The Worldwound Gambit

by Robin D. Laws

  "To stop you from killing dozens of people."

  "They're attacking us," he says.

  "No," says Gad, "they think we're attacking them."

  Hendregan mutters unintelligibly. Calliard pulls him through the door. Gad follows. The rest are on the other side already. Vitta slams the door shut and resets its lock.

  It rattles as someone on the other side tries to force it open. Fists and weapons pound fruitlessly on the heavy door.

  The chamber on the other side is dry and choked with dust. The only light is a tiny line escaping from the gap between door and frame. Hendregan, still grumbling, unfolds a segmented staff. It burns with a false and heatless fire, illuminating their new surroundings. It is the most ordinary of a wizard's spells, but Hendregan has altered it so that it seems to burn. He has done the same with all of them.

  The flickering yellow light reveals a set of stone steps leading up. A moldering plank leans against the wall near the doorway. Iron bar sliders affix themselves to the doorframe, and Vitta fits the plank into them, barring the door against attempts to batter it down.

  "Where does it lead?" asks Gad, meaning the staircase.

  "There's still part of the parapet left," Vitta answers. "It might be blocked, or it might lead all the way up to the top."

  "Go look," says Gad.

  Vitta complies.

  Exhausted and bruised, Tiberio lets himself fall against a wall. Dust and grime sticks to his sweaty, bloody skin. "Why did you help us?" he asks Sodevina.

  An incessant tic pulls at the warrior's cheek. "You're a better fighter than that," she says.

  "Better than what?"

  Her flimsy top has slipped in the fray; she tugs it unceremoniously back into place. "In the ring. Couple of times, you could have hurt me bad. But you weren't really fighting. Only taking it. Couldn't figure why that was. When it's me you're up against, it's either stupid not to fight back, or it's something else. Took me a while to realize it was something else. Then when these ones got in trouble, I saw you see that and, then when you followed ...I saw you were doing it for them. For some reason. And so let's say I got curious and wanted to know what that was." She turns to Gad. "You're the leader, uh-huh?"

  "Somebody has to be," Gad says.

  Vitta returns. "We can get up to the parapet from here."

  "Do we want to get to the parapet?"

  "Tiberio could use some air," Calliard suggests.

  Sodevina is first to head for the steps. She asks for names; Gad introduces himself and the others.

  Cool air blasts them as they pull themselves through a trap door onto the keep's best remaining wall. They hunch below the crenelations of its battlement so as not to be seen from the ground.

  "Which one of you's the healer?" says Sodevina.

  "He is," says Vitta, pointing to the injured Tiberio.

  Sodevina reaches for Hendregan's heatless flame and holds it up to Tiberio's cut face. The swelling has sealed shut his left eye. "What was worth having him endure this?" she asks, returning the light-stick to Hendregan.

  "Word is you can tell us about Yath," says Gad.

  Her cheek tics faster. "That's what you want?"

  "You did see Yath, yes?"

  She wrings her fingers compulsively together. "You went to Umir and said you wanted to talk to me. And he said he'd only let you if one of you fought me first."

  "That's the summary."

  She turns away from them. "You're going there?"

  "We are," says Gad, "and need your help."

  "Here is my help." She drops her ground-glass voice to near inaudibility. "Do not. Do not go."

  Gad moves to sit down beside her. "Somebody's got to put a stop to all this."

  "You'll only destroy yourselves. You can see that I'm not right. Uh-huh?"

  "Maybe we can help you, some way, in exchange. Get you out of here."

  "Here's the only place I ought to be."

  "What hold does Umir have over you?"

  "Hold?" She laughs. "He thinks he holds me, maybe. I am here by choice. The last choice that I can see. I keep waiting for the one. The one who will do it." She indicates Tiberio. "When I saw him tower into view, I thought maybe he was it. But he wouldn't. I still don't think I understand the answer. Why he wouldn't do it. I know you wanted information from me, but you could have got that from me by winning ...unless you thought I wouldn't."

