Shadow's Witness (23 page)

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The snow and wind had stopped. Breathless, Jak and Gale stood in the shadows of an alley beside Emellia’s. The sounds of that most human of pastimes carried through the brothel’s shutters.

“Not exactly shy, are they?” Jak observed with a soft chuckle.

Gale smiled despite himself. Now that they had begun to work, Jak seemed to have shaken his trepidation and regained his usual carefree sense of humor. Still, they needed to stay focused. Across Ariness Street was the guildhouse. The street itself was empty.

“I don’t see any guards,” Cale observed. “Didn’t last time, either. You?”

“No. No one on the roof, either.”

Cale continued to study the guildhouse, thinking. Assuming tilings had not gotten markedly worse, he knew what to expect in the basement. He also-knew from his combat with the shadow demon in Stormweather that they would need enchanted weapons to destroy the demons. Jak had nothing but a luckstone. Cale had nothing at all. He rebuked himself for not keeping Thazienne’s enchanted dagger.

“There’s an armory on the first floor, toward the back of the building. The guild keeps a few magical

weapons there, in case they are ever needed by a guild member for a job. They aren’t very powerfttl. The Righteous Man kept anything of power for himself. But they’ll be better than nothing.”

Jak blew out a misty-frozen sigh and nodded. “Good idea. Well need magical weapons to face the demons.” He turned and looked at Gale. “What’s the play, though? How do we get in?”

Cale knew there to be only two entrances to’the guildhouse, the sewers and the front doors. Before, when he had come in by way of the sewer entrance, he had barely escaped with his life. While not superstitious, he would not go in the same way twice.

“We’re walking through the-front doors,” he said, and started across the street.

Halfway to the guildhouse’s porch, he pulled his long sword from its scabbard. Beside him, Jak jerked free a short swordand dagger.

Come on, you bastards, he challenged the cold night air, but nothing happened. They gained the porch without incident and faced the sturdy double doors.

“The hairs on my arms are standing up,” Jak softly observed. ‘ “

“You’re just cold,” Cale said, though he knew the statement to be false. His hairs also stood on end. The ah* around the guildhouse tasted polluted. He felt an ominous prickling in his body that made him shudder. He tried to ignore the feeling and placed his hand on the door handle. If it was locked, even Jak would have difficulty picking it.

The handle turned. Cale and Jak blew out frozen breaths simultaneously. They shared a look.

“It opens in,” Cale whispered. “To better expose as a target anyone trying to force their way in.” Jak nodded. Cale began to push against the oak slab. It wouldn’t budge. Something blocked it.

There’s something on the other side,” he said, and prepared to throw his body against it. “Ready?”

Jak sheathed his sword and dagger, drew three throwing knives, and positioned himself to the left of the door. “Ready.”

With a grant, Gale slammed his shoulder into the door. Whatever blocked it slid dear and the door flew all the way open. Jak leaped into the opening behind Cale, daggers ready. Gale, long sword before him, slid sidewise to give Jak a wide berth to throw.

Enough light from the street spilled into the room to depict a scene of terrible destruction. Tables, chairs, beds, and piles of unidentifiable debris lay scattered about. A pile of four mildewed straw mattresses had blocked the door. A musty, rotten smell wafted from the door. The smell of smoke lingered in the air—the aftereffect from

“Stinks,” Jak said. He sheathed his throwing knives and again drew his short sword and fighting dagger.

“Get used to it,” Cale replied.

Jak stepped fully through the doorway and poked the mattresses with his short sword. “Why the mattresses? How*re they getting in and out?”

Gale shrugged off his backpack and pulled out a torch. “Sewers, probably. Hells, I don’t know. There’s no making sense of what’s going on in here, Jak.”

Before Gale could remove his tinderbox, Jak stopped him. “Here.” The little man pulled forth the metallic rod that he had used to illuminate their way through Selgaunt’s sewers a month ago. As he held it, a blue light sparked in its tip and grew to a soft glow.

“I’m surprised to see you still have that thing,” Cale observed.

“I don’t use it much.”

“Does it do anything else?”

Jak frowned thoughtfully and studied the rod. “I

don’t think so.” He crouched and aimed it purposefully across the street. “Kill!” It did nothing.

“Just the glow, it seems,” Jak said with a smile.

