by Layton Green
The Brewer strode into the clearing, blade in hand, singing at full volume. As the tuskers drew back in confusion, Caleb felt a surge of confidence and adrenaline unlike anything he had ever experienced. He sprang forward and swung the candlestick with all his might, again and again. Marguerite leapt to his side, ducking under a club swing and slipping her three-pronged dagger into her opponent’s side.
The tuskers recovered, but the Brewer entered the fray, twisting to the side to avoid a spear throw, then rushing forward to engage the nearest tusker before the rest could coordinate an attack. He sang as he fought, taking down his first opponent with a flurry of sword thrusts, then engaging two more while Marguerite and Caleb faced off against the third.
Caleb blocked another swing while Marguerite slipped behind their attacker and sliced its jugular with her dagger. They turned to help the Brewer, who had already dispatched another tusker, and the battle was over in moments.
Breathing so hard he couldn’t speak, Caleb put his hands on the other man’s face, drew him close, and smacked a kiss on his cheek. Marguerite whooped and added another, causing him to break into a wide grin.
“Where’s Luca?” Caleb asked.
“He’s safe,” the Brewer said. “I hid him in the forest before I came.”
The older man’s grin slowly faded.
“What?” Caleb said.
He waved for quiet. In the forest north of camp, what at first sounded like the rustle of an animal moving through the woods actualized into the stomp of multiple pairs of feet, crashing through the brush.
After the footsteps came voices, grunting and huffing and snorting.
More tuskers. Many more.
The Brewer’s eyes flew upwards. “Run.”
-35-
As Val and the others climbed out of the sewer and hurried down the street of the demon-infested town, the forms of the party started to blur, as if they were a mirage. Dida’s work, Val knew.
Rucker snarled at the bibliomancer. “Kill it. Most demons can see through a quick illusion, and some can sense magic. Best just to get off the street.”
Dida canceled the spell, making Val feel even more vulnerable. Every step on the blue marble paving stones sounded to his ears like a herd of buffalo charging down the street.
The stench of demonkind permeated the air, overlaid by a growing odor of sulfur from the hot springs. The party stopped at the next intersection, edging forward to peer around the corner before sprinting across. Val caught his breath as two different groups of demons came into view. To their left, a block away, a circle of horned albino humanoids was hunched over a motionless form on the ground, scooping out hunks of flesh with long black talons.
Down the street to their right, twenty yards away but walking in their direction, was a trio of towering cyclops demons with six arms, and thighs as big as Val’s body.
“Back in the sewer?” Ferin asked.
Rucker swore. “No time.”
“I’ll create a diversion,” Synne said. “Then meet you inside as soon as possible.”
Rucker waved a hand. “Too risky, and we need you with us.”
“Then what?” Adaira whispered. “We’re out of time!”
Rucker turned to Dida. “Shield us the best you can. We have to risk it.”
As their forms blurred, Val wondered if a mad dash across the intersection was the extent of the plan, until Rucker hooked his axe on his belt and whipped another hunting knife out of its holster. With a snap of his wrist, he flung the knife around the corner at the group of albino demons.
Val heard a scream that turned into a series of raucous shrieks. Bare feet slapped against stone, and a dozen horned, pale humanoids with blood-flecked mouths hurtled past the intersection and tore into the trio of cyclops. The larger demons swatted them away like flies, but the albinos regrouped and attacked again, their superior numbers making it a fight.
“I vote for running,” Rucker said.
Val cursed as the party sprinted forward. Some time for Rucker to develop a sense of humor. With a sidelong glance, he glimpsed the pitched battle between the two groups of demons as the party raced past the intersection. Farther down the street, when he checked over his shoulder again, he saw that one of the albino demons had tumbled into the intersection, probably batted away by a cyclops. The demon noticed the fleeing party and leapt to its feet. Adaira saw Val’s face and turned, then made a furious slicing motion with her hand. The albino demon shrieked and clutched its throat as rose-colored blood erupted from a long gash. The demon stumbled but didn’t die, and Rucker followed up with a knife to the creature’s heart.
