Care for a Foot? (Seidaku)

[Ulric]

“Of course I’m not petching okay,” Ulric growled. “I’m stuck down a petching hole.” Shaking his head again to clear it, he extended a hand. Stroking the crude, slime-encrusted sides, he vainly tried to get a hold. They were too slick for climbing. With a grunt, he settled back on his haunches, nose wrinkling at the overpowering stench. At least it’s not shyke, he told himself, torn between gratitude and revulsion. At least it’s not shyke. Jellied corpses, perhaps? “Get me out of here,” he snarled, pounding on the rocks. Even though he wasn’t close to losing his head, he wanted to impart exactly how important it was that he get out of there. “Find a rope or som-” Abruptly, a stone gave way beneath his fist. He frowned. There was an ominous rumble, and then the jagged rock whistled past his face as if launched from a catapult, borne upon a jet of the noxious, reeking glop. Now that struck him squarely in the face. “Glur-uurgh,” he spat, clawing at his burning eyes and he reeled away, his back striking against the other side of the shaft. There was another creak. Shyke! Ulric threw himself down, barely managing to evade the larger, steaming spurt. He crouched there warily, not wanting to touch the sides again, but uncomfortably aware that the slime level was rising. And he was wreathed in darkness.

[Seidaku]

"Oh," Seidaku muttered, embarassed at his question in the face of Ulric's sullenly growled answer, "Umm, of course."

Even separated from the grizzled man by twenty feet of slick, smoothe stone, he flinched at the open malice in the tone. His appraisal of the room they had just left was even less hopeful than he had feared. There was literally nothing for him to use as an impromptu ladder.

He had stuck his head back over the edge of the precipice to report his dismal findings when he heard a sharp crap, a dull rumble and a gurgle that none the less managed to sound furious. Before he could inquire as to the source of the noises, a wave of foul smelling air washed over him and he rolled to the side, retching miserably.

Once more in control of his gorge, he looked back over the edge, eyes watering from the stench and, for one selfish moment, he was glad it was not him in the hole. He could hear the sound of pouring water, which could not possibly be a good sign. "Umm," he called down into the hole, wishing he sounded more confident, "Try to, umm, float. Don't, umm, don't worry. I'll find something to get you out."

On his feet again and looking back into the empty room of worship, Seidaku danced anxiously from foot to foot. Burdened as he was with clothing and boots and his arsenal, Ulric was not going to be doing much floating at all. Which meant that he had maybe a chime or two to figure something out before he was forced to bear witness to a drowning.

But what? There was nothing in the room. Just salt, and hanging herbs, and the lectern... the lectern! Racing against the ticking of a clock tolled in time with his heartbeat, Seidaku ran back through the shadowy room and grabbed the edges of the speaking podium. With a grunt of effort, he managed to drag it a few squealing inches along the wooden floor.

A span of time that felt like days but could surely have been no longer than two chimes laster, Seidaku had pushed, pulled, and grunted the now monstrously heavy lectern through the circles of chalk, irrevocably marring them in the process, and across the room to the edge of the foul smelling pit. The rest would have to be pushing, and then it would fall into the pit.

If it fell into the pit though, it would likely brain Ulric. Unless...

Seidaku scurried around the lectern to lean over the side of the pit wall again and called down, "I'm going to, umm, to push down the lectern. It's heavy, so don't, ah, don't let it hit you. You can stand on it and it will give you, umm, a few feet to not drown with."

He gave Ulric a few moments to get out of the way, and then took hold of the lectern one more time. This would be the hardest part. If he just shoved it, the top would go over before the bottom, and the widest part would fall facing downward, meaning the greatest possibility of crushing Ulric to death. However, if he walked it forward in increments, it would go down much straighter and in a (hopefully) more controlled manner.

With the lectern tipped backward slightly, Seidaku rocked it first to one side and then the other, each time moving the lectern a few inches toward the lip of the well. He was pouring sweat and his arms burned and shook with strain, but it would only be a few more inches now.

The lectern cleared the edge of the edge of the pit with shocking suddenness, plunging downward and into the darkness to land in the water with a resounding crash. The pull of gravity had reached out to Seidaku as well however, leaving him with no chance to hope it had not crushed Ulric to death on its way down. Unbalanced by the sudden yank, Seidaku was leaned precariously over the edge, arms pinwheeling frantically as he tried to push himself back to safety. "No, no, no, nononono!," he cried, feeling himself beginning to go over the edge.

