Still staring at Jarlaxle, the wizard moved to the lip of the wall and tentatively bent over to find a handhold on Athrogate’s harness. He yelped with surprise when the dwarf grabbed him again and yanked him over, holding him in place until he could wrap his thin arms securely through some of the straps. Then he yelped again as Athrogate planted his heavy boots against the stone wall, pushed off, and began hand-walking the rope.
Jarlaxle took up the slack quickly and moved to the lip with Arrayan.
“Do hold on,” the dark elf bade her, and to her obvious shock, he just stepped off.
Perhaps to ease the grasping woman’s nerves, the drow used his power of levitation to rise up a bit higher, putting more room between them and the undead monsters. Canthan had heard tell that all drow were possessed of the ability to levitate, but he suspected that Jarlaxle was in fact using some enchanted item—perhaps a ring or other piece of jewelry. He was well aware that the mysterious drow had more than a few magic items in his possession, and not knowing precisely what they were made the wizard all the more reluctant to let things go much farther between them.
“We’re coming fast, Ellery!” Athrogate called to the woman up ahead. “Ye’re gonna get yerself a dwarf head! Bwahaha!”
Ellery, no fool, seemed to pick up a bit of speed at that proclamation.
The rooftop was clear, but the fight was still on at the keep, for the undead had begun scaling the tower—or trying to, at least—and more gargoyles were awakening to the intrusion and flying to the central structure.
Mariabronne worked his bow furiously, running from wall to wall, shooting gargoyles above and skeletons scrambling up from below. Olgerkhan, too, moved about the rooftop, though sluggishly. He carried many wounds from the initial fight after Athrogate had unceremoniously tossed him over the wall, most of them received because the large warrior, so bone-weary by then, had simply been too slow to react. Still, he tried to help out, using gargoyle corpses as bombs to rain down on the climbing undead.
Artemis Entreri tried to block it all out. He had moved about eight feet down the small staircase along the back wall to a landing with a heavy iron door. The door was locked, he soon discovered, and cleverly so. A quick inspection had also shown him more than one trap set around the portal, another clear reminder that the Zhengyian construct knew how to protect itself. He was in no hurry, anyway—he didn’t intend to open the door until the others had arrived—so he carefully and deliberately went over the details of the jamb, the latch, potential pressure plates set on the floor.…
“We’ve got to get in quickly!” Mariabronne cried out to him, and the ranger accentuated his warning with the twang of his great bow.
“Just keep the beasts off me,” Entreri countered.
As if on cue, Olgerkhan cried out in pain.
“Breach!” Mariabronne shouted.
Cursing under his breath, Entreri turned from the door and rushed back up the stairs, to see Mariabronne ferociously battling a pair of gargoyles over to his right, near where the rope had been set. A third creature was fast approaching.
Behind the ranger, Olgerkhan slumped against the waist-high wall stones.
“Help me over!” the dwarf priest called from beyond the wall.
Olgerkhan struggled to get up, but managed to get his hand over.
Entreri hit the back of one gargoyle just as Pratcus gained the roof. The dwarf moved for Olgerkhan first, but just put on a disgusted look and walked past him as he began to cast his healing spell, aiming not for the more wounded half-orc, but for Mariabronne, who was beginning to show signs of battle wear, as claws slipped through his defenses and tore at him.
“We have it,” the ranger cried to Entreri, and as the dwarf’s healing washed over him, Mariabronne stood straighter and fought with renewed energy. “The door! Breach the door!”
Entreri paused long enough to glance past the trio to see Ellery’s painfully slow progress on the rope and the other four working toward him in a strange formation, with Jarlaxle and Arrayan floating behind Athrogate and the hanging wizard.
He shook his head and ran back to the keep’s uppermost door. He considered the time remaining before the rest arrived, and checked yet again for any more traps.
As usual, the assassin’s timing was near perfect, and he clicked open the lock just as the others piled onto the stairwell behind him. Entreri swung the door in and stepped back, and Athrogate moved right past him.
