by Dave Gross
"It's a means of heating a building by channeling hot air or steam through narrow passages beneath the floors," said the boss. "Such a system requires regular maintenance. It seems entirely likely that the new occupants of the tower never learned to use it."
"Can we reach the upper floors this way?" asked Oparal. She was no dummy.
"Perhaps," said the boss. "But we could not expect to find access from the hypocaust chambers to the rooms we need to explore."
"I'll go," I said. "Have a listen here and there, catch up with you afterward."
"I'll go with you," said Gemma.
"No," said Oparal.
"Then I'll come," said Alase.
"No way," I said. The last time I'd let a pretty little bit help me in a tight space, I'd wound up down in a pit. "You can't see in the dark, and we don't want a flame in there with all the dust. Besides, you got to help the boss find the library."
The boss gave me the nod. I looked to Oparal, not that I needed her permission. She nodded at me, and I tipped her a wink.
"I'll meet you upstairs." I started to climb inside the furnace, but then I realized they might need more doors opened. I handed over my rake pick to Gemma. I had a feeling she knew how to use it.
I climbed into the furnace. That was no favor to my kickers, but the ashes had disintegrated to a fine powder. I tried not to stir it up too much as I pulled myself up into the water tank.
A narrow channel on the side connected it to the tanks on either side. It was the vents on top that I wanted. They angled up only a couple of feet before leveling off.
My jacket got a couple of scrapes, but nothing too serious. Time was, that would have bothered me a lot more. These days, I was getting used to the idea that I wouldn't have any jacket for long. Something always ruined it for me.
Usually something from Hell.
The space beneath the upper floor was only a couple of feet tall. In a few places there was a square stone rectangle filling up the space, probably a stairwell. The rest was full of little pillars set about three and a half feet apart, all across a space that must have covered a third of the tower. The other steam tanks must have fed the other two-thirds of the floor.
Crawling quiet as a snake, I got partway across the space before hearing sounds above me: screams, the crack of lashes, the sizzle of flesh, and inhuman laughter. Under other circumstances, I'd have guessed it was a torture chamber. In a place like this, it could have been a party.
Across the room I found another set of vents rising to the third floor. When the hypocaust was working, the second floor must have been the hottest, with each of the ones above a little colder.
Going up to the third floor was just a little trickier, since the passage went about ten feet almost straight up. Once I got under the floor, I heard the scrape of furniture and chains above me. A little farther along, I heard something boiling. On the other side of the tower—right above the place we'd broken in—I heard quiet footsteps and figured I'd caught up to the others. I listened hard but picked up no whispers.
Maybe it was a mistake, but letting the boss know where I was became a temptation. I can resist anything else.
Hoping anyone else would think it was just rats, I scratched out a simple pattern the boss and I had worked out years ago. After a pause, he scratched back the answer.
So far, so good.
I went up another floor. Nothing to hear, so I went up another.
That's when things got interesting.
First I heard a metal squealing. It took me a second to figure it out, but then I recognized the sound of the big metal frames hanging off the tower outside. As I moved closer to the center of the tower, I heard voices.
One was definitely a woman, the second one a man. The third, I don't know what it was. Its voice felt like fingernails on slate. Hearing it made my teeth hurt.
Worse than the sound of that voice was the language they were speaking. I recognized it as demontongue. I could even say a few nasty things a demon could understand, but I couldn't follow a conversation.
The man's voice sounded familiar, but I couldn't place it. That was frustrating, but I couldn't say I regretted never learning the language. Chaos talk was one of the few languages even the boss wouldn't speak, although he understood it well enough. He told me speaking it too much could mess with your mind, change the way you think. Make you crazy.
More like a demon.
Still, that man's voice was killing me. I knew I'd heard it somewhere before. If only he were speaking Taldane or ...
I felt along my arm until I found the riffle scroll I needed. The boss had scratched a word into the leather cover: comprehend.
That was one I hadn't tried before, but I figured there was nothing to it but what he'd already told me. I thought about what I expected the magic to do. Then I thumbed the edge.