With a last desperate surge of energy, he pushed with his legs, hoping to leap over the pit to find purchase on the other side. Instead, he struck the other lip of the pit with enough force to knock the wind out of himself and drive splinters of wood into his chest before his scrabbling fingers failed to find purchase and he fell down, into the darkness with a breathless screech.

[Ulric]

“Float? Float?” Ulric was screaming now, his face red and twisted with rage. “Float on what, exactly? Hundreds of years of shyke?” He actually would’ve preferred shyke. Shyke reeked, but it was familiar. There wouldn’t be any surprises. The slime just made him nervous. Trying not to gag, he treaded through the viscous substance, ultimately losing the fight against his gorge. Harsh vomit spewed from his mouth, and he bent double as paroxysms shook his body – which also had the effect of making his head dip below the surface. Before he could think to close his lips, warm glop seeped through, sliding down his throat. He wasn’t even able to heave, just thrashed around as the flow kept on going, fighting to get his head above the surface. Bursting up through the glutinous substance, he spat, hurled, clawed at his face and eyes, desperately trying to get away. But he couldn’t. The most he could do was keep his head and upper body from being sucked down, a hoarse, gurgling scream emanating from his mouth. Slowly, the frenzy began to recede. Desperate he was, but at least he was thinking straight now. “What’s going on?” he groaned, wincing from the echo of his own voice, as the slime continued to burble around his legs. He swiftly closed his mouth, tried to listen to what was happening up top, but all heard was a scrabbling, then a familiar voice, the words running together. Then he saw the shadow. Petch. Ulric flung himself away, at least as quickly as a person could when most of their body was mired in muck, so that the lectern barely missed his torso. The heavy object struck the surface with a loud quelch. Then the slime was flying everywhere, splattering the stones. The lectern sank, then bobbed up amid gooey, reeking waves that pushed him from the center, hand clutching the sides. Before he could curse, there was another creak. He wildly sought to get away, only to see another shadow descending from the ring of light. Then another spurt of slime caught him in the face.

[Seidaku]

The furious shouts had ceased with the wet thump of the lectern into the... whatever awful filth Ulric had fallen into. Even as he began his own uncontrolled descent into the hole, he had a moment to regret the fact that his plan to save the day had killed Ulric and probably himself as well.

Pitching over backwards, Seidaku could do nothing more than clench his eyes tightly, give the beginning of a hoarse scream, and pray to any gods that might be listening that he did not land on the lectern and break his everything. After a fall that was at least two bells long, but still only gave him time for that single shout, Seidaku impacted the surface of the foul smelling slime with an impact that rattled his teeth and knocked what little breath he had left out of his lungs. A split second after he landed, the backs of his calves exploded in white-hot flashed of agony as he hit the lectern after all.

Completely inverted by the impact and with his lungs entirely empty from various attempts to scream and blunt impacts, Seidaku instinctively opened his mouth to try and draw in a breath of air. Instead, a flood of the muck that somehow managed to taste even fouler than it smelled forced its way into his mouth and down his throat. Flailing and choking, he somehow managed to right himself, dragging his head above the surface and retching violently, vomiting up everything he had ever eaten as his body fought to purge itself of the reeking slime. Doubled over in pain and nausea, he went under again and was forced to repeat the process, retching and gasping in dry heaves with his stomach empty, before he was able to flop across the top of the lectern and break the cycle, at least temporarily.

Seidaku wiped a stinging mixture of slime and tears from his eyes, blinked about owlishly, and noticed that he was not alone in the bottom of the pit. Despite the pain in his stomach, and the worse pain spasming in his lower legs, he managed a relieved sigh that turned into more dry heaves, "You're, umm, you're alive. Good... My plan wasn't a, umm, a total failure. Of course, now we're going to drown. In stinking, ah, slime. In the dark."

Seidaku slumped over the lectern, feeling thoroughly defeated and miserable.

