Advanced Race Guide Art Preview

Thursday, May 24, 2012

It's time for another art preview from the Advanced Race Guide, hitting stores near you next month!

While I think we can all agree on how awesome the wayang and ifrit are, for me this entire book is made complete by the wide-eyed grippli. I usually try not to make inflammatory statements on the blog, but I feel comfortable saying that anybody who isn't inspired by the adorable courage of this bold amphibian archer is a little bit dead inside.

Illustrations by J. P. Targete, Jorge Fares, Ben Wootten

James Sutter
Senior Editor

Pathfinder Society in Denmark (or Tidings from the Viking Lodge)

Monday, April 9, 2012

Illustration by J.P. Targete

Last month, we highlighted the UK and Venture-Captain David Harrison's efforts to grow Pathfinder Society there. We now shift our focus to the north and the land of the Vikings. Venture-Captain Diego Winterborg's report on Pathfinder Society in Denmark was a very interesting read for me and I hope all of you find it informative as well.

Denmark is a Scandinavian country made up of a peninsula that is geographically joined to Northern Germany, called Jutland, and a large number of islands southwest of Sweden, the largest of which are Funen and Zealand. Its size and population are roughly the equivalent of Tennessee. Greenland and the Faroe Islands are part of the Danish Rigsfællesskab, or Commonwealth.

The Pathfinder Society Organized Play campaign made its arrival in Denmark in February 2010 when a few friends and I went to a small RPG convention in the town of Odense. Danish RPG conventions are, by their nature, rather small events, and are largely dominated by indie games and a lot of deep-immersion, psychodrama players, so it goes without saying that we made quite an impression with our loud combat-heavy, dice-rolling RPG, which we ran in the convention's common area, for all to see. While we fully expected a lot of people would be provoked by our very different approach to gaming, it gave us an excellent opportunity to engage them in a discussion about the merits of “our game.” By the end of the convention, what started out as a four-man event had drawn in a score of new players and totaled some 10 sessions.

During the summer of 2010, we arranged a game day in honor of then Pathfinder Society Campaign Coordinator, Joshua J. Frost, who was making Copenhagen his first stop on his European tour. His tour culminated at Paizo Con UK that year. Frost was very keen on having a solid PFS presence in Europe, and in Denmark I volunteered for the position of regional coordinator. That is how Denmark, being a small country by most standards, was fortunate enough to be assigned a Venture-Captain with the first round of selections, when the program was born in the fall of 2010.

Early in the fall of 2010, the first game days were planned at the game store, Fantask, in Copenhagen. While the venue is very small and only allows for a single session every other weekend, it has been very reliable and has been a constant for over a year.

Pathfinder Society has since had annual representation in Denmark's two largest gaming conventions, Viking Con and Fastaval, as well as other smaller conventions and game days in and around Copenhagen.

This winter Jacob Trier, who had just recovered from serious illness, volunteered for the position as Venture-Lieutenant based in Jutland. This addition will ensure a stronger presence in the western half of Denmark. By next month, regular store games are expected to start in Dragon's Lair in the city of Aarhus and this year's Fastaval convention will have a locally based Pathfinder Society coordinator.

In 2011, Viking Con and Fastaval had nine Pathfinder Society tables each. This was satisfactory as a very small core of players and GMs drove our continued interest in Pathfinder. This year, however, we are seeing the emergence of more private gaming groups and expect to have a growing GM base for 2012's events.

The primary Pathfinder Society events scheduled for 2012 in Denmark are:

• Spilfestival, on March 24, features Blood under Absalom as its highlighted event. This marks a milestone for the Pathfinder Society in Denmark as it is the first time a Pathfinder Society multi-table special will be run here.
• Fastaval, April 4–8: Danish Pathfinder players will get their first opportunity to play the Season 3 exclusive, The Cyphermage Dilemma. We have 15 tables scheduled over the four days.
• Viking Lodge Game Days are planned for July 28–29. Started in 2010, this is fast becoming a Danish tradition. The plans for this event are still in the planning stages. Participants can count on being among a good number of Paizo fans and having a full day of Pathfinder Society games, followed by a night out in Copenhagen afterward.
• Viking Con 31, October 19—21, is Denmark's largest gaming convention and we will certainly have something special to offer to Pathfinder Society players.

Danish Pathfinder Society events are also receiving a measure of Paizo convention support, which hopefully will increase interest and send a strong signal that Paizo pays attention to its international fans.

To facilitate continued growth of Pathfinder Society, we are making plans with public libraries to start having monthly game days. The success of this plan is still dependant on GMs volunteering to run games. Initially, I am planning game days in Copenhagen libraries only. But, the public library network in Denmark is rather extensive and Pathfinder Society has the potential to reach veritably every Danish roleplayer interested in participating in an organized play campaign.

This brings me to one of my most important points about roleplaying in Denmark. The RPGA and Living Greyhawk never established themselves in our country, and the very concept of an organized play campaign is very new to Danish gamers. According to my friendly local gaming store, Pathfinder RPG sales are increasing, and continued convention scheduling and internet exposition is bound to draw players into the fold one handful at a time. While events to date remain small, we always know we will be among friends as we strive to continue increasing our numbers.

If you live in Denmark or Southern Sweden and are interested in trying out Pathfinder Society Organized Play, you can keep up with our growing community on our website, pathfindersociety.dk. Danish convention organizers and store owners interested in hosting Pathfinder Society events should contact me at pathfinder.society@live.dk.

Diego Winterborg
Venture-Captain

If you are in another country and do not have a Venture-Captain, but think you can do as good a job as Diego did above, please do not hesitate to send me a write-up about Pathfinder Society play in your area of the world and include some photos.

Mike Brock
Pathfinder Society Campaign Coordinator

The Box

by Bill Ward

Chapter Four: Nothing Gained

"Move back!" Kostin shouted, barely parrying a spear thrust to the gut. There were more than a score of the things, each scarcely taller than Shess but like no humanoid Kostin had ever seen. Green-skinned, bedecked with shaggy ropes of dark moss, and armed with crude spears and clubs of human bone, the naked savages fought silently, almost impassively. The sheer weight and surprise of them had pushed Kostin back until he collided with Aeventius.

"Go forward!" Aeventius snarled. A flash of light behind him attracted Kostin's attention, and he spared a quick look. Shoanti, howling for blood, were blocking the hallway that was their only exit. In the instant that Kostin turned he saw white darts of energy burst from Aeventius's wand to sear down the corridor and drop the lead thug dead, leaving black burn holes smoking in the man's chest.

Beside Kostin, Gyrd sung a low, rumbling war-ballad in the skaldic language of his people. His thick Ulfen blade rose and fell grimly, black-green liquid clinging to the steel. He dropped his shield hard down upon the skull of one of the monsters with a sickening crunch, and bulled forward with a roar, scattering the creatures with his charge and clearing a path into the shaman's sanctum.

Kostin parried another wicked jab from his opponent, and sliced his blade down along the spear shaft, lopping the creature's hands off with a snick. The thing made no sound, nor did its expression change as he pushed past it.

"They’re fungus!" Taldara shouted behind him, the twang of her crossbow punctuating her statement. "Cover your nose and mouth!"

But Kostin now had his dagger in his other hand, and was fighting in the style of the Sczarni street duelists he had so loved to emulate as a kid. His blades whistled in a tight arc around him, alternately parrying and striking, the difficulty of landing mortal blows on such diminutive opponents compensated for by their lesser reach. With a wild howl he leaped and spun among them, all fear forgotten now, or else subsumed in his desire to strike.

To his right, Gyrd fought like a juggernaut, hacking fungus-men down and ignoring any blows that landed upon his armored form. Kostin took note of their surroundings for the first time, the floor strewn with carpets and hides in a score of styles and colors, the walls bedecked with a strange intaglio of scrawled symbols, the black altar in one corner of the room shedding a weak radiance from guttering candle-stubs.

It was only then that he noticed the bodies.

They were Shoanti, clearly, or what was left of Shoanti. Each body was sticky with a mass of glistening mold, and each horribly ruptured as if it had burst from the inside. Suddenly Taldara's warning to cover their faces made sense, and Kostin dropped his dagger and riffled one-handed through his pouch for some kind of cloth. Smashing aside an attack from one of the creatures, he turned to shout a warning at Gyrd—and was just in time to see the big man disappear behind a wall of darkness in the room's far corner.

"Light!" Kostin shouted, running toward the place where he had last seen the Ulfen. A lance of pain sent him crashing to the floor, a bone-tipped spear lodged in his thigh. His sword spilled from his hand, landing with a thump on the carpet, just out of reach.

He rolled, hands held up to ward off the blow of a femur club. He could see everything in excruciating detail; the bone club brown with dried blood, poised to strike; the horrible, vacant face of the monster, a thing more plant than animal; and his own hands, held up uselessly, themselves green with the blood of these creatures.

Kostin saw too the silver blade emerge from the thing’s chest just as it was about to strike, and the unholy light go out of its eyes as Shess appeared behind it, her invisibility spell nullified by her attack.

"Stop sitting around, boss!" She tipped him a wink as the monster dropped dead at her feet. He had seen the same little girl enthusiasm in her once before, when picking flowers in a cemetery. She whirled away, blade flashing through the pack of monsters, babbling a cheerful sing-song in the strange language of gnomes.

As Kostin regained his feet and removed the miniature spear—the wound was not deep, but it bled profusely—Aeventius and Taldara were there beside him, fending off the encroaching creatures. There were around a dozen of the things left, surrounding them in a deadly noose.

"I have held the door," Aeventius said, "but it will not last forever. I think we may have a larger problem, however." The wizard gestured to the corner where Gyrd had disappeared. The unnatural darkness emanating from it had rolled back, and the object of Kostin's quest was revealed.

The box.

It stood open atop a seaman's chest, seemingly innocuous, but a dissipating cloud of particles surrounded it in a halo of death. Gyrd lay unconscious at its base among a group of ruined corpses.

"Spores," Taldara said. She had discarded her crossbow in favor of a fighting hatchet, and was laying into a pair of creatures to Kostin’s left. "We have to get to him soon!"

Suddenly it all clicked into place for Kostin. The box—not just bait for a thief, but a trap for a shaman. The Scales had set it up. Dangling a treat the Azahg could not resist, and filling it with a trap he would never be able to counter. Dispel the locks and you still had the darkness spell—and the lethal spores within. Simple; diabolical; and if it weren’t for the stupid greed of Donal Carent feeding Kostin information about such a tempting prize, he would have never been involved in this business.

"We need acid!" Aeventius was shouting at Taldara as Kostin regained focus. A creature leaped over the back of its fellows, spear leveled at the wizard's heart. Aeventius flicked a finger at it in midair, and a force equal to one of Gyrd's hammer fists smashed it in the chest and flung it back the way it had come. "Ask the imp!"

Shess was at his side, slashing with enthusiastic abandon. "Aevy!” she admonished, sounding wounded. “After all we've been through!"

"Acid?" Kostin asked Taldara, as they both danced out of the way of a flailing creature. "To kill the mold?"

"Well I don't know any acid spells either," Shess piped above the din. "I don't like that sort of thing!"

"Tal—what else do you know? How do we kill it?" Kostin was acutely aware that Aeventius's holding spell on the door wasn’t going to last much longer, and they would soon be trading one set of enemies for another.

