The voice of Sebastian rose unbidden: Who ever said the Lion Blades were sane? Or, for that matter, the world?
"We won't cooperate," the captain was saying. His accent was Taldan, probably from down by Zimar.
"Don't you know Tambour's gone rogue?" Gideon asked.
"You're Andoren," said the helmsman. "Why should we care what you say?"
"Sebastian Tambour will restore Taldor to glory," said the captain. "Despite itself."
Merrigail said, "I don't think they'll see reason, having gone this far."
"You're working with the Eagle Knights," said the helmsman. "The enemy!"
"Even in Andoran we understand the chain of command. We're not your enemy. Not yet."
"Grizzendell," Gideon said, "do you think you can figure out the controls? We saw him turn this..."
"Yes," mused the gnome, "and there's that..."
The vessel lurched.
"You'll never figure it out," said the helmsman.
"I so admire your bravery," Corvine said, stepping closer and singing the peculiar syllables of an enchantment under her breath.
"Ah. What?" The helmsman shivered a little, looking into her eyes, as her spell impacted his mind.
"My friends," she said sadly, "are the bloody, violent type. And yet you resist! I so admire that."
"Oh...?"
"So willing to protect a leader who didn't give you enough troops to guard this wondrous ship. And it is wondrous, isn't it! I bet few men have the mettle to master such a vessel."
"Don't listen to her—" began the captain.
"Go to sleep," said Viridia, twirling and tossing petals. The captain did.
"It isn't easy, you know," the helmsman said. "The captain keeps acting like he could do it, but I've seen him try. You need the touch."
"I'm sure," said Corvine, leaning a little closer. "You need the touch."
It's good I'm not a jealous man, thought Gideon.
Oh, hell with it, he thought in the next second. I am a jealous man. But I'm also a grown one.
"Tambour got the basic idea from this inventor named Croon," the helmsman babbled. "But the inventor's ideas were hard to replicate, so Tambour used magic. He got the basic spell for submerging a ship from off in the Shackles. Then there's the spell that turns some of our on-board War Fog into a psychic disguise..."
Before long they had all the information they needed for Grizzendell to guide the vessel, and more interesting knowledge besides. Binding and gagging the helmsman ended the spell, but the deed was done.
Glowing mists closed over the top of the craft as it plunged into the waters.
"Sure we shouldn't look for Ozrif?" Viridia asked Gideon.
Gideon shook his head. "Wish we could. But we're not sure where to look, and too much of the night's passed already. I hope this was the correct approach."
"It's by far the most fun one," said Grizzendell, grinning at an enchanted globe that gave him perfect vision of the river bottom and its hazards. As the rocks of the castle promontory came into view, Gideon hoped the gnome would be as eager when they assaulted Sebastian's fortress.
Chapter Nineteen
Fantasia for Empire
Grizzendell still thought the approach entertaining, even after the vessel scraped upon the sides of the underwater tunnel.
"Hahaha! The stories I'll tell!"
"Let the bards think about that, Grizzendell," Adebeyo said. "If we live."
Gideon glanced uneasily at the catapult in the stern, the one beside the crates of disassembled skeletons and the metal drums labeled War Fog and bearing handprints of red paint. At least he assumed it was paint.
"Here we go," said Grizzendell.
The ship surfaced within a vast chamber carved with bas-reliefs, lit by a stone chandelier representing an octopus, with a magical flame blazing on the tip of each limb.
"Welcome to Mistwatch," Gideon said.
The group was prepared for a fight, but discovered no one nearby. They claimed garments from the crew and left them beside the wall in their underclothes, bound and gagged and in some cases sleeping.
There were two female uniforms. Viridia claimed one, and after some coaxing Merrigail gave up her Andoren livery to don the other. Luckily there was no device on her shield. The remaining four went to Gideon, Adebeyo, Hammerton, and Briar.
"I'll be more convincing as a prisoner," Tyndron said.
"You, me, Dymphna, Asta, Grizzendell," Corvine said, "we're simple delvers who blundered into the wrong ruin."
