More interesting than the damage of the trap was that the door had disappeared. He peered into the space where it had been. He could see nothing there. Perhaps, he thought, it was like the darkness behind him. Enter, the familiar voice said, softly, seductively. It was definitely a female voice. But he would be careful about what voices he trusted now, even if they were in his own head. He looked back towards the gate, but he saw no path, and it occurred to him that going back would now be harder than reaching this point. He decided he must go forward. He took a deep breath, and stepped across the threshold.
The unnatural darkness dissolved. He was in a stairwell, with only natural shadows. Natural shadows were a thief’s friends. They were a comforting presence after the horror of the garden path and the uncertainty of the doorway. He stepped into the deepest of them for a moment, wrapping himself in darkness, natural darkness in an unnatural place.
The stairwell spiralled up around a central column of stone, like a tower within the tower. The stone of both of the inner walls and the steps between them was as smooth as marble, with no joins or mortar, unlike the outside of the tower, as if the whole edifice had been sculpted from a single piece of marble then polished. It seemed, further up, where a lantern glowed, to be the colour of sun bleached bone. Only that lantern, on the outer wall, opposite the point where the curve cut off sight, interrupted the monotony of the surface. The light didn’t flicker like a flame, but glowed evenly, softly, similar to the lamps in the Courts of Law. He strained his ears, hoping to hear the familiar voice, but the tower was completely silent, and so was his head. No sound of life of even the smallest kind was here, not a pattering of rat’s feet, nor a scratching of scuttling cockroaches. There were no cobwebs in the stairwell, though the ceiling, being the next turn of the stairs, was too far above for any broom to reach, at least if human hands were doing the sweeping.
He moved carefully up the stairs, scanning each step and the wall to either side in case of traps. But he wasn’t sure he would be able to spot a magical trap. The one outside, on the door, had been the first he had ever encountered. He hoped that trap was the last, but a thief’s natural caution made him wary. He hadn’t spotted that trap though he had evaded most of its damage. He didn’t like to think what would have happened if he hadn’t moved, since that might be the result of the next trap he missed. As he reached the lamp set in the wall he saw another lamp up above, just within sight at edge of the tower’s curvature. Examining the lamp he couldn’t see what fuelled it. Its light didn’t dance, even when he blew through vents in the bottom. Not the tiniest flicker. The necromancer must save a lot on candles and torches, he thought. If Corin had had some magic of his own he would probably have made the shadows deeper, or made himself invisible. An invisible thief with quick light fingers and a quick light step, he thought; he would be a legend in his own time, if he wasn’t already. He continued up, each breath carefully controlled to silence it, each step carefully placed, lighter than a cat, yet what to most ears would usually be imperceptible, in this place, to Corin’s own ears at least, sounded loud. His breath seemed to rasp in his throat, his feet seemed to thump on the stone.
He felt the trap before triggering it this time. As he stopped he noticed a barely visible rune that he was sure had not been there a moment before. He barely dared to move his eyes or to breathe, then he carefully stepped back, prepared to leap away if necessary. There was no mechanism to observe or disable as with a mechanical trap, only a slight difference in the air. Corin could feel that difference, and suspected that if he disturbed that air above the rune it would disturb the organization of the organs in his body, perhaps by splattering them all over the walls. That would be a shame, he thought; they were such pretty marble walls. He decided he had to test the trap, despite the danger involved. The only other option would be to return the way he had come, and he dreaded stepping again on that garden path. He tried to put out of his mind that he would have to traverse it again, somehow, when he had finished his thieving. He moved carefully closer to and further from the threatening air of the trap, delicately probing its limits. He tried to find space enough to squeeze past it, but saw the rune begin to glow and quickly backed away. The rune pulsed slowly then faded to its earlier imperceptible form.
