by Ari Marmell
Fezeill had discovered, as well, that the stone appeared completely undamaged by the decades or centuries that the tower had lain submerged and that the place was windowless, lacking any means of ingress save for the main door at what had been the base, now about ten feet below the surface.
“I haven't examined the door itssself that closssely,” the faux-troglodyte admitted as he climbed from the water. “The truth is, thisss form is not bessst sssuited for fine coordination.” He flexed his thick fingers as though demonstrating.
Gork sighed deeply as the others looked his way. “All right, fine,” he sighed, shucking most of his equipment. “But if anything down there eats me, I’m coming back to haunt the lot of you.” Then, having made his pronouncement, he took a breath so deep it seemed to inflate his entire body, and dived from Belrotha's pack.
Navigating solely by feel and keeping one hand pressed firmly to the curved wall, the kobold kicked against the water, diving ever deeper. Finding the portal didn't actually take long, since it was right where Fezeill had suggested it would be. Even as his hand brushed the slimy wood, Gork felt a brief tingle beneath his skin. It wasn't precisely a static shock, though that was the closest equivalent his startled mind could come up with. It was more as though the door itself had hummed.
If he'd had the breath, Gork would've cursed. This was a Stars-damned wizard they were dealing with; of course he wouldn't rely on mundane defenses! Dammit!
After a moment or two, however, Gork had neither been slain nor transformed into some sort of rodent or amphibian. Focusing past the faint burning that was starting to tickle his lungs, he reached out to check the latch itself. To his expert fingers, it felt as perfectly preserved as the stone, without a hint of corrosion. Magic. What a surprise.
Hey, maybe Trelaine's spells preserved the interior, too! It might be completely free of water!
Of course, even if that were true, they still had to get in without flooding the damn place….
Gork kicked upward, breaching the surface with a deep gasp.
“Anything?” Cræosh asked.
“Yeah!” The kobold repeated everything he'd learned—omitting, however, any reference to the strange sensation he'd felt upon first touching the door. If anything bad was going to happen, he wasn't about to get blamed for it.
He was splashing through the water with small yet powerful strokes and had gotten about halfway back to his companions when he felt the waves slapping against him and realized that he wasn't the only thing thrashing in the water.
“Uh, guys? There's something in here with me!”
Seeing Cræosh's eyes flicker past him and grow wide was not the most comforting response Gork could imagine to that particular pronouncement. “No shit! Get the fuck over here, Shorty!”
The kobold whimpered once and resumed his course as fast as his tiny arms and legs would move, not pausing even to glance behind him. He hadn't even realized he'd reached the squad until Belrotha's obscenely huge hand plucked him from the water. Gork began rubbing the muck from his face, trying to see what was happening around him.
“Move out onto the tower!” Cræosh was ordering loudly. “Even with the curve, it's more stable footing than this fucking gunk!”
Gork felt the ogre who carried him move to obey. With a final swipe of his hand, he cleared his vision, and then rather wished he'd chosen to remain blind.
The swamp called Jureb Nahl had disgorged its dead, and they didn't seem at all happy about it.
Well over a dozen bodies, bloated and putrefied by submersion in the swamps, circled in the water, their heads cutting the surface like sharks’ fins. Some leered with hideous bulging lips and liquid-filled eyes, others with completely empty sockets. Their mouths all gaped in unending moans or nigh-silent screams.
“All right, we're gonna have to be quick about this,” Cræosh said, not taking his focus off the surrounding waters.
“Quick about what?” the kobold asked suspiciously.
“Look, Gork, we don't know how many of these things there are, or if we can even kill them. We've got to get those damn bones and get out of here! They don't seem to swim too well, so they'll have to climb onto the tower to come at us, and that means only a few at a time. The rest of the squad's gonna hold them off while you and I go in there and—”
“You're insane if you think I’m going back down there, Cræosh!”
“You'd rather stay up here and fight, then? I don't think you're gonna have much luck trying to sneak up on these things!”
Gork cursed, loudly.
“All right, then. Let's—”
“No.”
