by Ed Greenwood
Tantaerra, still looking at Voyvik's corpse, fought against a sudden surge of nausea, then shrugged and started fishing unbroken vials out of the goo. The seat of Voyvik's breeches served to wipe them more or less dry, and she started stowing them. They all looked the same, so there was no knowing what each one did, but any magic was better than none at all.
She managed to stow eleven in places where they might not break if she took a hard fall, then started handing them to The Masked, who managed to put away ten, on various places on his person.
That left more than a dozen.
They exchanged looks. "Right here is as good a place to leave them as any," Tantaerra told her partner.
He nodded. "Remember how to get back here, then."
They turned and looked into the gleaming yellow eyes of countless dweomercats.
"Oh, yes," The Masked said slowly. "Our escort."
Tantaerra eyed the swirling radiance playing over eerie blue pelts. "Can we eat them?"
The Masked chuckled. "Gods, but you're a great partner."
Tantaerra looked up at him. "Thank you," she said quietly. "I-thank you."
The remaining arm of Valorn the Healer lifted, perhaps in salute.
She gave the feebly moving bones a good hard kick.
∗ ∗ ∗
As the masked man and the small halfling walked the overgrown streets of Hurlandrun, dweomercats stalked them-yet this time did not attack, even when The Masked stopped to cut a sapling. As they went on he trimmed off its branches to fashion a crude pole. None of the cats ever ventured quite near enough to bite or claw, or to be reached by the drawn daggers of the pair. Rather, the sleek blue panthers surrounded the two intruders in a ring, in the end almost herding them up to the doors of the tall, hulking building with the cracked dome. Like the mausoleum, it was windowless.
"One needn't be a sage to know this is the Shattered Tomb," The Masked muttered.
"How old is it?" Tantaerra asked, eyes on the great rift in the dome and the leaning half of the building.
"About fifty years," he replied, "not ancient."
"So what did that?"
"Spell battle between Mahalagris and Karm, perhaps. Or mice."
Tantaerra sniggered. "They have big mice, hereabouts. All right, Masked One, let's be about this."
They were standing in a wilderness of weeds and grass sprouting between great square stones, underfoot. A wilderness that had grown a crop of more human skulls than Tantaerra had ever seen before. Raised stone platforms jutted up like gigantic teeth here and there, either plinths for vanished statues or the sort of ancient communal tombs she'd heard were sometimes called "bone boxes." Dweomercats slunk watchfully among the ruins on all sides.
Facing them across this desolation of weathered stone, centered in the wall of the building, was a tall, arched double entrance door of carved stone. Two carved, snarling lion's heads adorned the doors where handles should be, their fangs carved in arcs that touched each other, to form jutting rings of stone. A stout tree trunk had been thrust through these to keep the doors together-a bar that certainly hadn't been there for more than a year, let alone fifty.
Tantaerra looked at The Masked. He looked back at her for a moment, then led the way. They turned their backs on those doors and walked all around the building, seeking other ways into and out of it. They found none that they could recognize. Not a window, not a seam among the stones that suggested a doorway-and no damage of passing years that was more than bird droppings or stained stone.
Along the way, The Masked had picked up a fist-sized fragment of old stone. He used it now to poke the tree trunk out of the stone rings.
The wood fell and bounced on the flagstones underfoot with the ringing crash of falling timber.
"So much for stealth," Tantaerra muttered.
The Masked shrugged. "Wizards know when visitors intrude." He gave her a sidelong look. "And if they happen to be asleep, flying halflings that glow pink and trail flames are apt to awaken them."
Tantaerra's reply was as a gesture as rude as it was wordless.
With his pole, The Masked thrust at the lion's fangs on the right-hand door. The great door swung open-outward-easily and in eerie silence. Clearly counterweighted and well maintained, with nothing unusual to be seen in its frame, and the hinges on the inside free of rust and freshly oiled.
"See? Expecting us," The Masked commented.
"As it happens, that does not fill me with joy," Tantaerra murmured.
