Post by Tirith on Nov 1, 2008 17:07:58 GMT -5
((I wrote this a few months ago as part of the WFR side of the Troll Bounty arc. It's a fun story, but be warned that it lacks a beginning and an end. In the weeks prior, someone (Matsu'jin himself?) had a vision that implicated Tarquin as the murderer of Matsu'jin's family. Tarq was less than thrilled with this, and sent some toughs (Elyle and Tirith) to calmly and rationally explain the situation to (beat information out of) some veterans who might know the real story (or at least, a more convenient one.) Eventually the trail ends with some nutty ex-SI7 fellow, a Northman named Rhoniar ap Cayod, who made suspicious profits during the war and now keeps a heavily-guarded manor.
The best way to get into a heavily-guarded manor is to be one of the guards, or so Tirith figured.))
I
It was entirely too easy. A quick tour of Old Town's seamier (well, seamier than normal) parts had me chatting with three people who'd heard of Rhoniar's Guard – an organization apparently deserving capital letters – within the afternoon. I knew where to go and was already formulating a persona to present.
A canny bastard, was this ap Cayod; he did his recruiting through Stormwind's unlicensed dueling community, a group that I have the dubious fortune to be quite familiar with. These lovely folks likely represent the most desperate, the most dangerous, and the most paranoid of the city's urban poor. That last one was of some concern to me, and it meant that this job would take some weeks of preparation. Even then, I was taking my chances, but that's hardly anything new.
So it was that I stepped into an ill-lit basement at three in the morning, wearing a set of filthy, malodorous leathers and a pair of notched, ill-kept but deceptively well-balanced longswords that had likely seen use in the first Orc War. I'd have felt much, much more comfortable decked out in heavily enchanted arena combat gear, but then I would likely have had to fight off every combatant in the room and half the audience besides as they scrambled to strip me. Like Friday night in Goldshire, but these guys might try to cut my throat first.
As it stood, I was mildly concerned that my kit wasn't sufficiently foul-smelling to fit in with the crowd. A hard-faced youth – younger than I, which was reassuring – shot me a razor glance as I entered. I suppressed a smile. Gaining acceptance here was a tremendously difficult thing, but it was always those who had most recently suffered the indignity of it who relished the hazings most. A voice echoed from somewhere in the room.
“Whee-ooo, we have us a pretty boy!”
I was standing in what qualified for the light down here, and my appearance had had the anticipated effect. Oily hair hung in lank tangles from my head, dust and other miscellaneous filth clinging to my face. Enough work to allay suspicion, but not nearly enough to avoid standing out. That would have required weeping sores and black holes where teeth should be. I turned and found myself staring into a grin appropriately containing more gum than teeth, and looked up to find a thoroughly broken nose below a pair of beady, suspicious eyes.
“Newcomers always fight,” the man rumbled. “'S a rule, you see.” His gap-toothed grin widened as he pronounced this.
“Excellent!” I replied, with the timbre of an eager newbie with something to prove. “Who and when?”
The grin vanished. “Who I say, and when I say,” the man responded. “Now clear out. Gape & Blackeye are about to have a go.”
I dutifully stepped aside, starry-eyed and oblivious. Or appearing so, at least.
The first few fights were pretty boring. Bar brawlers wielding swords like chair-legs, for the most part. There was a bit of excitement when one of their more wild swings mostly decapitated a bystander, but the bored-looking priest in the back of the room merely waved a hand, then returned to his beer. A fortunate coincidence, he. Perpetually down on his luck, or down in his cups, his unlikely patronage made this whole thing possible. Of course, the larcenous cut he took of the profits didn't hurt, either.
After what seemed an eternity of shoddy weaponplay, gleeful bookies, and bitter inveterate gamblers, it finally came my time in the ring. As befits tradition, they put me up against the finest fighter in the room who was still sober, and the laughter was already building before we began.
“Right,” boomed the broken-nosed man, whose name was in fact “Brokenose,” addressing me. “I want a good clean fight. No magic, no alchemy, and try not to bleed on the ceiling, it's a bitch to wipe off.” The crowd roared. The fellow I was in line to fight raised his swords in salute, and I returned the gesture, then parried the predictable lunge that followed immediately.
A few shouts were raised amongst the crowd, which was trying rapidly to vacate the space immediately around us, but for the most part I suspect that avoiding being caught in the fray was of much more interest than the rapidly accelerating exchange of blows between my opponent and I.
I was having a blast. Responding to the heavy pounding of the tough's blades with flourishes and ridiculously elaborate fencing parries, I hardly noticed the wild grin spreading across my face. I nearly lost my head when the first cry rose from the crowd.
“Teeth! Teeth!” It built, with more and more voices intoning the impossibly familiar moniker.
The hell, I thought. Oh well. A bizarre coincidence of choice, but being Named was an important part of the exercise for this evening, and also my cue to throw the fight. I ducked left and swung apparently wildly with both swords at once, whiffing through the air and spinning myself around.
The sensation of being impaled is not one that I would ever wish to get used to, but in that moment, on that night, I think I may have. It was almost reassuring, as the tip of the sword appeared just below my sternum, blossoming outward in a spume of my own blood. I kept my mouth wide open, baring my teeth if not precisely smiling, and theatrically dropped to one knee with my arms – hands empty, i did not recall dropping my swords – spread wide, then rose into a bow as the blade slid out with a glowing light surrounding it, the flesh knitting together painfully even as it did so.
I drank myself into a stupor, trading fabricated tales with my new best friends, lost nearly a gold in wagers carefully chosen for their capacity to ingratiate, and stumbled home.
An absolute success, and it continued for a week. But so it is: pride goeth before the fall.
II
Ap Cayod's man could not have fit the part more utterly if he'd been trying. His blinding white-blonde hair was cropped flat at the top in a manner that was equal parts intimidating and ridiculous, and the intense blue eyes on his thoroughly scarred face emoted precisely the right amount of scorn. As for his gear, well, the man did have good taste in kit. He could have made the cover of Mercenary of Fortune magazine, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if the outfit had been selected precisely because of its previous showing in that venue.
He had everything that the men around me thought they wanted: skill, reputation, and tremendous amounts of disposable income. But he was smart enough to know that in this, he deceived; the extreme measures taken to assert the image couldn't be anything but intentional. Despite this apparent spark of intellect, I suspected that beneath the facade of violence and avarice lay very genuine violence and avarice. Rhoniar chose well.
“Rhoniar chose well,” rumbled the man in an accent that must have been faked – it almost sounded Draenic, but not quite.
I started momentarily at how his thoughts had echoed my own, and then again at the implications of that phrase. I settled my face into a neutral expression as I calculated.
“He has been watching you, these past few months. Amongst the crowd, always a shadow, a figure that is easily mistaken for... innocuous.” He grinned. “Mistaken.”
