The Worldwound Gambit

by Robin D. Laws

  The man withdraws his glaive.

  "Instead," Calliard says, "you want to drop the weaponry at my feet."

  With a clatter, they comply.

  "Then all of you except for ..." He looks at the slump-shouldered man. "You. What's your name again?" Calliard has never known his name.

  "Zaiko," the man stutters.

  "Zaiko, you're going to free me from my bonds, while Tiberio watches you very, very carefully."

  Zaiko does this. Tiberio watches him very, very carefully.

  He also notices that a dagger hilt pokes from the top of the old man's boot, and that the old man is looking at it.

  Tiberio growls at him.

  With outstretched palms, the old man shows his surrender.

  Zaiko removes the last blood-soaked strap from Calliard's chair. Calliard wobbles to his feet. Tiberio moves to catch him.

  "I can do it," Calliard manages.

  Tiberio backs off. He turns to watch the huddling men. They press themselves back into the corner.

  Calliard drops an arm down to steady himself on the back of the chair. With aching, halting steps, he starts his journey to the door. When he is out of sight, Tiberio picks up the chair. His back to his destination, he takes slow, defiant steps, toe-to-heel, toe-to-heel. Once through the threshold he closes the door, tips the chair back against the handle, and wedges it into place until it's tight.

  Calliard slumps against the stairwell wall. Now that the guards are unable to see him, he lets Tiberio help. He falls into Tiberio's side. The big man takes part of his weight for a while, until they reach a landing. Then he picks up the rail-thin prisoner and, cradling him in his arms, carries him the rest of the way.

  Calliard flinches as Tiberio presses a damp cloth against his lacerated forehead. They're with Gad, in a rented room above the Skull and Snake. Sharp slivers of daylight, filtered by a shuttered window, stripe across the brown-gray walls. The room reeks of ale and musty bedclothes. If they wanted, they could open the window and crane to see the Everbright chapel across the lane. They are here for two reasons:

  One, they all trust the proprietor, a leathery oldster who these days goes by the name of Vladul.

  Two, directly across the street is the last place Fraton will think to hunt for them.

  Tiberio surveys his handiwork. He has soaked his cloth with honey and a tincture of healing potion. The swelling subsides already. The face will be torn and bruised for a while. "Only the one on your cheek will need stitching."

  Calliard nods his silent assent.

  "So," says Gad. "This Yath business."

  "Mm," says Calliard, watching as Tiberio pokes the end of a thick black thread through the eye of a distressingly large needle.

  "I've heard a demon and a cultist say it's real. Whatever it is. And Fraton thinks it's a fake."

  "He thinks it's fake because I told him it was real."

  Tiberio sterilizes the needle in candle flame.

  "Elaborate," says Gad.

  "I'm a degenerate, so my knowledge of demonkind can't possibly eclipse his. If I'd told him Yath was just another crazed rumor, he'd be tromping into the Worldwound right now to lay it low."

  "No, I meant elaborate about Yath. What is it?"

  "Yath is a paradox. It is several things at once, yet none of them. It is neither creature nor matter, not of the Abyss nor of the true world, neither gate nor tower, neither new nor old."

  "Thanks for explaining."

  Tiberio advances with the needle. "Quiet for a moment, both of you." He plunges the needle into the torn flesh surrounding the slash on Calliard's cheekbone.

  Gad takes care not to look away.

  Tiberio steps back, turns Calliard into the light, and snips the thread with the sharpened nail of his baby finger.

  "Yath," says Calliard, "is a gigantic tower, recently manifested in the Worldwound."

  "Recently, as in, at the time the attacks got suddenly worse. When the demonhorde found a way past the wardstone line."

  "Right."

  "So if we dispose of Yath, we go back to the usual degree of war and trouble?"

  Pain cuts Calliard's laughter short. "Dispose of Yath? Why don't you pick an easy task, like disposing of fear and greed?"

  "I'm rather fond of greed. I wouldn't touch a hair on its head." Gad paces. "It's a tower, yes? So let's knock it down."

