Nightblade

by Liane Merciel

  The sculpture at the end of the path, however, had not been touched by time. It was an immense work of living wood, fifteen feet high and ten across. Innumerable trees and vines had been woven together by magic so that their overlapping trunks and branches formed an intricate knot of multicolored strands. Smooth silver bark twined around fibrous gray and shaggy dun; glossy olive leaves brushed gently against red-throated white flowers and fragrant lilac. The interaction of all the disparate plants, creating a design that varied unpredictably in the center but came to four symmetrical compass points at the perimeter of the circle, suggested wildness and absolute control at the same time.

  It was a wonder. Isiem had never seen its like.

  Teglias, Ascaros, and Ganoven were studying the circle of branches intently, while Pulcher and Copple sat off to the side trying to crack open some nuts they'd found in the forest.

  "Ena's gone to get the horses," the Sarenite said when he saw them. "We'll keep them here while we explore the rest of the complex. It seems safe enough. There's water here, and grass by the streams."

  "What is this?" Isiem asked, motioning to the immense living sculpture.

  "The Circle of the Four Gates," Teglias answered. "An ancient symbol, and an obscure one. It's mostly forgotten nowadays. But in earlier ages, it was used by some druidic sects to represent the natural world." The cleric pointed to the flowers that blossomed at each of the four compass points: red, yellow, blue, white. They were all different species, but they had clustered together so that each group of flowers was the same size as the others. "The flowers mark the classical elements: fire, earth, water, air. The plants within represent the wild variety of life that flourishes within the embrace and interaction of those four elements. Each design is subtly different, depending on the sect and the individual druid, but that much of the meaning is always the same."

  "Does it do anything?"

  Ascaros lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "It seems to maintain the air and water in this place. I suppose it might have some influence on that enchanted sun, as well. If it does anything else, it's beyond me to tell. You're welcome to examine it yourself, if you like."

  Isiem did, but could tell little. He wasn't familiar with the magic undergirding the sculpture. The druidic arts had always been foreign to him. In Nidal, such mysteries were considered the domain of primitives, or mystic cults like the albinos of the Uskwood, and were little studied in the arcane schools of Pangolais or the hushed temples of Zon-Kuthon. He felt the magic in the symbol, stirring sleepily under his probing spell and running through each leaf's green veins, but he could not unravel its meaning.

  Defeated, he shook his head and stepped back. "It's druidic, I can tell that much. But no more."

  "I believe your friend is right," Teglias said. "It maintains the balance of elements in this place that allows the garden to live. The important thing, in my mind, is what it tells us about Eledwyn. This was a woman who valued the natural world, and who chose to make her sanctuary a garden, going so far as to enlist the aid of druids in crafting it. Clearly she was not entirely evil."

  Ascaros snorted. "I can see you've never met a Nidalese druid, Teglias. In the Uskwood, they honor nature by watering their gardens with human blood." He shook his head. "Don't go looking to redeem Eledwyn. Use her weapon or don't, but don't kid yourself—you're fighting evil with evil."

  The Sarenite started to speak, then subsided with a small inclination of his head. "I suppose that's wise. If there are no objections, we'll rest here tonight and see what else there is to be found on the morrow. It'll be faster if we split up. Kyril and Ena will go with me. Ganoven, take your men. You two together." He pointed to Isiem and Ascaros.

  "It's safer if we all stay together," Kyril protested.

  "It's safer if we find what we came here for and get out quickly," the cleric said. "None of us is a novice, and in any case, we haven't seen anything more dangerous than water bugs and a few unpleasant doors in here."

  "I agree with the cleric," Ganoven said, stroking his tidy black beard. "It's far more efficient to canvass the place in a single day, then regroup just before we leave." From the glint in his eye, and Kyril's answering scowl, Isiem surmised that the paladin shared his thought: the Aspis agent just wanted a chance to loot the place without the others seeing.

  "I think you're being a stupid greedy idiot," Ena said, eying Ganoven as she returned with two of their horses. "But I can also see you're bent on it. Fine. At least I should be out of blast range when you inevitably blow yourself up."