I had some difficulty concealing my relief. A canned statement, utter bullshit, but bullshit brilliantly calculated to play on both the hubris and the cravenness common to underground duelists. I might have been more worried if I'd actually been around the community for more than seven days. He would have been saying precisely the same thing to whichever one of the combatants had won tonight's informal tourney, and it just happens to have been me.
Alright, perhaps not entirely by happenstance, and perhaps doing it this early was not optimally covert, but I can only play pattycake with a bunch of malnourished Defias rejects for so many days in a row before the desire to put the bastards in their place becomes entirely irresistible.
“Really?” I responded, my eyes widening. “Ap Cayod? Watching me. Why? Does he, does he want to hire me?”
The man smiled, and beckoned me to the door. I pretended not to notice the two toughs flanking us; they were pretty damned well hidden and it would have been thoroughly out of character to catch them out. After all, I was wide eyed and amazed at Bodyguard Ken here.
“We do in fact have an opening at the house right now, yes. And Rhoniar sent me here to pick you up – he's busy tonight, you see.” Because normally Rhoniar ap Cayod meets his green recruits in the dingiest parts of Stormwind in person. Right. “You seem... pleased. This is good. We appreciate applicants with a passion for the job.”
“Sir there's nothing I'd rather do I've been wanting this for so long sir this is just sir thank you sir.” I was barely able to make out what I'd just said, so it was probably entirely lost on my companion. He went on, blithely ignoring my outburst.
“Compensation will be three gold pieces a week. This will be sufficient, yes?”
My jaw dropped appropriately, but I was inwardly mildly concerned. That sum would wow the plebs from the dueling-cellars well enough, but it wouldn't pay for a wardrobe like this guy's. If the pay-scales were this far apart, the guards at the bottom weren't likely to have access to the kind of information I wanted.
“Y-y-yes sir. Absolutely sir. When do we leave?”
III
I didn't have to fake my astonishment when we arrived at the estate. Of course, I wasn't astonished at precisely the right thing.
“It is a fine mansion, our employer's. He has done well for himself. All the result of his genius investment during the war.”
Looting is a novel definition of investment, but when I file my taxes I replace "contract kill" with “logistics work” so I suppose I owe the fellow a bit of leeway.
“Wow,” I said. “What's, er... what's that?”
I gestured at what had actually provoked my astonishment. On a flat field to the left of the manse there stood at least a hundred men and elves – all male, I paused to note – wielding swords of bound sticks and beating the everloving crap out of each other with them. As I watched, the organization of the entire affair became clear; two men to a team, each attempting to tag one of the members of the other team with a whipping strike, causing them to kneel and cease fighting. The whole yard was in constant flux as teams moved up and down the field depending on victory and loss.
“That is the training yard for the bodyguard staff. What, you didn't suppose that we would let your skills waste away unless the estate came under attack?” He laughed. I was unimpressed by the deflection. What possible use could ap Cayod have for a hundred bodyguards? And why did Tarq think more along the lines of twenty?
“Oh! Well, that's, er, interesting. Why do they use wooden weapons? Are there no priests?”
“You will learn this at orientation.” Bodyguard Ken gave me a look that implied that further questioning was not appreciated. “I will take my leave of you here. Go through this door and be assigned a bunk, then report to the yard. You'll meet the other newcomers there.”
There were four others who had arrived in the past week, apparently. If this was representative of a normal week's induction, then either the turnover was incredibly high or ap Cayod was recruiting an army. Neither option was particularly reassuring. What was reassuring, however, was that none of the recruits would have looked out of place at an Old Town dueling cellar; they must have been recruited from similar establishments... with one exception, and I turned to him an inquisitive eye. A Night Elf.
“Welcome to the Guard, Teeth. My name's Brick.”
I turned to regard the voice, which came from a grizzled man with thinning red hair and a full beard who was likely a veteran of more wars than I'd had birthdays. I inclined my head to him, and took the stick-swords he proffered.
“Right. Simple rules, 'cos we're simple people. No intentional blows to the head. Especially no jabs or thrusts. Eyes, y'know. I'd like you all to keep them. You do not fight until I tell you, and you do not fight off the yard... with one exception. That'll be handled in orientation, until then just don't do anything stupid or you'll find yourself with a gryphon-ticket home and nothing to show for your trip out here. Meals are served at seven, twelve, and seven. You get an hour after meals to mill about and do as you please, otherwise all other hours are spent here on the yard or on patrol, but you won't be doing any of that for your first month or so here. Questions?”
I had none. “No sir.”
“Great. That's something we appreciate around here; you'll probably last until orientation on Friday.”
I was introduced to my peers, who all used earned names rather than given ones – Grunt, Eyes, and Biter – except for the Elf, who again puzzled me. Maventa was presumably judged to have too many syllables, so they took to calling him Mav.
We took turns beating each other up, and I judged that it was safe to conclude that the humans were, like my fellows in the cellars, malnourished Defias rejects. Again, the Elf was another matter. It quickly became apparent that he was pulling his strikes to appear less skilled than he was, and this was complicated tremendously by the fact that I was doing exactly the same. I sped up a bit, and he responded immediately, always just a little bit better than me. I kept pushing, but eventually held off, minding the eyes of the officer behind me. I had already begun to think of this operation as a military one; what else could it be?
IV
Seeing Rhoniar ap Cayod for the first time explained a lot. The name had its suggestion, sure, but especially catching my view of him from behind at first led me almost to think that Tarq had just been putting me on, and had his hand in this thing the whole time. Something about the hair. And the height. Even when he did turn around, revealing a face with its own unique features, I could imagine the guy being a long-lost cousin of ap D's. No wonder Tarq was catching his rap for the troll-slaughtering thing.
“Good evening,” said Rhoniar in a calm, quiet voice. “And welcome to my home.”
We sat in a well-appointed but tasteful dining room, the setting admirably intimate considering his guests for this “Orientation.” Grunt and Eyes had cleaned up rather nicely, but Biter was looking like he might live up to his name at any moment.
“Though the rules and regulations, the schedule and the tasks appointed you are no doubt firmly stamped into your minds by now, I suspect that you might still be plagued by questions regarding the reasons for these things. At this meal I would like to reassure you that I keep no secrets here; if you ask a question of me now, it will be answered. Your guides thus far have been instructed not to speak on these matters, yes, but it is strictly for reasons of clarity, not policy. I like to discuss the nature of my vision with my students myself.”
Blank stares from the plebs. Maventa looked thoughtful, and I immediately spoke up, true to the character I was playing.
“Y-you mean to say that you will teach us yourself, Mr. ap Cayod? That's amazing!”
He laughed. “Well, I would like to think that I already am. You see, this manor, and you, my Guard... you must have realized by now that you serve not merely to guard me from mortal threats. But you are my Guard nonetheless, protecting me from a much more dangerous thing: the purposelessness and ennui that is the death of most wealthy and indolent men.
