... In the Event of My Untimely Demiseby Robin D. Laws ... Chapter Four: ReckoningNeed I remind you? Naphrax asked his prisoner. ... Tears further wet Gaval's bloodied cheeks. Of what? ... Of what we know. ... You're wrong. ... Jordyar jabbed the poker in Gaval's face. You've replaced Aruhal in his comely wife's bed, haven't you? ... Gaval held his chin up. I love Seriza, and Seriza loves me. That doesn't mean I've heard of this treasure. ... She spoke nothing of it? Naphrax snorted. ......
In the Event of My Untimely Demise
by Robin D. Laws
Chapter Four: Reckoning
"Need I remind you?" Naphrax asked his prisoner.
Tears further wet Gaval's bloodied cheeks. "Of what?"
"Of what we know."
"You're wrong."
Jordyar jabbed the poker in Gaval's face. "You've replaced Aruhal in his comely wife's bed, haven't you?"
Gaval held his chin up. "I love Seriza, and Seriza loves me. That doesn't mean I've heard of this treasure."
"She spoke nothing of it?" Naphrax snorted.
Outrage stirred Gaval from his agonized stupor. "She and Aruhal had nothing. She'll be better off with my takings, humble as they are!"
"Liar," Naphrax spat.
Holding the poker out of sight behind him, the dwarf sidled up to Gaval, grimacing out a rotten-toothed smile. "What Aruhal did to us is not your fault, boy. But by standing in our way, feeding us ridiculous untruths, it becomes your fault. Don't you see that?"
"How many times do I have to tell you?"
"If you won't spill," Naphrax said, "we'll take the woman, and do the same to her."
Jordyar pressed the glowing poker to the prisoner's leg. Gaval screamed, the smoke of burning fabric giving way to the steam of blackening flesh.
At the window, Ontor looked to Luma, his expression asking: are we going to let this happen?
Luma waved him to silence, then reached into the citysong for the vein of venom that pulsed below the city's skin. Magnimar's settlers brought with them their Chelish tradition of settling affairs with arsenic, belladonna, and kingsleep. Luma took in this dark harmony and projected it outward, to the blood-spotted tunic worn by the howling Gaval. In this town, to hear that a man was an apothecary was to think not only of healing, but its opposite.
Luma's magic-inflamed senses confirmed it: tiny speckles of poison dotted his tunic, were ground as grime into his fingerprints. She couldn't tell what variety, with so little of it still left. But she would bet it was the kind that made an already sick man die from seeming natural causes–of pleurisy, say.
"We need him," said Luma. With a turn of her head she indicated an opposite window, not far from the second imprisoned man, the cleric Rieslan. "It will help if you can get him free–that will make it three against two."
Ontor nodded and was gone. Moments later she saw him appear at the other window. Jordyar once more laid the poker on Gaval, this time applying it to his chest. Naphrax watched with stoic attention. Fully occupied by Gaval's shrieking and squirming, neither man noticed Ontor's acrobatic contortions as he fit himself, legs first, through the tiny window. He dropped to the floor with a muffled thud that at last turned their heads, but only in time to see him draw his knife and slash open the ropes binding Rieslan. Then he bounded up to grab the holy symbol from the rafter, tossed it to the priest, and threw his knife at Naphrax. The spellcaster only barely managed to duck out of the way, yet the blade succeeded in interrupting his gesticulations and spoiling whatever spell he meant to cast.
Luma, meanwhile, shifted her awareness to another vault of the city's memory. Her mind traveled to the spires and rooftops, from the heights of the Arvensoar barracks tower to the great stone snake encircling the Hippodrome. From the mystic vibrations of these structures she pulled out the countless times they'd been struck by lightning. Converting them from past thought to present memory, she brought into being a vertical bolt of blue energy. It materialized above the dwarf, striking the crown of his bald head. He sizzled and convulsed, the poker flying out of his hands.
Naphrax started to cast a spell at her, but Rieslan, holy symbol clutched between gnarled fingers, came up behind him, chanting. He shoved his hand past the sorcerer's vest and onto his bare skin. A swirl of angry energy shunted from the old priest's fingers into Naphrax's breastbone. The sorcerer staggered back, clutching his chest, his arm going stiff.
A wolfish look came over the priest. "That sluggish heart of yours can't take another of those. Can it, Naphrax?"
"I should have killed you in Kaer Maga," said the sorcerer, sweating.
"I should have killed you in that awful tavern, the moment we met," said Rieslan.
Jordyar, his clothes still steaming slightly, staggered and reached for his axe, positioning himself for a lunge against Ontor. Luma called down another lightning bolt, striking him as before, and he dropped to one knee, panting.
Luma crawled through her window, a few last tendrils of summoned fog purling away from her. "Are we done here, gentlemen?"
Naphrax still hadn't caught his breath. "He hasn't told us."
Ontor cut Gaval's bonds.
The freed prisoner rose, quaking; Luma indicated his soiled trousers. "You terrified him. You think he wouldn't have sold out the widow in a heartbeat, if he thought it would spare him?"
Gaval struggled to form words. "I take exception to—"
Luma cut him off. "This is not a good time for you to talk."
He hung his head.
"My brother and I," Luma said, "are leaving, with Gaval. He and I have a separate matter to discuss. What the three of you do is of no concern to us. You have nothing to gain from further hostilities, and would not prevail. Are we agreed, or shall I punctuate that with a lightning bolt?"
"Agreed," grunted Naphrax. The others said nothing, so, each holding one of the quaking man's arms, Luma and Ontor withdrew–through the front door, this time.
"Where do you live, apothecary?" Luma asked.
"Above my uncle's shop, in Vista."
To the southeast lay the Seerspring Gardens, where they could hire a hansom, and get him to his home in the Summit.
"So," said Luma, "let me guess. When you began to console her, Seriza was not yet a widow."
"I would never..." Gaval tried to pull away, but she held him tight, as did her brother.
"If we ask her neighbors how often they saw you around before Aruhal died, will they tell the same story?"
Gaval slumped into her. "Very well. But I beg your discretion. Calumnize me all you like, but spare the lady's reputation."
As they crossed an intersection, Luma saw a lurker one street down, paralleling their progress. She stopped and waved Rieslan over. The river-priest hesitated, then complied, his gait sheepish. "Never was much for sneaking," he said, joining the others.
"That was Aruhal's job," said Luma, moving on. "Your old comrades have patched up their grievances, it would seem."
Rieslan fell into step, at her elbow. "It won't last. Are you sure you haven't guessed where the treasure is?"
She shook her head; lying was easier when confined to gesture alone. "When did the four of you have your falling out, precisely?"
"We learned to hate one another long before the Demonsweald. But it was after we captured the reliquary that Naphrax and Jordyar decided it would be better if Aruhal were cut out of the deal."
Luma raised her faint auburn eyebrow. "And you had nothing to do with that?"
Rieslan made a sour face. "Let's say, I absented myself from discussions."
"A sin of omission, then."
The old priest laughed. "My god hungers for the last breaths of the drowning. His moral demands are flexible."
"And how did they inform Aruhal of the new arrangement?"
"With axe and spell." The priest's chuckle suggested that it hardly needed saying.
"One more question," said Luma. "Who researched this treasure? Aruhal?"
"Another correct surmise, my dear."
They parted with him at the gardens, and rode with Gaval in the cab. As soon as he was seated, the tortured man passed out.
"You were good back there," said Ontor.
Nothing phases Ontor—not even death.
If only the others had seen it, thought Luma. Maybe Ontor would tell them. She considered asking him to, but knew it would spoil the effect.
Arriving at Derexhi House, Luma went straight to the library, which smelled of leather, wine, and her father's olibanum cologne. Muttering curses at Randred's haphazard reshelving habits, she hunted until she found the folio labeled "Acts and Legends of the Holy." Giving silent thanks for its alphabetical arrangement, she found the entry for the holy warrior Lovag, whose reliquary had so muddled her assignment. To Ontor she read aloud:
"And Lovag was betrayed by his companions, and slain. Lo, his last loyal servants did burn his body and entomb his bones, placing it in a golden reliquary. Even reduced to ashes, Lovag's passion for the justice of his great god Aroden burned bright. When the traitor priests beheld the shining vessel, he rose from his celestial rest to smite them."
"What does that mean?" her brother asked.
Luma closed the book with a thump. "It means I think we just found the treasure they've all been looking for."
∗∗∗
In the marbled mausoleum, Luma and Ontor searched the shelves for Aruhal's name. Near the iron-gated entrance, a callow attendant held himself in a posture of bland discretion. He held in his hand the document authorizing the disinterment.
"Grave-robbing's just not the same when you have the deceased's permission," Ontor whispered.
Luma found the brass nameplate bearing the client's name. With the key supplied by the attendant, she opened the wood-paneled door to Aruhal's niche. Inside rested a large ceramic urn. Luma removed it and set it on the marble table in the middle of the crypt's vestibule, where flowers and offerings of incense were placed.
"That's not made of gold," Ontor said. "I thought the book said Lovag's reliquary was made of gold?"
Luma pulled out her sickle and bashed its hilt against the urn. The porcelain crumbled into shards, revealing the golden, gem-encrusted reliquary hidden within.
Ontor addressed the attendant. "You must have seen this when you poured the ashes in. Aruhal trusted you not to switch it?"
The crypt-keeper placed a hand over his heart. "Terrible oaths to the death-goddess bar us from such chicanery."
Again Luma opened her mind to the strain of citysong that ran thick with toxin. She wasn't sure if the spell would work on a man's ashes, but it did–they lit up with the same malicious speckles she'd perceived on Gaval's tunic.
She smiled. "Got you," she whispered.
∗∗∗
Seriza and Gaval perched together, agitated, spines straight, on the edge of the divan in the widow's sitting room. Though the swelling had gone down on his face, Gaval still showed the signs of his beating and torture the day before. Luma almost felt pity for them. If they'd been smart, they wouldn't be here, but rather on a boat to anywhere else right this moment.
"So the dwarf was right?" Seriza said, trembling. "Aruhal did have a treasure after all?"
Luma gestured to the furniture crate she'd pressed into service as temporary transport for the urn. "As I said in my message, he left an inheritance. But we were to perform an investigation before giving it to you."
They deserved this, she reminded herself. When Aruhal discarded the saint's remains to make room for his own, he no doubt assumed it would be his erstwhile companions who'd face this fate. To be murdered for the oldest reason of all–a spouse clearing the way for a new lover–felt too cheap, too ordinary, for the complex effort Aruhal had expended for his prearranged revenge.
Luma hauled loose the crate's lid. She picked up the urn and placed it in front of Aruhal's killers, setting it down on a low table.
Seriza lit up with avarice; she squeezed Gaval's hand, squealing her delight. Her excitement overcame his wariness, and he reached out to caress the urn's lid.
Bursts of green steam vented from holes in the urn. The widow and her lover reared back as the unearthly vapor coalesced into a blob of floating ectoplasm, and then into an eerie, translucent specter in the shape of an old man. It surging through the urn and table into Gaval, where bony fingers unfurled and locked around the startled man's throat.
Gaval's skin whitened and flaked; his hair turned from brown to gray to shocking white. His face a mask of terror, he pitched over onto the divan, drained of life. The groaning spirit then turned on Seriza.
"No!" the widow shrieked, scrabbling backward on the couch. "Not you!"
Then all words were cut off by those glowing, ephemeral fingers. For a moment, the sitting room was filled with the sound of flailing limbs—and then two corpses lay on the divan.
The spirit twisted, spiraling toward Luma, who prepared herself to call down lightning against it. As it hung in the air before her, its contorted face calmed. Then the entire apparition dissipated and was gone.
Luma waited until it was clear that the manifestation had concluded, then called out to the man hidden in the hope chest behind the divan. "I thought you weren't much for sneaking."
"You detected my presence, did you?" Rieslan lifted the lid and poked his head out. He stared at the urn, still sitting on the low table.
Luma put her hands on her hips. "Do you want it? It should go back to the mausoleum, but my family wasn't hired to protect it forever. Our contract is complete."
Rieslan scratched at his beard. "Those are Aruhal's ashes in there, and not the saint's?"
"That's right."
"That quite diminishes its value. Still..." He reached out for the urn—then pulled up short, gazing at the shriveled corpses splayed on the divan. "You know, I think I've abruptly lost my desire for this object." He unfolded the rest of long frame out of the chest and stepped around the couch. He doffed his skullcap and bowed to Luma.
"To your health, my lady."
Then he let himself out.
When he'd been gone for a slow count of ten, the door to the kitchen swung open. Ontor, hand on the hilt of a knife, sauntered in and leaned over the two ash-skinned corpses, inspecting their terrified expressions. "So the old priest left without making a play for it, huh?"
"He's apparently learned a new appreciation for caution."
Ontor whistled. "I guess you're never too old to learn, but still—what do you want to bet that in a few days we hear reports of an old sorcerer and a bald dwarf found dead in Aruhal's crypt?"
"I won't put any money against that," Luma said, but her mind wasn't on the banter. Inside, she was already thinking of the praise she would receive when they returned home—from her father, who would give it willingly, and from the rest of her siblings, who would finally be able to see what an indispensable part of the team she was. Even they would have to admit that she'd executed the mission to perfection.
Surely they would.
Coming Next Week: A "Where are they now?" story regarding the infamous Gray Maidens of Korvosa in the wake of events from Curse of the Crimson Throne, by F. Wesley Schneider. A perfect preview for those GMs and players running Pathfinder Adventure Path #62: Curse of the Lady's Light!
If you like this story, consider picking up the further adventures of Luma and her family in Robin D. Laws' Blood of the City!
Robin D. Laws is the author of the Pathfinder Tales novels Blood of the City and The Worldwound Gambit, as well as the Pathfinder's Journals for the Serpent's Skull Adventure Path and the Skull & Shackles Adventure Path. In addition, he's written six other novels; various short stories, web serials, and comic books; and a long list of roleplaying game products. His novels include Pierced Heart, The Rough and the Smooth, and the Angelika Fleischer series for the Black Library. Robin created the classic RPG Feng Shui and such recent titles as Mutant City Blues, Skulduggery, and the newly redesigned HeroQuest 2. Those interested in learning more about Robin are advised to check out his blog.
... Happy Labor Day! Monday, September 3, 2012 It's Labor Day here in the States, which means that all the goblin-wranglers and libromancers at Paizo are taking a well-deserved day off. To hold you over until the next blog post, here's the unadulterated cover illustration for Robin Laws' new Pathfinder Tales novel, Blood of the City--a story revolving around Luma, an urban druid, and her family of high-end mercenaries in Magnimar. ... One of my favorite things about novel covers is the way...
Happy Labor Day!
Monday, September 3, 2012
It's Labor Day here in the States, which means that all the goblin-wranglers and libromancers at Paizo are taking a well-deserved day off. To hold you over until the next blog post, here's the unadulterated cover illustration for Robin Laws' new Pathfinder Tales novel, Blood of the City--a story revolving around Luma, an urban druid, and her family of high-end mercenaries in Magnimar.
One of my favorite things about novel covers is the way they wrap all the way around the book, and it's always with a tinge of regret that I write the back cover copy, knowing it'll cover up such wonderful details. Just take a look at those fountains here in the wealthy Alabaster District, and it's easy to see why Magnimar is often called the City of Monuments....
... In the Event of My Untimely Demiseby Robin D. Laws ... Chapter Three: Old ComradesThe trim, white-haired man responded with seasoned stillness to Luma's knee and sickle. His foreign-accented voice purred soothingly, with a hint of disarming irony. Who am I and why I am I following you? I might equally ask whose blade caresses my jugular. ... Depending on your answer, Luma replied, I might tell you. She glanced at the alleyway's mouth. The street it jutted onto was not such a quiet one....
In the Event of My Untimely Demise
by Robin D. Laws
Chapter Three: Old Comrades
The trim, white-haired man responded with seasoned stillness to Luma's knee and sickle. His foreign-accented voice purred soothingly, with a hint of disarming irony. "Who am I and why I am I following you? I might equally ask whose blade caresses my jugular."
"Depending on your answer," Luma replied, "I might tell you." She glanced at the alleyway's mouth. The street it jutted onto was not such a quiet one. This was in Dockway, where most folk would note a waylaying in an alley and keep going, unblinking. But trouble only took one busybody.
Prominent veins ran like engorged streams across the man's papery, spotted hands. Around his wrist coiled a silver chain bearing a charm—a rat perched on a raft. From her reading, Luma vaguely recalled this as the symbol of an obscure river god from the faraway River Kingdoms. The man was likely a priest, able to call down magic from his deity, much as Luma did from the city itself.
"What would you say, young lady, if I told you I wasn't following you?"
Luma couldn't help finding him likeable—and resenting people who projected charm so readily. "I'm not that young, and a lady only by the skin of my nails."
"When you get to my age, you'll consider everyone young. And I wasn't following you, I was following the dwarf."
"Jordyar."
"You've met my truculent former colleague, then. Honestly, my dear, let me up. We may discover common goals."
"Introduce yourself first."
"I am Rieslan, once known as Rieslan the Drowner, now sadly diminished."
Luma relaxed the pressure of her knee on his spine. "And let me guess. You went with Jordyar and Aruhal into the Demonsweald, in search of a valuable reliquary."
Rieslan sighed. "He told you about that, did he? Dear fellow's grown talkative in his dotage."
"I'm going to let you up, Rieslan. Try anything and you'll—"
"No need to complete the threat," said the river cleric. "I've had a long career, and heard them all."
Luma got up, her sickle still ready. "You shadowed him in case he was pursued?"
Rieslan rose, brushing gravel from his leggings. "That's what I thought you were doing, my dear. Jordyar and I have had a falling out, shall we say, since the old days. I know why I'm chasing him. Why are you?"
"I'll ask the questions," Luma said, watching him rub his creaking finger joints. "I suppose you've heard that, too."
The old priest twinkled at her. "Very well."
"I care about the reliquary only insofar as it might have led to my client's murder."
