"The Cabal is here," he called.
"Not for long," came the gruff reply. "Swords." Chainer heard multiple blades scraping out of multiple scabbards. "For Kirtar. For the Order." There was a bright flash, and Chainer could make out three glowing blades just beyond the miniature fog bank he had created. Behind the advancing boots, Chainer heard something heavy dragging its feet across the floor.
Chainer focused on the smoke, slowly becoming lost in its oily feel against his skin, the stifling odor, and the painful tears it brought to his eyes. He continued to breathe as Skellum had taught him, always fighting the impulse to cough. The marching feet drew closer.
Above their rhythm Chainer heard the whistling of the chain as it slashed through the air. He reached higher above his head, even going up on his tip toes to elevate the censer as high as he could.
Three members of the Order came slowly but steadily through the smoke, their gleaming swords out in front of them like torches. Chainer was gratified to see that they were crouching slightly, on guard like good toy soldiers ought to be. It gave him more clearance above their heads. He let the chain out another two feet as it spun, so that the Order were inside its radius.
"Who's there?" said the shortest of the three figures. He wore officer's robes and was the one with the gruff voice who had answered Chainer. "In the name of the Order, stand aside!" A tall, manlike figure loomed out of the smoke behind him.
"I'll stand aside," Chainer called, "but you're coming with me." He closed his eyes and remembered the feel of the place Skellum had showed him. Lightheaded, he felt his balance evaporate. He might have been falling forward or backward, down or up.
He remembered what Skellum had forced him to describe before he had ever seen it. The blasted landscape, the threatening skies. Chainer saw a whole world of his own that was just waiting for him to come and claim it. Yet it was tantalizingly out of reach, and all Chainer could do was imagine it.
He felt his stomach drop and suffered an extreme wave of vertigo. He opened his eyes. The hallway, the vault, and the entire building were gone. Chainer stood in a circle of smoke on an endless black sand desert. Three soldiers and a huge limestone golem were with him. The sky above was an unbroken field of sickening mustard yellow, and a bruise-colored moon shone overhead. Opposite the moon was a hole in the sky, and from the jagged hole poured a blood-red river that was slowly creating an inland sea.
Chainer and the Order soldiers alike stared upward, disoriented and hesitant. The limestone golem shuffled forward, oblivious to the change in location. It stood well over eight feet, so
Chainer's censer was impeded. The cage clanged noisily off its cheek and bounced on the wall and floor several times before Chainer got it back under control. The world flickered around them, flashing between the vault hallway and the black desert.
Once Chainer recovered the censer's momentum, the alien landscape returned and stayed. The interruption, however, snapped the officer with the gruff voice out of his awestruck daze.
"Forward," he barked at the golem. He stepped behind the limestone man and began following it like a shield. "Fall in behind me," he said, and the other soldiers quickly lined up. Single file, the strange procession slowly made its way toward Chainer.
Chainer felt the first stirrings of panic. He had been planning on a bigger advantage from the element of surprise, but he hadn't counted on having to surprise something that wasn't alive. He wasn't sure what to do next. He couldn't simultaneously spin the chain and defend himself, something Skellum had warned him about. If he abruptly stopped spinning to lash out at the Order, would they all be trapped in the black desert? Could they ever get out? Or would they just flash back to the hallway as if nothing had happened?
Deidre sprang hissing over Chainer's shoulder before he could decide to stand or fight. She pounced on the golem, clung to its head like an insect, and began slashing and tearing at its face.
"You gonna stand there all day, little brother," she called, "or are you going to help me? Come on, they're all lined up for us."
Chainer watched the strange world around them flicker back into a normal hallway as he reeled in the censer. He quickly whispered the spell that separated the cage from the chain and replaced the censer with a rounded weight. He then gathered the chain up in both hands and whipped the weighted end into the golem's kneecap. The limestone man's leg cracked, but held together. The golem himself didn't even notice.
The soldiers started to spread out from behind the golem.
Deidre's simian partner charged into them before they could separate and clumsily bore two of them to the ground. The officer still stood, however, and he looked first at Deidre attacking the golem, then back at the tangled knot of simian and soldier. He nodded, then prepared to drive the point of his glowing sword deep into the simian's back.
Deidre wasn't faring much better. For all her effort, she was merely chipping away at the golem, doing cosmetic damage to its limestone head and throat. There were almost as many metallic shards of her fingernails as there were of the golem's face, however.
Chainer's fighting instincts were coming back to him. The dementia trap hadn't worked, but he had spent two years in the pits before Skellum pulled him out, and to survive in the pits you strategized fast and acted faster. He sent the end of his chain smashing into the officer's hand. The officer squawked and dropped his blade, which stopped glowing as soon as it hit the floor.
"Deidre," Chainer hollered, "get off him, you're not hurting him!" The simian cracked one of his opponent's arms at the elbow and then shoved the screaming man over the officer, who had bent down to retrieve his sword.
Deidre had dropped off the golem and was now trading blows with it. Rather, she was striking off tiny chips from its chest and arms and in return, it was missing her entirely. She bobbed and weaved like the veteran fighter she was, avoiding each of its slow, heavy blows.
"If I keep cracking you," she said through clenched razor teeth, "eventually you'll break." Deidre was dancing around so much that Chainer couldn't predict where she would be next, so he couldn't strike at the golem.
The simian was doing better. He had the unwounded foot soldier in a headlock on one side and the officer's sword arm in a death grip on the other. The simian hooted, amused.
Deidre turned a forward roll into a two-handed strike that landed square in the center of the limestone golem's chest. Her long nails dug in deep. For the briefest moment, she was held fast as she tried to reverse her momentum and pull herself free. In that moment, the golem brought his huge hands together in a wide, arcing clap with Deidre's broad shoulders in between. A sickening crunch followed.
"Deidre!" Chainer said. "No!" The simian echoed Chainer's howl, shoved the officer back, and angrily snapped the headlocked foot soldier's neck.
The golem let Deidre fall. The officer sprang forward and ran the simian through with his good hand before the Cabalist could get clear of the soldier he had just killed. The simian dropped, choking and grunting and clutching at its wounded chest.
The golem began to shuffle toward Chainer, and the officer fell in step beside it. His sword and the golem's hands were bloody. In the last few wisps of Dragon's Blood smoke, Chainer faced them alone.
"Surrender, filth," the officer said. He held the hand Chainer had smashed at his side, but he seemed just as comfortable with the sword in his other hand.
"You're robbing us, and we're filth?" Chainer knew he had to stop the golem first. It was too tough for his chain or his dagger. He needed something better, something more dangerous-something drastic.
"Give it up, officer," he called. He feinted at the man's face with the weighted end of the chain, flicking it back and forth to keep him at bay.