“In fact, one might say that you are members of a... little project of mine.” He paused, smiling, and continued. “I have seen things in my lifetime that left me forever changed. I cannot again be witness to the horrors and depredation brought on, not by war, not by famine, but by that more insidious vice that masquerades as virtue. I speak, of course, of weakness. Of the failure to do what is necessary. Of the inadequacy, the inability to defend oneself and one's own.
“We live in an age where we are daily reminded of the absence of consequences for our weakness. The priesthood stalks our streets, wielding their emasculating Light at their whim, undoing the actions that by strength of will and strength of arms deserve to stand eternal. This twisted crime against nature and all that is natural is regarded not as the failure that it is, but as an expression of utmost virtue. I cannot countenance this, and neither should you.
“This is why we train with wooden swords. Because blades are meant to wound, are meant to kill, and the Light perverts their very meaning. This is why I do not tolerate priests in my estate; because their work is anathema to my teachings. In fact, this ground is consecrated, purified by our purpose; the Light has no place here. Ours is the way of the fist, the way of the blade, the way of strength that takes, strength that chooses, strength that builds, and strength that destroys. Ours is the way of righteousness, and that is never to be forgotten. We do not concern ourselves with mundane tasks such as the cultivation of crops or the ceaseless and banal pursuit of women. No, we have the luxury of focusing on that which is important: skill at arms. You will build that, as you stay here, and you will learn that all other purpose in this world is illusory.
“This is the lesson of the battlefield, this is the strength that war brings to nations. But the battlefield is an impure place where weakness thrives. It is only here, with the imposition of structure and control, that we can truly excise weakness from our lives, and experience the purity of true strength.
“The excision of weakness is not an easy process, but it is a necessary one. And that is the birth of a practice that I have termed the Ritual of Purification. There is an ancient justice, known as the trial by battle. Removed from the zeitgeist of our emasculated present, this wisdom of the past is the most important part of the new life I have fashioned for you here.
“Order in my home is maintained by my clerics, colloquially termed the Red Priesthood for their attire. They are my most trusted lieutenants, and they walk amongst you. If they determine that there is a conflict between some of you, they will notify the involved parties and bring them to the Shrine. I will lead you there after dinner; it is a place of beauty, and I am very proud of it. There you shall be given true weapons with an edge appropriate to their purpose. The victor shall return with honors, and the corpse of the defeated will be quickly transported away to a neighboring church. Upon resurrection, the defeated will be paid in full for his service; possessed of those all-important qualities, health and wealth, but forever stained by the fact of his weakness.
“Now,” Rhoniar leaned over the table and tented his fingers. “Are there any questions?”
Five pairs of eyes stared above five untouched plates. Silenced reigned in the room.
V
Life in Rhoniar's Guard began to take shape after the shock of Orientation wore away. I was paired with Maventa, and we quickly became immensely successful in the daily training. He apparently shared my reaction to ap Cayod's speech. Those words were somehow energizing, speaking out loud that which we secretly believed. For the first time in my life I was feeling... absolutely honest.
Of course, two fresh recruits slapping down a bunch of old, proud veterans didn't go over terribly well. The third night in I awoke shortly after falling asleep to see a red-robed figure with a mask of black gauze staring down at me. I nearly shat myself, but was relieved when the figure began laughing uproariously with a familiar voice.
“...Brick?” I asked.
He inclined his head in what might have been a nod, but said simply, “You have been selected for the Ritual. Please follow me, Teeth. Heh.” I doubt that chuckle was part of the script.
I rose, clad only in a pair of briefs, and followed the robed figure. He turned and offered me another robe, though of a rougher material and lacking a hood. I took it, grateful that I would be covered during our trip through the drafty stone halls of the manse's underground workings.
When we arrived at the Shrine, I was amazed at the transformation that it had clearly undergone since my first visit. Lamps lit the room brilliantly, bathing it in flickering red light that licked upward but didn't reach the high ceiling and the balcony from Rhoniar's personal quarters above. The finesse of the ornamentation again struck me, beautiful renderings of weapons familiar and foreign ringing the room's walls. There were swirling patterns on the floor, grooves that led to the center of circle.
I met Maventa, and engaged in what was fast becoming my favorite game; trying to get the notoriously silent Elf to speak up.
“Heya Mav. So we're going to have to spit us some jokers for real this time. Noticed you were getting a little slow yesterday, you sure you'll be alright with this?”
He glared at me. Elves have no sense of humor.
I turned to the weapon rack and drew out a pair of swords, testing their weight. Maventa took a pair of maces, startling me. If he specialized in their use, but was as good as he seemed with the practice swords... I let that thought trail. Maventa was an unknown quantity, but seemed at the least not to be hostile.
We only had to wait another few minutes before our opponents joined us, led by two red-robed priests of their own. I laughed out loud. It was Grunt and Eyes, and they looked absolutely terrified.
“You don't unnerstan'!” yelled Grunt. “Tha' root was just to keep me reg'lar! I never meant nobody no bloody harm by it! It was Eyes' idea!”
The priest, plainly unimpressed, dragged him forward. Brick, still hidden beneath his robes, stepped out from behind me.
“It has come to attention to the High Guard that there is a disciplinary issue between the four Guardsmen brought before the shrine today. It is our belief that Grunt and Eyes conspired to dose the meals of Teeth and Maventa with dustroot, a potent laxative, as a method of offense. This method of offense, taking place off of the grounds of the Yard, qualifies as an unresolvable physical conflict in the opinions of the High Guard.
Two more robed men, this time in black with gilded masks, strode from the corridor.
“The corpse-bearers are ready to attend,” rasped one.
Maventa and I strode to the opposite end of the room without urging. Grunt and Eyes were pressed into the ring with some difficulty..
“No mercy.” Intoned the four High Guard, the Red Priesthood. The black-robed corpse-bearers remained silent, their impassive golden faces staring unseeing. The gates closed, apparently of their own accord, behind the unhappy Grunt and terrified Eyes. A puddle of urine was forming beneath Eyes' robe.
A few seconds later, when Eyes was choking on his own blood and Grunt was wearing a stupefied expression as a transparent fluid leaked from his ears, the gates snapped back open. The priesthood greeted us.
“Welcome, accepted Guard Teeth. Accepted Guard Maventa,” they spoke in unison.
The corpse-bearers skittered away, their prizes slung across their backs, hunching them over.
“You will begin walking the rounds as full Guards tomorrow,” said a priest I did not recognize.
“We're all proud of ya,” said Brick.
I followed Brick back to my bunk, but I felt no pride. And I had no thoughts, other than the image that I could not shake from my mind's eye: the rivulets of blood that flowed from the neck I had opened, through the intricate pattern of grooves in the floor – and vanished, in the center of the room, through a hole.
