A Thief in the Night (18 page)

Chapter Thirty

C
roy called out in shock, but Malden was already in motion, dropping to a crouch and rolling out of the way as the spikes slammed through the doorway and bit hungrily at the air where he had been.

Malden scuttled away from the spikes on his hands and heels. When it was clear they weren't going to shoot outward from the door or knock back into the crevasse, he shook his head in relief.

The spikes were six inches long, protruding point first from a wooden board. A complicated arrangement of springs sent the board flying into the room when the door was opened. The tip of each spike glistened with droplets of liquid.

“Poison, almost certainly,” Malden said as he rose to his feet. “Interesting. I wonder why it was set to trigger from this side? Surely—”

A loud, rhythmic clanging noise interrupted him. The noise ratcheted up in volume, and then the five of them jumped in surprise as the board began to retreat back to its previous position, drawing back through the doorway. A spring mounted to the back of the door slammed it shut again once the spiked board had returned to its starting state.

There was a very loud click, like a dead bolt being shot into place, and then silence reigned once more. It was as if Malden had never opened the door.

“Ah,” he said.

“Fucking brilliant!” Slag cried.

“Ingenious, definitely,” Malden agreed. “But it raises a question. If we want to proceed, how do we get through that door?”

The dwarf pondered for a moment. “Trigger it again. Then we wedge something in between the board and the doorjamb. Something strong, like one of Mörget's weapons. He's got a whole fucking wardrobe of the things under his cloak, surely he can spare one, right? Then we all heave on it until something breaks.”

“Something inside the mechanism that propels the board?”

“Or the weapon. In which case we try again.”

Malden nodded, seeing the wisdom of this plan. “Very well. In that case—”

He stopped because Mörget was already standing to one side of the door and pulling on its latch. Malden jumped back as the board of spikes came bursting into the room again, exactly as before. Mörget roared and jumped between the board and the jamb. Instead of sacrificing one of his weapons, however, he got his own shoulder into the narrow space.

The clanging, ratcheting noise came again as the trap tried to reset itself. Mörget's face twisted into a grimace of pain as the back of the board tried to crush his body. Yet he was braced well and he pushed back with the arm he had thrust into the mechanism. The ratcheting noise made a pathetic series of clicks as the barbarian heaved and shoved, sweat breaking out across his forehead and running down across the red stain around his mouth.

And then something broke.

Malden couldn't be sure at first if it was the mechanism or one of Mörget's bones. But a moment later the barbarian screamed in rage and gave one last heave, and the board tore away from its springs. It went flying across the room, inches from impaling Cythera, and then slid over the edge of the crevasse to disappear from sight. A moment later Malden heard it splash into the river below.

“Grab the door,” Mörget howled. Croy rushed in to grab it before it could slam shut on Mörget's body. Slag ducked under the knight's arm and attacked the spring on the door with a wide-bladed screwdriver. In a moment he had that spring disabled as well.

Mörget stepped away from the mechanism and rolled his shoulder as if it was slightly sore.

“My way works, too,” he said.

“So much for the element of surprise, though,” Cythera pointed out. “That made enough noise that I'm sure even the demon heard it. We'd be wise to press on now and get away from here as quickly as possible, before it—or anything else—comes to investigate.”

“You mean the ghosts of elves?” Croy asked. “Do you sense them?”

Cythera shook her head, but she didn't look particularly sure. “No . . . but . . . there's something here. Something that doesn't want us to go any further.” She gave them all a weak smile. “Perhaps I'm just jumping at shadows.”

“Some shadows are more dangerous than others,” Mörget pointed out. “The woman is right. We need to keep moving.”

Malden approached the open door and held his lantern inside. He could see the clockwork that had operated the trap, much of it now broken and bent out of shape. Beyond, there seemed to be a large open space. He crawled over the gears and into the room there, and then called back for everyone else to follow.

