"Are you doing that?" Vitta asks.
"No," says Hendregan.
"Good," says Vitta.
"Well, yes."
"What do you mean, no well yes?"
"I'm not doing it; I did it."
"Clarify, you barking—"
"When I set the fire that got me out of my cell, and you from yours—"
"—you set the tower aflame, and now it's spreading—"
"—in a nonlinear fashion, according to chaotic geometry—"
"—with half the team still inside!"
Hendregan nods tightly.
"Can you stop it?"
"Do I look like a water elemental?"
"You're not telling me that the entire tower is about to explode, are you?"
"I'm trying not to tell you that."
"But it is?"
Hendregan clenches his teeth in chagrined acknowledgment.
Isilda crawls on her stomach through her hall of preserved ex-lovers. Their resin-coated faces stare blankly ahead, indifferent to her plight. Jerisa, advancing, matches the inching speed of her crawl. She draws yet another knife.
"I came here to retrieve my jewels," Isilda rasps. "You came to murder me. Which of us is the greater fool?"
"Before I gut you," says Jerisa, "I have to thank you."
Contempt withers the priestess's words. "And you want to tell me why."
"For granting me perspective." With a convulsing shoulder, Jerisa indicates the stuffed men. "I thought I was one to hold uselessly onto a dead and petrified love."
Specks of red mar Isilda's mordant grin. "It's him, is it?"
Jerisa's face grows taut.
Isilda spits out a chuckle. "We are not the same, knife-wielder."
"I agree."
"I conquer my men," says Isilda. "Whereas you..."
Jerisa's hand whitens on her dagger hilt.
Isilda utters another invocation. Abyssal energies wail into being around her hand. She holds them, curling and crackling in the air, waiting for her enemy to come at her.
The skin walls sizzle. They fall from the bone girders as strips of charred, acrid-smelling meat. Hendregan's cerulean blaze roars up the tower's exposed, skeletal frame. Motes of flame spring from the skeleton. They land on the resin-covered lovers. Varnish crackles.
Jerisa dives through the hole that leads back to the wardrobe.
Isilda's slain lovers explode, blowing her to pieces.
Cultists squirm into the narrow corridor leading from the tower. Tumbling bodies spill into the chamber, vomited out from the shuddering passageways that lead into it. Like a dirty, noisome river they flood, a grunting, sweating flow of limbs and torsos, toward the single chokepoint. The weak and malnourished fall beneath the boots and sandals of their stronger colleagues. They punch and kick to force themselves closer to the bottleneck.
Tiberio and Vitta back away from the fatal scrum. The half-orc tugs on Hendregan's robes, dragging him from the ever-growing cultist horde.
"I should burn them out, yes?" offers Hendregan.
"No," says Tiberio.
"Not yet," says Vitta. Then she adds, "But we haven't much time."
Additional demons enter the chamber: shambling, crawling, flapping, skittering. There are frog-demons, cherub-demons, mantis-demons. All the demons of the tower appear, bearing the twisted features of scorpions, mantises, worms, and ants. There are the bony, tall demons dripping acid slime, the corpulent boar-faced beasts, the giants bristled in lizardlike horns. They fall on their mortal servants, biting, clawing, dismembering. Baffled, betrayed, the cultists bow down before their demon masters, only to be torn apart.
"Are they trying to get out?" Tiberio asks.
"No," says a voice behind them. It's Calliard.
Gad stands at his shoulder. Both are wet with ichor.
"The demons realize they're about to be called back to the Abyss," says Calliard.
"So they're having their fun before they go?"
A clamoring spasm shakes the tower. Chunks of meat and burning bone girder detach from the ceiling to drop on the struggling figures below. They crush mortal and demon alike.
"We have to find another way out of here," says Gad.
The base of the tower splits apart, opening holes in its wobbling sides. The five sprint for the nearest gap before fleeing cultists can fill it.
A group of armored men hie into view, disgorged by a set of upward-leading steps. The fleshy stairs melt as they charge up them. Their scorched and rotting tabards bear the mismatched blazons of various crusader orders.