VI
So it was that, after two weeks spent first playing pattycake and then getting caught up in a crazy cult, I finally got to work. I had already counted the Guard's membership – about 140, but likely to change what with the high influx of recruits and the Ritual exit – and had an accurate idea of their actual strength from practice with Maventa. We stood about two tiers from the best he had, and then only by our mutual understanding to pull a few swings now and then. These men couldn't have been here long; these hours of practice would have shaped even the slugs from the dueling cellars into something like competition over the course of years. As it stood I judged a directed force of five Riders could decimate the place.
About two nights after my initiation in the Shrine, I decided to pay a visit to some of the passageways I had been instructed to avoid when making the rounds of the underground. For the most part, the experience couldn't have been more boring. A few stores of weapons, some old junk – nothing that revealed anything about Rhoniar's history – and a whole lot of cobwebs. A cache of engineering equipment struck my fancy, and I set in motion a project that I figured would be very useful in the future. I wandered for a while, and was on the point of giving up on that tack when I noticed a light beneath an uncommonly well-maintained door.
It opened silently and slowly on oiled hinges. I peered in, surprised to hear the clattering of machinery as I stepped through. The room was filled with it, wall to wall, dark metals covered in arcane glyphs. The light came from a furnace burning with green flames that was nestled up against the far wall.
The mechanics were complex, but engineering is a hobby of mine and I judged the machine's purpose quickly; it generated power. Tremendous amounts. But there was another factor here, and I couldn't, at first, figure it out. Then I recognized the source of the glyphs and the style of the machinery, and I recalled a statement that had seemed odd to me when Rhoniar spoke it.
“...this ground is consecrated, purified by our purpose; the Light has no place here...”
This stuff was Burning Legion equipment. I was looking at a giant generator of ambient Shadow. As this sank in, I forced myself to look up, already knowing what I would see but dreading it nonetheless. A point of light was visible in the ceiling, and from it flowed a thin stream of blood, falling silently into a reservoir.
The Ritual had just been completed. I dashed, almost too late, behind a bank of rattling machinery and flattened myself against the wall.
The door opened, and a black-robed priest stepped through it.
“Bugger all, this bastard's a heavy one. Usually it's pretty easy when there's only the one like this.”
Two men, carrying a body slung between them, shuffled past me and casually tossed the corpse into the fiery maw on the far wall. It flared with green light, and had they turned to face me I would have been easily seen. Fortunately, they paused to manipulate some knobs and dials I had previously failed to notice, and the light had died by the time they turned to exit.
I exhaled.
I still had some questions, but I now knew one thing for sure: I wanted the hell out of this place.
VII
Training continued unabated. Though he never spoke, I became increasingly certain that there was a level of understanding between Maventa and I. We remained among the stronger teams, but never placed ourselves at the top. I had noticed already that there seemed to be a recurring issue with the top pair vanishing abruptly.
Eventually I found a private moment and worked up the courage to establish more precisely our relationship. I used my characteristic brilliant tact in doing so.
“So, who are you working for anyway?” I asked.
“Arena Syndicate,” he rumbled. “You?”
“Wildfire Riders.”
He grunted. “My organization's richer.”
I shrugged. “Mine's handsomer.”
We laughed. He had a sense of humor, after all. “What does the Arena Syndicate care about Cayod?” I asked.
“Competition. Goblins don't like competition.”
I nodded. “Listen. There's no church for Ritual losers. Just a furnace. I disappear, or you start hearing explosions, I'd like you to tell people that. If they'll listen.”
He grunted again. “I guessed as much. And I doubt they'll listen.”
Questions were never asked when men disappeared. We all shared the Ritual, the Shrine, the Way of the Fist and the Blade and et cetera. Red robes, black gauze, blank gilded masks. All accepted, all presumed benevolent. Yet never did it cross anyone's thoughts that the very concept of benevolence was unacceptable to a man like ap Cayod; the idea that he would treat the failures amongst his membership with mercy was always ridiculous, should never have been believable. But in their desperation to find a cause – no, in our desperation to find a cause – we believed what was convenient.
“Eventually, my friends are going to raid the place. Best thing to do would be to disappear, but I'm sure there'd be some coin or goodwill in it if you cared to help them out.”
He grunted again, and that concluded the first and last time we spoke.
I had spent a few nights in the machine room poring over the equipment, trying to establish what all that shadow was for, but I was coming up against a blank. I knew engineering, and some elemental magic theory, but shadow's tricky. The best that I could establish was that it would disturb the boundary between life and death thoroughly, perhaps forming a wall against the influence of dead spirits, perhaps twisting the results of divination attempts. The most significant concern, and my personal suspicion, was that it would neutralize the effect of healing spells in the area. Either or both seemed likely to serve the interests of Rhoniar ap Cayod, and neither was pleasant. So I rigged it with explosives.
There was probably an off button, but the trouble with off buttons is that they allow the machinery to be turned back on again. I'd be having none of that. I put enough elemental blasting powder in that room to turn that fel iron into vapor.
Satisfied with the job, I brought out my other little engineering project and found myself a quiet place.
“This is Tirith. My report is complete.” the buzzbox crackled, and I was prepared to call the job done.
When I crept back to my room there was a man in a red robe waiting for me.
VIII
“Where were you?” the tone was unconcerned, and I allowed myself to breathe.
“Privy.” I replied, intensely aware of the swords under my bed and the distance between me and them.
“Ah. Takes some of the drama out of it,” he said, his disappointment evident. “Well. Let's get downstairs, I'm sure they're waiting.”
I wasn't wholly convinced of the nonchalance, but I wasn't presented with a large span of options. We passed the halls in silence. When we arrived at the Shrine I was momentarily surprised by the absence of Maventa, but only momentarily. My capacity for surprise was truly tested when I met my opponent.
Rhoniar ap Cayod smiled at me sadly.
“Ah, Tirith. You really had a chance here, you know that? I had very high hopes for you.” Shit. “Your night wanderings, however, are not appropriate, and I really must challenge you over them.” Shit.
I pulled a pair of swords from the wall, silently considering just how fucked I was. If I killed him, I'd have the Crazy Cultist Brigade on my case. If I didn't kill him, I was bound for the furnace. But he hadn't mentioned my little engineering project, and that opened up a sliver of hope.
“You can't honestly expect to keep that corpse-furnace a secret? Nearby church my ass.”
He was startled by that comment, and I nearly jumped for joy. The gates slammed behind us, and he rushed me, blades flicking up fast enough that I was damned glad I wouldn't be fighting him. I dashed aside, jumped, and then did something that I prayed he did not predict. I pointed my index finger at the hole in the center of the room, directly below me, and willed a tiny bit of nether energy into a ball of fire that leaped from the outstretched digit and straight into the machine room below.
Which was filled with explosives.
I was deafened, then hurled straight up. I crowed my triumph as I flew, then blinked a few feet forward, just over the balcony high in the cylindrical room. The rubble was still falling when I caught my breath, lying on my side with one hand grasping the banister. I pulled myself into a sitting position to look down at the damage. The floor had caved in, and the machine was utterly ruined. I glanced around, but didn't see ap Cayod's body anywhere. Not caring to waste valuable seconds, I stepped away, planning to head out through his room.
