Dark Path: Book Three of the Phantom Badgers

by RW Krpoun

  “I came here five years ago; I was a servant of a lesser liche who served the Dark Sun, and who tried to cheat the Gray Lord while selling artifacts. My master was no more, and I entered the service of the White Necromancer.”

  “The token is your talisman to protect you from the Dayar?”

  “Yes, milady.”

  “Are there guards on the stairwell you were about to use?” Elonia asked.

  “No, milady.”

  “Aside from the entrances, where are there guards posted?”

  “At the entrance to the treasure vaults, which I have never been inside, and at the main entrances to the Grand Archive; I have never been inside the Grand Archive.”

  “What about the liche’s chamber, are there Dayar there?”

  “There are none outside the Grand Chamber, but I have never been inside.”

  “You said there are guards outside the Grand Archive; are there Dayar guarding the lesser archives?”

  “No, milady.”

  “Has there been much construction within the underground complex since you have been here?”

  “No, milady, none. I am told that some storerooms and the archives were enlarged in the last decade, but not since I have been here.”

  “Has there been much traffic from the outside?”

  “One or two supply convoys from the Dark Sun each year, and two or three Orc trade caravans yearly. Twice Gold Serpent merchants have arrived, and three times others have visited, all followers of the Sundered Gate.”

  “How many lechtor are there here?”

  “Six, milady.”

  “How many Dayar, and how many vampires?”

  “None of the Anointed of the Night King, milady; perhaps a hundred Dayar in these two levels, and as many more outside on guard.”

  “Are the Dayar old?”

  “Very old, Milady; most have been with the Gray Lord for centuries.”

  “They’ll be damnably tough then, and quick to recover once the liche is dead. Are there any other creatures or warriors in this place that you know of?”

  “No, my lady.”

  “This is a map of the level we are on; this is the room we are in now; examine this closely and tell me what each room is used for, and if there are any new rooms or corridors. Point out exactly where each Dayar is. Maxmillian, take notes.”

  The terrified Brett hunched over the sheet of vellum, nervously sipping from the mug of wine the Badger Serjeant had given him and tracing the various corridors of the level the raiders were currently on, sending Maximillian’s pen dancing across a sheet of parchment. Then Bridget produced the map of the level below, and with strangely steady hands and a wooden expression, the servant revealed all he knew of those areas as well. Towards the end his voice began to fade, until the man quietly slid sideways from the keg of nails he had been sitting on; Henri had to catch him and ease him to the stone floor.

  “Poison?” Kustar inquired.

  “No, just something I picked up last year in the same chest of oddments that produced your poison; it is a very interesting narcotic which puts the mind to sleep very gently and slowly. Very useful for interrogations, as we have just demonstrated. Bind and gag him, then hide him well.”

  “Why not just cut his throat?” The Pargaie officer inquired, catching the silk cord Elonia tossed her.

  “The Torc prevents the liche’s magic from detecting us, but a creature as old in Undeath as it is can sense a death no matter what barriers you have around it. Leave his token with him as well; I don’t want the warding spells to mistake him for an intruder and sound the alarm.” The advocate considered the maps, now altered with red ink, and the page of notes Maxmillian had taken. “We’ll go down the stairs he was heading for, turn here and here, go along this way, and arrive at the west entrance to the liche’s lair, the Grand Chamber as they call it. Kill the liche, make a quick detour to these treasure vaults while everyone is stunned, then go this way, turn thus, take these stairs, and back to our entry point and out.” She went over the routes again, lining them with a blue pencil so that all knew the way. “Any comments?”

  Maxmillian measured the distances with a short ruler. “Assuming that these are done to scale, which seems the case, we will be outside the Grand Chamber in twenty minutes or so. What is the final plan of attack?”

