As he burst through the stairwell door and started plunging down flights of steps with wild bounds, the speakers at every landing crackled and came to life. Sollars had flipped a switch.
"Ah, gentlemen, welcome to Holdoncorp." Marie's usually butter-smooth and calmly professional voice sounded a little shaky, and no wonder. "Can I help you?"
"Yes," a deep, helm-bound voice snarled back at her. "Take us to those who know Falconfar."
There followed a loud crash of breaking glass. Amid the tinklings of falling shards that followed, and more than a few swiftly-stifled shrieks, the Dark Helm added in a loud and gloatingly menacing voice, "And mind ye do so quickly."
Rusty hurled himself down another flight of stairs. Quickly.
Rod blundered into the illusion of straight hallway stretching on the hard way; by bringing his foot down on the edge of the unseen descending steps and pitching forward, slamming chest-first down on the steps, and finding himself staring at the slumped corpse of Thalden bent over the giant crossbow quarrel that had torn through his innards and killed him. It was as big as a lance, and Rod realized with a start that a matching war-quarrel had struck the steps just beside Thalden, right about where his own head was now, chipping the stone ere it bounded away up the steps. He'd fallen right past it without even seeing it.
Hastily he got himself up and away from those particular steps. Picking up that quarrel, he used it to probe at the illusory passage, running on its unseen distances. There were side-walls to the steps, and an end wall with a door in it, facing the steps, and that wall ran straight up as high as he could reach; there was no gap or space through which he could move on.
So he either had to go back to the doors behind him, dare any traps Malraun had put on them, and find a way around this deadend… or it wasn't a dead-end, but the way onward, and he had to open that door.
The door through which two oversized crossbow bolts had fired, if that was the right word, one of them fast enough to kill Thalden. The other had missed Syregorn and however many other Hammerhand knights had still been alive when they'd reached this door.
Everlar hefted it in his hand, then gingerly poked its far end through the pull-ring of the door, stood as far away as he could on the stairs, over against the wall on the far side from Thalden's body, and tugged.
The door opened with surprising ease-in well-oiled soft and smooth silence-and an unseen double-bow let go with a crash. Rod saw only blurs as another lance chipped the empty side of the steps and bounded up and on along the passage, while Thalden's body spasmed, arms and head bouncing wildly, as a second quarrel tore into it right beside the first.
Rod swallowed, but made sure to keep the door held open as he edged along the lance toward its dark opening. He could hear no sounds of reloading, a whirring windlass, or men moving about, beyond the door; the only breathing he could hear was his own. The bow had fired from about there and there, which meant he should be able to keep to the very edge of the doorway and step through without straying into the path of another war-quarrel.
Assuming there were no other little surprises waiting in, say, the doorframe.
Rod shrugged, swallowed, and carefully stepped through the door. He had to trust in his hunches, because they were all he had-and this looked to him like a mechanical trap, not manned and aimed. Unless Syregorn and the others had decided to make it so.
The moment he was in the darkness-a magical band or zone of utter pitch-black blindness, he decided-Rod stopped, lance in hand, and stood still to listen.
No breathing, no stealthy movements nearby that he could hear. Just deepening silence.
So he raised the crossbow quarrel in front of him, holding it in two hands like a quarterstaff, and stepped cautiously forward.
Here cometh the Lord Archwizard of Falconfar, with borrowed war-quarrel in hand. Tremble, all, and flee before him.
Two steps took him out of the darkness-it was a magical area, that ended in a wall as smooth as the black-tinted glass he'd seen in the foyers of various luxurious corporate headquarters-and on along a stone passage very similar to the one back beyond the stairs, except that it wasn't crowded with doors in its walls, floor, and ceiling.
A hall that stretched for only a short, straight run before turning into another flight of descending steps. The ceiling bent to descend on an angle with the steps, unmarked and unremarkable stone, and there were two small, closed doors on either side of the passage, just where the steps began.
Trap, Rod thought, eyeing them. But just how did it work, and what was the best way to pass those two doors?
Right beside one of them, he decided, choosing the right-hand one on a whim and walking to it as quietly and alertly as any cat-burglar, the war-quarrel held up and ready.
Use this borrowed spear of mine to bat aside anything that strikes at me out of the doors. Rush past, low and fast, with the quarrel held up like a shield.
He did that, and nothing happened. Save that he almost fell down the stairs beyond, skidding to a teetering halt on the lip of floor they descended from. Gingerly he tapped the topmost step with the quarrel, then shoved on it, hard.
Nothing happened. The stone was hard, solid, and not moving in the slightest.
Cautiously he rapped the wall beside the step, to make sure it didn't erupt with flames or a stabbing blade or anything else.
Nothing. Rod stepped down onto that step, and prodded the next one. Any corner he cut could cost him his life. As usual.
Rusty Carroll reached the door he wanted, flung it wide, and darted out onto the giant glass display case that was the ground floor front. It ended at a wall clad in black marble, right beside him, and he ran along it, down the back row of cubicles, gun in hand.
Where were th-oh.
Screams filled the air, a cubicle wall went over with a crash, and sparks sprayed from a dangling cable as a savagely-swung sword severed a johnny pole at one stroke. From somewhere he heard the unmistakable "pop" and high-pitched singing of one of the older, larger glass computer monitors bursting.
"Women in silk blouses, short skirts, expensive metal spike heels, and elegantly-decorated pantyhose were rushing everywhere, hair wild and eyes wilder.
And there, behind them, came one of the Dark Helms, swinging his sword back and forth as he came, two-handed, like a teenager smashing store displays and not expecting anything to stand in his way. He was chuckling.
Rusty fired at the man's throat. The man staggered, but the bullet whined away, the screams rose even louder from all around, and the Dark Helm neither slowed nor stopped. Instead, he headed straight for Rusty.
Who felt the sudden need for a fire axe.
Rod walked cautiously along a new passage. He'd descended two levels from where he'd met the skeleton, and was wondering how much farther he could go before Malragard ran out of hillside and he found himself in an attic or bedchamber of some house in Harlhoh.
This passage looked like it ended just ahead, in another descending flight of stairs, but he was learning not to trust his eyes. The quarrel, or spear, had saved him from-
"Lord Archwizard," Syregorn's voice greeted him pleasantly, from somewhere ahead. "Left alone, you must trudge through life slowly indeed. I was beginning to wonder if your magic had failed you."
Chapter Twenty-Six
Rod Everlar stopped, the war-quarrel feeling suddenly heavy and awkward in his hands. He was damned if he was going to flee like a scared child-and really, in this house of hidden traps, where did he dare flee to? — but the Hammerhand warcaptain was a veteran swordsman. It would be suicide to try to fight him directly.