by T. H. Lain
Regdar shushed him, and Naull silently applauded his patience. It took a minute more than she thought it would, but eventually her eyes locked on a chip of mortar at the edge of the door. She clearly saw her hand extend toward it and tip the mortar chip down as if picking it out of the wall. The door swung wide, revealing—
Naull shook her head, wiping the spell away, with her hand still poised an inch from the trigger. With the magic gone, she couldn't see the door.
"Is that the latch?" Regdar asked.
She thought about opening it to show off her cleverness but quickly reminded herself what might be behind the door. She swallowed and found her throat dry and painful.
"Just, um..." she said. "Just scratch it like you're trying to pull it out, and the door will swing inward."
Regdar gave her a smile that she tried to return, then he turned to the tracker.
"I'll take point from here," the lord constable said.
Jandik didn't argue. None of them did.
Vargussel threw open the door to his study and went immediately to the apothecary's cabinet in which he stored his spell components. He opened just the four drawers he needed and quickly gathered up the components of the spell. Heedless of whatever papers might have been on his desk, he ran through the spell as quickly as possible, mixing the noxious components in a sizzling, smoking paste that almost caused a sheet of parchment to catch flame.
The mixture was gone in a puff of smoke, and Vargussel finished the spell. He closed his eyes and formed in his imagination a picture of the lord constable's face. It took no more than a few heartbeats but Vargussel found his heart racing and his fingers tapping with impatience as the image formed more clearly, then took life in his mind.
Regdar was in the sewers. Vargussel could see him as clearly as if they were standing toe-to-toe, though in truth they were separated by a mile or more.
Stairs, the lord constable said, his voice echoing in Vargussel's mind, somehow disconnected by magic, time, and distance from the image of his lips forming the words.
Vargussel hissed out a curse. They were at the sewer stairs. They had found the second of his secret doors. They would be in the slaughterhouse soon enough.
The wizard watched and listened as Regdar mustered his pitiful force of impotent city watchmen and some girl Vargussel had never seen. They started up the stairs.
I had time, Lord Constable, Vargussel thought. I was ready for you. You'll see just how ready soon enough.
As Regdar and his people ascended the stairs, Vargussel fingered his amulet, watching, waiting patiently.
Regdar fought the urge to crouch the whole time he moved up the stairs. The ceiling was tall enough so that he could stand up straight, but just barely. The stairs were wider than he'd have expected, though. The telltale scratches ran all the way up the ceiling and lined both walls. Whatever it was they were tracking had definitely gone that way, back and forth maybe dozens of times.
The stairs looped back over themselves and stopped at a wider space, like a vestibule or foyer. Straight ahead of them was a heavy oak door bound with iron bands. Regdar stopped, waiting for the others to gather, though only Lorec and Jandik could fit in the space behind him. He couldn't even see Naull.
"I make it about sixty feet up from the sewer tunnel," Regdar said.
Lorec shrugged, and Jandik nodded.
"We should be about ten or fifteen feet below the surface, if I guess right," the tracker said.
"Basement depth?" asked Lorec.
Regdar shrugged and turned to examine the door. There was no obvious lock, just a big, heavy, iron ring.
"Why am I getting a bad feeling about this door?" Regdar asked no one in particular.
"Because you're not an idiot," Sergeant Lorec answered, then seemed to remember himself. "I mean, because you have good instincts, Lord Constable."
Regdar waved off the young man's embarrassment and briefly pined for Lidda. She could have examined the door for traps, removed them, then picked the lock. Regdar sighed at the thought that what he needed right then was a thief, but he was surrounded by the watch.
"I'll open it, milord," Lorec said, squaring his shoulders.
Regdar smiled, held his shield up to cover his face, and said, "I've got it, Sergeant, but thank you."
Reaching around his shield, Regdar tugged at the iron ring, but the door held fast. Nothing shot, squirted, exploded, or hissed out at him, and he didn't drop dead or burst into flames, so Regdar had to assume it was just locked.