"Your client?" Rieslan interjected. "You work for Aruhal's estate?"
Luma nodded.
Rieslan steadied himself against the wall. "Someone might have hastened his demise for it. But it wouldn't be me. Or Jordyar, for that matter."
"Why not?"
"Haven't you found it notable that we waited till we got word of Aruhal's death to come for it? He had a curse placed on himself. Whosoever slays Aruhal will himself be slain." The priest studied Luma's expression. "You look like someone who's just had an epiphany."
Luma flushed. She hated it when others saw through her. "How did you hear of this curse?"
"He sent a messenger, to warn us, back when we still stalked him for our share of the loot."
"He told you he had a curse placed on himself, and you accepted it as truth?"
Rieslan held his hands together, as if in prayer. "I asked my god, Hanspur, and was told it was true."
"But, as in the way of gods, received no clearer details."
Rieslan winced.
"What is it?" Luma asked.
He waved her question away. "I get headaches. It is nothing."
"So you and your comrades—"
"Former comrades," Rieslan said.
"You all waited until you learned of his death, then came for the treasure. How did you hear of it?"
"Naphrax posted a spy, who sent word that Aruhal was sick. Jordyar had Naphrax's dogsbody in his pay, and so learned that Naphrax had broken from his seclusion and was bound for Magnimar. And of course I have been keeping an eye on Jordyar."
"This Naphrax, he's your party's other survivor? Let me guess—a wizard?"
A vein pulsed on Rieslan's forehead. "Sorcerer, but let's not make fine distinctions."
A spell-slinger complicated the possibilities. He might have found a way to break the curse, and killed Aruhal off despite it. But then, why wait until he was sick?
Luma caught herself playing with her hair again and stopped. "Let see where that leaves us. I don't care about the treasure. You have no particular reason to protect Aruhal's killer—if indeed he was killed at all. Does that about sum it up?"
Rieslan crinkled aged dimples at her. "Much gold is at stake. You'll excuse me if I greet your disinterest in it with a certain skepticism."
Luma, affronted, tried to cover it up with a smile. "Ask around about the Derexhi family. Our reputation for honesty is worth more than your treasure."
Rieslan is charming—which doesn't make him innocent.
"A thousand pardons, my dear."
Don't call me dear, Luma wanted to say. "At any rate, we have each spoiled the other's attempt to follow Jordyar. I suggest we part, with no hard feelings."
The priest bowed deep, and went on his way.
Luma signaled to her brother Ontor, who for several minutes had been standing across the way. He'd appeared in her peripheral vision, sauntering down the street, looking for her. Seeing her occupied, he'd dropped into a pose, engaging in conversation with loitering dockworkers.
It never surprised Luma to see one of her siblings appear out of the blue like this. Her sister Iskola could see from afar, and whisper into distant ears. Wherever she was in Magnimar, one of the others could always find her.
Ontor required no further instructions. Adopting a languid lope, he pushed off after Rieslan.
Iskola's spells didn't permit them to communicate with one another, so Luma would find a rendezvous and wait. She ambled for the closest of the Derexhi haunts, a spot named after its proprietor, Chanda, who specialized in bream broth and walnut bread. Luma claimed the darkest corner, where Chanda, unbidden, brought her soup, half a loaf of the bread, and a bowl of sea snails in red garlic sauce. Luma paid Chanda the usual premium for a lengthy stay and settled in.
An hour later, Ontor slid into the seat across from her, a sea snail bowl already in one hand and a half-filled ale flagon in the other. "You'll be happy to hear I was also deemed too much a black sheep for the Vitellus job."
Family politics could wait, Luma decided. There was a mystery to solve. Even if the answer was that there was no mystery at all. "Where did he go?"
Ontor threw his head back, dropped a sea snail in, and swallowed, pleased with his show of downmarket manners. The stevedores filling the restaurant ate the same way. "He's staking out a hovel down in Rag's End. Waiting for someone to show. Since I have no idea of the situation, I figured I'd come and collect you, and we'd check the place out together."
Luma dunked a final bread crust into the remnants of her broth.
Ontor wiped ale-foam from his lips. "That was a hint, by the way. A request for context."
Luma briefed him on the case to date: the prearranged, posthumous assignment; the widow and her pleurisy story; Jordyar the dwarf and then Rieslan the river-cleric and their tangled, treacherous history with Aruhal.
Ontor gobbled the rest of his food. "So you reckon this Rieslan knows where Jordyar is staying, and, having lost him in Dockway, has gone there to wait for him?"
Luma hadn't so reckoned, but would have, given one more moment's thought. The two half-siblings set out for Rag's End.
∗∗∗
As ramshackle as its name suggested, Rag's End stretched out before them as an expanse of hovels and shanties. Luma and Ontor strode with dispatch past a crowd gathered for an impromptu match between a mastiff and a crab spider half again its size. Sensing a form of authority approaching, the bettors hunched and turned their faces away. A jagged laneway sloped gently into a depression. As Ontor led Luma down its length, a gathering fog grew from scattered wisps to an obscuring mass.
At the end of the cul-de-sac a two-story structure held itself with lordly remove from the surrounding shacks. To its left, a cloud of flies buzzed around a heap of rotting trash. Piles of rubble, wood and masonry mostly, formed an unintended fence around the building's right side.
"That's where your old duffer was waiting," Ontor said.
Luma peered into the twilight. There was no immediate sign of Rieslan now. Lamplight issued from an open window facing the debris wall.
"He's either gone in," Ontor whispered, "or gone entirely. But someone must be in there." He wasn't so much stating the obvious as asking: do we go in and see?
In reply, Luma nodded. Hunching, the two of them covered the distance to the wall, and then to the side of the house.
Luma let in the citysong, hearing the whispers and shushes of the billowing fog. Cozened by her spell, it pooled around them, its protective mantle blending naturally with the mist flowing through the neighborhood. They could see into the house, while anyone looking out would see only swirling vapor.
Inside Luma saw two familiar individuals, and two unfamiliar.
Jordyar sat atop a wooden table, picking at his rotting teeth with his fingers. Rieslan slumped in a chair, shoved in a corner. Ropes bound his waist, arms, and ankles. Wet blood reddened his goatee. His divine charm, with its rat and raft motif, swung from a rafter, a good twenty feet away. Without it, Luma knew, he wouldn't be able to shape his appeals to the realms beyond, and would receive no magic from his god.
A second, much younger man was also tied to a chair, this one positioned in the center of the room. Muscular and tanned, he would have been handsome, prior to the beating he'd taken. His face swelled and purpled; scorched holes in his tunic revealed burned skin beneath. Still conscious, the man seemed to be willing himself to pass out, and failing at it.
Over him stood a creased, leathery man dressed in a suede robe dotted with turquoise and agate beads. He wore a vest with no shirt beneath it, showing off the puffy muscles of a fit but elderly man. Greasy black hair hung straight from his scalp down to his shoulders. A long mustache drooped from his upper lip to his protruding clavicles.
He grunted at Jordyar, who approached him carrying a poker, which he held out at arm's length with the aid of his thick hide glove. The mustached man spoke arcane syllables, evoking a cone-shape blast of flame, which flew from his fingertips to the poker. The poker's iron tip glowed red.
"Please," the prisoner sobbed. "I'm begging you."
Jordyar hefted the red-hot poker. "You're doing to this yourself, Gaval."
Gaval shuddered. "I can't tell you anything about it. Seriza never mentioned such a thing! And Aruhal—I barely spoke a hundred words to him my entire life. I'm just an apothecary."
Jordyar's partner—who had to be the sorcerer, Naphrax—turned to the terrified young man in the chair. "Tell us," he said.
The dwarf advanced with the poker.
"Tell us," repeated Naphrax.
Coming Next Week: Revelations and old grudges in the final chapter of Robin Laws' "In the Event of My Untimely Demise."
If you like this story, consider picking up the further adventures of Luma and her family in Robin D. Laws' Blood of the City!
Robin D. Laws is the author of the Pathfinder Tales novels Blood of the City and The Worldwound Gambit, as well as the Pathfinder's Journals for the Serpent's Skull Adventure Path and the Skull & Shackles Adventure Path. In addition, he's written six other novels; various short stories, web serials, and comic books; and a long list of roleplaying game products. His novels include Pierced Heart, The Rough and the Smooth, and the Angelika Fleischer series for the Black Library. Robin created the classic RPG Feng Shui and such recent titles as Mutant City Blues, Skulduggery, and the newly redesigned HeroQuest 2. Those interested in learning more about Robin are advised to check out his blog.
... In the Event of My Untimely Demiseby Robin D. Laws ... Chapter Two: TreasureWhere is what? Luma asked, withdrawing her hand from her trickbag. If it came to a fight, she could reach out to Magnimar's spires and towers, gather their memories of the lightning that struck them with every thunderstorm, and from this summon a bolt of energy to strike the dwarf down. Unlike some of her other magics, it required no props, just concentration, a gesture, and a few words of entreaty to the city....
In the Event of My Untimely Demise
by Robin D. Laws
Chapter Two: Treasure
"Where is what?" Luma asked, withdrawing her hand from her trickbag. If it came to a fight, she could reach out to Magnimar's spires and towers, gather their memories of the lightning that struck them with every thunderstorm, and from this summon a bolt of energy to strike the dwarf down. Unlike some of her other magics, it required no props, just concentration, a gesture, and a few words of entreaty to the city. But she was here to learn, not to do battle.
"Don't play stupid with me." The dwarf showed a mouth full of jagged, rotting teeth. "You know very well what." He shook his axe for emphasis.
"I would like nothing more than to understand what you're talking about." Luma edged in front of the cabinet behind which Seriza cowered. "Start at the beginning, maybe?"
The dwarf peered past her at the widow. "You aren't Aruhal's wife?"
"I am Luma of House Derexhi, hired to perform a service on his behalf."
The intruder elevated an eyebrow. He pointed his weapon at the cabinet. "She's the widow?"
"Lay out your grievance, dwarf." Luma spoke evenly, her confidence steady, as it always was when her siblings weren't watching. She'd sooner face this frothing dwarf, outweighing her by two to one and bristling with menace, than a single exasperated glance from one of her sisters. "Perhaps I can sort it out."
"You address Jordyar, warrior of the First Stone, son of Jordgar, true inheritor of the axe of Skrellim." He hefted it again, this time as an expression of pride. "To speak ill of the dead is not my wont. But that woman's husband was a liar, a cheat, a betrayer, and a thief from his own friends. Did you know Aruhal?"
Luma shook her head.
"Then you missed the chance to acquaint yourself with a kill-stealer and a credit-grabber. A blasphemer against the gods, a drunkard on watch, a coward in a scrap, and a tent-farter of the worst order."
"So you were comrades."
Jordyar stalked over to the divan, as if wondering whether sitting would show weakness. "For three years, two decades ago, we strove together as treasure-seekers. We plumbed the depths of the Riddle Canals, scoured the Haunted Hills, and stormed the Citadel of Xerkas Xaan. But the day after our greatest triumph, he deserted us—taking the treasure with him."
"And this treasure is what you think he had when he died?"
Warming to the subject, the dwarf puffed out his chest and paced the room, gesticulating with the axe. "Oh, what that cost us! We fought giants, demons, mind-eaters. Upon entering the Demonsweald's innermost crypt, the best of us all, Corin the Bright, was beheaded by a trap. Which Aruhal thereupon disarmed." Jordyar stomped into the hallway, then returned, holding aloft the strange doorknocker that had tweaked Luma's curiosity on her way in. "This! This is the flying ring that sliced through Corin's neck. I can't believe that he would take that and display it on his door, as if mocking the memory—" A frustrated groan caught in Jordyar's throat. He backhanded the ring away; it lodged, quivering, in the wooden lintel of the sitting room's doorway. A fresh flush of crimson rose through his face. "So yes, Aruhal owes me. This treasure, we had a deal to sell it for a wagonload of gold. Enough to forever conclude my grubbing and sweating, sleeping in cold crypts with the doors spiked shut, fighting for rest as ghouls and bloodsuckers scratch at the sill. To retire for good and all, on the one great score every looter dreams of. That is the life Jordyar deserved. The life that Aruhal plucked from my grasp!"
He lunged at the cabinet where Seriza quietly wept.
Luma stepped up, her sickle drawn. After a moment of tension, the dwarf relented, sticking his axe in his belt. He stretched out open hands, as if ready to grab Luma by the front of her tunic. His eyes glistened. "You must let me question her. He must have told her. Our customer never bought it from him."
"Or so they told you," Luma ventured.
Jordyar wiped his nose with the back of his liver-spotted hand. "Or so they did. But they say that even now they will buy it, if I can produce it. It changes nothing—he either sold it and has the gold, or kept it. And it is mine."
"And if he did keep it, what is it, exactly? A magical relic?"
"Scarcely. A historical curio—a reliquary containing the ashes and bones of a saint: the holy warrior Lovag. A globe of gold, studded with gems. It would be worth much to a collector, but more to the church."
"Which church?"
Jordyar's glory days are behind him.
Jordyar's snort sent spittle flying. "So you can sell it to them when you find it? You take me for a fool, girl." He twitched, as if realizing he'd given away too much already by naming the saint.
"I'm not here for this treasure," Luma said. "I'm here to find out who killed Aruhal."
"No one killed Aruhal," Seriza sobbed, white fingers clutched around the cabinet. "I told you that already. It was pleurisy—a pain when he breathed. It just got worse, until..." She trailed off into another burst of tears.
Jordyar angled for a better view of her. "You look a pretty creature. You don't propose to tell me a wretch like Aruhal caught a wench like you without a great bag of gold swinging over his shoulder?"
The widow's face froze into a wordless plea directed at Luma. Its meaning was clear: please get him out of here.
Luma again stepped between the widow and the dwarf. "It sounds like you had all the reason in the world to kill Aruhal."
"You speak truth there." He spat onto the bare floor, just missing the boar's hide rug.
Luma crossed her arms. "But you want me to believe you didn't."
"I'm done answering your questions. That one will tell me where it is—gold or relic, I'm taking it now."
"I don't know anything about any relic," Seriza sniffled. "And as for gold—look around you. I can't see how I'll afford to fix that door."
"Aruhal never had money?" the dwarf asked.
"A little. At first. He worked as a locksmith. It wasn't money I loved him for."
Jordyar bellowed out a laugh. "Then he was holding out on you, too."
Luma crowded him. "So why didn't you?"
"Why didn't I what?"
"Kill him."
Trepidation flashed across the dwarf's face. "I'm not the swine he was." He flexed his shoulders, regaining his composure.
Luma twined a lock of her hair between her fingers—a habit her family's scolding had never quite cured her of. "I don't think that's it."
"Matters not to me what you think." Jordyar knocked on the nearest wall. "I should tear this place apart."
"You're not going to do that," Luma said.
Jordyar stiffened. "Is that so?"
Luma let her fingers brush against her trickbag.
The dwarf took it in. "A magicker, are we? What kind?"
"You don't want to find out," said Luma. Depending on how tough the dwarf was, it was either a well-calibrated act of intimidation, or a reckless bluff.
Jordyar wove past her to address Seriza. "This is all a shock to you. Your husband dying and now this." He gestured to the broken door as if it were a catastrophe unconnected to himself. "I approached this too strong, didn't I? I believe you when you say you had no inkling of the relic. Or the gold your rodent of a spouse sold it for. So I'm telling you this." He jabbed his leather-gloved finger at her. "You cogitate long and hard on where Aruhal might have stashed a pile of gold, or a treasure about yay big." With open hands about a foot apart, he mimed a roughly globular object. "Because there's no chance in hell that he doesn't have it. Maybe he tried to tell you, when he was sick. Search your mind for clues of that nature. Because in forty-eight hours, I'll be back, and I'll take what Aruhal stole from me. Or you'll have more to mourn than your husband. Understand?"
Seriza said nothing—a rabbit transfixed by a snake.
He poked Luma's shoulder. "And if you want to test your spells against my axe then, you're welcome to try." He stamped for the door, reclaiming the sharpened ring from the lintel on the way out.
Luma rushed to the window. Jordyar had turned westward, toward a main thoroughfare, the Avenue of Honors. He proceeded with the attentive uncertainty of a visitor. Consulting her mental map of the city, Luma plotted a route of alleyways. If she got going right away, she might well beat him to the high street, and trail him unseen from there. She plunged into Seriza's kitchen and out the back exit. The widow called after her, either asking why she was following the dwarf, or asking who would pay for the door. Luma didn't attempt a reply.
On the second question, it was not up to the Derexhi family to pay Jordyar's reparations. As to the first, the old adventurer knew more than he was saying. Were there anything here to investigate, the path to it could well lead through him. Missing treasure certainly sounded like a motive for murder.
There was more to hear from the widow, too, but that would have to wait. Luma knew where to find her.
Reaching the Avenue, she spotted Jordyar's head bobbing between a pair of laggardly porters carrying wine crates for a doddering master. Luma wished she had her brother Ontor with her—shadowing was both safer and easier with two. Still, her street-honed instincts kept the dwarf in sight, and he showed little propensity for looking back. The fat-purses and liveried servants who populated the street at this hour gave wide berth to her battle-ready, fuming subject. Picking up speed as he stomped along, he passed hawkers, criers, and store guards, merchants, traders, and grandees. He traversed the length of the avenue, turning at the Pediment Building and continuing down the long stone slope that served as the bypass for the Seacleft, the great cliff dividing the city into high and low, the Summit and the Shore.
From its base, the dwarf wended through the clamorous Bazaar of Sails, bypassing stalls and skirting around tents. A trio of urchins, in the sparkling glad-rags of the Varisian minority, chased a fist-sized jewel bug into his path. Jordyar roared at them, sending them scattering. Luma halted; his swivel to shout curses at the children placed her in his line of sight. But he seemed not to notice her, and continued on. Heedless of Luma's pursuit, he plunged into Dockway's narrow streets, lined by salt-crusted depots and sturdy taverns.