"Right," Grizzendell said. "That'll work for all of ten seconds."
"That long?"
Dymphna was regarding the vessel. "Should we wreck it?"
"We lack time and tools," Adebeyo said.
"I'll sink it, at least," Grizzendell said. "Don't worry, I'll swim out in time."
"Be sure you do. That's an order."
As the gnome set about his work, Tyndron looked around at the bas-reliefs, which depicted squids and crayfish, otters and salmon, merfolk and gillmen. "There's an elven look to all this, but in a wild style. Perhaps the traitor Zethril feels at home here."
"You have a special enmity for Zethril," Viridia said.
"Do betrayal and murder not justify such?"
"It began before then, though, didn't it?"
Tyndron shrugged. "My family is among those faithful who didn't abandon the elven lands before the Age of Darkness, when the fall of the Starstone rent the world. We kept watch over the empty cities while Zethril's kind dallied in the otherworldly paradise of Sovyrian."
"You once said your family was cast out," Gideon said.
"I can believe I said that, although I don't remember. I must have been in fog-rage. Whatever, it was an exaggeration. Since their return, most of the abandoners show us courtesy at least. Their superior airs are a subtle thing. My family chooses to live far from the homeland, but we weren't forced. Even so, some, like Zethril, are not at all subtle in their contempt. They see my kind as backward."
"Your kin were reunited over two thousand years ago."
Tyndron shrugged. "It's the privilege of elves to have long memories."
"Or their curse?" Corvine said.
"As you wish."
The submersible sank like lost Azlant; after a worrisome moment, Grizzendell emerged from the waters, laughing.
"Well done," Merrigail said. "But I advise less noise from all of us."
"Let's be about our work," Grizzendell said. "After that water, I need to warm up."
Gideon and Merrigail led the way, he a little ahead, ready to tumble back to the protection of the Eagle Knight's sword and shield.
Four passageways led from the chamber. The first two, as it turned out, accessed supply chambers. The remaining tunnels presented a decision, for they both led upward.
One was a simple ascent up a stone staircase, winding far out of sight. The other sloped to a bizarre laboratory, this one also lit by magical flames, here embedded in lanterns hanging from chains.
"I vote for the insane laboratory," Viridia said, and there was general agreement.
The workspace occupied a small cavern sheltering a natural pool, one that billowed with unnatural-looking fog, glinting green.
They crept closer. Several metal tables stood rusting, full of equipment Gideon couldn't begin to identify. Beside these were many open barrels of the sort they'd found on the submersible.
A circular air shaft opened in the ceiling above the pool, rising as far as they could see. Merrigail pointed it out, holding a finger to her lips. In a far corner, a spiral staircase of metal ascended through another opening overhead.
Gideon thought he glimpsed a glow above the spiral stairs. His imagination? By now he couldn't trust that explanation.
"This must be where Tambour brews his War Fog," he whispered.
"I'd have expected a livelier facility," Viridia answered.
"It seems we've a choice of ascents," Adebeyo muttered. "Commander Hannison, your opinion?"
"You think?" said Grizzendell.
"A sense of abandonment, bereavement...Don't you feel it? Do you sense anything, Gideon? Gideon?"
"I...do. I think I sense something descending those stairs."
His companions raised their weapons. "Is it her, Gideon?" Corvine asked.
He couldn't answer, for he was transfixed by an approaching shape.
Its robes billowed black, outlined by a spectral glow like moonlight upon the waters. Emerging from the sleeves were skeletal hands, and a skull grinned from within its hood.
"Do you see it?" he gasped.
It was Captain Crookwing, pointing at Gideon once more.
"I see nothing," said Corvine, and the others murmured agreement.
"What is it?" Viridia asked.
Crookwing beckoned and ascended out of sight.
"Not sure. But I feel I should go up." He found himself walking toward the stairs, as if in a dream.
"We'll come with you, Gideon," Merrigail said.
He shook his head. "I feel this presence will flee if we all go."
