by T. H. Lain
Regdar withdrew his blade with a tooth-rattling shriek of steel on steel and stood ready for several heartbeats until he was satisfied that the thing wasn't going to get back up.
"Drahir," Regdar called back over his shoulder, "take its sword."
Vargussel was beginning to get nervous. The intruders had dealt with the dread guard too easily. He'd hoped it would kill at least one of the watchmen but Regdar hadn't even given them a chance to fight. The young mage had wasted a spell on it, at least, and Vargussel could take that as a minor victory, but overall the construct that had cost him forty thousand gold Merchants had hardly even frightened them.
"Think you killed it, Lord Constable," Vargussel hoped aloud. "Think that's what came for you in your bedchamber."
If Regdar was stupid enough to think that the dread guard was the assassin they were looking for, they might take their wounded and their assumed victory and go home.
This wasn't it, Regdar said to his men.
Vargussel hissed out an exasperated sigh.
"You may be suffering from late-onset intelligence, Lord Constable," he said to the image of Regdar, "but you've a long way to go before you get to me, and I've been smarter than you for a long time."
Grinding his teeth, Vargussel watched in silence as one of the watchmen retrieved the broadsword that alone had cost him nearly nine thousand Merchants. Regdar gathered his party around him, leaving his two wounded men in the anteroom, and pressed on.
The mage watched as they explored the ruined wing of the basement. They found the stairs leading up to the ground floor that had caved in and been blocked for decades. He watched them run through their elaborate rituals of listening, touching, feeling, thinking, and pondering at the first of two intact doors. Finally Regdar just kicked it in and Vargussel had to tap his fingers waiting for them to satisfy themselves that the room beyond was indeed empty.
They did the same for the second door, and Vargussel found himself yawning. They found the old stairs behind the second door blocked by another cave-in. They wouldn't get down to the killing floor that way.
"You'll have to come in the front door," the mage whispered, "just as planned."
Vargussel briefly wished for the confidence to laugh maniacally but instead he just set his chin on his hands and watched.
They regrouped in the anteroom, all eyes on Regdar, and Naull took a deep breath.
"What we encountered in the inn," Regdar said, "and what was described by witnesses was much bigger, much stronger than that suit of ghost armor."
"Dread guard," Naull said.
Regdar looked at her and she felt herself blush but didn't know why.
"It's a magical construct," she said. "Powerful mages use them as guards."
" 'Powerful' mages?" said Jandik, who could stand without leaning on the wall, though he still kept one hand pressed to his bruised midsection. "How powerful?"
Naull shrugged and said, "I'm not sure how to answer that. Its not as if there's a scale that assigns someone a number so you can immediately know the extent of his abilities."
"On a scale of one to ten," Regdar offered with a wink.
Naull shrugged again, and said, "Fifteen?"
The watchmen visibly sagged.
"Great," Asil whispered. "That's just great."
"You think someone's building these things and sending them out to kill people?" Regdar asked.
Naull shrugged a third time and said, "I have no idea. All we can know for certain is that the dread guard was built by someone and left in there with instructions to attack. The parchment with the explosive runes was put on the door by an equally skilled wizard. I don't know how long they sat there, but now that we're here, it seems they weren't guarding much of anything."
"And the dread guard, as you call it," Regdar added, "is smaller than what we're looking for."
Jandik took a deep breath and said, "It was a decoy."
Regdar nodded. Lem, Asil, and Drahir each took a step back. If Naull didn't know any better, she thought it looked like they were ready to run. She realized then that she didn't actually know better and they might be.
"There's only one other way out," Jandik continued.
All eyes were drawn to the door Naull and Regdar had been about to open when the parchment exploded.
Regdar, his greatsword still in his left hand, strode to the door in question and stopped within arm's reach of it. He glanced back and Jandik limped forward, holding a lantern. Lem and Drahir followed with their new magic swords, if a bit reluctantly. Asil staggered to Jandik's side and they ended up leaning on each other.
Naull ran through the spells she still had at her command. As if on cue Regdar asked, "Can you open this door like you did the one from the stairs?"
She had cast that spell and would need time before being able to cast it again.
"No," she said. "If it's locked the same way, you'll have to break it down."
"Anything on the other side," Jandik warned, "will know we're coming."
"There was an explosion in here that killed two men," Lem said.
"Yeah," Drahir added, "and some kind of snow storm."
"It was rain," Asil corrected.
"Actually," Naull said, "it was sleet."
The watchmen nodded and Regdar sighed.
'"Whatever's behind that door," the lord constable said, "already knows we're here."
Everyone but Regdar went pale.
Regdar, greatsword still in one hand, kicked the door and kicked it hard. It didn't open but Naull heard the wood crack at least a little. She knew enough about the magic that was likely holding the door closed to realize that it would be hard, but Regdar could eventually kick it in.
The lord constable sighed and gave the door a second kick. Jandik held up his lantern in a hand shaking from fear, pain, and loss of blood. The effect was a flickering light that sent shadows twitching across the walls. Naull's hair stood on end. Lem and Drahir held their swords up and ready, their own shaking hands sending flashes of reflected light flickering across their enchanted blades.
