf was called Urio. The possible was Alatar. There is a Cleaon, a Razi, and an Ignacy. Two of the men are named Gronal. Though separated by a generation, a resemblance can be seen in their weathered faces. Jerisa wonders if they were father and son.

  She clicks a fingernail against the closest of the figures, a dark-complected man whose face when alive would have been wide and raffish. The tap reveals a hard coating, sealing in the preserved flesh. It is almost sticky to the touch, like a resin that has nearly but not entirely hardened.

  Jerisa suppresses a shudder. She tours through the maze of figures. Those in the back ranks reveal a history of rough transport: chipped lacquer, missing fingers. The row nearest the entrance looks fresher.

  She plunges deeper into the room to find a slab of wood outfitted with straps and buckles. A dark brown stain has seeped unevenly into its center. Scores along its surface show the use of various sharp implements to prepare the figures for display.

  In a corner sits a clay tub closed shut by a cork stopper. Beside it, a battered pail holds a handful of brushes, from the broad to the fine. Jerisa pops the cork. Inside is a brown, gluey substance. It gives off a heady whiff of naphtha.

  She pushes the cork back in and surveys the rest of the room, looking for another way out. She stops short before stumbling over an empty pedestal. Five gold letters announce the identity of its destined occupant: F R A T O N.

  Next to it sits another unused pedestal. Its label has only three fresh and gleaming gold letters: G A D.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The Beating

  Perception becomes excitation as Calliard rushes through a dead-end corridor covered in gummy skin. He lifts a trap door, enameled like a rotting tooth, and drops down in.

  Utter darkness compasses him. Now it is brighter to him than light. He sees the demon form before him from the stuff of blackness. The glowing eyes are last to materialize.

  "So soon?" Xaggalm asks.

  "Let's get it done with," says Calliard.

  "I was certain it would take you two more days to succumb."

  "What response do you expect to that?"

  Xaggalm wraps a shadow arm around him. "Self-justification. Excuses."

  Calliard hardens his stance.

  "Nothing to say at all?" says Xaggalm. "Ah, I see. You intend at least to deprive me of my pleasure. The resistant type to the end. I can extend this as long as I please."

  "Until I degrade myself before you."

  "That is the point of the transaction, Calliard. How long have you devoted yourself to the study of my kind?"

  "Too long."

  "And you expect to come here, and show defiance, and still win your reward?"

  "Your observation is valid," says Calliard.

  The demon general laughs. "How scholarly of you! You'll have to do better than that."

  The bard takes a deep breath. "Tell me what is required."

  "Surely you are conversant with the first steps, at least."

  Calliard lowers himself slowly to his knees.

  "Very good," says Xaggalm.

  "What words must I say?"

  "Words? Unnecessary, lute-picker. When you drink of this, the need for it becomes all the oath I need." The demon opens the vein in his wrist. "Open your mouth, baby bird." The shadowy ichor spatters onto Calliard's lips, teeth, and tongue.

  Jerisa hastens down the corridor toward their commandeered barrack. She sees Calliard heading toward the door from the opposite direction.

  They meet in front of it.

  "What are you doing?" he asks her.

  "No," she says, "what are you doing?"

  He wrenches open the door and slips inside.

  Gad arrives, pale and scratched, not long after.

  Vitta watches Hendregan as, with flaming hands, he scorches away a field of stingers sprouting from the wall. They loft in the air as threads of cinder before breaking apart.

  "Escape unscathed?" Vitta asks Gad.

  Gad throws himself onto his bedroll. "Mostly."

  Vitta adjusts her increasingly woebegone coiffure, pulling at her metal headpiece to twist it back into shape. "You didn't have to give it up to her, did you?"

  "What kind of boy do you think I am?" Gad answers.

  Jerisa, sitting in a corner, draws her knees to her chin.

  Tiberio stares ahead.

  "Are you good, Tiberio?" Gad asks.