The Masked smiled tightly and swung the other door open.
Beyond lay a rather bare hall with a high, vaulted ceiling, stretching off to unseen endings left and right. Flagstone floor and unadorned stone walls, with another pair of arched doors centered in the far wall.
And three stone blocks serving as tables, arranged in a line just inside the doorway they were looking through.
On the table to their left lay a single silver coin that was as large as a grand circular serving-platter. On the center table stood a lone ceramic potion vial, stoppered and sealed just like the ones they were carrying. The right-hand table displayed a glowing sword. No scabbard or belt or anything else, just the gleaming blade.
Tantaerra's lip curled.
"Are we thought to be greedy children, or merely fools?"
The Masked made no reply, but looked up warily for falling blades or anything else in or just within the doorway, or on the ceiling beyond.
There was a vast stone dragon up there with a long, sinuous tail, curled around the bosses of the vaulting, but it looked to be a carving, and certainly wasn't moving. It and all the rest of the ceiling gave off a gentle white radiance that lit the room below dimly.
"Keep an eye on that," he muttered to Tantaerra, pointing at the dragon, and strode through the door, turning sharply right and hastening along the wall for six or seven paces. Then he stopped to look and listen.
Silence deepened. Nothing happened, nothing moved. The dweomercats had stopped outside the doors and were standing in a silent, watchful line, shoulder to shoulder, barring any retreat.
"Try not to get into any mischief while we're gone," Tantaerra told them, and darted through the doorway after The Masked, following his route along the wall.
The dragon on the ceiling hadn't moved in the slightest, and continued to not do so.
The Masked waited for her to join him, then proceeded along the wall with caution, tapping and probing each new flagstone with his pole. Every one proved to be solid, and to react not at all to either the pole or The Masked's cautious booted strides. Around the walls he proceeded, to stop short of the inner doors.
Neither he nor Tantaerra made any move toward the three tables, now some seventy feet or so away across an empty, dusty floor. Crude, obvious traps.
So were the keepers of the tomb of Mahalagris just seeking to kill anyone intruding into it, or had they other purposes in mind? Collecting magic from adventuring wizards, perhaps?
"I dislike the look of these doors," The Masked told Tantaerra, waving at the closed inner doors-and then at some dark stains on the dusty floor about halfway to the tables. She peered at those marks, then up at the doors. They were even taller than the outermost doors, some sixty feet or more, and were apparently fashioned of single slabs of stone. They loomed up impressively over anyone trying to read the writing graven across them above each door handle:
Mahalagris the Mighty
sleeps at last.
Tantaerra read those words, then looked back at the stains on the floor again.
"No," she agreed, "I don't like the look of them, either."
The handles were massive knobs of stone, shaped as if someone had found a matching pair of gigantic dewcap mushrooms and had them petrified.
The Masked looked at the nearest one for a moment, then down at where its door met the floor.
Aha!
He peered back along the wall in which it was set. "See if you can find even the slightest trace of a concealed door, anywhere al
ong there."
Tantaerra nodded and set to work on that-and once she was safely down the far end of the wall, The Masked slid his pole behind the flange of that nearest doorhandle and gave a gentle tug.
Nothing happened. It was as if these doors were solid stone, mere ornamental carving that could never open.
He pulled a little harder, planting his feet and hauling.
The door didn't budge.
With a sigh, The Masked went into a crouch and put his back into a huge heave.
And as he'd expected, the doors moved suddenly-toppling forward together, with an ominous roar.
He flung himself headlong toward Tantaerra the moment they started to shift, hurling himself and then rolling, clawing the air to keep himself moving just as fast as he could. So he was well clear when the heavy doors crashed down against the floor. They were solid blocks of stone, pierced through their backs to take massive chains-chains that even now were beginning to haul them back upright again with a slow clack, clack, clack, covering the narrow hole behind them, through which The Masked caught a glimpse of another large room.