The pages tickled past my thumb. I didn't see any magic happening, but I got a snoot full of dust. I managed not to sneeze, but I choked a bit.
"What was that?" said the woman's voice.
"I heard only the sails," said the man. He sounded distracted, like he was busy with some chore, but now I knew his voice. It was Prince Kasiya, the boss's old nemesis.
That third voice scraped across my ears. "Why are you nervous? You said your mistress would depart from the temple."
"That's what she told me," said the woman. I could hear the shudder in her voice. "But she doesn't trust me—she doesn't trust any of us. I wouldn't be surprised if she returned here before heeding the summons to Iz, just to catch me at schemes."
Kasiya snickered. I'd heard that mocking sound from a lot of noble types in past. It made me want to slap it right out of him. "Schemes are exactly what we're hatching, Yavalliska. Can you blame her?"
After a moment of icy silence, the woman laughed with him. "Of course not," she said. "There are no sisters among succubi. We were not made to serve each other or to work in concert. It is agony simply to suffer her close presence. But Areelu Vorlesh never learned the lessons taught in the cradle of the Abyss. She was born a human and thinks that makes her superior to me. Soon she will learn otherwise."
"Do not underestimate Areelu Vorlesh," said the third, monster voice. "She was the first among the Three. You cannot overthrow her rule alone."
"Then it is good that you came to me, Ommors."
Ommors, I thought. Desna weeps! That was the name of the spider-thing we chased out of the Delvegate.
"Do not forget that I have precedence, both by rank and by virtue of first arrival," said Kasiya. "You will open the library to me the moment Vorlesh leaves Undarin. Once the secrets of the Lexicon of Paradox are mine, no one will stand before you."
"I am grateful for your generosity, Your Highness."
Even from under the floor, I could hear the sarcasm. Kasiya obviously missed it. "It is well that you understand."
"What is in this Lexicon?" said Ommors.
"That's none of your concern, demon."
"Daemon," screeched Ommors. The sound itched in my teeth. "If I had not already sated my thirst, I would drain the last ounce of your blood, vampire. My kind have hunted your kind for ages."
"You will dare no such impertinence when I am the god of vampires!"
"Now, now, Prince Kasiya," said Yavalliska. "The distinction between demons and daemons is more important than you may understand. Unlike my kind, daemons—"
"Don't lecture me, fiend. Your obsession with such trivia reminds me of that ...Pathfinder." He spat. "I am a prince. It is I who decides. It is I who commands. I do not crab my hand on notes or dull my eyes in candlelight over monographs on the varieties of fiends."
"But weren't you once a Pathfinder?"
"I will not be mocked."
"Then it is best you do not speak."
Kasiya gasped. The guy would have been a hit as a court fool, except he wasn't in on his own joke. Still, when he spoke I could almost feel the ice forming on the floor above me. "One word to Areelu Vorlesh, and I could have you destroyed.
"
"Perhaps," cooed Yavalliska. "But she needs nothing from you. Your success depends on my assistance."
Ommors said, "Why do I have to wait? For centuries the people of Valahuv worshiped me as a god. All I crave is blood and suffering. Undarin has ample supplies of both."
"Areelu Vorlesh will not suffer your presence in her city. You must serve me before I grant you sanctuary when the city is mine."
Ommors made a chittering sound but didn't say anything I could understand, even with the spell. I heard a window open. Somebody left, but I still heard two of them moving around above me.
Glass clinked. Someone settled into a chair. I wondered whether I should go back to find the boss or stick around and listen some more. It hadn't been so long since I left, so I crawled toward the sound of the clinking glass. Before I got there, Kasiya spoke again.
"Are you well?"
"I felt ..." Yavalliska got up and moved to where I'd heard the window open. "No, she is still at the Temple of Deskari. Her escorts are assembling, but she has not emerged."
"Once I have used the Lexicon to take Zura's place as the god of vampires, you will have a place at my side." A pause. "What? Does that thought repel you?"