The room beyond the door had a low ceiling, though Mörget was able to stand upright once he was inside. It was broader than it was deep, and the walls were of finely dressed stone. A pair of broad doorways led out of the room, farther into the city, but they could not be reached immediately because someone had constructed a barricade before them. It was a clumsy affair of broken furniture and low walls made of sacks filled with sand, studded all over with wooden spikes. The spikes pointed toward the door Malden had just come through. He approached one and gave it a push, and the wood collapsed under his finger, rotten through and as soft as paper. In fact the entire barricade looked like it might collapse into dust if he gave it a good kick. The furniture was falling apart and the sacks of sand had been nibbled at by insects until they leaked in a hundred places. “Ah. Well, this explains one thing,” he said.

“What's that?” Croy asked.

“I wasn't expecting that last trap to be triggered from that side because I expected all the traps were meant to keep anyone from getting out of the Vincularium. Clearly, though, the elves wanted just as much to keep anyone from getting in. Tell me, Croy, would this make a good defensive point to ward off invaders?”

“Yes, certainly,” the knight said. “Presumably the trap on the door would stop the first one who tried to come through. The noise it makes would alert you that someone was trying to come in. The invaders would be unlikely to fall for the trap twice, but by the time they disabled the mechanism, you could have a dozen archers here, protected by this defensive works, and they could hold off all but the most determined attackers.”

“The elves thought they were going to be attacked,” Malden said, climbing over the barricade. From the far side he could see how easily a man could duck down behind the gathered junk and be shielded from incoming attacks. “They must have believed that the humans would come in here after them and finish the job. The last thing they expected was that they would be sealed inside and left to rot.”

“Sounds good, lad,” Slag said. “Too bad your theory is horseshit.” The dwarf was busy examining the clockwork that had propelled the spiked board.

“Oh?” Malden asked.

“Two reasons. No elf ever built something this complicated. They lacked the skill. Secondly, the buggers all died off centuries ago.” He ran one finger across the teeth of a heavy gear. “But the oil on this thing is fresh.”

Chapter Thirty-one

“T
hen—someone else has been here. And recently,” Cythera said.

“Most like they're still here,” Slag insisted. “And they didn't want us coming in.”

Croy frowned. “It doesn't seem like Mörget's demon would be capable of building that trap.”

“It had no hands,” the barbarian agreed. “The woman had a sense something was here. Now we know it's more than just intuition. There's someone else in here with us.”

“But who?” Croy demanded. “This place has been sealed tight for centuries. The demon seems able to come and go, but only because it can flatten itself so that it fits through narrow cracks in the earth. We know no human has ever despoiled this place—the chains out front were still intact, and their enchantment had never been discharged. Moreover, if any man of Skrae had ever come here before we would have heard the tale.”

“Grave robbers, perhaps,” Malden said, though that failed to counter most of Croy's points. It was all he could think of.

For a while they all just stared at each other, fear passing from one to another as their eyes met. This was not something they'd prepared for.

“Whoever they are,” Slag said finally, “even if they didn't hear all that noise—they'll probably come check their trap from time to time. And when they do, they'll see that someone broke their fucking toy. They'll know we're here, too.”

Croy drew Ghostcutter from its sheath. “We need to be on our guard from this point forward.” He saw Mörget's axe jump into his hand. “Everyone,” the knight said, “get back behind this barricade, while we scout the way forward.”

Mörget moved without instruction to one of the two doors leading deeper into the Vincularium. The barbarian shoved his helmet down over his shaved head and nodded to indicate his readiness. Croy moved to the other door and stood to one side of it. Whoever constructed the door trap might even now be aware that it had been triggered. He had no conception of what might come to check on it, but he was ready. Carefully, in case there were more traps, he pushed down on the latch of his door. It swung open easily, revealing only darkness beyond.

If anyone was out there, they needed no light to see by. Croy considered extinguishing his group's own lanterns, but he had fought in darkness too many times to think that wise. A man fighting without a light was as likely to strike down a friend as a foe. He looked across at Mörget, who opened his own door. No spikes jumped out, nor did the ceiling of the barricade room fall in, nor did the room fill up with boiling oil. All to the good.