  "I'm so glad you agree," the Aspis agent said, unruffled.

  "Ascaros," Teglias said. "Do you still have those compasses?"

  "Yes." The shadowcaller opened his satchel, removing the bloodstone compasses he'd distributed before they went into the Backar Forest to hunt the Beast. He handed compasses to Kyril, Teglias, and Ganoven. The last he did not keep for himself, but offered to Isiem. "I trust you all remember how to use them? Each communicates with the others and will guide you to them. For a small price in blood."

  "I remember," Isiem said. He noted that this one's needle was silver, not steel like the others', and that there was a rune at its center that the compass he'd used previously did not possess. The wizard wondered why Ascaros wasn't keeping the compass for himself, but he accepted the needled stone and slid it into a pocket. It rested cold and heavy against his leg, its needle pricking into his thigh. He turned it around, which made it only slightly less uncomfortable.

  If any of them stumbled into real danger in Fiendslair, the compass was unlikely to save them. It took precious seconds to use, and it required a level of concentration that a panicked man might not be able to muster. But it might be useful before that, if they had enough warning to know.

  "Good," Ganoven said. "Then it's settled. Tonight we rest. Tomorrow we find this nightblade."

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Laboratory of Demons

  Ganoven and his thugs were already gone by the time Isiem arose the next day, and Teglias's group was leaving. Ena gave Isiem's shoulder a brief squeeze as she departed; Kyril nodded in wordless farewell.

  "Good luck," Teglias said. "Try not to get eaten, and be sure to give them indigestion if you do." And with that, they, too, were gone.

  Isiem assumed it was morning, although that was only a guess. The garden's artificial sun moved along its track at a speed that seemed to approximate a day's length, but it never rose or set, and there was nothing else in Fiendslair that had even that tenuous connection to the world outside. The natural cycle held no meaning here; Isiem strongly suspected that Eledwyn's workshop existed outside Golarion altogether.

  A covered pot of porridge sat by the embers of their cookfire. Isiem lifted the lid and looked inside. Oats, raisins, a smudge of honey. Kyril had prepared that meal, he guessed—the paladin had a distinct sweet tooth, and had never been able to abide plain porridge—and probably Copple had been the one who'd scooped out most of the raisins and all but the faintest whiff of honey for his share.

  But there was more than enough left for him. He hesitated, wondering if he should save some for Ascaros ...but the shadowcaller wasn't anywhere to be seen, so he had probably already eaten his fill. And if not, there was no telling when he'd be back.

  Isiem took the whole pot, and was just finishing it when Ascaros came back through the trees. "Ah, you're finally awake."

  "Indeed." Isiem put the pot aside and closed his spellbook. He'd studied while he ate, imprinting the words of magic carefully on his mind and storing another teleportation spell in his ruby ring. Without knowing exactly what they were likely to face, it had been difficult to choose the spells that might be useful, but he was accustomed to that. It was the wizard's daily lot. "What shall we explore?"

  "One or another of the demonflesh doors, I imagine." Ascaros's illusory face twisted in an expression of very real disgust. "Ganoven cut through the brimorak door before you woke up. I don't know what he found past it, but it might be pru
dent to find out. He was a little too eager to run off on his own yesterday."

  "Of course he was," Isiem said dryly. "He's here to find weapons, and weapons are vastly improved by surprise. Particularly if the enemies you want to surprise are Chelish devilers, and your not-entirely-trusted allies are Nidalese who might be in league with those devilers. It's entirely predictable that he'd want to leave us behind. It will be even more predictable if he tries to backstab us on the way out."

  "Quite so," Ascaros agreed. "But I didn't come here looking for weapons. I came to find out how I could cheat death. As such, I'm not especially interested in getting myself killed during the search. Tends to negate the point."

  "We agree entirely." Isiem collected the satchel that held his traveling spellbook and a few other necessaries. Shouldering the satchel, he followed Ascaros through the garden and back to the circular brass room.

