The Worldwound Gambit

by Robin D. Laws

  "I've heard that said," says Gad.

  "It is you who has been commanded to attend her," says the fly-demon. "These others. They have committed their soul-fates to you, that you may consign their allegiance, as you would your own?"

  "Do I not lead them?"

  "Answer directly, Yath-thrall."

  "Yes," says Gad.

  "Then come with me, that you may prostrate yourself before our pale mistress."

  Gad bows and taps his heels together. As he follows the fly-demon from the chamber, he whispers into Jerisa's ear: "Nose around. Take the others."

  Jerisa and Calliard peer down into a moist, scaled tunnel leading directly down into the tower. Hendregan and Vitta wait a few feet back, with Tiberio guarding their rear flank.

  Around them swarms a cloud of biting gnats. Hendregan snarls a petty incantation. Each gnat becomes a red cinder, then disappears.

  The tunnel walls lack the phosphorescence of the steaming corridor they stand in. Its depths extend into utter blackness. Jerisa calls for the sorcerer's fire-staff. Still they can't see how far down it goes.

  "Are you sure about this?" she asks Calliard.

  "Certain, no," he answers. "But it is the best first place to look."

  A belch of grinding metal echoes up from somewhere down there.

  "And you know this how?"

  "I sense its presence."

  "You sense the orb?"

  "There are two linked presences. The greater of the two is above. The second—smaller, brighter—lies below. The first a spreading stain, the second a minute dot of light. The former, aware, the latter, an insensate object. I could be wrong but I believe the second to be the orb."

  "So you sense orbs now."

  "As I said, I might be wrong, but it's a good bet."

  "Before you only sensed demons."

  "Before when?"

  "Before you got here."

  "Before now, there were no orbs to sense."

  "So there's nothing you want to tell me."

  "I've told all, Jerisa."

  She leaves it there. She pulls items from her pack: an eye-hooked spike, a hammer, a coil of rope. She searches for a likely spot to plant the spike. "I don't like driving spikes into a living tower," she says.

  "Who does?" asks Calliard.

  "What if it notices?"

  As if in response, the dripping walls breathe in and out.

  "You can see a layout of the whole tower in your head?" Jerisa asks Calliard.

  "Yes and no," Calliard says. "It appears as impulses and images, moving within grasp, then just as fleetingly fading."

  "And this is the only way down to where you think the orb is?"

  "No. This is the only route that isn't packed with demons. I think."

  "You think," says Vitta.

  "Risk is glory's handmaiden," says Jerisa, repeating an old maxim. She chooses a join between wall and floor where the substance of the structure seems more mineral than animal. Still, when she clangs in the spike, black ichor bubbles from the impact point. The corridor ripples.

  "You don't think it could ...expel the spike, do you?" Vitta asks.

  "What risk do we prefer?" says Calliard. "Sneaking past hundreds of extra demons—and presumably cultists as well? Or falling down the tunnel?"

  "Should we fall," says Hendregan, "I can lift us with a fiery hand."

  "If Gad were here," says Vitta, "he could make that sound reassuring."

  Jerisa weaves the end of the rope through the hook and ties it with a double founder's knot. The rope is only about fifty feet long. That it is magical, and will extend as far as they need, goes without saying.

  The biggest man goes first. Tiberio hikes up his cultist robes to tie the rope's other end to his belt. He climbs into the tunnel mouth. The rope goes taut.

  "Yell if there's trouble," Vitta says.

  "Yell when you hit bottom," Jerisa adds.

  The spike wavers in its hole.

  Jerisa catches herself holding her breath.

  They hear bustling down the passageway and brace for confrontation. The sounds veer away.

  Finally the tension falls from the rope.

  A forlorn echo attaches itself to Tiberio's call: "It's not nice down here."

  Now Vitta disappears into the tunnel. Now Hendregan.

  Calliard and Jerisa are left.

  "You go," says Calliard.

  "No, you," says Jerisa. She has the hammer ready, in case the spike requires another hit.