  "‘Let's knock it down'? Yath is a living stronghold, yes, but at the same time it's also an entity, or a consciousness. The physical tower is merely the central axis of its influence. Demons and cultists feel its presence. They draw power from it, and in turn are pulled to its service. At first they perceived it only dimly, and drank tentatively from it. As every day passes, it grows stronger, as do those who accept its power, who thus make it stronger, and are made stronger ..."

  "And so on ..."

  " ...and so forth."

  Tiberio leans in to tie off his stitch. His efforts leave an ugly knot.

  "So," says Gad, "as the aura expands, it envelops more of Mendev, and the demons can operate freely there. Today it's reached as far as the Estrovian Forest. Soon it will be the entire territory, then Numeria, and maybe eventually the world. Is that the idea?"

  "As conjectures go, I've heard crazier."

  "So how do we kill it?"

  "Kill it? You'd be lucky to banish it."

  "So how do we banish it?"

  Calliard raises his aching body from the bed. He picks up a hand mirror and frowns into it. "I'd have to learn more."

  Gad stands over his shoulder, appearing in the mirrored surface behind him. "I'd like to have you do that. But are you good?"

  "Who have you told about this?" Calliard asks.

  "About what?"

  "That you're interested in a tower."

  "Until you explained it, I didn't know I was interested in a tower."

  "Why are you so ablaze for this?"

  "Too much chaos, like too little, is bad for business."

  "So you're the thieves' benevolent order, now?"

  "Someone has to be."

  Calliard laughs, then clearly regrets it. "Only you would say that."

  "Also, there's the revenge aspect."

  "I like revenge. Who are we revenging?"

  "You remember Abotur."

  "Heard of. Never met."

  "He was upright. Not a mastermind, but solid."

  "A plugger," says Calliard. "That's what I heard about him."

  "Dedicated. Willing to play long. Spent a year of his life on this tapestry gaffle, winning the trust of his mark. He brought me in late, to sink the tap."

  "So it wasn't your rip?"

  "Assist only. I told him to be safe it should be more than a two-manner."

  "But it was his rip, and he called it."

  "A year of his life. I was willing to take a fee and not a share, but you go bringing in additional talent, and his year's investment starts dwindling."

  "You told him you wanted a team."

  "I told him if it was my rip, I'd have a team."

  "But it was his rip."

  "That it was."

  "And he got himself killed."

  "Not because the rip was faulty. Because demons came pelting in from nowhere. Right when we were closing. Wreaking havoc, which is what they do. We let them run wild around here, there's no longer such a beast as a reliable scam."

  "There never is."

  "There is when I'm running."

  "Which you weren't."

  "Which I stipulated already, and which is neither here nor there, and you're evading the question."

  "What question?"

  "Are you good?"

  Calliard turns. "Don't mistake me—I'm grate
ful for the rescue. But if you think I'm going with you into the Worldwound—which is where we'd have to go; I'm not sure of much but I'm sure of that—if you think you can blithely assume I'll be pleased to trot along with you into the suppurating heart of evil and insanity ...then what do you mean, am I good?"

  "You know exactly what I mean."

  Calliard's demeanor changes. He sits back down on the edge of the mildewy mattress. "I think I'm good."

  "You think, or you are?"

  "I'm better."

  "Are you better enough?"

  He flares back up. "Wait a moment. How did this change from a discussion of whether I'm fool enough to accompany you into the—"

  "Are you better enough?"

  Calliard stares down. "I bought my lute back."

  "Is that better enough?"

  "I mean, I bought it back and then Fraton caught me and his men crushed it to flinders, but I did buy it back. I played it a little, even."

  "Calliard?"

  "To be honest I can't say. I shouldn't be anywhere near the Worldwound. I shouldn't even be in Mendev, except I can't work up the imagination to leave."

  "How about if I tell you you're ready?"

  "I'd like that to be true. After what happened the last time."

  "Let's not talk about the last time."

  "Yes," mutters Tiberio. "Let us not."

  Gad's expression warns the big orc to silence.