Abruptly abandoning her chase, Luma darted into an alleyway between an alehouse and a whorehouse and drew her sickle. As soon as she was past its threshold, she pressed her back against the crumbling brick of the tavern wall. A rake-thin man clad all in black, from boots to leggings to tunic to skullcap, hustled in after her. She thrust out the sickle, wrapping its curving edge around his ankle. As she pulled it up, she twisted the blade, so that it would trip him without cutting into his leg. He fell into the wall, bashing his snowy-bearded chin against the brick, and tumbled to the ground. Luma leapt onto his back, pinning him with her knee, and pressed her blade around his throat, positioned for a slaughtering cut.
"Who are you?" she asked, "and why are you following me?"
Coming Next Week: Wheels within wheels in Chapter Three of Robin Laws' "In the Event of My Untimely Demise."
If you like this story, consider picking up the further adventures of Luma and her family in Robin D. Laws' Blood of the City!
Robin D. Laws is the author of the Pathfinder Tales novels Blood of the City and The Worldwound Gambit, as well as the Pathfinder's Journals for the Serpent's Skull Adventure Path and the Skull & Shackles Adventure Path. In addition, he's written six other novels; various short stories, web serials, and comic books; and a long list of roleplaying game products. His novels include Pierced Heart, The Rough and the Smooth, and the Angelika Fleischer series for the Black Library. Robin created the classic RPG Feng Shui and such recent titles as Mutant City Blues, Skulduggery, and the newly redesigned HeroQuest 2. Those interested in learning more about Robin are advised to check out his blog.
... In the Event of My Untimely Demiseby Robin D. Laws ... Chapter One: The Dead ClientNo, said the wizard Iskola, pointing a polished fingernail toward her half-sister, Luma. Not you. ... Luma sank further into her characteristic shoulder-slump. Though older than Iskola, she looked younger. She owed her callow appearance, at least in part, to the elven blood which her five siblings, children of her father and stepmother, did not share. Together, her lithe frame, wide eyes, and boyish figure...
In the Event of My Untimely Demise
by Robin D. Laws
Chapter One: The Dead Client
"No," said the wizard Iskola, pointing a polished fingernail toward her half-sister, Luma. "Not you."
Luma sank further into her characteristic shoulder-slump. Though older than Iskola, she looked younger. She owed her callow appearance, at least in part, to the elven blood which her five siblings, children of her father and stepmother, did not share. Together, her lithe frame, wide eyes, and boyish figure conspired to hang about her neck an unshakable air of adolescence. Her siblings, who were also her teammates, had learned—or perhaps been taught, by her unkempt red hair, her shrinking posture, her downcast gaze—to treat her not as a woman, but as the runt of the litter. It was her own damn fault, but that realization had so far not helped her one whit in altering the way they regarded her.
Iskola, her black-clad body a thin and twisted reed, towered over Luma. Her headpiece, a complex of lacquered, intertwining loops constructed from her own raven hair, magnified the imperious effect. A stiff laced collar and dark fingerless gloves, also of lace, completed the outre look the city of Magnimar relished in its highborn magicians.
Luma forced herself into a rigid posture. "We're to guard a gem from thieves, and you want to leave behind the mind-reader?"
Iskola sighed. "No one wants a mind-reader, and you'd be best to stop describing yourself as such. Go back to calling yourself a streetseer if you must. Or citywalker. Or cobblestone druid. Those are all strange enough."
"I wasn't proposing to introduce myself, period."
Iskola's hand flitted out, as if tempted to seize one of Luma's stray hanks of hair and tuck it back into place. She aborted the gesture, locking hands behind her narrow waist. "When Lord Vetillus hires Magnimar's most expensive city warriors to stand sentry at his soiree, we are as much a signal of his prestige as is the Bandu Emerald. Were any of his guests to so much as infer that one of us was busy trawling their innermost mental wanderings, we would be failing our duty."
"And giving cause for a refund." Arrus, the squad's swordsman and Iskola's twin, squared his broad shoulders and jutted his blocky chin.
"Honestly, Luma." Iskola bustled in her whickering skirt toward the squad room door. "When people learn you perform the magic of the streets, they assume you were born on them. Until you learn to present yourself as a scion of a founding house, simple wisdom forces us to exclude you from certain missions."
Luma scanned the others for flickers of sympathy. Eibadon, the family ecclesiast, settled his jowly features into an imperturbable dullness. Ulisa, robed master of the unarmed fighting arts, held fast to her serenity, even as a yellow moth flitted around her shaved head. Only Ontor—top-knotted, leather-clad—let a glimmer of feeling hint across his long and hawkish face.
"Mouse," he said, "Think of it as being excused from an evening of apocalyptic boredom."
"Read one of your books," Arrus said, and departed, carrying the others in his wake.
Luma followed him into the manor hallway, hung with portraits of each Lord Derexhi, from its legendary founding warrior Aitin to her father, Randred. Next to the painting of a heroic, virile Randred stood the real man, his brow creased, his beard now gray and wild.
"Let them go," he said, voice feather-soft. Father and daughter watched the rest of the squad troop down the stuccoed hallway. "Ontor may have been right. About the boredom of that assignment."
"Listening in, I see."
Dimples broke across the old warrior's face. "The successful man of arms pays close heed to his forces. Doubly so when they're his children." He patted her shoulder. "What say we show them up, and give you a juicy task?"
Luma rarely gets the respect she deserves.
Randred guided her to the library, where he poured her a goblet of Riverspire red and topped up his own to match.
Luma sipped. The wine was subtle and deep, with a caky finish. "Juicy, you say?"
"Well..." Randred eased into his favorite chair. "No doubt I exaggerate. But you'll be working for a dead man. That's a novelty, at least."
Luma perched on the arm of his chair. "Who's the dead man, and what am I to do for him?"
Randred reached over to a side table for a contract inscribed on a sheet of vellum. "The client's name is—or was—Aruhal. A retired explorer of some kind. One with enemies, apparently. Several years ago, he placed a standing order for us to perform an investigation for him, to be triggered in, quote, "the event of my untimely demise," unquote. We are to ascertain if his death was natural or not. Further instructions apply if we find he was in fact murdered."
"Which are?"
"An agent of House Derexhi is to secure the funerary urn containing his ashes and place it in front of his killer."
∗∗∗
As Luma stepped out onto the Derexhi House portico, the citysong came to her, its manifold voices rushing to fill her mystic awareness. Its harmonies manifested not only sounds, transmitted through magical connection to her mind's ear, but accompanying sensations as well. The dominant notes were those of her own neighborhood and present location, the Marble District. Among them she sensed the whispering tread of servants' slippers, steam rising from laundry kettles, the barbed laughter of wits and gossips, and the old-fashioned spiced perfumes of its wealthy matrons.
Underneath these rang distant melodies from other quarters of her beloved city. Clanking counting-house coins in Naos percussed against the scratching quills of Capital District scribes. Waves lapped against Dockway piers, dueting with the tapping chisels of the Golemworks. Soldiers drilled in Arvensoar Plaza, their grunts and footfalls joining the wafting strains of cornets and tambourines from raucous Lowcleft. The hunger of Rag's End wretches crashed against the excess of Alabaster's gourmands. Priests doubted, thieves shared their takes with beggars, and whores fell in love. Below all of these thrummed the ancient bass drone of the Irespan, the great and ruined stone bridge said to house a legion of monsters within its hollow depths.
Together the contradictions somehow made a whole—the city Luma loved, and which loved her in turn. Periodically, it proved its affections with a gift, a new trick it would teach her. A polyglot town of foreign traders, it showed her the key to understanding any language. It had taught her to borrow the jumpings of its spiders, to mantle herself in morning fog, and to always find her way.
Luma needed no such magic to reach her destination. She strode the Boulevard of Messengers, passing gilded carriages and brocaded bravos atop high-strung white steeds. On the Way of Arches, an honor guard of bleached statues loomed, dwarfing her and the city functionaries in their ink-stained tunics. Buyers and sellers choked the Avenue of Honors, and then she was turning down smaller streets, weaving through alleys with no markers to proclaim their names, led only by her flawless recollection of the city. At last the map in her head told her that she'd reached Barrel Way—Aruhal's address as of five years ago, when he'd paid for the services she would now render.
It was a common enough scene. Here huddled residences of Magnimar's striving class—the merchants, burghers, and brokers who fattened the city treasury and sought approval from old families like the Vetilluses, the Scarnettis, and indeed, the Derexhi. Built tall and thin, the buildings adjoined, as if uniting for support. Small plots of land in front of each served as battlegrounds for a competition of decoration. Tiny gardens overflowing with tangled, exotic flowers encroached on sparer arrangements of rocks and statues.
Luma was about to stop a hustling fat-purse in an ermine-trimmed cloak to ask where Aruhal lived when she spotted windows draped with black mourning bunting. The house that went with them hunkered like a poor relation next to its well-kept neighbors. Paint peeled from the trim. Oilskin stood in for several windowpanes. Instead of a garden or collection of stone figures, its front yard boasted only broken paving stones.
Unlatching and swinging open the rust-kissed iron gate, Luma made her way to the door. Its knocker twigged her curiosity. A metallic ring about a foot and a half in diameter, it was formed with an unusual precision. Beveled outer edges had been dulled with a file, scratching the ring's smooth surface, and Luma guessed that they had once been razor-sharp. Clearly, knocking on doors had not been the object's original purpose. Luma used it anyway.
After some shuffling from inside the house, the door opened a crack. Luma saw a fraction of a pale face peering out at her. The eye, like hers, was enlarged compared to a full-blooded human, but still showed a white sclera, as a full elf's would not.
Its owner spoke in a husky rasp. "What is it?"
Luma adopted her most authoritative posture, aped from her brother Arrus. "I am Luma, of House Derexhi. May I come in?"
The Derexhi and their retainers were not official lawkeepers, but because Magnimar employed few of these, citizens sometimes treated them as such. If Luma were lucky, this woman would take the cue, overlooking the ‘quasi' in their quasi-official status.
She didn't. "What for?"
"Your husband hired us for a job."
"My husband's dead."
"That's why I'm here. If you let me in, I'll explain."
"I don't know." The woman, Luma saw, wasn't so much looking at her as past her, into the street.
"You appear anxious."
"My husband had enemies."
"That's what I'm here for. To protect you." This was not so much a lie, Luma consoled herself, as something that might turn out to be true, depending.
The door swung open; Luma slipped inside.
The house smelled of yeast and cinnamon. Flour spotted an apron slung around the woman's waist. Sweat glistened on her brow, sticking loose strains of white-blond hair to her prominent forehead. Her lips joined together in a worried bow, exposing a slight overbite. Though scarcely a judge of feminine allure, Luma reckoned that these were the sorts of imperfections that would attract rather than repel male assessment. Her beauty had a wildness about it, but it was beauty all the same.
The widow gestured Luma toward a sitting room. Luma rejected a scuffed chair in favor of a divan, tufts of batting poking through tears in its upholstery. "I know your husband's name, but not yours," she started.
"Seriza." The woman stood wavering in the middle of the room, feet planted on a worn boarskin rug. "You said Aruhal hired you?"
Luma nodded. "Five years ago. You said he had enemies. Apparently he worried that one of them would do him in. So he paid us to investigate his death."
She parted the black bunting to peer out a window. "Then you're not here to protect me at all."
"Why is that?"
"He wasn't done in. It was pleurisy."
Luma craned to try to see what Seriza was looking at, but the angle was wrong. "If he died of natural causes, why are you so fearful?"
Seriza ducked down behind a cabinet.
A loud report came from the hallway, followed by the splintering of wood and then a louder thump. Luma leapt from the divan, fingers plunging into the soft leather pouch she wore at her hip—her trickbag, containing the objects she needed to work her street magic.
A florid-cheeked dwarf clad in heavy battle gear stood in the ruins of the shattered door. He stepped into the sitting room, brandishing a jagged war-axe.
"Where is it?" he demanded.
Coming Next Week: Old friends and enemies in Magnimar in Chapter Two of Robin Laws' "In the Event of My Untimely Demise."
If you like this story, consider picking up the further adventures of Luma and her family in Robin D. Laws' Blood of the City!
Robin D. Laws is the author of the Pathfinder Tales novels Blood of the City and The Worldwound Gambit, as well as the Pathfinder's Journals for the Serpent's Skull Adventure Path and the Skull & Shackles Adventure Path. In addition, he's written six other novels; various short stories, web serials, and comic books; and a long list of roleplaying game products. His novels include Pierced Heart, The Rough and the Smooth, and the Angelika Fleischer series for the Black Library. Robin created the classic RPG Feng Shui and such recent titles as Mutant City Blues, Skulduggery, and the newly redesigned HeroQuest 2. Those interested in learning more about Robin are advised to check out his blog.
Blood of the City Sample Chapter Wednesday, August 8, 2012 ... by Robin D. Laws ... In Blood of the City, Luma Derexhi is a cobblestone druid, a spellcaster who fights alongside her siblings as Magnimar's most infamous and wealthy mercenary company. Yet despite being the oldest child, Luma gets little respect—perhaps due to her half-elven heritage. When a job gone wrong lands Luma in the fearsome prison called the Hells, everything she knows to be true begins to fall apart, leaving her to...
Blood of the City Sample Chapter
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
by Robin D. Laws
In Blood of the City, Luma Derexhi is a cobblestone druid, a spellcaster who fights alongside her siblings as Magnimar's most infamous and wealthy mercenary company. Yet despite being the oldest child, Luma gets little respect—perhaps due to her half-elven heritage. When a job gone wrong lands Luma in the fearsome prison called the Hells, everything she knows to be true begins to fall apart, leaving her to unravel a bloody web of lies and politics if she wants to survive...
Chapter Ten: Triodea
Arrus had been sitting on the grand staircase's lower steps, and jumped to his feet as Bhax and another of the servants hauled open the foyer doors. For a moment, Luma thought he might come down to wrap his arms around her. When he reached her, stopped short, and put his hands on hips, she saw the absurdity of her assumption.
"What are you smiling at?" he asked.
"I'm not," Luma answered, realizing that she was, a little. Trying not to smirk made it worse.
Iskola tried to steer her around him. "Let it rest, Arrus ..."
"Rest? We can hash this out here, or in the squad room, but we have to— Luma, what did you tell him?"
"Nothing."
"Did you genuinely say nothing, or did you banter with him and trip yourself up?"
"There was nothing to say. He thinks one of you ordered me to murder Khonderian, and that I did so, on behest of a client."
"So you didn't do as I told you."
"When we got there," said Iskola, "we found Grobaras on the verge of apoplexy. From that, I judge Luma's performance more than adequate. Now let her wash up."
Arrus paced. "So did you succeed in drawing him out?"
"Someone saw me following Khonderian," said Luma. "That's all he has."
"And how did you let yourself be seen?"
"Can't say," Luma shrugged. "It's tough enough doing a one-person tail and not having your target see you. I don't recall being made, but then I wouldn't, would I?"
"You're awfully impertinent, given the cost of this failure."
"Maybe compared to the threat of a golem sawing my limbs off, being second-guessed by you isn't so terrifying."
Arrus stopped pacing. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"The mouse has a point," Iskola said.
Arrus wheeled on her. "You're her defender now?"
"Arrus, calm yourself."
"I don't need to be defended," Luma blurted. "I didn't fail. An operation threw a wheel. Happens all the time. To each and every one of us. It's how you recover that counts. And I recovered fine."
"Don't shriek at us, Luma," Arrus said.
"No, I'm going to say this and you're going to listen. I resign as family scapegoat. No longer will I accept this."
"Accept what?"
"You know very well. I comported myself perfectly in there. Same as you would have. I even have a lead."
"A lead?" Arrus asked.
"This thing, it has something to do with golems."
"What do you mean?"
"I don't know yet, I sense it ...the lord-mayor has a golem bodyguard, there's a golem uprising in Bridgeward ...it hasn't come together yet in my head, but it's all part of the same complex melody ..."
Arrus threw up his hands. "I'm sure that will hold up at the Justice Court. You hear the city sing to you ..."
Luma pointed at Iskola. "My magic is as real as hers. That's exactly what I mean. You're constantly denigrating me. All of you, but you more than everyone, Arrus. Because I let you. Well, this is my notice to the lot of you. Starting today, it stops."
Arrus turned to Iskola. "And I'm the one who has to calm himself?"
"Let's all of us pause for breath," Iskola responded. "This is what Grobaras wants. For us to turn on each other."
"Who hired us to track Khonderian?" Luma asked her.
Iskola passed her outer cloak to Bhax, who bore it away to the garderobe. "As soon as it's possible, I'll tell you. You have my word."
Luma pursued her out of the foyer and into the ballroom. The floor squeaked under her feet. "That's not good enough."
"It will have to be," Iskola answered.
Luma grabbed her and pulled her around. "I'm the one they're fixing to stick up on the gibbet!"
Iskola pulled her arm away. "I'll talk to the client. It will take some persuading."
"I don't care what you tell the client."
"Certain of our patrons find you an uneasy presence."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"You're spooky. You lurk. You think the city talks to you."
"It does."
"And nobody likes a girl who can steal their thoughts."
Luma stormed up the steps, headed for her father's room. This time, Yandine was nowhere in sight. Silently she turned the latch and peeked in. Her father sat propped against the head of his bed, a ledger in his lap. With a jittering finger he followed its entries. If he'd heard the argument through his chamber's thick walls, he betrayed no sign of it.
She slipped inside. "Father," she said.
Randred's features lit up. "You're back," he said. His expression clouded. "They mistreated you."
Shaking her head, Luma sat on the mattress' edge and wrapped her arms around him. He smelled of camphor. "Iskola showed up with political reinforcements before that could happen."
"Then that unpaid mission I upbraided Iskola for has more than justified itself," he said. "I owe her an apology."
"I am grateful for it," Luma said.
Before she could go on, Randred insisted on knowing all that had happened: in the coach, at the prison, before Grobaras. Luma's efforts to quickly summarize events fell before his frequent interjections. She gave him every detail.