Taldara caught the spear of a charging creature in the crook of her axe blade and pried the weapon from its hand before driving her fist into the creature's face. Mordimor leaped and slashed around her feet, his oversized claws ripping through fibrous flesh with ease. "Acid and daylight are the best ways—real light, not Aeventius’s ring."

"Not fire?" Kostin asked, driving the point of his sword through the midsection of one of the monsters.

"No," Taldara answered. "Daylight. Acid. And... alcohol. But something hard, high proof stuff."

With a barking laugh, Kostin remembered the leather skin he had confiscated from Gyrd. Judging from the smell of it, it was strong enough to strip paint. Without hesitation he sheathed his weapon and sprang for the box in the corner, wineskin in one hand, the other holding a cloth over his nose and mouth.

"Don't get close!" Taldara shouted behind him, but Kostin saw no other choice. Muttering a prayer to Cayden Cailean, the god of drunks and heroes, he moved in, skin held out at arm's length, the black box that had been the cause of all his problems fixed in his sight.

When he was close enough to see the reddish stuff—clinging to what looked like a clay shingle sitting serenely in the otherwise empty interior of the box—the world suddenly exploded in a cloud of dust.

"The only thing worse than fighting one of these things is becoming one."

Spores. Kostin screwed his eyes tight against them and held his breath beneath the cloth. It suddenly, stupidly occurred to him that this just might be the last thing he ever did.

Not only that, but he might just get everyone else killed in the process. Everyone that was here because of him.

Moving by memory, he lunged forward on his wounded leg, ignoring the bolt of pain that shot up his thigh and the blood squelching in his boot. Reaching what he hoped was the right spot, he upended the strong spirits into the box. For what seemed an eternity he squeezed the skin, lungs hot as forge coals bursting in his chest. The skin of his face and hands tingled unnaturally.

The jack was empty and Kostin dropped it, staggering away while waving his arms and slapping his face and clothing to rid himself of any spores that might have clung to him.

He opened his eyes. The dead creatures all lay heaped in still mounds around his exhausted friends. Kostin smiled, a ready quip on the tip of his tongue, just as the door banged open at the other end of the room.

His smile evaporated as the vanguard of the Shoanti mob poured into the sanctum. But a crazy notion seized him in the same moment, and he rushed to meet the gang, arms spread wide and teeth bared.

"Behold the vengeance of the Night Scales!" Kostin bellowed in a voice that sounded like the arrival of a god.

The Shoanti froze.

Kostin grinned his most intimidating of grins, conscious of the fact that he was covered in green ichor and spore dust. He pointed at the bodies that littered the rooms, both the horribly mutilated corpses of the Shoanti shaman and his women, and those of the strange fungus people.

"Thus do those who cross us die: souless and damned for all time. Come to me and join your master in Urgathoa's belly—or flee the city tonight!" Kostin roared, ranting like a stage villain.

Behind him Shess murmured, and a ghostly image appeared between Kostin and the Shoanti. It was vaguely man-shaped and glowed with its own inner light.

"Witness his agonies as I wrack his soul!" Kostin howled, throwing both hands into the air. Before him the image writhed and flickered like a storm-blown candle flame.

It was a stampede. The Shoanti, all will to fight broken, scrambled for the door. Their howls had turned into those of whipped dogs, and reverberated down the hallway until they were well out of sight.

Shess giggled, her illusion winking out of existence.

Taldara moved instantly to Gyrd's side, the threat from the spores extinguished by the Ulfen’s own potent draught. She searched frantically through her small pack, discarding a slew of items strange and sundry, before snatching up what she had sought. She brought the small phial to the Ulfen's bearded lips, and tilted it down.

"That should kill the spores, but he’s still going to hurt like hell. Maybe if we get this mail off, two of us will be able to manage him." She wiped sweat from her forehead.

"Let us be away from here first," Aeventius said. Producing a pinch of coarse, brown hair from his pouch, he intoned the words of a spell. His ring flashed.

Walking over to the massive warrior, Aeventius bent down and hoisted him onto his shoulder with barely a grunt. "Although," he said casually, chainmailed form balanced on his shoulder as easily as if it had been a child, "if we run into anything more dangerous than another locked door this evening, I am of no more use."

They moved quickly back the way they had come, not daring to explore the complex any further in case some of the Shoanti returned, and everyone aware that Aeventius's unnatural strength could only last for a few minutes.

They encountered no one. Retracing their steps to the same alleyway where they had ambushed the first pair of guards, Aeventius set his burden down unceremoniously. Taldara dashed away, intent on hiring a horse or mule from the livery yard on Kindrucker Street. Kostin moved to accompany her, but Aeventius pushed past him with alarming intensity, saying something about not being left behind with “the imp.”

Kostin sighed and slipped down next to Gyrd’s sleeping form. He straightened his wounded leg, tightening the hasty bandage that was half-soaked through with blood. "Looks like this was a wash. Lucky you got paid up front in Sczarni silver, right little one?"

Shess shrugged, trying to adjust her overlarge spectacles, which had been bent in the fight. With a pout she plucked them from her button nose and pitched them into the dark.

"Oh, I don't know,” she said, a grin sneaking over her face. "It was interesting. Plus we get equal shares of this thing I grabbed off the altar." From her pouch, Shess produced a sun-bleached goat's skull. It would have been hideous if it were not for the dozens of fine-cut gemstones clustered around its golden eye sockets.

Kostin threw his head back and laughed. For the first time in seemingly forever, he really meant it.

Coming Next Week: Assassination in the markets of Katapesh in Steven Savile’s “Blood and Money.”

Bill Ward is the author of more than 40 short stories for venues like Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Every Day Fiction, Morpheus Tales, Rogue Blades Entertainment, and more, as well as game work for companies such as i-Kore and Urban Mammoth. A diehard fan of pulp adventure, he’s also an editor at the flagship sword and sorcery magazine Black Gate. For more information, visit his website at billwardwriter.com.

Illustration by J. P. Targete.

The Box

by Bill Ward

Chapter Three: Nothing Ventured

The girls were, by any objective standards, far too beautiful for the Point. But in the dim glow of the dockyard lights they did the trick. Silently the trio gestured, gyrating hips that would make the women of the Keleshite Emperor's harem seem bony lads in comparison, their impossible skin as smooth and silver as the moon above. Their black tresses—tinged with a seaweed green—hung in long clinging strands that managed to suggest more than they concealed. They were, when it came down to it, completely irresistible.

If you were born yesterday, Kostin thought with a smirk.

The pair of Shoanti thugs guarding the old rum joint moved toward the gorgeous trinity like fish pursuing a hooked worm. When they passed through the darkest and narrowest part of the alleyway, Kostin struck.

He slipped in behind the leftmost guard and smashed across the base of his skull with a lead-filled sap. The man dropped.

Opposite him in the dark a giant figure loomed up, felling the second Shoanti with a single blow from a sledgehammer fist.

"Nice hit, Gyrd," Kostin said, gritting his teeth as his voice came out too loud.

At the end of the alley, the three nymphs gave a silent cheer, flinging their arms up and bouncing on their heels like schoolchildren.

Kostin swiftly bound the arms of the unconscious Shoanti with rawhide tethers and gagged them with wads of cloth. Gyrd stepped in when he was finished, reeking of sour sweat and stale mead, and threw a guard over each broad shoulder. The Ulfen's chainmail jangled under the load. Kostin pointed further down the alley and the big northerner stomped off with his cargo to dump them where they would not be found until morning.

"Enough with the girls," Kostin said through clenched teeth, noting that the illusory threesome was now engaged in activity fit to make a Calistrian blush. With a final, sensuous wave they winked out of existence—and a child-sized figure vaulted onto a nearby stack of discarded casks and gave a bow.

"Not too bad, yeah?" Her voice was the very model of gnomish enthusiasm. "I actually met a sea-nymph once, you know. And so I took her likeness and this tavern girl that Gyrd used to know—well, everyone used to know, apparently—and—"

"Yes, Shess. But we need to keep quiet—" Kostin was interrupted by the sudden flaring of a light behind him.

Whirling around and drawing his sword in the same motion, he saw Aeventius and Taldara walking up from the opposite end of the alley. A glow like daylight emerged from the wizard's left hand, from the onyx and platinum ring that bore his family seal and was an integral part of his magic.

Aeventius held up his other hand before the livid Kostin could speak. "There are no watchers outside, no windows—the light is safe. But just to keep you from making faces..." The wizard—dressed more appropriately for a night at the opera than a raid into a dockside gang's stronghold—cupped his hand over the ring and brought the daytime radiance back down to something approaching a dim lantern.

"What's she doing here?" Kostin stage whispered, gesturing at Taldara.

The half-elf stepped between Aeventius and Kostin before the wizard could answer. "Why is that the first thing everyone says when I show up? You got me into this, Kostin—"

"Not this!"

"Yes, this. The box, the Shoanti—staying up all night and watching them try to save your father's house. Don't think it's all about you—he was a father to me long before I ever met mine. Besides," Taldara smirked, raising the crossbow she held at the ready, "this is better than sketching the Irespan all day." Her badger, wobbling where it clung to her right shoulder, chattered agreement.

"She followed me," Aeventius added.

"You aren't hard to track—and a city isn't so much different than the wilderness, especially the city where I grew up."

Just then Gyrd reappeared like some vast berg of steel and flesh.

Aeventius let out an audible sigh. "Of course, where the imp goes, the ogre follows. You smell like an alehouse latrine."

"That's where we found him!" Shess piped up, bouncing to Aeventius's side. The wizard flinched away.

Gyrd, bearded face impassive behind a tangle of red and gray hair, took a long pull from a leather drinking skin. The raw, almost chemical odor of potent spirits rolled out from him like an aura.

"None of this!" Kostin said, snatching the bag from Gyrd before the giant could react. "You can have it back when we're done."

"What did you think of my casting, Aevy?" Shess gazed up at the wizard through a shock of emerald green hair.

Kostin interrupted, clearing his throat. "Enough talking. Come." He moved back down the alley toward the old rum house.

"Too beautiful," Aeventius said to the gnome as he turned to follow Kostin. "And do not ever call me that."

"Of course!" Shess said, skipping in stride with the wizard. "I always knew you liked your women short and green!"

"It seems Taldara picked up a number of new skills in her years away from home."

Taldara moved to Kostin’s side. "Aren't you going to introduce me to your, um, 'gang?'"

"Certainly. Forgive my manners," Irritation creeping into his voice, Kostin turned back around. The group halted.

"This here is Shess, the best little sneak thief in Magnimar."

The gnome, beaming, gave a mock curtsey. She was dressed in a patchwork of styles and colors, resembling something like a collision between a Chelish noble, a Tian merchant, a Sczarni blade, and an Ulfen minstrel.

"And Gyrd here is, um..."

"Blacksmith," the giant answered, no expression on his ruddy, heavily scarred face. His chainmail hauberk gleamed dully in the light, and he held a battle-dinted round shield in his left hand. Gyrd looked as if he had just stepped out from a shieldwall—and was aching to get back.

"Really?" Kostin asked, surprised. "Well, ah, everyone, this is my oldest friend, Taldara, who is some sort of big deal Pathfinder now."

"Ooh," said Shess, eyes round with interest as she studied Taldara. "But I thought Aevy was your oldest friend."

