Regdar kicked the door again, and there was a louder crack. One side of the door was bent outward, the wood cracking around the iron bands.
One more kick and the door broke inward with an echoing crash. Regdar shifted his greatsword into a two-hand grip and swung the blade over his head as he stepped boldly through the door.
Naull closed her eyes, tense, waiting for the sound of steel on steel or of another explosion, or the roar of some fell beast, but none of those things came.
"Come in behind me and watch your step," Regdar said. "There's something strange in here."
Vargussel absentmindedly rolled a piece of parchment between his fingers until he'd made a long, thin tube of it.
They're in, he thought.
His mind descended into a flurry of unspoken curses, many of which he was embarrassed for even thinking.
They had broken through the door into the slaughterhouse and were steps from his laboratory. What was worse, the damnable woman had set them thinking along a course that brought them closer to the truth than they knew. Yes, someone had built the dread guard, and yes it was a decoy, and yes whoever it was was a powerful wizard, and yes that powerful wizard had built it with the express purpose of killing certain young suitors for the hand of fair Maelani. That last bit might have been a piece of the puzzle still missing for them but still they were farther along than Vargussel would have liked.
Regdar stepped through the door ready for anything but there was nothing there yet. He stood on a wooden platform twenty feet above the killing floor. The platform was built against the southwest wall of the huge room, and there was a flight of wooden stairs that emptied onto the killing floor itself.
Regdar couldn't see the stairs and neither could Vargussel. The steps were cloaked in a thick, roiling gray mist-a fog of Vargussel's own creation.
The mage watched Regdar scan the room. He saw the lord constable's eyes linger on the twisting fences that once led streams of cattle to their doom. He saw his rival's eyes trace the path of the steel tracks on the ceiling from which dangled chains on the ends of which were rusty meat hooks, their grisly loads long since gone.
The far side of the large space was shrouded in gray fog that reached halfway up the high walls and was placed just so to conceal Vargussel's laboratory along with his mightiest creation.
Come in behind me and watch your step, Regdar said to his charges. There's something strange in here.
The others wandered in behind him, and Vargussel was pleased to see the masks of fear on all their faces. The wounded tracker was having difficulty walking despite Regdar's healing potion and was relegated to holding a lantern. The other wounded watchman stood arm-in-arm with the tracker, and they helped each other along.
They were the first to follow Regdar onto the platform, and Vargussel sat up, holding his breath in anticipation. The wounded tracker spotted the low railing on the north end of the platform and steered his companion toward it, obviously hoping to rest their weight against it. They made it two steps before the whole north half of the platform gave way.
Vargussel laughed, and when he clapped his hands, the rolled bit of parchment he'd been fiddling with wafted to the floor. The wounded men fell in a cloud of dust and rotten wood, twenty feet to the killing floor. Regdar backed up a step, regaining his own balance and leaning up against the south wall. The young woman poked her head through the door and said, What happened?
The floor collapsed, Regdar told her.
The exchange demonstrated everything Vargussel thought was wrong with the fools. Obviously the floor had collapsed.
The lord constable looked in the direction of the stairs, eyeing the fog with reasonable suspicion.
Looks like stairs over here, he said to the woman, again mastering the obvious.
I don't like that fog at all, one of the watchmen said from the safety of the anteroom.
Regdar looked at the stairs again and stepped away from the wall.
Neither do I, the lord constable said, but he went to the top of the stairs anyway and stepped into the fog.
"Go ahead," Vargussel whispered, placing the palm of his right hand over the amulet that controlled the shield guardian.
The mage sent a portion of his thoughts into the amulet, through the link, and to the construct. Now, he sent. They come.
24
Naull stepped through the door and was startled when someone grabbed her arm from behind. She turned and Lem smiled at her, then glanced at the ruined platform. She smiled back, nodded, and stepped onto the wooden planks. The half of the platform that was against the south wall of the slaughterhouse had held Regdar's considerably greater weight well enough but Naull was still hesitant about it. Heights had never been her strong suit.
With Lem still holding her arm, ready to snatch her back into the anteroom should the rest of the platform give way, Naull stepped farther out-far enough to peer over the jagged edge, down to where the two watchmen had fallen.
She could see one of them, partially buried in the broken planks, a cloud of dust settling around him. It looked to be Asil, and he wasn't moving. Lying facedown as he was, she couldn't see his face.
Naull looked over at Regdar, who was waist deep in roiling gray fog, and she swallowed in a dry throat.
"Are they all right?" he asked from over his shoulder, pausing for a reply.
Naull shook her head and answered, "I can't tell. Asil isn't moving. I can't hear anything."
She looked back down and enough of the dust had settled that she could see Jandik, or at least the bottom half of him. The rest was buried under broken planks of rotten wood. He wasn't moving either.
She turned to tell Regdar and was just in time to see the top of his helmed head sink silently into the obscuring mist. Her breath caught in her throat.
She stepped away from the door, crossing halfway to the stairs, having slipped out of Lem's gentle hold. She stopped, looked back at the door, and saw Lem and Samoth follow her out and peer over the edge themselves.
"Constable Jandik!" Lem called. "Asil…are you all right?"
They all waited for the space of a few quick breaths but there was no answer.
Naull looked out over the room and the sight of the fog made her shiver. It was obviously conjured in some way. The edges were too straight, almost at right angles. The fog was meant to hide something. It extended as high as the floor of the platform, and obscured about a quarter of the huge space that was the abandoned killing floor. It didn't drift like natural fog, but seemed almost contained by glass walls or some other, invisible force.
The platform trembled and Naull heard a low thud as if something heavy had fallen to the ground. She pressed herself against the wall, and Lem did the same. Samoth ducked back into the anteroom.
"What was that?" Samoth asked.
Both he and Lem looked at Naull, who said, "It's the…thing." She turned to face the stairs and shouted, "Regdar!"
There was no answer.
"Regdar!" she called again, louder than before.
She jumped when a hand touched her arm. It was Lem again.
"He won't answer," the watchman said. "He won't want to give away his position in that pea soup."
"Lem!" Samoth hissed from the doorway. "Get over here…Jandik's lantern."
"Damn," Lem breathed, skipping across the ruined platform to Samoth's side. The two of them looked down. "Jandik was holding a lantern when they fell. The flame's caught on all that old wood."
Another low, booming thud vibrated the platform, and Naull said, "They'll burn alive."
"If they aren't dead already," Samoth mumbled.