  The half-orc shakes his head. "They're hinting at something. Something bad."

  "What do you mean?"

  "They mentioned it before and then let it drop. Now they've taken it up again."

  "I'm in no state for riddles, Tibe."

  "They're suspicious of me, and from the hints they're dropping they're going to test me."

  "Test you how?"

  "Let's end this, Gad."

  Hendregan breathes rings of fire and watches them drift to the ceiling. They leave circular scorch marks. The room rumbles discontentedly.

  "Cut that out," Vitta snaps.

  "No flame, no light," Hendregan replies.

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "Air on your skin is simply slow fire. Rust is slower fire still. All is flame, and will be returned to flame."

  "That clears it up," Vitta says. She turns to Gad. "Tiberio's right. What are we waiting for? There's nothing more to be gained or learned here. Why aren't we going?"

  "We were waiting," says Gad, "for all the pieces to come together."

  "Were waiting, past tense?"

  "Past tense." He produces Isilda's pendant, with the mark of Yath appearing as a flaw in its central gem.

  Vitta reaches for it. "Finally something we can sell," she says.

  He pulls it away.

  "So we're ready?" Vitta asks. "Finally? Before the demon-ridden sentinels force Tiberio to some awful atrocity, or this chamber comes to life and eats us?"

  "Calliard," Gad asks. "Are you good?"

  Calliard nods.

  "He doesn't look good," says Jerisa.

  Vitta bounds over to her. "That's enough out of you, you morose little—"

  "Enough, Vitta," Gad warns.

  Vitta looms over Jerisa. "We need reasons to go, not reasons for fear. We've got enough of those as it is."

  A knife has wriggled its way into Jerisa's hand. "You think I want to prolong my stay here, halfling?"

  Gad slips between them, steering Vitta away. "We all understand that's the tower talking, yes? It's in our heads. Like we expected. Our supply of the salve is wearing thin. If you were the tower, what would you want to do to us?"

  "Pit us against each other," Vitta mutters.

  "That's right. So we're not going to let it win, are we?"

  "No," says Vitta.

  "We're going to tear it down, yes?"

  "Yes," says Jerisa.

  "We're ready to burn it?" asks Hendregan.

  "Metaphorically or otherwise, yes, Hendregan, we're ready to burn it."

  The fire sorcerer claps giddy hands together.

  "And," says Gad, "we're going to be steely. We're going to find reserves we didn't know we had. Yes?"

  "Yes," says Tiberio.

  "Because we're going to need them," says Vitta.

  "And then the last obvious point I always make," says Gad.

  "We're not greenhorns," says Vitta.

 
; "Humor me," says Gad. "Call it a ritual."

  "Go ahead and say it, then."

  "I say it because someone always forgets."

  "I said, say it."

  Gad says it: "Getting the thing? That's not the rip."

  Jerisa completes his thought, a lesson learned by rote: "The rip is getting out after you've got the thing."

  Jerisa returns to the group after one last errand. She leads Gad, Tiberio, Hendregan and Vitta down below. They climb down through the well, edge through the tunnels, and reach the guard post. Tiberio goes ahead. He finds the demon-ridden men waiting for him.

  "You'll turn that body into a glob of fat if you're not careful," Baatyr tells him.

  "I don't understand," Tiberio says.

  "Always off scouring food," Baatyr says. "It's as if you don't love us, Tiberio."

  "Looking for food is not finding it. If only you would share ..."

  Baatyr scoffs and stalks over to a rickety chair. Tiberio looks around. Only Aprian is there with him.

  "Where have the others gone?" Tiberio asks.

  Aprian bares his teeth, in what is meant to be a grin. "They're finding you a present."

  "Food?" Tiberio asks.

  "You can treat it as such," says Baatyr. "Afterward, if you want."

  Tiberio slumps against a wall. Baatyr and Aprian laugh at him.

