D&D 10-The Death Ray

by T. H. Lain

  "Ah," the duke said, breaking the silence, "Maelani."

  The girl smiled and fluttered to a stop before the two men.

  "Father," she said, dipping into a shallow curtsy.

  "Regdar," the duke said, touching the fighter on the arm, "late of the Third New Koratia Comitatus, and a good friend."

  The girl smiled, showing straight teeth of almost blinding white, and said, "Regdar...."

  "My daughter," the duke continued, "the Lady Maelani."

  Regdar bowed, feeling a bit on display under the girl's embarrassingly precise gaze.

  "My lady," he said.

  "My father has told me a great deal about you, Regdar," Maelani said. "Your efforts in defense of the duchy are..."

  She seemed to be searching for a word, and the duke said, "Most appreciated."

  Maelani's cheeks flushed red and she looked away.

  The duke laughed and said, "My daughter studies well and often, and will soon enough comport herself like the duchess she's destined to be."

  Maelani either couldn't or didn't bother disguising the irritation in her face.

  "She's lovely," Regdar broke in. His face flushed red with embarrassment, and sweat trickled down his chest.

  The comment that Regdar so regretted made the duke laugh and Maelani blush again. She smiled at the fighter, who looked away.

  "I'm sorry, Your Highness...L-lady..." Regdar stammered.

  "Surely you've heard that my daughter's hand is the most sought-after prize in the duchy, if not the world," the duke said, and again Maelani showed her irritation. "She is reaching the age where a marriage is possible, and I am reaching an age where her marriage is necessary. She is my only child, Regdar, and I love her deeply. She is also my only heir, and I love Koratia at least as much...though in a different way," he added hastily.

  Regdar nodded, still too embarrassed to follow what the duke was trying to say.

  "Maelani," the duke said, "I would suspect that we'll be seeing more of Regdar in the coming weeks. I hope that prospect pleases you."

  Maelani, whose future husband would eventually become the Duke of Koratia, smiled and nodded. Regdar began slowly to understand. He felt the color drain from his face, and his forehead went damp and cold. His mouth was dry. He tried to clear his throat but instead made an unbecoming, weak, squeaking noise.

  Surely, he thought, the duke remembers Naull and everything I went through to get her back.

  "It does please me," the beautiful young woman replied with undisguised pleasure. "I would like to hear of your worldly experiences..."

  Regdar's jaw went slack and he had to blink sweat out of his eyes.

  "With the Comitatus, of course," Maelani added.

  Regdar sagged with relief.

  Though he wasn't the tallest of men, Vargussel's spiky hair brushed the rafters of the dark passageway. It was the easiest of prayers to Vecna that caused the tip of his staff to glow like a torch. Without it, he would have stumbled around in whatever inconsequential twilight seeped through the crumbling roof of the abandoned slaughterhouse. As it was, it was difficult enough to avoid the many deep puddles of fetid, vile water. Vargussel's long, green robe was already spattered with muck that obscured the wine-red trim around the hem.

  The place was cool but humid, and sweat beaded on his forehead as he picked his way deeper into the dilapidated building. The corridors were designed for cattle, not men. When the place was abandoned decades ago, no one bothered to clean it. The smell was a constant reminder of how low Vargussel had been forced to sink at times in order to inevitably rise so much higher.

  Vargussel breathed through his mouth, quickening his step so that he would reach his hiding place deep in the old slaughterhouse before he was overcome by the stench. Sweat collected on his chest and back, under the heavy, quilted tabard in a wine-red diamond pattern mimicking the heraldry of his family. It was an old pattern for an old family—a family that would die with Vargussel if he failed in the coming days, but he would not fail. For his family, all gone but him; for his liege, still waiting and watching from afar, he would—

  Vargussel stopped. His foot splashed in a puddle of syrupy muck that slid over the top of his fine leather boot. Something was wrong. Something was different. Vargussel had come to the old slaughterhouse often enough, for long enough, that he could feel the change in the air.