Entreri grabbed him by the shoulder, stopping him.
“Eh?” the dwarf asked, and he meant to argue more, but Entreri had already put a finger over his pursed lips.
The assassin stepped past Athrogate and bent low. After a cursory inspection of the stones beyond the threshold, Entreri reached into a pouch and pulled forth some chalk dust. He tossed it out to cover a certain section of the stones.
“Pressure plate,” he explained, stepping back and motioning for Athrogate to go on.
“Got yer uses,” the dwarf grumbled.
Entreri waited for Jarlaxle, who brought up the rear of the line. The drow looked at him and grinned knowingly, then purposely stepped right atop the assassin’s chalk.
“Make them believe you are more useful than you are,” Jarlaxle congratulated, and Entreri merely shrugged.
“I do believe you are beginning to understand it all,” Jarlaxle added. “Should I be worried?”
“Yes.”
The simplicity of the answer brought yet another grin to Jarlaxle’s coal-black face.
CHAPTER 17
CANTHAN’S CONFIRMATION
The door opened into a circular room that encompassed the whole of one floor of the keep. A basalt altar stood out from the northern edge of the room directly across from them. Red veins shot through the rock, accentuating the decorated covering of bas relief images of dragons. Behind the altar, between a pair of burning braziers, sat a huge egg, large enough for a man Entreri’s size to curl up inside it.
“This looks like a place for fighting,” Athrogate muttered, and he didn’t seem the least dismayed by that probability.
Given the scene outside with the undead, the dwarf’s words rang true, for all around the room, set equidistant to each other, stood sarcophagi of polished stone and decorated gold. The facings of the ornate caskets indicated a standing humanoid creature, arms in tight to its sides, with long feet and a long, canine snout.
“Gnolls?” Jarlaxle asked. Behind him, Entreri secured the door, expertly resetting the lock.
“Let us not tarry to find out,” said Mariabronne, indicating the one other exit in the room: another descending stairwell over to their right. It was bordered by a waist-high railing, with the entry all the way on the other side of the room. The ranger, his eyes locked on the nearest sarcophagus, one hand ready on his sheathed sword, stepped out toward the center of the room. He felt a rumble, as if from a movement within that nearest sarcophagus, and he started to call out.
But they didn’t need the warning, for they all felt it, and Entreri broke into motion, darting past the others to the railing. He grabbed onto it and rolled right over, dropping nimbly to the stairs below. Hardly slowing, he was at the second door in an instant, working his fingers around its edges, his eyes darting all about.
He took a deep breath. Though he saw no traps, the assassin knew he should inspect the door in greater detail, but he simply didn’t have the time. Behind him, he heard his friends scrambling on the stairs, followed by the creaking sounds as the undead monsters within the sarcophagi pushed open their coffins.
He went for the lock.
But before he could begin, the door popped open.
Entreri fell back, drawing his weapons. Nothing came through, though, and the assassin calmed when he noted a smug-looking Canthan on the stairs behind him.
“Magical spell of opening?” Entreri asked.
“We haven’t the time for your inspection,” replied the mage. “I thought it prudent.”
Of course you did, so long
as I was close enough to catch the brunt of any traps or monsters lying in wait, Entreri thought but did not say—though his expression certainly told the others the gist of it.
“They’re coming out,” Commander Ellery warned from up in the room.
“Mummified gnolls,” Jarlaxle said. “Interesting.”
Entreri was not so interested and had no desire to see the strange creatures. He spun away from Canthan, drawing his weapons as he went, and charged through the door.
He was surprised, as were all the others as they came through, to find that he was not on the keep’s lowest level. From the outside, the structure hadn’t seemed tall enough to hold three stories, but sure enough, Entreri found himself on a balcony that ran around the circumference of the keep, opening to a sweeping stone stair on the northernmost wall. Moving to the waist-high iron railing, its balusters shaped to resemble twisting dragons with wings spread wide, Entreri figured out the puzzle. For the floor level below him was partially below ground—the circular section of it, at least. On the southernmost side of that bottom floor, a short set of stairs led up to a rectangular alcove that held the tower’s main doors, so that the profile of that lowest level reminded the assassin of a keyhole, but one snubbed short.