And that's where my memories end. But I suspect that, were my brains slightly less scrambled, I would have heard the whooshing noise ap Cayod made as he stepped through my shadow and perhaps seen a falling truncheon.
The best way to get into a heavily-guarded manor is to be one of the guards, or so Tirith figured.))
I
It was entirely too easy. A quick tour of Old Town's seamier (well, seamier than normal) parts had me chatting with three people who'd heard of Rhoniar's Guard – an organization apparently deserving capital letters – within the afternoon. I knew where to go and was already formulating a persona to present.
A canny bastard, was this ap Cayod; he did his recruiting through Stormwind's unlicensed dueling community, a group that I have the dubious fortune to be quite familiar with. These lovely folks likely represent the most desperate, the most dangerous, and the most paranoid of the city's urban poor. That last one was of some concern to me, and it meant that this job would take some weeks of preparation. Even then, I was taking my chances, but that's hardly anything new.
So it was that I stepped into an ill-lit basement at three in the morning, wearing a set of filthy, malodorous leathers and a pair of notched, ill-kept but deceptively well-balanced longswords that had likely seen use in the first Orc War. I'd have felt much, much more comfortable decked out in heavily enchanted arena combat gear, but then I would likely have had to fight off every combatant in the room and half the audience besides as they scrambled to strip me. Like Friday night in Goldshire, but these guys might try to cut my throat first.
As it stood, I was mildly concerned that my kit wasn't sufficiently foul-smelling to fit in with the crowd. A hard-faced youth – younger than I, which was reassuring – shot me a razor glance as I entered. I suppressed a smile. Gaining acceptance here was a tremendously difficult thing, but it was always those who had most recently suffered the indignity of it who relished the hazings most. A voice echoed from somewhere in the room.
“Whee-ooo, we have us a pretty boy!”
I was standing in what qualified for the light down here, and my appearance had had the anticipated effect. Oily hair hung in lank tangles from my head, dust and other miscellaneous filth clinging to my face. Enough work to allay suspicion, but not nearly enough to avoid standing out. That would have required weeping sores and black holes where teeth should be. I turned and found myself staring into a grin appropriately containing more gum than teeth, and looked up to find a thoroughly broken nose below a pair of beady, suspicious eyes.
“Newcomers always fight,” the man rumbled. “'S a rule, you see.” His gap-toothed grin widened as he pronounced this.
“Excellent!” I replied, with the timbre of an eager newbie with something to prove. “Who and when?”
The grin vanished. “Who I say, and when I say,” the man responded. “Now clear out. Gape & Blackeye are about to have a go.”
I dutifully stepped aside, starry-eyed and oblivious. Or appearing so, at least.
The first few fights were pretty boring. Bar brawlers wielding swords like chair-legs, for the most part. There was a bit of excitement when one of their more wild swings mostly decapitated a bystander, but the bored-looking priest in the back of the room merely waved a hand, then returned to his beer. A fortunate coincidence, he. Perpetually down on his luck, or down in his cups, his unlikely patronage made this whole thing possible. Of course, the larcenous cut he took of the profits didn't hurt, either.
After what seemed an eternity of shoddy weaponplay, gleeful bookies, and bitter inveterate gamblers, it finally came my time in the ring. As befits tradition, they put me up against the finest fighter in the room who was still sober, and the laughter was already building before we began.
“Right,” boomed the broken-nosed man, whose name was in fact “Brokenose,” addressing me. “I want a good clean fight. No magic, no alchemy, and try not to bleed on the ceiling, it's a bitch to wipe off.” The crowd roared. The fellow I was in line to fight raised his swords in salute, and I returned the gesture, then parried the predictable lunge that followed immediately.
A few shouts were raised amongst the crowd, which was trying rapidly to vacate the space immediately around us, but for the most part I suspect that avoiding being caught in the fray was of much more interest than the rapidly accelerating exchange of blows between my opponent and I.
I was having a blast. Responding to the heavy pounding of the tough's blades with flourishes and ridiculously elaborate fencing parries, I hardly noticed the wild grin spreading across my face. I nearly lost my head when the first cry rose from the crowd.
“Teeth! Teeth!” It built, with more and more voices intoning the impossibly familiar moniker.
The hell, I thought. Oh well. A bizarre coincidence of choice, but being Named was an important part of the exercise for this evening, and also my cue to throw the fight. I ducked left and swung apparently wildly with both swords at once, whiffing through the air and spinning myself around.
The sensation of being impaled is not one that I would ever wish to get used to, but in that moment, on that night, I think I may have. It was almost reassuring, as the tip of the sword appeared just below my sternum, blossoming outward in a spume of my own blood. I kept my mouth wide open, baring my teeth if not precisely smiling, and theatrically dropped to one knee with my arms – hands empty, i did not recall dropping my swords – spread wide, then rose into a bow as the blade slid out with a glowing light surrounding it, the flesh knitting together painfully even as it did so.
I drank myself into a stupor, trading fabricated tales with my new best friends, lost nearly a gold in wagers carefully chosen for their capacity to ingratiate, and stumbled home.
An absolute success, and it continued for a week. But so it is: pride goeth before the fall.
II
Ap Cayod's man could not have fit the part more utterly if he'd been trying. His blinding white-blonde hair was cropped flat at the top in a manner that was equal parts intimidating and ridiculous, and the intense blue eyes on his thoroughly scarred face emoted precisely the right amount of scorn. As for his gear, well, the man did have good taste in kit. He could have made the cover of Mercenary of Fortune magazine, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if the outfit had been selected precisely because of its previous showing in that venue.
He had everything that the men around me thought they wanted: skill, reputation, and tremendous amounts of disposable income. But he was smart enough to know that in this, he deceived; the extreme measures taken to assert the image couldn't be anything but intentional. Despite this apparent spark of intellect, I suspected that beneath the facade of violence and avarice lay very genuine violence and avarice. Rhoniar chose well.
“Rhoniar chose well,” rumbled the man in an accent that must have been faked – it almost sounded Draenic, but not quite.
I started momentarily at how his thoughts had echoed my own, and then again at the implications of that phrase. I settled my face into a neutral expression as I calculated.
“He has been watching you, these past few months. Amongst the crowd, always a shadow, a figure that is easily mistaken for... innocuous.” He grinned. “Mistaken.”
I had some difficulty concealing my relief. A canned statement, utter bullshit, but bullshit brilliantly calculated to play on both the hubris and the cravenness common to underground duelists. I might have been more worried if I'd actually been around the community for more than seven days. He would have been saying precisely the same thing to whichever one of the combatants had won tonight's informal tourney, and it just happens to have been me.
