The Worldwound Gambit

by Robin D. Laws

  She blinks again and the arrangement of the bars appears to have altered itself.

  "Are you seeing what I'm seeing?" Vitta asks Calliard.

  Before he can answer, one of the survivors interrupts. "Free us," she pleads. She is thin-lipped and sharp-chinned.

  The other is slim, widow's-peaked, and might under other circumstances be handsome, in a sleek and decadent way. "First tell them—"

  "Silence!" the woman screams, her words ringing with the authority of rank.

  The other turns to her, his hand wadding into a fist. "It's only fair to—"

  Cage gears turn according to some unearthly physics. A hidden spear springs out from one of the bars. Its grimy point plunges through the man's spine to skewer his heart. Gad and team stand, unable to look away, bearing witness as life ebbs from him.

  Biting down on her slight line of a lip, the caged aristocrat contains her trembling. "You fool," she hisses at her dying underling.

  "You weren't planning to warn us," Vitta says.

  "Please help me," says the crusader. She speaks without otherwise moving.

  "How were we supposed to help you, without knowing?"

  "I am Countess Deueria of the Smelika Bounds. My estates yield ten thousand gold a year. I can pay you in ingots, in gems, in arcane implements. My crusade has ended in ignominy, but in Iomedae's name, I beg you to save me. I'll re-equip, assemble a new platoon, come back and slay the demon. I'll overturn this state of shame, I promise it. Just free me."

  "What do you have on you?" Vitta asks.

  "I carry no gold, for why would one do so in the demonlands?" Her eyes dart about the cage. "I wield the sword Indomitabilis, but it is a birthright and cannot be relinquished. The others carried a rod of many blows, and a crystal sphere. There are scrolls of arcane force ..."

  Vitta turns back to confer with the others.

  "As another so-called noble," mutters Jerisa, "I say let her rot."

  "It's worth considering," says Vitta. "This gaffle promises no other loot."

  "A leader's soldiers are under her protection," says Jerisa. "You heard how she treated him—like a lackey. Perhaps the next count or countess of the Smelika Bounds will be an improvement over her."

  "Harsh words," says Tiberio. "She treated her comrade poorly. But consider her fear."

  "Hendregan," says Gad, "What do you say?

  Hendregan starts, as if lost in other thoughts. "Me?"

  "Do we try to help her, or move on?"

  The wizard shrugs. "I don't care."

  "Indifference is a vote for inaction," says Jerisa.

  "I'm asking you," Gad says, "but this isn't a vote."

  "It's a difficult puzzle," says Vitta. "Perhaps knowing how to solve it would tell us other things about the demons and how they construct their traps. Surely we'll encounter others, on the way or when we get there."

  Gad pulls at a vine snaking up his leg. "We move on."

  "Truly?" Tiberio says.

  "I pity her too, Tiberio, but is it worth the risk? I need all of you for this rip. Intact."

  "Let's go then," says Jerisa.

  Tiberio plods to the cage as the others regroup.

  "Not too close," Vitta warns.

  "We are sorry," Tiberio tells Deueria. "We have chosen a difficult path, and do not dare stray from it."

  Resignation settles upon her. "What path is that?" Deueria asks.

  "We've come to destroy Yath."

  Deueria laughs. "Good fortune with that!"

  Tiberio turns and trudges away.

  "Peasants!" she shouts.

  "See?" says Jerisa to Tiberio, when he rejoins the others.

  They slog deeper into the marsh. Thickening mists obscure their route. They can see up, into the violet sky, but only a few dozen yards ahead of them in any direction. They can still hear Deueria's shouts, even after she vanishes into the enclosing fog.

  Tiberio sighs. "Would we have saved her, if she'd been kinder?"

  "This is the right decision," says Gad, "but it would have been harder to make."

  "Heroes save even the unpleasant people," says Tiberio.

  "We're not heroes," says Gad.

  "Thank the stars," Jerisa adds.

  Vitta, walking ahead, freezes. She holds out her arms, wordlessly commanding the others to stop. She pulls her pack from her shoulders and removes a copper cylinder about two feet long. Pulling out its telescoping segments, she transforms it into a pole, longer than she is tall. She pokes it into the swampy ground ahead.