"Aprian!" Tiberio exclaims, seeing the possessed soldiers from the guardpoint below. He counts them: Baatyr, Ergraf, and Pachko are there, too. He doesn't see Matesh.
The corrupted knights carry crossbows, nocked and ready. They aim them at Tiberio and his gang. Tiberio ducks; the others follow suit.
Four crossbow bolts find their targets in the open maw of a bat-winged demon, caught in mid-swoop on its way for Tiberio. It crash-lands on the chamber floor, sliding into a corpse pile.
Aprian runs toward Tiberio. The five brace themselves for battle.
Aprian executes a quick bow before the half-orc, then springs back up, ready to defend him against any comers.
"Aprian?" Tiberio asks.
"We haven't met, my friend, and yet we have," says the knight. His pupils are clear and bright. The muscles of his face have lost their previous contortion.
"The banishment of Yath cast out the demons who possessed you," Calliard says.
The crusader nods. "Aye. And am I right in supposing the lot of you had much to do with that?"
"We'll take credit once we're out of here," says Gad.
The knights form a protective V around Gad and company. Crossbows slung over their backs, the crusaders unsheathe long greatswords. Aprian leads a charge toward the nearest rent in the tower base. Their swinging swords cut down cultists and lop the appendages from approaching demons.
Tiberio shouts into Aprian's ear. "Where's Matesh?"
"Gone to Iomedae's hall!" the crusader hoarsely answers. "Acquitting himself courageously ere he fell!"
The escaping war party clambers through the rent to find themselves on a narrow ledge hugging the tower base. Boulders and clods of dirt jettison themselves from the edge in the rhythm of the tower's last seizures. Below them lies the moat of blood, steaming and churning, carpeted with the drowned. The drawbridge lies rattling across the moat, a hundred feet ahead. Aprian swaps his greatsword for his crossbow. His allies do the same.
Calliard's marrow freezes as a host of shadow demons emerges from the falling tower. They are ordinary specimens, none as large or malignantly numinous as Xaggalm. They swarm in formation at the impromptu war band. They slide into and out of one another, their forms interpenetrating as if they are all part of the same roiling storm front. Gad's company adds its own missile fire to the fusillade loosed by their newfound allies. Some shadow demons veer off. Others keep coming. They snatch Baatyr from the ledge and carry him into the sky. They rip Ergraf's arm off. In shock, he topples into the blood moat. Burdened by his armor, he sinks quickly beneath its awful surface. The escapees recoil in dismay as a round red missile bounces off the wall above them. It is Baatyr's severed head, returned to them as a projectile.
The assault's survivors make it to the drawbridge, where assorted demons await them. Aprian fires a crossbow bolt into the forehead of a shambling frog-demon. It lunges at him, dying before it reaches his feet. Aprian and Tiberio join together to roll the slain demon into the moat, clearing their path. The half-orc is first to reach the drawbridge. There stands the skeletal red demon who slew Vasilissa and her misguided crew of peasant demon-stalkers. Tiberio rushes it, hitting it sideways, enduring the burns its slimy coating
causes. Grappling the rail-thin demon, Tiberio lifts it high in the air and breaks its back across his knee. The demon utters graveled obscenities as it expires. Its fellows scatter, diving into the bloodmoat or taking wing in search of easier prey.
With Aprian and Tiberio in the lead, the escapees bolt across the drawbridge. Pachko, his back to the others and his greatsword swinging, guards the rear. He is nearly across when a burning gobbet drops from the disintegrating tower, splintering the bridge into planks. The impact flings him into the air, back onto the ledge.
Aprian rushes to the other edge. Tiberio, arm slung around his breastplate, holds him back, stopping him from diving into the moat.
Frog-beasts shamble from both sides toward his trapped comrade.
"Swim for it, Pachko!" he shouts.
Pachko shakes his head; the moat will use his armor to pull him down, and there's no time to shed it. He throws his back against the increasingly gelatinous tower wall, swinging his enormous blade from side to side as the demons encroach.
"For Iomedae!" he yells.