"I thought I was his only friend," Aeventius said blandly.

Taldara smiled and opened her mouth to reply, but Kostin grabbed her arm and tugged her along behind him. "Plenty of time for all of this later!" he said over his shoulder. The rest followed.

Aeventius was correct in that there were no signs of observation from the rum house. It was as Kapteo Giuleppeschi had said—the place was boarded up and abandoned. The Sczarni boss had come through for him that afternoon, granting him not only his silver, but valuable information about the Shoanti hideout. Kostin had modified his original plan to storm their front door in favor of this one—to come in undetected through the secret back entrance the Shoanti used to slip in and out along the shore side of the Point. Further west of here was the Wyrmwatch lighthouse, marking the spot where the great Indros had battled the sea dragon. South and east, and you had a tumble of smugglers' wharfs along the mouth of the Yondabakari leading down into the slums of Rag's End. It was a good location for a pack of robbers and thugs.

"Door is clear," Aeventius said behind him, and Kostin turned to see the wizard's eyes glowing with an eldritch blue light.

The guards had not had any keys on them. "Alright. Shess, you're better at this than me. Get us in there."

"Yes, sir!" Shess, saluting Kostin ridiculously, leaped onto Gyrd's back. Drawing her sword, the gnome leveled it at the door like a cavalry officer ordering a charge. "Smash it, Gyrd!"

Before Kostin could react the Northman—Shess still clinging to his back—raised his shield and launched himself shoulder-first at the door. It crashed inward with a splintering boom.

"'Best little sneak thief in Magnimar,'" said Taldara, covering the door with her crossbow. Aeventius snorted in amused agreement.

Kostin, sword drawn and teeth clenched in annoyed disbelief, entered after the mad gnome and the half-drunk warrior.

Inside it was dark and empty. A few sprung and moldering casks rested against the walls, and the odd sliver of wood or twist of ship's rope littered the ground. On the far wall a doorless portal yawned blackly.

"So far it's as the kapteo claimed," Kostin said. "The old cellar of this place abuts the sunken warehouse. From there we’re right at the shaman's quarters. Most of the Shoanti should be on the other side, in the warehouse proper. We nip in, take down Azahg, get the box, set some fires, and get the hell out again. Questions?"

Shess raised her hand and Kostin pushed it back down. The others shook their heads.

"Alright, then. Let's go."

The way ahead was easy to see—years of wear had left a path of dirt and scraped stone for them to follow. The blocks of the cellar wall had been pried out to form a crude doorway into the domain of the warehouse—a shoddily built structure that had sunk and partially collapsed at its south end and had long been abandoned by any legitimate concerns. Scrabbling through the wall and into the building, they followed a sloping and precarious floor upward. Kostin wiped sweat from his eyes; the air in the warehouse was close and redolent with the stench of mold and decay.

A flickering light ahead caused Aeventius to clamp a hand tightly over his radiant ring.

There were two of them, talking animatedly in the guttural cadences of the Shoanti. Gyrd tensed as if to spring forward, but Taldara clapped a hand on his shoulder and bade him be still. With her other hand she held a finger to her lips, urging them all to stay quiet.

After a brief exchange, both Shoanti moved off down the corridor.

Taldara turned to the group. "They say Azahg and his wives have been a night and a day in his sanctum, and they worry. They wish to know what powerful treasure he has discovered in the box, but also do not know if they should counter his orders and try to enter his rooms." Taldara shrugged. "At least that's the most I could get out of it."

"You speak Shoanti," Kostin said, impressed.

"They aren't all bad, you know. I think they may have had to come to the city to turn into this." Taldara scratched her badger behind the ear. Lifting it gently from her shoulder, she nuzzled it before placing it on the ground.

"Mordimor will scout they way for us," she continued as the badger zipped off down the corridor. Taldara closed her eyes and drew a shape in the air.

"Tal, are you—" Kostin stopped at a sudden smack on the arm from Aeventius, who gestured for silence.

The badger returned as swiftly as he had left, and Taldara muttered a few words in a language Kostin had never heard, one different from the ancient tongue of magic he had listened to Aeventius utter on so many occasions.

Mordimor leaped into Taldara's arms, and the two commenced to have the strangest conversation Kostin had ever witnessed.

"He says it's clear, but he gets a bad feeling about the shaman's door. Or, maybe, what's on the other side of it." Taldara plopped the badger back up on her shoulder. It still muttered at her ear and Taldara cocked a playful smile. "He also says the wizard should go first."

"A woodland wit," Aeventius said, scowling.

Kostin led the way, stalking ahead with barely a sound. Shess followed, moving silently with little effort. Taldara and Aeventius came next, creeping forward with careful steps. Gyrd shuffled in the rear, heavy one-handed sword drawn, armor tinkling despite his apparent caution.

They paused at the door for a time while Aeventius and Shess examined it—the wizard scanning for magical emanations and the thief checking for traps.

Shess, now wearing a ridiculous pair of spectacles devoid of their lenses, gave a thumbs-up, while Aeventius murmured something incomprehensible under his breath. Finally, he turned to Kostin. "I can open it, whenever we’re ready."

Kostin surveyed his team. Gyrd, wicked smile on his face and skin flushed with battle lust and booze, had positioned himself at the door, ready to storm in. Taldara was beside him, eyebrows knit in concentration, crossbow leveled to cover Gyrd's flank. Shess bounced on her heels, eager as a child at the fair, her blade gleaming silver and naked in her tiny fist. Aeventius waited patiently, back straight as any aristocrat, a slender black wand in his hand.

Kostin moved into position next to Gyrd, and took a deep breath in an attempt to strike a mental deal with his heart to stop thundering in his chest. He loosened his grip on his sword and bent his knees slightly. A cold serpent of sweat trickled down his spine.

"Do it," he said, left hand poised above the door's handle.

A word from Aeventius and the door lock opened with an audible clack.

Kostin flung open the door to the shaman's sanctum—and a horde of creatures burst forth.

Coming Next Week: The triumphant conclusion to Bill Ward's "The Box."

Bill Ward is the author of more than 40 short stories for venues like Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Every Day Fiction, Morpheus Tales, Rogue Blades Entertainment, and more, as well as game work for companies such as i-Kore and Urban Mammoth. A diehard fan of pulp adventure, he’s also an editor at the flagship sword and sorcery magazine Black Gate. For more information, visit his website at billwardwriter.com.

Illustration by J. P. Targete.

The Box

by Bill Ward

Click here to read this story from the beginning.

Chapter Two: Where the Heart Is

It had been a busy day.

Kostin, sucking on split knuckles, tried to look nonchalant as he waited near the entrance to the courtyard. "Looks like rain again," he said to the hatchet-faced Sczarni blade that eyed him like a bird of prey studying a mouse. The guard did not reply.

Kostin nodded good-naturedly, as if they were two old friends completely comfortable sharing each other's silence. He casually let his gaze wander over the peeling plaster of the courtyard arch, studying the thug out of the corner of his eye as he did so. The man's clothing was a loose-fitting bloused shirt, brocaded at the sides in red and yellow, spilling out from a tight woven vest in crazy-quilt style. His trousers were a faded crimson stuffed into sailor's boots. He wore more jewelry than a dockyard trollop, and his hair hung in heavy black curls to the center of his chest.

Noticing the scrutiny, the guard shifted, hooking his thumb into his broad sash, resting his hand close to the curved knife he wore naked and gleaming at his side like the chip-edged cutlass of some Shackles pirate. You had to admire the Sczarni, Kostin thought; they really played the whole Varisian thug act to the hilt.

Granted, Kostin himself had been playing at the same game scant hours ago—but at least he didn’t look like he’d just stepped down from a covered wagon.

"Come," said another Sczarni stalking up out of the courtyard proper. "The kapteo will see you."

"Nice talking to you," Kostin said with a smirk to his minder, before pivoting on his heels to leave.

"Muschi-uepoi," the guard spat at his back. Kostin's stride wavered for the blink of an eye, then he kept moving.

It was the old, familiar insult: muschi-uepoi, or “mossback.” One of the highest forms of contempt in the Varisian lexicon. A verbal dart most appropriate for cowards and nestlings who had never gone out to travel the world, citified dandies who had fallen from the true ways of the People and turned away from their heritage. As far back as Kostin could remember, he had been told this—told that he was not a real Varisian.

Rather amusing, then, to think that poor Donal Carent, Kostin's informer at Dockway’s south impound lot, had utterly no notion of this. No, for Donal, Kostin was the sum total image of the Varisian criminal underworld—a veritable Sczarni bandit chief. That was probably why, when Kostin had paid him a surprise visit this morning fresh from sifting through the ashes of what had once been his home, Donal only needed minor persuading to spill everything he knew.

Kostin sucked again at the cut on his knuckle, and thought of the damned box as he followed the Sczarni thug to the kapteo's tent.

Among the Sczarni, a shoemaker is never just a shoemaker.

Tent. Here they were in Magnimar, a city that boasted more buildings than it did people to live in them for much of the year, and the chief of the Wreckwash Blades lived in a damned tent. The courtyard was central to an entire block of tenements, all bursting with the Blades' families, but the kapteo himself maintained the central position in what resembled a typical Varisian traveling camp. Tents and wagons littered the area, as did the slow cookfires of a dozen potato-faced matrons, busy monitoring their spicy chap'vwlash trail stews with one eye while keeping the other fixed on the chaos of their barefoot grandchildren. An ironsmith pounded out nails at an open-air anvil, a turner hunched over a foot-pumped lathe, and a gaggle of women took turns milling at a portable grindstone. If it were not for the clotheslines stretching overhead from window to window, Kostin would have forgotten he was in the city at all.

They came up short of the kapteo's tent, a green silk dome that was as humble in size as it was rich in material. Kostin's escort snapped his fingers for attention and performed a curious gesture, a raising and parting of the hands before the face. "Do this when you enter. Let me see you try."

Kostin obeyed, imitating the gesture perfectly and adding a few flourishes of his own.

"Good enough," the guard grunted. Kostin thanked him.

The man spat on the ground. "I do not show you for your thanks, muschi-uepoi, but only so that you do no dishonor to the kapteo."

"Well, thanks anyway," Kostin muttered as he stepped inside the tent.

In the smoky light of a single, sputtering lantern, the kapteo of the Wreckwash Blades was hard at work mending shoes.

"Ah… Kapteo Giuleppeschi…?" Kostin asked, confused. Could this really be the captain of a criminal clan?

"Sit," said the old man, not bothering to look up from the floor and the simple leather shoe he was hunched over. Arrayed about him were well-worn tools of the shoemaker's trade.

Kostin performed the gesture of obeisance he had been shown, uncertain if the man had even seen it, and sat down cross-legged on a brocaded pillow.

Waiting in silence, Kostin watched the kapteo's strong hands draw sinew thread through the tough old leather of the shoe. After a space of time that Kostin could not measure, the kapteo spoke.

"In life," he said, putting down the shoe and raising his washed-out blue eyes to look directly at Kostin for the first time, "we do what we must. My father made shoes, and so I have the skill. Your father was a good man, Kostinnavolus, and so I wonder why you are perhaps a bad one?"

Startled to hear his full name from the mouth of a stranger, Kostin blurted, "You didn’t know my father."

