Shadow's Witness (26 page)

Gale smiled despite himself—the having kept his sense of humor even when terrified.

Deftly, Gale tied a slipknot into one end of the thin but strong line. He opened some play ia the loop; gathered it in, and prepared to toss it to Jak.

“Catch this.”

“Catch it!” Jak eyed him incredulously over his shoulder. “How?”

Let go with one of your hands.”

“But—Dark and empty!” he said, and nodded in resignation. “All right.” He gingerly pulled his left hand free of the wall. Despite his care, the wall’s skin stuck to his hand and tore loose. Blood spurted from the rip. He hung on the wall with only two sticky feet and a sticky hand.

“Throw itf

Gale stood at the edge of the gate, let eight or so feet of line play out, and swung itup toward Jak. The little

man caught it on the first try. He stuck his arm through the loop, draped it over his neck, and tried again to get a grip on the wall. Slippery with gore, his hand no longer stuck.

“Blast,” he oathed. “It won’t stick.” Before Cale could say anything, the little man reared back and slammed his fist into the wall, wrist deep. “Ugh,” he exclaimed in disgust.

Quick thinking, Cale thought. “Get the rope around your torso,” he said. “IH give it a jerk at the same time you jump toward me. Ifs only about eight feet. You’ll make it.”

“I know what the plan is,” Jak muttered irritably. “Easier said than done, though. I don’t know if this hand,” he indicated with his head the hand buried in the wall, “will hold me if I let go with the other.”

Cale made no reply. He waited for Jak to come to terms. They had nothing else, and Jak had to know it. The fleshy, bloody wall offered no handgrips. Jak was stuck, and if he tried to move farther, he would certainly fall into the gate.

“Let’s do it now. With the rope tike this.”

Cale shook his head. “Can’t. I think it’ll slip right over your head and off when I pull. Won’t work”

“Dark,” Jak sighed. “All right, let’s do it. But if my hand won’t hold and I start to fall, you pull right away. Try to, at least.” He glanced down into the bloody gate. “I don’t want to go wherever that leads.”

Cale nodded, braced himself, and pulled the rope as taut as he dared. He had to leave some play so Jak could get his other arm through, yet he had to be ready to give it a sharp pull if the little man started to fall.

“Ready,” he said.

“Here goes.” Jak jerked his hand free. Blood spurted from the wall and poured past him into the gate. Cale tensed. Jak dangled dangerously but didn’t fall. His

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other hand held! Quickly, the little man threaded his free arm through the loop. He turned and shot Cale a grin.

“All right, Cale—” The little man’s green eyes fell on the gate and went wide. “Pull, Cale! Now! Now!”

Cale jerked at the same moment that Jak jumped free of the wall.

The snap of the rope pulled the breath from the little man in a whoosh. He flew through the air, just cleared the edge of the gate, and landed in a heap on the spongy floor beside Cale. He leaped to his feet.

“The shadow demon! I saw it looking out at me from the gate!”

Cale dropped the rope and had his blade out in an instant. Without hesitation, he stepped to the edge of the gate and looked down. From deep within the void, two hate-filled yellow sparks looked out at him and narrowed balefully. The eyes of the demon that had nearly killed Thazienne. j ; =

“Bastard!” He reversed his grip on the long sword, dropped to one knee, and drove the blade hilt-deep into the void, directly between those demonic ye^ew eyes. The stuff of the gate gave way before the iron Eke water. A distortion rippled across its bloody surface. When it cleared, the eyes had disappeared. Cale snarled and pulled the weapon free. He didn’t know if he had hit the demon or not.

Jak approached and stood beside him, blades bare.

“It’s gone?” he asked.

“Itfsgone.”

“Good,” Jak said. “Close one, Cale. I wouldn’t have wanted to fall in there with that thing, at least not without you.” The little man stripped off his bloody cloak and threw it into the gate. “Here,” he said to the gate, “you get this instead.”

The bloody cloak swirled into oblivion and vanished.

Jak took an extra cloak from his pack and wiped himself as dean as he could. “Disgusting,” he muttered as he worked. He threw the newly soiled cloak into the gate as well. “That’s better,” he said afterward. “I feel like a new man. We moving?”

Gale nodded and turned reluctantly from the gate. “We’re moving,” he affirmed.

“What’s in your hand?” Jak asked.

“Huh?”