“Lucky for the girls at Emellia’s,” Cale said grinning. “Give it, here then. “You can’t carry it and fight two-handed.”

Jak handed it over. His hand trembled slightly. Cale pretended not to notice.

He knew how Jak felt but they could not turn back now.

“Lef s go,” he said, summoning his own courage. They walked into the guildhouse.

The smell of corpses permeated the stuffy air. Within a few moments, Cale’s nose became inured to the smell. Moving warily through the ruined offices, Cale and Jak had to pick their way through the overturned chairs, desks, and scattered papers.

“Keep your eyes on the shadows,” Cale said tensely. He tightened the grip of his sweaty palms on the sword hilt and rod.

“Right,” Jak said with a nod, his eyes watchful of every corner, both blades held high and ready

They cautiously navigated room after room, but apart from the toppled, broken furniture, the offices seemed to have escaped the warping and foulness that had occurred in the basement. No corpses, no voids, no blood, no demons. Only the ubiquitous charnel reek that announced Hie presence of ghouls nearby.

Silent as specters, they prowled farther into the house. When the two reached the end of the offices, Cale held up a hand to signal Jak to stop.

“That door,” he said, and nodded at the oak door before them, leads into the guildhouse proper. To reach the armory, we go down the hall to the right, then left down a flight of stairs, then right down another hall. Can’t miss it.”

Jak nodded as he memorized the directions. He mopped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. “Do you think they’ve abandoned the upper floor?*

“Maybe. No way to tell. We’ll find out soon enough.” Gale stared into Jak’s eyes. “Ready?”

“Ready,” Jak replied. “Let’s hope the Trickster and Lady Luck are in a good mood.”

Gale stepped forward, knelt at the door, and listened. Nothing in the hallway beyond. He stood and tried to turn the-handle. It was jammed. \

“Dark,” he oathed. He held the rod before the keyhole and peered in. Jak crept close and looked over his shoulder. “The locking mechanism’s been deliberately mangled.” He looked back at Jak. “Can you pick it?”

“Not if the tumblers are bent,” Jak replied. “But I can still get it open.” He reached into his breast pocket, pulled out his holy cloak-clasp, and muttered the words to a spell. The air around his small hands began to grow charged. Gale backed a step away from the door.

When Jak finished the incantation and pointed his holy symbol at the lock, the magic of.the spell forced the twisted metal in the mechanism to disentangle itself. Tumblers fell into place, metal ground against metal and shrieked like a dying man. Gale winced at the sound. If anything stood nearby, it would have heard them.

In three heartbeats, the door popped ajar. Gale pulled Jak behind him and jerked the door open, his blade ready.

The narrow hallway stretched to the left and right, dark beyond the limits of the wand’s blue light. As with the rest of the guildhouse, debris lay east haphazardly about on the floor, the ghouls and demons seemingly intent on destroying or befouling any semblance of normalcy.

Despite the chaos, Cade now felt surprisingly calm. Either he would succeed or he would die.

The little man, on the other hand, seemed balanced on a sword’s edge, at one moment his cocky, adventurous self, at the next moment frightened beyond words. Gale could hear the nervousness in Jak’s harsh breathing, though the halfling tried to mask it.

I shouldn’t have brought him, Gale thought guiltily. Jak had not come to succeed or die. Nor had he come to avenge Thazienne. He had come because Gale was bis friend and Gale had asked him to come.

I don’t want him to die for that, he thought. He resolved to ensure Jak’s safety no matter what.

“You feel that?” Jak asked nervously.

Gale nodded. He felt it. The air in the hallway seemed as heavy as an autumn fog, pregnant with the stink of something vile. A distant pulsing, felt rather than heard, thumped at intervals like the beat of a giant, foul heart.

“What is it?” Jak asked.

“I don’t know,” Gale softly replied. He tightened his grip on the long sword. -

Jak looked at him sharply, eyes wide, but said nothing. The little man’s hand went to his holy symbol.

“This way,” Gale said, and headed right,;

After walking only fifteen paces, they encountered the first signs of warping. The blue tight of Jak’s wand illuminated a vacant spot in the hallway floor. The emptiness utterly swallowed the light. The pulsing seemed to originate from somewhere within the void. With each pulse, Gale’s loose clothes and the hairs on his arms were pulled toward the distortion.