  He wasn't alone.

  In front of him was an intersection, one he'd crossed a hundred times. He was a few long strides from the intersecting passage, so he couldn't see around the corners. The ceiling was a bit higher there, the walls close enough on either side that Vargussel could have reached out and touched both walls at the same time. There was no change in the heavy stench of decay. He heard no sound but the odd drip of water and the creak of an old gate hanging from one rusted hinge. The intersections had once been gated so the butchers could heard their charges in one direction or another. The other three gates were missing, long gone.

  With his glowing staff still held in his right hand, Vargussel slipped two fingers of his left into a pocket of his robe. There he found a small bead of blue glass, a spell focus he carried, along with many others, everywhere he went. He didn't pull the bead from his pocket but just held it and whispered the brief incantation while closing his eyes in the precise way the spell demanded.

  Without opening his eyes again, he could see. The lighting was different, more diffuse. His perspective was changed slightly, as if he'd suddenly become a few inches shorter. Concentrating on steady, even breaths, Vargussel altered his perspective by sheer force of will. Without actually moving a step—he stood stock still, his eyes still closed—he moved his sight forward, up, and around the corner to the right.

  The spell showed him the dark expanse of the narrow side passage. Scanning it briefly, lingering on the ceiling, he saw nothing. The shadows were deep, however, and Vargussel wasn't entirely convinced that the passage was clear. Before risking the time to move his sight deeper into the right-hand passage, Vargussel willed his perspective to turn, then slide back to the intersection. He caught a brief glimpse of himself with the magical light on the end of his staff illuminating the crumbling brick, rotting wood, and stagnant mud around him.

  He moved his sight into the left-hand passage. When he tilted it up to scan the ceiling, he saw something move.

  It was a twitch, really, a shadow expanding itself in an unnatural way. He moved in a bit closer and could see the outline of something clinging to the dark corner where the sagging ceiling met the cracked wall. The thing was vaguely humanoid but skinny. It's elongated arms were more like tentacles and at the end of them dangled grotesque, five-fingered hands that, seen only in shadow, looked more like squids than hands. The thing shifted its head around and twitched its shoulders. It was becoming restless, probably wondering why Vargussel had stopped.

  Vargussel let the spell effect fade to darkness. When he opened his eyes, he saw through them normally once again. He touched the medallion hanging from a heavy chain around his neck. It was small enough to fit in the palm of his hand. The medallion was shaped vaguely like the head of a dog, with a long snout simply rendered and two large rubies where its oblong eyes would be. Letting out a small, silent breath, Vargussel willed the guardian to come.

  Still standing in the same place, Vargussel took his hand away and whispered a quick spell that would protect him—at least a little—in the meantime. It was a minor casting, but wasting it and the clairvoyance was testing his patience. The fact that the Vecna-given light on the end of his staff would burn out half an hour after he cast it gave him a sense of irritated urgency. Still, Vargussel wasn't the type to let an opportunity pass.

  "Come out," he said, his voice echoing in the tight space.

  Somewhere, a flock of pigeons, startled by the sudden sound of a human voice in the dull silence, took wing. The thing in the darkness around the corner stirred as well but didn't reveal itself.

  "I saw you there, my friend," Varg
ussel said. "A clever hiding place indeed, but you've been found out. Come down and speak with me, and perhaps we can avoid all this nastiness I'm sure you had planned for me—and that I've been planning for you as well."

  There was a long silence during which Vargussel considered how to kill the thing if it didn't come down. As if sensing his line of thought, the thing in the corner came out.

  It unfolded itself slowly, almost gracefully, like a worm coming out of an apple. It clung to the upper corner of the passage, holding onto a rafter beam with its left hand. Its webbed feet splayed out on the wall and seemed to hold it there like suction cups.

  "That's it," Vargussel said, keeping his voice light, unthreatening. "Come down, and introduce yourself like a gentleman."

