The Paladin Caper (13 page)

Loch looked up as the alarms went off, long blaring sirens unmistakable for anything else but a warning about intruders.

“New plan,” she said, looking around.

“We have
no means
of advancing our goal,” Irrethelathlialann said. “We must leave now.”

“We leave, Dairy dies,” Loch said and stepped outside.

“He dies, the ancients return,” Kail added from right behind her.

The elf stepped out behind them, muttering to himself.

The workers on the dock looked at them in confusion, none ready to approach. At the end of the dock, Kail’s sad excuse for an airship was still safely moored. Inside the main hangar, massive lifting golems slowly maneuvered crates onto pallets for transport, and rails ran to the great double doors that led down to the mine proper.

“Not to agree with Ethel,” Kail said quietly, “but how do we fight Ghylspwr? I mean, our big heavy hitter for going toe to toe with the tough bad guys
was
Ghylspwr.”

“A weapon holding the soul of an ancient contains certain key alchemical compounds,” Irrethelathlialann said behind them. “The proper acids could damage the metal, even dissolve it.”

“Good to know. For now, the mine,” Loch said, and started forward, walking stick banging on the stone of the hangar floor.

The door to the waiting room crashed open behind them, and a group of men trooped out. While the security guard Loch had taken down earlier wore ringmail and a blocky helmet, these men wore long dark coats fitted with strips of silver and undershirts reinforced with similar banding. Each carried a staff tipped at each end with a silver metal cap. They seemed a lot wealthier and a lot less friendly than the normal security guard had, and had a look that Loch couldn’t quite place, not quite military but formal nevertheless, all of them with chiseled jaws and short haircuts.

“Think we found the guys who run things in the processing area,” Kail said. “Those may be the whitest men I have ever seen.”

Irrethelathlialann’s hand slid into his robes. “They will be redder in a moment.”

“Wait.” Loch stepped back past them toward the men. Six of them. Not the best odds. “Listen to me,” she said. “You want to arrest us, great, but something is happening down in one of the old mining tunnels. Something strange has been happening here lately, hasn’t it?”

“What has been happening,” sneered one of the guards, “is the return of the ancients, Urujar thug.”

“Ah,” Kail said from behind Loch, “so they’re in on that, then.”

“Makes things easier,” Loch said, and cracked the nearest guard across the face with the head of her walking stick. As he fell, she shoved him into another and swung down at a third, hooking his staff. She pulled, yanked the staff from his grasp, and punched the walking stick into his throat as the others charged in.

The one coming in spun his staff. Loch stepped in, used both hands to catch the staff with her stick, kicked him in the knee, and slammed an elbow into his face as he stumbled.

“Nobles,” she said, and saw that the others were down as well. Kail stood over one, holding a staff and wiggling the fingers of his other hand, while Irrethelathlialann stood over two more, his wood-bladed rapier having appeared from the folds of his robe as if by magic. “These are nobles.”

“Oh yeah, you can tell by the chin,” said Kail. “It’s an old-money chin.”

Irrethelathlialann smiled. “So the nobles of your Republic have sent their sons to assist the ancients in returning. How delightfully human.”

A white shape flapped over the dock and into the hangar. The air around it shimmered, and Ululenia dropped into a crouched landing, a pale woman with ash-blond hair and a white dress with . . . Loch squinted . . .
two
black shapes on the hip. The few remaining dock workers simply ran away at this point, which was fine with Loch, given that the alarm was still blaring, so subtlety was by and large no longer an option.

“Your key, Little One,” Ululenia said, still breathing heavily, her hands on her knees.

“Change in plans,” Loch said.

Ululenia shot her a look, and then seemed to notice the blaring siren. “As the wolf bays on the trail of the fleeing vixen, so your entrance has encountered difficulty?”

“She
said
change in plans,” Kail said. “You all right?”

“She has killed again,” Irrethelathlialann said. “Was it easier this time? I hear it gets easier.”

“Perhaps I should slice open your belly and ride you as you slowly bleed to death,” Ululenia said, still crouching, “coaxing you with gentle caresses into the very motions that would send your
guts spilling to the earth
, and then I can tell you if
that
felt easier?” She paused, then looked at Loch. “I am fine.”

“Yes, we can tell,” Kail said. “That was the kind of thing a fine person would say.”