[Ulric]

Ulric choked, retched, threw an elbow over the slowly sinking lectern, his aching chest heaving, desperately sucking in the torpid air at the base of the shaft. He was slathered in glop and reeking vomit, not all of it his own, and apart from being horrified by this sudden reversal of fortunes, he was exasperated. Why does it have to be me? He nearly scowled, only averting that familiar twitch of his face because it was incredibly hard to do that when the dark, watery contents of your guts kept spewing inexorably from your mouth. “Urgh,” he moaned, eyes turgidly roaming the inky murk, then, “Gurgh.” He’d half thought the other man had become a victim of either the plunge or their sucking bed of sludge. “How astute,” he managed to grit out, lacking even the energy to curse or be upset. I’d rather have my tongue yanked out with red-hot pincers, he grunted, trying to curl around the agony, nearly choking on an abrupt surge of hot, searing bile at the back of his throat. I’d sooner take it up the arse. “Ur–huuurgh!” He spewed again, though only a few gobbets of something came out, the force of the spasm causing him to lose his grasp on the lectern. “Guurp!” Ulric flailed around in a frenzy of fear, his clawing hand striking against the slick stones again. He made to scramble away, but there was no answering spurt, just a creak of rock scraping over rock, and what felt like a cloud of dust washing over his face. He sneezed violently. That was when he found that his arm was caught on something cold, something hard, something that was unmistakably stony. His arm was wedged through a squarish, gaping hole in the stones, glop leaking over the cracked-mortar edge. They were saved. Perhaps. “Come on,” he growled urgently, thrusting his head and shoulders through the hole, cursing as the head of his axe got stuck for a moment, grateful that he hadn’t brought his heavy fur cloak. Sucking in his breath, he violently kicked with his legs, sensed an abrupt shift in his center of balance. He struck the ground face-first.

[Seidaku]

Clutching tightly to the oddly bobbing altar, Seidaku was capable of little more than retching feebly and feeling miserable. He had doomed them. He had been the one who wanted to delve deeper into the strange building, he had been the one to drop the lectern and fall down the hole after it instead of doing something worthwhile.

Craning his neck to look upward at the still distant lip of the pit caused the lectern to spin, submerging him again in the stinking filth until he could scramble his way back to clutching at the top of the floating altar, spitting out a mouthful of liquid awful as his stomach cramped painfully in dry heaves. It was too far to climb. Still too far by a large margin, especially with both of them down inside the well.

Teary eyes stinging from the muck, Seidaku tried to clear his mind. There had to be a way out. If they could not climb out, then what?

The answer struck him so suddenly that he began to giggle, a high sound tinged more than a little with hysteria. It would work. It might kill them just as soundly as drowning, but it also might not. Voiding. Portals to the Void created suction, pull. If he could create a portal that created enough pull to overcome the force keeping them at the bottom of the hole, they would rise upward, and perilously close to the portal. But if he timed it just right...

His thoughts were cut off by a growled command and the sound of metal scraping roughly on stone. He looked over to see Ulric pulling himself through a hole in the wall of the pit, just over a foot above his head.

"Oh, thank the gods," Seidaku breathed, shamefully pleased at not being forced make a suicidal attempt at heroism. Following that growled command, he paddled carefully over to the edge of the well and watched the other man's feet disappear through the lip of the hole. With a deep breath to steel himself he grabbed the lip of what he realized now had to be a tunnel, feeling the rough stone scrape his palms and refusing to think of what manner of toxins might be seeping into his body, and pulled with all his strength at the wall.

Scrabbling at the muck slick wall with his feet to propel him upward, Seidaku managed to hook first one elbow and then another over the lip, resting for a moment to catch his breath. He then slowly, laboriously, drug himself out of the slime and onto level ground in a tunnel barely wider than his shoulders, where he lay, gasping and choking, peering ahead of himself to see what he was dragging himself toward.

[Ulric]

Ulric clawed at the rough stones, jerking himself further up the narrow tunnel, away from the noxious, rising glop. The sides pressed in on him, making him almost fearful to breathe, and it was even darker in their confines, but at least he was free of the glutinous horror. The air was turgid and stale. He sucked it in greedily, clutching his aching ribs as the other man clambered through the hole, reaching for the haft of his axe to make certain it wasn’t lost. We mustn’t linger, he thought faintly, fearful of another, dreadful surprise.

