by Heide Goody
“Wizards are just people,” said Pagnell. “We’re not earthworms or … the other kind of wyrms.”
“I’ve heard it said wizards cannot be killed by mortal weapons,” commented Bez.
“Yeah. That’s just a clever lie we tell people.” He moved closer to Lorrika and jerked a thumb back towards Cope. “Is she … is she normal?” he whispered. “I mean … regrowing wizards?”
Lorrika shrugged. “She’s a bit literal-minded.”
“Is she?”
“She believes pretty much anything she’s been told. I think there’s a lot of empty space in her noggin for any nonsense you’d care to put in there. If you get chance, ask about her sacred mission for the High Shepherdess.”
“Sacred mission?”
“Ask. She’s harmless really.”
“Oh?” Pagnell looked doubtful. “That thump she gave your artist friend…”
“Bez? Ah, he probably made her an offer she had to refuse. I wouldn’t be surprised if the words chainmail bikini came up somewhere in the conversation.”
“Ah.”
Up ahead, the chamber ended at a solid rock wall, and a gateway which grew clearer as they approached with their lights.
“Is this the first threshold?” asked Merken.
“Possibly,” said Pagnell.
The gateway was formed by two fat stone uprights and a massive lintel. These were plain and unadorned, but the closed double doors within crawled with seriously unpleasant imagery. Contorted, screaming faces, cast in grubby bronze, thrust from the surface of the door. Hands or sometimes just fingers, reached out, frozen in the act of grasping at the air. Here and there, elbows, sword hilts, spears and feet protruded.
“Wow, that’s so ugly it’s almost beautiful,” said Bez, sitting down to sketch it.
“Not very lifelike,” added Merken critically.
Pagnell knelt to run his fingers over the semi-circle of symbols carved into the floor in front of the doors. “Mmmm. I think it’s probably very lifelike,” he murmured. Loud enough for everyone to hear he added, “No one is to touch the door. At all.”
“Then how do we get through?” asked Cope.
“The first threshold is a riddle,” said Pagnell.
“I AM THE GUARDIAN OF THE GATE,” said a voice as cold and dead as the grave, which seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. “THOSE WHO WISH TO ENTER MUST ANSWER MY RIDDLE.”
“See?” said Pagnell. “Tedious things, riddles. I have eyes but cannot see and all that nonsense. It will sound superficially profound but end up being trite and really obvious. The answer will be Death, or Nothing, or the letter e or something. Bring it on, guardian.”
“MY RIDDLE IS THIS: FOREVER CHANGING, DRAWN THROUGH TAVERNS AND MINES THE SAME, WE GO TO ANCIENT TIMES AND JOIN THOSE WITH NO NAME. TO ARCHES FAR AND THE BUTCHER’S BLOCK, SEEK THE FORESTS OF TOMORROW AND UNDO MY LOCK.”
Pagnell was nodding to himself. He kept nodding.
“What’s the answer then?” asked Bez.
“I’m thinking,” said Pagnell.
“Is it Death?” suggested Cope.
Pagnell shook his head.
“Nothing?”
“No.”
“The letter e then?”
“No!” he snapped. “It’s none of them.” His face twitched. He looked up at the door. “Could we hear it again?”
“FOREVER CHANGING, DRAWN THROUGH TAVERNS AND MINES…”
Pagnell muttered along as the tombstone voice recited its riddle. When it was done, Pagnell made a thoughtful noise and then stepped inside the semi-circle to give his answer. “Is it Death?” he hazarded.
“NO.”
“Can I have another guess?”
“NO.”
“What? Not now or not ever?”
“NOT EVER.”
“Oh.” Pagnell turned to the others. “Well, at least we tried. Time to tell the general, eh?” He took a step; suddenly there was a curved sickle of blade against his stomach.
“It is incumbent on me to remind you,” said Merken, “that your little girl’s life is dependent on you helping us. Cope, if he tries to run before we get to the Quill of Truth, you damn well kill him.”
“Sir!” Cope responded.