  Gad lets silence hang in the air. Finally he says, "So you don't want us to go to Yath. Convince us. Tell us what happened."

  "You think me stupid, do you?"

  "Not remotely."

  "You only want my tale because then you'll go, to march off to your destruction, and then your deaths will be on my head too."

  "Too?"

  Hands on knees, she rocks uneasily forward and back. "My comrades. My beautiful comrades. Brave Geraux. Handsome Danan. Two-Staves, who knew more than any magician. Eleenan, whose song was like water. Isane, who I loved and who might have loved me. All dead, as you will die, if you go to Yath. Their deaths on my head. As the deaths of your comrades will be on yours, Gad."

  "No one's going to die," says Gad.

  Again she laughs. "That's what I said! They didn't want to go! I convinced them. We could cover ourselves in glory. Be celebrated as heroes forever. Drag home from the demon tower more loot than we could carry!"

  "Loot?" Vitta asks.

  "Oh, there is no loot," Sodevina says. "Unless you've found a willing buyer for pus and bile and a million pulsing insectile demon eggs. Call to mind the most terrible images. Imagine the worst visions in his head!"

  She means Hendregan, who has taken to rocking in unison with the ring fighter. Startled, he takes control and stills himself.

  "Take those terrible thoughts and treble them in intensity. That is still a fraction of what you'll behold if you pass the gates of Yath. Uh-huh? Just to set foot within the tower is to court madness. Do you know it's not a tower, not only?"

  "It's also a demon," Calliard prompts.

  "Yes, yes, and not. It is too many things at once. And that is part of its madness. And it creates madness in you. As lice lay eggs in your scalp. As worms gnaw your guts. The longer you're there, the worse it gets."

  Gad moves to face her. "We want to know if there's an object. Something that ties it to this plane. Something we can steal."

  "The orb? You know of the orb?"

  "Orb?"

  "The Wardstone Orb. We went there not knowing about it, but found it was the key to Yath's power."

  "What is it?"

  "You know what wardstones are, uh-huh?"

  "They're supposed to keep the demons out of Mendev, but now they're being counteracted—we think by Yath."

  "Yes, yes, of course by Yath. You know the Monastery of Tala?"

  Gad shakes his head.

  "Twenty leagues to the northeast," Calliard injects.

  "The cloistered brothers there are powerful priests of several faiths, joined in study to pit their combined knowledge and abilities against the Worldwound. Advised by a great abbess of Kenabres, they commenced a great experiment. If the wardstones held power against demonkind, perhaps that power could be concentrated. Refined into a weapon against powerful champions of the Abyss, one you could carry with you, into the Worldwound."

  "Like a wand."

  "Or a holy relic. Since the last crusade the residents of Tala have worked to this end. One generation after another. They consecrated a wardstone. Let it stand for a decade as a bulwark against the demons. Tended its might. Strengthened it with ritual and prayer. When a decade and a day had passed, they erected a new wardstone and then knocked the old one down."

  "You say you didn't know of the orb before you left," says Calliard.

  "
That's right."

  "So you learned this story there."

  "From the lips of a cruel priestess, as she mocked our failure."

  "So it could be lies."

  "It could be." She grants the point with growing resentment.

  "What else did she tell you?" Gad prompts.

  "The moment had come. For ten years, the brothers of Tala had honed their stonecutting skills, waiting for their material to ripen. The old wardstone, now resonant with anti-Abyssal essence, was turned over to their workshop. They fragmented it and cut it and polished it and magicked it. Until they had a crystal globe. Along the way they suffered many failures, producing globes of near perfection. Each of them in turn cracked or clouded. Uh-huh?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "Yet after all their tortuous labors, finally they had what they'd sought to create. The spherical shape geometrically precise. The crystal of flawless clarity. The priests celebrated. Their abbot, stricken by a withering disease, clung to life just long enough to behold its splendor, then serenely expired. You may say this is an exaggeration, but it is how the demon priestess told it to me."

