It was a two hour journey to the start of the fourth floor. From the ghosts Attar had spoken with earlier we knew only that Tom’s Mother’s place was north and east of the savage ogre lair, though Attar had revealed on our descent that ghosts could lie to him, so if we found a more likely path we should take that instead.

  There was only one path to take until the tattoo parlour, so there was little deception to be had, but here, instead of going east first, I suggested the northern exit. The Bleaktaur had gotten those swans from somewhere, and this was the only other path he could have taken to have encountered me going the other way.

  Soldier’s Swords

  I was already running low on swords after the vines and the goblins. Today was likely to be a short excursion.

  “Open that door.”

  The door was stone so I had little hope for destruction, instead relying on force to pry it open.

  My swords obeyed.

  The door (noisily) opened out into a corridor which forked north and east, though both forks ended in a room to the north.

  The closer room, the eastern one, was the room of the centipedes and was barred to us by a thick wooden portcullis.

  The further room was the crypt with the strange appearing bookcase. All we’d done was find a much safer route to the crypt, long after it was too late to benefit us. I must have just missed the taur on my return as we would have both come from the same path unless there were secret passages to be found.

  If only my ring was working.

  ***

  It was more likely the taur had taken the direct route rather than passing through the centipede lair, as I would have seen him while I was in there otherwise, and I doubted he’d simply spent an hour lurking in the fifty foot hallway around the corner and still been so surprised by me. Plus, if he’d been trying to investigate the armoured ogre den from the west, it suggested his more direct route didn’t taken him through the centipede lair, which for safety reason, triply reinforced the notion he’d come from the crypt instead.

  From the crypt we sought the orcish treasury and from there regarded the exits, one west, one north.

  The north door was our most likely path, but it was made of iron, whereas the west led through an archway.

  “Halt! In the name of the emperor.”

  I halted. He’d used the emperor’s name after all—the concept of the emperor’s name. I still didn’t know what emperor all these people were going on about. The one obsessed with women, I assumed.

  I shone brighter, revealing the four armed knights in the room beyond. Two were male. Maybe it wasn’t the same emperor.

  “Are you looking for your companions? Ten or so women? One with a large scar? The leader is cuter than a kitten hunting a lumberjack?”

  “Our companions have their own quest. Ours is to hunt down a powerful sorceress who lives in this area.”

  “The warlocks sealed the rift. Were you aware?”

  Both of the women were wearing robes, one black, one red. The one in the red robes spoke, “We were aware. Our mission comes first.”

  “My companion and I seek one known as Tom’s Mother. Is this the same sorceress?”

  The first man to have spoken, a large bald man with scars on his knuckles and armour made of layered hides answered, “That is her. What is your interest in the sorceress?”

  I got the feeling this lot might not take kindly to us helping her. I doubted they were “hunting” down the sorceress to give her a bouquet of flowers. Though if their emperor was the emperor of the Vineyards as I suspected, anything was possible when it came to women. The Vineyards were mad.

  “We have dealings with her house. Would you like to share information on her?”

  The man scowled, “I don’t find myself trusting you. Turn back and this will be the end of it. Otherwise...” he let the thought trail off with a shrug. The woman in black made sure to reveal her long, strangely curved sword, while the other man holding a shield and club simply looked embarrassed.

  If the woman in red was supposed to be threatening me she was failing in her duties. Perhaps she was some sort of sorcerer or magician.

  I would have left it there. Unfortunately, there was no other path save the door made of iron, and I wasn’t sure I could open that one.

  “We will ask you no more then, but we must pass through this way. We seek the downfall of the Warlocks, and we know of few other paths.”

  “You will leave, or you will die.”

  Iron door it was.

  ***

  My soldier’s swords couldn’t penetrate the door.

  After their failure Attar summoned his ogres, but they too failed to batter down adamant passage even if the noise was deafening.

  We had one other path before we had to try the door ourselves, and that was the spike pit coming off the tomb. After that it was finding a way through the iron door, or through the emperor’s knights.

  Lightstep Again

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  Rapture

  The peculiar nature of Attar’s body, which still allowed me to treat him as myself and an object outside myself, allowed me to lighten him with the first spell, and levitate him over the spike trap with the second.

  The elation was clear on his face, though he remained quiet as to not draw attention as I floated him down the hall past the pit. When he reached the corner I set him down and he disappeared from view.

  I waited, hand on my teleports, for any sound or sign he needed my help.

  Attar returned five minutes later with a shake of his head. I levitated him back while he filled me in.

  “It’s a loop. About fifty feet after the corner the hall turns again and ends in the iron door.”

  So the two paths became none. That left only the knights.

  We returned to the treasure room where we had met the orcneas. How had the taur gotten past the orcneas and knights? We must have been missing something.

  Straight above was a shaft, wide enough for a man. A passage to the floor above, much like the well which led below. But the Bleaktuar couldn’t have made it up or down through that, surely?

  “Care to see what is through there?” I pointed.

  Attar grinned, “Send me up.”

  When Attar returned he was looking confused and his cloak clutched his skull, bell and cutlass. His bag we’d made from the skirt was missing.