  “From the Pargaie files we know that the Grand Chamber is a large room, one hundred feet on a side, set square with the compass. There are three entrances: the primary one, in the south wall, and two secondary, east and west. According to the files, the room is bare of furniture save a screen on a stone platform three feet higher than the floor, such as you might place a throne upon; the platform is constructed as three banks of stone, each higher square smaller than the one before so that steps are created on all sides. The liche will be behind the screen, of that I am sure. Flanking the platform are fourteen Dayar, seven to a side; no doubt they will be the best of the best.”

  “By the Eight, fourteen against three, those are suicide odds no matter how you stack them,” Maxmillian breathed. “Unless you and Henri slay the liche immediately, we won’t last for a minute.”

  “Seven to three, actually, since we’re coming in from the side door; you will have to deal with them in two groups, which will be a tremendous advantage,” Bridget observed unhappily. “Besides, magical battles take very little real time; I don’t doubt the issue will be settled long before the second group comes to bear.”

  “We could use the last Orb of Destruction,” Elonia offered. “Breaking into this place gave me an idea: what if we threw it at their feet?”

  “They would be dropped into a foot-deep trench,” Maxmillian nodded. “Trip up two or three and the odds get much better.”

  “Better, but far from good,” Kustar observed gloomily.

  “Remember, the Torc’s aura will make your weapons far more effective against the Dayar than would be the norm,” Bridget assured her. “It won’t be a fair fight. Now, one last point: if any of us are slain, we must take the body with us, at least to some rest point or safe place.”

  “Why?” Kustar eyed her curiously.

  “So I can say the burial cant over them,” the priestess explained. “No doubt there are lechtor here who are necromancers in their own right; once they recover from the shock of the binding ties being broken, they’ll be setting themselves up to replace their dead master. I won’t leave any of you to be made into Undead.” She smiled sweetly at the Nepas officer. “Not even you.”

  “Finally, after all this trouble, we’re going to begin,” Maxmillian commented to Elonia as Bridget stepped into the hallway, restlessly working his hammer and shield to loosen up his shoulders. “We’re going to put the White Necromancer down.”

  The Seeress nodded absently as Henri stepped out, Kustar close behind. Before she could follow, the scholar stepped up, hammer held in his shield hand, and pulled her close for a kiss. As the red-faced Badger stepped backwards through the doorway, the Seeress cocked an eyebrow at him, the ghost of a smile tugging at her lips.

  Weapons ready the raiders slipped down the curving stone ramp that made up the stairway, the sweating, peton-moss-covered walls pure bedrock. Kustar held her narrow-bladed sword, good steel forged by Black Dwarves, in a low-inside position, point about six inches from the floor and angled across her body, her dagger held reversed, the blade lying along her forearm. Inside she was terrified, but on the outside, where it mattered, she was calm, the professional Pargaie officer. She had seen fighting before, not only in the raids on Alantarn, but in a score of nameless skirmishes in her travels across a bloody and brawling world. She was confident in her skill and resilient strength.

  And in her toughness of mind, as well: service in the realm of the Dark Threll had been hard, with endless years lived on the knife’s edge of ambition and personal risk. Every day of her service had been lived with the danger of death or punishment, and it seemed to her that it had all been to prepare her for this moment, this underta
king. They were going to go in and put an end to the White Necromancer, and she was going to help them. Afterwards, well, that would take care of itself. The future, ambition, and her dark masters had become inconsequential these last few hours, thrown to the winds as her daring plan collapsed in upon itself, dragging her career, dreams, and life’s plans down with it. Now it was a relief to be operating as she had been trained, back in the field as it were, where you made your own luck and earned your victories.

  And someday, she promised herself, someday she would have a nice collection of small, sharp knives, neat copper pokers and a fire to heat them in, and a Healer to hand; Bridget Iola Uldo would be chained to a table of stout logs, and they would spend a few lazy days establishing just how much pain and degradation the advocate’s mind could take before she was a mewling, empty husk.