"We've won the merest respite," he said, when he had wrung it all from her. "Grobaras believes he has you. He has always disliked us, as he does any force in the city outside of his control. Only the true killer, delivered to him on a platter, will move him from his assumption. No one will do this for us."
"Indeed," Luma said.
"But you must confine yourself here and let the others take point. Anything you do might be construed as cause to seize you again. And then all the Urtilia Scarnettis in Magnimar won't save you from the torturer's slab."
"Father, Grobaras doesn't just want me. It's all of us. He kept asking whether it was you who ordered Khonderian's murder, or Iskola. Whichever of us goes out will be exposed."
"But you most of all, Mouse."
"We need someone who can sneak, who can pry open loose lips. Ontor can't do it alone."
"Then I'll pull in dirt-sorters from other squads." He clutched his side.
"You're unwell," she said.
"It's nothing."
She considered telling him that she knew. And she would, soon. One battle at a time, she told herself. "I would never question your authority, Father."
He gave her a wan smile. "Which means you're about to."
Luma clutched his hand. It was cold. "I've come to a decision. If I'm belittled around here, it's my doing. I'm a Derexhi, and an adult. Older than them. As capable as any of them. The only way to earn their respect is by standing up to them. Starting now."
"Starting with what?"
"Iskola wants me off the streets, too. I'll be defying that order. If it means defying yours, too ..."
Randred dropped the ledger to the floor and held her. "Belay what I just said. I was talking nonsense. I've been suffering a touch of the rheum and it's fuddled my head. Of course you must act. Whatever the others say. This is Magnimar. No one here will give you respect if you fear to seize it."
Luma broke the embrace. "It is also Derexhi House. Where the same maxim applies."
Informing no one, Luma left early in the morning for the Triodea. She walked along the Avenue of Hours, where the warm winds of early spring came out to greet her. Gulls circled overhead; she felt their hunger and greed. Thinning clouds skidded through the sky, transforming it from gray to blue. In these signs—well, except for the gulls, gulls were a constant and didn't mean anything—she chose to find an omen. Her standing up for herself, and behaving like a woman instead of a girl, would be good for all. They would kick and complain; to adjust one's thinking is never pleasant or easy. When all the fuss was over, they would see the advantage in adding a full, equal partner to the squad. They would trust her better, and she, them. To fight without trust is to invite defeat.
As she trekked on, the sun rose higher. Traffic trickled on the avenue, then grew thicker. She passed ox-sellers, laborers, gilded carriages, bird-catchers, chimney sweeps, and a flag-draped cart carrying a troupe of traveling players. She ducked a wandering fortune-teller, warned a carter that a wheel was coming off, and stole a pickpocket's purse when he tried to take hers. Its contents she doled out to child beggars and blind men.
By the time the Avenue of Hours opened into the plaza housing the Triodea, the citysong had reached a peak, high and clear. Nowhere to Luma's senses was its sublimity purer than here. Mid-morning sun shone on the tripartite structure. It intensified on the long, white hangar of the Grand Stage and dulled on the gray surface of the adjoining concert hall. Bright-breasted birds gathered atop the reaching awning of the rooftop stage. The plaza, called the Starsilver, glittered beneath Luma's feet. In place of cobblestones, it was surfaced by tiles inlaid with pieces of reflective abalone shell. A well-scrubbed work crew took its unhurried time searching out broken tiles. When they found one in need of replacement, they gathered around in murmured colloquy. After prolonged contemplation, the crew leader nodded to an aide, who dipped a brush into a pot of soluble red paint, hunched down, and encircled the offending tile.
She strode over to them, greeting the crew captain by name: "Mordh!"
"Luma," he answered.
Luma passed around the last of the coins she'd taken from the pickpocket, which the tilemen pocketed without comment.
"Aren't you s'posed to be in the Hells?" Mordh asked.
"I like to think otherwise." She kept up with the crew as it resumed its hunt for faulty tiles. Luma spotted a cracked one before they did. They gathered around to peer at it. "You know a gnome named Noole? He frequents the performance halls. Fancies himself a poet."
"I never asked him his name," said Mordh, "but a fellow matching that description comes 'round now and again, to practice his quatrains on us."
"And cadge coins," added another of the tilemen, a tall man who wore his thinning hair close to the scalp.
"That too," said Mordh. "I prefer that to the verses."
"No," argued a gaunt third tileman, "the poems is good."
"Seen him lately?"
Mordh pointed across the plaza, to the doorway of one of the taverns installed in the Grand Stage's right flank. "Went in there an hour ago, thereabouts."
Luma left them with a wave of thanks. The gaunt tileman squatted to paint a red circle around the tile she'd pointed out. She wended her unobtrusive way through the plaza's sprawling foot traffic. At the tavern entrance, she held herself so that she seemed to be gazing up at the rooftop stage. In fact, she spotted Noole at a corner table, a flagon at his left elbow and a piece of vellum stretched out before him. He held his pen at an abstracted angle. She eased into the tavern.
The gnome spotted her and bolted. His table toppled, taking tankard, inkwell, pen, and poem with it. He dashed for the kitchen entrance. Luma followed. As she passed through the swinging doors, a jar hurtled at her head. She ducked; it hit the wall behind her, shattering. A cloud of flour puffed out from it. Now coated in white powder, Luma sprinted for Noole, who dove out a service door into the Grand Hall. The tavern's cook, swearing in the dwarven language, hurtled at her, waving his butcher's knife. She drew her sickle and smacked it out of his hand. The knife flew end over end before splashing into a pot of hot oil. Scalding droplets rained on the cook; Luma was already through the door.
Noole fled with surprising speed through the concert hall's plush lobby. He'd knocked a lantern from its sconce; panicked servants rushed to douse its flames before they spread. Luma sped past them. Her hand thrust into her pouch of spell objects, now replenished. Each of the vial tops had its own distinct texture, allowing her to quickly find the one with the cricket leg. She reached into the citysong for the sound of the chirping, jumping bugs, and pilfered a touch of their magic.
Luma jumped, and the city propelled her into the air. She grazed the dripping crystals of the great hall's chandeliers, leaving them rocking and tinkling. Breathing deep, she braced for the coming landing.
Her outstretched feet struck Noole in the back. She rolled, hitting the pedestal of a statue to a long-dead contralto. She made her way up, watching Noole as he rose and drew a rapier. Her own weapon lay on the rug a few feet away; she'd dropped it to avoid cutting herself as she landed. Feigning dismay, she let him come at her midsection. The thin sword jabbed skillfully at her. With equal aplomb, she evaded the thrust. Continuing the motion, she snatched up her sickle and dove at her opponent. He kept her at bay with a feint of his blade. They circled one another, Luma leaving ghostings of flour wherever she stepped.
"I can't guess what you want with me," the gnome said, "but I want nothing to do with you."
"Drop your weapon and I'll explain," Luma answered.
He held it out as if ready to let it go, then lunged. The blade caught Luma on the side of the neck. It hurt, but she could tell the wound was only superficial. She swiped at his legs with her sickle; he hopped back with flamboyant ease. Adopting a perfect fencing stance, he waited for her to come at him.
His moves so far revealed one fighting style disguised as another. Noole added flourishes to what was, at its core, a cautious waiting game of precisely timed blows. He was waiting for Luma to make a mistake he could capitalize on. In this, and in his general deftness and quick reactions, he favored an approach to combat that was also Luma's. One patient, calculating scrapper faced another.
This could go on all day.
"What was your business with Khonderian?" Luma asked.
"That name is naught but a distant wisp of fading recollection."
She faked a strike; he didn't fall for it. "Set aside your perfumed words, poet."
"It reflects ill on you, to say ‘poet' like it's an insult." He faked a strike; she didn't fall for it.
"I saw him pay you off in Bridgeward, on the street of taverns. What for?"
"Surely you've mistaken me for another gnome of equal handsomeness."
White light filled the lobby. Luma glanced back to see what had changed, at the same time anticipating and deflecting an expected blow. She caught the gnome's rapier in the crook of her sickle and twisted it from his hand.
Workmen had opened one of the large entry doors to toss out the still-smoking rug. Luma decided on a stratagem. She shouted with inarticulate, feigned bloodlust and came at the gnome with apparent recklessness. Noole sidestepped her; she pretended to trip and fall into the wall, her sickle lodging in its flocked surface.
If the gnome turned out to be more interested in finishing her than in escaping, this would prove a terrible error.
But Luma was right: he took the opportunity not to strike at her, but to scoop up his rapier and sprint for the open doors.
This gave her the time and distance she needed to call on another of the city's boons. She attuned herself to the crunch of pebbles and grains of sand underfoot. She called to bits of gravel strewn on rooftops and trapped in their eaves. Through the citysong she plucked stones from the soles of boots. All of these she gathered together in an enfolding, spiraling wind.
Noole is always the center of attention.
As Noole reached the threshold, a thick hail of stone and gravel did too. It struck him in the chest and face, sending him back on his heels. Stunned, he tottered and fell. Luma, who was already running, jumped on him, a foot on his emptied sword-hand and the curve of her sickle around his throat.
"I can kill you, or buy you a drink," she said. "Which will it be?"
He twitched his mustache at her. "It's not yet noon. So I'll stick to ale."
The daytime house manager, kitted in a uniform of rich green and velvet, hovered warily nearby. Luma handed him Noole's sword, daggers, and throwing knives. "You're going to hold on to these while the gentleman and I repair for private conversation," she told the manager, who gulped in frightened assent. She removed Noole's ensorceled rings, which substituted for armor, and handed those over, too.
To her surprise, she found no burglar's kit on his person. From his way of fighting, she'd pegged him as a footpad. Judging from his accoutrements, the gnome was instead a swordsman—plain, though hardly simple.
"We'll return for these shortly," she told the manager. "If all goes well." Later she'd return to the tavern where her chase had wreaked havoc and arrange for payment of damages. For the moment, she escorted Noole across the plaza to a rival establishment, the Sock and Buskin. Around a central table, actors half-heartedly recited lines, committing them to memory.
Noole winced. "Not The Inconstant Nymph again! What a chestnut!" He cupped his hand theatrically to the side of his mouth and shouted, "Stage something new for once!"
The eldest of the actors, who held himself with an impresario's authority, stood up. "Cleave to your sonnets, hack!"
Noole wandered toward their table. "You're not playing Donatio, surely. That part is thirty years too young for you."
The impresario threw Noole the tines. Luma took Noole by the arm and led him to a corner table.
Luma took the bench, leaving Noole the chair, where his back would be exposed to the room. The gnome settled in. "A hail of stones. Never seen that one before."
"Need I repeat the question?"
"You're not the one they say murdered old Khonderian, are you?"
Luma felt herself bridle.
Noole's eyes glittered. "You are, you are. Well, I daresay you don't seem the murdering type. Else you'd have opened my throat too."
The barmaid, whose blasé demeanor and overly painted face led Luma to think of her as a disappointed ex-actress, ambled to their table.
"I'll have a pint of Old Asmodeus, and so will she," said Noole. "And your cured meat plate, and your cheese plate, and shall we say the pickle assortment?" He cracked his fingers together.
"No drink for me," said Luma.
"Have you had the Old Asmodeus?" Noole asked.
"No."
"Then she'll take the half-pint and at least taste it," Noole told the barmaid, who shuffled off.
Luma leaned in. "I suppose I should ask if you killed Khonderian."
"Me? Why would I?"
"What was he paying you for?"
Noole sighed. "The life of a versifier can be at times a chancy one. Yet for all its material deprivations, I am blessed with the chance to ascend and descend the social ladder. Oft times in the same afternoon. Along the way, one picks up scraps—sometimes a fine duck rillette, sometimes a pregnant rumor. "
"You were his informant."
"I prefer gossip. The other sounds impersonal."
"And what intelligence earned you that clinking purse the other night?"
The barmaid made her way over, carrying the first of the food plates. Noole rubbed his hands together. "I am no gentleman poet. To keep a roof over my head, I must at times resort to the unconventional."
"You were squatting in a Qadiran trader's house in Grand Arch."
He popped a chunk of blue cheese into his mouth. "If only I had a critic who followed me as avidly as you, my peach." He frowned. "Don't blush, child. I mean nothing by it."
"Don't call me child."
"At Grand Arch, did you happen to notice any skulky characters about?"
"Across the way from you."
"Yes. A small troop of highly armed men and women, their every furtive glance broadcasting ill intent. I crept over there one night, as I am wont to do. They spoke with Korvosan accents. Alas, I heard little of their discourse. They did have a map of the city up on the wall. Stuck there with a dagger. A breach of squatter's etiquette, I must say."
Luma nibbled absently on a piece of cured boar. "And that's all you told Khonderian?"
"He wanted me to do some more creeping about. I left that open as a possibility."
"But never followed through?"
"The muse led me elsewhere." He shoved the tankard, which she hadn't touched, toward her. "Try it. Strongly hopped, with a hint of persimmon."
She took a grudging sip. "Why go to the head of the lord-mayor's bodyguard? Why not the lord justice?"
"My tittle-tattle is of a political nature, chiefly, and of little interest to the law." He drained the last of his ale. "Also, Khonderian paid well. The city guard can scarcely afford blade polish."
"And you have no guess as to why Khonderian was killed?"
He gestured to the barmaid for another Old Asmodeus. "It can't have anything to do with me. Speaking of which, his departure leaves a gaping void in my future earnings. Surely you Derexhi could stand to enlarge your network of informants."
"We cultivate unpaid sources."
"Then I venture to say you're missing a trick." With one swipe he cleared the meat plate of its olives. "Let's talk advance."
Luma stood. "Let's go get your weapons back to you."
"My second tankard hasn't arrived. Listen, I hate to argue from need. I can impose on dear old Lady Khedre for a week or so in her servant's quarters, but do so hesitantly. Ours is an association that wilts under the heat of prolonged proximity. Khonderian's payment was not so generous as you may have assumed ..."
Luma paid the barmaid. "Drink up, gnome. I'll tell the manager he's free to give you your sword when you come to ask for it."
Coming Next Week: A brand new, standalone story featuring Luma and her family!
Robin D. Laws is the author of the Pathfinder Tales novels Blood of the City and The Worldwound Gambit, as well as the Pathfinder's Journals for the Serpent's Skull Adventure Path and the Skull & Shackles Adventure Path. In addition, he's written six other novels; various short stories, web serials, and comic books; and a long list of roleplaying game products. His novels include Pierced Heart, The Rough and the Smooth, and the Angelika Fleischer series for the Black Library. Robin created the classic RPG Feng Shui and such recent titles as Mutant City Blues, Skulduggery, and the newly redesigned HeroQuest 2. Those interested in learning more about Robin are advised to check out his blog.
... Pathfinder Author Chat Next Monday! Thursday, September 21st, 2011 Hey there, fiction fans! This coming Monday, September 26th, Pathfinder Tales author Dave Gross has set up an awesome Pathfinder Tales round table discussion in the Paizo chat room. Starting at 6:00pm PST, this is your chance to catch all of the current Pathfinder Tales novelists in one place, to offer your opinions and ask your burning questions (such as the all-important “Who would win, Elyana or Ellasif?”). The floor...
Pathfinder Author Chat Next Monday!
Thursday, September 21st, 2011
Hey there, fiction fans! This coming Monday, September 26th, Pathfinder Tales author Dave Gross has set up an awesome Pathfinder Tales round table discussion in the Paizo chat room. Starting at 6:00pm PST, this is your chance to catch all of the current Pathfinder Tales novelists in one place, to offer your opinions and ask your burning questions (such as the all-important “Who would win, Elyana or Ellasif?”). The floor will be entirely open, and your questions will determine what we talk about, so drop by http://chat.dmtools.org/ on Monday night to chat with Dave Gross (Prince of Wolves, Master of Devils, Winter Witch), Elaine Cunningham (Winter Witch), Howard Andrew Jones (Plague of Shadows), Robin D. Laws (The Worldwound Gambit), and yours truly (Death’s Heretic, Fiction Editor). (Once you get there, be sure to type /join PFTales to enter the side room hosting the discussion.) It’s guaranteed to be a riotous, educational, and undeniably literary affair.
The Ironroot Deceptionby Robin D. Laws ... Chapter Four: The Beast The weirdness of the creature's distant cries washes over the prisoners like a crashing wave. The elves have arrayed themselves behind them. With swords outstretched, they impel the captives into the newly revealed inner chambers of the Ironroot. ... Gad and Vitta are working their way to point position when Dualal chimes: Not you, good dog. Nor you, halfling. You seem like you might be of more specialized use. You two, with...
The Ironroot Deception
by Robin D. Laws
Chapter Four: The Beast
The weirdness of the creature's distant cries washes over the prisoners like a crashing wave. The elves have arrayed themselves behind them. With swords outstretched, they impel the captives into the newly revealed inner chambers of the Ironroot.
Gad and Vitta are working their way to point position when Dualal chimes: "Not you, good dog. Nor you, halfling. You seem like you might be of more specialized use. You two, with the beards—you go first."
She points a glossy nail at the two brothers, Tlivush and Tliuka.
Tlivush, the elder one, threads his fingers together and begs: "We are brothers, milady. Let him stay back, and I'll bear the brunt of whatever risk—"
"Human, you should know your place by now. As a measure of my vexation, your brother shall walk ahead, and you'll hang back."
The elves hold lanterns for the humans. The final Ironroot Vault reveals itself as a succession of twisting tunnels. Every surface is wooden, whether covered in bark or exposed and lacquered. Feathery roots reach down from the ceiling. Thicker ones provide overhead passage for skittering mice.
When the vault branches, Tliuka wanders for the closest fork.
"Hold up!" Vitta shouts.
"What?" says Dualal.
"Up in the root structure," she says, pointing above Tliuka's head. "There are glowing sigils painted in the roots. A glyph trap."
"Go the other way," Dualal commands.
Shoulders hunkered, Tliuka complies.
"This isn't right," Vitta says to Gad. "I should be up there, not that poor serf."