“And you said she was harmless,” Pagnell hissed at Lorrika.
“But obedient,” Lorrika observed.
“Can’t you pick the lock, thief?” asked Cope.
“Who are you calling a thief?” said Lorrika. “I’m a professional lock enthusiast.”
“And even the most amateur lock enthusiast can see this lock is impossible to pick,” added Merken. “No keyhole.”
“Can’t I guess the riddle?” said Lorrika.
Pagnell shook his head. “It said—”
“EACH PERSON MAY MAKE ONE GUESS,” intoned the guardian of the threshold.
Lorrika stepped inside the semi-circle. “Is it Nothing?”
“NO.”
“Are you sure?”
“YES.”
“What if I said it was Nothing. Can you disprove it?”
“I DO NOT NEED TO.”
“Spoilsport.”
“The letter e?” said Bez, stepping up.
“NO.”
“No!” squealed Pagnell. “It’s none of those!”
“You said it would be.”
“Yes. I meant, something like those. Not that but like that!”
“The letter a?” suggested Cope.
“NO.”
Pagnell clutched at the air. “Why?” he cried.
“It’s like the letter e,” said Cope, “you know, a.”
“Just everyone shut up and let me think!” said Pagnell.
“Is it man?” said Merken.
“NO.”
“Shame,” said Merken. “I was thinking you find men in taverns and in mines and also—”
“Oh, you blithering idiot!” spat Pagnell. “That was our last chance!”
Merken turned unhurriedly to Pagnell. One second and a knobbly knee to the groin later and Pagnell was on the ground, curled up in a ball and regretting his life choices.
“As I was saying,” continued Merken, rubbing his knee, “you also find men working as butchers and, I suppose, underneath arches. I thought it a good answer. Oh, well.”
Cope squared up to the high double door. “Maybe we should just smash through it,” she said and turned an armoured shoulder towards it.
“IF THERE ARE NO MORE TO GIVE ANSWERS, YOU ARE WELCOME TO TRY,” spoke the guardian, with just a hint of smugness.
Cope took a step back to make a run up. Lorrika couldn’t be certain if it was the flicker of the lamp light or if she really saw it, but it seemed one of the hideous carved hands on the door flexed a little. Preparing to take hold of Cope and pull her in; to make her part of its grim façade, add her hands to its…
“Wait!” squeaked Pagnell and rolled to his knees.
“What?” said Cope.
The hand on the door quivered a moment, frustrated.
“If—” said Pagnell. “It said If there are no more…”
Lorrika looked at the door, at the terrible frozen faces staring out. I have eyes but cannot see. “I’d like to guess,” she declared.
“YOU HAVE ALREADY GUESSED,” said the guardian.
“No. That was Lorrika. I’m Aisel from Aumeria.”
“YOU SOUND VERY SIMILAR.”
“We do.”
“YOU’RE NOT LYING, ARE YOU?”
“I never lie,” she said. She waited for a denial.
“WELL…?” said the guardian.
“Oh, okay. Um. Is it … flowers?”
“NO. NOW, IF THERE ARE NO MORE—”
“There are more of us,” said Pagnell, rising.
Cope looked about herself, confused. “But there’s only the—”
Pagnell flapped her into silence.
“HOW MANY MORE?” asked the guardian, warily.
“Gosh. Hundreds. Possibly thousands.”
<
br /> Cope spun around, looking for these hundreds of people who had apparently turned up.
“Oh, Yesh shertainly indeed,” said Merken in a lispy foreign burr. “For inshtance, is the ansher water?”
“NO.”
“Is it time?” said Cope.
“YOU’VE ALREADY GUESSED ONCE.”
“You have to do a voice,” hissed Lorrika.
“Is it time?” Cope asked again, not so much in an accent as in the strained voice of a person who had never heard human speech before.
“NO.”
“Is it Moon?” said Lorrika.
“NO.”
“Blood?” said Pagnell.
“NO.”
“Boots?” said Bez.
“NO.”
“Harbour?”
“NO.”
“Hearth?”
“NO.”