He thought at first he couldn’t simply go back down the stairwell and throw something at it; the sound of the trap going off might alert the necromancer. But he remembered the trap at the door. It had been silent. The necromancer did not want to be disturbed by anything as trivial as the sound of a thief’s body exploding into bloody little chunks of flesh and bone and brain. Still, he didn’t want to do it. Professional pride made him hesitate. Set off a trap rather than avoid or disarm it? That just was not something a great thief did. And Corin was a great thief. He knew it; the world would one day agree. But how many thieves could disarm a magical trap? Only a sorcerer could do that, maybe. Was it cheating to admit to what you couldn’t do? No! It was practical. Anyway, he liked cheating. Why should a thief care about cheating? At the end of the day, or more usually night, what mattered was the size of the sack of loot you carried away. But still, it would be an inelegant solution to the problem. As an artist, or scoundrel, which is much the same thing, he hated inelegant solutions.
He went back to the door and stepped outside, looking up. He had left the rope and grappling hook hanging at the gate. He had his claws, for more challenging surfaces. If the wall could be scaled, and what wall could not? then he could get in through a window higher up. But the only window he could see was the one at the top. Come to think of it, he had never seen any window but that one, no matter where he had seen the tower from, no matter from what angle. And from that window even now oozed the same threatening sorcerous light. There was no way he was going to go through that. All he wanted to do was break into the lower levels of the tower, find some loot, and get out of there before the necromancer could discover him and redecorate by making a mural of his gizzards. There was something else he had to do, but he couldn’t remember now. Some of the haze of the dark path stayed with him.
He shrugged, stepped back inside, and took the pack off his back. He couldn’t use anything too heavy, or when it hit the stair it would make a noise itself, whatever the trap did. He took out a pair of ladies’ gloves he had filched from a glove maker’s stall. Soft doeskin leather. He had thought Rose might like them, but business comes first. Even if he told her, as a pragmatic whore she would understand. He rolled the gloves together and twisted the fingers around the whole to tie the bundle into a neat compact mass, then he walked back up to the first lantern. He was now a bit further from the trap in the stairwell than the brambles he had landed in earlier had been from the trap at the door. He threw the gloves so they landed right on the rune.
Even shielded by the curvature of the stairwell the blast launched him back down the stairwell, deafening him with the roar of sudden fire. His reflexes kicked in as he hit the stone and he rolled, awkwardly because he was travelling sideways and stairs are not a good surface to roll down. He ended up on his feet but was on fire and dropped back down to the stairs to roll about some more, putting it out. He had been wrong expecting it to be the same trap. It hadn’t been silent. It had not been friendly. He didn’t generally get personal with his unsuspecting patrons, but he would like to thump this necromancer. Maybe when he was asleep, then run away before he could wake up and throw a fireball at his arse. That had not been a pleasant experience. Still, he was alive, which was always a special pleasure to discover. A little bit singed, a little bit battered, like a fish fried in oil by a talentless cook. But this fish wasn’t going to be anybody’s meal. This fish was pissed off.
He breathed until he calmed down. Anger was not professional. It marred your judgement, made you do something stupid, though what could be more stupid than breaking into a necromancer’s tower and deliberately setting off his fiery trap-of-thief-death was hard to say. Corin ears were ringing, but that soon subsided, and the towe
r was silent. He waited for footsteps, but none came. Probably the necromancer thought that whoever set off the trap was dead. Anyone but Corin probably would be. Or maybe he was so busy with his dark magic that he hadn’t noticed the sound. Or maybe there was nobody here, and the necromancer was long dead, leaving nothing but rumours to scare little children and traps to squash, or roast or disembowel or whatever else, any thief who didn’t respect the power of the place. But if the necromancer was dead, where did that oozing darkness come from?
He continued up the stairs when he was sure the fireball trap wasn’t still alive. The rune had completely vanished and didn’t reappear as he approached. Knowing what to look for now he could move more quickly, though he cautioned himself not to become too complacent. There were doorways without doors leading off into the central well of the tower, and he checked each of these. The first room was empty except for a broken crate and barrel hoops without a barrel to hold together. No rats, no mice, no cockroaches, not even a spider. The second was a storeroom with sacks of grain, barrels of beer, amphorae of wine or olive oil, rolled up rugs and tapestries, a broom and mop and bucket, and a chest.