  The thing slid off the wall, making a horrid, wet, sucking sound when its feet came loose. It splashed into a puddle of reeking muck without flinching from either the cold or the smell. Vargussel moved his staff in front of him a few inches and the light fell over the creature.

  Its eyes closed against the light and its skin wrinkled around its small, deep-set black orbs but it didn't back away. It might have stood only four feet tall, if it stood erect, but it didn't. The slight creature crouched, not cowering, in front of Vargussel. Naked, its skin looked like burnished steel gone splotchy with rust. The flesh of its long legs and arms was smooth but elsewhere it was wrinkled and sagging, even where it hung from deeply-cut ribs. Its head was narrow, with a high forehead and pronounced jaws. As it stared at Vargussel, it's lipless mouth slid open to reveal two rows of vicious, yellow fangs, each as long as one of Vargussel's fingers.

  "Well, then," Vargussel said, "there you are."

  "No fear me, human?" the creature said, it's voice high but still menacing.

  Vargussel smiled politely and said, "I do not fear a lone choker, but thank you for asking."

  The choker, as Vargussel had identified it, was a wretched vermin that would lie in wait for unsuspecting passersby, then squeeze the life out of them. It opened its eyes a bit wider and tipped its head.

  "Yes," Vargussel said, "I know what you are."

  "How know?" the choker asked. "Why here?"

  "I know a great many things," Vargussel replied. "As to why I'm here, that is none of your concern. Suffice it to say that I have laid claim to this dismal ruin for reasons of my own. It is you who is the trespasser."

  "No understand," the choker hissed. "Who you?"

  Vargussel was about to answer when the floor quivered under his feet. The choker twitched, startled, looking around, and Vargussel knew the creature had felt it too.

  "Pay that no mind," Vargussel said. "A storm is coming...thunder and all that."

  The choker tipped its head again and nodded.

  "Who you?" it asked again.

  "I am Vargussel, but you can call me Your Highness."

  "Highness?"

  "I intend to be duke," Vargussel replied. "By marriage, mind you, but duke just the same. Do you know what that is...a duke?"

  The little humanoid shook its head, and its long, tentacle-like arms twitched.

  "Well," Vargussel explained, "it is a title that identifies a man of great importance—a man it might do you well to serve."

  "Serve you?" the choker surmised, its eyes narrowing again.

  "Serve me," Vargussel said.

  The choker's right arm shot out toward Vargussel's face like the snatching tongue of a tree frog. Grotesque, wormlike fingers splayed open, reaching for Vargussel's throat to grasp it in a palm lined with jagged spikes. It meant to strangle him, not serve him.

  Vargussel didn't flinch, didn't move, and the hand stopped short, no more than an inch from his neck. The man lifted an eyebrow and looked into the darkness behind the choker, where something enormous loomed.

  "Wrong answer," Vargussel said, and the choker was snatched backward.

  The creature whimpered, then coughed out a sound that might have been a bark. Vargussel stepped forward and held his staff out and up. Light poured over a massive form of steel and wood and glinted off eyes of thumb-sized rubies. It revealed on the thing's chest a duplicate of Vargussel's amulet, and likewise illuminated the shocked, terrified face of the little choker.

  The shield guardian—Vargussel's shield guardian—had a hold on the choker. The steel fingers of its left hand wrapped around the creature's slim torso. The choker's arms whipped back in a feeble attempt to ensnare the guardian, but the huge construct, sitting on its knees in the confines of the passage, paid it no mind.

  Vargussel shrugged and stepped past, moving around the two creatures as best he could. He came close enough that the choker saw him. Its tentacle arms snapped back into place, then made to reach out again. The shield guardian drove the choker into the wall hard enough to dislodge a ceiling beam.

  Vargussel stepped away from the falling dust and blood. The choker squealed, and the shield guardian drew back its right arm, pausing to let Vargussel pass. When its master was out of the way, it curled its metal fingers into a fist the size of a man's head and smashed it into the choker's skull. The creature's neck snapped and one of its black eyes careened into the air only to splash into a puddle of decades-old cow dung.