Aprian stands rapt, watching his friend. "Iomedae!" he shouts.
"Better them than us," Vitta mutters.
Gad nods. He and Vitta turn and run. Calliard follows. Tiberio breaks away to run as well. Hendregan stands poised to conjure more fire. Nothing comes.
"Damn," he says. "Out of spells. No more flame. Damn." He shrugs and sprints to join the others, his wide, sandaled feet flying wide as he awkwardly dashes.
Numbed and light-headed, Jerisa wanders an unsteady corridor high in the dying tower. The black veins have faded, but the injuries from the demonic curse remain. She's losing blood from her cheek, her thigh, and gods know where else the priestess's razor-trimmed boots struck her. A meaty wall looms up before her. She either falls into it, or it falls into her. In her state, it's hard to tell.
In these last moments she feels a weird detachment from her circumstances. She ponders Gad, and wonders how he'll talk about her when she's gone. He'll speak of her little or not at all, she decides, after he puts her in her grave. Not that there will be anything to find that is specifically her, to lay in the Suma crypt.
But that's not the point.
The point is, she's breaking his rule. Spoiling his streak. The whole team is supposed to get out. And here she is, too deep in the tower to escape. All because her stupid homicidal temper got the better of her. Because she could not bear the thought that Isilda might still breathe after this. Or even that the priestess might be killed by accident, or any other's hand.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
No, Gad will not speak of her. She will be the one who disobeyed. The one who doomed herself.
If he remembers her at all, it will be as an example to others. When laying out the scheme, during the talk before the job, Jerisa will become a veiled reference. Others have failed in the past, have gone off on their own, and look what happened. Maybe he'll say her name. More likely, a look of impassive annoyance will cross his features—one of the looks that still shivers her, damn the idiocy of it—and then Vitta or Calliard or one of the others will take the new recruits aside. And they'll tell the Story of Jerisa. The Story of the One Who Got Herself Killed Because She Was a Child, and Because Her Heart Was, In the End, Ungovernable.
Not as good as being a genuine lost love. Jerisa smiles, a fresh splash of blood falling from her curse-flayed lips. But it is something, maybe. Perhaps the new recruits, when they hear the story, will assume that Gad loved her. Even if he didn't. In a way, even if the wrong way, she'd be tied to him forever.
An ant-demon appears before her, its waggling antennae all but burnt off, its front legs twisted and warped. A dagger appears in her hand, then in its head. She stumbles past, the dagger back in her hand.
Inside the passageway wall, a burning bone snaps and bursts through charring tower-flesh, nearly impaling her. She dances back from it, insanely laughing. She's Hendregan now, she decides. Embracing madness, so as to shut out fear. Let it come, she tells the tower.
As if obeying her mental command, the floor drops away beneath her, breaking into a shower of noxious meat. She hears the level below it give way under the impact. The two falling floors land on a third, then a fourth. The reaction continues until all of the floors below her are gone, and the bottom half of the tower is nothing but an empty tube.
It occurs to her to wonder how she is still alive and able to observe this. She sees her right arm. It is outstretched above her, pulled to its full length. Her reflexes have accomplished what her conscious volition has shirked. Her fingers clamp tight around the hilt of her dagger. It digs firmly into the muscle of the tower's outer wall. Her grip, and the dagger, keep her suspended dozens of yards above the tower floor.
All right, Jerisa tells her body. If you're so determined to try, who am I to argue? She reaches her free arm around her back. Her fingers snake into her pack. Working only by feel, she hunts for the item she needs.
The pressure of her weight radiates from her shoulder socket through her injured body.
A jellied substance drips from the hilt into her face.
The wound created by her dagger widens. She drops a few more inches, then is brought up short as the blade meets resistance.
Her shoulder flashes white pain through her torso. It mingles sadistically with the wounds she's already endured. Her arm signals its imminent surrender.
She finds what she's rooting for. The grappling hook, the line of enchanted filament still attached to it. She threads the hook's terminal clip around her belt. It clicks into place. She tests it, ensuring that it is properly secured.
