Those absurdities should have claimed devoted examination ever since. How could that happen? It had despite the logical implausibility. Could there be an even stronger ascendant coming now? Ssu-ma Shih-ka’i, whose ingenuity brought the Deliverer down? No! Not some ridiculous farmer grown too big for his trousers! But who else? There was no other significant name associated with those events. Not amongst the living.
Clearly, he had not looked where he should. But that was too hard when you were alone. Tactics devoured your time, leaving none to linger over the meaning of what might be happening behind what was distracting you at the moment.
His vision began to clear. He discerned frozen shapes. Disinclined to trigger another trap, his companions awaited his instructions.
The stricken demon had settled to the floor. Its birdlike skinny legs projected into the kitchen. Its through and through wound still produced wisps of black mist. Greenish ichors streaked the color where a wing and wing case had been ripped away. It was trying to reinstall something that had fallen out of its chest.
It was a demon. Its wound should not be mortal, in this world, but to survive it dared not flee to its own realm even though here it could survive only as a cripple.
The stricken iron statue remained fixed, almost unbalanced, in the process of taking an awkward step. The green shaft had not driven through but there was a six-inch circle of bluish purple shine on the statue’s back, bulging, where the light would have emerged had it not spent so much energy skewering the demon first.
Old Meddler’s vision continued to improve. He eyed that bulge. How could anyone set random traps that powerful? Where had they gotten the know-how?
Better question. More important question, right now. Were there more such traps? It was not reasonable that his evil luck should be so foul that he would trigger the worst trap first stumble. Far more likely that it was one of a battery.
“The perfect response to an improbable event,” he said, softly, punctuating with a tired sigh. “Stay put.” He readied the Windmjirnerhorn.
So. Yes. There were more traps, impressive in number, but with disposition and trigger choices that seemed naive. Once you knew they were there you could deal with them easily. People as sophisticated as the Tervola ought to have built a network so cunning that the triggering of one instantly rendered the rest more sensitive.
Suppose they had been set in haste, to deal with an anticipated intrusion by mundane burglars? The traps could polish off a battalion of regular bandits. Unless that notion was what the trap builders wanted put into the head of a more sophisticated intruder.
Unless…
The curse of being Old Meddler was overthinking and seeing everything through the murky lens of his own twisted character. Of assuming that everyone was as warped of mind and motive as he.
He eliminated the most obvious traps. Even so, the iron statues triggered several more, better disguised, as they assisted his futile search the next few days.
Old Meddler grew increasingly disgruntled. He had one healthy demon left. The statue smitten by the green light had not moved since. It still communicated but that made it no less an oversize, man-shape heap of scrap.
He had planned to spend a few hours recuperating once he arrived, before investing a few more recovering weapons and tools from hiding places beneath the fortress. Magden Norath had left a lot. Old Meddler had hidden his own reserves here and elsewhere across the archipelago.
He had come to the emergency against which all that stuff had been cached.
Only… The hiding places were empty. Covert after covert, whatever had been hidden was gone, as though someone who knew every cache had systematically rid them of anything that might ever be of use to the Old Meddler.
Hours burned gathered into days of despair. What the hell had happened? Who had happened? Varthlokkur was not plausible. Had some incredibly clever Tervola matured unnoticed while developing the skills to root out the Star Rider’s hidden treasures? That reeked, too, but not as badly as the possibility that the bitch Tervola Mist might be responsible.
No. None of that was credible. Those were not people who could resist the temptation to use what had been hidden here. Tervola were dark of heart by definition, nor could Varthlokkur possibly be as goodygoody as he wanted the world to think.
All men did evil when they saw a chance to get away with it.
The Star Rider was a stubborn old beast. Yet another thirty hours of daylight and lamplight went into his search before he surrendered to the fact that every filthy tidbit was gone. The fortress had been stripped.
He had to get back west. Time was fleeing. “Enemy never rests,” he reminded himself, over and over. “Water sleeps, but enemy never rests.” He was not ready to spend the time necessary to look back and find out who had done this and what all they had done. That could cost another week. Meantime, leakage from the small freight portals had begun to weaken the Horn.
He could not destroy those. He needed them-unless he wanted to return to the Place and start over, which would take ages because he had conscripted the best iron statues and most tractable demons already.
Perhaps the universe itself was out to thwart him.
The hours fled on. He should have launched his attack long since, crushing resistance instantly using weapons which even Varthlokkur’s weird sorcery could not withstand. He should have passed through the final fire by now, and be headed back to the Place for a long rest, not still be out here with a stomach gone sour.
By grace of the Horn he learned that his missing treasures were not lost forever. They were out there, in the waters of the strait, thrown there by whoever had robbed him.
The Horn brought several relics ashore. That was a waste. Anything that had been unbroken when it went in had been damaged by the brine and battered by surf and current. Everything had been in the water a long time, not just days. His weakening had begun even before the Deliverer crisis commenced.
“Only one option left. The other islands.” A feeble hope, there. Little of value had been cached elsewhere. There had been no clear need for the redundancy.
His remaining demon hauled him hither and yon, from barren outcrop to empty sand pile. Each cache was as pristine as could be hoped. His enemy had either not known about them or had been unable to reach the lesser islands. His mischief had been incomplete.
Sadly, what he recovered was useless now-though, sweet miracle, he did discover copies of Magden Norath’s research records. Those would be invaluable later.
He would make time for those after he finished. He would go to ground for a generation or two, maybe three, letting his fields lie fallow. New generations would produce ambitious men willing to disdain the lessons of history. And he could rest up and get ready to leap back into the game.
He had done it a hundred times before.
But first he had to push through this.
He realigned his strategy to fit the tools available and what he suspected about the people ranged against him. He brooded over the role of the Dread Empire. He had no concrete evidence but felt certain that Shinsan’s ruling class were actively working against him. Too much cleverness had gone to make him stumble.
His nature compelled him to waste time rehashing every little episode of the past year, looking to tie unrelated events into one cunning campaign, but his grand capacity for conspiracy theory could not pound some events hard enough to make them fit a unified hypothesis.
If it was all connected, he lacked some critical piece of evidence.
He had no time to winkle it out. He had to strike.
As it stood, his enemies-with everyone entangled in the year’s events-appeared to be victims of plain old-fashioned “Shit happens.”