Alastair Archibald - Weapon of the Guild

"Leave it to me," the demon squeaked. "I have a perfect memory, and I remember every little twist and turn that we took on the way. Lead me to my beverage!"

"Very well, Thribble, an early night it is. I can't wait to get back home."

Back at the Accommodation Block, Dalquist bade Grimm goodnight, and told him that Cally should be arriving with the carriage to take them back to Arnor House at first light.

"It won't be a moment to soon for me, Dalquist," Grimm said with fervour. "I can't wait to be back where I belong."

"I can only agree," the senior mage replied. "I'm going to get some sleep, and I suggest you do the same."

Grimm looked at the tiny, expectant face of Thribble protruding from his pocket. "I will do so in a little while, Dalquist. Our small friend Thribble seems to have a considerable thirst, which it would be inhospitable not to slake, so I'll share a drink or two and chat for a while longer before I retire. Goodnight."

When Dalquist closed the door, the demon looked eager as the young mage took a small thimble from a pocket and filled it with amber liquor. Grimm took a rather more generous measure for himself, and felt good humour seeping through him as the alcohol sent warming waves into his body.

The human and the demon chatted for a while, as Grimm gave Thribble an unvarnished account of Madeleine's attempted ensorcellment of him, and his gradual realisation of the truth of their relationship. Thribble listened, rapt at first, but, after two thimblefuls of good brandy, the minuscule imp was in an uproarious state, laughing, clapping his hands and dancing. After a while, he fell asleep, and Grimm laid the demon carefully inside his travelling bag, shutting him in the chest-of drawers. The netherworld being snored at a volume that belied his minute frame, but the heavy wood of the closed drawer attenuated this to a bearable level.

Grimm downed a couple more brandies, and then reached for Redeemer in order to clear his head. However, instead of annulling the effects of the alcohol, he backed it off just a little, retaining the pleasant, warm, good-humoured sensations he had felt earlier.

He read a little from a book he had borrowed from the library of Thaumaturgical Research, but his eyelids began to flutter, the words began to blur and the book eventually fell from his hand. Grimm snuffed the light, and was quickly asleep.

****

A sharp smell of ammonia seemed to bring him to his senses, and Grimm felt himself drifting upwards and outwards, until he found himself looking down at what appeared to be his own, sleeping body. The mouth hung slightly open, and the eyes rolled and darted beneath their lids as if seeking some fugitive prey.

His senses seemed acutely heightened; even in the dark room, colours appeared bright and vivid, and it was as if he could see every thread in his blanket and hear every tiny sound; Thribble's amplified snoring grated like a rough thread being drawn through the mage's ears.

Ears? Surely nothing so crude and corporeal; Grimm was aware of his essence, but he had no sense of encumbrance or limitation, such as that imposed by a mere mortal body.

He was flying, soaring, floating in the air. Grimm Afelnor had often tried to achieve this effect before, but the best he had achieved was an uneasy, wobbling, precarious levitation that was more strenuous than exhilarating. This was different; this was liberation and joy, a pure, unalloyed sense of freedom he had never before experienced.

As if drawn by some invisible thread, he felt himself moving down through the floor, which proved no barrier to his ethereal form. Vague images flitted through his consciousness: the Senior Doorkeeper berating one of his underlings for sloppy dress; an Adept's staff shattering against a Breaking Stone similar to that at Arnor House; a hot, busy kitchen buzzing with activity. Still he moved downwards at a relentless, increasing pace.

It seemed as if an age passed before he ceased his downward journey, and the dream-Grimm could now take stock of his surroundings. This was no chandelier-lit, mahogany-panelled realm of extravagance; there were bare stone walls and a flagstone floor, dappled with flickering shadows from crude rush torches and oil lamps. Moisture dripped from an unseen ceiling. He guessed he was in the very bowels of High Lodge, deep beneath the ground, within that monstrous edifice's very foundations, and that these regions were visited only infrequently.

A corner of his mind wondered who had illuminated these dingy catacombs, and for what purpose: workmen, perhaps, or victuallers replenishing the Lodge's capacious storehouses, he surmised. Despite his heightened senses, he felt no sense of urgency, just a mild interest in his surroundings.

He drifted through the stone-pillared labyrinth, aimless and unrestricted. Under normal circumstances, he might have felt more than a little claustrophobic at finding himself in such a dimly-lit, dingy maze, aware of the crushing weight of the gigantic structure, millions of tons pressing down upon the roof above him, but he felt that the entire structure could collapse at this point and leave him utterly unscathed.

The catacombs were like a blancmange; each part identical in form and construction to each other. The layout seemed to be in the form of a regularly spaced lattice of massive stone pillars, sinking deep into the earth and supporting the entire weight of the Lodge. Not for the first time, Grimm supposed that some mighty magic must have been invoked in the raising of this titanic building. Surely no secular architect could have been so bold as to envision such a massive undertaking, and no common artisan or engineer would have known how or where to start its construction.

The disembodied consciousness of Grimm Afelnor became aware of a distant humming, a rhythmic pulse that waxed and waned in a metronomic, hypnotic fashion. It was far in the distance, and it would have been inaudible to mortal ears, but it came through clearly to spirit-Grimm's heightened senses. Without volition, he felt drawn inexorably towards it, unerringly guided through the warren of anonymous, identical passages.

Closer, closer; the relentless rhythm, now identifiable as a low chant, seemed to fill his consciousness, subsuming and swamping his very will. It was as if he were some passive castaway in a thick, heavy, glutinous sea, being carried along on an unchanging wave.

Dream-Grimm saw a door ahead of him, surrounded by an aura of golden light that streamed from its edges. A mere physical portal was no barrier to his ethereal form, and he drifted through it as easily as his physical body might have moved through a curtain of mist.

This was a crypt, a place of the dead, he realised. The mortal Grimm might have shuddered in superstitious, subliminal uneasiness, but his spiritual avatar watched unmoved. Racks and racks of ornate coffins rose thirty feet to a vaulted ceiling, arrayed neatly around the walls of a circular room, maybe fifty feet in diameter and dished in the middle, like some giant serving-bowl. In the middle of the bowl, the roaming dream-spirit saw a circular dais, on which was mounted a gilded wooden throne with a blood-red velvet cushion. To one side of this was a large basket of silver metal, filled with carefully arrayed blocks of some wood emitting a pungent, aromatic perfume. Was this some altar of consecration for departed souls?

The chanting grew more intense, and spirit-Grimm sensed that he was approaching the door of the crypt. The door opened, and a hooded, black-robed figure entered; behind it, a group of four chanting, grey-garbed entities in a square formation, a cloth-bound bundle borne on their shoulders.

The figure in black sank onto the throne in the centre of the crypt; the hood slipped back and dream-Grimm recognised Lizaveta, the Prioress of the Order of the Sisters of Divine Mercy. The grey chanters released their burden carefully, reverently onto the flagstones at the Prioress's feet. They, too, doffed their hoods, to reveal young, female, glassy-eyed faces bearing identical expressions of utter adoration. The chanting ceased as if on cue, and the Sisters chanted, "All hail, Reverend Mother," in perfect unison.