  An object erupts from the soppy ground in front of her. A shower of dislodged muck sprays the travelers. Twisted, looping arms of metal reach from the swamp. They intertwine, snapping into place in a succession of clattering reports. Gears and cogs open like sinister blossoms from the unidentifiable alloy.

  It is another demon cage.

  "That was close," says Jerisa.

  "I was lucky to spot it," Vitta replies.

  "How much farther?" Gad asks.

  Fog, momentarily shooed away by the impact of the snapping cage arm, noses its way back around them.

  "With no line of sight it's tough to be sure," Vitta answers. "My guess? We're a fifth of the way across."

  A hum permeates their bones and the sockets of their teeth. Its intensity increases as they near the cage.

  Vitta leads them to skirt around it. Their boots squish. Tiberio's horse whickers angrily at the mud sucking at its hooves.

  The halfling continues, stabbing the copper pole into the marshy ground. Whenever she finds a spar of solid ground she leads them onto it, even when it leads them on a slower, twisting route.

  They pass another cage. Bones and armor pieces litter its floor.

  Twice more Vitta's probings activate a cage before they step into it. Each time she pauses to study its construction and listen to its keening hum.

  When they are about two-thirds of the way across the swamp, a fast-moving shape appears in the northern sky. It zigzags wildly toward them. It is nearly on top of them before they can make it out. A pair of airborne demons fights over a squirming, protesting crusader. The first demon is a tumorous humanoid kept aloft by dusty moth wings. The other is batlike, hairy, fanged. The second demon locks the warrior's upper arm in its toothy jaw. The first alters its arc to jerk all three figures into a downward spiral.

  Its rival places stubbornness over sense. It stays clamped to the victim. The first tries to disengage but is prevented by the panicked grasping of the victim's other arm. The three plunge into the swamp ahead. The thump of their landing is immediately followed by a now-familiar series of clattering reports.

  Dispersed by the impact, the fog parts. The two demons and their warrior prisoner are trapped inside a demon cage. As if by instinct, the warrior, a starved and bearded wretch who scarcely fills out his armor, falls still on the cage floor. The enraged moth demon bangs on the cage bars. Blades and spears and garrotting wires disgorge from the cage's bars, floor and ceiling. They slice through the mothman's grotesque frame. They meet more resistance than they might with human flesh, but in a matter of instants disassemble the demon all the same. Ichor bubbles from its remains, staining the surrounding swamp.

  The warrior stirs. His back is broken. He bleeds from a dozen wounds. He reaches out with his remaining good hand and grasps the bat-demon by its warty ankles. He pulls hard, screaming the name of the war goddess Iomedae. The demon tries to steady itself but is suddenly pulled from its position. The movement alerts the cage to its presence. A geared and segmented metal arm detaches itself from the top of the cage. It saws off the demon's head. The head bounces, landing on the warrior's horribly angled back. With the last of its energy, the expiring demon clamps its disembodied jaws around its killer's neck. The man screams a battle p
rayer as he dies.

  "Let's clear," says Gad.

  Vitta holds up a hand. The gears and cogs are still moving. She waits until they're finished, then continues.

  The marsh occupies a bowl of land about three miles across. The travelers can see the beginnings of the rocky slope that marks its end when Vitta's pole finds another cage. It bursts from the marsh as the others did. This time one of the reaching metal spires strikes a boulder as it knits together with the others to form the cage. The cage breaks, sending a jagged arm hurtling toward Vitta. The crew scatters. Jerisa, Calliard and Hendregan go left. Vitta, Gad, Tiberio, and Tiberio's horse duck back and to the right. They step onto marshland untested by Vitta's instrument.

  A cage roars from the muck to envelop them.

  "Don't move," calls Vitta.

  The warning is unnecessary: Gad and Tiberio have already frozen.

  The big steed, suddenly stabled in a box of clashing metal, rears in panic. Sensing its movement, the cage releases its supply of hidden blades. The horse groans as the urannag reduces it to meat. Butchered pieces slide across the cage's floor. Their movement prompts further attacks from the cage's blades. A screw-cut spear jams into the cage bottom less than an inch from Gad's left heel.