  Calliard ties himself in and climbs over the ledge. It yields coolly to his grasp. He pushes off and dangles in the air.

  Hand over hand, he lowers himself on the springy rope. A magically imbued softness protects his skin from abrasion. Occasionally he bounces against the tunnel wall. Below, as the merest pinpoint, he can see the yellow-orange of Hendregan's fire-staff. As he inches downward, the green glow from above gradually diminishes, and then is gone. Darkness envelops him. He keeps going. Calliard expects his vision to adjust, to be able to make out the dim form of the surrounding tunnel wall. Instead his world goes impossibly blacker. His inner sense of his own body departs. When his legs or back brush the wall, he jolts in surprise.

  The effort of the climb wears into his arms and shoulders. It feels as if he has been climbing for a very long time. The flame dot seems not much closer.

  Calliard comes to perceive that within the darkness is a deeper shadow still. It comes to enfold him. The rope spins, adding to his disorientation. The darkness-within-darkness resolves itself. First it is only a region, then a form, then a distinctive shape. It is a horned face, rimmed with teeth. Within the face, two glowing red eyes open.

  "Xaggalm," Calliard says, under his breath. Or perhaps merely thinks.

  The demon from the Suma parapet. The demon from his dream.

  He speeds his descent. He knows from the rapid movements of his arms, from the sweat that trickles down his spine, that he is traveling, more rapidly than before.

  The demon face remains in front of his.

  He spins, this time on purpose.

  The demon face spins along with him.

  He stops climbing. His spin tapers and ends. His head pitches woozily.

  "What do you want of me?"

  The shadow widens its grin, then fades: shape, form, region, nothing. The lesser of the two blacknesses is all that remains.

  Jerisa shouts his name from above. She sees that the rope has stopped moving. Without crying back, Calliard continues down. Suddenly he slides, his grip slicked by sweat. His belt stops him short, constricting painfully around his waist. Recovered, he makes it the rest of the way down, touching down on spongy ground.

  An arched passageway extends before them. Its luminescence radiates not only from its walls, but from millions of squirming worms. They form a writhing carpet along its peak and sides. They precipitate from their ceiling perch only to wriggle back to the walls. A sulfurous stench surrounds them. Calliard uses the additional control of his demon sense granted by the blood dose to dismiss the stink from his awareness. It will be difficult on the others, he realizes. He decides to pretend that it affects him as much as they.

  He unties the rope and shouts up to Jerisa.

  The fly-demon escorts Gad through a labyrinth of ever-narrower passageways. Soon Gad has to walk sideways to pass through them at all. He wonders how the larger demons fit. Maybe they don't. Or perhaps the corridors make way for them. For a moment, he toys with the prospect of engaging the fly-creature in conversation. Unable to find the angle in it, he sets the idea aside.

  The passageways widen again. They move through a series of large, connected chambers. Milling demons and cultists step aside as the fly demon approaches. After he passes, they return to their p
revious activities: fighting for scraps of meat, throwing objects at one another. In one corner, a crowd gathers to witness a duel between an earwig-headed demon and an oiled, weaponless barbarian woman. To Gad's surprise, the human seizes the advantage, ripping off one of the demon's mandibles. Swinging it overhead, she buries its sharp tip deep in the demon's skull. She brays in the demonic tongue as its body is dragged away. Gad wonders if she is another Sodevina—come here to destroy the demons, then reduced to their maddened plaything. The last he sees of her, a frog-demon has stepped from the circle to volunteer as her next opponent.

  Finally they reach an empty corridor, at the end of which waits a sapphire door. It groans open when the fly-demon nears.

  "Kneel to our lady," it says, pushing Gad inside. The doors slam shut, leaving him alone in a perfumed foyer. He remains upright.

  Silk curtains part. A slim, pale, feminine hand juts through them. It beckons him to move through the fabric to the room beyond.

  Gad steps through. The woman from the procession stands before him. She has situated herself so that Gad is already uncomfortably close to her as soon as he steps through.