Alright, perhaps not entirely by happenstance, and perhaps doing it this early was not optimally covert, but I can only play pattycake with a bunch of malnourished Defias rejects for so many days in a row before the desire to put the bastards in their place becomes entirely irresistible.
“Really?” I responded, my eyes widening. “Ap Cayod? Watching me. Why? Does he, does he want to hire me?”
The man smiled, and beckoned me to the door. I pretended not to notice the two toughs flanking us; they were pretty damned well hidden and it would have been thoroughly out of character to catch them out. After all, I was wide eyed and amazed at Bodyguard Ken here.
“We do in fact have an opening at the house right now, yes. And Rhoniar sent me here to pick you up – he's busy tonight, you see.” Because normally Rhoniar ap Cayod meets his green recruits in the dingiest parts of Stormwind in person. Right. “You seem... pleased. This is good. We appreciate applicants with a passion for the job.”
“Sir there's nothing I'd rather do I've been wanting this for so long sir this is just sir thank you sir.” I was barely able to make out what I'd just said, so it was probably entirely lost on my companion. He went on, blithely ignoring my outburst.
“Compensation will be three gold pieces a week. This will be sufficient, yes?”
My jaw dropped appropriately, but I was inwardly mildly concerned. That sum would wow the plebs from the dueling-cellars well enough, but it wouldn't pay for a wardrobe like this guy's. If the pay-scales were this far apart, the guards at the bottom weren't likely to have access to the kind of information I wanted.
“Y-y-yes sir. Absolutely sir. When do we leave?”
III
I didn't have to fake my astonishment when we arrived at the estate. Of course, I wasn't astonished at precisely the right thing.
“It is a fine mansion, our employer's. He has done well for himself. All the result of his genius investment during the war.”
Looting is a novel definition of investment, but when I file my taxes I replace "contract kill" with “logistics work” so I suppose I owe the fellow a bit of leeway.
“Wow,” I said. “What's, er... what's that?”
I gestured at what had actually provoked my astonishment. On a flat field to the left of the manse there stood at least a hundred men and elves – all male, I paused to note – wielding swords of bound sticks and beating the everloving crap out of each other with them. As I watched, the organization of the entire affair became clear; two men to a team, each attempting to tag one of the members of the other team with a whipping strike, causing them to kneel and cease fighting. The whole yard was in constant flux as teams moved up and down the field depending on victory and loss.
“That is the training yard for the bodyguard staff. What, you didn't suppose that we would let your skills waste away unless the estate came under attack?” He laughed. I was unimpressed by the deflection. What possible use could ap Cayod have for a hundred bodyguards? And why did Tarq think more along the lines of twenty?
“Oh! Well, that's, er, interesting. Why do they use wooden weapons? Are there no priests?”
“You will learn this at orientation.” Bodyguard Ken gave me a look that implied that further questioning was not appreciated. “I will take my leave of you here. Go through this door and be assigned a bunk, then report to the yard. You'll meet the other newcomers there.”
There were four others who had arrived in the past week, apparently. If this was representative of a normal week's induction, then either the turnover was incredibly high or ap Cayod was recruiting an army. Neither option was particularly reassuring. What was reassuring, however, was that none of the recruits would have looked out of place at an Old Town dueling cellar; they must have been recruited from similar establishments... with one exception, and I turned to him an inquisitive eye. A Night Elf.
“Welcome to the Guard, Teeth. My name's Brick.”
I turned to regard the voice, which came from a grizzled man with thinning red hair and a full beard who was likely a veteran of more wars than I'd had birthdays. I inclined my head to him, and took the stick-swords he proffered.
“Right. Simple rules, 'cos we're simple people. No intentional blows to the head. Especially no jabs or thrusts. Eyes, y'know. I'd like you all to keep them. You do not fight until I tell you, and you do not fight off the yard... with one exception. That'll be handled in orientation, until then just don't do anything stupid or you'll find yourself with a gryphon-ticket home and nothing to show for your trip out here. Meals are served at seven, twelve, and seven. You get an hour after meals to mill about and do as you please, otherwise all other hours are spent here on the yard or on patrol, but you won't be doing any of that for your first month or so here. Questions?”
I had none. “No sir.”
“Great. That's something we appreciate around here; you'll probably last until orientation on Friday.”
I was introduced to my peers, who all used earned names rather than given ones – Grunt, Eyes, and Biter – except for the Elf, who again puzzled me. Maventa was presumably judged to have too many syllables, so they took to calling him Mav.
We took turns beating each other up, and I judged that it was safe to conclude that the humans were, like my fellows in the cellars, malnourished Defias rejects. Again, the Elf was another matter. It quickly became apparent that he was pulling his strikes to appear less skilled than he was, and this was complicated tremendously by the fact that I was doing exactly the same. I sped up a bit, and he responded immediately, always just a little bit better than me. I kept pushing, but eventually held off, minding the eyes of the officer behind me. I had already begun to think of this operation as a military one; what else could it be?
IV
Seeing Rhoniar ap Cayod for the first time explained a lot. The name had its suggestion, sure, but especially catching my view of him from behind at first led me almost to think that Tarq had just been putting me on, and had his hand in this thing the whole time. Something about the hair. And the height. Even when he did turn around, revealing a face with its own unique features, I could imagine the guy being a long-lost cousin of ap D's. No wonder Tarq was catching his rap for the troll-slaughtering thing.
“Good evening,” said Rhoniar in a calm, quiet voice. “And welcome to my home.”
We sat in a well-appointed but tasteful dining room, the setting admirably intimate considering his guests for this “Orientation.” Grunt and Eyes had cleaned up rather nicely, but Biter was looking like he might live up to his name at any moment.
“Though the rules and regulations, the schedule and the tasks appointed you are no doubt firmly stamped into your minds by now, I suspect that you might still be plagued by questions regarding the reasons for these things. At this meal I would like to reassure you that I keep no secrets here; if you ask a question of me now, it will be answered. Your guides thus far have been instructed not to speak on these matters, yes, but it is strictly for reasons of clarity, not policy. I like to discuss the nature of my vision with my students myself.”
Blank stares from the plebs. Maventa looked thoughtful, and I immediately spoke up, true to the character I was playing.
“Y-you mean to say that you will teach us yourself, Mr. ap Cayod? That's amazing!”
He laughed. “Well, I would like to think that I already am. You see, this manor, and you, my Guard... you must have realized by now that you serve not merely to guard me from mortal threats. But you are my Guard nonetheless, protecting me from a much more dangerous thing: the purposelessness and ennui that is the death of most wealthy and indolent men.
“In fact, one might say that you are members of a... little project of mine.” He paused, smiling, and continued. “I have seen things in my lifetime that left me forever changed. I cannot again be witness to the horrors and depredation brought on, not by war, not by famine, but by that more insidious vice that masquerades as virtue. I speak, of course, of weakness. Of the failure to do what is necessary. Of the inadequacy, the inability to defend oneself and one's own.