  "I'm telling you you're ready," says Gad. "It's the only way you're going to get ready."

  "Give me time to think."

  "That's the last thing you need."

  A renewed gust sends the shutters slamming.

  "Who else are you thinking of?" asks Calliard.

  Gad removes his last cache of emergency coin from its hiding place behind Vladul's wine rack. He sends Tiberio out into the city to buy six horses and a lute. He reminds Tiberio to buy a horse big enough to carry him.

  The three travel by day across the scourged plains north of Nerosyan. The horses veer instinctively east, away from the Worldwound border. Tiberio tracks the sun and corrects their course.

  Calliard hasn't ridden in nearly a year. His wounds are healing but the bruises still hurt. He has trouble staying in the saddle. Every half a league or so he sways alarmingly to the right or left. Just in time he catches himself and regains his balance. The problem grows worse when he takes the lute from his pack and begins to play it, the reins draped loosely over his arm. He tunes it maddeningly. Plink plank plonk.

  Gad can't stand it any more. He lets his mount slow to plod alongside Calliard's. "You sure we'll find her there?"

  Calliard shrugs. "It's Mendev. Who's sure of anything?" He plinks his lute.

  "And I forgot why I missed you ..."

  "Where else would she be?" The bard waves an arm. "Demons attack a mixed encampment of crusader orders. Their flames and acid and wrenching winds wipe out the warriors. They tear earth from stone, root from trunk, turn boulders to sand and sand to ash. They fly away, leaving exposed the entrance to an underground ruin unexplored for centuries. A ruin said to be stocked top to tail with the ingenious traps of Isano Golemsmith, celebrated in tome and song. Maker of the sevenfold lock and the evershifting key."

  "Right," says Gad.

  "And also I spoke to both Gashek and Footless Timon, and they said she said she'd be there."

  Calliard twists a key on his lute. He strums the strings. Now the magic is back. Gad listens and the colors around him deepen. The fragrance of the season's first tentative wildflowers rises up beneath the hooves of their horses.

  Chapter Four

  The Lockbreaker and the Distance Man

  A sprinkling of ash covers the scrubland weeds. As the three ride on, the ash grows denser. Soon the vegetation recedes entirely, replaced by barren earth. Overturned boulders lie scattered across slopes and hollows. A starving hawk circles uselessly overhead.

  Eventually the remnants of an old civilization appear. Crumbled bricks, some red, some yellow. A long-buried pillar covered in cracked blue tile. A door and a railing, both cast in bronze.

  Amid them are strewn new relics of a recent battle: broken swords, sheared lances, melted helmets. Fresh graveyards, their shallow mounds arrayed in neat ranks and rows, attest to an effort to bury the dead. Still, fragments of skull and bone, raked by the teeth of scavengers, salt the land. They belong to man and horse, to elf and dwarf.

  An open pit yawns in the distance. Gad speeds his horse; Tiberio and Calliard follow. The earth yields uncertainly beneath them. They hear the whicker of horses. Four scraggly beasts stand glumly, tied to the last branches of a scorched and toppled tree. The three tie their mounts there and walk toward the pit.

  Two weary figures clamber from the pit's edge. Seeing Gad, Calliard, and particularly Tiberio, they freeze and reach for their swords. Tiberio holds out his hands in a gesture of peace. The explorers sheathe their weapons and slowly approach. They are human women, lithe and long-tressed. One wears metal; the other, leather. Mystic symbols cover the latter woman's breastplate. The two appear to be twins.

  "Too late," the metal-wearer says. "All cleaned out."

  "Anyone still down there?" Gad asks.

  "Other than our damnfool time-wasting laggard of a lockpick?"

  "That's who we're looking for." Gad bows gallantly. Each woman raises an eyebrow, notes a flash of attraction and moves on. The warriors untie their horses, and another besides, and ride away.

  Tiberio climbs down the rope ladder first, followed by Calliard and Gad. The ladder extends for more than forty feet, taking them through a sinkhole and then a stone-lined catacomb. They leap down to a mosaic floor. It depicts a muscled warrior crushing prostrate enemies beneath his boot. An ancient war leader, probably, or perhaps a god. The tiled faces of general and victims have been chipped out and hauled away. Stone benches circle the chamber's edges.