Cræosh pivoted to face the newest objection. “What do you mean, ‘no?’”
Katim's snout twisted in a frown. “I mean that you are…not going with the kobold. I…am.”
“Oh?” the orc sneered. “And why is that? Afraid this fight's not worth your while?”
The troll didn't rise to the bait. “It's true that I cannot…claim the servitude of creatures…already dead. But I was…thinking of more practical…concerns. This tower collapsed years…ago; there may be a…great number of narrow passages and…other obstacles. Gork cannot go in…there undefended, and in such an…environment, who here can…keep up with him better than…I?”
“Jhurpess could,” Cræosh huffed. Katim ignored him.
“Decide faster, would you guys?” Gimmol said. “Those things aren't going to circle forever, and I don't think you want to be in the water trying to get that door open when they decide to attack.”
And sure enough, the orc gave in. He might be a tad stronger than the troll, but he wasn't nearly so dexterous or lithe, and they both knew it. “All right, fine! But don't dilly-dally, okay? I don't know how long we can hold these things off.”
Katim nodded. “We will hurry.” Don't think about the water. It's only a short climb to the door. Don't think about the water.
Gork stood up, this time on Belrotha's left soldier, and prepared to dive. “You realize,” he said, “that we could get down there and find that the whole place is flooded. Or that there's no way in without flooding it.”
“Then we will deal with…it at the time.” Don't think about the water. Trolls do not fear. “You go first and…open the door. I will be…right behind you.”
“Got it.” Gork took one last look at the hideous undead things, their circles growing ever smaller, and dove.
I will not fear. Fear is—
“Katim!” Fezeill shouted, pointing.
Several of the creatures had broken off their circling and begun moving, slowly but deliberately, toward the ripples and bubbles that marked the kobold's dive.
“If you're going, go now!”
Katim closed her eyes for just an instant, and dropped.
Terror surged through her as soon as her snout submerged, and she had to fight the instinct to take a startled—and lethal—breath. Taloned hands scrabbled across the stone walls of the fallen tower, seeking purchase to halt her descent. More by accident than design, the fingers of her right hand snagged in a crevice. There she hung, unable to make herself move, an easy target for the ghoulish creatures splashing and dogpaddling her way.
And then she felt something snag her leg.
The troll's entire body locked up, muscles pulling painfully against one another as she fought the urge to lash out in mindless panic, to drive her boots or her talons into whatever had gotten hold of her. Her mind filled with the image of those decaying monstrosities dragging her down, down, to slowly drown in the liquid blackness of Jureb Nahl…
No! I am a troll! We do not fear! Clenching her teeth so hard her protruding gums began to bleed, she forced herself to calm—and only then realized that whatever lurked beneath her wasn't grabbing at her leg so much as it was tugging at the hem of her pants. Katim relaxed and allowed Gork to guide her to the door, forcing herself not to struggle as he dragged her through the portal, now hanging open…
And felt her lungs empty themselv
es of breath in a single blast as she fell free of the water's embrace to land on the curved “floor” that was originally one of the walls of the fallen tower.
“What…?” Turning a violent cough into a growled question, she twisted to examine the barren chamber. Above and slightly to the right, the wooden door hung open to reveal a veritable wall of swamp water, yet barely a trickle of the murky stuff dribbled in through the opening.
“It's as I suspected,” Gork said. “Trelaine must've laid some pretty potent spells on this place. He probably just meant to keep his basement from flooding if the swamp rose in the rain, but—well, you can see for yourself.”
Katim, still breathing heavily, rose to her feet. “I can indeed. It…seems that searching this place…will not be so difficult after…all.”
“I don't know,” Gork said, glancing around. “The floors and the ceilings are walls, and everything's gonna be topsy-turvy at best. Could make searching awkward.”
“Then we'd best…get started, hadn't…we? The others are running…out of time.”
“Yeah.” A brief pause. “I'll pretend to care about that if you will.”