Regdar kicked the door again, and there was a louder crack. One side of the door was bent outward, the wood cracking around the iron bands.
One more kick and the door broke inward with an echoing crash. Regdar shifted his greatsword into a two-hand grip and swung the blade over his head as he stepped boldly through the door.
Naull closed her eyes, tense, waiting for the sound of steel on steel or of another explosion, or the roar of some fell beast, but none of those things came.
"Come in behind me and watch your step," Regdar said. "There's something strange in here."
Vargussel absentmindedly rolled a piece of parchment between his fingers until he'd made a long, thin tube of it.
They're in, he thought.
His mind descended into a flurry of unspoken curses, many of which he was embarrassed for even thinking.
They had broken through the door into the slaughterhouse and were steps from his laboratory. What was worse, the damnable woman had set them thinking along a course that brought them closer to the truth than they knew. Yes, someone had built the dread guard, and yes it was a decoy, and yes whoever it was was a powerful wizard, and yes that powerful wizard had built it with the express purpose of killing certain young suitors for the hand of fair Maelani. That last bit might have been a piece of the puzzle still missing for them but still they were farther along than Vargussel would have liked.
Regdar stepped through the door ready for anything but there was nothing there yet. He stood on a wooden platform twenty feet above the killing floor. The platform was built against the southwest wall of the huge room, and there was a flight of wooden stairs that emptied onto the killing floor itself.
Regdar couldn't see the stairs and neither could Vargussel. The steps were cloaked in a thick, roiling gray mist—a fog of Vargussel's own creation.
The mage watched Regdar scan the room. He saw the lord constable's eyes linger on the twis
ting fences that once led streams of cattle to their doom. He saw his rival's eyes trace the path of the steel tracks on the ceiling from which dangled chains on the ends of which were rusty meat hooks, their grisly loads long since gone.
The far side of the large space was shrouded in gray fog that reached halfway up the high walls and was placed just so to conceal Vargussel's laboratory along with his mightiest creation.
Come in behind me and watch your step, Regdar said to his charges. There's something strange in here.
The others wandered in behind him, and Vargussel was pleased to see the masks of fear on all their faces. The wounded tracker was having difficulty walking despite Regdar's healing potion and was relegated to holding a lantern. The other wounded watchman stood arm-in-arm with the tracker, and they helped each other along.
They were the first to follow Regdar onto the platform, and Vargussel sat up, holding his breath in anticipation. The wounded tracker spotted the low railing on the north end of the platform and steered his companion toward it, obviously hoping to rest their weight against it. They made it two steps before the whole north half of the platform gave way.
Vargussel laughed, and when he clapped his hands, the rolled bit of parchment he'd been fiddling with wafted to the floor. The wounded men fell in a cloud of dust and rotten wood, twenty feet to the killing floor. Regdar backed up a step, regaining his own balance and leaning up against the south wall. The young woman poked her head through the door and said, What happened?
The floor collapsed, Regdar told her.
The exchange demonstrated everything Vargussel thought was wrong with the fools. Obviously the floor had collapsed.
The lord constable looked in the direction of the stairs, eyeing the fog with reasonable suspicion.
Looks like stairs over here, he said to the woman, again mastering the obvious.
I don't like that fog at all, one of the watchmen said from the safety of the anteroom.
Regdar looked at the stairs again and stepped away from the wall.
Neither do I, the lord constable said, but he went to the top of the stairs anyway and stepped into the fog.
"Go ahead," Vargussel whispered, placing the palm of his right hand over the amulet that controlled the shield guardian.
The mage sent a portion of his thoughts into the amulet, through the link, and to the construct. Now, he sent. They come.
Naull stepped through the door and was startled when someone grabbed her arm from behind. She turned and Lem smiled at her, then glanced at the ruined platform. She smiled back, nodded, and stepped onto the wooden planks. The half of the platform that was against the south wall of the slaughterhouse had held Regdar's considerably greater weight well enough but Naull was still hesitant about it. Heights had never been her strong suit.
With Lem still holding her arm, ready to snatch her back into the anteroom should the rest of the platform give way, Naull stepped farther out—far enough to peer over the jagged edge, down to where the two watchmen had fallen.
She could see one of them, partially buried in the broken planks, a cloud of dust settling around him. It looked to be Asil, and he wasn't moving. Lying facedown as he was, she couldn't see his face.
Naull looked over at Regdar, who was waist deep in roiling gray fog, and she swallowed in a dry throat.
"Are they all right?" he asked from over his shoulder, pausing for a reply.
Naull shook her head and answered, "I can't tell. Asil isn't moving. I can't hear anything."
She looked back down and enough of the dust had settled that she could see Jandik, or at least the bottom half of him. The rest was buried under broken planks of rotten wood. He wasn't moving either.
She turned to tell Regdar and was just in time to see the top of his helmed head sink silently into the obscuring mist. Her breath caught in her throat.
She stepped away from the door, crossing halfway to the stairs, having slipped out of Lem's gentle hold. She stopped, looked back at the door, and saw Lem and Samoth follow her out and peer over the edge themselves.