“Music?”
“NO.”
“Brush?”
“NO.”
“Names?”
“NO.”
She didn’t know about the others but Lorrika quickly gave up on thinking of answers to the riddle and just spouted random words. Bez was simply stating objects he had on his person. Pagnell was going through Abington’s book and picking words out, which was either unimaginative or clever, she couldn’t say.
“Coins?”
“Rum?”
“Jewellery?”
“Tunnel?”
“Trousers?”
“Ooh. Is Trousers a good name?” said Lorrika. “Trousers in Trezdigar?”
“No,” said Pagnell.
“HOW MANY MORE OF YOU ARE THERE?”
“Stone?”
“Paper?”
“Clouds?”
“Sand?”
“Coal?”
“Smoke?”
“YES.”
“Poetry?”
“Knives?”
“Darkness?”
“I SAID, YES,” said the guardian.
“Wait. What?” said Pagnell. “Did we get it?”
The double doors swung open to the reverberation of distant and powerful machinery. Beyond, there was a simple, stone tunnel.
“Which answer was it?” said Lorrika.
“Does it matter?” said Merken.
“Told you I’d get you through,” said Pagnell and offered a fist to Lorrika. She regarded it, nonplussed. “Celebratory fistbump?” he said.
“A what?”
“You don’t do that round here? No?” He sighed and consulted his papers. “Beyond here begins the tomb proper. And, yes, now it’s all traps and things which will try to kill us.”
“Pipsqueak and Sparkles,” said Merken, nodding for them to lead the way.
Lorrika considered the tunnel ahead. “Traps, huh?”
“Come now, chaps. Do you want to live forever?” grinned the old soldier.
Pagnell glanced at Lorrika. “That’s a trick question, right?”
Ten yards down the corridor the floor vanished beneath them.
Cope Threemen
1
Eight bells, or something like it. It was hard to tell if no one was bothering to ring the bells.
Cope Threemen sat in the cell which had once held the wizard Abington and now held the highest ranking priest left in the city: a round-faced man-boy called Daedal. Cope perched on a bench, polishing her longsword with a soft leather as she watched the priest.
The taking of Ludens had been even quicker and more bloodless than General Handzame had promised. The guards at the gate had been taken utterly by surprise. Cope had smashed one in the face with a clay pot, knocked another out with the pommel of her sword and the rest had run. Then it was a race to the temple: the sounds of a thousand men and the flashes of whizzbang explosions about her. One hour to take the city, less even. If the tales were true, only the spymaster Merken had taken a city quicker, and that entirely by himself.
Cope knew she should have felt some sort of pride on a job perfectly completed, but she felt only a deep dissatisfaction it hadn’t been a proper battle. She bent to polish her blade all the harder.
“You will pay for what you have done,” said Daedal.
Cope paused and looked at him. “Pay?”
“The people you have hurt, killed. You will be punished.”
This was news to Cope. “When? How?”
The priest blinked. “I mean … you know, generally. I’m just saying. The wicked are always punished.”
“Oh.” She continued her work. “I don’t think so.”
“In the Book of Truth, Hierophant Foesen tells us after this life we are reborn, and Buqit gives us the life we deserve: the good given better lives, the wicked punished with toil and misery.”
Cope thought about this a while. And then she thought about it some more. She got to her feet, walked over and delivered a backhanded slap to the priest’s face.
“What did you do that for?” he warbled, a hand to his reddening cheek.
“So,” she said, “I will be punished in a future life for doing that?”
“Yes!” he whined.
“And that slap was probably punishment for something you did in a previous life?”
“I suppose.”
“Huh,” she muttered thoughtfully. “So why does this place exist?”
“This place?”
She raised her hands, armour clinking. “Prison. Seems a bit redundant.”
“Ah. No. Buqit wants us to show justice in this life too.”
She thought about that. “So, punishment in this life reduces the misery criminals face in the next?”
“Yes.”
“Because they’ve already paid.”
“Yes,” said Daedal with some uncertainty. Thinking it over, he repeated with greater conviction, “Yes. Yes, it does.”