"Got an argument that doesn't explain who you are?" Gad asks.
Vitta grimaces. She goes back to checking the ceiling and walls as best she can from the back of the shuffling scrum. The passage curves, slopes down, and curves again. They come to a set of roots, forming a rough staircase leading a dozen steps down. Vitta edges her way to the front of the crowd.
"Let the selected human walk the steps alone," calls Dualal.
Tliuka freezes on the first stair.
"Walk lightly, my brother," Tlivush calls.
One by one, Tliuka traverses the steps. He hits bottom and moves on down the corridor.
A grate of sharpened poles drops from the ceiling. It falls with speed and force, knocking Tlivush first to his knees and then flat against the floor. The poles impale him. He gasps and writhes. Vitta bounds up but there's nothing to be done.
"Tliuka!" his brother cries.
Dualal bares her teeth at him. "Silence, thrall, or we'll dig a grave for two!"
Tliuka dies at Vitta's feet.
The portcullis bars their way. Dualal parts the group to inspect it. She rattles it, orders her men to chop at it with swords. It resists their blows.
"Halfling," she says, "you seemed to know to look for traps, before. If you can find us a way through this, you'll be rewarded."
Vitta looks not at the portcullis, but at the ceiling and nearby walls.
"Ingenious," says Vitta, squinting in the lantern light. "Though woven—or is it grown?—from roots, vines, and twigs, it still obeys the rules of winch and pulley. This tough fiber here is like the chain, and this notch is where you secure it. The weight-plate here, that Tlivush stepped on to trigger it: bark and wood. All of it still living. Or, if you prefer, ensorcelled into an eternal semblance of life. And this spiral of branches here, that duplicates the actions of a spring. Pulled tight, it imprisons a great measure of force. It is that captive force, when suddenly released, that made it fall so fast, and impaled poor Tliuka."
Dualal sucks air between her fey-white teeth. "At another time, halfling, your disquisition might be interesting. Can you raise it up, and prevent it from falling?"
"I could, but will I?"
"What do you mean?"
"Will you let all of us go, unharmed, when you get what you seek?"
"You will be of little use then."
"Yes, that's why I ask."
"You'd be wise not to test me."
"Do you want this up, or not?"
"I swear, you all shall be safely dismissed."
"On your blood and the blood of your lineage?"
Dualal stiffens. "Yes, creature." She gestures to Gad. "Save for this one. In him I see the potential for longer service."
Gad sees a vituperation form on his comrade's lips.
"Don't worry about me, Vitta," he says. "Accept her pledge, for you and for the others."
"Give me a boost then," she tells him.
He hoists her up. She hauls at a vine. The wooden grate lifts up, slipping wetly free of Tlivush's impaled corpse. The prisoners groan as it rolls into view.
Vitta rearranges roots, ties a knot around a protruding burl, and leaps down to tear chunks of wood from the weight-sensing mechanism.
"You have rendered it safe?" Dualal asks her.
Vitta brushes bark dust from her palms. "I have."
"Then onward."
∗ ∗ ∗
"The thornbeast doesn't appear to have much respect for would-be royalty."
They turn a corner and the howls grow in pitch and frequency. Other sounds join its plaintive, angry wails. The unseen thornbeast roars, snorts, and slavers. A succession of thumps and frantic scratching noises suggest a creature struggling to escape.
Gad speeds up, intending to be the first to see it. A small cool hand lands on his shoulder, pulling him aside. It's Dualal.
The creature is within view now. Gad sees it over Dualal's shoulder. It is an ever-shifting thing, a mass of muscles, hide, quills, and teeth. It is a body arranged entirely around a deep, clashing maw. Its gums are granite; its teeth, serrated ivory. Green spittle sprays from its gullet; it reeks of new-mown hay. Hundreds of jagged thorns protrude from its back and the outer surfaces of its limbs. Blood-red fruits, compounded from bulbous drupes, dangle from its plated hide. It is like the frothing, charging issue of an impossible mating: part porcupine, part lion, part boulder, part bramble. The thornbeast is growth gone wrong, life defined as pure predation.
A web of verdant energy forms a seal between the passageway and the beast's imprisoning chamber. Seeing Dualal, the thornbeast dashes toward it, and is stopped short. It stomps and bucks and froths.
At the very center of the web hangs an opal the size of a fist.
"Stand back, all of you," she calls, face fixed on the gem.
The prisoners pell-mell chaotically out of the way. Vitta follows in their wake, though more cautiously, alert for traps they failed to trip on the way in. The elves step back only a few paces. Gad presses himself into a depression in the wall, between two trunklike columns.
"Join me in the chant, good elves!" she cries. Together they draw their arms away from their bodies, hands twisted into arcane shapes. She leads the ritual. An ancient, breathy ululation sings from her lungs. Her retinue joins her, harmonizing. The green, imprisoning web flickers.
The thornbeast grows still, as if calmed by elfsong. Meekly, it retreats to the far corner of its cell.
Dualal plucks the opal from the air.
The web vanishes.
The creature blinks. It realizes that it is free.
Gad's throat constricts.
The creature opens its own, shrilling out its bloodthirsty anticipation.
Dualal reaches into her pack for her wand, readying herself to kill the thornbeast, just as she did its lesser cousin, back in the forest.
Gad steps from the alcove.
"Get back!" Dualal shrieks.
Gad reaches for her.
She clutches the opal tight. "You've come to steal the gem!" she realizes.
"No," Gad corrects. "I've come to steal this." He snatches the wand from her hand.
The amber elf leaps at him. Ready for his lunge, Gad pivots, throwing him. He lands at the thornbeast's clawed, titanic feet.
Dualal's elven retinue draws swords. Gad gets out of their way by pushing Dualal into a wall. The warriors rush to engage the thornbeast. It already has Amberelf's right leg caught tight in its jaws. It ragdolls him back and forth, dashing his skull against the hard wooden wall of its cell.
Dualal stutters her incomprehension. "The wand? I need that to quell the beast."
"I'm not sure it'll work on that thing, and, more to the point, don't care," Gad says.
She struggles to get at her sword hilt but it's wedged between her back and the wall.
"The wand?" she continues. "You came to steal the wand?"
With deft fingers Gad unbuckles her scabbard. "Yep."
"The wand. Not the gem?"
"Nope." Buckles loosened, he pulls the entire apparatus—sword, scabbard, and belt—from her.
"But it's priceless! Invaluable beyond measure!"
"Maybe to your insane dreams of conquest. But I don't know where I'd fence that. Whereas this remarkable wand of yours, unique on Golarion as far as I can tell —why, I have a buyer in Nerosyan lined up to pay a hundred thousand on the spot."
Behind them, the thornbeast devours Dualal's men. It crunches through bone and snaps off limbs.
Blinded by fury, Dualal scarcely notices. "You have betrayed me," she hisses.
"You enslaved me first, so it all comes out in the wash."
He pushes away from her, sword in one hand, wand in the other. She tries to pull her dagger. It stays stuck in its sheath. She withdraws her hand, pulling threads of glue with it.
"You remember the glue trap, back there?" Gad says. "Vitta saved some for you."
"The two of you... confederates?"
"Elves aren't the only ones who plan ahead."
"But—but you are my dog!"
"Ruff ruff," he says, backing up.
Once around the corner, he turns and sprints. An ill-cast spell whizzes overhead, scorching vine leaves, singeing his hair. He turns to point the death wand back at Dualal, having no idea what it might do to an elf rather than a thornbeast. She stops, flattening herself against a wall. He scuttles back to the preplanned point.
He nods to Vitta. Her expression fuses mock innocence with self-satisfied serenity.
She slashes a vine. The portcullis slams down, leaving Gad and Vitta and the press gang on one side, the elves stuck with the thornbeast on the other.
"Better go," he tells Vitta. "She still has spells."
"I forgot to mention," the halfling says, "the portcullis coated with some kind of magic retardant. Impervious to spells."
"Forgot to mention?"
"A randomly captured thrall can't seem too knowledgeable," she says.
The sounds of carnage flow down the passageway as the thornbeast finishes off Dualal's retainers.
Dualal surges to the wooden portcullis, jutting her pale fingers through it. Ignoring Gad, she pleads her case to Vitta: "Let this up! Quick! The creature's coming!"
Vitta puts hands on hips. "It'll hold. For awhile."
"But I promised you a safe dismissal!"
"Our freedom was never yours to grant."
Dualal looks back with terror as the ripping and tearing sounds subside. "This is not in the prophecy!"
"I can't help you with that one," Gad says.
"But the thornbeast—it will run a-feasting through the Shudderwood, and perhaps beyond!"
"Three minutes ago," he says, turning his back on her, "that was a price you were willing to pay."
They are well into in the excavated passageway when they hear the beast pounce, all grunts and scrabbling claws. To her credit, Dualal barely looses a scream.
They surface expecting to find the prisoners waiting for them, seeking guidance back to civilized parts. Instead, the freed thralls are already gone.
"Hnh," Vitta says. "They didn't trust us."
"In fairness," says Gad, "no one ever should."
Vitta nods her agreement. Without further repartee, they set out for Nerosyan, and the
hundred thousand that awaits them there.
Coming Next Week: Dark smoke rising from the plains and a farmer with a troubled past in Robert E. Vardeman's "Plow and Sword."
Robin D. Laws is the author of the Pathfinder Tales novel The Worldwound Gambit—also starring Gad—and six other novels, as well as various short stories, web serials, and comic books, plus a long list of roleplaying game products. His novels include Pierced Heart, The Rough and the Smooth, and the Angelika Fleischer series for the Black Library. Robin created the classic RPG Feng Shui and such recent titles as Mutant City Blues, Skulduggery, and the newly redesigned HeroQuest 2. His previous fiction for the Pathfinder campaign setting includes "Plague of Light" in the Serpent's Skull Adventure Path. Those interested in learning more about Robin are advised to check out his blog.
The Ironroot Deceptionby Robin D. Laws ... Chapter Three: The Dog Gad's feet scramble for purchase against a heap of gravel as the muscular prisoner chokes the life from him. Stokh grunts in surprise; Gad's supposed to be shackled at the ankles. He tightens his grip. Gad's arm flails into the gravel pile. He fishes out an object. ... The burly prisoner sees the flash of metal and releases Gad in a twitch of panic. Knuckles white on the hilt of Ethundel's dagger—stolen when he prompted...
The Ironroot Deception
by Robin D. Laws
Chapter Three: The Dog
Gad's feet scramble for purchase against a heap of gravel as the muscular prisoner chokes the life from him. Stokh grunts in surprise; Gad's supposed to be shackled at the ankles. He tightens his grip. Gad's arm flails into the gravel pile. He fishes out an object.
The burly prisoner sees the flash of metal and releases Gad in a twitch of panic. Knuckles white on the hilt of Ethundel's dagger—stolen when he prompted Stokh to push him into the elf on the way into the excavation that morning—Gad neatly plunges it between the startled man's well-demarcated ribs. He jams it in deep. He twists, forcing Stokh to cry out in pain.
Agonized cries resound through the pit. They cease as blood fills Stokh's lungs. He dies to the sound of running elven feet. Gad steps out of Stokh's path as his corpse timbers to the dirt. He slides to Vitta's side, yards away. He presses his ankles together. Vitta slaps the shackles on them. Using a twig she's carved, she clicks its tumblers, locking it. She stashes the twig in the rock pile, retrieving another item. When she sees that Ethundel has seized control of the scene and is barking orders to his fellow Reclaimers, she places it in Gad's hand.
Ethundel rushes to Stokh's side. He places fingers on his jugular, shakes his head, and rises. A red fury, so intense as to be visible in the weak light of predawn, suffuses his triangular face.
"Where is the new one?" he calls. "Where is the churl?"
Gad scrabbles back, catching his eye. The elf sprints at him, hauling him to his shackled feet. He backhands Gad across the face. Throws him against the pit wall. When he tries to knee him in the groin, Gad angles to avoid the worst.
"What happens here?"
At the slicing sound of his mistress's voice, Ethundel stops. He throws Gad to the dirt. "The new one has murdered our best thrall. Our strongest, most loyal human."
"They say that all the best leaders are a little crazy. By that metric, maybe Dualal is destined to rule."
Dualal's arched brow suggests that her admiration for Stokh ran cooler than her lieutenant's. "Humans are vicious, Ethundel. They slay one another. The savage ones are oft of greater use than their docile brethren."
Ethundel points at Gad. "And I shall slay this one."
"And lose two slaves, instead of one?" says Dualal. "When we are a few day's digging from our prize?"
"I warned him not to defy me."
She laughs. "I've told you time and again, child, just because these creatures walk and talk, and seem capable of feeling, you must not mistake them for people. They are but snarling animals. If one dog tears another's throat, it is not the fault of the dog, but of the negligent dog-keeper." She sweeps toward Ethundel. "Why did you let my one good dog kill my other?"
"Milady..." Ethundel stutters.
"I raised you from nothing, and you are hard and brave, yet you haven't the sense of a barnacle."
Ethundel can see that his comrades are watching him.
"I didn't even do it!" Gad blurts.
"What?" says Dualal.
"He says I killed Stokh, but it wasn't me. Look! He's stabbed. Do I have a blade?"
"Ethundel," she says, "did you let the human have a dagger?"
"I did not!"
"Look!" says Gad, "the blood's on his scabbard!"
The dagger is back on Ethundel's hip. Returned to him when he was trying to knee Gad in the gobbles. Stokh's sticky blood smears his belt and tunic.
Dualal's hand snakes out at him.
In an unthinking defensive gesture, Ethundel's hand lands on his guilty dagger-hilt. He immediately lets it go, as if it burns. His lips follow the rhythm of his unraveling thoughts. "He must have—no..."
"Give me that blade," she says.
From her tone, Gad decides he guessed right. These two are like mother and son. But not truly mother and son. All the demands, none of the affection.
She pulls the knife from its sheath. With it falls a bundle wrapped in a dirty rag. It falls to the dirt. Glinting dawn light reflects from ruby facets. Dualal bends down to seize the purloined gems.
"You've been holding out on me," she says.
"No."
"I told everyone that any treasures found in the Ironroot Vaults were to be turned over to me. And you, of all my followers, you betray me?"
"I've never seen those before."
"You, whom I elevated not for your strength, nor for your courage, but for your loyalty—you would forsake me for a handful of stones?"
She stabs him in the chest. He drops to his knees, more out of supplication than injury.
"Milady, it's a trick, I would never—"
Dualal jabs the knife into his open mouth, slashing his tongue. "Silence, traitor!" She wheels to face the appalled ranks of her minions. Ethundel gags behind her. "Each of you will stab him once with his own duplicitous blade. I shall punish shirkers and light-strikers as I have punished him!"
One by one, they step up and meekly comply. Her lackeys slash at Ethundel enough to say they've done it. She wrinkles her nose in dissatisfaction.
"You there. Human," she says.
"Me?" Gad asks.
"These elves are of the blood, yet have permitted it to run thin in their veins. We lost Golarion to you because we lacked your cruelty. To take it back, we must equal your barbarity. Teach my men a lesson, human. Show them what savagery is."
She proffers the knife.
"Do it. I'll reward you."
Gad steps up and slices open Ethundel's throat.
Imagining that he's doing it to her.
∗ ∗ ∗
Days of toil pass, with no hint of Dualal's promised reward. Each morning Gad and Vitta go down into the excavation with the rest of the press gang. Some days they break rocks. Some days they pass debris buckets down the passage or up the shaft. Every night they stumble from the complex, which they now know as the Ironroot Vaults, topple onto beds of gravel, and surrender to pain-wracked sleep.
Since his stabbing of Ethundel, the other prisoners come to Gad, as if, in killing the elf, he gained a measure of his authority.
They say:
"They're going to work us to death."
"My name is Saadak. I have a wife, three children, and another on the way. My death will be their misery, too."
"If we're still alive when they get whatever they're looking for, they'll slaughter us just for spite."
"I am Barash, son of Barash. I was foolish to venture so close to the Shudderwood with my cart, but it is not a crime I deserve to be killed for."
"I overheard her. They seek a gem that will prove her destined to rule the world. That can't be true, can it?"
"I am Tlivush. That is my brother, Tliuka. It does not matter what happens to me, but if he does not return, it will break our mother's heart."
"There must be a way we can escape."
"She thinks you're her new pet or such. We beg you, sway her to ease up on us."
It throws him off. Gad is used to leading, to calling the moves, but with confederates who are in on the gaffle. Responsibility for a pack of ordinaries is not part of the plan.
The next evening, as the end of the shift nears, Vitta's ax opens a hole to a hollow chamber. She quickly returns the rock to its place. "The digging's almost done," she says to Gad.
That night, Gad sleeps fitfully. He dreams that Dualal is looming over him.
He awakens.
Dualal is looming over him.
She unlocks his shackles and takes him for a walk. They stroll up the slope out of the pit, to the dead forest beyond. "The other dogs gather around you," she says.
"We prefer 'human.'"
She turns to face him, as if worried that he'll rifle her pack. "I said I'd reward you, and I will. Even though a sliver of me now suspects that you somehow abetted Ethundel in his betrayal."
"That's not so," Gad says.
"Your people were bred to serve mine. You'll deny it, but it's true. Are we not older, wiser, more beautiful? How could we be supplanted by such as you?"
"It is a mystery."
"I could use a loyal dog. A killing beast. Instinctively, the others yearn to follow you. Why is that?"
"Your thoughts rush swiftly. This poor dog can't keep up."
"When I rule... It is unrealistic to expect that we shall exterminate your race entirely. Many will remain. I must learn to command your kind. Yet my revulsion for you clouds my understanding."
"You're not too big to admit that."
"Not at all."
"What makes you think you're going to be world-queen?"