  The sound of an approaching group snaps them to attention. They seize their weapons and clank over, ready to confront the newcomers.

  Gad, the others behind him, grunts at them. The most outlandish of the captured helmets obscures his face.

  "What did you say?" Aprian demands.

  "I said, let us pass, meat-rider," Gad replies.

  Aprian places the point of his sword at Gad's throat. "You'll eat those words, cultist. None are permitted here, save by a general's permission."

  Gad dangles the sapphire pendant in front of him. "And by this, the emblem of Isilda's favor, I prove to you my right to pass."

  Aprian lowers the sword.

  Gad moves confidently toward the round opening that will take them on toward the orb; the others follow. Before Gad reaches it, the absent guards step through the opposite door. They bring with them a weeping, starving figure, his head and shoulders covered by a burlap sack.

  "Please don't," the prisoner says.

  Hendregan closes his fist. Blue flame appears around it.

  Gad whacks his shoulder. "Don't steal their fun," he says.

  A tense instant flickers by. Hendregan douses the fire. He follows Gad through the opening. Jerisa and Vitta go with him, leaving Tiberio with the possessed guardsmen.

  Baatyr produces a roll of soft leather bound by a gut string. Its contents clink together. Baatyr carries it to a crudely assembled wooden table. He unties the string, revealing an assortment of torture implements. Tiberio sees scalpels, pliers, nails, a hammer, and a series of hooks. Except for their well-honed blades, the devices are crusted with rust.

  Aprian shoves the sobbing captive into Tiberio. "Your present has arrived."

  Jerisa leads the remaining members of the party to the wall of demon heads. As before, Hendregan steps forward; the others hang back. "Once more, my brothers," he intones. He steps up to transfix them. When he has them wholly entranced, Jerisa takes Gad and Vitta past and into the labyrinth of shadow.

  When they have reached their destination, and Gad stands for the first time in front of the chaos vault, Vitta says, "It's bad, isn't it?"

  Gad puts his helmet back on so he doesn't have to see so much of it. "Worse than I imagined."

  "You can't imagine this," says Vitta. "You have to see it."

  "But shouldn't," says Jerisa, copying Gad's trick.

  "So you figured out how to get through it," Gad says.

  "Watch me," says Vitta.

  "I'd sooner hear you describe it."

  Vitta removes a jagged length of iron from her pack. It is the scrap she took from the trap she disarmed on the plain of cages—the urannag. Its end is scorched and partially melted. "It's a matter of rational principles after all. I feared that I'd finally found the perfect vault. The one I could never crack.

  "Locks are mastered through logic. You learn how they think—or, to say it better, how their designers thought—and work to defeat them within the parameters of natural law. The nature of metals, their relative hardness, and how they are shaped in a forge. The mathematics of geometric shape, keys against tumbler. These are the factors that determine a lock-breaker's success. Rational, predictable, reliable factors.

  "Chaos is the enemy of logic. It cannot be out-thought because there is no thought in it. A lock of pure chaos, one might theorize, would by its nature resist all effort to break it.

  "Yet—and this is the key, the figurative key that allowed me to understand what my literal, physical key would be—a chaotic lock is itself a paradox, a contradiction in terms. An oxymoron."

  "An irregular pattern," Gad says, sneaking a look, against his wiser judgment, at the sickening swirl of the chaos vault.

  "Precisely," says Vitta. "You can either have a pattern, or an irregularity, but you can't have both. Not in the same object. And that's what a chaos vault is—an irregular pattern. Chaos doesn't contain things, lock them in, control them. That's the job of its eternal opposite, the law principle. Such is the arrangement of the spheres and planes, the core structure of existence. A law beyond law."

  Jerisa fidgets, pointedly.

  Vitta pays her no mind. "So in order to be a lock at all, a chaos lock must have within it a kernel of its cosmic adversary: order. So all I have to do to impose order on this is to locate the kernel, and seek leverage from there."