He examined the chest for traps. Even if it was owned by a necromancer, people bought chests with mechanical traps built into their locks. This had none that Corin could find. He searched carefully for any runes which might indicate a magical trap, but could find none. He didn’t feel anything strange as he had approaching the last trap, or before the one at the door had struck. The lock was relatively easy to pick. He opened it, and found inside a velvet cover, underneath which were a number of small phials. He picked up one, and took it back to the stairwell, where another lantern glowed with its magical light. The phial was green glass, no bigger than his thumb, with a tiny cork. A little label had been scrawled on, but the writing was illegible. You’d think necromancer would write neatly, he thought. Perhaps they only cared about the neatness of their runes, like the ones they wrote to murder innocent thieves. He went back to the chest. Should he take some of the phials? He wasn’t sure whether he would be able to sell them. Rose was a pretty good fence, but who would buy something without even knowing what it was? He noticed that the flasks were too elevated in the chest, so he started removing them. One wouldn’t budge. He pushed it forward, sideways, pressed down, and heard a click. He removed the rest of the phials and opened the secret compartment.
Inside was a large transparent phial. Its contents sparkled. It was much larger than any of the others. Inside the room was dark though; Corin’s shadow blocked the light from the stairwell; what light could be causing that? He picked up the phial and took it out to the mage-light. There was no label on the outside. It was clear glass, or equally transparent crystal. Inside was a clear liquid, or seemed to be. When he shook it gently it felt no different than had it been empty, the contents as light as air, but he could see the liquid splashing about, and when he returned to the dark storeroom it still sparkled, like sunlight on a waterfall. He slid it into his pack.
He continued up the tower and came to another doorway, but this one had a door. It wasn’t locked or trapped, and when he opened it a light in the ceiling cast the scene within into sharp, unnatural relief. In the room was a small bed, with chains extending in from each of the posts to a partly fleshed and still bloody skeleton. There was blood on the floor, brown, almost black, and congealed in patches like curdled milk, and runes scrawled in blood on the walls. The skull was not attached to the chained skeleton; eyeless it stared at him from the nearest bedpost, its mouth hanging open, bloody flesh still dangling, rotting, from the bone.
Who had died here? So many people disappeared in Thedra that it was hard to know what happened to most of them. If a necromancer wanted to murder someone in a bloody ritual there were plenty of willing thugs in North Bank, and not a few elsewhere in the city, to kidnap and sell the victim. No one asked questions about the missing in North Bank, and few cared about the denizens of the southern quarters. Perhaps it was different for the children of rich merchants or guild masters in north east Thedra, or of the lords in the north western quarter, though money could more easily buy death than life anywhere in the Obsidian City. As far as Corin could tell, this city was sick to the core. Corrupt and violent, with sufficient order for the powerful and rich in their palaces and guildhalls, and the reality of desperation for the many others, the tinkers, itinerant journeymen and day labourers, actors, thieves, beggars and whores. Were it not for his skills and the whores who had taught him to pick the pockets of naked customers when he was a boy he would not have survived long after his father had died, fighting over the whore who called herself his wife but not Corin her son. Despite Corin’s skills he would probably die sooner rather than later, his body mouldering on the refuse heap, remembered with satisfaction only by the kites who fed on his flesh. So he had seen too much death to be easily disturbed by it.
And yet. This was different. The hairs prickled on the nape of his neck, but he didn’t dodge out of the way. There was no trap here. He felt rage and horror, but he couldn’t tell whether the rage was another’s or his own. It rose like a tide of blood and like blood it clung to him. He tried to shake it off but couldn’t. He felt rather than heard the scream. The eyeless sockets glared darkly into his heart, seeing into the places he dared not look himself. The jawbone hung open and the scream had the force of a fist, striking him at the centre of his being, threatening to freeze and shatter his bones.