Lantern in one hand, sword in the other, Croy stepped through his door. Beyond lay a room so large his light failed to illuminate anything but the wall behind him. The floor was made of cobblestones like a city street, smoothed down by time and commerce until they were nearly as flat as flagstones. He took a few steps forward into the darkness but failed to find another wall. Soon he was standing in a rippling puddle of his own light, with darkness beyond him in every direction.

He turned to look behind him and could just see the door he'd come through. Standing next to it was its twin. Mörget stood framed by the light coming in through that door—it seemed both doors opened on the same chamber. Croy wanted to call Mörget out to join him but dared not make noise. He could hear nothing but the omnipresent sound of dripping water and the roaring of the air as it rushed past his ears. There could be a host of demons all around him, with slavering jaws and squirming tentacles, but if so they were not pressing their attack.

After considering his options for a moment, he headed back to the barricade room. “All right,” he whispered, “everyone, come with me. But we must remain absolutely silent!”

He had no idea what was out there in the enormous room. Yet it would be foolish to simply wait in the barricade room for the enemy to arrive. He would look for another defensible spot, one the unseen opponents wouldn't be watching.

The five of them moved in absolute silence—or as close as they could manage. Mörget's arsenal rattled and clanged under his cloak, and Slag's tools jangled in his purse. They headed left, along the one wall Croy had found, the outer wall of the barricade room. The wall was made of white brick, roughened here and there by centuries of dripping water. Croy had expected to follow it to another wall soon enough, but after a hundred feet or so he found nothing. The wall seemed to go on forever, featureless and unchanging save that every twenty feet it was braced with a massive column, ten feet square, that ran straight up into the darkness over their heads.

He kept going. After passing another five columns, he saw Malden waving to get his attention. Croy nodded, but placed a finger across his lips to indicate the thief should remain silent.

Malden grimaced in annoyance, then set his lantern down and pantomimed what he'd wanted to say. He held up one hand flat, the fingers pointing straight ahead, then pushed his other hand past it, curving away from it.

Croy frowned and tried to puzzle out the meaning. Then he had it. Malden was saying that the wall they followed was curved.

The knight ran his hands along the smooth bricks, trying to feel the distortion. It was very slight, and very subtle, but once he saw it, it was obvious. The wall was definitely concave. They must be inside some enormous circular room, and he had been hunting for a corner. Had he kept going, he would eventually have returned to the two doors leading into the barricade room.

Slag, watching the interplay of gestures, nodded eagerly. He took a piece of charcoal from his purse and drew a large circle on the wall. Croy nodded in approval. Yes, he thought, we are in a round room, very good.

Slag next took out a ball of string dyed with spots along its length. Croy had seen similar strings used to measure out parcels of land—the spots would be a precise distance apart, and if you knew the distance you could tell how long a given piece of property was, or how wide. The dwarf handed one end of the string to Malden, then reached up to close his fingers around Malden's hand, indicating that the thief should hold the string tight. Then, lantern held high, Slag walked back the way they had come until Croy could barely see the dwarf's light swinging in the distance. Slag stopped at some arbitrary-seeming point, then hurried back and drew some dwarven runes on the wall with his charcoal. Croy couldn't read most of them but recognized some numbers.

The dwarf pulled at his beard for a while, then wrote a number along the outside of his circle. Some strange notation was involved, but Croy saw the figure 1570, and near it the fraction 22/7. Slag next drew a line across the circle, neatly bisecting it. Along this line he wrote 500. Cythera, excited by the numbers on the wall, tapped the 500 with her finger several times, and Slag nodded happily.

Then Croy understood a little of what they were doing. Slag had somehow worked out that the circular room must be five hundred feet—or yards—across. He didn't understand enough mathematics to know how they'd reached that conclusion, but he didn't doubt it was correct.

Cythera ran her finger along the bisecting line, stopped right in the middle and shrugged. She was asking what was in the middle of the room.

Slag frowned, then drew the dwarven spiral rune where she'd pointed. The rune of uncertainty and doubt. Cythera stood up and pointed out into the darkness, directly away from the wall.

Slag shrugged, and started walking where she'd indicated.

Croy almost called out to stop him, but caught himself in time. Instead, he set off after the dwarf. What else could he do?