  "So that was the whole reason you were summoned to the palace?" Naull asked over the shiny silver teacup.

  Regdar sighed, shrugged, and didn't bother to answer. Naull shook her head, then sipped her tea, and Regdar looked away.

  Absently, Regdar's hands fiddled with the collapsing bow he'd purchased early that morning. It was expensive, but when he saw it he knew he needed to have it. How much easier would it be to carry a bow that folded into a slim leather satchel than the long composite bow that had gotten in his way so many times while slung over his shoulder and dragging on the ground?

  They sat at a small table on the huge, high terrace of the Thrush and the Jay—the inn that the duke himself had recommended to them—sipping tea from wildly expensive silver cups and taking in the cool, sunset air. Regdar had never stayed in a place so opulent before. Almost everything about the inn made him feel silly, like a fish out of water.

  Naull, who grew up in a lonely wizard's tower on the eastern frontier, was oddly at ease. The beauty and elegance of the inn seemed to transform her, bringing out a grace that Regdar had always sensed in her but hadn't often been able to see. She was a gifted spellcaster with a quick mind and an easy wit. Surrounded by silver, silk, and servants, she became a lady.

  Naull set down her teacup and met Regdar's eyes. He smiled when he realized he'd been caught staring at her when he'd meant to look away.

  "She must be very beautiful," Naull said, a smile curling her lips.

  Regdar shrugged and this time did look away, out to the east where the pale orange glow of the sunset held the city in its gentle embrace. From where they sat, high atop the columned inn, the Duke's Quarter stretched out beneath them with the eastern portion of the Merchant's Quarter behind it and the bustling Trade Quarter beyond.

  "More beautiful than a poor country wizard, anyway," Naull mused.

  Regdar ignored the comment and lifted his teacup to his lips. His huge hand engulfed the delicate, silver vessel in a most uncouth fashion, but the fighter didn't care. He let his eyes wander the city, which was a great oval surrounded by mighty walls. Those walls were well maintained, even washed regularly on the duke's orders so that their polished, gray-white stone glowed in the warm light. The River Delnir cut through the heart of the city, flowing from the north on its way to the endless expanse of the Southern Sea some dozen miles away.

  The Thrush and the Jay occupied a large and expensive tract of real estate right on the western strand and the terrace overlooked the fast-flowing river. Orange light glittered on the water where the inn's shadow didn't fall. Directly across was the Duke's Quarter, an island in the middle of the river. The duke's palace towered over them, stretching over the entire northern half of the island. Surrounded by brilliant white walls of its own, capped with a cluste
r of soaring towers, the palace was easily half a mile on a side.

  A coach that appeared to be cut from solid gold, pulled by a team of white horses and flanked by a dozen of the duke's elite guard, rumbled over the bridge that linked the island with the Merchant Quarter. The coach and its outriders disappeared from sight below the rim of the terrace to pass along the south wall of the inn.

  "She's smart, too, I suppose," Naull sighed.

  Regdar, engrossed with the view of New Koratia, barely heard her. A flash of light caught his eye and he squinted at the Floating Crystal. The renowned college of wizards was an enormous, floating tower of glass. Though it was almost a mile away, it still appeared huge, hovering over the wizard's reserve on the eastern side of the river. Behind it, the labyrinthine streets of the Trade Quarter formed a backdrop of chaotic shapes. Beyond that he could see the twin towers of the east gate.

  "She's had tutors," Naull continued, "to teach her everything, perhaps even to school her in the most exotic and secret lore of love and pleasure."

  Regdar's attention returned to her abruptly, and her eyes flared.

  "That caught your attention?" she asked, arching an eyebrow at him.

  He took a hasty sip of tea and flinched in surprise when he found his cup empty. He set the cup down on the lace tablecloth and shifted in his too-small, wrought iron chair.