The kapteo nodded. "True. I only knew of him. There was a time when I knew all the comings and goings of the People from Rag's End to the Underbridge. He was a good man, as you know. He would not cross silver with us, with any clan. And for that we loved him in our way—he was as the stone that does not feel the storm. A strong man is like that, yes? Do you follow?"

"I…" Kostin was at a loss for words. He glanced down at his dirty breeches, ash-smeared from the scorched remains of his father's home. He was conscious for the first time of smelling like smoke.

"But you are here, now." The kapteo grinned, leaning back in evident satisfaction. "And that can only mean you have failed him, yes? You are a boy in trouble, a boy in a man's body, just as any nestling who has hid like a child from the world." It was said mildly, matter-of-factly, but the venom of the old man's words was palpable.

Kostin, anger kindled, locked eyes with the kapteo and bared his teeth.

"A friend is an enemy's enemy," Kostin quoted the old Varisian saying. "It's the same in every language, kapteo. I'm not here for a handout, and Desna take your insults. I'm here to make a deal about the Shoanti."

The kapteo raised one bushy white eyebrow and gestured for Kostin to continue.

"The worst scum in Beacon Point—what do they call themselves? The Iron Eaters? Something ridiculous. We both want them out of the picture—only you have an agreement with the Night Scales not to touch them. They're the Scales' blunt instruments in this part of town, and they push and push at you and all you can do is complain to navedo bosses that life isn't fair." Kostin stopped, took a breath, and noticed his hands were knotted into fists. "I can get rid of them."

A calculating look crept into the old man's eyes. "If one pretends the Scales will ignore what they can surely find out about such a deal, what do you want from us?"

Kostin named his figure.

The kapteo licked his lips before speaking. "A lot of coin. It will take time to raise such a loan."

Kostin hissed a choice Varisian oath and slammed his hand into the ground between them, sending a leather-punch skittering across the carpets. The old man's eyes flashed fire, and his hand slipped to the hilt of his blade.

"It isn't a loan, you old cheat. Either I get it done, in which case it's payment. Or I don't—in which case I'm dead, either at their hands or yours. And I don't need coin. Hacksilver, trade bits, ingots—hell, dinnerware is fine, just have it for me by this time tomorrow. I have people that need to get paid."

The kapteo shook his head, his anger giving way to amusement. "Too much risk. I cannot say yes to this. But it is good to see the spirit of the People is still in you, mossback."

Kostin leaned back and smiled. "You don't know the best part yet, kapteo. I admit that I'm an unknown quantity to you—my abilities in this area cannot be seen as a guarantee. But the real risk you’re talking about is retaliation from the Scales." Kostin scrutinized the old man, noting his interest. "But the Scales grow tired of their alley dogs, and they've already tried to arrange the killing of the Shoanti Azahg, the mad shaman that holds their leash."

"And I am to take your word at this? You would say anything; I see revenge in your eyes."

Kostin stood. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled forth a wad of fire-blackened cloth, its former intricate and multi-hued pattern barely discernable. It was his kapenia, his family scarf. The story of his parents and his parents' parents, the story of his life before it had been given him. He dropped the ruined thing before the old man.

The kapteo smoothed the garment with bent fingers, and said nothing.

"This time, tomorrow. It's enough time to check my story. One of Symirkova's brats down at the Bazaar can tell you all about the Kellid freelancer who took a shot at Azahg, and how the deal was brokered by a couple of town guards called Marster and Dennebris. Maybe you've already heard of that pair—they certainly run their mouths enough. The girls of half-a-dozen Lowcleft dance halls had plenty to repeat about those two, about how they like to go around spending Night Scales silver and playing the big men."

Kostin declined to mention the remaining link in the chain of information he had uncovered this morning—that it was Donal Carent that had sent him sniffing after Marster and Dennebris, the two men that had rolled into Dockyard impound one day with a cartful of supposedly confiscated sundries and a false bill of lading. Their cargo had disappeared by the end of the day, gone home in the pockets and pouches of a score of guards and officials. All their cargo, that is, except for a black, wizard-locked box.

The kapteo spoke after a moment's consideration, "If this is true, then the Scales will take care of our problem for us."

Kostin shook his head. "The Scales want to cut off the head of the beast, to better control it. If they do that, your problem doesn't go away. If you back me on this, what's left of the Shoanti will turn tail and scatter and the Scales won't press the issue. It's the navedo way—they won't blood feud over a pack of foreign gutter grubbers that they have already grown tired of."

Kostin paused, studying the kapteo as he sat motionless in the dim interior, the old man's hands moving delicately over the ruined fabric of the Dalakcz kapenia.

"Let it be Sczarni silver," Kostin interjected into the silence that had fallen between them, "and a Varisian hand that accomplishes this task. That is our way."

The kapteo nodded, once, decision made. "Tomorrow you will have your silver, if what you say is true. Desna walk with you, Kostinnavolus, and may she light your path."

"And yours, kapteo. My thanks." Kostin bowed and slipped from the tent, fighting to keep a grin off of his face.

Outside the sky had cleared, and the first stars of early evening stood out like hard diamonds in the fading blue. A day ago he had brought the box into his home, the home he had watched burn from the fifth floor of the Rope Works building while bucket teams scrambled to douse it. A day ago his life had changed forever.

It was time to hit back. Time to cash in some favors, make some promises, and build his team.

Coming Next Week: Careful scheming and creative recruiting in Chapter Three of Bill Ward's "The Box."

Bill Ward is the author of more than 40 short stories for venues like Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Every Day Fiction, Morpheus Tales, Rogue Blades Entertainment, and more, as well as game work for companies such as i-Kore and Urban Mammoth. A diehard fan of pulp adventure, he’s also an editor at the flagship sword and sorcery magazine Black Gate. For more information, visit his website at billwardwriter.com.

Illustration by J. P. Targete.

The Box

by Bill Ward

Chapter One: Win Some, Lose Some

Kostin talked as he circled the box, a cube of black wood a forearm's length across resting on a table at the center of the junk-cluttered attic room. The afternoon's heist had come off without a hitch, and Kostin was still basking in the giddy afterglow of his success; his mind and mouth, as the old Varisian saying went, were determined to outrace one another. It had taken every scrap of will he possessed to leave the box alone until his friends had arrived that evening. Kostin knew that the real danger with a score like this was not so much in the stealing of the thing, but in the opening. Whatever this box was—and by extension whatever was in it—was special. The exact kind of special that made fortunes and got people killed in equal measure.

"So... to the box itself." Kostin, having finished his retelling of the day's con, got on with the business of the evening. "The wood is clearly onyx bark from the Mwangi Expanse, spot-lacquered in the Vudran style. The inlay is most likely the work of a Chelish silversmith, and the locking mechanism—at least what is visible so far—is almost certainly of dwarven make. Agree?"

"Not even close." Aeventius Reatés, scion of one of Magnimar's oldest—and now most impoverished—families, looked up from his scrutiny of the box to fix his glowing eyes on Kostin. "But it is wizard-locked. And why exactly is... she... here for this?"

"The name's Taldara, Aeventius," The third member of the group was a tall blonde leaning uncomfortably on the edge of a wobble-legged Galtan dining table. "Though I suppose feigning ignorance of my name is just your way of making me feel welcome after all these years." Taldara paused to scratch the head of the sleek badger draping her right shoulder and shifted her gaze toward Kostin. "As far as why I'm here, well, our mutual friend lied to me."

Most Chelaxians assume every Varisian’s a thief. In Kostin’s case, they’d be right.

Spreading both hands in a gesture of pleading innocence, Kostin deployed his most charming half-smile. "We could still be looking at a major find, Tal. Besides, isn't this more fun than sketching the Irespan all day? You should be flattered I trust you with something like this."

Aeventius, the bluish glow of the detection spell fading from his eyes, pushed his way irritably past Kostin to examine the box from another angle. Tall and sharp-featured, with jet-black hair sweeping back from a high forehead, the wizard looked every bit the full-blood Azlanti he claimed to be. "There are precautions we must take before..." Aeventius trailed off and cocked his head, listening. "Someone at your door."

"Flattered!" Ignoring the wizard, Taldara shot to her feet and took a step toward Kostin. She wore her fair hair back in a single, thick braid that exposed the pronounced tips of her ears, lending her a somewhat severe aspect. "You told me exactly what you knew would get me here. And now it seems that, in addition to this having nothing to do with Thassilonian artifacts, we've come to help you appraise stolen goods."

Caught with your hand in another man's pocket, Kostin thought. How is it he could coolly lie his way into Dockway's cargo impound with little more than an inexpertly forged writ of seizure and a cocky swagger, but this girl so completely disarmed him? Woman now, he corrected. It had after all been twelve years, long enough for even someone with Taldara's half-elven heritage to leave childhood completely behind and grow into someone new, a stranger.

And stranger she was, returning to Magnimar a world traveler, scholar, and newly minted Pathfinder—far more than Kostin had managed to do for himself. No, Kostin Dalakcz had stayed behind—stayed behind and become exactly what the predominantly Chelish population of his city suspected all Varisians of being: a thief.

At least he didn't run a harrow parlor.

"Would you answer that damn door already?" Aeventius spoke without looking up from the box, and Kostin, noting the banging downstairs for the first time, tore his attention away from Taldara. No, he did not run a harrow parlor, but he did run that most ubiquitous of Varisian institutions: the odds and ends shop. Among the citified Varisians who, like Kostin's father, had given up their wandering to settle throughout the Shore District of Magnimar, the small import-export emporiums like Dalakcz Durables of Callowcaulk Street, Beacon's Point, were a profitable link between the inland caravans and the sea.

Of course, such businesses had proven even more lucrative as fronts and fences for stolen goods, and if Kostin's father could see what had become of his once above-board shop, he would no doubt spit curses enough to make an Ulfen blush.

The banging three stories down had changed—it now sounded more like someone trying to smash down the door. Kostin could feel the vibrations through the floor with each blow.

"Probably some dumb drunk stevedore looking for the Whale's Belly," he growled, kicking his way toward the street-side windows through the detritus of the loft; a clutter of unsaleable items like a litterbin for all Golarion. Forcing open a window, Kostin leaned out. "Two blocks shoreward, you souse!"

The pane above him shattered before Kostin even registered the crossbow-armed thugs arrayed in the street below. He ducked back inside, collapsing to the floor and upsetting a standing shelf full of brass fittings and tarnished silverware. Another thunk drew his attention to the ceiling, where a second crossbow bolt buried itself a hand's breadth away from the first.

There must have been fifteen of them out there, that damn Shoanti gutter-gang bristling with weapons and painted for war.

Downstairs the door crashed in with a splintering final boom.

"New friends, or old?" Aeventius asked, stretching to his full height and cracking his knuckles. Taldara had rushed to Kostin's side, checking him for injuries. Her badger hissed eerily, bristling in agitation as it clung to her shoulder with curled nails the length of a man's fingers. Until that moment it had seemed a mere cute pet to Kostin, with its black-and-white face and bumbling demeanor—now it seemed about as cuddly as a war dog.

Kostin scrambled to his feet, glass crunching beneath his boots. The sounds of destruction rose muffled from the first floor. The shop was being trashed. "New," he said in answer to the wizard's question. "A dozen or more. But I never crossed any Shoanti. "

Aeventius tapped a finger on the polished lid of the stolen box. "I do not believe in coincidence."