“Come on,” he moaned, pawing at Seidaku’s filthy collar. He managed to jerk the man a few paces forward, but left off when he felt a fiery pang in his shoulder. When had that happened? “Come on.” He began to crawl, knees scraping on the rough stones, head bumping on the low ceiling. He didn’t know where the tunnel led, except for up, away from where they had fallen. The murk was constant, impenetrable, inexorable, and he found himself pausing every now and again to touch his cheek, ensuring that he wasn’t dreaming or lost in some empty void. And yet, the maw slowly began to widen, to rise until it was nearly the height of a man. He felt rusty torch brackets on the walls, the splintery rungs of a ladder that ended after but a few steps, a slight, cold wisp of wind against his cheek, the faint sound of dust sifting through loose stones, a clanking of metal and a creak of timbers, the drag of his boots against rock. They were somewhere, but he couldn’t even have made a guess. He just kept following the tunnel, scuffed, bloody fingers stroking the stones, questing ahead for sucking pits and other traps that never seemed to appear.

Then he struck the wall.

Thump.

“Shyke,” Ulric growled, rubbing at the dull, throbbing pain on his brow as he hunched over. Taking a firmer grip on a bracket to keep his weary, abused legs from buckling, he reached out and touched the stones. He felt the regular lines of masonry, cemented by crumbling mortar. The tunnel was bricked over. The embers of hope began to dim in his chest, which in turn made him angry, because he’d come so far only to perish in this crazy house on a sordid desire to find the owner of a foot.

“We are not going to die here,” he snarled back, angry at the man just because he was there, and threw his shoulder against the bricks. There was a jolt of pain, but he just grunted and bared his teeth, took a step to the rear and hurled his entire bulk against the cruel barrier. That was equally as vain. The thing was, he couldn’t stop now. He’d rather beat his brains out than give up now. Ulric began to roar, a hoarse, animal cry rumbling up from the depths of his throat as he flung himself forward, more times than he could count, until his shoulder was numb, his tunic torn to shreds, the skin beneath was scraped raw. The bricks began to groan, to shift under the fury of his onslaught, dust cascading from their borders. He reeled back, began to kick at them. There was a scraping sound, and then a shaft of pale light pierced the tunnel, granting him new hope. He bellowed with rage, kicked at the ancient bricks, pounded at them, until he’d forced a breach, then brought his shoulder forward and smashed through, sending masonry flying.

By then, he was barely conscious, his mind a whirl, crimson threads and stone dust gumming over one eye. The world was spinning like a top. He just stayed there, lying sprawled over the entry, clasping a clump of bricks to his chest like it was his own child.

He giggled, partly out of relief, but mostly because he didn’t know what the petch was going on.

They’d come to a chamber, barrel vaulted and strewn with slender pilasters, which was illuminated by the haunting, phosphorescent glow of some fungus that had spread over the entire structure. There were rows of machines, strange levers and pivots and great, reddish cogs, speckled with rust and caked with old, black grease, the floor smeared with the same, viscous substance that had nearly drowned them. There was a busted tank at the far side of the chamber, the ground in front of it strewn with shards of pinkish glass. There were metal benches and shelves, covered over with faded, crumbling parchments, a motley variety of tools, the remains of a meal that had long ago been reduced to a fine dust, sundry nuts and bolts. There were pieces of jagged metal, tarnished pewter and wires of greened copper, flakes and shaving of iron scattered everywhere. He thought he saw things that resembled tiny, unfinished constructs, but they had long since been concealed under layers of dust and grime, shrouds of gauzy spider webs. “Wake me when it’s time for breakfast,” he murmured softly, curling up and closing his eyes.

[Seidaku]

Still trying to catch his breath after his recent exertions, Seidaku still managed an indignant squawk when he was grabbed roughly be the collar and dragged in a single lurching pull up the tunnel. He had no choice but to follow along, it was either that or let Ulric finish the job of choking him that the slime had started.

Once he had been started, he realized that going forward was really the only option available to them. The pit behind them was too tall to climb out of and rapidly filling with the foul smelling slime that coated the walls and floor of the tunnel. And so, Seidaku followed Ulric along the only path available, exhaustedly dragging himself along the gradually climbing tunnel, scraping his palms and his knees raw and bloody.

