The Worldwound Gambit

by Robin D. Laws

  With an odd, anticlimactic expiration like the last breaths of air pushed from a bellows, the vortex winks from the face of the earth.

  Save for stray, scattered chunks of already-decaying wall-meat, the tower is gone. The crevasse is gone. The moat yawns empty. The angry blisters that marred the sky have been replaced by the Worldwound's usual gloom. Gad looks for demons but sees none, not even as flocking dots on the far horizon. Only robed cultists remain, and of these, a quick estimation tells Gad that for each survivor there are four lifeless corpses.

  He checks Jerisa: she's still breathing. He draws himself to a sitting position, then to his knees, then stands, his legs uncertain beneath him.

  A helmeted cultist, his puce robes torn to ill-concealing shreds, sees Gad and makes his way toward him. The steaming figure is both obese and muscular. A huge gut jiggles over a tiny breechclout. Ashes and gore cover his unctuous skin. Hideous gashes mar his limbs. All of his body hair has been burned away. Gad braces himself for the man's arrival.

  "You." The voice echoes from the helmet.

  "Yes?" says Gad.

  "You do not belong here."

  "What tells you that?" Gad asks.

  "I sense it."

  "You are blessed with the second sight, then?"

  "I was, poltroon. Until you stole Yath from us."

  "You seem disoriented," Gad observes.

  "He came to me in dreams. Lifted me from obscurity. Whispered of my greatness. Gave me the dark light of truth. Now my true sight is gone. But as it left me, I looked across this once-hallowed field and saw you. Saw that you have taken it all from us. Our glory. Our conquest. The blood we are due, owed by those who have mocked and disregarded us."

  "You're not crying in there, are you?" Gad asks.

  "Our dreams are slain. Now you shall be. With my bare hands, I shall murder you." The towering, all-but-naked cultist balls his hands into enormous fists. The bones of his fingers crack expectantly into place.

  "Is that so?"

  "Prepare to die."

  "And here I thought I was going to get away with it," Gad shrugs.

  The weeping cultist storms at him.

  Gad kicks him in the nuts. The man gasps and thuds to the ground.

  Gad picks up Jerisa's limp body and carries it to the others. He winces at the extent of her injuries. Calliard will have the party's healing potions on him, transferred from Tiberio's pack before the planned capture. Though not in the habit of bowing down before any particular god, he directs a mental prayer of gratitude for this fact to whoever will take it.

  Jerisa flutters to bleary consciousness. "You came for me," she says.

  "Everyone gets out," he says.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The Toast

  Gad interrogates Aprian carefully, charmingly, before inviting him to accompany the others on their journey out of the Worldwound. The knight provides a detailed accounting of his life, from his noble birth in an obscure Taldan holding, to his time as a young hostage in the household of his father's rival, to his acceptance of the call of Iomedae and investiture as a paladin. He speaks of his pilgrimage to Mendev, and his time in the Order of the Sunrise Sword. His possession he attributes to his rash seizure of an accursed ring which he falsely thought to have been cleansed of its demonic essence. The facts fit together. More to the point, Gad sizes him up and concludes that he is as he claims: a brave, straightforward man, perhaps too guileless, too hopeful, for his or anyone's good.

  Gad tells him his own tale, false in nearly every particular. Aprian believes it.

  At the knight's insistence, they detour on their way home. First, to the site of the battle, then to the encampment of the cultist army. The first location they find strewn with scavenged bones. Aprian pauses to pray, tearing himself away only when Gad and the others make to leave. The second is much the same: corpses burned to the bone and stacked in heaps.

  The horror swells in Aprian's throat. "I don't understand...victors as well as vanquished, slaughtered."

  "The great flame-whip demons," says Calliard. Since his departure from the tower, his demeanor has been drained, distant. "When they sensed the tower collapsing, they did what demons do. Knowing they no longer stood a chance of conquering Mendev immediately, they destroyed their own forces. Reveled in the slaughter, for slaughter's sake."

  "What despicable foes we face," Aprian absently mutters. "Their threat is ended—for now, at any rate. Still, it is a sorrowful turn of events."