  "She told it vividly."

  "Her words lodge in the mind."

  "Continue ..."

  "The brothers then held a tournament. To select the mightiest crusaders of Mendev. For the first time in a decade they opened the doors of their fortress to outsiders. Fierce champions battled for the glorious honor of carrying the Orb of Tala into the Worldwound, and using it to scourge the demon warlords and generals there. By tournament's end they had a war party of three dozen and seven great crusaders. At the last minute they were joined by the abbess herself. With fanfare and spectacle they were heralded as their departing convoy left to cross the border."

  "And it was all a trap," says Gad.

  "Uh-huh. A demon horde ambushed them in a crevasse. Slew the heroes, save one. The last of them, the abbess, shed her false raiments, and stepped forth to claim her true mantle as priestess of Yath."

  "This was the priestess telling you the story?"

  "Isilda, she is called. Razors in the soles of her boots. The object she had directed the brothers to make was not a weapon against demonkind, but a seed from which Yath would sprout. She planted it in the roiling earth of the Worldwound. Watered it with the blood of the martyred dead."

  "So the orb is buried under the tower?"

  "The tower grew up around it. The orb lies in a vault deep in its bowels."

  "And you and the others found out about it and tried to get it out of the vault."

  "Tried? We never got so far as to try." She stops talking.

  It was a mistake, Gad realizes, to mention the others. "What prevented you?"

  "Even if we hadn't been caught, we still had no way to get to Yath. We would have had to get the orb somehow to the inner chamber, where Yath's consciousness dwells, and perform the ritual of banishment. The others were doubtful, but I said we could figure that out when the time came. Fact is, no one gets inside the inner chamber. No one except its top few chancellors."

  "Wait," says Calliard. "You got inside the tower, though."

  "Hah?" The introduction of a new questioner confuses her. "That part was easy. Made us cocky. We posed as cultists. They don't know all who serve them. From all across Mendev and beyond, madmen and demon worshipers feel its pull unbidden. Compulsion takes them to Yath's doorstep, uh-huh? Are you sure you don't feel the compulsion?"

  "Not that one."

  "They are housed and garrisoned until a task is found, and then they are sent back here to undermine us. It is easy because it is a trap. If you are not mad or a consorter with demonkind when you cross its threshold, you will be soon, as the place wriggles through you. We might have withstood this, but by betraying the Abbot of Tala, Isilda prevented that, too."

  "Explain," says Gad.

  "Until the champions of Tala were betrayed, it was possible to go to the monastery and purchase a salve of protection against demonic influence."

  "A salve?"

  "Remember?" says Calliard. "We used it to get the Xanthou Pendant."

  "That was from Tala?"

  "In a roundabout way," says Calliard.

  "We need that salve," says Gad.

  "They won't give it to you," Sodevina says. "For a week we camped on the threshold of their now-sealed walls. We heard them within, but they would not answer our entreaties. If only they'd spoken to us, I could have convinced them, but they would not. And with foolish pride I took my people into the Worldwound, into the tower, without it."

  Gad frowns. "And so you wound up serving Yath?"

  She grabs Gad by the collar. "Do not say that!"

  "Forgive me, Sodevina."

  She pushes him; he lets himself fall, careful to protect his head. "No, they did not succumb. We didn't last that long. We were caught by Yath's priestess, the false priestess, Isilda."

  "I'll need to know about her," says Gad. "How she thinks, what she wants."

  Sodevina hasn't heard him. She continues as if speaking only to herself. "It was I who got us caught. I could not disguise my revulsion at the awfulness of that place. A true demon-lover strides through it excitedly, in a thrill of perversity. She saw the nausea on my face and sent spies to listen in on us. We were hauled before her. Tortured. Each of us thrown into a special Abyss. Each prison knew us—our weaknesses, our fears—and ate our souls. Of what befell the others, I will not speak. My torture was to see it happen. To watch. Unable to save them. As their sanity was forever ripped away from them."