The window closed. "No, my prince. It is not that. I simply feel her presence, even at this distance."
I heard Kasiya rise from his seat. He walked right over me as he went to her. "You need never fear her again, once the Lexicon is mine. But you must learn to hold that insolent tongue of yours."
"So long as that daemon is among us, I must present an image of strength and independence," purred Yavalliska. "Surely you understand."
Kasiya hesitated a moment before saying, "Yes, of course."
What a sucker, I thought—in more ways than one.
Sometimes I crack myself up. I stifled a chuckle.
"Ommors will serve us both. The daemon is more powerful than you realize, easily seduced by the blood it craves."
"I know something of that impulse."
"As do I, my prince. But there is no shortage of worship and sacrifice here in Undarin. And once we see Areelu Vorlesh depart for Iz, we shall slip into her tower and search every inch of her arcane library. Then you can use this Lexicon of Paradox to assume your rightful place as god of vampires."
They might have had more to say after that, but it was time for me to go. I'd heard enough: the boss was searching the wrong tower.
Chapter Twelve
The Widowknife Chronicle
Varian
Any misgivings I had about letting Radovan scout through the hypocaust vanished when we reached the first guard station. With a scroll I rendered Gemma invisible. The effects would not long endure, but the spell would persist even after she did her work.
Gemma crept around the corner. We heard a muffled grunt, and a moment later the body of a demonblooded sentry came sliding back, dragged by the invisible woman. We concealed the corpse in the furnace chamber and crept along the ground-floor hallway.
Pausing only to allow Gemma to listen at closed doors, we encountered nothing more dreadful than snoring from the guards' bunkroom. We proceeded up the stairs on the far side of the corridor.
There I heard Radovan scratching a signal from within the walls. If Desna smiled upon us, he would find egress above. Otherwise he would have to retrace his path all the way to the entrance.
Traversing the second floor proved more challenging. Rather than a single straight corridor, a circular passage separated an inner sanctum from a number of outer chambers. Semicircular braziers set into the stone walls glowered with banked coals. Red and yellow light spilled from the outer chambers, some with their doors wide open, others sealed with prison bars.
In more favorable circumstances, I should have liked to search them all. Yet we could tell by the sounds alone that most of the chambers were occupied.
Reluctant though I was to expend one of my last remaining invisibility scrolls, I placed a hand upon Oparal's shoulders. The others knew the sign; Gemma placed her hand on my shoulder, Alase on hers. I discharged the scroll and we vanished from sight.
Oparal led the way past orgies and tortures, experiments vile and cruel. Nothing I had seen even in the laboratories of the Acadamae could compare. The obscenities we saw perpetrated in those alcoves made the Acadamae's necromancers and diabolists seem no more malign than boys plucking the wings from insects or incinerating ants with a beam of sunlight focused through a lens. Despite the surgical nature of some of the proceedings, the leering faces of the vivisectionists, human and fiendish, left no question that they took far more pleasure than learning from their experiments. The blood resulting from their violations of their subjects pooled on the floor until it gurgled into drains that carried the effluvium through the basements to run off the falls and pollute the Sarkora River.
Few of the demon cults I had uncovered in Egorian had been half so abominable.
Once the paladin paused before me, and I imagined I could feel her holy blade trembling in its scabbard. For a dreadful instant I feared it might be one of those fabled sentient weapons that could overcome its mistress's caution and send her berserking into a futile attack.
Whatever the cause of her hesitation, Oparal resumed our course. On the other side of the tower, we ascended an unguarded stair to the third floor. It, too, presented us with a circular path around a central chamber and six more rooms on the outer perimeter.
I felt a hand upon my back. It moved to touch my arm. "If the library is on this floor," whispered Alase, "it must be through one of the first two doors to our left."
"I'll check," whispered Gemma. Her hand left my shoulder.
A moment later, I saw the nearest door handle move. The door opened a fraction of an inch before closing again silently. The same occurred on the next door. Moments later, Gemma whispered, "Definitely not libraries."