  "Everyone remain calm," says Vitta.

  "We're calm," says Gad.

  Vitta sucks at her teeth.

  Tiberio suppresses a cough.

  Discolored fog drifts in. Condensation appears on the underside of the cage's ceiling. Droplets gather and fall to the floor.

  "You have a way out of this, yes?" says Gad.

  "No," says Vitta.

  "No?"

  "Calliard," Vitta calls, "you haven't read anything else about urannags, have you?"

  "Urannag," answers Calliard. "The plural is also urannag."

  "Very helpful. That's all?"

  "Afraid so," says Calliard.

  "Vitta, you know a way out of this," says Gad.

  "I do?"

  "You do."

  "I will have a way, but I don't have it yet."

  "Each time you were watching how the cage worked," says Gad. "Watching the cogs and gears."

  "Looking for a pattern. Every machine has to have a pattern. Even a demon machine, born of chaos on the writhing plains of the Abyss."

  "The hum," says Gad. "You were listening to the hum."

  They stop talking. This cage hums, too.

  "It's hungry," says Vitta.

  "Hungry?"

  "Calliard," she asks, "from what you know of demons, is it possible that these cages are not simply creations of demons, but are in some way demons themselves?"

  The bard edges toward her, and the cage. "Possible," he says. "Demons form from the collected matter of destroyed and reconstituted souls—the souls of evildoers who in life dedicated themselves to anarchy and destruction. Certain scholars postulate that the ectoplasmic refuse from this process—scraps, if you will—are sometimes used to form artifacts, constructs, and other devices."

  "And such a device, then, would be a sort of sub-demon?"

  "Sages use that term in various ways."

  "The cage. Could it be incapable of thought and action, but made of demonstuff?"

  "It could be."

  "Then an anti-demon spell might work on it? Some sort of banishment or exorcism?"

  "It might indeed."

  "And, demon hunter, you wouldn't happen to know such a spell?"

  "There is a particular abjuration," he admits, pausing as if waiting for someone to comment.

  No one does.

  "Then work it," says Vitta.

  Calliard takes his lute from his pack. He sings. His voice, never a beautiful instrument, is rusty. It quavers and growls but finally resolves itself into a ballad. He sings of Yaniel, demon-slayer of the last crusade. The lyric follows her as she goes into the Worldwound alone and disgraced, and through courage redeems herself. When he reaches the final verse, in which she returns to Mendev, surrounded by the companions who will fight at her side for the rest of her short and glorious life, the notes rise from his throat and from his lute to gain visible substance around the cage. They form a dome of artificial sunlight.

  The hungry humming changes to a disconcerted buzz. The cage rattles, as if something inside it has slowed.

  "Now, Jerisa," says Vitta, "I want you to throw a rock into the other side of the cage, as far from Gad, Tiberio and me as you can."

  Jerisa finds a hand-sized stone in the mud, dislodges it, and pitches it with expert balance through the bars. A blade fires out to strike it, but with less force and speed than before.

  "So we've impeded it but not deactivated it," says Vitta. "Jerisa, I want you to try again. Does anyone have an object that rolls?"

  Calliard produces a cylindrical scroll case covered in red leather. He removes the magical parchment it protects and hands the case to Jerisa.

  "This time," says Vitta, "I need you to creep up to the cage and roll that case across the floor. As slowly as you can."

  Jerisa follows the halfling's instructions. The case rolls across the cage floor, coming to a rest unharmed against the opposite set of bars.

  "I'm guessing," Vitta says, "that we've muddled the cage's perceptions. It knows I've moved if I'm quick, but not if I'm slow. So now I'm going to try this out and see if what works for a scroll case also holds true for me."

  "Are you certain?" Calliard asks.

  "She wouldn't do it if she wasn't certain," Gad says.

  Vitta snorts. She takes a slow, slight step.

  The blades and wires remain in the mechanism.

  She takes another.

  And another.

  And another.

  Inch by inch, she makes her way to the edge of the cage. She hunches down. Lies herself flat. Slides her rounded fingers over to the gears and cogs.

