Keystone (Gatewalkers) (7 page)

Lallia tugged on a lock of Charlie’s hair. “That way,” she said, pointing down one of the branches of the street.

Charlie did a little staring of her own as they walked down the street. The majority of the people she saw had pointed ears and the natural range of skin and hair color, but some had green skin or scales. A few had catlike or wolflike features and were covered with fur. Once there was a diminutive green skinned couple with squished faces that had to be gnomes of some kind, and Charlie could swear she caught a glimpse of a halfling. Conspicuous in their absence were swarthy, long bearded dwarves and, oddly enough, humans. Charlie stuck out like a sore thumb as the noob who didn’t know how to change her clothes yet much less her race.

Lallia tugged Charlie’s hair. “There it is.” She pointed. “Rosethorn Manor.”
 

***

The “manor” was a three story stone house with a wraparound porch twined with morning glories. A low stone fence in sad disrepair surrounded an overgrown yard that might once have been a neatly tended garden. Weeds had largely taken over, save for a few aggressive rose briars. Someone had once put a lot of care into carving the porch’s woodwork, but it had been a long time since it had been repainted, and some of the railing spindles were missing. The boards of the porch were weather worn to the point of separating from their fellows, and age-gray shutters locked fast over the windows, closing out the world.
 

“You sure this is the place?” Charlie said doubtfully. “It looks abandoned.”

“This is where he lives,” Lallia confirmed.

Charlie could have stepped through the gap in the wall, but instead gingerly pushed open the brittle, termite-chewed front gate and picked her way up the crumbling path to the porch. An inquisitive cardinal alighted on the railing, eyeing them curiously before flitting away again.

 
“What’s this guy’s name, by the way?” Charlie said, glancing down at the pixies.

“He is called Rhys,” Lallia said. “Oh, and whatever you say, do
not
mention his bloodline. He… he’s a bit sensitive about it.”

“He’s just going to up and join us?” Charlie said dubiously. She rocked back and forth on her heels, feeling the soft spot under her left foot giving way slightly.

Lallia did not answer right away.

“Lallia.” Charlie prodded her with a fingertip. “He
will
be ok with joining us, right?”

“He… might need some persuading,” Lallia said, squirming.
 

“How much persuading?” Charlie said suspiciously.

Lallia shrugged and hopped off Charlie’s shoulder to peer through the cracks in the shutters.
 

Quest: persuade “Rhys” to join the party.
 

Charlie knocked as loud as she dared, half afraid the door would splinter under her hand. Even the little fan-shaped glass window set in the door was boarded over. She waited a while, but heard nothing from inside. Knocking again got no answer.

“Tom,” Charlie said. “Can you go in and see if anyone is there at all?”

Tom dematerialized.

Charlie tried knocking on the door again for good measure. The door opened a crack.

“Hello?” Charlie called, pushing it open a little wider. It was pitch black inside, the only light coming from the doorway.

Tom poked his head around the side of the door. “I think someone is in the basement. Careful. It is dark in here.”

As Charlie stepped inside, the briny fish smell of the town was replaced by a wall of herbal/floral/God only knew what, overlaid by closed in staleness and the musty smell of
old
that she associated with her grandmother’s basement.

“Hello?” Charlie called again. The light from the doorway illuminated flagstone floors covered in a thick layer of dust, and an empty bookshelf decorated with cobwebs. The floor dust showed several layers of footprints leading into the darkness, including Tom’s fresh, tiny prints. Some of the footprints were obviously old, but some might have been fresher. Maybe there was someone here after all.

Lallia flew past Charlie into the little foyer. Her pink glow revealed that the foyer opened up into a living space on the left, its windows covered with thick black curtains. The footprints in the dust led to a door in the wall to the right.

Charlie stepped all the way inside, but didn’t close the door. “Don’t mess with stuff,” she admonished the pixies, who had started investigating the few pieces of furniture in the living room.

Charlie pulled open the door on the right. She started to ask Lallia to go in and light things up a bit, but Lallia beat her to it.