Kostin shook his head as he strapped on his sword belt. It sounded as if a cavalry squadron maneuvered downstairs—or a single, epileptic giant flailed about in destructive seizure. "Not these guys. Small-time thugs running low-level stuff between the Point and Rag's End. A real headache for the Sczarni, but not someone like me. If anyone would be looking for the box, I'd expect the Scales, or one of the Shadow bosses. These guys are street trash."

"Sounds like the 'street trash' have just reached the second floor," Taldara said, drawing a long knife from beneath her jacket.

Aeventius, stooping low under the slanted ceiling at the far end of the room, was already peering out the alley-side windows. "Seems clear. Difficult to tell."

Leaning with one ear pressed against the attic's only door and listening to the intruders' chaos, Kostin uttered a string of fluent Varisian under his breath. "We could fight..."

"Don’t be a fool," countered the wizard.

"It's my home, Aevy," said Kostin.

"It is our lives I am thinking of," Aeventius said, raising the window and once again inspecting the street. "And I told you never to call me that."

"He's right," Taldara agreed. Pulling Kostin away from the door, she began to drag the heavy Galtan dining table to bar the passage.

"Desna laughs," Kostin hissed between clenched teeth before joining Taldara with the table. Shouts and the sounds of rampage had grown closer, now coming from the stairwell.

Behind them Aeventius was intoning a spell, uttering the strange language of magic as if he had been born to it. Kostin turned in time to see the flash of the wizard's ring, and the unstoppering of a phial in his other hand. Bringing the phial to his lips, Aeventius sucked up the contents with a sharp intake of breath. Kostin knew from experience that the wizard had just eaten a live spider, and judging from the grimace on his friend's face it had probably been a large one.

"Come," Aeventius said, before vaulting out of the window with the practiced ease of an acrobat.

"You next," Kostin said to Taldara. Behind them, the door boomed as if hit with a siege ram. "Go up." She did not argue, following Aeventius through the window with more composure than Kostin would have ever expected. He scooped up the mage-locked box—was it really the cause of all this?—and climbed through the window just as the attic door splintered from its hinges, toppling the primitive barricade. The howls of the Shoanti spilled out into the night after him.

The edge of the roof was within easy reach, and Kostin hoisted himself up one-handed, with Taldara's aid. From the vantage of the slate roof he could see his building—of which his rented storefront and apartments comprised but a tenth—stretching away to north and south. To his right, across the alley, the old five-story Rope Works building blocked their sight of the landward portion of the city, but the convoluted tangle of warehouses, dockyards, taverns, and tenements that comprised the shoreward view dazzled with alternating patches of light and dark.

The warm flicker of torches below stole his attention—some of the Shoanti, shouting and whooping like a pack of wild dogs, had run around into the alley to block any escape.

Breathing deeply of the cool, sea-tanged night air, Kostin struck out northward, Aeventius and Taldara at his heels. Before him loomed the dark shape of the Rope Works as it veered sharply shoreward just at the end of his block. The roof upon which they ran was a black wedge against the lights of the Shore, as the lower city was called. Just above was another dark band, the Seacleft, the great cliff that bisected Magnimar, atop which blazed the lights of the Summit, the upper city, a bright knife-edge glow like a barrier between the commoners of the Shore and the glittering heavens above.

A snarling yell announced that the Shoanti had followed them onto the roof.

"I will go first, then you can throw over the box," Aeventius said as they neared the narrowest space between the tenement and the Rope Works. They had practiced this escape route years ago, the leap over to the Rope Works and the quick climb to its abandoned top floor, but never had Kostin's heart been hammering in his chest like this, or his limbs trembling.

Unseen in the darkness, crossbow bolts whispered past.

Aeventius jumped out over the alley and struck the stone face of the Rope Works hard, sliding a little before finding purchase on a scrollwork ledge. He twisted his body, clinging to the building with one hand, and Kostin tossed the box over so that it hit the wizard square in the chest. Aeventius clutched it reflexively, holding tight.

Kostin turned to Taldara, intending to give a few words of encouragement, but the spry half-elf was already moving, leaping between buildings and flattening herself against the stones a bit higher up than Aeventius. Clearly she had been living a more exciting life than one spent writing travelogues and sketching artifacts since last he saw her—he only hoped he would get a chance to hear about it one day.

With a wild shout, Kostin followed his friends across the gap, catching the ledge with a shock to knock his breath out.

Aeventius scrambled past him, going upward, pausing only to hand over the chest of black wood that was the source of all their trouble.

To his left, a bolt cracked against the wall. Kostin began to climb as best he could with one hand, waiting for the shout from Aeventius that meant the wizard was ready for him to toss the box upward.

The smack of flesh and iron below and to his right drew Kostin's attention. There in the dark, one of the Shoanti—exposed skin painted in ochre and ash—wrestled with Taldara. Her badger growled and bit at the thug, slipping from her shoulder and down to the stone ledge upon which she and the Shoanti balanced.

Taldara ducked to scoop the creature up, leaving herself defenseless.

Kostin saw the gleam of the knife in the dark above her, poised to strike.

"Toss it up now!" came Aeventius's shout from above.

Kostin cocked his arm back and threw, not upward at the wizard, but hard down and into the face of the attacking Shoanti. The sharp crack of impact and a gargled yell preceded the man's fall. Man and box both plummeted into the torch-lit alleyway, down among the swarming Shoanti pack.

Their howls of victory rose up in the same instant that the first tongues of flame sprang from the windows of Kostin's home.

Coming Next Week: The secret lives of the Sczarni in Chapter Two of Bill Ward's "The Box."

Bill Ward is the author of more than 40 short stories for venues like Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Every Day Fiction, Morpheus Tales, Rogue Blades Entertainment, and more, as well as game work for companies such as i-Kore and Urban Mammoth. A diehard fan of pulp adventure, he’s also an editor at the flagship sword and sorcery magazine Black Gate. For more information, visit his website at billwardwriter.com.

Illustration by J. P. Targete.

We Come from the Land of the Ice and Snow!

Friday, August 26, 2011

As we struggle to keep our heads above water amid Bestiary 3's monster monsoon, here's a quick art preview of J. P. Targete's incredible work from the upcoming Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Lands of the Linnorm Kings. For more on Bestiary 3... stay tuned.

F. Wesley Schneider
Managing Editor

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.

Art by J. P. Targete.

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.

Art by J. P. Targete.

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.

Art by J. P. Targete.

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.

"That's not ...?" she asks.

"It is," says Calliard.

"This is not a good idea, then," Vitta says.

Calliard sighs. "Which of us is?"

Purchase the whole novel here.

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.

Art by J. P. Targete

What happens in the Academae...

Thursday, April 14th, 2011

	Illustration by J. P. Targete

What's this? Another new story already in the free Pathfinder Tales web fiction? As we discussed in the blog last week, this month brings us two short pieces from Pathfinder Tales superstars Elaine Cunningham and Dave Gross, both of which were recently previewed in Wayfinder #4. This week is "The Illusionist," a totally self-contained one-shot story from Elaine featuring a young Mwangi wizard from the Magaambya who travels to the Acadamae in Korvosa on a sort of study-abroad program, only to discover that the northerners are far less cultured than they pretend...

If you've read Winter Witch, you may notice a few familiar faces in this story. One of the main comments I've heard regarding the novel is that people are really curious about Declan's brother Asmonde, and the backstory with him and the Acadamae—I know I found Declan's relationship with his not-quite-sister-in-law and tiefling niece one of the more compelling aspects of his character. Thus it should come as no surprise that when Elaine contacted me about writing more about that bit of history, I jumped at the chance. And of course, seeing our old friend Jamang in his natural habitat lends that much more life and breadth to the underhanded world of Korvosa.

Click here to read Elaine's new story, and don't forget to come back next week for a rollicking new yarn by Paizo publisher Erik Mona himself!

James Sutter
Fiction Editor

The Illusionist

by Elaine Cunningham

To Oyamba, High Sun-Mage of the Magaambya, from apprentice and sojourner Bonali Kwazeel.

My lord,

I am well settled at Korvosa's Acadamae, in good health and most grateful for this opportunity to learn the ways of foreign wizards. Most of the first-year magic is familiar ground, but an unexpected lesson was taught to me yesterday by a fellow scholar. Though the story does me no credit, I will nonetheless report it faithfully.

My first impression of the Acadamae was, admittedly, not very favorable. The compound itself is impressively large, a walled city within the city, but the buildings are scattered about in random fashion rather than arranged in a sun-circle to focus power. It is strange to walk streets more twisting and contrary than goat paths, to see water contained in wells rather than free-flowing through the dreamwalk patterns of ancient cisterns. There is no symmetry in the Acadamae, and little beauty. It seemed incredible that magic could be called to such a place.

Still, the school is world-renowned, and I felt one might reasonably expect a certain breadth of knowledge in its scholars. To my surprise, little is known of the Mwangi Expanse. We are all one to these northerners. When they express admiration for my gold ornaments and the thread-art on my garments, their manner suggests an expectation of jangar-skin loin clouts and necklaces of monkey bone. On the whole, however, I found my new peers to be cordial and curious, if only in the hope that I might share some bit of exotic magic, or perhaps some jungle spices more potent than those they currently smoke.

I was assigned quarters with one Jamang Kira, a young man of Korvosa. If you can envision a strutting kimboda rooster, endlessly crowing and preening at his black-and-red plumage, you need no further description of the man. Despite his small stature and irritating ways, he stands near the head of our class and shows promise of becoming a powerful wizard. He is a first-year student, no older than my twenty years, but he spends much of his time ingratiating himself with older, more powerful scholars. One of them is Asmonde Avari.

Rumors flourish in any school. I had thought the Magaambya scholars worse than village gossips, but in the Acadamae whispers wander the halls like the unquiet dead. More than a few of them speak of Jamang's mentor.

Shortly after the dinner hour, Jamang, whom I seldom see before midnight, burst into our shared room. "Asmonde is casting a summoning in his chambers tonight," he announced with great excitement. "He allows a few friends to observe. You should come with me."

I put down the herbs I was grinding for the morrow's potions class and turned to face him. "Were I tired of living, I would gladly accompany you."

A smile bent one side of his mouth. "Asmonde is ambitious," he admitted, "and he does tend to overreach. Even so, his reach is long. We could learn much from him."

	"The Korvosans have little knowledge of the grand traditions of southern magic."

With difficulty, I suppressed a shudder. The summoning of demons and devils is bad enough, to my way of thinking. For a mere student to summon devils more powerful than most wizards can contain is hubris. Rumors whispered tales of earlier failed attempts. It was said that most of his family's wealth had gone to shielding him from the consequences of these failings. That Asmonde kept on with these summonings, despite the devastation he'd already wrought, was incredible to me.

To my surprise, Jamang did not press me. He reached for the small pot of herbs I'd just crushed. I caught his wrist before he could raise the pot to his nose.

"That is zumalli," I explained as I carefully reclaimed my property. "It is like mosswort in tincture, but far stronger."

Enlightenment flowed into his small black eyes. "No wonder you best me in potions class," he murmured. "You've access to plants most of us have never heard of. Stronger than mosswort, you say?"

I nodded. "Had you inhaled the volatile oils, you would have become confused and sleepy."