"Stand back," he said.
The two men pushed back to the top of the stairs, the others giving way behind them.
Regdar whirled and kicked the door hard just below the iron ring. The blow sent a resounding thud echoing down the stairs and tendrils of electric pain tingling up Regdar's leg. The door didn't budge.
"You hit that hard, milord," Lorec said. "It damn well should have opened."
Regdar rubbed his leg and called for Naull.
By the time she made her way up the stairs through the others, Regdar's leg was beginning to feel normal again.
"I've heard there are spells to keep a door closed," he said.
Naull looked at the door, took a long, deep breath in the stale but not odorous air, and said, "One or two. I had a feeling we'd be in a position like this, breaking into a murderer's secret hideaway and all."
She stared at the door and whispered a string of nonsense words. It seemed to Regdar that they should have echoed more in the confined space. Once spoken, the words fell dead as if they had weight.
There was a click, then a creak, and the door eased open a few inches.
Regdar put out a hand to push past Naull, startling her.
"Jandik," he said, "bring that light up."
The tracker came forward and Regdar carefully drew his greatsword. He stepped through the door into a wide room made from mortared flagstones. There was another iron-bound oak door in the wall to his right and a third across the room. A single sheet of parchment was nailed to the door on the other side of the room. Regdar could just barely make out what looked like writing from across the dimly lit room. Otherwise the space was empty and seemed not to have been used in some time.
Jandik stepped in next to Regdar and they both examined the floor. Thick dust was everywhere but there were obvious tracks—furrows almost—connecting all three doors.
"Looks like either one," Jandik said, "or both."
As the others filed into the room, Regdar said, "Sergeant Lorec, take Jandik, Asil, and Samoth, and go through that way." He pointed at the door with the parchment nailed to it and Lorec started crossing the room immediately. "Naull, Lem, and Drahir will come with me this way. Bring me that parchment first, though," he added.
Lorec was already there. Regdar saw him reach for the parchment while leaning in to read it from Samoth's lanternlight.
The sergeant's hand never made it to the parchment before it was blown off in a blast of air, fire, wood, iron, dust, blood, and shattered bone.
Regdar was pushed back and fell sprawling against the wall, only dimly aware of pain and heat, screams and grunts.
"Damn you," Vargussel muttered to Regdar, though the lord constable couldn't hear him. "Have you no intellectual curiosity at all?"
The explosive runes were meant for Regdar, but who knew the lord constable would send some lowly watch sergeant to read it?
Though it was hard for Vargussel to see through the clouds of dust and smoke filling the room, he could see Regdar scramble to his feet, virtually unharmed. The young woman was coughing, waving away the smoke, but also still standing. One of the watchmen at least seemed to have survived, and he ran out of the room, coughing and gagging.
The smoke continued billowing and Vargussel could just make out the shape of a man laying on the floor, his skin and clothing ablaze.
Vargussel smiled at the fact that he'd hurt them at least—maybe enough to turn back their little expedition into his private affairs. He stopped sm
iling when he heard the woman begin casting a spell.
She ran through it well, managing not to cough, and Vargussel cursed her the whole way.
What will it be? he thought. A gust of wind, a wind wall...something to blow away the smoke?"
The room filled with pelting, fast-driving sleet. The dull crystals were driven by a strong wind, falling almost sideways in the confined space. The few watchmen that still stood scurried around in a panic as the woman tried to assure them that it was "all right" and that they shouldn't panic.
"Sleet storm," Vargussel whispered, then thought: This one has a flair for the dramatic.
It didn't take long for the conjured storm to clear the room of smoke, drive the dampened dust to the floor, and put out the fires.
Vargussel shrugged. At least he could see better.
The runes did their work well. The sergeant was dead. His right hand was gone completely and his face was a blackened, ruined mass of scorched flesh. The watchman who held the lantern for his sergeant had been thrown back a good eight feet and lay crumpled on the floor in a position only someone with a broken back could accomplish.