The walls around her whoosh into flame. The conflagration eats away at the tower's failing substance. Holes appear in the wall. They race for one another, joining up.
Jerisa places her feet on what remains of the rapidly immolating wall. She walks herself achingly up to the point of her knife. With her off-hand she sinks the hook into the burning wall. The flames lick her flesh. She lets go of the dagger. Drops on the line. Swings her body. Flies through one of the widening holes.
She is now on the outside of the tower, just as it collapses. It droops over. For an instant, it hangs over the rubbled landscape of the Worldwound, parallel to the ground. Jerisa, on her line, dangles down from it like a spider descending from its web. Hurt beyond the capacity to experience pain, she slides down the filament. It runs out twenty feet above the ground. It swings her on a crazy arc over slaughtered cultists and swarming demons. She drops into the blood moat.
Gad runs for her. He dodges through fleeing cultists, skids to avoid barrages of tower fragments as they pound to the earth. Debris pummels the ground, landing with wet, butcher-shop thumps. A burly, robed figure running from the scene stretches out a spiked club, aiming to catch Gad in the neck as he runs. Gad seizes a scrawny demon-worshiper by the shoulders and spins him into the blow. The big and small cultists tumble together in the dirt. The routing crowd thickens as Gad draws nearer to the moat. A bat-winged demon dives in with grasping talons, headed straight for Gad. He rolls between a pair of half-clad female congregants. The demon's claws rake their scalps and shoulders. It pulls them into the air as Gad darts past. The heavier of the two drops from its grip and is swiftly trampled. The bat-demon bears the other high into the mottled sky, until she and it are pinpricks, and then vanish.
Sooty clouds churn overhead. They darken and twist. Searing red flashes pulsate through them, casting weird light on the tumult of figures below.
The final pieces of tower debris fall, crashing into the stampede of cultists and demons. The impact sets off a wave, throwing men and monsters into the air. Bodies tumble up; gravity yanks them down. They land in a ripple of snapping thumps. Death-groans echo across the polluted plain.
The tower itself now lies flat, a deflated tube of burnt Abyssal matter. It resembles a snake's dis
carded skin.
A shock wave erupts from the tower's former base. It lifts Gad up; he lands on his back. Most of the trampling horde is likewise felled. Gad curls into a ball to avoid the kicks of the last few oncomers still on their feet. The mob loses its forward impetus as the fallen totter back up. Transfixed, they watch as a crevasse opens up beneath the tower. Beams of otherworldly red-black light stab from the widening fissure.
Gad pushes through them, keeps on going.
The crevasse pulls the tower remains—what is left of Yath's earthly manifestation—down into its unseen depths. Gad guesses what Calliard would say about this: it's a hole between planes, like the Worldwound itself. Drawing that which belongs to the Abyss back into the Abyss.
He reaches the lip of the moat. He scans its length. Three dozen yards from his position, he sees her. With her off-arm, Jerisa woozily clings to the edge of the moat. Her right dangles, spent, at her side.
Stabs of light reach out to catch hold of scrambling demons. They impale the sky, jab across the plain. Wherever they strike a demon, it is caught and inexorably pulled toward the crevasse. At speed they hurtle toward it, indignantly squalling. Gad hits the ground as a flying tick-demon tumbles his way.
He sees Jerisa's failing fingers slide from the moat's edge. Crouching and weaving to avoid the inundation of kicking, writhing demons, he slides to her side.
He grabs her wrist as the Abyssal vortex takes hold of the contents of the moat. It sucks away the demon blood, and with it, the bodies and debris that float within it.
The force subjects Jerisa's body to a powerful jerk. Her slicked arm nearly slides out of Gad's grip. He reaches down to wrap his arms around her. A second tug, mightier than the first, pulls at him too. Gad determines that it will not take him, and will not take her. Drawing on his depleting reserves of strength, he resists the pull. He drags her to safety. She lies like a damp rag on the gravelly ground. He presses himself flat to it as the last straggling demons zoom overhead and are sucked into the center of Abyssal light.
The Worldwound Gambit Page 31