And there, just at the top of those stairs, set in the rectangular alcove opposite the doors, sat the book of Zhengyi, the tome of creation, suspended on tendrils that looked all too familiar to Artemis Entreri. The assassin eventually pulled his eyes away from the enticing target and completed his scan of the floor below. He heard the door behind him close, followed immediately by some heavy pounding and Jarlaxle saying, with his typical penchant for understatement, “We should move quickly.”
But Entreri wasn’t in any hurry to go down the stairs or over the railing. He noted a pair of iron statues set east and west in the room below, and vividly recalled his encounter in Herminicle’s tower. Even worse than the possibility of a pair of iron golems, the room below was not sealed, for every few feet around the perimeter presented an opening to a tunnel of worked and fitted stones, burrowing down into the ground. Might the horde of undead be approaching through those routes even then?
A sharp ring behind him turned Entreri around. Athrogate stood at the closed iron door, the locking bar and supports already rattling from the pounding of the mummified gnolls.
The dwarf methodically went to work, dropping his backpack to the ground and fishing out one piton after another. He set them strategically around the door and drove them deep into the stone with a single crack of his morning star—the one enchanted with oil of impact.
A moment later, he hopped back and dropped his hands on his hips, surveying his work. “Yeah, it’ll hold them back for a bit.”
“They’re the least of our worries,” Entreri said.
By that point, several of the others were at the rail, looking over the room and coming up with the same grim assessment as had Entreri. Not so for Arrayan and Olgerkhan, though. The woman slumped against the back wall, as if merely being there, in such close proximity to the magical book, was rendering her helpless. Her larger partner didn’t seem much better off.
“There are our answers,” Canthan said, nodding toward the book. “Get me to it.”
“Those statues will likely animate,” Jarlaxle said. “Iron golems are no easy foe.”
Athrogate roared with laughter as he walked up beside the drow. “Ain’t ye seen nothing yet from Cracker and Whacker?” As he named the weapons, he presented them before the dark elf.
“Cracker and Whacker?” the drow replied.
Athrogate guffawed again as he glanced over the railing, looking down directly atop one of the iron statues. “Meet ye below!” he called and with that he whispered to each of his weapons, bidding them to pour forth their enchanted fluids. With another wild laugh, he hopped up atop the railing and dropped.
“Cracker and Whacker?” Jarlaxle asked again.
“He used to call them Rotter and Slaughter,” Ellery replied, and Entreri noted that for the first time since he had met Jarlaxle, the drow seemed to have no answer whatsoever.
But as there was no denying Athrogate’s inanity, nor was there any way to deny his effectiveness. He landed in a sitting position on the statue’s iron shoulders, his legs wrapping around its head. The golem began to animate, as predicted, but before it could even reach up at the dwarf, Cracker slapped down atop its head. The black iron of the construct’s skull turned reddish-brown, its integrity stolen by the secretions of a rust monster. When Whacker, gleaming with oil of impact, hit the same spot iron dust flew and the top of the golem’s head caved in.
Still the creature flailed, but Athrogate had too great an advantage, whipping his weapons with precision, defeating the integrity of his opponent’s natural armor with one morning star, then blasting away with the other. An iron limb went flying, and though the other hand managed to grab the dwarf and throw him hard to the floor, the tough and strong Athrogate bounced up and hit the golem with a one-two, one-two combination that had one leg flying free. Then he caved in the side of its chest for good measure.
But the other golem charged in, and other noises echoed from the tunnels.
Mariabronne and Ellery, Pratcus in tow, charged around to the stairwell while Entreri slipped over the railing and dropped the fifteen feet to the floor, absorbing his landing with a sidelong roll.
Canthan, too, went over the railing, dropping the end of a rope while its other end magically anchored in mid-air. He slid down off to the side of the fray with no intention of joining in. For the wizard, the goal was in sight, sitting there for the taking.