"Very well," Corvine said, stepping beside him. "I'll go."
"I don't suppose I can refuse."
"Nope."
They climbed the spiral staircase, their boots making damp muted music upon the metal. Beyond was an opened trapdoor leading to a small library that possessed no windows and no other doors. If there were ever magical light-stones in this room, they had gone as dark as Treacherous Jack. But light was still present.
Captain Crookwing was gone, but a semitransparent, white-robed figure stood within the room, waiting for them. It glowed with much the same light as the War Fog and the ghost ship, if a trifle less green. The figure appeared to be an old, gray-bearded human, tall, slightly stooped, but with the bearing of one used to giving orders, and the poise of a man who remembered being handsome. His eyes were sad. He studied the bards but did not attack.
"I see it now, Gideon. What is it?"
"I don't know. But I feel that I should." Gideon led her the rest of the way into the library, watching. The room might have been pleasant under other circumstances, with its desk and chairs and many books, and its globe which Gideon, with a bard's curiosity, might have spun and consulted. Just the sort of room he might have wanted to whisk Corvine off to. Except for the small problem of the...
"Ghost?" Corvine was saying. "Is it truly a ghost? Why is it just standing there?"
He recalled the voice of the Mistress of Lies and Memory. Beware naming a thing before you've truly investigated it.
"Hello? Sir?"
The figure turned away.
"Was it something I said?"
"He does look familiar, somehow," Corvine said.
"I think I saw him on one of the towers earlier."
"That's not what I mean. It's like I've met him before."
The ghost—or apparition, spirit, spectre, projection, what-have-you—stepped into one corner of the library.
It pointed to one book with its left hand, and to a second book with its right.
"Well," Corvine said, swallowing hard, "let's see what reading he recommends."
"I'd prefer if he were Spindlegrim, the librarian from the college. But yes."
They carefully edged around either side of the apparition.
Gideon got his hand on a stained, untitled notebook wedged between works titled The Meta-Anatomy of Ooze-Life and The Enchanter's Guide to the Humanoid Psyche. He pulled it forth.
As soon as he did so, a rasping, ancient-sounding voice reverberated in his mind. At last we can speak, Gideon Gull. You hold my journal, a thing most precious to me in life. Through it, I can reach you for a time, without her notice.
Gideon spun and confronted the apparition. It smiled, crookedly. Yes, I know you. And you know me—or rather, my work, and my shame. My name is Tarquin Tambour, and I was Sebastian's father. There is much you should know.
Corvine gave no sign of having heard anything. "I think he wants me to look at this book called The Primary Tactic of the Wise Magician," she was saying. "But it won't budge...Wait..."
Some memory of Spindlegrim's library tugged at Gideon even as Corvine tugged on the book. "Corvine—"
The entire book-lined wall spun around on a circular section of floor, wheeling Corvine into the shadowy spaces on the other side.
No! came the voice of Tarquin Tambour. Too soon! Her attention stirs!
The old man vanished, plunging Gideon into darkness.
"Corvine!" Gideon hissed. Even now, he was mindful not to make too much noise.
He didn't hear her, but footsteps did ascend the spiral staircase behind him. As his companions approached, he kept calling out to Corvine as loudly as he dared, fumbling in the dark for the trigger book. There was no answer, nor any response from the door.
He searched his spell component pouch for the little vial containing a dead firefly. He murmured the doggerel couplet that helped him access his spell of illumination—one of the first he'd learned at the Rhapsodic College.
Hearken, night, to my bright verse,
Better this, than darkness curse
The firefly vanished, but the vial glowed like an Opparan streetlamp.
Viridia reached him. "What happened?"
"She found a secret doorway. I can't find the trigger, and apparently she can't find the corresponding control on the other side. Anyone, can you find a book with a title something like The Wise Magician?"
"Ah," said Grizzendell. "Here, down by me."
"Try pulling it out."
"Grr. Wedged in here..."
"Let me," said Tyndron. After a moment, he said, "No good. It's anchored in place somehow."