This room was rounded, with a table and two chairs, a few dusty plates and spider-webbed goblets. A deeper gloom showed where the room connected to another, and two dark squares marked doors. There was one curtained window. Charlie went over to it and pulled the curtains aside, allowing a few cracks of light to get in. The dark opening turned out be a staircase, curving upward to the second floor.

The footprints disappeared beneath one of the doors. A few tracks branched off to go up the stairs, but those looked old.

“Through the mysterious door of doom it is,” Charlie muttered. Charlie opened the door, revealing a narrow, descending stone staircase. A faint light flickered at the bottom. The cloying herbal/floral smell redoubled, nearly choking her. It drowned out the staleness of the air.

“Hello?” Charlie called. She felt a little stupid saying the same thing over and over again and still getting no answer.

Lallia fluttered down the stairs and out of sight. Charlie followed more cautiously, Tom materializing on her shoulder.

The bottom of the staircase opened into a room that explained the smell. The place looked like a cross between an apothecary and an alchemist’s lab, with tables of odd apparatuses and strange concoctions. The light came from the flames heating brewing potions, and a low-burning fire in the fireplace at the far end of the room. Dried and drying herbs of all colors and forms hung in bundles from the ceiling. Cabinets and bookshelves lined the walls, some holding books but most containing rows of neatly labeled bottles, vials, and jars of varying sizes.

Charlie still didn’t see anyone, but the place was so full of deep shadows they could hide the boogeyman. Come to think of it, where had Lallia disappeared to?

“Is anyone here?” she added to change things up. Charlie stepped into the room, peering into the spaces she couldn’t see as well. The fires were another indicator that someone was here, but unless he was invisible –

“What are you doing?” a voice growled out of the darkness behind her.

Charlie jumped and spun around, Tom’s startled squeal ringing in her ear. Pale hair, pale skin, pale shirt, a tall male figure emerged out of the shadows like a ghost. Even his eyes seemed colorless.

“You didn’t answer the door,” Charlie said.

“Really?” he said sardonically. The man – Rhys, she assumed – advanced until he loomed over her. Tom cowered into Charlie’s neck. The light still was not strong enough to show Rhys’ features. He leaned in less than a foot from her face. “Go back to the village brats and brag of how brave you are.”

Charlie refused to back down, keeping her expression coolly neutral. “I’m not here on some dare,” she said. “I am here to recruit you.”

“Recruit me?” Rhys snorted. He vanished back into the shadows. “For what? If this is a contract job, you may hire a free lance through the Alta Mercenary Guild. I do not do private jobs.”

Something about that last statement caught Charlie’s ear. Squinting, she spied his pale form in the darkness, bent over one of the tables.

“My source assures me that you would be interested in this particular private job, Rhys,” Charlie said, banking that 1) knowing his name would earn her points, and 2) that it actually was Rhys, not a random person living in his basement.
 

Rhys cocked his head, looking back at her, his posture subtly changing. She had his attention. “Who is your source?”

“Someone who knows you better than I do,” Charlie said honestly. She certainly was
not
about to mention that her source was a pixie. A
missing
pixie.

“Who would you be, then?” he said. “Since your source has told you of me.”

“Charlie,” she said, lifting her chin slightly, “of the Order of the Lady Dragons.”
Of doom
, she mentally added.

“Charlie?” he said. “A strange name to accompany your strange garb. Is that the crest of the Lady Dragons on your tunic?”

Charlie glanced down at the ‘cade logo on the front of her shirt. “No. It’s the crest of Lord Stinkwad.” She hoped to heaven Eliza wasn’t watching the monitors. The customers might be concerned for her sanity if she suddenly cracked up laughing.

There was a long pause in which Charlie seriously wished the lights were brighter so she could read Rhys’ face. “I know naught of such a lord, nor of the Lady Dragons,” he said, voice thick with suspicion.

“We aren’t exactly locals. You know, you could see better if you had more lights in here,” Charlie ventured.

“I like the dark,” Rhys replied.

Something acrid broke through the stifling floral smell. Charlie sniffed. “Do you smell that?”

“Smell what?”

“Is something burning?”