One of the others seemed to have stabbed himself through the thigh with his own sword. He sat against a wall, twitching, shivering in a pool of freezing sleet, bleeding.
Japdik, Regdar called to the man as he slipped across the floor to him. It's all right. You're going to be all right.
That made Vargussel laugh.
"Don't let me..." Jandik gasped, blood foaming on his quivering lips, his eyes rolling up to lazily scan Regdar's face. "Don't let me...die here. It stinks."
Regdar forced himself to laugh and got a smile from the wounded tracker. He was rifling through his pack, crouching over the fallen watchman.
"You're not going to die here," Regdar reassured the man. "You're under my command, and I don't remember giving you any such order."
"Lorec..." Jandik coughed out, "and Samoth..."
Regdar's fingers found the vial he was looking for and pulled it out of his pack with a jerk.
"I'll deal with them myself," Regdar joked darkly as he peeled the wax off the cork. "Now, I want you to drink this...all of it."
"No..." the tracker mumbled halfheartedly, wiping sleet, blood, and dust from his hair. "Don't waste that on—"
Regdar pushed the vial past the tracker's lips and smiled again as Jandik greedily drank the contents of the vial. When it was empty, Regdar gently drew it away from Jandik's mouth. The tracker leaned forward, trying to suck any last drop from the vial.
"Easy," Regdar said, "you got it all. It should just take a—"
He stopped when he heard something he thought was an armored footstep echo quietly from the dark space behind the ruined door.
"Did you hear that?" Naull whispered as Regdar stood.
Jandik coughed, wiped his lips on the back of a hand, and coughed again. The second time, no blood came with it. The tracker took a deep breath.
Regdar put up a hand for silence and the group of survivors obeyed. As he waited for the sound to come again, Regdar scanned the corpse of Watch Sergeant Lorec, doing his best to see the ruined body of one of his men in terms of resources rather than emotion. His eyes settled on the sergeant's sword just when the sound came again. There was no mistaking it that time.
Regdar held his greatsword in one hand as he bent to retrieve the dead sergeant's shining, polished long sword. It was probably an heirloom, and Regdar quickly, silently promised himself to return it to the sergeant's family, but he had use of it first.
"Something's moving in there," Regdar whispered to the others, who had gathered behind him.
He flipped the long sword over in his grip and held it out, pommel-first, to Lem, the next in line among the watchmen. Lem took the sword, admiring its gleaming blade.
"I can't take this," Lem whispered. "This is magical, or I'm a son of a naga."
"Shut up and use it," Regdar replied, putting both hands on his own greatsword. "Stay right behind me. Whatever is in there, I want you to kill it. Understood?"
Lem nodded, then exchanged a worried glance with Asil and Drahir.
"Drahir," Regdar continued, "get up here with that lantern. Stand just behind Lem. Naull, I need you behind Drahir. Asil, stay back with Jandik and keep an eye on our exit."
"I'm fine," the tracker said as he staggered to his feet, leaning against the wall and wincing with pain. "That potion did the trick."
Regdar was about to protest when the sound of a pile of rocks shifting—it could only be that—echoed from the space behind the door. He knew the time for planning and talking was over, and he stepped across the threshold into darkness.
"Go on, fools," Vargussel murmured to the image in his mind. "Let the little one serve some function after all."
The parchment and the spell cast on it had been a ruse—simple but effective. It hadn't managed to kill Regdar but it was succeeding in its second mission: drawing intruders down the wrong path.
Vargussel watched Regdar slip into the shadows. The mage rubbed his hands together nervously in anticipation of the moment when—
The lord constable sank into a fighting stance and called out, Engaged!—whatever that meant.
The dread guard stepped up over a pile of rubble—stone, bricks, and wood piled three feet high—where one of the walls had collapsed, decades gone by. Regdar stood in a corridor that ran the length of the west end of the slaughterhouse's basement. To the lord constable's right was the ruin of two rooms that once served as storage but had come to be the watchpost of Vargussel's earlier effort in the creation of a magical construct.
