The masked man nodded slowly. "You have the right of it. Hmm. What else could you see of the room that has these clockwork men steaming around it?"
"It's rectangular, long axis across our path, fifty feet or more across and at least three times that long. There's a narrow opening in the center of its far wall that looks to be a long, narrow passage. High ceiling, room and passage both."
"Windows, perching gargoyles, anything on the ceiling?"
"No. Bare and bland-from where I was standing, mind, not in the room yet to trigger any interesting nastinesses into appearing."
"Did you leave the door wedged open? And is it large enough for these metal men to walk through?"
"No, and I've no idea. If they can't bend and stoop, no, but they looked to me very much as if they can."
The Masked paced slowly away, then turned and came back to Tantaerra. "So we'll have to do this the hard way. Triggering the big doors to fall again and seeing if we can't wedge them open somehow."
"To …what? Give us a way to climb into the room of death on the other side of this wall? Or give those metal men freedom to depart it to come in here, with us?"
The Masked shrugged. "Either will do."
Tantaerra stared up at him. "May I remind you that it's just the two of us, and neither of us are wizards with spells that can blast down castles, or even plate-armored knights with some decent swords? You do like to live dangerously, don't you?"
"It's what's got me through life so far. To end up here in this ruined city, inside the front step of what looks like a formidable death trap, with you."
"You, masked man, are crazy."
The Masked shrugged again. "That has been said before. And is almost certainly correct. So what are we waiting for?"
Chapter Fifteen
We're looking," The Masked announced, as they walked out into the dweomercats-and watched the blue horde melt away from them almost magically, leaving them a clear space to walk in-"for a stone block or spar at least as long as my arm, that doesn't look cracked or as if it will easily crumble. It will be heavy."
Tantaerra gave him a withering look. "Halflings are small, not stupid. Of course it'll be heavy! And if it doesn't wedge those doors open?"
"We try something else. This isn't a race. Oh, and if we find something hard that looks like it will fit through one of the links of the chains that hauled the doors back up, we bring it, too."
"Jam the chain-spool if we can't wedge the doors," Tantaerra interpreted. "I just hope we aren't going to have to go trotting out here on new scavenger prowls with every new room we reach. Tell me-though I suspect those metal men will stay inside the Tomb, what if they come trundling out here after us?"
The Masked chuckled. "Remember what happened to Valorn the Healer? And his coffin?"
"We collapse a roof on them. Why doesn't that sound as tidy and easy to me as it obviously does to you?"
"You're halfling crazy, not Tarram Armistrade crazy."
"Ah. Well, as long as there's a reasonable explanation. Wh-there!"
Tantaerra pointed at what she'd just caught sight of, behind some tall and tangled weeds. A broken cylinder of stone, probably a section of fallen stone pillar.
The Masked eyed it. "Either we roll it, or I drag it with your cord. There's no way I'm hefting and carrying that back to the Tomb."
"Heavy," Tantaerra agreed.
So it proved to be. The Masked was sweating by the time they were standing in front of the Shattered Tomb again.
He was sweating still more by the time he'd muscled the cylinder of stone through the doors and around the corner, along the wall.
"From here," he announced, "we roll it. Right across the floor."
He undid the improvised harness and returned the cord to Tantaerra, then sat down against the wall, drew up his legs, and straightened them in a hard kick.
The cylinder rumbled across the floor toward the inner doors.
Halfway there, a flagstone sank under its passage. There came a grating sound from two places in the ceiling, and rather rusty axe-blades swung down on chains to crisscross at about the height of a man's torso in the center of the room.
"Such bright imagination," Tantaerra commented, watching them. "It'll be a big rolling ball chasing us, next."
The blades went back and forth tirelessly as The Masked struggled to stand the stone cylinder upright against the wall, beside the doors.
"I'm going to …have to move pretty sharp-like…to not get crushed by the doors yet get back to shove this in time," he panted.
"You won't have to," Tantaerra told him. "If I stand atop this, rest assured I can make it fall in the right direction when I jump off."
The Masked looked at her a little disbelievingly, then nodded, grinned, and replied, "Let's be doing this, then!"
So do it they did.
The doors toppled as before, Tantaerra got the cylinder to fall almost before The Masked was clear of the falling doors, and the air was filled with the grinding, whirring, and ticking of countless gears as three lumbering metal figures came to the doorway to stand in a line, trailing puffs of green steam.
"So they stay in their room," The Masked panted. "Right."
Tantaerra eyed the three metal guardians. They looked huge, this close. "So, Masked Brilliance, what next?"
The doors started to rise again, chains rattling.
The Masked said a dirty word, then snatched up his pole and trotted along the wall. "Where's this door of yours?"
"Right here, and opens thus. Now, what are you-"
"Don't know yet," The Masked informed her merrily. "Now, those things can outrun you, so it'll have to be me. Wait here."
And he burst through the door, ducked around the stone block and treasure chest, and sprinted across the room patrolled by the clockwork men, heading straight for the narrow passage opening out of the far wall.
He was almost halfway there when the men of gears saw or sensed him. They swung around, let out huge snorting gouts of smoke like old men blowing hard to get their pipes to catch alight, and charged.
Clank whirr wheeze tiktiktik. Clank whirr wheeze tiktiktik. CLANK whirr wheeze-
The floor was fairly shaking underfoot as The Masked raced down the passage, keeping as low as possible. When he felt flagstones give under his boots, he flung himself forward in a skidding dive that left the concealed crossbows in the walls hurling bolts at empty air, and came up in a racing crawl that brought him to the expected plain, ring-handled door at the end of the passage. He flung it open and moved with it, keeping just behind it.
Which was a good thing. The edges of the doorframe suddenly sprouted a row of sword blades with a loud clakkk.
The Masked ducked low to the floor and peered around the door. If this was anything like that old tomb in Cheliax, all was well and good. If not, he was likely to be very dead, very soon …
He caught sight of heavy chain, up at the ceiling of the space beyond the blade-adorned door, and hope leaped within him.
A moment later, there was a loud clacking sound from beyond the door, and what he'd dared to hope would happen started to unfold.
The men of steam and gears-clockwork golems, they had to be-were all in the passage now, heads leaning forward, arms drawing back to deliver hammer blows, legs striding hard.
And swinging to meet them, in a great arc that would make it sweep through the doorframe from ankle level up to chest level on these metal men, was a huge spiked iron block, tallish and with flattened sides so it would fit through the door and swing a long way down the passage. It was easily three times as thick as one of the metal men-and it smashed into the foremost one with a satisfyingly teeth-shaking crash.