Rhys made an odd strangled noise combined with a hiss. He slid past her to blow out the flame beneath what looked like a miniature cauldron propped up on three long, skinny legs.

“Tell me of this private job,” he said, measuring pale powder into the mini cauldron and stirring it in, “and what your mysterious source has said of me. I have already turned down contracts from landowners wanting to pad their personal security forces, fearful that a Great Gate to Ard Ri’s own realm will open in their gardens. If it is something of that nature, I decline.”

Charlie drifted over to one of the tables and started playing with a candle flame, passing her fingers back and forth. Candles were one of her guilty pleasures. “We need you in a more specialized capacity.”

A long fingered hand flew out of the darkness and snatched her hand away. “You will burn yourself.” His fingers felt like a metal bracelet around her wrist.

Charlie fought to keep her face in character. Burn herself on a fake flame? Not likely. “We intend to find the Keystone and those responsible for stealing it.”

He released her wrist as if it were suddenly red hot. “How do you intend to accomplish this?”

“With your assistance,” Charlie said. “My source assures me that –”
don’t mention his bloodline!
“– you… have a means.” She absently started playing with the candle flame again.
 

Watching him closely, Charlie caught the slight hesitation at her words. Thus his forced chuckle didn’t fool her.

“Your source is telling you tales,” he said.

“I have no reason not to believe them.” Charlie let her finger linger too close to the candle flame, and it bit her fingertip. Charlie gave a startled gasp, automatically thrusting the offended finger into her mouth. It had only been a small sting, but the one thing the VR projectors were not supposed to simulate under any circumstances was pain. Charlie told herself she must have imagined it, but she warily decided not to test it.

“If that is why you came, I am afraid you will leave disappointed.” Rhys picked up a large knife and attacked some poor hapless tuber on a cutting board.
 

 
“You are the only one who can help us find Princess Maelyn.”
Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope.

The steady snap of the knife against the chopping board paused. Charlie could almost picture the clockwork ticking. Rhys started chopping again, more slowly. He scraped the chopped pieces into a bowl, and then tested the concoction in the mini cauldron.
 

Would this be the time to let him mull it over, or push a little? Then again, they were working on a deadline here, in more ways than one. Her half hour was probably already half over. How about the Han Solo approach? “You would be rewarded for your assistance, of course,” Charlie said.

Rhys snorted. “What would I do with a reward?”

Charlie shrugged. “Fix up your house?”

“I like my house as it is.” Rhys set the cauldron aside and covered the bowl with a cloth.

“Buy fancy new alchemy equipment?”

“Alchemy? I have no interest in turning lead into gold, nor any similar nonsense.”
 

She shrugged. “How am I supposed to know what all this stuff is for?” she said, gesturing at all the apparatuses. “What
is
this stuff anyway?” she said, indicating the green paste in a ceramic bowl near her elbow.

“Poison,” he said. He started choosing bottles and jars off the shelves, and packed them carefully in a wooden box. “

Right.” Charlie scooted away from the bowl. Dying within the first quest of the game would be lame. “Ummmm.” Charlie cast about for another idea. “You could buy fancy new clothes?”

“Who is there to see me?”
 

“Get a girlfriend?” Charlie muttered under her breath.

He stopped and looked back over his shoulder. Charlie didn’t need to see his face to read the funky look he sent her.

Right. Sharp hearing then. Mental note.
Get a life?
But she didn’t say it out loud.

Rhys closed up the box with a pair of leather straps to keep it secure. He tucked it under one arm, then started blowing out the lights.

“What are you doing?” Charlie said uneasily. She wasn’t afraid of the dark, but she hadn’t realized how much those small lights brightened the room until now.

“Leaving. I suggest you precede me.” He blew out another candle. Only two candles and the low burning flames in the fireplace were left.

“Wait, there was another pixie with me earlier. Did you see where she went?”

Rhys shrugged, the motion barely detectable to Charlie’s eyes. He pulled a lantern from one of the shelves and set it on a table. Its dirty glass was thick and wavy, but the glowing pink thing inside was clearly Lallia.

“I hate pixies,” Rhys said bluntly.