The Copper Assassin

by Madolyn Rogers

  He walked on. The ground beneath his feet felt spongy. Gradually he became aware of noises. The sounds of chewing, he thought. Rather messy chewing. The foul smell of decay enveloped him. He heard squeaking, then a distant clacking. And the sound of feet: soft, light, and very many of them. He tried not to strain to hear the sounds, not to conjecture what was making them, but it was impossible. All those feet. The Fence probably knew he had a horror of centipedes, he reflected with grim humor.

  He leaped when something landed on his shoulder and ran across his neck, light and tickling. Another one settled in his hair; it skittered onto his cheek, and dozens of delicate legs prickled across his skin. Devourer take him! Gorgo cursed himself. They were centipedes of course. He himself had given the Fence the lever it needed over him, by thinking about what he feared. He had chosen the particular form of his torment. Morbid had not mentioned that the thing you must not fear would be the thing you were most afraid of. He cursed his own carelessness again. Anything but centipedes. He had abhorred the little beasts since his childhood.

  He had been three, still on the ice islands. A horde of centipedes from a foreign cargo had infested the Oribul isles. They were great tropical beasts, four and five inches long. They swarmed through his family home, invading the crib where Gorgo slept with his infant sister. He woke to find them covering him like a living blanket, burrowing under his clothes, scurrying across his face. Their bites stung like fire. His sister was hidden under a squirming mass of the beasts, as if they had burst from her tiny body. His screams alerted the adults, who came and stamped out the creatures in a frenzy of boots and snarls. Too late for his sister. Her body was swollen and purple, and she never woke again. Gorgo himself was sick for weeks. It was his earliest memory, burned in his mind like a brand.

  The centipede continued its trek across his face. It danced across his closed mouth in a dainty tickle of feet. His flesh crawled. The first centipede ran under his shirt, squirming. Two more dropped on his head. Gorgo forced himself to breathe deeply and unclench his fists. He fought against the urge to swat them away, to stamp them out under his feet. More will fall, he reminded himself. The idea is for you to get caught in the illusion. They aren’t real. Don’t react. No matter what you feel, ignore it; continue on. Morbid was right. He had to conquer this by keeping control, not by losing it.

  The centipede on his face bit him. The bite burned like acid, pain radiating through him. He could feel his face swelling. He fought away the image of his sister’s corpse, bloated and livid under the writhing bodies.

  The Fence had snared him. Knowing the beasts were not real meant nothing. Their touch, their bites were as real as his own body was. He could not distance himself from what was happening. His heart raced again, all his muscles knotted tight. At least a dozen of the beasts crawled over him now. Several had wriggled inside his shirt. More were climbing up from the ground, over his boots and inside his trousers. There would be no end to them. There would only be more of them, as many as it took until he broke. When he broke he would have failed the Fence. He would find himself back in Ilkour, and Cockatrice would go on her way unhindered.

  The only way out was through. He could not ignore them, therefore he had to conquer his fear. He was no child anymore, after all. That was in the past. He was a man now. If these were the first centipedes that had ever touched him, how would he feel? Could they not be pleasurable? All those little tickling legs running across his bare flesh. Under other circumstances, they might be a sex toy. Sweat trickled down his ribs, and a centipede pursued its liquid path and bit him where the drop hung, its sting like a burning explosion in his flesh. Gorgo registered dimly that the pain was increasing. No real centipede could have produced that effect. But even the pain could be part of the sexual pleasure, couldn’t it? Some lovers bit, Gorgo knew, though he had never experienced it himself.

  He forced his teeth to unclench again. He focused all his attention on picturing the skittering centipedes as so many little feather dusters wielded with great energy by a particularly imaginative lover. If only a few more fell on him, he would be covered, every inch of him caressed by their delicate feet. Another bite burned through his nerves. Only to add piquancy to the pleasure, of course. Six & Seven would be envious. Gorgo would have to describe to him the exquisite delights of this thousand-fingered lover. Gorgo could almost see his cousin’s smile, his eyes sparkling with fascination. Devourer, Six & Seven probably would be jealous, the fool. Thinking of this, Gorgo nearly laughed, catching even himself off guard.