No hinges at all, unless one counted the little trench in the floor that the bottoms of both doors could move about in. Both doors fixed together …
"Not an unfamiliar trap," Tantaerra murmured, beside him, as the doors rose back to their former position again, settling into the wall. "By far the largest of its type I've seen, though."
"Large budget," The Masked replied. "Much coin-and nastiness, too."
Tantaerra glanced at the bloodstains again, then told him, "I found the door. Opens readily, and no traps I could find-but there's hard fighting ahead of us if we go on. When yon smashflat doors fell, they pulled open another door, farther in, letting guardians into the chamber we'll have to traverse next. It's the same room as the smashflat doors let into, and it's lit just like this one."
"What sort of guardians?"
"Metal men. Three of them. Striding along, all whirring gears and puffs and jets of steam. Green steam. Huge bulbous forearms."
"Clockwork," The Masked muttered. "I've heard rumors, wild tales. They explode when destroyed-blasting metal shards and those gears in all directions."
"So do we turn back?"
The Masked shook his head. "Of course not. We find a way to lure them to where those doors can fall on them. Or some other nasty trap will take them down for us."
"Surely they'll know to avoid it."
"'Surely' nothing. Maybe they will-and maybe they can't think at all. Maybe their orders are stronger than whatever sentience or self-preservation was built into them."
Tantaerra frowned. "I don't like maybes."
The Masked shrugged. "I've yet to find anyone that does. Me included. Yet we do what we can with what the gods give us, yes?" He hummed for a moment, thoughtfully, then asked, "How quick are they?"
"Faster than I am. But then …"
"Many things are faster than halflings-who specialize instead in wit and charm. Not to mention, in your case, sharp tongues and good looks."
"Flattery, hired brute, will get you nowhere with me. And even less far with these men of gears."
"Did they see you when you opened the door?"
"Of course. My opening it caused another of these stone blocks displaying treasures for the gullible to rise up out of the floor, just inside the room. The treasure is an open chest of old coins-silver, gold, and some metals I've not seen before. Bluish, and greenish, and a few that are redder than copper, too."
"You have been busy. Hmm. Did the gear-men charge at you, or seem interested?"
"They seemed interested, and were moving my way. I didn't enter the room, and they might well be waiting for that."
"So we have a pole, a rock, our daggers, and our wits," The Masked muttered.
"Some cord, too, remember. With a grapple."
"Ah. I wonder, if we used the pole to whack that coin flying-to, say, almost out of the Tomb-do you think it would lure the dweomercats in?"
Tantaerra gave The Masked a dubious look. "The cats must be able to feel magic coming from this place, yet stopped-in a neat line, mind you! — well back, instead of streaming inside when we opened the doors. Nor do I particularly want your ankles and all of me, from heels to head, gnawed and scratched down to bare bones by more dweomercats than I can count, let alone fight. Unthink that idea and provide some better ones, hey?"
The masked man nodded slowly. "You have the right of it. Hmm. What else could you see of the room that has these clockwork men steaming around it?"
"It's rectangular, long axis across our path, fifty feet or more across and at least three times that long. There's a narrow opening in the center of its far wall that looks to be a long, narrow passage. High ceiling, room and passage both."
"Windows, perching gargoyles, anything on the ceiling?"
"No. Bare and bland-from where I was standing, mind, not in the room yet to trigger any interesting nastinesses into appearing."
"Did you leave the door wedged open? And is it large enough for these metal men to walk through?"
"No, and I've no idea. If they can't bend and stoop, no, but they looked to me very much as if they can."
The Masked paced slowly away, then turned and came back to Tantaerra. "So we'll have to do this the hard way. Triggering the big doors to fall again and seeing if we can't wedge them open somehow."
"To …what? Give us a way to climb into the room of death on the other side of this wall? Or give those metal men freedom to depart it to come in here, with us?"
The Masked shrugged. "Either will do."
Tantaerra stared up at him. "May I remind you that it's just the two of us, and neither of us are wizards with spells that can blast down castles, or even plate-armored knights with some decent swords? You do like to live dangerously, don't you?"