He wasn’t pleased when Jarlaxle floated down beside him and paced him toward the front alcove.
“Just keep them off of me,” Canthan ordered the drow.
“Them?” Jarlaxle asked.
Canthan wasn’t listening. He paused with every step and began casting a series of spells, weaving wards around himself to fend off the defensive magic that no doubt protected the tome.
“Jarlaxle!” called Ellery. “To me!”
The drow turned and glanced at the woman. The situation in the room was under control for the time being, he could see, mostly owing to Athrogate’s abilities and effectiveness against iron golems. One was down, thrashing helplessly, and the second was already lilting and wavering as blast after blast wracked it, with the dwarf rushing all around it and pounding away with abandon.
“Jarlaxle!” Ellery cried again.
The drow regarded her and shrugged.
“To me!” she insisted.
Jarlaxle glanced back at Canthan, who stood before the book, then turned his gaze back at Ellery. She meant to keep him away from it and for no other reason than to allow Canthan to examine it first. Ellery stared at him, her look showing him in no uncertain terms that if he disobeyed her, the fight would be on.
He glanced back at Canthan again and grew confident that he still had time to play things through, for the wizard was moving with great caution and seemed thoroughly perplexed.
Jarlaxle started across the room toward Ellery. He paused and nodded to the stairs, where Olgerkhan and Arrayan were making their way down, the large half-orc practically carrying the bone-weary woman.
“Secure the perimeter,” Ellery instructed them all, and she waved for the half-orcs to return to the balcony. “We must give Canthan time to unravel the mystery of this place.” To Mariabronne and Entreri, she added, “Scout the tunnels to first door or thirty feet.”
Entreri was only peripherally listening, for he was already scanning the tunnels. All of them seemed to take the same course: a downward-sloping, eight-foot wide corridor bending to the left after about a dozen feet. Torches were set on the walls, left and right, but they were unlit. Even in the darkness, though, the skilled Entreri understood that the floors were not as solid as they appeared.
“Not yet,” the assassin said as Mariabronne started down one tunnel.
The ranger stopped and waited
as Entreri moved back from the tunnel entrance and retrieved the head of a destroyed iron golem. He moved in front of one tunnel and bade the others to back up.
He rolled the head down, jumping aside as if expecting an explosion, and as he suspected, the item bounced across a pressure plate set in the floor. Fires blossomed, but not the killing flames of a fireball trap. Rather, the torches flared to life, and as the head rolled along to the bend, it hit a second pressure plate, lighting the opposing torches set there as well.
“How convenient,” Ellery remarked.
“Are they all like that?” asked Mariabronne.
“Pressure plates in all,” Entreri replied. “What they do, I cannot tell.”
“Ye just showed us, ye dolt,” said Athrogate.
Entreri didn’t answer, other than with a wry grin. The first rule of creating effective traps was to present a situation that put intruders at ease. He looked Athrogate over and decided he didn’t need to tell the dwarf that bit of common sense.
Strange that she should choose this moment to think herself a leader, the wizard mused when he heard Ellery barking commands in the distance. To Canthan, after all, Ellery would never be more than a pawn. He could not deny her effectiveness in her present role, though. The others didn’t dare go against her, particularly with the fool Mariabronne nodding and flapping his lips at her every word.
A cursory glance told Canthan that Ellery was performing her responsibilities well. She had them all busy, moving tentatively down the different tunnels, with Olgerkhan and Arrayan back upstairs guarding the door. Pratcus anchored the arms of Ellery’s scouting mission, the dwarf staying in the circular room and hopping about to regard each dark opening as Ellery, Entreri, Jarlaxle, Mariabronne, and Athrogate explored the passages.
Canthan caught a glimpse of Ellery as she came out one tunnel and turned into another, her shield on one arm, axe ready in the other.
“I have taught you well,” Canthan whispered under his breath. He caught himself as he finished and silently scolded himself for allowing the distraction—any distraction—at that all-important moment. He took a deep breath and turned back to the book.
Promise of the Witch-King Page 27