"Why, umm... why are we stopped?", Seidaku asked softly, unwilling to disturb the sepulchural silence of their darkened environment

It was dark enough that he did not realize at first that the tunnel had opened into a larger space. When he finally realized it, the path was tall enough for him to stand without hunching over and wide enough that he worried for a panicked moment that he would wander in the darkness forever. Or worse, his mind gibbered. Between the darkness, the silence, and the deepening cold, it was possible that they could step out of Mizahar entirely and spin away into the Void, to die in a freezing vacuum. Just like in the House of Broken Mirrors.

He was breathing hard, lightheaded from hyperventillation, when his fingers brushed against the rough stone of the passageway. He used the wall as an anchor of sorts, proof that they were still in Mizahar and not spinning away in the darkness. He increased the speed of his shuffling footsteps, not wanting to be left behind by Ulric.

With one arm brushing the wall, and another stretched out in front of him, grasping at the dark, he was none the less surprised when his fingers brushed rough woolens and shortly thereafter he ran abruptly into the halted Ulric.

"Why, umm... why did we stop?" he asked, reluctant to push past the other man to find out.

"We are not going to die here," came a snarling reply from the darkness. Remembering abruptly the wicked looking axe, and the dismembered foot that had brought them down into this miserable pit in the first place, Seidaku stumbled backward, tripping over his own feet and almost falling over in his effort to get out of reach of whatever violence might be coming.

Instead of a blow directed at him though, heard a resounding crash from ahead. This was followed immediately by another, even louder crash, this time accompanied by the dry trickling sound of shifting sand. A hateful, bestial shout echoed through the darkness, as Ulric obviously began hurling himself bodily against the barrier ahead in a frenzy.

Seidaku stood, paralyzed, as Ulric attacked a brick wall. He knew that he should do something, should stop the man before he did himself a lasting injury. However, if he pulled Ulric's ire away from the barrier ahead, he was the only other available target of that ire, which he doubted could possibly be healthy for him. Gradually though, impossibly even, Ulric's assault began to show results. He could hear bricks shifting, stone grinding against stone, even over the sounds of Ulric's hoarse bellows.

Then, with shocking suddenness, there was a sharp crack, followed by light. Blindingly bright after his time in the pitch blackness, Seidaku shielded his eyes from the light, finally opening them and blinking away the pain when he heard an unexpected giggle from Ulric and found the grizzled, battered man laying prone, slumped over the pile of rubble. He rushed forward just in time to hear Ulric grumble something unintelligible and descend into unconsciousness.

Still blinking his eyes and wiping away the clinging layer of filth that coated his face, Seidaku stumbled forward to collapse kneeling beside Ulric. It appeared that Ulric was still breathing, at least. He was beaten, battered, and bloodied, but he was still alive. And then Seidaku's gaze slipped past Ulric and into the eerily lit chamber that the attack had unveiled.

His eyes snapped open wide in amazement and his jaw dropped. Standing on shaking legs, he tottered into the huge chamber. He stared about himself in stunned shock, and then he began to laugh. Softly at first, and then louder, great gales of delighted laughter as his eyes fell on each new revelation. He laughed until he began to cough, doubled over as his body returned the last of the slime in his lungs to its counterpart slicking the floor of the chamber.

This discovery alone made the ordeal of the last few bells worth it. They were in a laboratory, or possibly a workshop of some sort. An ancient one, judging by its condition of disrepair.

Still in a daze, Seidaku walked toward one of the many shelves and benches, staring rapt at the stacks of loose papers and scrolls littering them. Grinning widely, he licked his lips and then gagged at the residue of ooze covering them. He was afraid to touch the papers, worried that they would crumble to dust in his hands. He realized that he could make out some of the symbols inked onto the scrolls. It was the Ancient Tongue, but a dialect that he did not recognize.

Leaning in close, he scanned the documents, searching for patterns or themes and wishing fervently that he had studied old Vauthor's lessons in the dead language more closely. There were runes that he could read, but they were many times isolated, or clustered together in small groups that did nothing but tantalize him to study deeper and learn more.