The columned green tower lay just ahead. With a burst of power, Val ripped out the wooden slats on the boarded-up window as they ran. Heavy footfalls pounded down the streets in the surrounding blocks, no doubt demons drawn to the melee going on a block away. All it would take was a single glance to raise the alarm.
The tower was squatting on the corner of another intersection. Propelled by fear, Val led the dash across another portion of open street and dove through the ground-floor window of the baths, tumbling blindly onto a slick tile floor obscured by a cloud of steam.
After ensuring everyone was inside, Val observed his surroundings. They had landed on a tiled floor, slick with moisture, on the edge of a pool of murky green water. A dense vapor rose off the surface, eddying in the air and suffusing the room, limiting visibility to a dozen feet. The room reeked of rotten eggs, the smell of sulfuric water heated deep within the earth.
“Watch yerselves,” Rucker said in a low voice, as they crouched on the tiles, praying none of the demons outside had seen them enter. “Anything could be in here.”
The tiled floor extended to the left and the right, a three-foot walkway that hugged the wall as it wrapped around the basin. Val peered through the steam and saw frescoes in colorful but faded pigments covering the ceiling. Steps led into the basin at various intervals, and a marble archway opposite the window gave access to the interior.
Val and Synne crept to the left, the others took to the right. When they reached the archway, Rucker peered through, then waved everyone into a narrow, stone-walled corridor. Haze seeped out of archways on both sides of the passage. Splashing and grunting and the plop of demon bodies stepping into steaming baths could be heard in all directions.
“What now?” Adaira whispered.
Rucker shook his head. “I don’t like this. We were lucky that bath was empty.”
“Can you use your sight?” Val asked Adaira.
The cuerpomancer concentrated as she gazed down the hallway. “I can’t see through the steam to the right,” she said finally, “but there are stairs to the left, at the end of the corridor. Fifty feet away.”
“I fear these alcoves are infested,” Synne said. “Perhaps there is less company below.”
Everyone agreed to try the stairs. Proceeding two by two in the corridor, they crept through the misty hallway, scurrying past the open archways. The dense steam spilling out of the rooms and swirling in the hallways was a godsend, because it shielded the party from observation. Still, Val knew it was only a matter of time before they ran afoul of a group of demons.
It happened just after they passed the last archway on their left before the stairs. A demon with mottled brown skin, tusks, wings, and distended jaws stepped into the corridor on hooved feet, right behind Dida. Before anyone could react, it lowered its head and barreled into the bibliomancer’s chest, driving him to the ground. As it stood, Rucker cut off the creature’s head with a vicious swing of his axe.
Val thought everything was fine until Dida didn’t get up. He curled into a ball and coughed, grasping his side. Rucker slapped a hand over Dida’s mouth. “Quiet, lad!” he said in a harsh whisper.
Ferin waved a hand at them to hurry. After carrying Dida and the dead demon into the alcove, the black sash gypsy pushed the demon into the basin. As its lifeless form sank to the bottom, Adaira probed Dida’s side. “Three broken r
ibs,” she announced quietly. “I can heal him, but it will take hours, at least. Internal wounds are complex.”
“We don’t have hours,” Dida gasped. “I can continue.”
Val raised his eyebrows at Adaira, asking a wordless question.
She pursed her lips. “He will survive, but the pain will be hard to bear.”
“I’m fine,” Dida said, gritting his teeth and pushing to his feet. “I’m staying with you.” He took a step and swayed, and Val caught him before he fell.
“We need him,” Rucker said. “Give him the ointment.”
Over Dida’s protests, Adaira rubbed the last of the healing salve onto his side. Within minutes, he was up and walking again. Val was thrilled his friend had recovered, but he knew that was the last reprieve.
Despite Rucker’s misgivings—the lower level of a dungeon was never safer—the party felt the better option was to continue down the stairs and hope for a less populated level. Just past the alcove, a set of limestone steps covered in lumps of green and brown algae materialized out of the steam.