Truth was, he'd considered leaving her out there to drown. Cræosh might have bought into her excuse about functioning down here better than the orc could have, but Gork didn't, not for one minute. He'd watched her in the water, knew damn well that she had all the swimming skills of a crippled brick. Something else had driven her down here. Probably the same something that had inspired her to keep an eye on him every waking moment, even when he was on watch and she was supposed to be asleep, since their days in the Northern Steppes. Yeah, he'd noticed, and yeah, it was pretty easy to guess why.
She knew about Ebonwind. Or, at the very least, suspected.
Obviously, Gork hadn't been as careful as he'd thought, back in the cottage. The troll must have spotted him leaving, must have watched as he made his pact with the dakórren and his strange little familiar.
Right now, though, he needed her. Gork would never have admitted it to the others, but the thought of exploring this place alone scared the piss out of him. And besides, she obviously hadn't said anything about Ebonwind to the others; hadn't tried to blackmail him, or cut herself in for a piece of the dakórren's promised reward.
So he'd watch her watch him, and see just what it was she had in mind before he decided what to do about her. Stars willing, it wouldn't come down to having to kill her. Just the thought of trying would've made his blood run cold enough to freeze the aforementioned piss absolutely solid.
“All right,” he said calmly, pretending there was nowhere else he'd rather be than in a submerged tower, surrounded by irate corpses, searching for the bones of a long-dead sorcerer. “So where do we start?”
They chose the nearest room, through a simple door that had once marked the first landing on the spiral staircase. The mismatched pair were forced to crawl along and through the steps, scraping their palms and their knees, working their way forward through the floor of the second story. Gork found himself growing nauseated with vertigo every time he looked straight ahead to see the stairs spiraling over—no, away—and decided to keep his eyes on his claws. As it happened, though, the chamber was little more than a small closet, apparently having served Trelaine as something of a coat room. Broken coat racks and a few scraps of cloak covered the wall-turned-floor. After desultorily poking through the refuse, they moved on.
By the time they'd reached what had been the eighth floor—after having stumbled onto three guest bedrooms, a dining room, a kitchen (which had been unfortunately positioned above them, and the opening of which had resulted in a large pile of pots and pans falling onto the kobold's head), a broom closet, and a bathing chamber—they were both growing well and truly frustrated at the whole escapade.
“Who would've thought,” Gork groused, “that some great and powerful wizard could possibly be this dull?”
“How many wizards…have you met in your…lifetime?”
“That's not the point at all,” the kobold said, crawling ahead to examine the latch on the next door. He dug a wire from one of his pouches and began to poke at the mechanism. “The point is that I’m standing inside a fallen wizard's tower underneath a swamp, and I’m bored. What's wrong with this picture?”
The lock snapped open with a loud ping. Gork shuffled back, brushing off his hands.
“If you're that bored…I’m sure they'd love to have you…join them topside.”
The kobold scowled. Katim, axe in hand, shuffled forward at a crouch and awkwardly kicked open the door. It fell inward with a crash, hanging down from the horizontal stairway on which they stood. She jumped inside, rising to her full height, the kobold close on her heels.
And then, in the light of the torch—which she carried while he was working on the locks, he while they entered each room—they saw what awaited them, and their spirits sagged. Katim's fists clenched tight, and Gork felt an overwhelming need to break something.
“Another storeroom? He couldn't possibly have even owned that much crap!”
“It would certainly…seem so, wouldn't it?”
“I told you all the interesting stuff would be at the top. I told you we should start there and work down!”
Katim growled something unintelligible, hunched back onto the twisted staircase, and crawled on ahead. Muttering and cursing, Gork followed, and almost ran into her as she stopped short at the gap in the wall leading to the next “level.”
“Now this,” she said, “may be…worthwhile.”
His curiosity—not to mention his constantly bubbling store of impatience—now fully aroused, the kobold squeezed past. Doing so gave him a clear view of the door, sitting on the floor (which had once been the west wall).
“Oh, yeah! That's more like it.” Or at least more interesting.