Surprised, Gale realized that he held the felt mask in his hand, H&must have pulled it out of his pocket after jerking his blade out of the gate. Or had he done it before?

“What is that?” Jak asked again, and gently gripped Gale’s hand by the wrist.

“It’s a mask,” Gale said. He shook free of Jak’s grip and stuffed it back into his pocket. “I picked it up in the armory. You overlooked it in the strongbox.”

Jak looked skeptical at that. “I didn’t overlook it,” he said thoughtfully. “A mask? Gale…”

“I know.”

Jak smiled and patted Gale’s forearm. “Seems the Shadowlord wants an answer sooner rather than later.”

Gale dared not reply to that. He thought some part of him might have already given his answer. Without another word, he knelt and retrieved the glow wand. “Let’s keep moving. The stairs to the basement are just ahead.”

With Gale holding the glow wand high to best illuminate the darkness and Jak keeping a watchful eye behind for the shadow demon, they moved warily through the narrow halls. The floor solidified as they distanced themselves from the gate, the warping seemingly localized around the void. Still, the whole guildhouse fairly reeked of wrongness.

With only the dim glow wand for light, Gale relied more on his hearing than his vision to warn him of danger. He was alert to any sound, but heard nothing—nothing but the dull, thudding pulses emitted from the gates as they grew larger and ate away at the world.

He wondered briefly whether proximity to the gates would somehow change he and Jak, warp them into unspeakable horrors tike the ghouls. Uncomfortable with the thought, he dismissed it as useless speculation. He reached into his pocket and felt the comforting touch of the felt mask.

I’m already changed, he admitted to himself. He was finding comfort in a god. Only time would tell if he also had been warped.

Doors dotted the hallway as they moved. The gates had warped some into saggy slabs of wood with the consistency of candle wax, while others seemed normal. Where the doors stood closed and solid, Gale left them closed. Where ajar, he kicked them open and stalked into the room, blade ready. Always the rooms beyond stood empty but for the occasional gate, broken furnishings, torn paintings, and of course, the smell. They moved forward, cautiously alert.

Jak’s hand suddenly closed over Gale’s wrist and pulled him to a stop. “There’s something behind us,” the little man whispered. “I can feel it.”

Gale didn’t feel it, but Jak’s words caused the hairs on his nape to rise. He nodded and set the glow wand on the floor. “Well wait for it here,” he whispered into Jak’s ear. It could only be the shadow demon. He had cleared the previous rooms to make sure that no ghouls could attack from behind.

The little man nodded and both took positions along opposite sides of the wall. Gale held the enchanted long sword in a two-handed grip. Jak held his short

sword and dagger in trembling hands. They stood just outside the blue light of the glow wand and peered back into the darkness, ready, waiting. Gale’s heart thudded in time to the unholy pulses of the gates.

Nothing happened. They stood there for twenty heartbeats, still nothing.

Trickster’s toes, Cale. I felt something.”

Gale didn’t doubt it He felt sure that the shadow demon was lurking somewhere nearby. Even if he hod wounded it back at the gate, he certainly hadn’t killed it. He picked up the glow wand. “We keep moving. Stay close, and keep your eyes and ears alert behind.”

Jak nodded agreement. Gale saw that in his dagger hand, the little man held both blade and holy symbol. Cale fought off the urge to draw forth the felt mask from his pocket.

I don’t have a holy symbol, he inwardly averred. Cale didn’t know if he believed himself.

They trekked on. Ahead, the hall branched into a T-shaped intersection. Moving forward in a ready crouch, wary for an ambush, Cale turned right. Illuminated by the glow wand, the door to the main stairwell came into view.

“There,” he said over his shoulder, and pointed with his blade at the door. Jak mouthed the words, Let’s do it, and they stalked ahead.

After assuring himself that it wasn’t warped, Gale knelt at the door and listened. Though he heard nothing, he did not assume the landing beyond unoccupied. He hadn’t heard the ghouls outside the armory, either, and had nearly died as a result. He turned to face Jak. The little man was staring into the darkness behind them, alert. Cale snapped his fingers to get his attention, and signaled in hand cant, Ready yourself.

Jak turned toward the door and moved in close behind Cale. When he felt ready, he gave Cale a nod.

Cale slowly turned the handle, dick. He shared a glance with Jak then jerked the door opea and jumped back, enchanted blade before him.