"It was the trigger," Gideon said, fighting down panic. "It worked before."
Viridia found his hand, squeezed it. "I remember the Master of Charm and Disguise talking about such a mechanism. A bookshelf door with a variable lock. Keyed to allow a quick escape, but once used, a different combination is needed."
Gideon flipped through the old wizard's journal, but it swirled with an arcane script unknown to him. He began pulling on different books. He found one that shifted only so far before stopping. Then another. Neither triggered the door. His hands kept moving.
"Gideon!" Viridia said, taking his arm and holding it tight. "She's my friend too. But you're not going to solve this puzzle. Not now, in a raid. I'm sorry."
It was maddening. "She was just here...If I only knew..."
"Gideon," Merrigail said, and from her tone he knew exactly what she would say. "I don't wish to abandon Corvine. But we have a mission. She's a capable person. Don't count her out."
"And if she's injured?"
"We can't know. But I do know what she would say."
"You're right." He slammed his hand against the bookshelf. "The ghost—it was Sebastian's father. I think he meant for us to go this way, but now he's gone."
"I don't think we can wait for his return," Merrigail said. "We need to try another path. When our tasks are done, no one will search harder for Corvine than I. You have my word."
"And mine," said Adebeyo. "But Merrigail's right."
"Gideon..." Viridia said.
"I know. We go."
As they passed the fog pit in the laboratory, the vapors within seemed agitated, swirling with more violence. The infiltrators hurried by. When they returned to the submersible's chamber and the prisoners' glares, Gideon stirred from dark thoughts long enough to glance again at the journal. It was full of notes and diagrams in a clear hand. Though the writing was unintelligible, the drawings were intriguing, depicting vapors and various bizarre-looking slimes and liquids, and methods of their containment and manipulation.
Ghost? he thought as he stared at the book. Lord Tambour? If you're out there, please make it known.
No voices touched his mind.
They ascended the far stairs.
The illumination was sparse—a magical torch here and there—and so Gideon padded forward with Tyndron and Grizzendell at his back, ready to alert him to dangers he'd missed. Viridia and Merrigail came next, then Adebeyo and Dymphna, Hammerton and Briar, and Asta as their rear guard. The tunnels had the look of old abuse. Gideon saw evidence of burns and water damage, scraped and cleaned with efficiency but no love. The stairway took a turn and ascended again, and Gideon was just beginning to wonder at the absence of guards when he spotted a sculpture on the next landing. He stopped and flattened himself against the wall.
He recalled the words of the Master of Steel and Sinew: All statues are guilty until proven inanimate.
This statue continued the aquatic theme of the chamber below. It was a voluptuous mermaid with ample cleavage, sunning herself upon a rock. As such, she was merely a saucier variation on other statues of the type, except that she bore a tattoo upon one breast—some sort of rune. He couldn't help but study...
He shut his eyes. Clever. Animation was not the danger here.
He descended a few steps. "No one advance. Up ahead's a magical inscription you'll have some difficulty not noticing. But if you stare, it will have ill effect."
"What sort of effect?" Grizzendell said.
"I didn't see it closely enough to be sure. Popular variations are madness, unconsciousness, terror, agony, and simple death."
"I'll be closing my eyes then."
"You all should."
It took precious time, but Gideon wasn't about to let his comrades fall to a known trap. Eyes shut, he passed the statue and then, eyes open, scouted to verify that the staircase ahead was provisionally safe. Returning to shepherd the others, he got them past the mermaid without incident.
"So far so good," he whispered to Viridia, trying not to think of Corvine.
"But still no way to signal the River Guard."
Two landings later, they encountered more magic.
Fresh illumination poured from a curtain of light. It had no true substance, but was rather a shifting weave of multicolored filaments of energy. Gideon could see through the effect to perceive an ordinary-looking landing beyond, yet the curtain was fascinating, forming half-understood patterns before breaking apart again. He wondered if it was some hypnotic effect, yet his mind didn't seem enchanted.
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