[Ulric]

“Grom nom nom,” Ulric growled, chewing on the soft, yellow chips of potato for a lingering moment before they chased the others down his throat, fork questing for the next morsel, the slender tines tinkling on bare rocks. That’s strange, he frowned, but the source of his unease was readily located. He didn’t have a fork. He didn’t even have a plate of food, just a flat, dusty surface of rock, and the creaking of rusty metal gears. “What’s going on?” Ulric mumbled, fingers clawing at the debris, knees scraping as he sought to gain his footing. That didn’t go very smoothly, for he just jerked back in alarm, beating his spine against the rust-pitted supports of a hexagonal, yellow-orangey table. He glanced around, saw a familiar man bending over sheaves of crumbling parchment, nostrils turning up at the foul, lingering stench.

“What’re we doing?” he asked, using the table to yank himself onto his feet. The surface creaked alarmingly under his bulk, but fortunately held. He felt around, sweeping away the dust, disturbing a few rough carvings, tools smeared with dry grease, a clay flagon that cracked on the ground, sending fragments dancing over the floor. He idly stuck a pair of pincers through his belt, thrust out his chest to breathe deeply, brow crinkling at the turgid, musty air. What’re these saying? He bent over the table, eyes squinting to regard the fading scrawls of ink that depicted an intricate, spider-like schematic, the chest bursting with cogs and gears, pointy legs thrusting out like some terrifying, chittering automaton from his worst nightmares.

Needless to say, he felt rather uneasy. He wanted to get out.

Ulric began to walk around, searching for some means of egress, some ladder in a corner leading to a trap door. However, it wasn’t that easy. He didn’t find anything, and presently harbored a brief, frantic doubt that the building itself was toying with them, leading them along the gamut of inevitably painful demises. That wasn’t very reassuring. He searched the shelves and tables, taking a hank of short, brittle wire, the rust sloughing away in chunks, a flat, engraved piece of greenish copper that he idly speculated might be some arcane sort of a key. “Hmmm,” he sighed, casting a sidelong gaze at Seidaku.

[Ulric]

“Hmmm,” murmured Seidaku, plainly entranced by the crumbling scrolls and smeared, crusty tomes. Petch, grunted Ulric. Now he’s going to want to stay here and read. He’d never had anything against books, just fumbling at them while covered in foul, drying sludge, while ensnared in the darkly fetid bowels of what purported to be a sorcerer’s lair. He paced around, nudging the heaps of debris, the warped boards and twisted bronze devices. I’m not going to bide here any longer, he growled, with pugnacious jerk of his jaw. Eyes scrying the chamber, he began to take in the vague contours of the walls, rock and timber, with bands of rusty metal, the remnants of friezes and frescoes, crumbling flakes of yellowed plaster behind years of pewter grime, even the tracery of crude and fine carvings, whorling together in a decrepit jumble.

Eventually, he found the door. The ledge of the frame was engraved with a motif of creeping gargoyles, confuscated by motley wreckage, including a huge, dusty mirror whose pieces were strewn over the floor. “Try not to cut yourself.” He began to tear away end tables, a sooty, half melted brazier. There were spars, pieces of sails, tarry ropes, and a dented pauldron, the head of a spear set on a broken shaft, torn bleached rags that when disturbed, erupted in a swarm of pale, sluggishly flapping moths.

Ulric forged on with the task, chest heaving as he errantly hurled the junk away, splinters gouging into his fingers. But at last, he was though. The door was squat, barely reaching his blunt, crooked nose. He sought out the latch, but there was none. He frowned. "What’s the petching use,” he glared at the piece of copper, but there was always another way. The door was timber, with only a few plates of brittle, sloughing metal, and when he gave it a rap with his knuckles, it didn’t sound very thick. Today, he felt like crushing things. Taking up the edges of a low bench, he whirled back, then smashed it into the door. He felt it gave after the blow, his fingers numbed by sheer, jolting force, but he didn’t relent. He brought it around again, punching a crack through the timbers, and then once more, forcibly tearing away the hinges. “Bastard,” he growled, crunching the heel of a boot into the sagging door, and ducked under.

Emerging into a brightly lit chamber.

The space wasn’t very large, but it held a pair of long, low trestles flanked by crude benches, a few stools. There were torches set in shiny brackets, the mortar of the stones barely scorched black by the haze of acrid smoke that was sucked up in cloying serpents of blue and gray by the gaping abyss of chimney set in the ceiling. The chamber was just a large barrel arch, broadly vaulted.