  With that, he dropped the weight of his fear. His muscles relaxed and his breath came easy. The centipedes were only a physical stimulation of his body, nothing more. Even as he thought this, the darkness, the centipedes, and the bites all vanished. He stood alone in a grainy grey fog.

  “Yahsta’s balls,” Gorgo breathed. He was drenched in sweat. He had conquered the second layer of the Fence, but they were said to get harder as you went. “Wonderful,” he muttered to himself.

  What had Morbid said next? “The third layer is the Fence of Mirrors. It is a maze, and you must solve it to pass. I cannot tell you how. You must solve it yourself.” Very helpful, Morbid. Apparently her source had never made it past the third layer.

  When he took a step, the grainy fog around him resolved into mirrored walls. Hallways radiated away from him in every direction, as though he stood in the center of a starfish. He could not tell which passages were real and which merely reflections. His own image gazed back at him from every side. The floor and ceiling were plain grey stone, and he saw no source for the diffuse white light that illuminated everything. Gorgo looked around for Cockatrice in vain. It would be convenient if he could simply follow her. There was no sign of her, of course. She was undoubtedly far ahead of him by now.

  Gorgo closed his eyes against the confusion of images. He stretched out his arms. Good, the hallway was only about five feet wide; he could easily touch both walls. He began to pace down the hall, counting his steps. When his fingers brushed over the empty space of a diverging hall, he memorized its location. When he had to turn, he remembered at which step, and which direction he took. So he continued, keeping track of the openings he passed, the turns he took, memorizing in a long tiresome string. He had played memory games with his aunt Armida often enough to be good at it, and he was grateful for that now. He would try to form a mental map of this place.

  It soon grew dizzying. Gorgo frowned, trying to focus. Up to 73 steps now, and twelve turns taken. He had a partial map, wavering in his mind. Then under his right hand he felt the cool glass of the wall dissolve, and his hand met nothing but air. One step later his fingers trailed over glass again. Gorgo froze, and opened his eyes. He still stood in the same mirrored maze, nothing apparently different. Yet it was different—the maze had just changed. A wall had become a passage. All of that memorization had been for nothing. Gorgo cursed. The maze was in flux.

  For a moment anger took his breath away. The game was rigged. There was no way to solve a maze that changed. He stayed still, and controlled his breathing, and gradually calmed. There must be a way to conquer this layer. It was just not the way he had thought. No need for memorization. There was no set path through this maze, nothing that a person might stumble upon by luck. There had to be another way.

  Gorgo continued walking, eyes open this time, but hands still trailing over the walls. He felt another wall dissolve into a passage, and with his eyes open now, he could see the change in the maze. Halls altered in length or direction, instantly and soundlessly. Gorgo pondered as he paced. The labyrinth must have some other clue, some other pattern. He set himself to observe. Was every mirror, every passage, exactly the same? Were there subtle details that distinguished them? Little anomalies? Even the lengths of passageways—anything that might form a pattern. Eventually he saw that there were tiny deviations. A reflection of a shadow, far off down a passage. A miniature mouse cleaning its ears on the floor in a distant hall. A smudge of grease on
a mirror. But he could not piece them together into any kind of sense.

  Time was passing, too much time. Perhaps he was still making it too complicated. If he were the Warlord, now, how would he design his maze? He would make the solution something quick and easy, once you knew the trick of it.

  The changes themselves were the key, Gorgo decided. They must point the way. He had only to follow them. The next time he felt a hard surface dissolve into air under his fingers, he turned into the new opening. He continued on, waiting for the next transformation, and once again ducked into the new-formed passage. It happened again, and yet again. The mirrors were changing faster now. Six times he took a new hallway. Then he felt the walls under his right and left hands dissolve simultaneously, forming two new passages. He hesitated for a split second, and then leaped to the right. The Warlord was right-handed, he reasoned: it was always preferable to go through a door with your sword hand forward.

  The mirrors were gone. He stood in a cool, dim-lit cave. The air felt moist, heavy and cold. He heard water dripping somewhere. He recalled Morbid’s last words on the Fence wards. “There is one more Fence after the Fence of Mirrors. I don’t know its name or how to surmount it. Use your initiative.”