"It's what's got me through life so far. To end up here in this ruined city, inside the front step of what looks like a formidable death trap, with you."
"You, masked man, are crazy."
The Masked shrugged again. "That has been said before. And is almost certainly correct. So what are we waiting for?"
Chapter Fifteen
Death, Death Everywhere
We're looking," The Masked announced, as they walked out into the dweomercats-and watched the blue horde melt away from them almost magically, leaving them a clear space to walk in-"for a stone block or spar at least as long as my arm, that doesn't look cracked or as if it will easily crumble. It will be heavy."
Tantaerra gave him a withering look. "Halflings are small, not stupid. Of course it'll be heavy! And if it doesn't wedge those doors open?"
"We try something else. This isn't a race. Oh, and if we find something hard that looks like it will fit through one of the links of the chains that hauled the doors back up, we bring it, too."
"Jam the chain-spool if we can't wedge the doors," Tantaerra interpreted. "I just hope we aren't going to have to go trotting out here on new scavenger prowls with every new room we reach. Tell me-though I suspect those metal men will stay inside the Tomb, what if they come trundling out here after us?"
The Masked chuckled. "Remember what happened to Valorn the Healer? And his coffin?"
"We collapse a roof on them. Why doesn't that sound as tidy and easy to me as it obviously does to you?"
"You're halfling crazy, not Tarram Armistrade crazy."
"Ah. Well, as long as there's a reasonable explanation. Wh-there!"
Tantaerra pointed at what she'd just caught sight of, behind some tall and tangled weeds. A broken cylinder of stone, probably a section of fallen stone pillar.
The Masked eyed it. "Either we roll it, or I drag it with your cord. There's no way I'm hefting and carrying that back to the Tomb."
"Heavy," Tantaerra agreed.
So it proved to be. The Masked was sweating by the time they were standing in front of the Shattered Tomb again.
He was sweating still more by the time he'd muscled the
cylinder of stone through the doors and around the corner, along the wall.
"From here," he announced, "we roll it. Right across the floor."
He undid the improvised harness and returned the cord to Tantaerra, then sat down against the wall, drew up his legs, and straightened them in a hard kick.
The cylinder rumbled across the floor toward the inner doors.
Halfway there, a flagstone sank under its passage. There came a grating sound from two places in the ceiling, and rather rusty axe-blades swung down on chains to crisscross at about the height of a man's torso in the center of the room.
"Such bright imagination," Tantaerra commented, watching them. "It'll be a big rolling ball chasing us, next."
The blades went back and forth tirelessly as The Masked struggled to stand the stone cylinder upright against the wall, beside the doors.
"I'm going to …have to move pretty sharp-like…to not get crushed by the doors yet get back to shove this in time," he panted.
"You won't have to," Tantaerra told him. "If I stand atop this, rest assured I can make it fall in the right direction when I jump off."
The Masked looked at her a little disbelievingly, then nodded, grinned, and replied, "Let's be doing this, then!"
So do it they did.
The doors toppled as before, Tantaerra got the cylinder to fall almost before The Masked was clear of the falling doors, and the air was filled with the grinding, whirring, and ticking of countless gears as three lumbering metal figures came to the doorway to stand in a line, trailing puffs of green steam.
"So they stay in their room," The Masked panted. "Right."
Tantaerra eyed the three metal guardians. They looked huge, this close. "So, Masked Brilliance, what next?"
The doors started to rise again, chains rattling.
The Masked said a dirty word, then snatched up his pole and trotted along the wall. "Where's this door of yours?"
"Right here, and opens thus. Now, what are you-"
"Don't know yet," The Masked informed her merrily. "Now, those things can outrun you, so it'll have to be me. Wait here."
And he burst through the door, ducked around the stone block and treasure chest, and sprinted across the room patrolled by the clockwork men, heading straight for the narrow passage opening out of the far wall.