Strange, Val thought. Those steps look almost . . . diseased.
The steam was even thicker on the staircase. Val could only see to the third step as they approached. Just before he and Synne began their descent, he noticed two ash-colored humanoids sitting on their knees, almost childlike, at the bottom of the staircase. They had gangly limbs, crimson eyes that glowed through the steam, and three long fingers ending in claws that looked like iron. Apart from their eyes and knife slash mouths, their faces were featureless, smoke congealed into skin. Their only reaction to the presence of the party was to tilt their heads upwards and regard them with lidless eyes.
Synne clutched Val’s arm and jerked him away. “Fall back,” she said. “Fall back.”
Val stumbled away from the staircase, wondering what had spooked the majitsu. Yet as the party lurched back down the corridor, there was no sign of pursuit from the two strange beings. As far as Val could tell, they had not moved at all, simply observing the party with eerie calm.
Rucker led them back into the room they had just cleared, edging away from the archway. Adaira said, “What are those things?”
“Death is what they are,” Synne answered, with a shudder. “Impervious to most magic and weaponry, as fast as I am, and with claws as sharp as azantite.”
“Not to mention their bite,” Rucker said. “A poison with no antidote. On Urfe, they’re known as gethzul.”
“What the hell are they doing sitting on those stairs?” Val asked.
Rucker spat into the water. “They’re guard dogs for the demon lords, or so the legends go. Never seen one meself.”
“Won’t they come after us?”
“Whatever it is they’re protecting, I don’t think they much care who is at the top of the stairs.”
“We studied them at the Academy,” Synne said. “Many generations ago, six of our Order descended with a spirit mage into the Thirteen Hells, on an intelligence gathering mission. They encountered a pack of gethzul. All of our Order was slain, and the spirit mage was forced to flee.”
“I thought them to be legends,” Rucker said.
Ferin’s eyes were wild. “We can’t go forward, and we can’t go back.”
“We have to go somewhere,” Val said grimly. “I wish we could get a look at the rest of the level. Remember, we only have to find Tobar.”
For some time, Val had been trying to recreate the spell that had allowed him to view the layout of the dungeon beneath Leonidus’s castle. A Spirit Map, it was called. So far he had been unsuccessful. His father’s spell book had only hinted at it, and Professor Azara had said with a smirk that such a spell was far beyond his present abilities. He refrained from telling her that he had already cast it in Leonidus’s dungeon.
“I might have a solution,” Dida said slowly.
All eyes turned his way.
“As you know, we bibliomancers do not employ many offensive spells. Combat is not part of our ethos. But we do have certain spells that can be adapted to fit certain situations. For instance, I am proficient in a Mirror Ward that renders the protective barrier not invisible, but reflective of the environment.”
Rucker waved his axe. “Yer talking in riddles again.”
“To the observer,” Dida said, “the warded zone appears to be a reflection of its own form.”
“Are you saying you can make us look like demons?” Val asked.
“One of us,” Dida said. “And the spell will not enable you to appear as a demon, but merely reflect the form of the observer. However, given that we are surrounded by demons, I see the logic in your supposition.”
Everyone except Ferin volunteered for the task. Val argued that the strongest mage should be the guinea pig, in case things went south. Dida protested that it was his spell and his duty, and Adaira clutched Val’s arm and begged him not to go, contending she was the most expendable mage and should take the risk.
Val won the argument by sheer stubbornness, shrugging off Synne’s protests and Rucker’s appeal to wisdom and experience. “Except for Ferin,” Val said, “we’re all here because of me. Getting us home is my responsibility.”
No one liked the idea, yet everyone agreed it was the best plan they had. They would risk trying to pass the gethzul if no other option arose, but it might be unnecessary, if Tobar and the crown were stowed somewhere on the upper level.
As Dida slowly walked around Val, casting the Mirror Ward, Val gripped his staff and threw the hood of his cloak over his head. He felt nothing except a slight prickling of his skin.