  Hendregan has wandered away, tunelessly humming. He pops his head above the battlement. Vitta scuttles over to pull him out of sight. The wizard has chewed a layer of skin from his lower lip.

  "Your friends," Gad asks Sodevina, "are they still there?"

  "I led an escape, but they were all slain on the way out of the tower. I alone survived."

  "What more can you tell us about Isilda?"

  This time she grabs him by the arm. Jagged fingernails dig into his sleeve. "You've tricked me."

  The pain of her grip registers in his voice. "How have I tricked you, Sodevina?"

  "As Yath tricked me. As my own vanity tricked me. Before I was broken, I would not have been so easily fooled. I'm not convincing you to stay away. I never have been."

  "Please let go of my arm, Sodevina."

  She does. "I'm sorry," she weeps.

  "There's nothing to be sorry for."

  "I'm a coward. I wait for a fighter to come and do what I am too afraid to do for myself."

  "Now that's the madness talking, isn't it?" He moves to embrace her.

  She swats him aside and leaps onto the edge of the parapet, balancing herself with outstretched arms.

  "You consider these people your friends?" she asks Gad.

  He steps toward her.

  "Stand back!"

  He stops.

  "Answer my question," she demands. From between the stone blocks beneath her, crumbling mortar drizzles.

  "Yes, they are my friends. Come down from there."

  "If you value them, do not do what I did."

  "I do value them."

  "Then don't take them into the Worldwound." She glances behind her, seeing how long the drop is.

  Gad edges infinitesimally toward her. "Your friends wouldn't want you to do this."

  "Perhaps not," says Sodevina. "But are they here to say so?" She swallows a lump of phlegm. "I am sorry, Isane," she says, tipping back.

  Gad tries to catch her. She drops over and away. Gad is only fast enough to see her land. The others hear the thud of impact. Together they peek over the wall. Sodevina lies with arms and legs outstretched. The angle of her broken neck, and the spreading dark pool beneath her head, belie a pose that might o
therwise seem serene.

  Gad curses.

  "Oh no," says Hendregan.

  Gad peers down at her.

  "Oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no," Hendregan repeats.

  Jerisa touches Gad's shoulder with tentative fingertips. "She wasn't giving you the chance."

  "No, no, no," says Hendregan.

  Vitta peers over the parapet, to check if others have heard the fall. This side of the keep is sheltered from the town. It faces onto encroaching scrub, with a stand of trees behind. No one comes.

  "It makes no sense," she says. "She had the willpower to fight and win in that ring every night. To go into the Worldwound in the first place. Why could she not then use that force of will to overcome her regrets?"

  "Easily said," says Jerisa.

  "Easily said, easily done," Vitta says. "To let yourself be undone by, by ...bad memories? It surpasses understanding."

  Hendregan twitches.

  "Stop talking now, Vitta," Jerisa says.

  "But you see my point."

  "We should hasten," says Gad, "before they find her. Or come looking for us."

  Jerisa reaches into her pack, withdrawing a grapnel attached to a length of thin Nirmathi rope.

  Vitta continues: "There is no strength greater than logic. If she had only the wit to use it, she would not be—"

  Hendregan cries out, words mangled in his throat. He rends his robe and clambers halfway over the parapet. Tiberio grabs hold of him.

  Sobs well in Hendregan's throat. "She couldn't use logic because she wasn't right anymore."

  Gad seizes his shoulder from the other side. "I'm sorry you had to see this, Hendo."

  The tattooed wizard grimaces at the sound of his old nickname.

  "She said she wasn't right," says Hendregan. "And I saw her and I realized, neither am I."

  "First, departure," says Gad. "Then we'll talk about this, all you want."

  "I never saw it until I saw it in her. I'm not who I was when we first met. Am I?"

  "You do want us to get out of here safely, yes?"

  Hendregan nods. "But first answer my question."

  "No one's who they used to be."

  The wizard loosens his grip on the battlement.