"Do not mistake this moment of intimacy for weakness. Insolence shall still be punished. My visions say so. Since I was but a child, I have dreamed my future glory. I would fall into a trance, and recite epic stanzas of my eventual deeds. All the great prophetic poems of elvenkind refer to me, foretell my coming. Yet unbelievers, even other Reclaimers, refuse to see the obvious parallels in the texts. The prophets say that the great elf queen to come will find a gem, buried deep in the earth. Its light will shine on the elven people, curing them of their blindness. Forcing them to recognize me. I will unite the elves and fey of the known worlds, then the seven leaves will fall—but it is beyond your comprehension."
"And that's what we seek here—your gem?"
"Two thousand years ago came the first harbinger of my rule. The thornbeast. A terrible tripartite devourer: animal, mineral, vegetable. It scourged the elven kingdoms, seeking the queen too early, enraged by its failure to find her. The elves of this land finally captured it and sealed it in their own holy Ironroot Vaults. They could not kill it, so they left a powerful gem, the Opal of Command, to force its eternal slumber."
"And the opal is your gem of prophecy."
"Yes."
"So what happens when you take it from its resting place? You release the thornbeast?"
"Don't worry about that, good dog."
∗ ∗ ∗
Gad asks the amber elf what his name is as he and Vitta smash through the last wall of rock to the open chamber beyond. The elf has time to snarl at him before the stones give way, collapsing into a tumble of rubble at their feet.
Darkness shrouds the chambers beyond. Vitta reaches for a lantern.
The amber elf stops her short. "Halfling! Go to the top, and convey to your mistress that the excavation is at an end."
Gad steps lightly on her toe, to forestall the retort he can already hear coming. She stalks off down the passageway, squeezing her way past the row of bucket-haulers. "Drop your pails, boys," she says. "Digging's over."
Soon Dualal and her best-armed guards have shoved themselves into the tiny terminal chamber. She peers into the black with her exceptional elven eyes.
"Shall I dismiss the thralls?" Amber elf asks. "We shall guard you, the rest of the way."
"Yes," says Dualal.
A hideous, hungry wail echoes from the depths.
Dualal whispers: "The thornbeast." She swallows, then shudders back to composure. "On second thought," she says. "The thralls may still be of use. To walk ahead, and alert us to hazards." She turns to Gad. He expects to see a cruel smile but there is only blankness. She gestures to the pile of stones, and hands him a lantern.
"Proceed, brave dog, proceed."
Coming Next Week: The perils of the thornbeast and the rewards of presumption in the final chapter of "The Ironroot Deception"!
Robin D. Laws is the author of the Pathfinder Tales novel The Worldwound Gambit—also starring Gad—and six other novels, as well as various short stories, web serials, and comic books, plus a long list of roleplaying game products. His novels include Pierced Heart, The Rough and the Smooth, and the Angelika Fleischer series for the Black Library. Robin created the classic RPG Feng Shui and such recent titles as Mutant City Blues, Skulduggery, and the newly redesigned HeroQuest 2. His previous fiction for the Pathfinder campaign setting includes "Plague of Light" in the Serpent's Skull Adventure Path. Those interested in learning more about Robin are advised to check out his blog.
The Ironroot Deceptionby Robin D. Laws ... Chapter Two: The Hole On massive, clawed legs, the forest-beast bounds toward the elves and their captives. Its beady eyes, shielded by rootlike extrusions, seem to lock onto Gad. It stops to snort and paw the ground. ... Gad can't help but wonder: why him? ... It can't be that he's the only human present. There are two in the press-gang now. ... Then he understands: he's bruised and limping from the thrashing Ethundel gave him. He reads as the...
The Ironroot Deception
by Robin D. Laws
Chapter Two: The Hole
On massive, clawed legs, the forest-beast bounds toward the elves and their captives. Its beady eyes, shielded by rootlike extrusions, seem to lock onto Gad. It stops to snort and paw the ground.
Gad can't help but wonder: why him?
It can't be that he's the only human present. There are two in the press-gang now.
Then he understands: he's bruised and limping from the thrashing Ethundel gave him. He reads as the weakest prey.
Dualal's lesser subordinates pose for flight. Ethundel preempts them, sweeping his sword from the imposing scabbard mounted on his back. "For you, milady!" he bellows. Meadow-grass churning beneath his boots, he runs for the forest-beast. It shifts its attention to the shouting warrior. It charges. Ethundel stands ready to pivot when it reaches him, but misjudges its speed. It butts him full-on. His wiry body flies into the air. He lands with a thud. The creature, spraying leafy sputum, rears to crush him beneath elephantine feet.
Ethundel rolls, seizes the hilt of his dropped sword, and stabs up into the beast's scaly belly. Gouts of pulpy blood gush from the wound. The elf reaches to withdraw his stuck blade. The creature bucks away before he can grasp it. Ethundel pulls out a dagger.
Finally shocked from their daze, his comrades rush with drawn longswords to join him.
Dualal remains in place. She reaches for the spiraled wand strapped to her back. Green energy swirls up the spirals to collect around its globular tip. With a snap of her wrist, Dualal lobs the gathered energy into the air. It arcs onto the creature's back.
The beast freezes in mid-leap. Its position insupportable, it thumps over on its side. Dualal calmly ambles over to it.
The elves have left Gad and the second prisoner on their own.
"Let's go," the young man says.
Gad shakes his head. "They'll catch up," he says, words muffled by the gag.
The creature isn't breathing. The wand's magic has stilled even its involuntary reactions. Dualal, impassive, watches it suffocate. Even in death it remains rigid.
"She wouldn't use that on us, would she?" the prisoner asks.
Gad points to his mouth, as if to say, I can't answer, I'm wearing a gag.
∗ ∗ ∗
For several hours Ethundel leads the party deeper into the wildwood. Signs of corruption grow ever more frequent. The ground cover becomes a slick fungal mass. Blackened spores swell the surfaces of rocks and boulders. Bloated insects the color of corpse-flesh hang like bats from withered branches.
Clustering firs give way to an expanse strewn with vine-choked logs. These thin out as the group trudges into a vast circle of dead vegetation. Diffuse smoke rises from a fire ahead. Temporary shelters, fastidiously constructed from scrap wood, huddle on the edge of a pit. On its lip, elven archers—Gad counts three of them and assumes there will be more—stand with exaggerated ease. Their weapons point down into the hole.
Ethundel seizes Gad by the back of the neck and shoves him onward. He hisses into Gad's ear, his breath hot and vaguely sweet. "Here's where you learn humility, churl."
The pit has been quarried from an earthy soil thick with chunks of shattered limestone. Ethundel manhandles Gad toward its edge. A treacherous ramp composed of loose gravel leads down into the pit. Ethundel means to steer Gad short of it, to heave him directly into the hole. It's a fifteen, maybe twenty-foot drop.
"Good Ethundel!" Dualal warns. Ethundel snarls, changes course, and jostles Gad onto the ramp. The prisoner stumbles, recovers, and slides down to its floor level without twisting an ankle. He contemplates the connection between the elf leader and her chief bullyboy. Not lovers, he decides: It's the wrong kind of heat. It smacks more of an unbidden, unexamined mother-son pull. Perhaps between a mother who has never had a son and a son who has never known his mother. Gad stores the theory for later use.
He surveys his new surroundings. Dried meal coats the side of an empty gruel-pot. Heaps of dirt and gravel periodically shed their pebbles. Planks of fresh-cut deadwood cover a deeper hole in the pit's center.
A dozen prisoners sit in exhausted stupor on hard-packed dirt. Shackles bind their ankles. They are pale, undernourished, water-starved. Eleven humans, three of them women, and a female halfling. Gad gives himself a plausible interval, and checks to see that none of his captors are looking, before seating himself next to the latter.
It hurts to see her in this state. Under chosen circumstances, Vitta would be impeccably turned out. No matter how deep the dungeon, she'd be powdered and rouged, her clothing spotless, her hair piled and secured by an intricate copper lattice. Grime coats her forehead. Her usually plump cheeks have sunk.
"You all right?" he asks.
She stares ahead, speaking without moving her lips. "Remind me again why I got volunteered to get caught first."
"Your expertise in matters subterranean. Your mastery of traps, engineering, hazards..."
"An annoyingly correct answer."
"They've been putting you to work?"
"Also remind me, once this rip is over, to never lift another rock." She steals a sideways glance. "You got kicked around some, too."
"Got to sell the gaffle."
"It's a shame to see Vitta in such a state, but she's the only halfling for the job."
"Speaking of which," she says. She lifts a flat, chalky stone. Beneath it lies a torn rag tied into a bundle. Vitta pats it, eliciting the telltale sound of cut gems rubbing up against each other. "Rubies. Found them down in the works. Behind a locked panel no one else saw."
"Dualal naturally insists that all swag is turned over to her, to disperse as she deems fit."
"Naturally. You've got that look."
"What look?"
"That look that says we're not going to get to keep these." Vitta replaces the stone.
"We're here for the big steal."
"This little steal could feed a village for a year."
"Not that you'd use it for that."
"Who would?"
His expression kept safely flat, Gad laughs.
"Bad tidings," Vitta says, shifting her eye-line to guide Gad's gaze.
Ethundel has taken aside one of the humans. Unlike the others, this man wears no shackles. He towers above the elf warrior, outweighing him by fifty pounds of muscle. He's all jaw and naked cranium, framing a pinched and narrow face. The elf speaks into his cauliflowered ear. He nods obediently.
"That's Stokh," says Vitta.
"Let me guess. Jailhouse stooge."
"There's always one," says Vitta.
"Ethundel has taken a dislike to me."
"Inexplicable."
"Looks like I'll have to watch my back."
"So nothing new, then."
Stokh breaks from Ethundel. He attempts to be subtle as he assesses Gad.
"Better break for a while."
Vitta hobbles away from him. Half an hour later, when the elven guards are inattentive, they drift back together.
"Want the breakdown on the complex?"
"Sure," says Gad.
"Two thousand years old, give or take. Definitely elven. Not purpose-built, but a reuse of an existing structure. The room forms are organic. Shaped as if the roots of a gigantic tree withdrew to somewhere else, leaving behind a hollow. It's all wood and earth, eternally suspended in a state between dead plank and living plant."
"What did they use it for? The elves who built it, or grew it, or whatever?"
"Originally? Vaults. Probably a treasury and armory. Quite a full one, judging by the size of the place. There's royal crests everywhere."
"Whose crests?"
"Am I an expert on the heraldry of second-millennium backwoods elven royalty? You should have brought Calliard."
"He's not to be found. And yes, I also hate small-team rips. But there's a limit to the number of captures we could believably fake."
"I'm complaining, not re-airing the plan," says Vitta. "At any rate, the complex. Maybe sometime after it was first excavated, it became a shelter for noncombatants in a time of war."
"Something has to be going badly, for elves to live belowground."
"That's understatement for you. And then its last use: Like we thought, a prison. To keep something in, and to prevent any bunch of later fools from letting it out. Once they had it sealed in, they laid in a gaggle of impressive traps and filled the whole thing up with rocks and dirt."
"You figure they got the plants to do that for them, too?"
"No, they did it by hand. Whatever's in there, they truly wanted it to stay."
"And you reckon it did?"
"If it got out, it was through tons of tightly packed debris, not to mention some very impressive traps."
"So preferably, we steer well clear of it."
"Preferably," says Vitta.
∗ ∗ ∗
In the morning they are roused with sword-butts. Elven guards kick them until they stand. They remove the prisoners' shackles, clanking them into a heap. The longer-held captives know what to do: they pull the boards from the hole within the hole.
"Down you go," the amber-headed elf commands.
The prisoners form a queue. One by one they descend into a shaft, climbing with the aid of precarious spikes thrust into stone and root.
"We want to be near the front," Vitta tells Gad.
He edges in, with Vitta right behind him. The others are happy to give him his berth. The forward part of the job is evidently the hardest and most hazardous.
Stokh sees him and pushes his way into the line, too. The wretched captives seem surprised. Gad guesses that he doesn't generally take point.
The shaft takes them twenty feet down, where it meets a narrow tunnel. Metal buckets line the passage.
Stokh shoulders Gad into the rocky wall. He presses, pinning him there. "You're not going to cause trouble here."
"Why do you care?" Gad demands.
Stokh stinks of brandy, a provision not granted the other prisoners. "We're nearly there. Then the elves let us go. Safe. Don't you ruin it."
Before Gad can reply, Stokh storms down to the head of the procession.
Ethundel is up ahead.
Gad strides up behind Stokh. He waits. Then speaks: "Hey, bald-head. What liberties do you allow the elves, in trade for that brandywine?"
At first Stokh is too shocked to move. He recovers, turns, and swings a knobby fist. Gad ducks. He pushes into the bigger man. Stokh grabs him and shoves, pushing Gad into Ethundel. The elf withdraws, stiffening in revulsion.
"Cease this now, louse-ridden scum!"
Gad slips past to catch up with Vitta.
Stokh's outraged breathing fills the passageway.
The tunnel jogs to bypass a formation of hard quartz. Vitta grabs Gad by the back of the tunic. He stops short before brushing a section of quartz slathered in a wet, gluey substance. Above it juts a copper spout, now stuffed with rags. A man's corpse, mummified by the glue, adheres to the rock.
"Glue trap," says Vitta.
"I can see that," says Gad.
The passageway abruptly ends. Its rough terminal wall grants room for four laborers to have at it with pick-axes. Vitta takes an axe for herself, and hands another to Gad.
"Welcome to the hole," she says.
They dig, freeing stones, releasing cascades of dry soil. Other prisoners scurry up to gather the debris into buckets. They send it brigading down the passageway, each bucket passed from hand to hand.
They toil until they're dizzy and ready to drop. Their captors dole out miserly portions of water and gruel. When workers waver, the swordpoints come out.
By the time they're allowed to stumble from the excavation, night has fallen. Gad staggers to the wall of the outer pit and collapses. Sleep takes him immediately.
When he awakens, it is with Stokh's steely fingers around his windpipe.
Coming Next Week: Death and politics in Chapter Three of "The Ironroot Deception"!
Robin D. Laws is the author of the Pathfinder Tales novel The Worldwound Gambit—also starring Gad—and six other novels, as well as various short stories, web serials, and comic books, plus a long list of roleplaying game products. His novels include Pierced Heart, The Rough and the Smooth, and the Angelika Fleischer series for the Black Library. Robin created the classic RPG Feng Shui and such recent titles as Mutant City Blues, Skulduggery, and the newly redesigned HeroQuest 2. His previous fiction for the Pathfinder campaign setting includes "Plague of Light" in the Serpent's Skull Adventure Path. Those interested in learning more about Robin are advised to check out his blog.
The Ironroot Deceptionby Robin D. Laws ... Chapter One: The Snare Gad feels the roughness of the burr-oak's bark as its branch constricts tighter around his ankles. Though he is upside down, blood rushing to his head, his face retains its symmetry. A roguish skiff of stubble softens his jutting jaw. Gray-peppered hair clings closely to his scalp. Blue eyes sear out at his elven captor. ... The tree that dangles him stands at the edge of the Shudderwood. Its roots snake through a weed-choked...
The Ironroot Deception
by Robin D. Laws
Chapter One: The Snare
Gad feels the roughness of the burr-oak's bark as its branch constricts tighter around his ankles. Though he is upside down, blood rushing to his head, his face retains its symmetry. A roguish skiff of stubble softens his jutting jaw. Gray-peppered hair clings closely to his scalp. Blue eyes sear out at his elven captor.
The tree that dangles him stands at the edge of the Shudderwood. Its roots snake through a weed-choked pathway. A gang of firs bullies around it, swaying and trembling to spite the windless air. The dry earth writhes with insect life; biting ants and fat white grubs pulse to the demon harmonics of the nearby Worldwound.
The elf woman steps around him, squinting. From every angle, she assesses the tautness of his muscles and the straightness of his bones. The tree reverently moves its suspended prize, allowing her to circuit him easily. Her hair is an autumn tangle, recalling the sprigs and leaves of a grapevine after harvest has come and gone. The face is an arrangement of hardened planes: beautiful in theory, unyielding in practice. Her war-garb is worn in, well kept. Slung across her back are a long sword and an ornate, spiraled wand. A curved dagger accentuates a narrow hip.
"There are few situations that Gad can't talk himself out of. This appears to be one of them."
Behind thin, drawn lips, she clucks her tongue. "Among your fellow humans, you are reckoned handsome."
Gad smiles. "I look my best right side up."
She does not return the smile. "You will serve," she says.
"Will I now?"
With a curt turn of the head, she gestures to her retinue, gathered near a camouflaged ambush-screen on the treeline's edge. There are six of them: all elves, all strikingly equipped, all poised with martial confidence.
Gad's weapons—short sword, main dagger, hidden back dagger, visible right boot knife, concealed left boot knife—have all been plucked from him and lie in a mocking pile near a clump of dying milkweed.
"And who might I be serving?"
"My name is none of your affair."
"Maybe I like serving."
Elven features freeze. "Do libidinous undertones aid you with your fellows?"
Gad finds it hard to shrug. "A gentleman never tells."
"You do yourself no favors by provoking my disgust."
Again the urge to shrug. Gad resists. "You wouldn't be press-ganging me, would you?"
"Humans have forgotten their purpose on this world."
"Have we now?"
"You were born to brute labor. And you shall perform it."
"I don't work cheap."
She signals her men. The tallest, most sinewy specimen, glossy black hair trailing behind him as he strides, leads the pack. Wrist shackles clatter in his compact fist. He lowers his head as he approaches. "Lady Dualal."
"Good Ethundel," she says, "prepare the labor for transport."
Nothing about Ethundel looks good to Gad.
Dualal turns to the tree trunk and utters a command in archaic Elven. Its encircling branch loosens, releasing Gad's ankles. Two members of the retinue stand below. They catch him, saving him from a neck-breaking. Holding him tight, they wrestle him to his feet. Ethundel claps the shackles on him.
"I renew my objections to this wrongful treatment," Gad says.
Ethundel smacks the back of the head.
A faraway expression settles on Dualal. "If it is matters of justice that concern you, wanderer, your indenture furthers the most righteous of causes."