“We live in an age where we are daily reminded of the absence of consequences for our weakness. The priesthood stalks our streets, wielding their emasculating Light at their whim, undoing the actions that by strength of will and strength of arms deserve to stand eternal. This twisted crime against nature and all that is natural is regarded not as the failure that it is, but as an expression of utmost virtue. I cannot countenance this, and neither should you.
“This is why we train with wooden swords. Because blades are meant to wound, are meant to kill, and the Light perverts their very meaning. This is why I do not tolerate priests in my estate; because their work is anathema to my teachings. In fact, this ground is consecrated, purified by our purpose; the Light has no place here. Ours is the way of the fist, the way of the blade, the way of strength that takes, strength that chooses, strength that builds, and strength that destroys. Ours is the way of righteousness, and that is never to be forgotten. We do not concern ourselves with mundane tasks such as the cultivation of crops or the ceaseless and banal pursuit of women. No, we have the luxury of focusing on that which is important: skill at arms. You will build that, as you stay here, and you will learn that all other purpose in this world is illusory.
“This is the lesson of the battlefield, this is the strength that war brings to nations. But the battlefield is an impure place where weakness thrives. It is only here, with the imposition of structure and control, that we can truly excise weakness from our lives, and experience the purity of true strength.
“The excision of weakness is not an easy process, but it is a necessary one. And that is the birth of a practice that I have termed the Ritual of Purification. There is an ancient justice, known as the trial by battle. Removed from the zeitgeist of our emasculated present, this wisdom of the past is the most important part of the new life I have fashioned for you here.
“Order in my home is maintained by my clerics, colloquially termed the Red Priesthood for their attire. They are my most trusted lieutenants, and they walk amongst you. If they determine that there is a conflict between some of you, they will notify the involved parties and bring them to the Shrine. I will lead you there after dinner; it is a place of beauty, and I am very proud of it. There you shall be given true weapons with an edge appropriate to their purpose. The victor shall return with honors, and the corpse of the defeated will be quickly transported away to a neighboring church. Upon resurrection, the defeated will be paid in full for his service; possessed of those all-important qualities, health and wealth, but forever stained by the fact of his weakness.
“Now,” Rhoniar leaned over the table and tented his fingers. “Are there any questions?”
Five pairs of eyes stared above five untouched plates. Silenced reigned in the room.
V
Life in Rhoniar's Guard began to take shape after the shock of Orientation wore away. I was paired with Maventa, and we quickly became immensely successful in the daily training. He apparently shared my reaction to ap Cayod's speech. Those words were somehow energizing, speaking out loud that which we secretly believed. For the first time in my life I was feeling... absolutely honest.
Of course, two fresh recruits slapping down a bunch of old, proud veterans didn't go over terribly well. The third night in I awoke shortly after falling asleep to see a red-robed figure with a mask of black gauze staring down at me. I nearly shat myself, but was relieved when the figure began laughing uproariously with a familiar voice.
“...Brick?” I asked.
He inclined his head in what might have been a nod, but said simply, “You have been selected for the Ritual. Please follow me, Teeth. Heh.” I doubt that chuckle was part of the script.
I rose, clad only in a pair of briefs, and followed the robed figure. He turned and offered me another robe, though of a rougher material and lacking a hood. I took it, grateful that I would be covered during our trip through the drafty stone halls of the manse's underground workings.
When we arrived at the Shrine, I was amazed at the transformation that it had clearly undergone since my first visit. Lamps lit the room brilliantly, bathing it in flickering red light that licked upward but didn't reach the high ceiling and the balcony from Rhoniar's personal quarters above. The finesse of the ornamentation again struck me, beautiful renderings of weapons familiar and foreign ringing the room's walls. There were swirling patterns on the floor, grooves that led to the center of circle.
I met Maventa, and engaged in what was fast becoming my favorite game; trying to get the notoriously silent Elf to speak up.
“Heya Mav. So we're going to have to spit us some jokers for real this time. Noticed you were getting a little slow yesterday, you sure you'll be alright with this?”
He glared at me. Elves have no sense of humor.
I turned to the weapon rack and drew out a pair of swords, testing their weight. Maventa took a pair of maces, startling me. If he specialized in their use, but was as good as he seemed with the practice swords... I let that thought trail. Maventa was an unknown quantity, but seemed at the least not to be hostile.
We only had to wait another few minutes before our opponents joined us, led by two red-robed priests of their own. I laughed out loud. It was Grunt and Eyes, and they looked absolutely terrified.
“You don't unnerstan'!” yelled Grunt. “Tha' root was just to keep me reg'lar! I never meant nobody no bloody harm by it! It was Eyes' idea!”
The priest, plainly unimpressed, dragged him forward. Brick, still hidden beneath his robes, stepped out from behind me.
“It has come to attention to the High Guard that there is a disciplinary issue between the four Guardsmen brought before the shrine today. It is our belief that Grunt and Eyes conspired to dose the meals of Teeth and Maventa with dustroot, a potent laxative, as a method of offense. This method of offense, taking place off of the grounds of the Yard, qualifies as an unresolvable physical conflict in the opinions of the High Guard.
Two more robed men, this time in black with gilded masks, strode from the corridor.
“The corpse-bearers are ready to attend,” rasped one.
Maventa and I strode to the opposite end of the room without urging. Grunt and Eyes were pressed into the ring with some difficulty..
“No mercy.” Intoned the four High Guard, the Red Priesthood. The black-robed corpse-bearers remained silent, their impassive golden faces staring unseeing. The gates closed, apparently of their own accord, behind the unhappy Grunt and terrified Eyes. A puddle of urine was forming beneath Eyes' robe.
A few seconds later, when Eyes was choking on his own blood and Grunt was wearing a stupefied expression as a transparent fluid leaked from his ears, the gates snapped back open. The priesthood greeted us.
“Welcome, accepted Guard Teeth. Accepted Guard Maventa,” they spoke in unison.
The corpse-bearers skittered away, their prizes slung across their backs, hunching them over.
“You will begin walking the rounds as full Guards tomorrow,” said a priest I did not recognize.
“We're all proud of ya,” said Brick.
I followed Brick back to my bunk, but I felt no pride. And I had no thoughts, other than the image that I could not shake from my mind's eye: the rivulets of blood that flowed from the neck I had opened, through the intricate pattern of grooves in the floor – and vanished, in the center of the room, through a hole.
VI
So it was that, after two weeks spent first playing pattycake and then getting caught up in a crazy cult, I finally got to work. I had already counted the Guard's membership – about 140, but likely to change what with the high influx of recruits and the Ritual exit – and had an accurate idea of their actual strength from practice with Maventa. We stood about two tiers from the best he had, and then only by our mutual understanding to pull a few swings now and then. These men couldn't have been here long; these hours of practice would have shaped even the slugs from the dueling cellars into something like competition over the course of years. As it stood I judged a directed force of five Riders could decimate the place.