Jamang strode over to the little cabinet where I kept my pots and vials. "And this one?" he demanded, pointing to a jar of snakevine sap.

"Greatly diluted, it is a powerful restorative. In its current state, it is green-death. Deadly poison."

He stared at me, clearly puzzled. "Aren't you concerned that someone might use it?"

A moment passed before his meaning became clear. Horror swept through me like venom.

"That would be... most unwise," I said carefully. "The use of any Mwangi medicinal would swiftly bring the Acadamae's masters to my door."

"My point precisely," he said. "It would be an easy way for a rival student to implicate you."

"Or you." Some instinct I did not quite understand prompted me to add these words. Jamang did not take offense. If anything, he looked amused.

"In that case, we are both safe enough. If Mwangi poison were suspected, a magical enquiry would quickly establish our innocence."

I thought that would be the end of the matter, but Jamang reached for the setoli sitting atop my cabinet.

"This is a spirit house, yes? A protection against evil?"

The observation surprised me, since Jamang had shown little interest in Mwangi customs before. The reason for his inquiry came to me suddenly.

"I am not sure whether it could contain a devil," I said candidly. "That is not its intended purpose."

He nodded as if he'd been expecting this answer. "If I thought it would come to that, I wouldn't ask. Asmonde promised he would take every precaution known to him. Asmonde is good, but I'd feel better if magic not known to him were guarding the perimeter."

This was a side of Jamang I had not seen. It was clearly difficult for him to ask this favor of me, but his concern for his friend outweighed his pride. I'd dismissed him as vain and shallow, concerned about no one but himself. He was a better man than I'd credited him, and I was ashamed to have judged him unfairly.

All the same, I locked up my medicinal cabinet before we left.

∗ ∗ ∗

Asmonde Avari met us at the door. I saw at once why Jamang followed him like a hound. Power surrounds some men like shadows and mist. Asmonde stood in a dark cloud of his own creation. He was nearly as tall as me and quite handsome, with the dark hair and pale skin common to Korvosans. There was something about his eyes, however, that I did not like.

Still, he greeted us cordially and showed us where we should stand. His chamber was larger than the one I shared with Jamang, as befitted his years and higher standing. The furniture had been pushed back against the walls, and a circle surrounded by elaborate runes had been painted onto the floor. Painted, not drawn—a permanent work of art and magic, clearly the product of considerable time and effort and study.

This was unusual, but I must admit that I breathed a little easier. Clearly Asmonde was not quite as reckless as rumor suggested.

Six of us had gathered to observe the casting. At a gesture from Asmonde, we fell silent.

He began the casting, chanting in a voice as resonant with power as an oracle's as he strode slowly around the circle. When he came to a stop, I noticed that there was a small gap in the circle and an empty place where a rune should have been drawn.

Asmonde drew a small knife from his belt and pressed it to his arm. A line of blood welled up. He knelt, still chanting, and closed the circle with his own blood.

I lack the words to describe what happened next. Imagine that thunder and lightning struck simultaneously, yet without sound or light. There was no roar or flash. There was only the devil.

Several moments passed before I recovered from that first shock of power, and even then my mind could hardly encompass what my senses perceived. I have a half-memory, like something from a fading nightmare, of great size and glistening hide and twisted black horns.

I glanced at Jamang. He stood calmly at my side, meeting the devil's gaze without any apparent difficulty. For some reason, that disturbed me more than anything I'd yet seen. I tore my gaze away. It was easier to watch Asmonde as he intoned the chant that would bind the foul being to his will.

But his words faltered. A strange look came over his face, the expression of a man confused, not by some failing of will or intellect, but by some enchantment. Or perhaps even by green-death...

My gaze flew to the knife in Asmonde's hand. It was small and silver, identical to the blades most scholars carried for magical purposes. Substituting another knife—a knife touched with zumalli—would be a simple matter.

Asmonde continued to chant, but he no longer controlled the spell. Blood spattered the floor as words of power tore free of his throat. He rocked back and forth like a man retching himself dry. Closer and closer to the circle he rocked.

Too close.

A great, black-taloned hand snatched Asmonde by the hair. The devil dragged him into the circle and tore his head from his body.

All of us stood frozen, too horror-stricken for thought or action.

Jamang was the first to recover his wits. He slapped the shock from my face and pointed to Asmonde's body, lying half in the circle, a bridge of mortal flesh.

"The spirit house," he shouted. "Contain the devil now, before it crosses over!"

Whatever Jamang's part in this catastrophe might have been, his reasoning now was sound but for one thing: I was not sure my magic could reach into another wizard's circle.

Nor could I risk setting that devil loose.

I gave a curt nod, more to steel myself than to respond to Jamang.

"When I step into the circle, pull the body out," I said. "Then run for help."

Not waiting for a response, I leaped into the circle, brandishing the spirit house and shouting the word that would activate it.

At least, I think I shouted it. Any sound I might have made disappeared into the devil's shriek. A terrible wind buffeted me with blistering heat and a roar like the screaming of tortured souls. How long it went on, I could not say, for when two of the Acadamae's masters stepped into the empty circle and lifted me to my feet, my ears still rang with the hellish sounds.

One of the masters took the spirit house from my hands and raised it to peer into the window. A look of wonder crossed his face, as if the thing captured within were no more than a pleasant toy. He looked upon me with new respect and said something I could not hear. The other master pointed to his ear. An expression of chagrin crossed the first master's face and he handed me a small amulet.

The cacophony died, suddenly and completely.

"You may keep the amulet," the master said, lifting the spirit house meaningfully.

"A fair exchange," I agreed.

Jamang reached up to place a hand on my shoulder. "That was the most astonishing act of courage I have ever beheld," he said solemnly. "As is custom, Asmonde deeded his personal effects to a younger student, but I think he would want you to have this."

He pressed something into my hand.

Asmonde's knife.

Without thinking, I raised it to my nose. There was no trace of zumalli. For a moment, I knew shame for my suspicious thoughts.

And then I realized that there was no trace of blood on the knife, either.

∗ ∗ ∗

The first thing I did upon reaching my room was to empty all of my Mwangi herbals, every pot and vial, into my jug of asperengi. I did it quickly, before Jamang could return and learn that I possessed a nearly universal solvent. I did not like to imagine what use he might make of such knowledge.

He came in late that night, flushed with self-satisfaction and laden with Asmonde Avari's books and scrolls. I made no move to help, nor did he seem to expect it.

I meant to keep silent, for what good can come of barking at a jackal? And I might have done so, had he not smirked at the sight of the empty zumalli pot on my table. Temper overcame me. I snatched up one of the books, a slender volume bound in blue leather, and hurled it against the far wall.

"I will go to the masters," I promised. "I will tell them everything."

Jamang made a show of yawning and stretching, as if he could barely hold himself awake for such inconsequential threats. "And what exactly is 'everything,' Bonali?"

"You killed Asmonde Avari!"

"A devil killed Asmonde Avari," he corrected me. "Several people bore witness to that fact."

"But the knife—"

"The knife in your possession?" He shook his head in the manner of someone gently chiding a boy too slow of mind to learn simple runes. "If anything is found on it, who do you think they will accuse?"

I was about to remind him of our earlier conversation about our shared access to my store of green-death when my gaze fell on "Asmonde's" spotless knife. I had no doubt that the knife Jamang gave me was not the knife Asmonde had wielded. If dangerous herbs were found on it, it could only be because I myself put them there. Any magical inquiry would reveal this. No one would believe that I did so to bring another man to justice. If I accused Jamang, I accused myself. Bringing the spirit house to the summoning, destroying my store of Mwangi herbals after—these would not be construed as the actions of an innocent man.

But perhaps the masters might listen and believe, if the motive were sufficient. "Are those books so valuable?"

Jamang glanced at the slim blue volume, which he hadn't bothered to retrieve from the floor. "Asmonde's books? I doubt it. He comes from a family of innkeepers. Even his knife—and you do have his knife, by the way—is of middling quality."

A great confusion fell over me. "Then why? What did you gain that was worth a man's life, even such as man as Asmonde Avari?"

He picked up the empty zumalli pot and placed it among the other empty containers in my cabinet. The smile he turned upon me was something I will not soon forget.

"Ask me again," he said pleasantly, "after tomorrow's potion class, when I stand first in the student rankings."

∗ ∗ ∗

Master Oyamba, I am mindful of your desire that I learn the art of abjuration, but with your permission I would like to devote myself to the study of illusion. Perhaps knowledge of how falsehoods are told with magic might prepare me to better perceive the illusions built with words and deeds. That ability, I suspect, might hold me in better stead than anything else I might learn from Korvosa.

Respectfully,
Bonali Kwazeel

Coming Next Week: Erik Mona introduces us to the etiquette of cannibalism in "Two Pieces of Tarnished Silver."

Elaine Cunningham is the New York Times best-selling author of numerous novels in such varied settings as the Forgotten Realms, Star Wars, EverQuest, Spelljammer, and Ravenloft. Her other contributions to the Pathfinder campaign setting include the Pathfinder Tales novel Winter Witch and work on Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Guide to the River Kingdoms

Art by J. P. Targete.

Jeggare in the Jungle

Wednesday, April 6th, 2011

With all the excitement of last week's Meet the Iconics post for Hayato, our new iconic samurai—who we unveiled ahead of schedule as part of our auction to help tsunami relief efforts—we unfortunately didn't have a chance to talk about the new web fiction story that started that Wednesday. Which is really too bad, because the new story is awesome on several fronts!

	Illustration by J. P. Targete

In "A Lesson in Taxonomy," Dave Gross brings us a glimpse of Pathfinder Varian Jeggare, the longstanding co-hero of Pathfinder Tales novels, journals, and webfiction stories, as he was in his early days as a Pathfinder, well before he became a venture-captain or met up with his bodyguard Radovan. Just two episodes long, this story takes us through historical Sargava and into the heart of the Mwangi Expanse, where Dave sheds some light on the not-always-amicable practices of competing Pathfinders.

If you're a fan of Wayfinder—and how can you not love free, high-quality, fan-created Pathfinder material?—then this story might look a little familiar. When the Wayfinder folks originally told us that both Dave Gross and Elaine Cunningham had agreed to write new short stories for the zine's Mwangi-themed issue, we were all excited, yet the deal raised some sticky issues regarding continuity and the community use agreement. The solution? We bought Dave and Elaine's stories and let them run first in Wayfinder as a preview before bringing them here to the website for the world to see, thereby making them official Pathfinder Tales content. Everybody wins!

This week represents the final chapter in Dave's safari adventure, and next week we'll have Elaine's fabulous one-shot story "The Illusionist." And after that, we'll be starting a story by one of our very own Paizo staffers. Who could it be, you ask? For the answer, stay tuned...

James Sutter
Fiction Editor

A Lesson in Taxonomy

by Dave Gross

Chapter Two: The Observation Post

"Are you certain those are the females?"

"Very certain, Most Excellent Count," said Amadi. "I have seen where they lay their eggs."

I lowered my spyglass and compared what I had seen through the mist with Amadi's sketch of the dinosaurs. His illustrations were astonishing for both their simplicity and their accuracy. At first glance, the dinosaurs we observed from our treetop post appeared identical to the brachiosaurus. They were slightly smaller, perhaps no more than twenty-five tons. Their most distinguishing feature was a large gill-like organ on the females' heads, just below the angular jaws.