I heard the horror in her voice and was content not to have seen the occupants of the room myself.
We hastened past the third-floor chambers before the invisibility expired. I prepared to extend it with my last such scroll, but Desna smiled upon us. The stairs and the landing on the fourth floor were uninhabited.
The fourth floor was little more than half the circumference of the first. Surrounding a small circular landing were only four doors. We went to the westernmost. Gemma reappeared as she knelt before the lock, removing Radovan's rake pick with a grim smile.
"I should buy one of these," she whispered. When she saw Oparal's concerned frown, she added, "You can see it's useful."
Oparal made a grudging nod and a hurry-up gesture. Gemma opened the door just wide enough to peer inside. She continued to peer as she opened it further and further, until eventually she stepped inside and beckoned the rest of us to follow. Once we did, she closed it in near silence.
Moonlight streamed in through a tall window to the west. Mismatched tapestries hung from a heavy rod above the window. Without prompting, Oparal closed them. Once they were covered, I activated the light on my ring, cupping it to direct the light toward the floor.
Mammoth-wool rugs covered the floor. Their faded colors told me they were original to the tower when it was dedicated not to Zura but to the myriad Sarkorian "gods" associated with twilight and sunset. Three-legged stools, the lacquer long since worn off the seats, surrounded a pine table perched on giant elk antlers. A row of half-melted candles ran down the table's spine, their dusty heads indicating long disuse.
High upon the walls, the painted skulls of beasts and men glowered down at us. A few empty spaces showed where the old had made way. Gory remains of several demon skulls were relatively new additions. I speculated they were fallen rivals of Undarin's mistress, the half-demon Areelu Vorlesh.
Beneath the grim skulls hung boxes of bone and wood, woven baskets, their bellies burst or sagging. In some of them I spied scroll-sticks similar to those we discovered in the ossuary beneath Nekrosof tower. These had either been expended or never completed.
; In the base of some of the hanging boxes we found circular stains in colors I recognized from the tinctures we had found beside the scroll-sticks in Storasta. A few drops in a draught of water, and the concentrated liquid became a potion. The ancient Sarkorians may have been known for their unorthodox worship, but they were no strangers to the arcane.
Between them, withered parchment draped over long pegs like wool through a loom. At first glance, I speculated that someone had made an effort to restore old manuscripts, but blowing lightly across the parchment produced a cloud of dust. If there had been any efforts toward restoring or preserving these documents, they had been abandoned decades earlier. My hopes of finding the Lexicon of Paradox in this chamber plunged.
Gemma listened at the door while Oparal stood by the window tapestries. One was made of coarse aurochs yarn, braided and dyed to form images of enormous animals with tiny human hunters at their feet. The other was a rude quilt stitched of foreign military banners: Ustalav, Isger, Mendev, and others. The blood of the fallen stained every patch.
Oparal parted the tapestries, shielding the gap with her body as she peered outside. Without turning, she said, "You must see this, Count."
I gave Alase my ring, demonstrating how to direct its light with a cupped hand. While she removed the scrolls from their racks and set them on the table, I joined Oparal at the window.
Rather than step aside, Oparal beckoned me close. With two fingers, she once more divided the tapestries, raising her shield to prevent the light from betraying our presence. Our faces close, we peered through the careful gap.
Our high vantage gave us a new perspective on Undarin.
The southern bank remained relatively dark, with occasional bands of demons or cultists roving the avenues between slave and animal pens. A few hovels remained, but most had been left in ruins after the capture of the city nearly a century earlier.
There was little traffic on the bridges that leapfrogged the Sarkora River, only a few sentries marked by the light of their torches. As we watched, a lone traveler crossed one of the bridges, avoiding the ogre-sized guard. Perhaps offended by the cringing pedestrian, the gigantic figure reached him in two great strides, grasped him by the head, and hurled him into the river. The victim's scream reached us even over the clamor of the nearer Cliffside.