However, the first features he detected weren’t related to the arches. No, he just blinked, for there were four men hunched over the tables, over a repast of bread, soup, and beer. They gaped at him with red, likely stinging eyes, long angular jaws, partly enveloped by scruffy beards. There was the clack of a spoon as it slid through slack fingers, splashed into a bowl. They were clad in studded leather fringed with a faded burgundy, clearly meant to emphasize a concord, and there was a spiked iron cap by one of their elbows. However, the swords, and a short, heavy axe, were mostly leaned in a rack by the near corner, only leaving them with daggers.

For a long, astonished instant, nobody said anything. There was only the crackle of coals in a brazier, the writhing of red ember worms.

Then it began.

Harshly, the cry jounced over the corners, crept into cracks in the mortar, under the door at the other side of the chamber. “They’ve come for Master Quilon!” And abruptly, a squirrely guard with watery blue eyes and a shaggy thatch of jet hair was hurling a cudgel across the room, scrambling for his dagger.

Ulric flung himself away.

Seidaku, who’d quietly come away with a pair of tomes jealously cradled to his chest, hadn’t quite recovered from the shock yet, and it struck him at the juncture of his brow. He rocked back with a teeter, eyes slowly crossing. Then tumbled like a sack of flour.

Ulric lunged forward, trying to get his back away from the corner. Shyke, he cursed, feeling the fevered pulsing in his veins, though his thought was distracted and irregular. He was half dazed. There was a flash of a curved dagger, and before he could grasp what was happening, he’d jerked his shoulder and clove downward. The axe’s curved edge bit into bone, into brain with a crunch. Hair furled away, and there was a red spurt of bloody scalp over the ridge of his cheek, making vivid dots against the gray canvas of dried sludge. He sought to pull the haft away, but he couldn’t. The bone, the sucking embrace of soft, pale matter wouldn’t give way. “Shyke,” he grunted, just an instant before a fist found his jaw. He wrenched away, trying to divest the punch of its jarring force, but it petching hurt.

Ulric swept back, driving a knee into the juncture of the man’s legs, crushing his elbow against a nose. More red, speckling him like a tapestry. The man reeled away. Then there was the edge of a dagger, scraping over the cage of his ribs, trying to slip between to get at his guts. “Get away, cunt,” he snarled, fingers encircling the offending wrist like a vice, cruelly twisting. There was a loud pop, the grating of breaking bones, and a consequent clatter. Then he reared back, crunched his brow into an ugly, redly contorted face, flung the guard aside.

Then a stool, hurled by the squirrely guard, jounced away from his shoulder, a stray leg catching him on the jaw. He gave a groggy shake of his head, a crimson rivulet wending down his neck from the gash. Not fair, he grunted, just as a fist careened into his nose, making his head snap back with a burst of white specks before his eyes. He gave a stagger, felt his back brush on the rocks. But he didn’t fall. No, he was a brawler. He just lurched forward, taking another blow in the ribs, landing a blind, vicious punch that knocked the guard away for a moment. That was all the time he required to recover.

Ulric reached for his knife, the edge scraping against the leather sheath as he brought it around, trenchantly cutting through the cartilage of the man’s throat. There was a wash of crimson, hurling like ribbons over his face, his chest. Then the man was down, fingers desperately cinching over the ragged gash, making soft gurgles as vainly sought to keep from bleeding out. There wasn’t time to end him, though. There was a crash broken of pottery, sundered to a dozen pieces on the rocks, and then the squirrely guard was dragging at the door, scrambling into the corridor beyond with a high, reedy squeal. Well, shyke. Ulric began to pursue the receding clump of hair, angrily kicking a feebly groaning foe in the side of the head, but the first guard was already up. This time, it was his fruits that absorbed the agony.

“Urp,” he grunted, nearly curling around the crashing breakers of intense, yet deadening nausea, but he wasn’t so hurt that he didn’t remember to lash out with his knife, forcing the guard to lurch away. “Grarg,” he growled, trying to straighten the length of his spine. Then the guard was leaping at him again, a squat dagger slashing for his belly. “Gurgh.”

Dark, cloudy eyes narrowed to angry wedges, he whirled away, brought up his own blade to deflect the other. That wasn’t quite the best move, for the guard’s meaty fingers latched onto his wrist, trying to jerk the knife away. He leaned away from a cut of the dagger, caught just under an elbow, and they grapped for several long, fraught moments, grunting and sweating in a deadly grasp.