  "How so?" Gad asks.

  "These were innocents until those foul demon dreams led them astray."

  "They had a choice."

  "You don't mourn them, all the same?"

  "I don't pretend to be a good man."

  The paladin turns to him. "You pretend not to be."

  Gad shrugs. "The Everbright Crusaders will be in need of a new commander," he says.

  "As will my own order, the Sunrise Sword. Kenabres is saved, but will be short of defenders for some time. I'll make a proposal to you. I'll lead an amalgamation of the two orders, if you—all of you—agree to join."

  They all laugh, except for Tiberio, who ruefully shakes his head.

  "We're no paladins," says Gad.

  "Perhaps we have too many paladins. Had we a few distrustful rogues among us, we'd not have fallen for Fraton's ploy. We universally esteemed him as a man of peerless virtue."

  "In part because he persecuted the likes of us," says Gad.

  "I am more than ready to concede the point," answers the knight.

  "Sentiment appreciated," says Gad. "But we'll go our own way all the same when we reach the border."

  Aprian sees movement in the treeline. A band of ragged knights emerges, swords held ready. Behind them cower malnourished civilians. Their robes bear the mark of Yath. The group approaches hesitantly. They seem in no mood to fight.

  "May I borrow Tiberio, to stand at my side as I parley with them?"

  "That's up to him, crusader."

  Without comment, Tiberio accompanies Aprian as he strides out to meet the wretched stragglers.

  Gad catches Hendregan preparing a fireball. "Probably won't be necessary," he says.

  After a discussion, Tiberio and Aprian return.

  "I won't be going with you to Mendev after all," the paladin announces.

  "No?"

  "If these men survived, there are others, too. Several of the knights were as I was—demon-ridden, until the tower fell."

  "And the cultists?"

  "As you say, they had a choice, and took the wrong one. Now Iomedae has granted them the opportunity to repent. If they are capable of atonement, it is my duty to guide them."

  "So you'll scour the place for survivors and penitents, and then bring them back home?"

  "I too have atonement to make. For pride and blindness, if naught else."

  "You'll understand if we don't stay for dinner," says Gad.

  Aprian clasps his hand and then Tiberio's. "Farewell, my friend," he says.

  "Goodbye," Tiberio answers.

  "When the demons controlled our bodies," Aprian begins, "we were aware, but helpless. Trapped in our own minds as our forms became puppets for depravities unspeakable. The demons could not see it, blinded as they were by single-minded cruelty. But we could tell who you were, beneath your ruse. You felt our agonies, and we felt yours. I'll extend to you the same offer I made to your comrade here. Should you ever wish to join my crusader order, whatever that may be, I'll exalt you to the place of honor you deserve."

  "Thank you, Aprian," Tiberio says, "but I'm with them."

  They depart, hungry. They wait until they're several leagues from the encampment so as not to deplete the foraging there, before searching for food. With Tiberio's help, Vitta lays trap
s for birds. After several hours, she returns to their temporary camp with a bag full of well-fed crows.

  "These are fatter than the ones we caught before. Let's try not to think why," she says, plucking glossy feathers.

  "We weren't," says Jerisa, "until you mentioned it." It is nearly her first time speaking, and certainly her first attempt at banter, since her healing near the vanished tower.

  Calliard, too, has been largely silent. His gaze is fixed on the middle distance. Despite the day's increasing heat, he shivers. With anxious hands he rubs the clammy goosebumps that dot the pale flesh of his forearms. Seeking distraction, he takes some of the crows from Vitta and joins in the plucking.

  Gad watches the sky for airborne demons. His eyes track a few fluttering shapes that might be the spawn of the Abyss. They dart away and are gone. A day ago, he'd have seen dozens of them.

  "Make no mistake," says Calliard. "We've staunched one leak from the demon realms, but the Worldwound itself remains. It won't be long until this place is as infested as ever."

  "But they won't have so easy a time penetrating past the wardstones into Mendev," says Gad.

  "That's right."

  "Back to normal, then."