  Both the spite demons and the brimoraks were still bleeding when the Nidalese arrived, suggesting that some of the companions had just passed through. The brimoraks' blood boiled away upon contact with air, leaving a foul sulfurous smell in the room.

  The demonflesh doors did not heal instantly after being cut open. Their flesh took a minute or two to mend back into a solid seal, allowing a door to be used by several people before it closed. The delay was likely excruciating for the demons—their agonized, squashed expressions certainly suggested as much—but the builders of this place had not been much concerned with their pain.

  "Now's our chance to spy on them," Ascaros said mischievously, poking at a sliver of exposed bone from a brimorak's severed finger. The wounded creature snarled at him, its bestial face flattened and voice muted by the magic that held it trapped in the shape of a door. "The door's open. It's a golden opportunity to take them unawares."

  Isiem eyed the bleeding door dubiously. Tendrils of raw pink flesh were beginning to adhere to the walls around it as the demons' broken bodies healed, renewing the airtight seal around the chamber. They didn't have long to decide; their best chance might already be past. "Really?"

  "No." Ascaros jabbed the bone back down vertically into the brimorak's finger, eliciting a final soundless squeal, and turned away. "I am tempted to catch them stealing, because I know they are, but not enough to forgo my own explorations to do it. We'll take the door of bones."

  "What are those things? I don't recognize them."

  "Vermin." The shadowcaller pulled hard on the handle of warped bone that jutted out from the mass of fiends. Another tiny blade whirred out, shearing through the fine white bones around the door's edges with a high shrill noise. It sliced through a blinking red eyeball as well, spreading the viscous, crimson ocular fluid across another six inches of bone and wall.

  "Ostovites," he continued, stepping back as they waited for the door to open. "Mindless, vile little parasites that have barely any bodies of their own. Instead they dig into their victims' bodies, then soften the bones with their saliva and pull them out so that they can peel them apart and weave them like wicker strands in a basket. Except they never make anything so sensible as a basket; they just build themselves demented attempts at arms and legs that barely function well enough for them to crawl to their next unfortunate prey. The best of them look like crippled starfish. The rest ...well, being smashed into a door of eternal suffering is likely a considerable improvement on their own architectural skills."

  The whirling blade retracted back into the wall. The door was free, framed by a fine dust of ground bone.

  Isiem pulled it open and sent his floating light ahead. Its bubble of illumination passed over dusty tables and cobwebbed chests, freestanding wardrobes crowded with acolytes' robes, and eight narrow beds on iron frames. Their mattresses were wrinkled and shrunken, their blankets faded by time, but on the whole, the room was remarkably well preserved. Behind the demonflesh door, it appeared, this place had been empty and sterile for centuries.

  "Eledwyn's assistants?" Isiem stooped to lift the lid of a wooden trunk at the foot of a bed. More clothes were tucked inside, along with a pair of pale green candles that smelled mustily of sage, a small gold incense dish, a necklace of irregular aventurine beads, and a few pages of faded, barely legible script. He rifled quickly through these last items—mnemonics and study aids. "They were worried about possession, poison, disease."

  "It seems likely," Ascaros agreed. "Fiendslair is far too large for a single person to have managed, and the assistants would have had to sleep somewhere. And yes, of course they'd be concerned about such things. Demons are demons, and it's a fool who forgets that." He rummaged through the clothes hanging in the wardrobe. They all appeared to be of the same simple cut, although the gray-green robes were in several different sizes.

  Isiem moved to the next trunk. It held a few more personal effects and ritual paraphernalia from the same esoteric religion, but nothing that struck him as being of great interest. The two after it were similarly unrevealing.

  The fifth one was different. The lid of this trunk was tipped back, propped up by an overflowing heap of tangled chains, collars, and other restraints. Most of them did not appear to be made for human forms. Some were inscribed with sigils that Isiem recognized as paralytic spells; others contained links of verdigrised copper and were adorned with milky quartzes to neutralize the bound creature's poison. All were damaged in some way, although a few seemed to have been partly repaired.