When Dida finished, everyone looked at Val with widened eyes.
“Remarkable,” Adaira murmured. “I’m in need of a good wash.”
“Ye look much more handsome now,” Rucker quipped.
“Can you see my staff?” Val asked.
“You mean my axe?”
“Excellent.”
After a round of pleas for caution, Val took a deep breath and strode into the hallway. A thousand things could go wrong. Death was all around. He turned right, away from the staircase, sensing the gethzul would react if they saw another of their kind, since they were so rare. He strode down the passage, terrified but understanding that a projection of strength and confidence was his best ally. That and discretion. Engage no one, stop for nothing. He lowered his head as he passed two demons conversing in an alcove. Neither gave him a second glance, and the steam helped cloak his face.
When he reached the next alcove, Val stepped inside and found himself in yet another steam room with a basin of water in the center. A dozen reptilian forms lounged on the tiled walkway and drifted through the steam bath. Val tensed. It might look awkward to walk through the chamber without stopping, but he had already committed.
Head down, lips compressed, Val tried to ooze confidence as he strode all the way around the walkway, towards the alcove on the other side. He had to step over two demons who reared up to address him in a guttural language. Val ignored them and kept walking, praying they didn’t look at his face and see an exact replica of their own.
He felt tension hovering in the room, but none of the demons accosted him as he walked out of the room and found himself in an inner hallway with a tiled floor and rounded ceiling. He looked left and right. Alcoves and steam in both directions.
Just when he thought the entire level was a warren of tiny steam rooms, he crossed the hallway and entered a covered colonnade that spilled into a gigantic open-air basin of steaming water. Due to the outside exposure, the vapor was thinner, and Val could see that the colonnade wrapped all the way around the rectangular pool. Archways led back into the building at regular intervals, and marble statues supported the rooftop terrace they had viewed from the tower.
The basin, colonnade, and entrances to the alcoves teemed with demons. Val froze, unsure what to do, trying not to gag from the smell, forcing himself not to flee from sheer terror. Before he could decide, a seven-foot tall demon with a missh
apen head and three horns rose out of the water, pointed a talon at him, and shouted something in a demon tongue.
Val tried to stay calm as he walked down the tiled walkway surrounding the steaming central basin, away from the three-horned demon that had singled him out. To his dismay, the ugly seven-foot tall beast followed, bellowing and making threatening gestures whenever Val looked over his shoulder. None of the other demons seemed concerned about the aggression. A normal occurrence in demon land. There had to be a few hundred of them milling in and around the steam pool.
Should I ignore him, Val wondered? Stand and fight? Jump into the basin? Run away as fast as I can?
None of those seemed like good options.
He waved a hand without turning, dismissing the demon, trying to feign confidence. The brute ran up and shoved Val in the back. Not weighing half as much, Val tumbled to the tiled floor and skidded across the moist surface on his stomach. He barely managed to hold on to his staff. The demon roared and tried to kick him. Val rolled to his side, then jumped to his feet as the demon swung a gnarled fist. He ducked and shoved the beast in the chest, enhancing the maneuver with a wisp of magic. He felt more eyes on him, heads turning to watch the fight. Not good. The demon stumbled and then barreled forward again, head lowered to spear Val with its horns.
Just before he was forced to use a stronger spell that would surely draw attention, another demon tackled the misshapen beast from the side, sending them both into the basin. Hot water splashed in Val’s face, and the smell of sulfur stuffed his nose.
The new combatant was a toad demon. The fight in the pool turned into a brawl, drawing more and more demons, and Val exhaled as the rest of them ignored him. Of course, he thought. Everyone thinks I look like they do. The toad demon probably thinks the three-horned demon just attacked his brother.
He hurried away from the battle, walking the length of the walkway and peering into every alcove, searching for Tobar but finding nothing except groups of demons loafing or playing dice games. Just as he started to despair, he passed a grate in a corner of the walkway, set between two alcoves. He almost walked right by it when he noticed movement below.