  “Someone took my bag as I ascended. One moment it was there, the next it was gone.”

  I squinted up at the hole. A toll? Or a misplaced demon?

  “What was the room like?”

  “Large. Very large. I had to send my lantern walking about. One of those strange hexagonal rooms you’ve talked about. Completely empty though with plenty of exits.”

  Useful if we ever found ourselves wondering where the hole in the floor led on the third floor, but not to us now.

  I pulled out Conan’s map, hoping perhaps he’d found a secret passage to avoid conflict but there was none. Stranger still, his map no longer matched our own path. It was the room with the centipedes where it diverged. Conan claimed passages in totally different directions and rooms where there weren’t rooms. Not as a secret passage but of a different shape and character entirely. It was as if we’d not explored the same floor at all.

  And perhaps we hadn’t. The bookshelf had been strange after all. Appearing and disappearing right at the point where Conan’s map diverged from our experience.

  I increase my glow and marched up to the entrance of the knights’ lair.

  “Something is distorting the pathways in this place. Doorways don’t lead where they led a week ago. And this room is the only passage available to us though it shouldn’t be.”

  The bald man started, then his eyes narrowed, “We were aware. But we weren’t aware you knew as well,” he gestured to the left and right with his empty hands. His knuckles tightened, “That is dangerous information to know.”

  The knights charged me.

  What?!

  What had I done?

  We’d gone from wary to hostile so fast my hands couldn’t keep up with their footsteps. My fingers were still desperately, foolishly, searching my spellbook for something non-lethal, scouring the scars along by body for a peaceful resolution to this encounter with these heartless killers, but I’d already used up most of my spells.

  The would have reached me before my mind caught up, but fortunately Attar had no such compunctions.

  His two ogres reappeared between us and the knights. At the same time his own mounted knight bore down on the red robed woman from behind. Six soldiers surrounded the woman in black. Two more horsemen bore down on the man with the club, one from each side.

  It was laughably one sided.

  The bald man tried to duck under the male ogre’s swing, miscalculated the distance, and was torn nearly in half. His left leg went spinning away, completely detached.

  The woman in black blocked a single strike with her strange sword, but two others cut her deep across her chest and leg, and a third pierced straight through her kidney and out the other side.

  The man with the shield spun to face one of his assailants, but there were two. The lance lifted him like pennant and tossed him to the ground a step later. He didn’t rise.

  The woman in red fared the best of her companions. The horseman missed. She spun around in fear, eyes wide at the sudden army and her close brush with death, then she dropped to the ground, hands raised.

  Attar’s army stilled. The woman in black dropped on her face and curled about her wound, sword forgotten.

  “Wha- how? Who?” The magician, or whatever she was, was stammering.

  Her robes were especially bilious, slowing her movements, making her seem almost like a flickering flame.

  Attar’s face was red, furious at their attack. He looked ready to cut her head off himself. I was also angry, and didn’t want a magician at my back, but her robes had given me an idea. Several, even.

  “Do you yield?”

  She swallowed and nodded, “I do. Please, we didn’t know.”

  “Didn’t know what?” I asked, curious.

  “Didn’t know who to trust. Your allegiance. We thought,” she gulped, started again, “We serve the emperor. The emperor rewards us. We gave everything discovering the secret of this place, of the sorceress’s power and that of her house. We were to be the ones to share the discovery. We couldn’t risk you bringing the information to traitors, or those who would use it to advance their own cause.”

  So killing us was convenient. She wasn’t winning me over to the Empire’s way of doing things.

  “We’ll let you live,” Attar shot me a furious glance, “If you tell us what you know.”

  She shook her head, “Better to die.”

  “Can you at least tell us about the sorceress? The teleportation? Her house and traps?”

  “I am no traitor.”

  I sighed, “Then strip. Give me everything. Your robes, your jewels, your books, bag, everything. Leave this place as naked as you were born and find those other knights of the emperor. Throw yourself on their mercy, and never raise your hand against us again, nor send any other to do so. To this do you swear?”

  She paled, but nodded, “I do.”

  “She tells the truth,” Attar said.

  The woman’s head swung wildly around to look at him, “What are you? Servants of the warlocks?”

  “We are their enemy. Prisoners of this place. Prisoners who were freed by their own hand,” the reprimand caught me off guard, even though I was the one giving it. I might be more merciful than Attar, but I was no less vengeful. I let the feeling flow through me, let it run its course rather than curdle into spite.

  Shame and fear filled her face as she stripped, but neither Attar nor I looked away. We couldn’t afford to. A momentary lapse might be all a magician needed to attack us or smuggle away her valuables with a quick spell. She was crying by the end, whether for her dead companions or own humiliation I couldn’t say, but her sorrow was misplaced. We’d let her live, which was already far more generous than we should have been.

  She backed away in silence, twisted oddly, not daring to reveal herself, not daring to turn her back. She broke into a run once she reached the orcneas treasury.

  Did that mean there was another way back where we’d came? Or that she knew the secret of the teleportals?

  There was no way to have known. I had no stomach for torture, and an attempt to befriend or beguile her would have been worse.