  “Devourer,” Gorgo muttered. He looked around. The ceiling loomed close above him, crusted with stalactites. Behind him and to his left, the cave wall hemmed him in. The stone was fuzzed thick with luminous blue-green moss, the source of the light. To his right the floor fell away, a sheer drop into darkness. The chasm was long but narrow, about eight feet across. Before him the path sloped down, about three feet wide, spilling into a large cavern that circled the chasm. Well, at least it was clear which way he must go.

  He padded down, trying not to slip on the slick stone. The damp air tickled his throat and made him cough. The dark void of the chasm still lurked to his right. Below him, where the trail widened out, stalagmites and jumbled rocks studded the cavern floor, blocking his vision. In the greenish glow, he could not see any clear path through the place. He stopped on the slope, wondering.

  The first layer of the Fence wards had to be conquered by trickery; the second, by overcoming fear; the third, by solving a maze. What must he do here? He needed more clues. He took another step down the trail.

  The air whistled above him, and something pierced his right shoulder, pain lancing through him. Rubbery limbs lashed at him. Gorgo grabbed the thing and yanked it away. It writhed like an eel in his hands. He caught a glimpse of a round black body squirming with tentacles. Two crimson eyes glared back at him. He seized a fistful of its thrashing limbs with his other hand, and bashed the creature against the wall to his left. It went limp, and he flung the beast into the chasm.

  “Yahsta’s blood!” He looked up into the dark hollow the thing had fallen from; a bevy of red eyes gleamed back. He leaped down the trail and hurtled into the cavern, even as more of the creatures hissed down through the air behind him. As he clambered over the rocks that littered the floor, he risked a glance back.

  Some dozen of the things skittered along the floor on jointed legs, moving fast. They were shaped like squid, their bulbous heads trailing a long skirt of rubbery tentacles. Their jointed legs poked from this sheath, crab-like. Gorgo guessed other appendages hid within their skirts, like the fangs that had gashed his shoulder. The wound oozed blood, the punctures deep.

  The creatures gained on him as he scrambled over the jagged floor. He could not outrun them in this terrain. He reached for a promising rock, heavy and narrow, with a pointed end. The nearest cave squid came scuttling over the stones, and Gorgo swung his weapon at it. The pointed end buried itself deep in the squid’s swollen head, and black blood jetted. The thing squealed, its legs spasming, and collapsed to the floor. Gorgo smashed at the next one. It dodged, but he connected with a glancing blow and felt its soft head crush under his stone.

  Now a mass of them mobbed him. He slammed his rock into another head, and another, but there were too many springing at him. Tentacles twisted about his right arm, squeezing the wound Wakár had given him until it throbbed. Another squid fastened around his left leg. Its teeth pierced through his trousers, and pain slashed at him. The squid surged up his leg, tearing flesh; agony exploded in his head like white light. He cried out, and bashed the beast with his rock. The squid burst in a shower of blood and brains. His stone smashed into his own lacerated flesh, making him yelp again.

  They were still coming. Gorgo kicked one away with his good leg, surged to his feet, and smashed the one tangled around his right arm against a stalagmite. He flung himself over the stones, heedless of bruises and scrapes, scrambling for the nearest wall. A ledge beckoned just above his head. Gorgo leaped, pain lancing through his injured leg, and caught the edge with his hands. He pulled himself up, grunting, got one knee onto the ledge, and flopped over. He lay on his back, panting.

  Squeaking and skittering sounds rose from the floor. He pushed himself upright, peered down, and saw the remaining five squid scuttling about, seeking a way up the sheer wall. They were not long thwarted. One of them wrapped its tentacles about a stalagmite and began to hump its way up it. The stalagmite nearly touched an overhanging stalactite, and that led to the roof, where the uneven surface would provide plenty of toeholds for the squids’ tentacles.

  Gorgo swore. They would be on him again quickly, and he had left his rock on the cavern floor. He assessed his mangled calf, and his breath hissed out. His trouser leg was in ribbons. Beneath it, his calf streamed blood, his skin shredded into strips as well. He swallowed, forcing himself to look closer, to probe the wounds. In one way, it was not as bad as he’d feared. Though the beasts’ teeth were sharp, they were apparently small; the cuts had barely punctured his muscle. He could still function, if he could stop the bleeding. He ripped off the bottom of his shirt, tearing the tough fabric with difficulty, and wrapped the cloth tightly around the mutilated mess. As he tied the knot tight, he sank his teeth deeply into his lower lip, trying not to scream, not to faint. The bleeding slowed to an ooze.