Gork had seen the insides of enough prisons to recognize that this thick, steel-bound monstrosity could only be the door to a cell. And in fact, it was held shut by a heavy wooden bar that fastened it to what was now the floor. Carefully he crawled over and peeked in the small window, twisting his head to peer between the bars.
“Do you see anything…worth going in there…for?” Katim asked.
Gork shook his head. “Can't tell for sure. There's a whole lot of seriously old straw piled against the far wall. Er, that is, the floor. Bunch of chains and manacles hanging from some of the walls—long suckers, too. And it looks like there're some bones sticking out of the straw, but I can't tell how many.”
The troll dropped to all fours beside him and pulled the queen's bronze brooch from a pouch at her belt.
“You think we're going to find his bones in his own cell?” Gork asked skeptically.
“Probably not,” Katim admitted, holding the brooch above the window. “But we don't know…what happened here. Would…you not prefer that we make…certain?”
“Fair enough. And I suppose he could've been holding a rival wizard captive, and that'd do us just as well. So how's that thing supposed to work?”
“I’m not entirely…sure. But it appears that we…are not close enough. It…is not doing anything…at all.”
“That, or they're just normal bones and it's not supposed to do anything. Or you're doing it wrong.” Gork quickly raised a hand in supplication as she cast him a sideways glare. “Okay, okay. Just kidding.”
They stared silently at the bones below.
“Why don't we move on,” Gork said finally, “and if we don't find anything elsewhere, we can come back?”
“I'd really prefer to…be sure, however improbable it…may be.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Feel free to go on…ahead alone, then.”
Sigh. “Fine. Move that bar, would you?”
With a grunt, Katim heaved. The bar slid from its brackets with a hideous screech, clattered to the wall/floor beside the door with a deafening clang. The entire door flashed, as though the sun had been hidden behind that bar, and then the light wa
s gone—not counting the spots in Gork's and Katim's eyes—as rapidly as it appeared.
The door shuddered as something slammed against it, hard, from the other side.
“It occurs to me, albeit a tad belatedly,” Gork said as they scrambled to their feet and backed away from the juddering portal, “that anything imprisoned in a wizard's tower might, uh, be magical enough to survive the centuries.”
“A tad belatedly?” the troll snarled, obviously ignoring the fact that she hadn't thought of it either.
“Well, better late than never, right?” Gork asked. With a final earthshaking thump, the door blew open.
The thing that emerged was pulled straight from someone's nightmares, possibly the same lunatic who had dreamed up the worm-folk. It hovered a foot or so above the ground, bobbing and swaying like a ship at sea. Its uppermost parts were a humanoid skeleton: grinning skull, collarbone, shoulder blades, arms—they were all there. Even a spine, a thrashing and twisting tail, hung from that skull. But beneath the shoulders was nothing but a spinning vortex of air, a whirlwind in miniature made visible by the centuries of dust and grime it sucked into itself as it spun. The spine lashed about, a whip in that wind, taking small chunks of stone out of the bricks wherever it struck. With an earsplitting laugh that came from the midst of the raging winds, rather than from the mouth above, it lunged toward its “rescuers.”
Katim's first thought, just before she brought her axe around to intercept it, was Who the hell would create such a thing?
Gork's first thought, as he glanced down at the kah-rahahk in his hands, was What the hell am I going to stab with this?
Even as he backed away from the hell-spawned creature, he watched Katim knock the first of its bony claws away with the flat of her blade, then bring her axe down straight into the rictus grin. Bone chips flew, and the skull howled in pain—or Gork hoped it was pain, at any rate—but rather than do the polite thing and drop dead, the creature only retreated a foot or so, striking with its other hand even as it moved.
The troll cried out, staggering back to slam against the nearest wall. (Floor? Whatever it was.) Gork's eyes tried their damnedest to pop from his own skull as her flesh contorted and a burst of wind—as dusty as the creature's own—flowed from Katim's wound and from her gaping mouth. She forced herself upright, choking something foul from her lungs, but her posture was stooped, and it appeared to Gork that the dancing axe was markedly slower than before.