"Constable Jandik!" Lem called. "Asil...are you all right?"
They all waited for the space of a few quick breaths but there was no answer.
Naull looked out over the room and the sight of the fog made her shiver. It was obviously conjured in some way. The edges were too straight, almost at right angles. The fog was meant to hide something. It extended as high as the floor of the platform, and obscured about a quarter of the huge space that was the abandoned killing floor. It didn't drift like natural fog, but seemed almost contained by glass walls or some other, invisible force.
The platform trembled and Naull heard a low thud as if something heavy had fallen to the ground. She pressed herself against the wall, and Lem did the same. Samoth ducked back into the anteroom.
"What was that?" Samoth asked.
Both he and Lem looked at Naull, who said, "It's the...thing." She turned to face the stairs and shouted, "Regdar!"
There was no answer.
"Regdar!" she called again, louder than before.
She jumped when a hand touched her arm. It was Lem again.
"He won't answer," the watchman said. "He won't want to give away his position in that pea soup."
"Lem!" Samoth hissed from the doorway. "Get over here...Jandik's lantern."
"Damn," Lem breathed, skipping across the ruined platform to Samoth's side. The two of them looked down. "Jandik was holding a lantern when they fell. The flame's caught on all that old wood."
Another low, booming thud vibrated the platform, and Naull said, "They'll burn alive."
"If they aren't dead already," Samoth mumbled.
"We have to climb down there," Lem said, already slipping out of his canvas rucksack.
"Wait," Naull said. "Regdar's—"
"Got enough trouble," Lem interrupted, "with whatever's making that booming sound."
Naull nodded and looked out over the magic fog as Lem and Samoth gathered up their lengths of rope and tied them to anything that looked strong enough to hold.
The sound came again, closer.
Naull ran through what spells she had left but she'd have to see the thing to use them.
The sound came again, much closer, and Lem started climbing down.
Regdar judged his arms to be about two and a half feet long, and he knew the blade of his greatsword was five and half feet in length. He held the blade straight out in front of him and couldn't see the tip.
Five feet, he guessed, no more.
He stood at the foot of the stairs on a damp, rough, stone floor, surrounded by gray fog as featureless and unyielding as endless Limbo itself. He could hear the thing approaching and could hear the voices of his comrades. He was happy they weren't following him. Naull's spells would be as dangerous to friends in the fog as to enemies, and Lem and Samoth were better off climbing down to save their fellows from the fire.
Lord Constable....
Regdar repeated the words in his mind. It was up to him.
The floor trembled under another booming footstep, and Regdar held his greatsword in a ready stance that protected his head and the front of his body. He might only be able to see five feet ahead of him but that was all the room he needed.
Another footstep, and the thing was close—very close.
As the vibration subsided, Regdar heard a boot scrape the rough floor next to him. He turned slowly, keeping ready to defend himself. He could see the vague outline of a man against the gray nothing of the fog.
"Lord Constable," Lem whispered, "it's me...Lem."
Regdar would have nodded but wasn't sure Lem could see him.
"Stay there," the lord constable whispered.
"I'm outside the fog," the watchman whispered back. "I can just barely see you."
Another booming footstep, and Regdar could tell that it was very, very close. He turned and saw a shadow looming up in the mist. It had the shape of a man but the behemoth was easily eight feet tall.
Without a second's hesitation, Regdar charged, bringing his sword around in a high, hard slash aimed at the thing's midsection. He'd moved only half a step when the shadow thrust out its left hand and Regdar's mind registered a flash of light.
His body moved faster than his conscious mind. Regdar let the momentum of his sword slash spin his body down and under the streak of ragged, yellow lightning that burst from the shadow's outstretched palm. The lightning bolt passed within an inch of Regdar's face, and he had the unpleasant feeling of each tiny whisker standing on end, as if drawn to the bolt. The mist turned instantly to nearly boiling water that scalded his face but he managed to dodge it.
Regdar's spin brought his face around to see the lightning bolt slam the shadowy form of Lem full in the chest. The watchman never had a chance. Caught in the lightning's deadly embrace, Lem shook on his feet as if dangling from wires, his whole body convulsing. The mist was blasted away and Regdar saw the watchman's eyes burst in a shower of pink fluid. He smelled Lem's flesh burning a moment before the bolt bounced back, arcing angrily from Lem to Regdar.
The lord constable wasn't as fast or as lucky the second time. The bolt hit him in the right thigh. His armor seemed suddenly made of a million stinging bees and his eyes, jaw, and other orifices clamped tightly shut. He could hear himself rattle out a staccato groan, then it was gone as fast as it hit him.
He opened his eyes, waiting for the lightning to hit him again.
Naull watched Lem's twitching body fall to the floor, heard Regdar groan, and didn't have time to scream before an arc of blinding yellow light spat out of the fog and touched Samoth in the chest. The watchman blew out his breath in a stuttering moan and flapped his arms at his sides as if he was trying to take wing. All that happened in less than a second, then the lightning bounced off him and back into the mist.
There was a sound like a sack of rice being dropped on the floor, then the sound of wood exploding—she'd heard enough of that lately that the sound would never leave her.