David Chandler - A thief in the night

Croy stepped over to the wall. He pounded on the bricks with the pommel of his sword. The hollow thud he made suggested there was an open space behind the wall-but what of it? What kind of girl could just walk through a solid wall?

“Whoever she was, she’s gone now.” Croy shook his head. He glanced down at the buckets by the fire. “I don’t think she was a warrior at all.”

Morget turned to stare at him. “No. No. She was… very small.”

Croy stared back. Was Morget suffering a pang of conscience? If the girl had not fled, Croy was certain Morget would have cut her down just on principle. Maybe he was doubting his whole philosophy, maybe he was wondering why he had devoted his life to mindless violence, and “I have not killed anything in days,” Morget said. “Now, I am cheated!” He bellowed in rage at the unfairness of it all. “Magic! She must have used magic, to vanish in thin air like that. She must have been a sorceress. And I could not reach her in time.”

Croy frowned. He looked down at the buckets. They were simple, and crudely made from hammered sheets of tin. They leaked. “A witch, perhaps,” he admitted.

“Who knows what dark magic she was about?” Morget thundered. “At least, I can say I kept her from practicing her foul art.”

Croy shook his head. The buckets didn’t look like witch’s cauldrons. They looked like the kind of simple implements one might find on a farm. He was pretty sure the girl had been tending the mushrooms, not some arcane ritual. “She must have been sent to wet down the floor of the farm tunnels. Mushrooms like the damp.”

“She was just here! And then she was gone. Magic, I swear!” Morget looked farther up the tunnel where it ran ahead into darkness. There were more racks that way, identical to the ones behind them. “She did not go that way. She did not hide behind one of the racks. She was just-gone.”

“Hardly a wonder, in the dark like this,” Croy protested. He leaned against the brick wall. “We had no light ourselves, and-”

Behind him the wall shifted. He thought at first it was collapsing under his weight, and he jumped away. When he looked back, however, he saw that a whole section of the wall was mounted on hinges. It was a hidden door. It must not have been closed properly, and now it had popped open on its hinges.

He reached forward and got his fingernails around the edge of the door. With a simple tug it swung open before him, revealing a side tunnel-just wide and tall enough for one person to walk through at a time. A secret passage.

A fresh breeze ruffled Croy’s hair.

“It smells better in there, at least.”

Malden heaved at the iron bar again, and the stone door grated against the floor. He put his back into it and grunted in frustration. Sweat made his hands slip and he jumped backward as the bar flew, spinning, to clatter on the floor once again.

He stripped off his cloak and pushed back the sleeves of his tunic.

“Do you want me to have a try?” Cythera asked.

Malden glanced over at Slag. The dwarf was lying on the floor, curled in a ball by the pain that wracked his muscles. His eyes were clamped shut and he was moaning softly. Better that than the screaming that came before, Malden supposed.

“I’m to blame for this,” Malden said, running his hands across his breeches to dry them. “If I’d been thinking clearly I would have seen that dart before it struck him.” He looked at Cythera’s face, hoping to find compassion there. No, there is no fault, he expected her to say. No, you are not to blame.

“Yes,” she said instead. “His death is on your hands.”

Anger and guilt surged through Malden’s chest. He grabbed up the bar and shoved it into the door frame once more. He braced his feet and pulled, and pulled, and — fell over backward as the door stopped resisting him and flew open on its hinges. The bar struck Malden’s foot as it dropped to the flagstones, and he cried out as sudden pain raced up his leg.

“Damn! I think I might have broken a toe,” he said, hugging the foot toward him.

Cythera ignored him and walked over the threshold into the Hall of Treasures.

“Wait!” the thief called. “What if there are more traps?”

But she was already inside, carrying Slag’s makeshift lantern with her. Malden rose to his feet-the toe hurt, but he doubted that it was really broken. He bent over Slag and helped the dwarf stand on shaky legs.

“Can you walk?” he asked.

“For this I can.” Slag stumbled forward, barely keeping his feet. Malden pulled the dwarf’s arm around his waist and helped as best he could.

The room beyond the door was not large, at least by the standards of the rest of the Vincularium. It went back perhaps sixty feet and was a third as wide. Its ceiling was barely ten feet over Malden’s head, and was vaulted with graceful stonework that looked more ornamental than functional.

The hall was filled with gold.

Each item in the room had its own pedestal or case. They all deserved special display. A wooden stand the size of a wardrobe but fronted with glass held a selection of crowns as delicate as birds’ nests-woven of filigree, of gold and silver wire that held hundreds of gems aloft. A long case made entirely of crystal held rings in the shape of towers or horses or swords that curved around until their points touched their pommels. Each ring held a single perfect gem the size of a robin’s egg. Along one wall hung tapestries made of cloth of platinum, cunningly worked with shining copper wire for contrast. The scenes the tapestries showed-including a view of the Vincularium from the top of the central shaft-were so finely detailed they might have been windows into a shimmering world.

A row of suits of armor lined the other wall, with additional suits mounted higher up to make a second array. One panoply was painted with black enamel, then worked with silver leaf to form a floral pattern so convoluted the eye could get lost in its twists and turns. Another suit was covered in gold-tipped spikes to give a fearsome aspect. Yet another looked to Malden as if it had been carved from stone.

Then there were the weapons. Axes and pikestaffs rose from the floor, gathered together by the hafts until they looked like deadly trees. The blades of some were inscribed with runes in a script so flowing, so elaborated with curlicues and sharply barbed serifs, that a single thorn rune could fill the entire available space. Others were engraved all over with characters so tiny Malden could not make out the individual runes.

There were cases of swords with blades so delicate and thin they looked like they would snap if they were lifted, or hilts so heavily encrusted with jewels that surely no hand could hold them. There were doubly recurved bows of laminated horn fitted with half a dozen strings-they looked like fairy harps to Malden.

The armor and weapons were so grand it took him a while to realize they all shared something in common, which was their small size. They were not made for humans, but for dwarves.

“It’s illegal for a dwarf to use a weapon,” Malden said, admiring a sheaf of perfect daggers that stood like pins in a velvet cushion. The pommel of one was a ruby as big as his fist.

“It is now,” Slag explained. “Before we signed that damned treaty my people were hardy warriors. Lad, help me over to yon case of glassware. I’d stand on my own feet in this place.”

Malden brought Slag to the case in question, which was full of fantastically elaborate bottles, decanters, and ewers.

“When we left the Vincularium, we had to leave all our weapons behind. That was part of the agreement we made with your king.” Slag shook his head-a gesture that made him wince with pain. “We gave up a great deal.”