  The hall serves as a junction; open archways lead from it to the north, east, south, and west. The three stop to listen. They hear a faint sound of metal on metal. They listen further, finally deciding that its faint echo comes from the eastern corridor. Calliard lights a lantern. They move through a vaulted passageway, its walls and floor also covered in pictorial mosaics. Faces and decorative features, as on the floor in the round chamber, have been hacked out and spirited away for resale.

  The tap-tap-scrape grows louder. They move toward it, ignoring other doors. The chamber terminates in another archway. Tiberio pauses at its threshold.

  A corpse lies across it. It is the body of a man, cut nearly in two. The jagged slice through his body begins at his right shoulder and ends at his left hip. He has been stripped to his bloodied undergarments. Tiberio looms briefly over him. "About a week ago," he says.

  His fingers delicately trace a groove recessed inside the archway. A spike juts from the groove, stopping a five-foot blade meant to scythe out from it.

  Splayed in a corner around a bend are a pair of burned corpses. On the opposite side of the hallway, the inner cement wall has been exposed. Tiles spill across the floor in heaps, along with clods of crumbled plaster. Disassembled metal spouts, plaster chunks still attached to their coppered sides, lean against the wall. A fire-spitter, taken apart, though not before it claimed at least two lives.

  They follow the tapping noises down a curving set of cement steps. The last step has been pulled away. Those above it are spattered brown-red and spackled in gobbets of dried brain matter. Beside the removed step, now set against a stone urn, sit a bronze trip plate and the spring mechanism it once activated. A bloodied boulder has been rolled to the side. Across from the steps stands a larger-than-life stone lion, another boulder readied in its mouth.

  The tap-tapping takes them through an octagonal chamber surrounded by marble porticoes. They step over a se
vered tripwire on the way in. Stacked by type across the chamber floor are hundreds of segmented metal components. These are magical constructs, deconstructed. From the collection of barbed stinger pieces, the automatons appear to have been artificial scorpions.

  They continue on through a narrow corridor. It opens into a smallish antechamber, where a hunched halfling figure pokes thin metal wire into an enlarged, multifaceted keyhole. The door is already open. The halfling's lantern, hanging from an ingenious portable pole device, illuminates the bare shelves of an emptied vault.

  Strands of white, gray, and ash-blond interweave into a complex construction atop her head. Supported by an intricate copper lattice strategically bedecked with seed pearls and agate shavings, the great mass of hair remains firmly in place and out of her way. Its owner is stout, round of hip and generous of thigh. Skin crinkles around her eyes and at the corners of her mouth. Blocky, jeweled rings adorn her stubby, fast-moving fingers. Ruby powder sparkles on her lips. Beneath her greasy hardened-leather breastplate, frills and ruffs of unaccountably spotless white lace coyly peek, partially obscuring the thin silver chain of a sapphire pendant.

  A magnifying eyepiece dangles on a chain from one of the spokes of her hair lattice. She seizes it, planting it firmly in place between brow and cheekbone, and squints deeper into the lock.

  "Vitta," says Gad.

  "Who's the orc?" says Vitta.

  "Half-orc," says Gad.

  "That's what they all say." She turns briefly from the lock. "If you're with Gad, and I suppose you are, I'm pleased to make your acquaintance."

  "I'm Tiberio."

  "Thought you'd sworn off dungeon-hopping," she says, presumably to Gad.

  "Never sworn it in. Nice work taking the traps apart."

  Vitta snorts. "Had a bit of bother with the fire trap. Not Isano Golemsmith's handiwork, though. Not by a long stretch. The rumors were wrong. As rumors tend to be."

  She bangs the lock with the end of a chisel, frowns, and contorts her padded frame to peer into it from below.

  "Vitta?" Gad says.

  "What?"

  "I can't help but notice ..."

  "The door I'm trying to unlock is already open?"