The dread guard had cost Vargussel dearly at the time, but it proved too stupid, too slow, and too weak for his greater purposes. It could never wield the death ray but it could pick off unwary intruders.
Regdar easily deflected the dread guard's first attack but the construct fought on. It had no other choice, no survival instinct, no independent mind.
Vargussel sat back and watched.
Naull could see the man who attacked Regdar but couldn't see his face. He was wearing a rusted but once grand suit of banded armor and an elaborately plumed helm with a visor that covered the whole of his face. The broadsword with which he deftly parried Regdar's bigger blade was undoubtedly enchanted.
The man was shorter than Regdar by a hand or more, and though the armor was heavy, Naull couldn't imagine the dark, rusted knight making the booming footsteps Regdar and other witnesses had described. Still, she'd learned not to judge a book by its cover, and she knew well enough that though he looked like a normal man, he could still be strong enough to flip over the bed. The holes in the floor had been carved with magic, and the young aristocrats had been killed magically as well.
Naull brought to mind a simple spell that she hoped might end things quickly. In the cramped, tumbledown space, Regdar was slashing at the knight with his greatsword, keeping Lem and the others back. Jandik looked like he was itching to fight but his wounds were still too painful, and he had trouble just keeping on his feet. From the others Naull could sense the same palpable feeling of relief that she was experiencing herself. They'd found their murderer and he was a man in armor, not a monster, not a godlike steel demon from some sewer-reeking hell.
Naull cast the spell, focusing all of its energy at the dark knight. She fully expected him to crumple to the rubble-strewn floor at Regdar's feet, fast asleep, but the armored warrior didn't oblige. To Naull it seemed as if the spell had passed right through the strange man as if he wasn't even there.
There could be any number of reasons for that, she told herself, but still….
She felt that sense of relief and hope quickly fading back to anxiety and panic.
Regdar banged another of the strange knight's attacks away while stepping back and to the left. He'd taken the measure of his opponent and found the dark knight strong and insistent, brave and relentless—but slow and predictable. He expected the knight to slash high at his throat
with a cross-chest backhand, and that's just what the mysterious man did.
Rather than wave his own sword in front of himself to parry the slash, Regdar crouched and let the blow pass just over the top of his head. The dark knight was momentarily unbalanced with most of his weight on his right foot and his left foot almost off the floor.
Regdar let himself fall back on his rear as he kicked out with his right foot, slamming it hard into the inside of the dark knight's right knee.
The stranger's right knee emitted a loud snap and collapsed, sending him sprawling in a clatter of steel onto the top of the rubble pile. Regdar was surprised that the man didn't grunt, cry out, or make any sound at all either when his knee was dislocated or when he fell facefirst onto a pile of sharp stones and splintered wood. The dark knight's helmet popped loose when his neck snapped at the end of the fall and before Regdar could spin up to his feet, the knight was already standing, even though he was missing a head.
The helm rolled off the pile of rubble and came to rest against Regdar's foot but it was empty. In front of Regdar stood the knight, his weight on his undamaged left leg, his sword swinging into a guard position, and just an empty space where his head should have been.
It was no man, Regdar realized, but a suit of armor come independently to life.
The armor hacked down with its broadsword and Regdar bashed the blade away so hard the broadsword whirled out of the animated gauntlet and clattered against the ceiling before sliding to a stop behind the pile of rubble.
The animated armor turned at the shoulders, as if it still had eyes or even a head to house them, and looked for its sword. Regdar chopped into its pauldron. The force of the blow drove the armor suit down to the rubble.
It reached out a hand for Regdar's throat but the lord constable jerked back, freeing his sword from the twisted metal of the thing's shoulder, then punched through with the point of his greatsword into the thing's breastplate. The wide, heavy blade sank into the space where the dark knight's heart should have been, and the armor twitched in response, then fell still.