  Henri mouthed the key consonants of his best spells as they slipped down a side corridor towards the Grand Chamber. There wasn’t much here to distract him from his exercises; this level had been bored through the living rock, and then shored up with balks of tarred wood as a safety precaution. The glowing moss and the occasional rusting lantern bracket were the only decoration; occasionally they passed a single or double doorway with a functional frame and door(s) of rough wood stained to prevent rot and bound with blackened iron straps. And there were few enough doorways: shorn of the living’s need for food, heat, clothing, or sleeping quarters, this level was arranged in grim functionality, small and simply laid out. The functionality extended to the traffic as well: they were very near the Liche’s lair before they first heard footsteps approaching.

  At the sound of the footsteps Bridget, in the lead, froze and signaled to halt; a heartbeat’s time was spent confirming the origins of the noise before the advocate spun on her heel and led the raiders back at a brisk walk, silence being more important than speed. The Serjeant stopped in front of the last portal they had passed, an unmarked set of double doors, listened perfunctorily, and then motioned for the raiders to follow as she pulled one door open and darted through.

  Once inside and the door softly closed the five raiders split, pressing themselves against the walls to either side of the door, straining their ears for noises in the hall while looking for any occupants in their hiding place. Not that there was much free area to search: the room, which was half the size of the liche’s lair, was filled with floor-to ceiling bookshelves, with well over half of their shelves loaded with books, tomes, grimores, scrolls, portfolios, and bundles of written pages. A short passage bisected their room at their doorway, which was centered in one of the rectangular room’s long walls; the passage between the towering stacks led to an identical set of doors in the far wall. A free-standing bureau in the passageway held dozens of small drawers, each filled with neatly-written cards.

  Outside, the footsteps passed their doorway at a steady pace and dwindled away into the distance. The raiders heaved a collective sigh of relief.

  “Empty,” Elonia reported after cautiously working her way down the passageway, checking each aisle as she went.

  “Indexing system,” Henri whispered, sliding one of the bureau’s drawers shut. “Comprehensive system, I might add; thousands of hours of work just in setting it up and maintaining it.”

  “A lesser archive,” Bridget nodded, closing a book she had grabbed at random. “Just part of the liche’s collection of things necromantic. Each page here is devoted to some aspect of Necromancy, Undead, or the like. On our way out I’m going to indulge in some selected arson.”

  “From the looks of these cards, each archive has its own indexing system, with a master system elsewhere tracking all the works. Comprehensive, and safe, but not entirely foolproof. If we dump the drawers out it will seriously hinder the next person who tries to get anything from here.”

  “Go ahead, but dump them down the aisles so no one can see that it was done from the doorway; Kustar, give him a hand. Everyone take a fistful of cards with them, we’ll dispose of them elsewhere.”

  Bridget in the lead, the raiders left the archive and resumed their stealthy trek after strewing the contents of the drawers down each of the aisles. As they moved ever inward, the corridor widened, and a moss-free belt near the ceiling began to display a filigree of inlaid tiles in a gray and silver motif. Soon the moss was cultivated to grow within shallow grooves in the wall, and the lamp brackets were both more elaborate and showed signs of use.

  “We’re getting close now,” Bridget whispered. “Can you feel it, Henri?”

  “All too well. Either we’re right on top of the Grand Chamber or I’m going home.”

  “Remember, necromancy is a cumulative matrix-builder, and the liche has been in one place for decades, perhaps centuries. The Torc negates the aura, so it will be a fight on an even footing.”

  “Oh, that makes me feel all better,” Henri muttered. “I’ve always wanted a fair fight with a mage who was a master before my grandfather was conceived.”

  The Serjeant grinned and motioned them onward. Soon even Maxmillian and Kustar could sense the awful enchantment in the atmosphere, the eerie, soul-tingling quality of this place polluted by decades of unspeakable magiks. Their corridor finally ended in an intersection with a crossing hall whose floor boasted colored tiles in blue and green, and whose walls were covered in exacting mosaics depicting scenes of Undead doing battle with a wide vanity of peoples and creatures.