About two nights after my initiation in the Shrine, I decided to pay a visit to some of the passageways I had been instructed to avoid when making the rounds of the underground. For the most part, the experience couldn't have been more boring. A few stores of weapons, some old junk – nothing that revealed anything about Rhoniar's history – and a whole lot of cobwebs. A cache of engineering equipment struck my fancy, and I set in motion a project that I figured would be very useful in the future. I wandered for a while, and was on the point of giving up on that tack when I noticed a light beneath an uncommonly well-maintained door.
It opened silently and slowly on oiled hinges. I peered in, surprised to hear the clattering of machinery as I stepped through. The room was filled with it, wall to wall, dark metals covered in arcane glyphs. The light came from a furnace burning with green flames that was nestled up against the far wall.
The mechanics were complex, but engineering is a hobby of mine and I judged the machine's purpose quickly; it generated power. Tremendous amounts. But there was another factor here, and I couldn't, at first, figure it out. Then I recognized the source of the glyphs and the style of the machinery, and I recalled a statement that had seemed odd to me when Rhoniar spoke it.
“...this ground is consecrated, purified by our purpose; the Light has no place here...”
This stuff was Burning Legion equipment. I was looking at a giant generator of ambient Shadow. As this sank in, I forced myself to look up, already knowing what I would see but dreading it nonetheless. A point of light was visible in the ceiling, and from it flowed a thin stream of blood, falling silently into a reservoir.
The Ritual had just been completed. I dashed, almost too late, behind a bank of rattling machinery and flattened myself against the wall.
The door opened, and a black-robed priest stepped through it.
“Bugger all, this bastard's a heavy one. Usually it's pretty easy when there's only the one like this.”
Two men, carrying a body slung between them, shuffled past me and casually tossed the corpse into the fiery maw on the far wall. It flared with green light, and had they turned to face me I would have been easily seen. Fortunately, they paused to manipulate some knobs and dials I had previously failed to notice, and the light had died by the time they turned to exit.
I exhaled.
I still had some questions, but I now knew one thing for sure: I wanted the hell out of this place.
VII
Training continued unabated. Though he never spoke, I became increasingly certain that there was a level of understanding between Maventa and I. We remained among the stronger teams, but never placed ourselves at the top. I had noticed already that there seemed to be a recurring issue with the top pair vanishing abruptly.
Eventually I found a private moment and worked up the courage to establish more precisely our relationship. I used my characteristic brilliant tact in doing so.
“So, who are you working for anyway?” I asked.
“Arena Syndicate,” he rumbled. “You?”
“Wildfire Riders.”
He grunted. “My organization's richer.”
I shrugged. “Mine's handsomer.”
We laughed. He had a sense of humor, after all. “What does the Arena Syndicate care about Cayod?” I asked.
“Competition. Goblins don't like competition.”
I nodded. “Listen. There's no church for Ritual losers. Just a furnace. I disappear, or you start hearing explosions, I'd like you to tell people that. If they'll listen.”
He grunted again. “I guessed as much. And I doubt they'll listen.”
Questions were never asked when men disappeared. We all shared the Ritual, the Shrine, the Way of the Fist and the Blade and et cetera. Red robes, black gauze, blank gilded masks. All accepted, all presumed benevolent. Yet never did it cross anyone's thoughts that the very concept of benevolence was unacceptable to a man like ap Cayod; the idea that he would treat the failures amongst his membership with mercy was always ridiculous, should never have been believable. But in their desperation to find a cause – no, in our desperation to find a cause – we believed what was convenient.
“Eventually, my friends are going to raid the place. Best thing to do would be to disappear, but I'm sure there'd be some coin or goodwill in it if you cared to help them out.”
He grunted again, and that concluded the first and last time we spoke.
I had spent a few nights in the machine room poring over the equipment, trying to establish what all that shadow was for, but I was coming up against a blank. I knew engineering, and some elemental magic theory, but shadow's tricky. The best that I could establish was that it would disturb the boundary between life and death thoroughly, perhaps forming a wall against the influence of dead spirits, perhaps twisting the results of divination attempts. The most significant concern, and my personal suspicion, was that it would neutralize the effect of healing spells in the area. Either or both seemed likely to serve the interests of Rhoniar ap Cayod, and neither was pleasant. So I rigged it with explosives.
There was probably an off button, but the trouble with off buttons is that they allow the machinery to be turned back on again. I'd be having none of that. I put enough elemental blasting powder in that room to turn that fel iron into vapor.
Satisfied with the job, I brought out my other little engineering project and found myself a quiet place.
“This is Tirith. My report is complete.” the buzzbox crackled, and I was prepared to call the job done.
When I crept back to my room there was a man in a red robe waiting for me.
VIII
“Where were you?” the tone was unconcerned, and I allowed myself to breathe.
“Privy.” I replied, intensely aware of the swords under my bed and the distance between me and them.
“Ah. Takes some of the drama out of it,” he said, his disappointment evident. “Well. Let's get downstairs, I'm sure they're waiting.”
I wasn't wholly convinced of the nonchalance, but I wasn't presented with a large span of options. We passed the halls in silence. When we arrived at the Shrine I was momentarily surprised by the absence of Maventa, but only momentarily. My capacity for surprise was truly tested when I met my opponent.
Rhoniar ap Cayod smiled at me sadly.
“Ah, Tirith. You really had a chance here, you know that? I had very high hopes for you.” Shit. “Your night wanderings, however, are not appropriate, and I really must challenge you over them.” Shit.
I pulled a pair of swords from the wall, silently considering just how fucked I was. If I killed him, I'd have the Crazy Cultist Brigade on my case. If I didn't kill him, I was bound for the furnace. But he hadn't mentioned my little engineering project, and that opened up a sliver of hope.
“You can't honestly expect to keep that corpse-furnace a secret? Nearby church my ass.”
He was startled by that comment, and I nearly jumped for joy. The gates slammed behind us, and he rushed me, blades flicking up fast enough that I was damned glad I wouldn't be fighting him. I dashed aside, jumped, and then did something that I prayed he did not predict. I pointed my index finger at the hole in the center of the room, directly below me, and willed a tiny bit of nether energy into a ball of fire that leaped from the outstretched digit and straight into the machine room below.
Which was filled with explosives.
I was deafened, then hurled straight up. I crowed my triumph as I flew, then blinked a few feet forward, just over the balcony high in the cylindrical room. The rubble was still falling when I caught my breath, lying on my side with one hand grasping the banister. I pulled myself into a sitting position to look down at the damage. The floor had caved in, and the machine was utterly ruined. I glanced around, but didn't see ap Cayod's body anywhere. Not caring to waste valuable seconds, I stepped away, planning to head out through his room.
And that's where my memories end. But I suspect that, were my brains slightly less scrambled, I would have heard the whooshing noise ap Cayod made as he stepped through my shadow and perhaps seen a falling truncheon.