Proving that these creatures were a species distinct from the brachiosaurus would be a commendable addition to my bestiary, but to deduce the function of this singular feature would surely impress upon the Decemvirate the value of my studies.

"We need a closer look," I said.

"No, Excellency, I beg you not to approach," said Amadi. "It is too dangerous during the mating season. You must list these creatures as 'dangerous' in your book."

The simple classification of creatures into the "dangerous" and "docile" categories had charmed Amadi. During our trek from Kalabuto, he had pointed out various wildlife along the way, categorizing them himself. He pronounced a band of tiny lemurs "docile," but then declared a family of similarly tiny monkeys "dangerous." Before I could demand an explanation, Remigo threw a stone among the monkeys and suffered a barrage of feces in retaliation. Under cover of his curses, I whispered to Amadi, "Definitely 'dangerous.'" Amadi laughed.

Much as I had grown impatient in our arboreal perch, I had to acknowledge the wisdom of Amadi's warning about the dinosaurs. It was tempting to send some of the bearers for a closer look, but they too were wary of approaching the beasts. I would have sent Remigo, but the villain had slipped away a few nights earlier.

Remigo's desertion was surprising only in that it occurred so long after I had relented to the man's pleas to remain in service rather than to return alone to Cheliax. I had expected him to accept his dismissal with relief after the indignity of his punishment, although it could not have been too severe judging from his unhindered gait. Instead, Remigo surprised me with an apology so abject that I could not find it in my heart to refuse him—or rather, I could not bring myself to disappoint my cousin Ersilia. With reticence, I allowed him to remain in service under a few absolute strictures, foremost of which was that there would be no mupute or any other alcoholic drink among our supplies.

The absence of his beloved liquor wore on Remigo as the days slogging through the humid Mwangi jungle elongated into weeks under the increasing torrent of the rainy season. At times the rain fell so hard that it splashed up at us as violently as it descended, and even the native bearers gulped in an atmosphere thicker than a lake bottom.

By the time our party reached the observation post that the Taldan Pathfinder Vors Nevarion had constructed nearly thirty years earlier, we tumbled into the barren tool hut at the base of a great rahuru tree and collapsed beneath its shabby roof. We stirred as the susurrus of the rain subsided, and I set the bearers to work conveying supplies to the upper level. They ignored the rotting rope ladder and clambered up hand- and footholds I could barely perceive in the gleaming brown and green bark. When at last I turned to give Remigo his orders, he was nowhere to be found. The brief silence surrendered to a rising cacophony of hoots and shrieks from the monkeys for which the Screaming Jungle earned its name.

Amadi reported seeing Remigo step outside the hut during the rain and assumed it was to empty his bowels. The former Hellknight did not appear before dusk, when I sent the bearers out with torches. An hour after dark, the men returned with the rain, having found Remigo's tracks leading back the way we had come.

Remigo's absence was as much a relief to the men as it was to me, but kind-hearted Amadi wished vocally that the man would find his way back home. I wished the same, although with somewhat less enthusiasm. There was no telling what falsehoods he would relay to my cousin Ersilia about the conditions under which he left my service.

Once we had repaired the observing post, I established a daily routine for our camp. The men were experienced at journeys to the Mwangi interior and needed little direction to establish rain pots for fresh water. After repairing the lower hut, the rope ladder, and the observation platform, they set themselves to gathering and hunting to supplement the provisions we brought from Kalabuto, while Amadi and I began our survey of the southern plains between the edge of the forest and the Pasuango River, the last natural barrier between the site of our survey and the dangerous Mzali tribes.

Through the veil of rain we could discern the shadows of the colossi in the distance. On misty days we saw their serpentine necks craning up past the river bushwillows to tear the leaves from the middle boughs of the lofty baobabs, whose leaves they favored. They moved with elephantine grandeur. Males and females alike greeted each other by nuzzling necks, to which I could observe no reaction from the unusual gill-like organs on the females.

Those gill-like apertures posed the most intriguing question about the creatures. Were they secondary sex organs? Scent emitters? Were they used in some form of echolocation? No one even glancing at the illustrations Amadi drew for me would fail to ask the question, and my Bestiary of Garundi would be incomplete without the answer.

"I can see nothing through this confounded mist."

"We pray to Gozreh," he said, placing his cupped hands upon the points of his shoulders. "There will be more sun."

I found myself ambushed by a yawn and caught Amadi's amused grin before he turned away, wary of my displeasure. I let out the next one with a roar and a broad stretch of my arms, crass as a porter. At that he laughed, and I felt the first moment of joy since Remigo's departure.

"Wake me when Gozreh answers your prayer," I said before withdrawing to the relative comfort of my hammock. I fell asleep to a muted symphony of simian chatter.

Human voices woke me.

"Excellency, you must wake up," hissed Amadi. "They are here."

"Who?"

"Prince Kasiya," he said. "And your man Remigo. The bearers have fled."

There was but one reason I could imagine for Kasiya's arrival, especially if he were guided by Remigo. He wanted the bestiary for himself. I hastened to the table containing my journal and Amadi's sketches. There was no place to hide them, nor did we have any avenue of escape from our treetop shelter. The platform trembled under the weight of men climbing the restored rope ladder.

I could have torn my journal to shreds, or lit it on fire if I dared, but I could not bear to destroy my life's work even to spite a thief who would present it as his own. There was little hope of arguing against his claim, even assuming he permitted me to live long enough to return to Absalom. The word of a prince outweighs the word of count.

A wicked thought emerged from my imagination. I took a paper knife and lifted the labels from the dinosaur sketches, reversing them. The paste was still moist, and I completed the task just as Remigo rose up from the trap door opening.

"I'll have those, Jeggare," he growled. I stepped away, wishing briefly that I had taken up my sword instead of the knife. Remigo followed my fleeting glance and put himself between me and my blade as Kasiya followed him up onto the platform. Behind him came two of his armored guards.

A long smile creased his eel-like jaws. He began to speak, but something held him back. His cheeks darkened, and I realized he was blushing.

"You would have let him flog me," said Remigo. Hatred colored his face, and I needed no further explication of events. Remigo had traded his punishment for betraying my location.

	"Prince Kasiya has a strange sense of honor."

"Forgive me, Count Jeggare." Prince Kasiya's voice rang with sincerity. "Perhaps one day, when you have forgiven this offense, you will allow me to demonstrate my gratitude."

"Let me demonstrate mine first," said Remigo. He jerked me toward the edge of the platform. The ground was so far below us that I could not make it out through the mist.

"Unhand him," ordered Kasiya.

Remigo scoffed, but he sobered as he saw the deadly earnestness in the prince's eyes.

"You are a treacherous dog. Your hands are unfit to sully a noble person," said Kasiya. "Await us below."

Remigo glowered at me before descending the rope ladder.

"I must delay your pursuit." Kasiya whistled a command, and one of his guards bound me to the guardrail. The other placed food and water within reach of my hands. "Once we have captured a specimen and have a good lead, I shall send a servant to release you."

"Most Great Highness," said Amadi. "You must not approach the females. It is their season, and they are dangerous."

Kasiya looked to me for confirmation, and I let him see it on my face. The warning would do him little good, after my change of the labels.

"Also," added Amadi. "The labels on the drawings, they have been changed."

Two treacherous dogs!

Kasiya bent to examine the drawings. He lifted the edge of one label with a long fingernail and saw the imperfect bond of paste beneath.

"Very cunning," said Kasiya. His expression darkened again, but not in shame this time. "And most wicked." He stepped toward me and kicked the food and water over the edge of the platform. "I suddenly find that my gratitude for your labors knows bounds."

With that they abandoned me.

My initial efforts to wriggle out of my bonds suggested that I would sooner starve to death than escape them. That was of course assuming that no predatory visitors found me first. The prospect of being devoured alive tempted me to implore Asmodeus for vengeance upon my betrayers, but I would not break the vow I had made to my late mother. Instead I prayed for some fantastic stroke of fortune.

Amadi's prayer was answered first with a glorious parting of the clouds and the evaporation of the mist. From my vantage I watched as Kasiya's party traveled across the grassy plain to the river's edge, where they carefully waited to approach a lone dinosaur.

They had for some reason chosen a female. I watched in astonishment as Kasiya commanded his men to dab their spears in some dark toxin. Remigo was among them, holding his own spear cautiously away from his body as if whatever they had told him about the poison was more frightening than the dinosaur that became restless at their approach.

As the men raised their spears, the dinosaur trumpeted her alarm. The "gills" upon her neck flared into thick, tumescent rills of brilliant color. From them radiated a deep, barely discernable sound. Its effects were more visible than audible, for the surrounding trees shuddered and shed their foliage. A moment later, I felt a horrific scrape along my teeth and in my sinus cavities.

The soldiers' spears bent and melted under the sonic wave. The bodies of the men leaped from the ground, their limbs jerking involuntarily into a hundred unnatural postures as their bones shattered and their organs burst.

Behind me, Amadi panted as he returned to the observation post. He must have slipped away even before the ill-fated party approached their prey. He released a breathless torrent of apologies as he released me from my bonds, but I already guessed why he had done as he did.

"You altered the drawings before I switched the labels."

Amadi grimaced. It was as beautiful as his smile, but more sad. Despite the treachery of Kasiya and Remigo, he mourned their deaths.

∗ ∗ ∗

It required patience and swift running to retrieve the trampled remains of Prince Kasiya from the riverside. I hoped against all chance, and Desna rewarded me with the recovery of the Bestiary of Garundi. We left Remigo and the prince's guards to the scavengers.

Amadi remained with me all the way back to Kalabuto, and then to Eleder. His cheerful disposition had been diminished by the horrors we had witnessed, but still I felt a bond of affection had grown between us. The day before I embarked upon the voyage home, I offered him a place in my household.

"You would make an excellent secretary," I told him, meaning it. "I will send you to the finest schools."

"Your Excellency is most generous," he said. "But I will remain here, in my homeland."

"Whatever for? Among the Sargavan colonists, you will never be treated better than a slave, and outside the cities, there is nothing but danger."

Amadi offered me a wan smile. "I have met many of your people before," he said. "Even in your homeland, and in that of the prince, I would classify most of them as 'dangerous.'"

It was impossible to argue with that. Disappointment wrestled with admiration in my heart. "Farewell, Amadi."

"Farewell, Most Excellent Count. Do not feel too bad. You are not so much like your countrymen," he grinned. "I am pleased to classify you as 'docile.'"

Coming Next Week: A young Mwangi wizard's introduction to subterfuge in the Acadamae of Korvosa in Elaine Cunningham's "The Illusionist."

Dave Gross is the author of numerous Pathfinder Tales novels and stories. His other adventures of Count Varian Jeggare (usually paired with his hellspawn bodyguard Radovan) include the novels Prince of Wolves and Master of Devils, the Pathfinder's Journals "Hell's Pawns" and "Husks" (published in the Council of Thieves Adventure Path and the upcoming Jade Regent Adventure Path, respectively), and the short story "The Lost Pathfinder." In addition, he's also co-written the Pathfinder Tales novel Winter Witch with Elaine Cunningham.

Art by J. P. Targete.

A Lesson in Taxonomy

by Dave Gross

Chapter One: The Bestiary

No reprobate more taxes my patience than a drunkard.