  Bridget consulted their map and led them to the left, the raiders unconsciously staying close to the walls as they slipped down the passageway. Two minute’s careful creeping brought them before a set of double doors made from elaborately carved teak planks whose rich surfaces spoke of decades of careful oiling and polishing, fitted with bronze hinges and handles kept at a bright sheen. The White Necromancer’s skeletal hand was prominent on both portals.

  “We’re here,” Bridget announced unnecessarily. “The west entrance to the Grand Chamber. I have a few final preparations before we go in; spread out and ready yourselves, and remember what I’ve told you about what this place can conjure. Nothing that appears to you can harm you.”

  She had been there for nearly a minute, but Elonia ignored her as she strapped her manoples in place, the bracer-borne short sword blades and their flanking disarming hooks being a legacy of a few years spent in and around Opatia, where the weapons were used to resolve duels. When the last strap was tightened and she had flexed her wrists and elbows to ensure that the bracers would not interfere with her movement, there was nothing else to do but look up and acknowledge Clarevia, the late Hold-Mistress of Alantarn.

  The Dark Threll, or rather, the non-corporeal spirit of a deceased female Direthrell, was perched daintily on a ghostly stool, dressed and appearing as she did just before Elonia had killed her almost a year ago, regarding the Seeress with an amused gleam in her eye. “My dear, how you do get around.”

  “I was expecting my father,” Elonia murmured, causally sweeping a manople blade through the Hold-Mistress’ form. The blade encountered nothing. “Can you feel that?”

  “Your father is obedient to my wishes, now as ever, and no, of course not. I merely came to watch you die.”

  “I hope you brought ration: you’ve quite a wait.”

  “I believe you overestimate your prowess; after all, you have no Felher to create a diversion for you this time.”

  “Don’t forget Era Ludio,” Elonia smiled. “A stupid and greedy Direthrell in a position of authority was a sizeable advantage. Do the two of you see much of each other?”

  Anger pulsed in the late Hold Mistress’ amber eyes. “You dare jest, mutt-slave, but your pathetic efforts will be for naught.”

  “Not all: I put you wherever you are now, and a lot of other Direthrell went that same day as well. And this after decades of betraying your spies and agents to the forces of the Eight. No doubt there are many a Pargaie operative with you who has me to thank.”

  “You have accomplished nothing, nothing at all. The Direthrell will
rule this world, of that there is no doubt! Your resistance is an annoyance, nothing more.”

  “Rule they may, but you didn’t live to see it, and you seem to be more than annoyed about it,” Elonia chuckled.

  Clarevia faded from view, leaving the Seeress feeling much better about life.

  Kustar dusted the hilts of her dagger and sword with powder from her pouch to ensure a better grip and worked her shoulders, loosening up; Bridget had warned her of the effects of the aura near the liche, but it was still a shock when she realized that Petor was leaning against the wall next to her. Giddy with surprise, she prodded at him with her dagger, hearing the point tapping against the wall behind him.

  “Do you mind not doing that? I can’t feel it, but I’ve had enough daggers jabbed into me lately,” the half-Orc grinned. “Surprised to see me?”

  “Quite a bit,” the Nepas officer nodded. “Although they told me you were dead.”

  “Yes, well, I was a bit careless, what with this being friendly ground,” the Thane explained, obviously embarrassed. “They baited me in, I dropped my guard for a second and it was all over. These’re professionals, with some sort of magical advantage. Sorry about not guarding you better.”

  “Is that why you came back, to apologize?”

  Petor shrugged, uncomfortable. “Well, yes, pretty much. Professional pride, you know: I hadn’t ever lost someone I’d been guarding, until you.”

  “Don’t worry about it: I should have considered the possibility that they would be in the area; the timing was right. The problem was, I’m a Pargaie officer: I spend my time investigating. I never considered what they were doing while I was digging into the past, damn the luck.”

  “Are you going to wriggle out of this?”

  Kustar shrugged. “Perhaps, with a bit of luck. If I do, their leader will come to regret it.”

  “The little dark woman? Good, give her one for me.”