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“Acid,” Alynthia said in a voice barely above a whisper. “Magical. All ordinary attempts to cut through this roof have failed, because of the wards placed on it by Mistress Jenna.”

“What if she is below? Won’t she notice the acid eating through her ceiling?” Cael asked.

“She uses the top floor for storage. Living quarters are on the second floor, shop on the first floor, laboratory in the basement. If we are lucky…” She ended with a shrug.

“Won’t the acid eat through the next floor as well?”

“Mancred is being very careful to only use enough to dissolve a hole through the roof, aren’t you Mancred?” Alynthia whispered.

The thief grunted in answer, not allowing a spoken response to break his concentration.

Meanwhile, the other three thieves busied themselves assembling a sturdy metal tripod, from the apex of which hung a small pulley. While one oiled the pulley and tested it for noise, another carefully uncoiled a thin black rope and threaded it through the pulley’s wheels.

“What am I supposed to do?” Cael asked Alynthia.

“Stay close to me and keep quiet,” she answered through pursed lips. “Mancred, how much longer?”

The thief grunted again, then sat back on his heels and carefully stoppered the bottle of acid before slipping it into a pouch. “A hundred slow heartbeats,” the old thief estimated. “A hundred and twenty, perhaps.” He coughed quietly, perhaps from the acid’s fumes.

As the thieves of Cael’s Inner Circle finished assembling the tripod, Mancred leaned over the hole eaten into the roof by his magical acid. A few last wisps of smoke arose from it and were shredded by the southerly wind. Without looking up, he extended one gloved hand. Varia quickly slapped a small gardening shovel into his hand. With this tool, the elder thief began to excavate, carefully removing scoops of sizzling, still-smoking debris from the hole and setting them aside, knocking gelatinous strands from the shovel with the heel of his palm. After the fourth such excavation, a thin beam of yellow light lanced up from below.

“The tripod!” Alynthia hissed. The thieves responded by placing the tripod over the hole, then covering it with a wrap of black cloth. This cloth effectively blocked the light from hole, preventing anyone from observing it from below on the street. This done, Mancred quickly dredged out a breach large enough for a man to fit through.

At a motion from Alynthia, Varia grasped the pulley rope. Ijus wrapped a loop around his waist and swung out beneath the tripod. She quickly lowered him through the hole. Hoag followed, then the old thief Mancred, who quietly grumbled of his aching joints as he slid down the rope. Next, Alynthia dropped through the hole, guiding her fall with one hand on the rope, and landing with no more sound than a cat.

Finally, Cael ducked beneath the tripod and grasped the rope. He looked into Varia’s cobalt blue eyes gleaming in the moonlight over the top of her mask. “Don’t worry. I won’t drop you,” she whispered. “Be careful not to touch the sides, or the acid will burn you.”

With a nod, Cael swung out on the rope. While he dangled by one hand, he kept a tight grip on his staff with the other. Slowly, Varia lowered him through the hole.

He dropped the last few feet, landing without sound beside Alynthia. Quickly, he crouched against the wall, while their rope vanished up through the hole as noiselessly as smoke. Looking up, he saw Varia’s hooded, masked face peering down at them. She signaled with a thumb’s up. Alynthia nodded, then pointed down the hall. Ijus eased forward.

The hall was ordinary enough. Cael had half-expected to find it lined with all sorts of impossible traps both magical and mundane, but as far as he could tell the passage was empty. A few torches burning in iron sconces provided a thin, smoky yellow light. Nondescript doors stood open at either end of the hallway, revealing dark rooms beyond. Between the thieves and the door to their right, there opened a staircase where a little light shone from below. Ijus paused here and peered quickly around the corner. He signaled that all was clear.

Just to their left stood a large locked iron door, the last barrier to their mission. Alynthia made a motion as though opening a scroll, at which Mancred moved around her and approached the door.

The elderly thief studied the door for a moment. It was of iron plainly wrought and stoutly riveted with reinforcing bands of blued steel. Its lock, also of blue steel, looked impressively strong. At first glance, the door’s metal appeared unadorned, but after a moment’s study, strange patterns showed themselves in the grain. It was writing, but in a language unknown to any of them.

Mancred nodded to himself and removed a scroll from the pouch where he stored the acid. He indicated to Alynthia, but without touching the door, three places where the ‘writing’ seemed the most intricate. He motioned everyone except the lookout at the stairs to draw near, indicating with the scroll an imaginary circle on the floor. Alynthia grabbed Cael’s hand and pulled him within the circle.

Satisfied of their positions, Mancred turned back to the door and opened his scroll. Hoag moved closer to peer over the old man’s shoulder, and Cael stole the opportunity to slip a hand around Alynthia’s waist. At a venomous glance from her dark eyes he quickly withdrew it and met her stare with an innocent smile. She looked away, but the twitching of her eyelid revealed her continuing annoyance.

Mancred began to read from the scroll in a voice no louder than a whisper. The air about them began to hum, not so much a sound as a buzzing feeling inside their skulls. A tremendous pressure closed over their ears and stole their breath, as though they had just been covered with deep water. Just as quickly the pressure disappeared, and the old thief let his scroll roll up with a snap.

“I have given us protection within an area of magical silence, so we can-”

A brief hiss cut him off. They started, fearing discovery, but saw only Ijus at the stairs motioning wildly. He pointed at his ear, and at them, then back at his ear.

Puzzled, Alynthia stepped outside the imaginary circle, motioning for Mancred to open his scroll. He did so, and she pointed at her ear, then at the scroll. The thief by the stairs nodded in agreement. Mancred frowned, staring at Cael’s staff.

Using the language of hand signals, Alynthia asked the old thief, “What is wrong?”

“His staff disrupted the spell,” Mancred silently responded. Alynthia turned on the elf, who had not been able to follow the conversation. Her eyes flashed anger. She stabbed a finger thrice through the air, violently pointing first at Cael’s staff, then at him, then at a spot on the floor outside the circle of silence. With a confused shrug, he stepped to the place she indicated.

Mancred tugged at Alynthia’s sleeve and signed, “However, the staff might remove the glyphs guarding the door, as it did the door of his dwelling.”

“Can you remove them with your scrolls?” she asked the old thief.

“Yes,” came the answer with a quick nod.

“Better to take the sure path than the unknown,” she answered.

With a final glare at Cael and his staff, Alynthia moved once more beside Mancred, who with a weary glance at the elf opened his scroll and set to work. Unfortunately, his scroll, penned by mighty wizards five hundred years before, had only one spell of silence upon it, and once cast it was erased forever from the parchment.

Now whispering, now breathing sibilant chants, the thief cast spell after spell from the ancient scroll, unweaving the threads of Mistress Jenna’s protective wards. As each magical ward was broken, it expired with a release of red or blue or green light in the shape of a magical rune or sigil, which dissipated in the air like pipe smoke. Some of these signs, being similar to Elvish letters, Cael was able to interpret. One was of fire, another of ice, a third the zigzagged symbol of Had the thief not broken these wards, anyone attempting to open the door or even to touch it without first speaking the proper passwords would have been burned to ash, frozen, or blasted to smithereens before he glimpsed the wonders beyond that iron portal.