  Gad admires the tactic. The forced intimacy establishes her power over him. It sets her up as the aggressor, and him as the weaker party. Strips him of the expected advantages conferred by his masculinity.

  He gives her the smile and nothing else. Neither discomfort nor a play for dominance. His impassive passivity will force her to make a second move, to follow up her first.

  She smiles, too, but only with her lips. "Did Kaalkur not instruct you to kneel?"

  "You mean Fly Head? It seemed more like a recommendation."

  "I like impudence," she says, "in a well-chiseled man." She reaches out and with the back of her fingers brushes his cheekbone.

  He catches her wrist.

  Her body tightens in controlled fury. Her diaphanous gown floats freely from her chest.

  "We haven't been introduced yet," says Gad. He releases her.

  She adjusts her neckline. Nostrils flare. "You will understand, of course, that I must test you. For untoward loyalties."

  Gad keeps himself loose. Drains himself of facial and bodily communication. To resort to charm now would be a tell. "Of course," he says.

  He hopes Calliard is right about the Salve of Tala. In addition to slowing the wearer's fall into madness in the presence of demons and other aberrations, it is supposed to mask intention. A detection spell—like the one the priestess now chants—should return the result the caster wants, and not the one she fears. The woman produces a locust-shaped golden amulet, chants in staccato demontongue, and waves it in Gad's direction. Apparently satisfied, she drops the pendant's loop over her head. The locust dangles in her decolletage.

  "We must be on guard against infiltrators," she says.

  "I imagine so."

  "You are wondering why you were summoned here," she tells him.

  "That's true."

  "I am Isilda. You are ...?"

  "Gad."

  "Tell me of yourself."

  "A few months ago, strangeness invaded my dreams. At first I thought they were just the perturbations of sleep, but gradually I realized that an alien consciousness—"

  She cuts him off. "I know that part."

  "You do?"

  "It is the same for all Yath's servants."

  "Even for you?"

  Impatience flickers across her face. "No, I have served him longer." She glides to a gilt-etched table. Gad dates it to the thirty-eighth century, the high Taldan style, and appraises it, dents and scrapes considered, at ten thousand gold pieces.

  For the first time he is able to take in the rest of the small, square chamber. Either the walls are stone, or they have been altered by illusion to make them seem so. It is lit not by a weird luminance but by dozens of candles. They mask the tower's punishing scent with perfumes of vanilla, sandalwood, and rose petal. The suite is richly appointed, albeit in mismatched and mostly damaged items. A fluted Hermean vase rests atop a rosewood side table of the Greims school. An erotic ivory statuette, either carved by Landrit himself or by a skilled imitator, athletically conjoins a pair of lithe figures on an ebony pedestal. On the far wall hangs a wooden panel, its chipping paint depicting a six-armed snake woman. She looms above a marbled city, putting its tiny denizens to flight. Each hand holds a quivering peasant, ready to be popped into her pouty, snake-fanged mouth.

  A second set of fluttering curtains conceals an exit into another room. Gad glances again at the sapphire door, mentally testing its weight and wondering how difficult it would be to open, should flight become necessary.

  "I want you to tell me what I can't already guess about you," Isilda tells him. "Who you were before you heard the call."

  Gad opts for the truth, which is easier to remember later. "I was a swindler. I acquired and sold items like the ones in your collection here. On occasion, when fine objects grew elusive, I resorted to simpler burglary."

  "And what drew you to this pursuit?"

  "Do you often ask men to explain themselves to you?"

  "Yes."

  "You do?"

  "Regularly."

  "And what they tell you, is it ever the truth?"

  She considers for a moment. "No," she says, as if surprised by her answer.

  "Let's say this, then. A man must follow his talents."

  "Until you heard the call, you were content with petty evil."

  "With lucrative evil," he says.

  She gestures for him to sit across from her. "Yet without power."

