there?
In the dim torchlight I could see a dozen men sleeping in bedrolls in
the middle of the room, and three more awake and playing some kind of card
game. There was a door behind the alter, with another man leaning against the
wall next to it. They were all pretty normal-looking men at arms, wearing
chainmail shirts and armed with a variety of spears, swords and axes.
Tricky.
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I put the section of roof back in place, and told Avilla what I’d seen.
“Could we go around them?” She asked. “The door must lead to the
inner sanctum and the priests’ quarters. If we move further down the roof we
could come in through that and search for the way down to the cellar.”
I rubbed my chin. “Maybe. But if we’re sneaking through a maze of
little rooms it would be easy to blunder into someone, and have them shout
before we can react. Let me take another look at this.”
I lifted the roof patch again, and studied the layout. The roof was
supported by an open framework of heavy timber, which included thick
horizontal crossbeams running the width of the room. Easily big enough to
walk on, although getting from one to another would take magic. The guy by the
door looked like he’d managed to fall asleep standing up, and the room had
several shadowy corners where it might be possible to float down to the floor
without being spotted.
Avilla’s head appeared next to me for a moment, but then she
squeezed her eyes shut and pulled away. Damn, she really did have trouble
with heights.
I shifted to put my lips at her ear. “Just stay here for a few minutes.
I’ve got this.”
She nodded.
I slipped through the hole, most of my weight suspended on a vector
of force magic, and dropped onto one of the crossbeams. It was already
creaking faintly as the wind outside buffeted the roof, and my own meager
weight made no impression on it at all.
I froze for a long minute, watching the men below. But no one reacted.
From where they sat in the torchlight the roof would be lost in shadow, and
there was more than enough background noise to cover any little sounds I might
make.
Carefully, I threw up an invisible bridge of force between the beam I
crouched on and the next one over. I crossed it on hands and knees, moving
slowly so as not to draw the eye. Still no one looked up.
Several nerve-wracking minutes later I was directly above the card
game. The players were intent on their cards, apparently still oblivious to my
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presence. Was this actually going to work?
Thankful that my magic was largely devoid of special effects, I
conjured up a small disk of stone and layered a set of spells on it. Effects I’d
done before, but this wasn’t going to be a stable enchantment. Just a hasty set
of single-use spells held together by conditional triggers. It only needed to
work once.
When I was finished I waited for a few minutes until they dealt a new
hand, and dropped it into the middle of the group while they were all busily
studying their cards.
The magic grenade fell silently through the gloom, nearly striking the
floor before the levitation spell caught it. A set of eight-foot force blades
sprung out along the edges as it rebounded, and the disk began to spin
furiously. In the blink of an eye it bounced back up to head height, then
wobbled up and down for a few seconds before the magic failed and it settled
to the floor.
The effect on the sentries was roughly comparable to dropping them in
a blender. Blood and gore went everywhere, and I had to close my eyes for a
moment. Turns out even the really hardcore slasher movies aren’t as bad as the
real thing.
But they died so fast the only noise was the soft whir of the force
blades, and a series of thumps as body parts fell to the floor. One of the
sleeping men mumbled and rolled over, but aside from that there was no
reaction.
Not trusting my good luck, I disposed of the other sentry quickly and
returned to the roof. Avilla was watching with wide eyes.
“You make the most terrifying weapons, Daniel. I’m glad you’re on
our side.”
I smiled grimly. “Thanks. Can you locate Cerise now?”
“Now? But, what about the rest of those men?”
“They’re not much threat to us asleep, and I’d rather not kill them if I
don’t have to. The way the floor is built I think the cellar is just dug out
directly under it, like your house. So if you can tell where Cerise is we can go
right through it, grab her and run before they have a chance to react.”
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“Well, if you’re sure.”
Unlike my sorcery, Avilla’s witchcraft involved a bit of a ritual
element. She pricked herself with a little paring knife, squeezed a few drops of
the golden fluid she used for blood into a small wooden bowl she produced
from somewhere, and sprinkled in a few pinches of crushed herbs while
chanting under her breath. Then she dipped a sewing needle in the mixture, and
threaded it with a hair plucked from her own head.
She held it up, and the needle swung as if magnetized to point at a spot
not far from the alter.
“There,” she pointed. “I think you’re right, we’re much closer than I
expected.”
“Keep that going, then, and hold on. I’ll get us down there, and see if I
can get a look at what we’re getting into.”
I took her in my arms again, noting in passing how natural that was
starting to feel, and dropped through the hole. Avilla buried her face in my
shoulder, her eyes screwed shut, but she managed not to make any noise. We
landed lightly a few steps from where her needle was pointing.
The instant my feet touched the floor the hollow boom of a gong
echoed through the temple, and a wave of hostile magic tried to smother my
defenses. Avilla’s locator spell flickered out like a candle in a storm, and my
levitation collapsed almost as fast.
“Ah, shit.”
My shield barely wavered before a fresh rush of power from my
amulet stabilized it. My power source was far too strong for the temple wards
to cancel out, but there was no telling what effect they’d have on normal spells
The soldiers were already sitting up and looking around, trying to find
the source of the noise. Guess I should have killed them after all.
I drew Grinder, and set Avilla down. She grimaced as her bare feet
touched the floor, and a burst of smoke rose up around her. She stomped her
foot and shouted angrily in what sounded like Greek, and a flash of golden light
drove the temple’s magic away from her.
“There,” she pointed. “Hurry! I don’t know how long I can hold the
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wards at bay.”
Grinder chewed through the heavy boards of the floor with little regard
for the magic that infused the wood. There were two layers of heavy planks
nailed to a grid of beams, easily a foot thick all told. But it didn’t slow me
down much. I carved a handhold first, then cut a generous chunk free of the
floor and boosted my strength so I could heave it out of the way.
Bright firelight shone up through the hole, but there was no time to let
our eyes adjust. The soldiers were grabbing up weapons and turning towards
us now, and I doubted my force blades would carry far with the magic of the
wards opposing them. So I grabbed Avilla, and dropped through the hole.