” “Ware that, Jak. I don’t know what it is, but we can expect more of them. Lots more. I think the shadow demon can move through them.”

Jak walked past Gale, stood at the edge of the emptiness, and peered within.

“Careful,” Gale warned again. He recalled the hypnotic effect one of these vacancies had on him in the guildhouse basement. He also recalled the malice-filled yellow eyes he had seen staring at him out of one.

“I think it’s a gate,” Jak ventured.

Cale stepped forward and peered within. The pull never got too strong, but it was nevertheless disconcerting. “A gate? To where? Yrsillar’s plane?”

Jak could only shrug.

Snarls suddenly erupted from somewhere behind. Jak gasped and-whirled, blades ready. Cale leaped before him in a fighting crouch.

As suddenly as they had begun, the snarls died out and vanished.

Cale held the wand aloft and walked a few steps back the way they had come. Nothing. Inspired, he knelt and placed his ear to the floor. From below, the distant sound of snarls carried through the floorboards.

“Came through the floorboards,” he said, and stood. “They must have been right below us.”

Jak let bis weapons sag and visibly relaxed. “Dark,” he oathed. “Startled me.”

“Me too.”

“They coming up?” Jak asked.

“I don’t know.” He walked past Jak, faced the emptiness of the gate, and estimated its width—five feet, maybe six. “Can you jump over this?”

TSasy.” Without another word, Jak sheathed his weapons, backed up a few steps, raced forward, and leaped over the gate. He cleared it easily and landed in a crouch. In a flash, he had his blades redrawn and stood at the ready, waiting for Cale.

Cale quickly jumped the gate as well. Dodging debris, they continued forward. Two more gates— empty holes in reality—blocked their path, one in the

floor, easily jumped, and one in the wall, easily sidestepped. They reached the short flight of stairs that descended to the lower level of the guildhouse.

“Down here,” Cale said.

Jak nodded. “I don’t smell it anymore,” he observed softly. “The rot, I mean.”

Cale nodded. He didn’t smell it either. The smell of decay had become so commonplace to him that he no longer noticed it.

That’s why I don’t feel afraid, he realized. Fear, too, had become so commonplace for him over the last two days that he noticed it only rarely.

A soft growling from down the twisting stairs interrupted his reverie. He looked questioningly at Jak. The little man nodded grimly. He had heard it too. Cale covered the cool tip of the wand with his palm so that only a little light trickled out between his fingers. In hand cant, he signaled to Jak, I lead. Be cautious.

Jak nodded and they silently descended the twisting stone stairs. When they reached the landing at the bottom, they discovered the source of the growls.,

A ghoul dressed in green tatters sat at the base of the wall and stared dazedly into the emptiness of a gate. A slowly swirling mix of gray and black, the gate pulsed periodically, and with each beat of the unholy heart the spider web tracery of purple veins beneath the ghoul’s translucent gray skin beat in time. The dazed horror rocked back and forth, rhythmically growling softly into the emptiness. Its yellow eyes looked as vacant as the hole into which it stared. The ghoul, oblivious to the pain and purple blood that coursed down its arms, mindlessly dug its claws into its own rotted flesh.

Jak gave a slight gasp and Cale signaled him to stop and stand still. Cautiously, blade before him, he walked toward the ghoul.

Shadow’s Witness • 2O7

Enthralled by whatever it saw in the gate, the creature showed no sign of noticing him. It simply kept rocking and gouging itself. Cale moved directly behind it. It continued to mutter and stare, oblivious to all but the void.

Up close now, Cale could make out muttered words interspersed with its bestial growls. “He is among us, among us.”

Cale swallowed his disgust. Though twisted and warped, he recognized the skinny body and short brown hair of Willen Trostyn, a boy the Righteous Man had recruited no more than a month ago. Willen couldn’t have been more than twenty, and now Cale had to kill him.

Without further thought, he raised his long sword high to strike. He stopped in mid-stroke and looked at Jak. Eyes filled with horror and disgust, the little man met his gaze and gave him a short nod of approval. Willen showed no sign of noticing anything. He rocked, dug his claws deeper into his arms, and muttered mindlessly.

“Among us. Among us—”

With an overhand chop, Gale laid open Willen’s head. Purple gore sprayed the wall and soaked, the floor. Willen died instantly, collapsing into a stinking heapat the base of the gate.