  He takes his seat, careful not to scrape the legs of the chair on the stone flooring. It is a Druman forgery, hardly worth the cost to cart it. The chair she sits on is from a different place and era and worth eight thousand easily—fifteen to the right buyer.

  "Gad," she says, rolling the name around in her mouth. "Have I heard that name before?"

  "Hope not," he shrugs. "I strive to be unmemorable."

  She drinks him in. "Surely this is a struggle for you."

  "We all have our burdens."

  "I see you assaying the value of my possessions," Isilda says.

  "You've caught me," he says. Let her think she's the one conning him.

  "These are trash." She rises, her gown puffing around her. She seizes the vase and dashes it to pieces. Gad jolts as if struck on the face. The reaction is unfeigned. She glides back to the table, swishes her chair next to his, and sits. "The lust for a fine object. Hunger for money. These are petty impulses. They blind us to greater ambitions."

  "I feel you are right," Gad ventures. "Or think I have come to feel it, since the dreams started. But I can't put it into words."

  A silver dome sits on the table. She lifts it up, revealing a platter, a pair of bowls, and a collection of dinnerware. On the platter lie a pair of thick-cut steaks. From appearance alone, they seem finely cooked: charred on the outside, carved to reveal a thin stratus of rare meat in the center. Juice, speckled with golden dots of fat, pools around them.

  Since leaving Castle Suma he has eaten fieldcake, dried sausage, nuts, sauerkraut, and carrion bird. Gad wants to grab the steaks with his hands, tear into them with his teeth. It is the correct tactic, he decides, to make his want transparent to her. She seeks to establish his weakness. He needs her to think she has the upper hand.

  "Serve me," Isilda says.

  An enlarged silver serving fork, its handle of carved greatdeer antler (Brevic workmanship, approximate value four hundred gold) rests atop a pair of nondescript stoneware plates. Gad spears the larger of the two steaks with the fork, deposits it on the first plate, and rises to place it in front of the priestess.

  Two cracked stoneware bowls (valueless dross) contain side dishes: boiled beets and noodles with peas. Af
ter Gad ladles a single spoonful of beets onto the priestess's plate, she nods enough. She does the same after the first spoon of noodles.

  "Now you may take what you want," she says.

  Gad spears the steak. He takes one ladle full of beets.

  "As much as you want," prompts Isilda.

  He takes more beets, and several spoonfuls of noodles. After she seems satisfied with his serving he stops, though his hunger tells him to keep piling.

  He waits for her to start.

  She prolongs the moment.

  Finally she slices the thinnest of slivers from her steak. Slowly opens her mouth. Lets him see her tongue. She places the meat insinuatingly upon it. Closes her mouth. Chews.

  It is a display of power and ingenuity, Gad understands, to serve up a pair of fresh steaks in a place like this. He considers asking her about the logistics involved: bringing live cattle to the Worldwound, feeding them, protecting them from demons and hungry cultists. He's sure from the smell and texture that it is in fact beef, and not something horrible. The expense and difficulty entailed is incalculable.

  Gad can't find the angle in asking. Instead he responds by precisely mirroring her eating. The thin sliver. The open mouth. The tongue. The distinct closing of the mouth. The slow, slow chewing.

  She repeats the tease with a second slice of steak, this time somehow thinner than the one before.

  Again he responds in kind.

  She rewards him with an appreciative smirk. "I assume you suffered deprivations on the trail," she says.

  "We had hoped to forage but were not prepared for the Worldwound's utter barrenness."

  "I am used to fine viands," she says. "You'll do me a disservice by leaving your needs unslaked."

  "Then I'll tuck in."

  Porcelain hands interwoven on her lap, she observes him.

  He saws off a large chunk of meat and bites into it with manly gusto.

  "Yath's sendings," she resumes, "awaken and direct the potential to power. I see it in you, Gad. A mere glance was all it took. Greatness is within you, but lies dormant. You have squandered it in a life of petty gamesmanship. You think yourself clever, but have swindled yourself of your true destiny."