He was not sure afterwards if it was terror or a physical force that drove him out, but the door slammed behind him without his touching it. He had encroached on an angry spirit’s domain, the place where their mortal form had died, sacrificed in ritual offering to one of the crueller gods or lords of the demonic planes. He felt a sickening revulsion. He had watched men die on the hanging tree, some never to be revived by cunning criminal friends. He had seen the bodies of whores who had been bashed and raped to death then thrown in the gutter with no more respect than a you gave the contents of a chamber pot. When he was ten he had held his own father as the life bled out of the knife wound in his gut and the light faded from those drink addled eyes. He had learned to shrug off the brevity and horror of life with a joke and a laugh. But he couldn’t shrug off this. This had to stop.
But what could he do? He was only a thief. The greatest thief in Thedra, he reminded himself. And the voice in his head agreed. And what would be the greatest thing a thief could do in this city? Steal what this necromancer valued most from right under his nose. He could do it. He was Corin Quick-fingers. He would do it. He ignored the door into a comfortably furnished room with a bed, a table, crystal balls, magnificent tapestries hanging from the walls, plush Kemetese rugs on the flagstones, and several chests. There would be many valuables in there. He knew it and ignored it, driven on by a sudden anger, climbing higher and higher. He no longer searched for traps. There were worse fates than death. He had seen one below. Did another wait for him above?
And up he climbed, it seemed for an eternity. He had known the tower was high, but it seemed to him it couldn’t be this high. He must have climbed for hours, days, months. And still he climbed. His legs ached, his eyes blurred. He was tired. How much further could the stairs extend? Then they ended. There was no door, only a blank wall. He sat down to rest, defeated. It didn’t seem possible, but it didn’t seem possible that the tower was so high. Though it soared higher than the city’s gatehouse towers, could any tower take days to ascend? Should he go back down? Was this all an illusion, created by the necromancer to frustrate thieves? Did the tower even exist at all? Was he in a dream? It seemed dreamlike, with the inevitability of failure despite all striving. As he looked down the stairwell it seemed he could see around the curve in the wall, and down, and down; an endless stairwell unwinding, descending into nothingness. He couldn’t even be sure that it went down. Perhaps that was it. He had mistaken up for down. He should go down and that would be up. But none of this made sense. And would he see such things i
f he wasn’t dreaming?
Perhaps if he lay down and slept he would wake up. Perhaps he would wake up holding Rose, her blonde hair flowing across him like honey, her eyes changing from green to brown and back again. Rose Red-lips, or queen Rose, as he sometimes called her, because that was also the young queen’s name. Red-lips had always liked that. “If I’m a queen you have to do what I tell you,” she had said to him once. “I’m willing to do anything for a price,” he had replied. “That’s my line. And you have to kneel and kiss my hand.” “What, like this…or should I kiss you here?” “You’re a naughty courtier.” “Only obeying my queen.” He smiled. He would rest. He would kiss Rose the way she liked, on her flawless, milky white skin, down along her wide hips and along the inside of her thighs where she was ticklish, the flesh twitching in anticipation of him rising higher. She would be gracious and grant him entry to her rosy chambers.
“Aren’t you the greatest thief in Thedra?” the familiar voice asked. It startled him awake. He was lying down on the stairs, just above the door he had passed, that led into the furnished room. He turned to look up the stairwell, but the stairs still ended there, with nothing but a wall beyond. He thought of going back down to the necromancer’s comfortable looking living quarters, but he hesitated. There was something more than stairs between that room and the top stair. Some kind of illusion, affecting his brain, as had the darkness of the path from the gate to the tower. It made a few steps look like an eternity of climbing. How did it do that? If he went back down he might not make it all the way back up, though it was only a few steps. As to how he would make it out of the tower and its environs when he had finished stealing all he could carry he didn’t like to think.
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