  "Chains for demons," he murmured, disentangling one such chain from a set of four interlocked manacles. Bubbles of dried ichor were faintly visible on the interior surfaces where they'd corroded the ancient steel. Isiem traced them with a pale fingertip, wondering what fiend had left those marks.

  Ascaros came over. "Is there anything else?"

  "Those books." Isiem nodded toward a stack of three yarn-tied notebooks piled next to the trunk. "Repair notes, perhaps."

  "One would think Eledwyn would have been able to afford better books for her underlings. These look like schoolgirl's diaries." Ascaros picked up the top notebook and riffled through its pages. After a few seconds, he frowned, closed the book, and picked up the next. "I can't read any of this. It's all in Elven."

  "Well, take them anyway." Isiem began sorting the chains into neat piles on the nearest bed. "I'll prepare a translation spell tomorrow. It should at least enable us to determine whether it's worth the trouble to translate all of them."

  "If only they'd thought to include some pictures." Sighing, Ascaros bundled the books up and tucked them into his satchel. "Have you found anything else interesting?"

  "Not unless you're fascinated by prayers to nature spirits."

  "I'm mildly curious as to why anyone would bother. But no, can't say I care beyond that." Ascaros helped extricate the last few sets of cuffs and chains. He chose a few of the smaller pieces to carry away. Isiem did the same, trying to vary his selections to encompass the widest possible range of restraints and intended targets. After packing them into his satchel, he led the way back out to the central brass room.

  The brimorak and spite demon doors were bleeding again. So was the omox, although that one had nearly healed shut under its drying line of ichor.

  This time, after raising an eyebrow at Ascaros and receiving a tiny nod in return, Isiem grabbed a brimorak's bent blue-gray leg and hauled that smoking door open. Dripping gobbets of boiling blood, it pulled aside to reveal another long hallway, narrower and less elaborate than the one that led to the forest garden.

  Unlike that ornately designed hall, this one held no metalwork or carvings, and while it was lit by enchanted lamps, these were simple globes of frosted glass hung from braided ropes. Several of them, like the lamps in the other hall, seemed to have lost their magic over the ages; their spheres were dark and lifeless.

  A series of rune-scribed silver plates were embedded in the floor. The flowing letters etched into those plates lit up as Isiem and Ascaros neared them—or, at least, some of them did. Others, drained by ages of neglect, stayed inert.
<
br />   "Trap?" Ascaros asked, staying near the door.

  Isiem shook his head and continued down the hall. "If Ena has already been here, she would have disabled it or marked it. If she hasn't, I would expect Ganoven's idiots to be plastered across the walls. As neither of those things has happened, I must conclude there's no trap."

  "Impeccable reasoning." The shadowcaller followed, amused.

  As he stepped on the first of the lit silver plates, Isiem heard a faint hissing sound. White smoke billowed from a second, matching plate that faced downward from the ceiling. He froze, wondering if his blithe assumption about the lack of traps was going to prove fatally wrong ...but the smoke drifted harmlessly past him. The fragrance of cedarwood and incense lingered, and nothing else.

  More smoke fell from the ceiling as he crossed the next silver plate, and the next, and the next. Some of them did indeed prove inert, but most seemed functional, although few produced the sizable plume of the first. A trail of cloudy white followed Isiem through the hall, doubling in Ascaros's wake.

  Through the haze of fragrant smoke, Isiem saw a large circular room ahead. An enormous oval dome of clear glass, itself large enough to serve as a small room, filled the chamber's center. Smaller glass bubbles, hundreds of them, lined the walls. Their curved surfaces reflected the hallway's light like so many bulbous eyes in the shadows.

  The light globes that hung from the ceiling in here were broken—not merely dark, as some of the ones in the hallway had been, but smashed into saw-toothed fragments. Several were melted and dimmed with a bubbled lace of soot. Robbed of their magic, the room was dark except where Ganoven's spells and his minions' lanterns created small, shifting pools of illumination.