  She hoists up the chunk of ruined cage. "Every lock or trap devised in the Abyss, or through demonic power, is then to a greater or lesser extent a contradiction of itself. The more sophisticated the device, the more of the law principle it omits. Which means ..."

  "A lesser chaos trap contains more law than a greater one," finishes Gad.

  Vitta excitedly approaches the rushing vault. "Exactly. And is therefore, according to the rudiments of occult theory, contagious. This piece of the lesser trap will introduce more order into the chaos vault door. The reaction, once triggered, accelerates and multiplies. Corrupting corruption itself."

  "Fighting paradox with paradox."

  "Perhaps we should do this now and talk about it later," Jerisa says.

  "Indeed," says Vitta. She times the interplay of moving elements in the translucent door, performs a last mental calculation, and with great force jams the piece of demon-cage into the demon-vault. Blinding green sparks ring the point of impact. Pale beryl flames run down the cage bar, flaring around Vitta's gloves. The chamber floor pitches; its walls shudder and groan. Gad and Jerisa brace themselves. Vitta fights the door as a vortex forms around the point of impact. The cage bar wrenches up; she nimbly tucks in her arms and legs, riding with it. An order leeches into the mad scramble of competing shapes centered on the bar. The door tries to absorb the bar, pulling Vitta toward it. She lets go, landing on her buttocks and skidding backward into Gad. A demonic face appears in the door. The impact point has become its mouth. As it tries to suck in the bar, the translucence of the door fades. The demon face melts away, replaced by simpler forms. The unearthly substance transforms, becoming mundane: iron chased with flanges of steel. Recognizable locks and wheels appear in its surface, along with rivets, joins, and lines of solder.

  "So now you unlock it," Gad says.

  "Don't have to," replies Vitta. "The contamination does all the work."

  Wheels spin. Tumblers click. The bar, its end melted and smoking, clatters to the floor.

  The vault, now a pair of doors segmented in the middle, swings wide, allowing access to the insectoid pedesta
l and the orb it contains.

  "We could simply work detection magic on you," says Aprian, "and peer into your soul, Tiberio." The possessed warrior jabs a swollen finger into the half-orc's breastplate. The demons have not been taking care of the stolen bodies. They've been sparring with one another to pass the time, and now bear a series of bruises, scrapes, and infected wounds. "But where would be the joy in that?"

  Baatyr takes a happy clout at the back of the prisoner's head. "Xaggalm cannot station us here, no matter how important our post, and expect us to succumb to boredom."

  "Diversions must be had," says Ergraf. "Don't you agree?"

  "Naturally," says Tiberio, striving to match their mocking casualness. "If you must pretend to suspect me, merely to justify laying hands on some cultist, I'll not blame you. Much."

  Aprian barges closer to him, their armor pieces banging together. "Oh, this is no pretense, Tiberio. And this equanimity, in the face of such an accusation? You are no demon, Tiberio."

  "It is not a demonic obligation to rage stupidly at every provocation. Should I lash out against all of you at once? Or bide my time, pick you off one by one, and exact a vengeance that is cold and certain?"

  Tiberio's threat appears to give them a moment's pause.

  Aprian recovers first. "No such action will be required. Prove yourself to us now. If you are one of us, the pleasure of the trial will outweigh the sting of any insult."

  "Easily said," says Tiberio, "for you."

  "Let us acquaint ourselves with the vessel for your trial," lisps Baatyr. He pulls the hood from the quaking cultist. "Who might you be, wretch?"

  The prisoner is a gaunt human of Kellid stock. Jaundiced skin and sunken cheeks declare his malnourishment. The effect accentuates the bulbous shape of his skull so that it seems monstrously enlarged in relation to his teetering, bony frame. Grime sits deep in his wrinkled flesh. He smells of blood and urine and the tower's dank organic stench. A few remaining teeth dangle from pus-dotted gums. He tries to speak; terror reduces him to a series of plaintive gasps.