  The cave squid were still coming. If only he had his knife. He recalled the words of that seller in the Hunger Market, “It’s not good to be abroad at this hour with no protection but a broken knife.” A hell of an understatement. What had the man sold him to take its place? Some furry fruit-like thing he had bought for two sharks. “Old Honeylegs over there.” Gorgo stuck his hand in his pocket, found the fuzzy thing and pulled it out.

  It was not a fruit. Only the quickest glance in the dark of the plaza could have made him think so. His new acquisition was a honey-colored spider, her body a couple of inches across, her hairy legs drawn up around her in a ball. “Honeylegs,” Gorgo breathed. The spider stirred, her long legs unfolding. Now she was as big across as his hand. The ends of her legs felt sticky on his palm, tickling. On either side of her mouth, a long grasper-like pedipalp curved. Between them, her amber fangs protruded, small but sharp. Eight gleaming golden eyes stared up into his own.

  “Can you help me kill these squid?” He did not really expect an answer. But the spider tapped one hairy leg against his palm as though she understood. She sprang from his hand, scuttling up the wall and across the bumpy ceiling. In moments she was dancing down the stalactite to the nearest squid, which was nearly at the top. Honeylegs pounced on its head and sank her fangs. The squid spasmed. Its tentacles loosed and it crashed to the floor, twitching. Honeylegs scampered down the column to the next beast, and in one bound gave it the same treatment.

  The spider sprang for a third, but this squid flipped its head away, back toward the floor. Now its killing parts were pointed up at Honeylegs. The squid splayed its tentacles to reveal rows of small jagged teeth, snapping at the spider. In the center two long fangs protruded.

  “Devourer,” Gorgo spat, and swung down from the ledge. He did not want to lose Honeylegs. He landed hard, pain shooting up his leg. He ignored it, seized the nearest large rock, and heaved it at the squid threatening Honeylegs. The thing splat
tered.

  The last two beasts were still low on the column. They released their hold and dropped to the floor, crab legs popping out. Gorgo stomped on the nearest with his good leg, feeling it squish beneath him. The last one twined a tentacle about his boot, lifting its skirt to show its fangs. Gorgo stooped, grabbed the squid, and smashed its body against the stalagmite. Black blood spurted over his hands.

  His panting sounded loud in the quiet. Honeylegs scurried down the column and pounced onto his shoulder. “Thank you,” he said, feeling a little foolish. Her golden eyes gleamed back.

  Gorgo looked around. The cave was empty now, no movement, no sounds, no more enemies. “Why are we still here?” he asked aloud. Had they not defeated this Fence? The empty air gave him the answer. He yelled into the silence. “Demon hells, killing twelve of those things wasn’t enough?” He wanted to beat on the walls in frustration.

  Honeylegs tapped one foreleg against his neck, perhaps in agreement, and he calmed. Maybe he merely had to keep walking through the cavern, find some hidden doorway. He limped along over the rocks, cursing every time fresh pain jarred his leg. The cavern was large and winding, but he found no exits, no doors, nothing of significance. Blood seeped through his makeshift bandage. He felt dizzy. He stopped to rest on a boulder. Devourer, how much time was passing here? Had the golem reached the Warlord already?

  Gorgo pushed himself to his feet. He had no time to rest. He had to figure this out. What was the trial of this Fence? Killing the cave squid, certainly. So what had he missed? Was there something else connected to them?

  They had been hanging above the path, lurking in a cluster in the rocks. He limped back along the cavern, up the sloping trail, and gazed up into the hollow where the squid had hidden. Dark reddish clusters hung there, like fruit. They were barely visible in the pallid light from the cave moss. Buried among those red blobs, something gleamed silver. Gorgo stretched higher to see. His breath caught; it was a key. He reached for it. It was well beyond his fingers, but he could grasp it if he jumped hard, he thought. He steeled himself, dreading the pain.