Slowly, a grin began to twist over his blunt, puffy features, already so caked with grime that only the glitter of his eyes seemed to stand out. He surged forward, using his powerful shoulders to hurl the guard into the rocks, so fiercely that the long jaw crunched against the mortar, leaving a red smear. “That’s what you get for eating soup,” he rasped.

Then he fled.

Ulric sawed through the thongs securing the guard’s purse, hastily stuffing it into his belt pouch, and then he was placing a heavy boot on a corpse, using the leverage to yank his axe away. Could’ve used that, he gave a rueful wince, jerking around his aching jaw as if hasty movement could deaden the ache, but there were other problems to consider. Seidaku, for one. Though he’d taken a cudgel to the face, the stranger could’ve been snoring in his bed for all that his mousy face revealed. There was just a red, angry welt, nothing more. The arms hadn’t moved, just clutched at the dusty, disintegrating pages and copper bound leather covers as though nothing, not even a cyclone, could’ve broken his grip. There wouldn’t be any leaving him. That would’ve been barbaric.

“You’d better wake up,” Ulric snarled, snaring his fingers through the front of Seidaku’s tunic, and began to drag the man through the door, down the winding brown corridor. They didn’t get far. There was a cry, and yet another guard broke from the gloom, clutching a large sword that he drove at them like a spear, a spiky yellow beard bristling out of the collar of his jerkin. Ulric didn’t know what to make of that, for the man was clearly half a head shorter than he was, and muscled like a sickly girl. He just swept it aside with his axe, grimacing at the clangor. He couldn’t fathom why the guard was bawling like a demon, either. “Go away,” he grunted.

“Go petch yourself,” was the growled answer.

Before he knew what was happening, the guard was leaping in close, fouling up both their legs with the japery of his sword. Ulric felt himself tumbling. Ha, he snarled, driving a vicious elbow into the canary beard, and the struggle was over just like that. He dragged himself from the floor, leaving a scant train of crimson drops where he’d been cut by the sword, and began to lug frenziedly at his scholarly burden, trying to find a way out. By now, he was angry.

They swept down the corridor, taking a left past a chamber that appeared to enclose a great quantity of stores, went around a corner. Then a large, heavy bronze door crept up before his eyes, and before it an even larger man, clad in robes of richly brocaded, yet blemished cerulean satins. The sorcerer clenched a parchment with emblazoned with rows of outlandish, menacing glyphs, and a dagger of bone.

“So, you’ve come for me,” he sneered, tossing his long, flowing platinum locks, with a twitch of his violet eyes.

“Not really.”

“Don’t be silly,” the sorcerer jerked with laughter. “Everybody knows the dreaded Quilon, potentate of the realms of life and death, master of the foulest voids and deadliest summons, tweaker of dreams, quencher of the infernal flames of the volcano, the bidder of the tempest. Don’t say you haven’t, because you do. Don’t try to defy my power, because you can’t.” Quilon gestured garishly, nearly cutting himself with the dagger, robes flapping around his huge thighs, which were certainly better suited to armor than the robes of a conjurer.

Ulric frowned. “Why not?”

“Why not?” Quilon gave a sputter. “Why not, it asks. Why not what, try to get away? These doors won’t open for you. They only open for-” There was a hiss of broken air. The words faded away. The sorcerer’s eyes crossed, and then he lurched back, tumbling onto the ridge of spine.

He lay prone.

“You?” Ulric snorted, trudging to the sprawl of Quilon. Jadely, he wrenched his axe from the center of the man’s face, tearing a gold bracelet from around his nwrist, and pilfered the red leather pouch at his belt, which faintly reeked of herbs and bat guano, before reaching for the piece of copper.

There was a hole in the door, and it fit perfectly. The gears began to grind, and then it was lurching away. The stairs erupted up before him, and beyond them, that ghastly, unnerving carving. “We’re leaving,” he jabbed a finger at the discordant visage. “Don’t fret, we’ll show ourselves out.”

Beyond the door, a warm, purple rain was pelting on the shingles, tasting of putrefying cherries. Not very pleasant, but at least there weren’t any stray feet.