“Why they left it. I understand. But are you saying we found what we need?”
“Maybe. The Blue Fire isn’t burning in here anymore, the system of battle magic I studied involves quite a bit of conjuration, and the instructions for using the gate are there on the wall. All those things are good.
“But I was never a Conjuror or privy to the craft secrets of any order of Red Wizardry,” Aoth continued. “Magic itself has changed since the time the portal was made, the geography of Faerun has changed, and you can see for yourself how the Blue Fire damaged the design. Those things are bad.”
Orgurth grunted. “But you’re going to try to take us through, anyway.”
“It’s the best chance we’ve found so far. Keep watch.”
The triggering incantation seemed relatively straightforward. Unfortunately, the instructions for the mystic passes meant to accompany the recitation were vaguer, although it was possible a member of the Order of Conjuration wouldn’t have found them so.
Aoth made his best guess at what the author had intended to convey. He considered too, what embellishments he might add to reinforce the spell and so compensate for the damage to the design. Such improvisation added to the risk that translation might not just fail to work at all but go somehow horribly awry, but in his judgment, it was necessary.
When he felt ready, Aoth faced the portal. He thrust his spear at the ceiling and said, “The world is thought. I turn it in my mind and bring the Fortress of the Half-Demon-”
Clinking and chiming, the stained-glass window climbed down from its frame. In the process, its component pieces shifted, turning it into a flat but roughly manlike shape by the time it reached the bumpy floor. It raised hands with the fingers aligned for cutting and slicing and, still tinkling, started forward.
Aoth had never encountered such a creation before but took it for some manner of golem. Presumably the Conjurors had stationed it here to keep intruders like him from using their precious portal, and one had to give a password or some such to keep it quiescent.
He wished he’d noticed it before. But in its previous shape, it had looked exactly like any ordinary stained-glass window, and perhaps because it had stood dormant for so long, it hadn’t had even a hint of power gleaming inside it. In the face of such perfect camouflage, even truesight sometimes failed.
Hoping to melt the oncoming construct without making too much noise, Aoth hurled a burst of fire from his spear point that made Orgurth cry out and jump away. The golem, however, advanced through the flare without even faltering. For the moment it lasted, the fire simply brought the colors of the figure’s component pieces to vivid, glittering life.
The golem raked with a spindly arm, and Aoth caught the stroke on his targe. The impact made a cracking noise, but to his disappointment, the claws didn’t break off.
Meanwhile, Orgurth circled behind the golem and swung his scimitar at its leg. That produced a similar glassy clashing sound but didn’t damage the guardian either.
Aoth blocked another slash of the figure’s talons and riposted with a jab to its torso. His spear popped a trapezoidal piece of crimson glass out of the matrix. But when he snatched the weapon back from the hole he’d made, the surrounding segments shifted to seal it, and the golem kept attacking as relentlessly as before.
Aoth faked left, dodged right, and retreated toward the empty window frame, which had cold air blowing through it. The maneuver flummoxed the golem for only an instant before it turned and pursued, but it gained him enough time and distance to attempt another spell.
He rattled off words of power, and a whine shrilled from the head of his spear. Orgurth’s face twisted in discomfort even though he wasn’t the target of the focused noise.
The golem’s body rattled, and it staggered. Some of its component pieces cracked, while others shattered. When the howl died, though, it was still standing, and more motion ran through it as, once again, the remaining bits drew together to close its wounds.
Orgurth cut at the golem’s flank. Still indifferent if not oblivious to the orc’s attacks, the glass figure kept pursuing the mage who’d roused it. When it caught up, it raked with both hands at the same time.
Aoth caught one attack on his shield and sent it glancing harmlessly away. He also sought to simultaneously deflect the golem’s other set of talons with his spear arm and drive home a thrust.
The glass claws skipped along the links of his mail shirt, snagged, tore through, and sliced into his forearm. But at the same instant, the spear punched through what might by default be deemed the construct’s face.
With a crash, the entire golem shattered, and Aoth averted his face and shielded his eyes to keep flying glass from blinding him. When he looked again, his foe was a litter of shards and grit on the floor.
With the certainty that the fight was over, pain woke in his forearm. For want of a better remedy-such as Cera’s healing touch-he tapped one of his tattoos. The throbbing ache subsided, and the bleeding slowed.
Orgurth waved his curved blade to indicate the remains of their opponent. “That was noisy.”
“Too noisy.” Aoth raised his spear and recited his augmented version of the spell on the wall.
Argent light shimmered along the curves of the magic circle. With a wizard’s sensibilities, he sensed the gate starting to open. But he also felt it stop an instant later, like a warped door jamming in its frame.
He cursed and then heard voices clamoring elsewhere in the building.
Orgurth pointed at the empty window frame. “We’re only on the second floor.”
“I wouldn’t blame you if you jumped and ran,” Aoth replied. “But with some tinkering, I still might be able to make the portal work. Especially with a comrade to keep the enemy from interfering while I try.”
For a heartbeat, Orgurth looked at Aoth as if he were crazy. But then he laughed and said, “Why not? Is it any stupider than believing I could make it out of town alive or survive a hunt through the mountains?” Orgurth took a fresh grip on his scimitar.
Pevkalondra had stationed a skeleton to watch for Uramar’s return via the deathways. Thus, she knew to come and find him immediately after his arrival.
But as she peered in at him from the doorway of the vault he’d taken for his personal quarters, she wondered if impatience was leading her into a gaffe. The undead were mostly impervious to fatigue in the human sense, and she certainly wouldn’t have expected the hulking swordsman to fall prey to it. Yet he sat slumped, his big, mismatched hands with their old stitches, mottled skin, and crooked fingers massaging his temples. Perhaps casting the secret spells of the Codex of Araunt tired him in a way mere physical exertion couldn’t.
As she hovered, he looked up and saw her. So it was too late to go away and come back later. But at least he gave her a smile, a stained, lopsided leer that would likely have petrified a mortal.
“My lord,” she said, curtsying. The spreading of her skirt made the tiny silver scorpions clinging to the velvet scuttle around.
“My lady,” he said. “Come in.”
She did. “How are things in Immilmar?”
His smile widened. “Everything’s going perfectly. With every night that passes, Nyevarra and her sisters replace more of the living or enslave them. Meanwhile, no one suspects a thing.”
Pevkalondra smiled like she thought that was wonderful news. In a way, it was, but the current situation had undercurrents that a traveler from beyond the western ocean was ill equipped to recognize.
“If everything’s well in hand,” she said, “then I hope you can find the time to wake more Raumvirans into undeath. After you’ve had a chance to refresh yourself, of course.”
Uramar hesitated. From his manner, one might have inferred he was listening to a voice only he could hear, but Pevkalondra didn’t sense any ghostly or demonic presences lurking in the crypt.