“Interesting.” She punched him hard in the face.
Daedal clutched his bloody nose. “Why?” he wailed.
“I’m making sure your next life is better than this one. I’m actually helping you. I’m hurting you to pay for any bad stuff you’ve done. No pain, no gain.”
She drew back her fist.
Daedal frantically warded her off with a raised hand. “I’b good! I’b good! Pleade, don’t helb me adybore!”
“Are you sure? A couple more solid hits and you could be a king in the next life. The Hierophant even.”
“No. No, I’b fide. Dhank you.”
“Oh, okay.” She shrugged and went back to the bench. “You have given me a lot to think about,” she said.
“Good,” said Daedal as he tore strips of cloth from Abington’s bed sheets and shoved them up his bleeding nose.
Cope resumed polishing her sword. The weapon was already clean and polished but she polished it nonetheless. She had been taught long ago a professional soldier cleans their blade every night, and Cope didn’t believe pre-existing cleanliness should get in the way of that. Cope was a follower, not a leader. She served, not commanded. She liked orders and liked following. Life was simple, clear and satisfactory when one was following orders. This made her an exemplary student.
When the militia master at Skelkin had told her she would need to practise for eight hours a day to be as good as the boys, she practised for eight hours a day. When she was as good as the boys (better even) and asked the militia captain what she should do next if she wished to join the militia, he’d given her a vexed look and said she should clear out the band of thieving grimlocks which had taken up residence in the local woods. When she had done that and brought back the webbed right hand of the biggest grimlock as evidence and asked the militia captain what she should do next, he’d given her a deeply vexed look and told her she should take up weight-lifting, and go to Master Jarden Orre and ask for a long weight for that very purpose. After standing outside Master Jarden Orre’s door for ten hours without any sign of said long weight coming forth, Master Jarden Orre had explained the militia captain was playing a cruel joke and she should learn to read be
tween the lines. That night, Cope had made herself cross-eyed trying to read between the lines of the pamphlet It Is Every Man’s Duty To Fight For What Is Right she kept in her bed roll. When she visited Master Jarden Orre again, to enquire exactly how one should read between the lines, he gave her a vexed look not dissimilar to the one the militia captain gave her and said if she could run the fifteen miles to Dochlon and back, bringing him a demijohn of beer, he would teach her all she needed to know to become the greatest swordswoman that side of the sea. She did. And he did. And she also took up the weight-lifting, because the militia captain had told her to.
Master Jarden Orre was the finest instructor she had ever had and, since his death, she had yet to find anyone close to equalling him in skill and wisdom. But she looked nonetheless.
“Are all priests wise?” she asked Daedal.
He chuckled grimly. “I widh.”
“I’m on a spiritual quest, you see,” she said.
“Are you?”
She nodded. “Given to me by the High Shepherdess Gwell. After my master’s death, I went to her seeking my true purpose in life, and she, in turn, asked me a question. I have to find the answer to the question in order to find my true purpose. When we have recovered the Quill of Truth, I will ask General Handzame to use it to answer my question.”
Daedal had shoved as much cloth up his nose as one priest could usefully shove. Two streamers hung down from his nostrils like a rubbish moustache. “Whad id your quedion?” he asked.
Cope told him.
Daedal pondered over it for a very long time. “I’b going to day, yed,” he said eventually. “Yed, dhey do.”
“That’s what everyone else says,” said Cope.
“Aren’t you habby widh dhat ander?”
She pulled a face and was about to respond when Merken walked in. Cope stood to attention.
Rantallion Merken cut a fine figure in his Amanni armour. He had the firm chin, the bold nose and the high brow of a great leader. He also had the fleshless fingers, the craggy skin and the hairy ears and nose of a village elder but, dressed as a soldier, he cut a fine figure nonetheless.
Merken looked at Daedal’s bloody face and the mess he had made of the bed sheets. “Prisoner giving you trouble, Cope?”
“Not at all, sir,” she said. “We were having a spirited religious discussion.”