  "Back to normal."

  "I'll settle for that," says Gad. "Let no one say I'm a greedy man."

  "Speaking of greed," says Vitta. She sets to work gutting the birds.

  "Do I know what you're going to say?" asks Gad.

  "I'm going to say it regardless," answers the halfling.

  Gad sighs.

  "It's a shame, that's all," Vitta continues, "that after all that trouble, us being thieves and so forth, and with all the planning we did, that we couldn't have arranged to put ourselves ahead. I'm speaking of the profit aspect, naturally."

  "Naturally," says Gad.

  Vitta passes the cleaned birds to Hendregan. He clutches them to his breast. They roast on contact, their skin crackling golden beneath his fingers. Forgotten hunger strikes the group as the aroma wafts around their camp.

  "All I'm suggesting," Vitta says, "is that, should we attempt a gaffle of this magnitude again, we should expend more effort to wring some financial gain from it. Otherwise, almost by definition, it isn't a gaffle at all. It's a crusade. And as you told that paladin, crusading is not our business."

  Gad lets his shoulders slump comically. "As I made clear ...This was an investment. To make it safe to do business again."

  "I prefer investments that make me richer," says Vitta.

  "Calliard, look in your pack," says Jerisa.

  With a quizzical look, the bard reaches for the pack. He thrusts his arm deep into it, rooting around, until his expression changes. He withdraws a ball of something that tinkles and clatters as it moves, wrapped in a fine silk scarf. Unrolling the scarf onto a clear, dry patch of forest floor, he scatters fistfuls of gems and jewels.

  Jerisa stays nonchalantly in place. The others rise to lean appraisingly over the haul.

  "Which of us wants to make a low, appreciative whistle?" Gad asks.

  "It'll mean more, coming from Vitta," says Jerisa.

  The lockbreaker bends down to run the jewels through her agile fingers. "This must be worth ...must be ..."

  "A lot of money, even when divided six ways," says Jerisa. "Enough to live on for a couple of years. Or squander magnificently, as our various predilections dictate."

  "You got it while out casing the tower," says Gad.

  "From the priestess," says Jerisa.

  "You stole this from Isilda?"

  "Her taste for finery led me to think she'd have a little cache stored away."

  "You were in her chambers?"

  "You're not objecting, I hope."

  "When were you in her chambers?" Gad asks.

  "Let's not ruin the moment with details."

  Gad stands over her. "That's what you were doing, when we'd banished Yath and you ran off from the others?"

  "No, no, I got them earlier."

  "Which brings up the question: what were you doing, when you ran off?"

  "Learning a lesson," she says.

  Their journey to the border of Mendev shows that Calliard is right. The Worldwound crawls with demons still. They hide from a frog-beast in a vale of flattened pines. Headless obscenities with mouths fore and aft harry them through the white canyons. In the depths of a fetid marsh, they fight and kill a shadow demon.

  That night, Calliard sneaks back and is surprised to find the demon's dead, shifting form lingering on the earthly plane. He sticks his most highly magicked sword into the indistinct dark corpse. Shadowblood spurts out. He catches it in a bottle, and slinks back to the camp. When he arrives, the rashness of his act occurs to him. He was on watch, and left the others slumbering unawares, to go and do this.

  A few minutes pass until he can bear it no longer. He drips a dribble of shadowblood onto his tongue. The substance burns through him. The dull, achy feeling subsides. Calm descends. He senses, not that he's seeking them or cares to know, where the nearest demons are. Luckily, they're at least a league away.

  He suspected as much. It was hinted at in a fragmentary account he once read in the library of a Nerosyani chronicler of perversions. After ingesting true shadowblood, the body changes. The addict doesn't need his blood spiked with mesz before he consumes it. His altered organs produce their own mesz, unbidden. The unadulterated flow, straight from the vein of a shadow demon—or perhaps any other demon—does the trick.

  From this moment onward, every time Calliard bloodies a demon, temptation will ride him.

  Thirty-nine days after the fall of Yath, they reconvene at Krega.