A white-blond elf grabs Gad by the right arm; an amber-blond elf by the left. They march him onto a deer trail leading into the woods.
"Care to specify?" Gad asks.
"Reclamation," Ethundel booms.
Gad ignores him, continuing to address the woman. "Oh, so you're one of those elves."
"Impertinence will be harshly dealt with." Dualal glides forward, to the middle of the marching order.
In the wood ahead, branches grow twisted and tangled. Keening cicadas assault the ears.
"Haven't you Reclaimers been plotting this for nine thousand years?" Gad braces for another hit but neither of his escorts seems interested in breaking stride. Ethundel, who struck him before, has moved up to take point. With no one to clout him, Gad continues: "Ridding Golarion of humankind—and dwarves and orcs and the rest—and taking it back? That's the dream, isn't it?"
"You are surprisingly versed in my race's lore," says Dualal.
"Isn't that a misleading way to put it?"
"What nonsense do you spout?"
"Don't most elves regard the idea of reclamation as lunacy?"
She whirls to face him. His escorts freeze, shying back from her. Gad stays cool.
Dualal sees this. She calms herself. A false, chill smile comes reluctantly to her lips. When she speaks, it is more to her men than to Gad. "It has never been the time to reassert our ownership of this profaned and polluted world."
"Until now?"
She gives him her back, resuming her regal mien.
"Have you considered, Dualal," he says, "that it's quite the coincidence?"
"What is?"
"That after all the other Reclaimers have failed and been proven wrong, century after century, that the great turning happens to dawn during your particular lifetime?"
"But it will!" blurts his amber-haired captor. "The gem!"
The elf's pallid skin turns whiter still, as he realizes he's stuck his foot in it. He flinches.
"Put a gag in that idiot's mouth," Dualal commands.
Gad protests and resists as blond elf and amber elf stuff a mildewy rag between his teeth. Inside, he is smiling. When an adversary thinks him an idiot, half of his work is already done.
∗ ∗ ∗
The Reclaimers drag him deeper into the forest. Gad is easier in a city than a wilderness, and this one is worse than most. Clouds of bloodthirsty bugs roll in like morning fog. A caustic oil drips from the leaves of certain trees. Unearthly murmurs, mimicking the groans of the tortured souls, rise from rills and meadows. Life is too strong in the Shudderwood. So strong that it is also death, a rancid cycle of birth and devouring.
A day and a night pass. They camp briefly, giving Gad four hours of sleep at best. The elves, rotating watches, get less. They feed him dry acorn-flower biscuits and a handful of crab apples. His head swims. When he slows, they prod him with scabbarded swords.
The biting bugs are worse the second day. With wrists in irons, he can barely swat them. His skin becomes a landscape of reddened, scabby bumps. Paying little heed to the elves' legendary harmony with nature, the insects feast on them, too. They spare only Dualal and Ethundel, who must benefit from some salve or charm. If he weren't gagged, Gad might work the lackeys, making hay of the gap in privilege between leader and led. With his mouth tied shut it's all moot.
He thinks they've edged back to the border of the haunted woodlands again, but can no longer be sure. When they're stopped for a short break by the side of a glassy stream, the conversation of another party drifts by. With silent efficiency, the Reclaimers grab Gad, fading behind a low ridge of mossy stone. The musicality of the overheard words is unmistakably elven. Clearly, the Reclaimers expect the local sharp-ears to treat them as interlopers. Gad waits for a chance to make the move he's been planning, but the opening never comes. His captors wait until the voices recede, then continue on.
A few hours later they hunker down again. Blond and amber stay by his side; the rest slip off through the firs. Gad mimes a request to get the gag off. They refuse him. He listens in with his barely passable Elven as they ponder which regions of the world they'll claim when Dualal rules the world.
They're arguing over the island of Absalom when the rest of the group tramps into view, dragging a new prisoner. The fresh unfortunate is male, human, young, and scrawny. A wiggle of drying blood runs from his scalp into a matted sideburn.
Gad seizes the moment of distraction. He bolts up, clouting the amber elf's temple with the edge of his shackles. Dodging slippery rocks, he bursts into the forest depths. Elven curses ring through gnarled pines. Uneven terrain adds effort to his flight. Gad's heart hammers; he gasps for breath. He stops to ease the gag from his mouth.
From nowhere, Ethundel is upon him. A fist catches Gad in the throat.
"Thought these woods would protect you, against an elf?"
Gad whirls back. He crashes into a tree. Pain throbs through his shoulder and down his side. He tries a double-handed swipe. The black-haired elf leaps gracefully back. With Gad off balance, he barrels in and kicks Gad's feet out from under him. Gad goes down, falling onto a rotting log. Ethundel aims a series of savage kicks at his legs. Gad holds up his bound hands. Sadism spasms across the elf's face. He grabs Gad by the back of the skull and crushes his face into the log.
"I give!" Gad cries.
"Now you supplicate? After mocking and profaning our mistress?" Ethundel punches Gad in the neck and steps back to draw his sword. "I don't care how well you haul a rock. It is unfortunate that in my attempt to subdue you, I was forced to draw steel, and underestimated the strength of my blow." He raises the blade.
"Ethundel! Stay your sword!"
The black-maned elf is not the only one who can move through a woods at a preternatural pace. Dualal stands a dozen yards off. She looks down on the scene from a leaf-strewn slope.
"Milady," Ethundel stammers.
Fir needles crunch underfoot as she draws nearer. "Your ardor is understandable. Humans are insufferable. This one more than most. They are also, in these woods, a scarce commodity. He who kills his thrall destroys his own property."
Ethundel visibly swallows. "Yes milady."
"We have two now. These will replace those we exhausted. Let us go now to the Ironroot, and resume the dig. When he has served his purpose, he is yours, to treat as whim decrees."
Ethundel dips his head and sheathes his sword.
At Gad's side now, she reaches down to grab the gag, still around his neck, and pull it up into his mouth. "And you. Do not count on a second reprieve."
Ethundel hauls him back to the others. The amber-haired elf greets him with a sullen stare. Before long, they are back on the trail. The new prisoner hasn't been gagged, but is too frightened to attempt a conversation.
Scrapes and contusions from Ethundel's beating gnaw at Gad as the elves push him on. He mimes his need for water. They let him linger for a while before slaking his thirst. They slog on past dusk.
The party is in a clearing when a thunder of breaking branches rises from a dense throng of pines. Tree trunks crack and topple. A throaty roar reverberates.
A creature leaps into the clearing, a wake of shattered wood fragments billowing behind it. Gad has never seen its like. It is a ball of quills and claws and fangs, ten feet high and as many wide. Its legs are pillars of muscle. As much as it seems like some unknown animal, it is also like a plant, festooned with vines and sprouting leaves.
It bounds, snarling and frothing, toward the elves and their prisoners.
Coming Next Week: Hard labor and quick thinking in Chapter Two of "The Ironroot Deception"!
Robin D. Laws is the author of the Pathfinder Tales novel The Worldwound Gambit—also starring Gad—and six other novels, as well as various short stories, web serials, and comic books, plus a long list of roleplaying game products. His novels include Pierced Heart, The Rough and the Smooth, and the Angelika Fleischer series for the Black Library. Robin created the classic RPG Feng Shui and such recent titles as Mutant City Blues, Skulduggery, and the newly redesigned HeroQuest 2. His previous fiction for the Pathfinder campaign setting includes “Plague of Light” in the Serpent’s Skull Adventure Path. Those interested in learning more about Robin are advised to check out his blog.
... Illustration by Kekai Kotaki ... Pathfinder Fiction News and Podcast! Thursday, May 26, 2011It's always a good day when we get to announce the next Pathfinder Tales novel, but today is especially important for me, as today I get to announce the November release of Death's Heretic, the new Pathfinder Tales novel by—well, me! ... Death's Heretic is the story of Salim Ghadafar, a desert warrior forced against his will to work as an agent of Pharasma. When a powerful merchant in Thuvia...
Illustration by Kekai Kotaki
Pathfinder Fiction News and Podcast!
Thursday, May 26, 2011
It's always a good day when we get to announce the next Pathfinder Tales novel, but today is especially important for me, as today I get to announce the November release of Death's Heretic, the new Pathfinder Tales novel by—well, me!
Death's Heretic is the story of Salim Ghadafar, a desert warrior forced against his will to work as an agent of Pharasma. When a powerful merchant in Thuvia is assassinated on the eve of receiving the sun orchid elixir, an elixir capable of reversing aging, few people are surprised—after all, immortality is a risky business. Yet when the merchant's soul goes missing from Pharasma's Boneyard and a mysterious note offers to ransom the man's spirit back to his family in exchange for the elixir, it's time for the church of the death goddess to step in and find out who would dare steal from the Lady of Graves herself. With his unique skill set, Salim should be perfectly suited to the mission. There's only one problem: The investigation is being financed by the murdered aristocrat's daughter. And she wants to go with him.
Illustration by Lucas Graciano
Along with his uninvited passenger, Salim must unravel a web of intrigue that will lead them far from the blistering sands of Thuvia on a grand tour of the Outer Planes, where devils and angels rub shoulders with fey lords and mechanical men, and nothing is as it seems...
This book has been a long time in coming, and I'm obviously pretty excited to finally be able to talk about it. Yet rather than ramble on the blog (there'll be time for that closer to the release date), I'd like to direct you over to the brand new, all-Pathfinder-Tales episode of the Atomic Array podcast! In addition to talking with me about Death's Heretic and the line as a whole, Ed and Rone also interview Pathfinder Tales authors Dave Gross, Robin D. Laws, and Howard Andrew Jones. It's nearly two-hours of hard-hitting fiction questions and anecdotes regarding Pathfinder Tales, so check it out, and feel free to ask your own questions in the comments thread below!
Last but not least, we've also unveiled the final cover art for Master of Devils and Death's Heretic, painted by Lucas Graciano and Kekai Kotaki, respectively. That's all from the Pathfinder Tales front for now, but stay tuned next week for the beginning of an all-new story from Robin D. Laws as part of our free weekly web fiction!
The Worldwound Gambit Sample Chapter—Chapter Four: The Lockbreaker and the Distance Man
The Worldwound Gambit Sample Chapterby Robin D. Laws ... In The Worldwound Gambit, veteran con man Gad grows fed up with the demons constantly flooding into Mendev, and decides to handle the issue by stealing something the demons can't afford to lose. As we see in this chapter, the first step in any major heist is putting together the right team. ... Chapter Four: The Lockbreaker and the Distance Man A sprinkling of ash covers the scrubland weeds. As the three ride on, the ash grows denser....
The Worldwound Gambit Sample Chapter
by Robin D. Laws
In The Worldwound Gambit, veteran con man Gad grows fed up with the demons constantly flooding into Mendev, and decides to handle the issue by stealing something the demons can't afford to lose. As we see in this chapter, the first step in any major heist is putting together the right team.
Chapter Four: The Lockbreaker and the Distance Man
A sprinkling of ash covers the scrubland weeds. As the three ride on, the ash grows denser. Soon the vegetation recedes entirely, replaced by barren earth. Overturned boulders lie scattered across slopes and hollows. A starving hawk circles uselessly overhead.
Eventually the remnants of an old civilization appear. Crumbled bricks, some red, some yellow. A long-buried pillar covered in cracked blue tile. A door and a railing, both cast in bronze.
Amid them are strewn new relics of a recent battle: broken swords, sheared lances, melted helmets. Fresh graveyards, their shallow mounds arrayed in neat ranks and rows, attest to an effort to bury the dead. Still, fragments of skull and bone, raked by the teeth of scavengers, salt the land. They belong to man and horse, to elf and dwarf.
An open pit yawns in the distance. Gad speeds his horse; Tiberio and Calliard follow. The earth yields uncertainly beneath them. They hear the whicker of horses. Four scraggly beasts stand glumly, tied to the last branches of a scorched and toppled tree. The three tie their mounts there and walk toward the pit.
Two weary figures clamber from the pit's edge. Seeing Gad, Calliard, and particularly Tiberio, they freeze and reach for their swords. Tiberio holds out his hands in a gesture of peace. The explorers sheathe their weapons and slowly approach. They are human women, lithe and long-tressed. One wears metal; the other, leather. Mystic symbols cover the latter woman's breastplate. The two appear to be twins.
"Too late," the metal-wearer says. "All cleaned out."
"Anyone still down there?" Gad asks.
"Other than our damnfool time-wasting laggard of a lockpick?"
"That's who we're looking for." Gad bows gallantly. Each woman raises an eyebrow, notes a flash of attraction and moves on. The warriors untie their horses, and another besides, and ride away.
Tiberio climbs down the rope ladder first, followed by Calliard and Gad. The ladder extends for more than forty feet, taking them through a sinkhole and then a stone-lined catacomb. They leap down to a mosaic floor. It depicts a muscled warrior crushing prostrate enemies beneath his boot. An ancient war leader, probably, or perhaps a god. The tiled faces of general and victims have been chipped out and hauled away. Stone benches circle the chamber's edges.
The hall serves as a junction; open archways lead from it to the north, east, south, and west. The three stop to listen. They hear a faint sound of metal on metal. They listen further, finally deciding that its faint echo comes from the eastern corridor. Calliard lights a lantern. They move through a vaulted passageway, its walls and floor also covered in pictorial mosaics. Faces and decorative features, as on the floor in the round chamber, have been hacked out and spirited away for resale.
The tap-tap-scrape grows louder. They move toward it, ignoring other doors. The chamber terminates in another archway. Tiberio pauses at its threshold.
A corpse lies across it. It is the body of a man, cut nearly in two. The jagged slice through his body begins at his right shoulder and ends at his left hip. He has been stripped to his bloodied undergarments. Tiberio looms briefly over him. "About a week ago," he says.
His fingers delicately trace a groove recessed inside the archway. A spike juts from the groove, stopping a five-foot blade meant to scythe out from it.
Splayed in a corner around a bend are a pair of burned corpses. On the opposite side of the hallway, the inner cement wall has been exposed. Tiles spill across the floor in heaps, along with clods of crumbled plaster. Disassembled metal spouts, plaster chunks still attached to their coppered sides, lean against the wall. A fire-spitter, taken apart, though not before it claimed at least two lives.
They follow the tapping noises down a curving set of cement steps. The last step has been pulled away. Those above it are spattered brown-red and spackled in gobbets of dried brain matter. Beside the removed step, now set against a stone urn, sit a bronze trip plate and the spring mechanism it once activated. A bloodied boulder has been rolled to the side. Across from the steps stands a larger-than-life stone lion, another boulder readied in its mouth.
The tap-tapping takes them through an octagonal chamber surrounded by marble porticoes. They step over a severed tripwire on the way in. Stacked by type across the chamber floor are hundreds of segmented metal components. These are magical constructs, deconstructed. From the collection of barbed stinger pieces, the automatons appear to have been artificial scorpions.
They continue on through a narrow corridor. It opens into a smallish antechamber, where a hunched halfling figure pokes thin metal wire into an enlarged, multifaceted keyhole. The door is already open. The halfling's lantern, hanging from an ingenious portable pole device, illuminates the bare shelves of an emptied vault.
Strands of white, gray, and ash-blond interweave into a complex construction atop her head. Supported by an intricate copper lattice strategically bedecked with seed pearls and agate shavings, the great mass of hair remains firmly in place and out of her way. Its owner is stout, round of hip and generous of thigh. Skin crinkles around her eyes and at the corners of her mouth. Blocky, jeweled rings adorn her stubby, fast-moving fingers. Ruby powder sparkles on her lips. Beneath her greasy hardened-leather breastplate, frills and ruffs of unaccountably spotless white lace coyly peek, partially obscuring the thin silver chain of a sapphire pendant.
A magnifying eyepiece dangles on a chain from one of the spokes of her hair lattice. She seizes it, planting it firmly in place between brow and cheekbone, and squints deeper into the lock.
"Vitta," says Gad.
"Who's the orc?" says Vitta.
"Half-orc," says Gad.
"That's what they all say." She turns briefly from the lock. "If you're with Gad, and I suppose you are, I'm pleased to make your acquaintance."
"I'm Tiberio."
"Thought you'd sworn off dungeon-hopping," she says, presumably to Gad.
"Never sworn it in. Nice work taking the traps apart."
Vitta snorts. "Had a bit of bother with the fire trap. Not Isano Golemsmith's handiwork, though. Not by a long stretch. The rumors were wrong. As rumors tend to be."
She bangs the lock with the end of a chisel, frowns, and contorts her padded frame to peer into it from below.
"Vitta?" Gad says.
"What?"
"I can't help but notice ..."
"The door I'm trying to unlock is already open?"
At her knee sits a leather case shaped vaguely like a coffin. Its velvet drawers cosset hundreds of small tools of copper, glass, and wood. She selects a brush and jams it fiercely into the lock. Inside, something clicks into place.
"Yes," says Gad. "That is what I couldn't help but notice."
"It was open when the first looters got here. Probably left that way when the inhabitants fled. During the last days of the Volobri Exodus, would be my guess. The entire complex is a disappointment. Except for this lock."
"Some might point out that the door is already open and the vault empty."
"Immaterial. As you well understand. It's a lock I couldn't get—some sort of a counter-tumbling action." She turns a wheel beside the lock. With a snap, the protruding bolt snaps back into the side of the door. Vitta exhales in satisfaction. She detaches the eyepiece from her hair lattice, placing it back in its designated spot inside her case.
"Got something juicy for me then?" she asks.
Vitta hangs upside down, suspended by cords from a scaffold of her own design and construction. Hollow tubes, through tension produced by interior springs, press tight against the wall above.
"Remind me why this is necessary," says Gad.
"Why what is necessary?"
"Hanging from your heels."
"Angle-sensitive tumbler cuffs," answers Vitta. Only a single twist of blond hair has escaped from its assigned position. "Hand me the expander."
He reaches into her case and withdraws a triangular device with a gear in the middle.
Vitta snorts. "The small expander."
