“Yeah, I get it.”
I had no idea what could produce that effect, but if the mirrors didn’t have something to do with it, I’d play my next game of s’yang stones without the flat ones.
And it was there that it smacked me in the face, what should have been obvious from the beginning: yeah, Devera had spoken about “tomorrow-me,” which indicated that, eventually, she was going to get out. But that didn’t mean I was going to get out.
I stood there on the roof thinking about that, then I tried one of those invisible barriers again, and the same thing happened: one step forward brought me back to the somewhere in the middle of the roof.
It’s one thing to decide you don’t want to leave; it’s another to realize that you can’t.
Loiosh and Rocza remained still while I digested that like a half-cooked pudding. Then I swore, and Loiosh agreed.
We went back down. I closed the door behind me because I’m a good guy that way, then walked over to the other door and through it.
I was in a wide corridor made of rough stone. There were two doorways on either side, with no doors, opening onto small rooms with nothing in them. Storage rooms, perhaps, but to store what, and why were they empty? It hit me that a lot of what was confusing me about this place is that parts of it seemed like they’d been lived in and gotten regular use for hundreds of years, and other parts seemed like they’d just been completed, and there was no pattern to it.
On a sudden thought, I studied the ceiling, then the ceilings in those empty rooms. Where the ceiling in the hallway was stone, these were wood, and they were sagging and cracked in places. And, yes, there were the yellowish stains that said there’d been leakage. This part was old, older than anything else I’d seen, and it made even less sense than before. The floor in these small rooms—or rather, the ground—was just dirt.
I continued forward.
Have you ever wished some asshole with a sword would jump out of nowhere and try to kill you, just so you’d have a problem you knew how to solve? Me neither, but I was pretty close to it about then.
There was another doorless doorway in front of me. I stepped through it into a decent-size room filled with large objects that at first I couldn’t make out. There wasn’t much light; what there was being provided by a couple of large crystals glowing in the corners of—
I smiled.
“We found the wine cellar.”
“You aren’t going to ask why we’re suddenly in a cellar?”
“No, too busy being pleased about the discovery. I may steal a bottle. I may steal two bottles.”
“Stealing is a crime, Boss.”
“Good point.”
It looked to be about a five-thousand-bottle cellar, which is pretty good as such things go. I’d always wanted a wine cellar. I’d never had five thousand bottles at the same time. I’d had five once. These bottles were covered in dust. People generally don’t dust very often in their wine cellars, but even by those standards, there was a lot. This place hadn’t seen much use in a long, long time.
Which meant, hey, they’d never miss a bottle, right?
I pulled out the one closest to me. By chance, it was a Khaav’n, one of my favorites. I read the date on the label and translated it to a time just past the end of the Interregnum, two and a half centuries ago. You’d think no wine could last that long, but you’d be wrong: the sorcery to let wine age to its most perfect moment, then keep it there indefinitely is, in my opinion, the Dragaerans’ greatest, perhaps only, contribution to culture.
Now, if I’d only had wine tongs.
Someday, I’d meet someone with a good, elegant way to remove the top of a wine bottle, and I’d kiss him.
But in the meantime, the old-fashioned methods work best. I went over to the nearest wall, gripped the bottle, and struck the top of it a quick, sharp blow. It came off pretty clean; I’d gotten good at this over the years.
I smiled, sniffed the wine, stopped smiling. Just to be sure, I poured a drop on my finger and tasted it. No, I wouldn’t be drinking that. I tossed the bottle aside. It didn’t break, it just rolled and glugged. I tried another bottle. Same variety, same year. I smashed the neck and sniffed. Same thing.
I moved over a shelf and pulled out a white Morofin, about ten years more recent, this one marked by Zerika’s reign, rather than the pre-Interregnum numbering. It was bad too. I searched some more, found a Stathin, what I would call a brandy but Dragaerans call wine because they’re idiots. One sniff, and I felt like a crime had been committed. I don’t know if you’ve ever had a Stathin, but this was a crime. I sighed.
“Okay, Loiosh. What did it?”
“Boss? Have I just been promoted to wine expert?”
As mysteries go, I guess this one wasn’t all that exciting; spells do fail every now and then. It’s just that with everything else, it made me suspicious. But there was no good way to figure it out now. Maybe I’d find Discaru again, and ask if he’d done the spell, and if so, why he was so bad at it. That was bound to work out well.
There are things I’ve gotten good at over the years, like saffron rice with kethna dumplings, roasted fowl with plum sauce, and killing people. I guess figuring out what made weird houses weird was something I’d have to work on. Bugger. What was I missing?
I tried to make myself pay attention to what the floor was like, to smells, to the dimensions of a room, to lighting, and any furniture or objects that might hold useful information. But it was hard, and mentally exhausting in a way I wasn’t used to.
I considered knocking over the racks just out of spite, but there might be a good bottle in there somewhere.
“Boss?”
“It’s all right, Loiosh. Just need to regroup, re-form the line, and prepare for another charge.”
“What, now you’re a soldier again?”
“Don’t you miss those days? Just a little?”
“Are you crazy?”
“Yeah, neither do I.”
Well, standing here wouldn’t do anything. I tapped Lady Teldra’s hilt and shifted my cloak a little. I’d figure things out later. For now, onward. The far end of the room had a doorway, and about halfway there, on the other side, there were three steps leading up to something I couldn’t see clearly. I went that way, scowling at the four thousand, nine hundred and ninety-six worthless bottles, and up to the steps. What they ended in was one of those freight doors, installed at an angle, so the top was above me and the bottom was in front of me. It seemed to open out (which was good, because otherwise opening it would have given me a sharp knock on the head), but the odd part was that there seemed to be no lock. There were double iron loops, as if for a padlock, and there were brackets that looked like a bar would go there, but neither lock nor bar was to be seen.
I took hold of the door and pushed, and—nothing. Not even a hint of give, as if I were pushing into solid stone. Could it be stone? How could I know? If rooms were on the wrong side, and up took you down, and a stairway deposited you into some random place, how are you supposed to tell where you are relative to the land the building is set on?