  Of the town's structures, the most completely rebuilt is the brothel. Raw new timbers cover its grand facade. A hunched servant, face scarred by a demon's slashing talon, teeters on a ladder to paint the beams red. Inside, in the mistress's inner salon, fresh boards cover the walls. Rolls of flocking, brought by Gad as a gift to the proprietor, lie neatly piled, waiting to be installed.

  A feast has been set before them. Three fat river bass lie in pools of black sauce, dots of fat glistening on their surfaces. Crisp-skinned game hens heap upon one another on a porcelain serving plate. Medallions of honeyed ham ring a haunch of boiled mutton. Bowls of pickled white cabbage, garlic-covered beets, chive and tarragon dumplings, and peas with oil and pepper crowd the table. Wicker breadbaskets overflow with salty flat breads and round loaves dotted with crumbled walnuts. The house's whores, hired for an evening of untaxing duty, bustle in wedges of soft cheese and pots of stavisiberry sauce.

  Gad pops the cork on a dark bottle of fine south Chelish brandy. Its sweet aroma rises into the air. Six pewter goblets stand before him, straight as sentries. He pours a splash into each. The whores pass them around.

  "This is the room where Abotur died," says Gad, raising his goblet. The others raise theirs. "To Abotur." He pours the brandy on the floor. The others follow suit. Gad hands the bottle to a wide-hipped harlot. She refills each of the goblets, generously this time, ending with Gad.

  He raises his goblet again. "To success," he says.

  "To success," they chorus.

  "Jerisa, what's the word from the border?"

  "Father says that there have been a few testing feints against Suma's defenses, but nothing like before. Small sallies of flying demons, no more than a handful at a time."

  "The wardstones are holding again?"

  "A few get through, as before, but armies cannot pass."

  "And it's the same to the north and south?"

  "Father has been in communication with the other generals and commanders. They say the same is true at their positions."

  "So then there are still enough demons getting through to cause disorder and lawlessness, which is good for business, but too
few to wreak catastrophe, which is not."

  "A fair assessment," says Calliard.

  Gad hoists his brandy. "To success."

  "To success," they answer.

  "And to silence," Gad says.

  "To silence?" Vitta asks.

  "As we agreed at the border," he says.

  "Oh yes," she nods. "Remind me again why we've sworn ourselves to secrecy. Why it's such a terrible secret that we saved this entire land? Having thought about it these last few weeks, I'm thinking there must be additional rewards to reap."

  "From the glory of it?"

  "Precisely."

  "Another word for glory? Attention. We don't want that, do we?"

  "I reckon not."

  "Altruism is fine for crusaders and paladins. But for honest thieves ...Do we want to ruin our reputations?"

  "Point made," says Vitta. "Objection withdrawn."

  "So noted," says Gad. He reaches for his pack, pulling from it five heavy leather purses, tied shut with a thick gilt cord. He tosses them beside the plates of each confederate. They clank satisfyingly against the wood when they land. Vitta, Calliard and Jerisa quickly snatch them up. Hendregan pokes his purse with his fork, as if unsure what it might contain. Tiberio, ignoring the money, rises to carve himself another chunk of mutton.

  "As I reckoned," says Gad, "several of Isilda's pieces were antiques of great craftsmanship, worth more than the constituent value of their stones and metals. You'll find that, if anything, Jerisa underestimated their value."

  "You've kept a leader's share, I trust," says Vitta.

  "I've kept a sixth, neither more nor less."

  "You're entitled to two shares," says Vitta. The others, except for an oblivious Hendregan, nod their agreement.

  Gad colors slightly. "In my book, a real leader's share is the same as everyone else's." He sits down, spooning himself a hefty portion of dumplings. "However, if the rest of you aren't vigilant, I'll likely take more than a sixth of these." He passes the bowl to a grateful Tiberio. "Let's eat."

  The wenches bring wine, a sugary local white, retrieved from cold basement depths. The talking gives way to eating. In a happy rhythm of chewing, slurping and lip-smacking, the thieves mount a formidable assault on the impregnable mountain of food.