There was nothing there. Only the upper landing of the stairs.

He didn’t allow himself the luxury of a relieved sigh. He knew that from this point onward, there would be no rest. Yrsillar must know that they were in the guildhouse. Since the demon hadn’t set up an ambush here, Cale figured he had marshaled his forces in the basement.

“Get’s ug|y from now on,” he said to Jak.

“It’s been ugly since the day we met,” Jak joked, and gave him a friendly shove in the shoulder. “Why change now?”

Cale couldn’t bring himself to smile. “The first flight descends ten feet or so, leads to a second landing, then to a second flight of stairs.” He paused, then added, “Those go down about another fifteen feet and open into the basement.”

Jak’s face remained emotionless. “You lead.”

Placing his right hand on the iron banister, Cale started down the narrow stone stairway. The smell of rancid meat and rotting corpses wafted up from the depths of the guildhouse as though from the bowels of the Abyss. Cale steeled himself and walked on, prodding each stair with his blade before putting his full weight upon it. He rounded the first curve in the stairway and stopped cold.

Before him, the stairs shimmered in the light of the glow wand like shallow water in moonlight. Each dull pulse of the gates sent a distortion wave rippling along them. Below, the entire landing had been transformed into a gate, a hole that led to nothingness. Leaping over it would be impossible,

“I>ammit,” Gate muttered.

“Dark,” Jak echoed.

He turned around to face Jak. “We can turn around, go out of the guildhouse, and try to come back in through the sewers.” He paused for a moment, then added, “Or we can climb around it.”

At that, the little man’s expression fell—Jak had apparently had enough of climbing around gates—but he rallied himself quickly. “We climb,” he said. “WeVe come too far to turn back now. Besides, the sewer entrance could be blocked too.”

He turned away from Gale and tapped along the wall with his short sword. “Wall seems unaffected this time, if not the floor. It’s a good tiling too, because I don’t have another spell to help me get across. Seems the Lady is still with us.”

Gale nodded absently and studied the walls for himself. Like everything in the guildhouse, they had been built sturdy and sound, but without regard for cosmetics. Their rough, unfinished, and unwarped surface provided plenty of handholds. The real problem, however, wasnt the absence or presence of handholds, it was that he and Jak would have to elide not just sideways along the wall, but sideways and down, a difficult maneuver under the best of circumstances. Thankfully, the ceiling provided plenty of clearance. They wouldn’t have to climb with the gate mere inches below their feet.

We can do this, he thought, and believed it.

Jak had already sheathed his blades. Gale did the same.

“Same side or different?” asked the little man.

Gale considered. Even if they did follow each other along the same side of the wall, they wouldn’t be able to help one another if either ran into difficulty. “Different,” he said. “If only one side proves impassable, we don’t both want to have to double back. This way, when

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oae of us gets across safely, he can throw a rope to the other to help him across.”

Jak gave a nod, turned, and started to feel the wall for handholds. Gale stuck the glow wand in his belt and did the same. He quickly found a likely route.

With a soft grunt, he began to climb. Behind him across the stairwell, he could hear Jak’s breathing as he struggled to move his hands and feet over the stone. Gale ascended five or six feet vertically.

“You all right?” he asked Jak. He had to contort his neck so that he could turn far enough around to see the little man.

Jak had climbed to about the same height as Gale. His short arms and legs stuck out at all angles as he gripped the available protrusions. Tm all right,” he said. “You?”

“Fine,” Gale replied. Bracing himself with his feet and left hand, he reached out sidewise for a grip. After finding one, he shifted his weight and probed the wall with his right foot for another step. He found one and slid a foot or two sidewise. . We can do this, he mentally reiterated. . Gale was breathing hard now. Sweat poured down his back, trickled down his brow and pooled in his eyebrows. Behind him, Jak’s breathing had also grown loud and raspy. With his short limbs and fingers, Jak would find the climb even more difficult than Gale.

But hell make it, Gale affirmed hopefully. He called over his shotdder, “How’s it going?”

“It’d be going better if you’d stop distracting me,” Jak retorted. Gale could hear the smile in the little man’s voice.

Gale smiled and continued the slow sidewise climb. For the next few minutes, he focused only on the wall, his weight, and his next movement. Reach, feel for a protrusion, grip, extend his leg, plant his toe, delicately shift his weight. He made steady progress.