My new bodyguard entered my employ under a cloud. Since the adumbration of his character originated from the headquarters of the Order of the Scourge, I weighed its warning against the value of a favor to my cousin Ersilia. She pledged to place me foremost in her prayers should I offer the former Hellknight an opportunity to redeem his reputation. As my cousin is famed throughout Cheliax as much for her influence in the Court of Thrune as for her personal charms, I was powerless to refuse.

The first harbinger of discord occurred during our passage from Egorian. Whilst we passengers of noble birth enjoyed a late supper of roast pheasant at the captain's table, a supremely vulgar song erupted belowdecks. The ensign departed the cabin to investigate the disturbance. Moments later, the same slurring voice that had regaled us with excerpts of the amorous adventures of the Trick Alley Trio bellowed curses, threats, and finally pleas as the mates clapped the singer in irons. My appetite perished as I recognized the voice as that of my new servant.

Four of the ship's mates bore the proof of my man's violence upon their faces. The malefactor had already fallen into an unshakeable slumber, due less to his own injuries than to the copious amount of grog he had consumed. A brief investigation revealed that he had begun the evening with Desna's kiss upon his brow, for he had a blazing streak of luck in a game of dice in the crew's quarters. Having won the grog ration of every off-duty sailor for the evening, he stepped on the hem of Cayden Cailean's cloak and proceeded to mock his conquered foes by drinking it all while regaling them with his favorite brothel ditty. When the sober crewmen implored him to constrain his volume, he responded with fisticuffs.

The knave presented a grotesque figure as he emerged from the brig in a miasma of cheap alcohol and body odor. I shielded my nose with a handkerchief my cousin had granted me as a sign of her favor. Her delicate perfume succumbed to the assault of the drunkard's stench. A smile flickered over his mouth as he witnessed my reaction, but it vanished when he recognized the handkerchief. Instead his eyes beamed intense jealousy.

At that point I fully understood my cousin's interest in the man.

I returned the man's scowl until he relented and cast his eyes to the deck. "I trust I need not articulate my displeasure, Remigo."

"No, sir."

The hairs on my neck became needles. "Do I resemble a knight of your acquaintance?"

"No, Your Excellency."

I withdrew to the main deck for fresh air. Remigo's conduct was sullen until we reached Khari on the north coast of Garund, where we disembarked to await passage to Eleder under Sargavan colors, lest we attract the rapacious eyes of the so-called Free Captains who, emboldened by their victory at Desperation Bay, continued to prey on lone Chelish vessels. In hindsight, I would have been wise to delay my departure and seek a replacement for my bodyguard, but I was anxious to begin what promised to be my final expedition as a member of the Pathfinder rank and file. Once I had completed my Bestiary of Garund, the Decemvirate would surely offer me the reward for which I had longed since first joining the Society: my commission as a venture-captain.

∗ ∗ ∗

Of the marvels witnessed during the voyage along the western coast of Garund, I have expounded at length elsewhere. We disembarked at Eleder, which resembled a half-completed Chelish city. Since my previous visit two years earlier, the proportion of fair-skinned inhabitants had risen to nearly one-fifth of the crowd gathered by the docks. I counted dozens of halfling porters and several dwarves. There was even a pair of elves awaiting our vessel, one of them a tall, pale figure with eyes the color of amethysts. For a moment I imagined him to be the specter of the father I had never met.

"Most Excellent Count Jeggare?"

Puberty had not yet coarsened the speaker's voice, but the Mwangi boy stood taller than my shoulder. I estimated his age as something between ten and twelve. His accent was a peculiar marriage of the native Kalabuta dialect and my mother tongue.

"Beat it, boy," snarled Remigo. His demeanor had grown more surly for his abstinence.

"No," I said. "Who are you?"

"I am Amadi, Excellency." His bow was perfect, although it revealed wicked scars upon the back of his shoulders. He wore an unbuttoned Chelish waistcoat and short trousers cinched with a length of sisal. He had a canvas bag slung over his shoulder. "Your esteemed colleague bade me await your arrival and offer my service as a guide to Kalabuto." He proffered a sealed letter.

I opened it to find a short note of recommendation from the explorer Rosk Hargun, a fellow Pathfinder whose acquaintance I had made during my previous visit to Sargava. Our association had been collegial, but I had no expectation of such a favor from the dwarf.

"What do you have there?" I nodded at a rolled parchment protruding from the satchel.

Amadi's radiant smile indicated that he was pleased to be asked. He unfurled the parchment and revealed a sketch depicting me. It was an extraordinary likeness, and my first impulse was to imagine that Hargun had commissioned it so that Amadi could recognize me. Yet behind my image was an equally striking depiction of Remigo.

"Does your bag contain a spyglass?" I asked.

"No, Excellency." He smiled again, obviously apprehending the trajectory of my inquiry.

"How long did this take?"

"Since you left your ship."

We had been on the stone docks for only a few minutes. Amadi's combination of speed and accuracy was a rare gift, one that I could fruitfully apply to my bestiary. I understood why Rosk Hargun would recommend the lad.

"Tell me how much Hargun paid you," I said. "I shall give you twice that."

∗ ∗ ∗

We remained in Eleder long enough for the local venture-captain to assure Baron Grallus that my visit was wholly divorced from any intrigue of the House of Thrune, to whom all loyal lords of Cheliax had sworn obedience. If the baron had received any intelligence on my service during the war, it was insufficient to compel him to detain me from my personal ventures.

Remigo complained constantly during our passage upriver. He hated the temperature, the humidity, and most of all the mosquitoes. On the final count, my sympathy was limited, since the sickly odor of mupute on his breath only attracted the vermin. If he thought I could not smell the pineapple liquor, he was more stupid than I had imagined. In past expeditions I too had endured the depredations of the pests, who seemed particularly fond of my half-elven blood. At last I had relented and applied the noisome unguent the natives used to deter the insects. Amadi had offered him the balm, but Remigo refused to acknowledge the lad, much less to contaminate himself with a native concoction.

At last we navigated the Lake of Vanished Armies and turned northward to Kalabuto, an oasis of civilization upon a mound of ancient ruins. While the city is named for the most populous local tribe, the Kalabuta were not its founders. Rather, the tangled mound among the pineapple fields, date orchards, and cattle ranches is all that remains of a long-forgotten tribe whose mysteries linger in every crumbling monument protruding between the contemporary huts. There was no telling where a marketplace ended and the homes began, but there was also no mistaking the grand pavilion of Prince Kasiya. Its silken tents and golden-helmed guardians appeared like a mirage of distant Osirion.

The prince was no older than I, although as a human he appeared a good fifteen years my elder. The illusion of chronological seniority served as a reminder that the prince was my superior outside the Society. He was the sixth son of the great Khemet and brother to the current ruler, Khemet II, known by the lurid appellation of "the Crocodile King." Kasiya greeted me with a fraternal grip of my hand before I could bend knee.

"Welcome, brother." His smile revealed a legion of tiny white teeth. If his elder brother was a crocodile, then Kasiya was an eel.

"Your Highness." I glanced back to ensure that Amadi had knelt and to remind Remigo that he should do the same.

In what seemed but a few moments, the servants were dismissed and we reclined upon embroidered pillows, replete with a sumptuous meal of local fare prepared with the subtlest Osirian spices. Only when the sorbet arrived and the last of the servants withdrew did the prince inquire as to the particulars of my expedition. I shared with him as much as one usually does, which is to say I was honest but indistinct about my intended course. I would indeed travel into the Screaming Jungle, but he did not need to know exactly where.

"It is said that this could be the last of your field excursions," he ventured. "All I hear from Absalom is a buzz of anticipation about this bestiary of yours."

I raised my glass to acknowledge the accuracy of his intelligence. It was little surprise that he knew of my hopes for advancement. With gossip and rivalry, our Society is as rife as the courts of Cheliax.

"There is no doubt your work will persuade the Decemvirate you are a deserving venture-captain."

His unwavering gaze told me he was awaiting a reaction from me, but I could not fathom what secret he hoped I would reveal. I knew that he too harbored ambitions for advancement within the Pathfinder Society. Unfortunately, such advancement was limited, and as all evidence suggested that the Decemvirate made their selections of new venture-captains based on merit rather than station, I favored my chances over his.

"Perhaps you would be so kind as to show me this fabled work?"

"Your Highness, it is incomplete," I demurred. "Upon its publication, I shall be honored to send you a copy."

The moment the prince's lips moved, yet before he could speak, a woman shrieked from the far corner of his pavilion. The prince composed his face as we heard the clamor of his guards' armor. Shouts of accusation, a familiar voice raised in protest, and the minutes crawled upon my throat like a disease. I knew what I would see even before the guards entered the prince's tent and forced Remigo to his knees. The mupute from his breath was almost visible. Beside him knelt Amadi.

"We found these wretches within the tent of Your Highness's concubines," reported the commander.

	"Amadi is a good-natured boy, and does not deserve to suffer for the crimes of others."

Kasiya's eyes flashed a question.

"They were apprehended before laying a hand on any sanctified person."

"In my country," said Kasiya, "the punishment for looking upon my concubines is six ounces of flesh." Remigo squirmed, and Amadi froze. The prince did not need to specify which six ounces he meant.

"Sir," Remigo blurted at me. "I mean, Your Excellency—"

"Silence," I said. "Prince Kasiya is master here."

The prince nodded approval of my deference. His fury subsided, and he turned back to the prisoners.

"You, boy," he said. "I know you."

"I am Amadi, Most High Prince Kasiya." He kowtowed. "It was my honor to accompany your expedition to the Kaava Lands last season."

"And now you wish to mount an expedition to my bed?"

"No, Most Merciful Prince, I wished only to prevent—"

Remigo snarled. "Shut your hole, you dirty little monkey."

The guards kicked him flat on the carpet.

Kasiya waved away the guards, who dragged the prisoners out of his tent. The prince sighed.

"Count Jeggare," he said. "In respect of our affiliation, I can reduce the punishment to a lashing, but no less."

I bowed. "Your generosity knows no bounds."

"I know it is difficult for you to surrender a countryman to the lash. My honor will be satisfied if only one of your servants endures it. You may choose."

"Remigo."

"The Chelaxian?" Kasiya raised an eyebrow at my swift answer. I knew what he was thinking, yet I had seen the marks on Amadi's back, and I had sufficient evidence to surmise he had followed Remigo to the forbidden tent only to prevent his trespass.

"Or," said Kasiya with a cunning glint in his eye. "Perhaps his absolution could be purchased with a gift. I am fond of books."

I took his meaning, but Remigo was not worth a single page of my bestiary. "Let him be flogged."

Coming Next Week: More of Varian Jeggare's youthful Mwangi explorations, and the startling conclusion of "A Lesson in Taxonomy."

Dave Gross is the author of numerous Pathfinder Tales novels and stories. His other adventures of Count Varian Jeggare (usually paired with his hellspawn bodyguard Radovan) include the novels Prince of Wolves and Master of Devils, the Pathfinder’s Journals "Hell’s Pawns" and "Husks" (published in the Council of Thieves Adventure Path and the upcoming Jade Regent Adventure Path, respectively), and the short story "The Lost Pathfinder." In addition, he’s also co-written the Pathfinder Tales novel Winter Witch with Elaine Cunningham.

Art by J. P. Targete.