  "I'm thinking about the pattern," she says. She is not explaining it to the others. She is talking through it for herself. "Each time the blades come out, these gears whir and click. I'd convinced myself there isn't a pattern, because each time it was a different gear that spun first. But no matter how strange, there is sense in every puzzle—provided you take the time to seek it."

  She reaches out and snaps off one of the gears. A blade drops impotently from the cage ceiling to rest against Gad's shoulder. The force of the drop is not enough to nick his armor.

  Methodically, she pops off the remaining gears. The cage clunks apart. Its pieces fall into the mud. Arranged there, they resemble the petals of a wilted flower, as rendered by a drunken metalsmith.

  Gad steps woozily from the cage flooring. A scythe sproings ineffectually behind him. "And what was it?"

  "What was what?" asks Vitta.

  "The pattern," he says.

  "Oh," she says, already bored. "The gear movement corresponds to the location in the cage where the movement occurs, but the order is mixed up. So you have to watch several cages in action before you see what matches what. And then you have to fill in the gaps with a certain amount of conjecture."

  Jerisa hands Gad a waterskin. He takes it and drinks deep. "Conjecture?" he asks. "How much conjecture?"

  "Some questions are best unasked."

  A hundred paces into their march from the cage, she stops. "Wait," she says. She takes measured steps back to the disassembled cage. Ducking down, she paws through the pieces, hefting some, rejecting others outright. Finally she settles on a section of cage bar to which several of the gears and demonic ornaments still adhere. She lifts it, testing it for weight. A nasty serrated blade attaches to its narrowing end. She places this on the ground and, with her boot heel, snaps it off. Using a pair of shears fished from her kit, she systematically clips off a series of sharp projections. She appli
es a grinding stone against the snipped edges, smoothing them down. Pushing on the newly broken end, she demonstrates the bar's telescoping action. She continues until she finds its minimum length, about two and a half feet. Vitta reshuffles the contents of her pack to make room for it. The piece juts out from it like a flag bearer's pole.

  "Isn't that on the heavy side," asks Jerisa, "for a souvenir?"

  "It would be, yes," says the lock breaker, trudging on. "If that's what this was."

  Chapter Ten

  The Lake

  The team walks through a forest of moaning trees, their bark the color of maggots. A field of white rocks reveals itself as the eggs of repellent creatures, combining the features of crab and millipede. Fleeing from the hatching, the six are forced into a canyon. It channels them south, taking them further from their destination, which lies to the northeast.

  On stone shelves along canyon walls, ghostly figures sit, translucent legs dangling from ledges. They silently observe the six as they're drawn away from the tower.

  "They are the fallen," Calliard says. "Too virtuous to be tempted to demon worship, yet too weak to ascend to the celestial realms when slain."

  One of the ghosts says to him, "You'll be joining us here soon, demon hunter."

  Finally they reach a set of stairs chiseled into the rock. They ascend it up the canyon face. There they are set upon by a trio of starving mercenaries. Numbed by hunger, the ambushers attack without caution. Jerisa's blades fly to their throats and chests. An hour later they are visible as ghosts, mournfully watching the six from the canyon ledges.

  The canyon has taken them a day off their ideal route. They pick their way through stony terrain. Gad stumbles between sharp rocks, his ankle plunging between them. Jerisa bounds to his side. Gingerly, she pulls at one of the stones. He pulls his leg out, working the ankle.

  "Thank you," he tells Jerisa.

  She starts to speak, stops herself short, and instead says, "Of course."

  Tiberio completes a teetering step from rock to rock, a dozen yards away. "Is it twisted?" he calls.

  "Only scraped," says Gad.

  Heat rolls over them in waves. It radiates from the stones and through the soles of their boots. The air shimmers and bends. It leaches the moisture from their skin. Their mouths dry up. Gad reaches for his waterskin and gulps deep. Minutes later, he is parched again. The others suffer too, except for Hendregan. He has stripped himself to a loincoth. Arms outstretched, he basks in the baking wind. A chuckle of delight resounds from deep within him. His tattoos seem to dance.