Gad gives her a smaller version of the same tool. He peers down the round, metal-shod passageway, through the six doors Vitta has already opened, past the propped-up portcullis, to the guard room a hundred feet away. In less than an hour, guards he hasn't and can't pay off will appear to relieve the ones he could and has.
They are deep beneath Bogilar Fortress, in a vault designed to house its baronial family after demons burrowed into their souls. Due to the terms of their demonic pact, the first generation of the Bogilar clan could not die, except of old age. The horrified second generation built this vault, to keep them in until they did just that. Two generations later, all that is left of the Bogilars is the name of the fortress. Only one occupant now dwells in its vault.
Vitta drops the small expander. The impact sounds like a dropped pin but the sound reverberates and amplifies as it travels down the corridor. Gad stoops and hands it back to her. She places the tool inside the vault lock.
"Now a wad of gauze."
He hands it to her.
"No, don't hand it to me, keep it for the moment. Now find the green vial with the yellow liquid in it."
"Not the green liquid inside the yellow vial?"
"How cleverly amusing."
"Got it."
"Now pour just a dab on the gauze."
"How big is a dab?"
"Don't tell me you don't know how much a dab is. After all this time."
He pours a dab onto the gauze. It smokes, dispersing a rotting onion scent. She takes the gauze and carefully packs it into the lock. It hisses.
Inside the vault, something else hisses back.
Vitta pauses. "Should we be concerned about that?"
"Let me guess and say no," ventures Gad.
"Am I to treat that as certainty?"
"If you choose to believe in the concept."
"In which case, grab me," the halfling instructs.
Gad wraps his arms around her waist and extends his leg muscles, bearing her weight. She yanks on a knot. The contraption releases her. Gad totters, regains his balance, edges over to the wall. His back pressed against it, he pinions his legs, gently placing Vitta on the vault floor. Unruffled by the graceless move, she squirrels hastily to her feet.
The liquid on the gauze has stopped hissing. The voice inside the vault has not. There is anger and joy in it.
"This is truly the only way?" Vitta says.
"You're asking now?"
With a nod, Vitta concedes the point.
Gad explains anyway. "Too many demons come at you from the air. We need a distance man."
"I don't mean that." She runs respectful fingers lovingly over the lock mechanism. "They've no one to repair this properly now."
"That's what you're worried about? The lock?"
"What should I be worried about?"
"Just open it."
She points to a spot above the mechanism. "Strike this part right here with the heel of your hand."
"Why me?"
Vitta shrugs. "Thought you'd like to be a part of history."
"In what sense?"
"This lock has never been cracked. Sola of Escadar tried. Barles Sablecoat didn't even get as far as the third door. In a moment, no one will ever get the chance to break this lock again."
Gad strikes it with the heel of his hand.
Nothing happens.
Vitta sighs. She hits it.
Smoke billows from the circular seam surrounding the mechanism. It seems to contract. Vitta reaches in and pulls out the entire lock.
Red eyes stare back at her from the window she's just created.
"Fire," says the prisoner.
Vitta curls her fingers around the edge of the opening and pulls. The heavy door swings open. Diffuse lantern light floods the darkened cell.
A naked man jogs back from the door to assume a bestial crouch in the corner. Shaggy black hair cascades from his head. It covers his back like a cape. Dark tattoos stain the natural olive of his skin. Pink, shiny patches of burn scar dot his flesh, interrupting whatever patterns might be discerned in the tattoos. The whites of his eyes glisten through spears of drooping hair.
"Burning," says the prisoner.
"Come on, Hendregan," says Gad.
The prisoner blinks and rubs his eyes. He leaps up and down, making no effort to cover his nakedness. Then he takes note of Vitta. He grabs the frizzy hair running down his back and bundles it over his crotch.
"Hendregan can't be trusted. But then, who can?"
"Oh, please," says Vitta.
Gad opens his pack. He tosses Hendregan a loincloth. The prisoner seems puzzled by it at first. He pulls it on, folds it inexpertly, unfurls it, and starts again.
"Hendregan," says Gad, "the guards."
"Burn them?"
"No, don't burn them. Just get yourself together quickly."
The grimacing inmate fumbles with the loincloth, finally arriving at a half-satisfactory arrangement. Gad throws him deerskin leggings and a silk tunic and cloak. The last two items are crimson, with orange cuffs and trim.
Hendregan wraps it tightly around himself. Clothing emphasizes his improbable proportions. He is barrel-chested and muscular above the waist, spindly and pigeon-toed below. "You are Gad, yes?"
"Yes, Hendregan. Gad. You remember."
His scowl is one of confusion. "Do I?"
"Yes, you do."
"Gad ..." He brightens. "Then there is someone to burn?"
"Yes, there is someone to burn."
"Who?"
"Demons."
Hendregan smiles. "Demons. Some burn already. Yet they can also be burnt. Others—the insect ones. Wings wisp away into nothing and smoke. Maggot flesh blackens. Beetle shell crisps. Yes, demons, demons. Burning demons."
"Let's discuss this outside."
"But wait, but wait." The man jigs and trembles. "Why me?"
"You have other pressing engagements?"
"Why do I get to do the burning? What about Esikull?"
"Left Mendev two years back. Let's go."
"Ashetak?"
"Missing."
"Pera?"
"Dead. You are ready for this, yes?"
"Ready?" A new demeanor comes over him. His mad quivering ceases. He claps his hands together, moves toward the exit. A mirror, hanging on the back of the vault door, stops him short. He peers into it, confused. Moves his head from side to side. Realizing that the face he sees is his, he grimaces.
His right hand bursts into flame. He seizes his hair by the fistful. The strands turn orange and disintegrate. He pulls his burning hand over his scalp, until he is completely bald. A few blisters rise along the top of his head.
"I knew it would be you," Hendregan says.
The five ride north for a day. The sky blackens. Spring snow straggles through the air.
The dark bulk of Suma Castle looms into view, barely visible against sooty clouds. Ahead, the trail forks. Travelers may continue on to the monastery of Tala, to other points north, and eventually to Kenabres, the city of witch-hunters. Or they may turn to the west, toward the border, and the domain of Suma.
Gad takes the turn.
Calliard, lagging at the back of the small procession, urges his horse forward. He circles around Gad and his steed.
"You're not ..." he begins.
"We are."
"Of all people, I'm in no position to—"
"That's right, you aren't."
Gad spurs his horse. The others do likewise, and follow.
Suma Castle sits on the lip of a high crag. Its central tower punches into the heavens. Atop it, a vast box of ebon stone implausibly perches, held in place by four sturdy buttresses. Around its base, eroded barracks cluster. These in turn are ringed by neglected workshops and storehouses, and are themselves protected by a serpentine outer parapet. This wall bows and bends, accommodating itself to the shape of the mountainous hill beneath.
The riders' horses strain to find safe footing as the slope to Suma's gate grows steeper. There is only one gatekeeper, an ill-fed man who leans on a crutch.
"You have come to fight?" he asks.
Before Gad can reply, thunderous drums pound from the tower. Winged creatures sweep through the air from across the Worldwound border.
Hendregan, until now slumped slack-jawed in his saddle, comes to life. "We have come to fight!" He savagely spurs his horse. The keeper rushes to cover as the horse bolts through the gate.
A flood of airborne demons, their body shapes recalling both reptiles and monstrously bloated mosquitoes, whine toward the top of the tower. Hendregan slaps his horse on its haunches, accelerating it toward the crest of a sloping road. Turning backward in his saddle, he faces the formation of oncoming demons. With open throat, he holds clawed hands aloft and screams an incantation. Fire erupts from his arms and shoots toward the oncoming fliers. The formation falls apart. Creatures inside the mass see the fire wizard and attempt to peel away. Filmy wings break and carapaces slam together as demons collide. Then the ball of fire is all around them. They pop and crack and come apart. Flaming chunks of burning demon precipitate down, extinguishing themselves on the surrounding rocks and on the stone roofs of emptied barracks. A sizzling stinger lands near the hooves of Hendregan's steed, spooking it. Laughing and screaming, the wizard leaps from its bucking haunches. He lands on bended knee and chants again.
The others pepper the dispersing demon mob with arrows and crossbow bolts. Soldiers spill from the main tower to join the fray.
A winged clump of curdled flesh dives for Hendregan, acid sputum dribbling from spiraled mandibles. Hendregan finishes his spell-speech, firing a ray of scorching heat at it. In midair, the ray splits in two. One of the rays sizzles through the curdled flesh demon, blowing a discharge of boiling innards from its hind end. Another perforates the ropy wings of a worm-headed creature, sending it into a tailspin. It strikes the stone shingles of an armory roof, exploding in a shower of putrid slop.
Calliard places an arrow in his bow and pulls back the drawstring. His aim shifts from a fleeing mosquito-demon, its wings smoking and twisted, to a figure emerging from the inky clouds. As he first observes it, it seems to Calliard as if the being forms itself from the encompassing clouds. Then he recognizes it: a shadow demon, or as the scholars sometimes call them, an invidiak. It flits over to the parapet wall as soldiers from the tower haul themselves up a ladder to defend it. As it moves, its shape flickers, contracts and expands, as a shadow does when it moves between two torches. Though its form alters from one moment to the next, the batlike outline of its wings remains nearly consistent. Each wing converges to a downturned, hooklike projection from its peak. Taloned legs form, vanish, reform and vanish again. Spindly limbs terminate in long, razored fingers. A crown and collar of ever-transforming horns surround an open, toothy maw. Tiny red eyes glow from the top of its flattened head.
They look into Calliard. He feels the demon's awareness moving around inside him. Exploring him. Testing his soul for flaws. Finding them.
He looses his arrow at it, but the demon is out of range, and the attack falls pathetically short.
At the edge of his hearing, a sandpaper laugh intrudes. The demon leaps nimbly from the parapet back into the concealing clouds. The move seems to be a command, or to correspond with one. The remaining demons scatter for the border.
Hendregan takes a succession of marionette leaps as the demons depart. While the castle's defenders lower their bows, he claws his hands together for a final spell. Amid the densest concentration of demons, a second globe of fire materializes. Half a dozen slain demons splatter in smoldering pieces against the tower's southern face. As many more spin in uncontrolled jags through the air as they strive to remain aloft.
In tense silence, the assembled soldiers watch until the rest of the demons are gone. They straighten their backs as the doors at the base of the tower swing open.
A middle-aged man strides out. A coat of gilt brocade, surmounted by a collar of lynx fur, underlines the grandeur of his strut. Gold medallions swing from his neck on matching chains. Atop his head jaunts a felt hat, its upturned peak bordered in silver ribbon. His ginger beard sharpens an otherwise rounded jaw.
Having made his entrance, he halts a few steps outside the doorway, waiting for Gad to come to him.
With unthinking instinct the soldiers form a ragged honor guard for their commander. They array themselves in two wayward lines, one on each side of the pathway. Gad walks their gauntlet, wordlessly greeting each as he passes. Despite broken arms, poisoned skin, sunken cheeks, and layers of scars, the soldiers of Suma proudly return his gaze.
Gad bows to the castle lord. "General Braval," he says.
Braval claps him showily on the shoulders. "Gad. Once more I have cause to thank you. Your men saved mine some trouble." The bravado is manufactured. Small, testing eyes rest uneasily in his face.
"The least we could do," says Gad.
"Passing through, then?"
"You could say that."
Braval's actorly smile fades. "Wherever you're headed, she'll not go with you."
"I can confirm that by asking her."
Braval puts his hand atop Gad's shoulder and squeezes. From a few feet away, the move looks friendly. "Where are you headed?"
Gad tilts his body westward, toward the Worldwound.
Braval's face hardens. "She'll especially not go with you there."
"As I said ..."
"She won't so much as see you."
Gad clucks his tongue.
The Lord General of Suma Castle flushes. "She's standing right behind me, isn't she?"
Gad nods.
Fists at his side, Braval stands aside.
A young woman hovers in the doorway. Auburn hair and a certain straightness of the brow-line mark her as Braval's daughter. There the resemblance ends. She is paler and more hawkish than he. Lank curls tangle loosely from her head. Her chin is pointed, her crimson lips straight and drawn. A light dusting of freckles reaches from cheek to cheek, extending across the ridge of her noise. The tunic and leggings she wears are cut for a boy. Though it is not the intended effect, they heighten the otherwise modest curves of her rangy body. Calliard counts a dozen blades on her belt and knows that there are at least two more in each boot.
She cocks a hip to lean against the doorway, deceptively slim arms firmly crossed.
"Jerisa," Gad says.
"Gad," she replies.
The others gather at the far end of the undeclared honor guard. Vitta pulls on Calliard's cloak to bring him down to her height.
Coming Next Week: A brand new caper featuring characters from Robin D. Laws's The Worldwound Gambit in "The Ironroot Deception."!
Robin D. Laws is the author of the Pathfinder Tales novel The Worldwound Gambit and six other novels, as well as various short stories, web serials, and comic books, plus a long list of roleplaying game products. His novels include Pierced Heart, The Rough and the Smooth, and the Angelika Fleischer series for the Black Library. Robin created the classic RPG Feng Shui and such recent titles as Mutant City Blues, Skulduggery, and the newly redesigned HeroQuest 2. His previous fiction for the Pathfinder campaign setting includes “Plague of Light” in the Serpent’s Skull Adventure Path. Those interested in learning more about Robin are advised to check out his blog.
The Web Fiction Cometh! Wednesday, May 25th, 2011 ... Illustration by Daren Bader ... Here at the Paizo headquarters, we know that our community is made up of busy folks. (After all, we're insanely busy, and we work at a company that makes books about goblins.) We know that the average person surfing our website probably has half a dozen tabs open, is following a dozen different messageboard conversations, is scrolling through his or her email—all while trying to look productive in case...
The Web Fiction Cometh!
Wednesday, May 25th, 2011
Illustration by Daren Bader
Here at the Paizo headquarters, we know that our community is made up of busy folks. (After all, we're insanely busy, and we work at a company that makes books about goblins.) We know that the average person surfing our website probably has half a dozen tabs open, is following a dozen different messageboard conversations, is scrolling through his or her email—all while trying to look productive in case the boss walks by.
Which is why we're switching things up to save you one extra mouse-click per week! Yes! Starting next week, we're going to begin serializing the weekly web fiction as part of the Paizo blog, making it that much easier for you (or your RSS reader) to catch each installment. You'll still be able to find both the latest episode and the whole archive of free web fiction stories collected under the "web fiction" tab at the top of this page, but now it'll pop up here as well.
But that begins next week, with Robin Laws's "The Ironroot Deception." This week, we've got a different Robin-related treat: a sample chapter from his newly released Pathfinder Tales novel The Worldwound Gambit. Click here to get a first look at veteran con man Gad as he attempts to put together the perfect team of thieves and scoundrels for a job in the demon-infested Worldwound—folks like an obsessive and socially oblivious halfling lockbreaker, or a demon-hunting bard-turned-junkie. And of course, as this chapter reveals, no con would be complete without some heavy artillery in the form of an insane, pyromaniac spellcaster...
New Books and Epubs! Wednesday, May 18, 2011It's an exciting day over here in the Pathfinder Tales department! Not only does today introduce the final chapter in Erik Mona's Two Pieces of Tarnished Silver (which you can read right here for free), but it's also the release date of two things that folks have been anxiously awaiting for a while now. ... Illustration by Daren Bader ... The first is Robin Laws' The Worldwound Gambit, a rollicking heist novel set in the demonic madness of the...
New Books and Epubs!
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
It's an exciting day over here in the Pathfinder Tales department! Not only does today introduce the final chapter in Erik Mona's "Two Pieces of Tarnished Silver" (which you can read right here for free), but it's also the release date of two things that folks have been anxiously awaiting for a while now.
Illustration by Daren Bader
The first is Robin Laws' The Worldwound Gambit, a rollicking heist novel set in the demonic madness of the Worldwound. Hitch a ride with veteran con man Gad as he gathers the perfect team of scoundrels and thieves to infiltrate a cult's living tower deep in demon-held territory. Together they'll attempt to pull off the biggest job of their lives, saving their home from destruction and keeping business booming. Along the way, they'll have to deal with insufferable paladins, a dangerously seductive priestess, their own quirks and faults—and of course, plenty of demons. By turns hilarious and disturbing, Robin's new book is a dark, witty romp that will show you Mendev and the Worldwound like you've never seen them before.
Illustration by Jason Engle
The second thing we're proud to unveil is the latest batch of Pathfinder Tales ePubs, which includes not just several of the web fiction stories, but the first three Pathfinder's Journals from Pathfinder Adventure Path, available now in compiled electronic form, complete with all their original illustrations! For years, people have been asking for compiled versions of the journals for ease of reading and transportation—in fact, before he worked here, Mark Moreland compiled all the Eando Kline stories into a self-printed chapbook to read on his commute—and we're glad to finally be able to oblige. Appearing in this first batch are "Hell's Pawns" by Dave Gross, which marks the first appearance of Varian Jeggare and Radovan; "Dark Tapestry" by Elaine Cunningham, which follows the adventures of half-elven Pathfinder and desert druid Channa Ti; and "The Compass Stone: The Collected Journals of Eando Kline," which presents the entire epic journey of Pathfinder Eando Kline from his first appearance in Pathfinder Adventure Path #1 to the stunning conclusion in #18. Much longer than a typical web fiction story, both "Hell's Pawns" and "Dark Tapestry" are full-length novellas, while Eando's story is roughly as long as a Pathfinder Tales novel! "The Compass Stone" also comes complete with a new foreword by yours truly, discussing the evolution of the Pathfinder's Journal, and of Eando's story in particular. Joining these journals are the compiled web fiction tales "Lord of Penance" by Richard Lee Byers and "The Secret of the Rose and Glove" by Kevin Andrew Murphy.
And this is just the beginning! We hope to unveil the next novel in the Pathfinder Tales line fairly soon, and you can look forward to seeing further batches of web fiction stories and Pathfinder's Journals compiled for your electronic reading enjoyment at regular intervals. Because when it comes to Pathfinder fiction, more is better!