“Key,” Loch said, and Ululenia tossed it over, a simple crystal that glowed with a pattern Loch’s eyes could almost trace. “Now, we need Desidora. Dairy is in the death zone, not the processing center. Without Desidora’s magic, we have no way to get to him.”

“My virgin.”

“Neither yours, nor virgin,” Irrethelathlialann pointed out.

“Nevertheless . . .” Ululenia shook her head and rose back to her feet. “I will get Desidora.”

“Tell her that Ghylspwr is here,” Kail said.

Ululenia started, then nodded. Without another word, she shifted back into an eagle and took to the skies.

“It’s so dramatic when the old ones finally taste blood,” Irrethelathlialann said.

“Later.” Loch started for the great double doors. “For now, the mine and the processing center. The death zone isn’t an option until Desidora gets back, but we can sure as hell find whatever Project Paladin is and hit it with wrenches.”

There were dock workers between them and the looming entranceway. Loch held the walking stick up as she approached. “Not your fight,” she said, and they scattered. She pulled the lever to open the great double doors, and they creaked and strained, using gears and not magic as they swung out to either side.

Inside, the mine was lit by well-shielded glowlamps strung along the ceiling. The cart rails led in to a large opening chamber, and then split. To the right, they ran to a lift leading down to the tunnels, while to the left, they ran to a large sealed door forged from reinforced
yvkefer
.

“Expensive,” Irrethelathlialann said. “The dwarven metal shields that entire area against magic.”

“Processing center, then,” Kail said.

They got to the door. Loch saw a crystal square beside the doorframe and held the key out toward it. The crystal square chimed and glowed, and the door clunked and whirred and made a lot of gear noises as it slid open.

Inside, she could see what had to be the processing center. A great moving belt lifted crystals up from the mine below onto a rattling platform where they were sorted for size. From there, other moving belts carried the crystals off in different directions to vats and assembly chambers, magical and alchemical wonders that turned the raw crystals into the devices used throughout the Republic. The belts snaked back and forth across the massive room so that the entire area was in constant motion. Golems stood watch at key points; they were simple functional models built for durability rather than grace, fitted with impressive lenses that Loch guessed let them spot hidden flaws in the crystals that slid by.

At the far side of the processing center, overhead crystals with harsh azure lights brighter than daylight bathed a long table with their glow. Objects rested on the table, but she couldn’t see what they were from the doorway.

She started into the room.

Then she looked at the golems, still patiently doing their job while the security alarm continued to blare out its earsplitting siren.

She lifted a hand to Kail and signaled
Trap
in the sign language they had learned in the scouts. Then she dove into the room, going in low and rolling as she hit the ground.

The ax ripped into the doorframe where her head would have been, and as Loch came back to her feet, the Hunter golem holding it yanked it free and turned to her. While they were difficult to tell apart, this one looked charred and scraped in a few places, which made Loch suspect it was the one she had fought at the Forge of the Ancients.

The ax, however, she
definitely
recognized.

“Isafesira de Lochenville,” Arikayurichi said. “I cannot tell you how much I’ve been looking forward to this.”

Six

Y
OU
’
RE AN OGRE
,” Tern said to the largest of the three figures. The ogre was dressed like a human, and Tern didn’t have a lot of experience with ogres in general, since Tern generally avoided the wilderness as a large, dirty place lacking in expensive things to steal.

“My people call themselves
Besnisti,
” the ogre said. She spoke like someone with an education, though the words were muffled by the tusks. The red light of the walls didn’t hit her properly. It was as though she were lit from within somehow.

“Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” Tern said, smiling. “My boyfriend and I were taking a hike by the light of the wall here. We heard that children conceived by its light grow up to be better wizards!”

“I’m not certain that the magical emanation would have any beneficial effect upon an unborn child,” Hessler said, and then blinked at her stare and added, “but we thought we might try nevertheless.”

“You are thieves,” said the bony woman. “Your lies are an insult.”

“Well, I suppose we had better surrender, then,” Tern said brightly to Hessler, “so the
three
of them can question us?”

“What?” Hessler asked. “Really?”

“No questions,” said the smallest of the trackers, a cloaked thing that Tern had thought might be a dwarf until it spoke, at which point she heard its piped-through-a-tube voice and realized how much trouble they were in.

“And
you’re
one of the scorpion-folk,” she said, looking at Hessler and grinning madly. “Hessler, have you heard of the scorpion-folk? They can kill you with
three tugs
of their poisonous stingers.”

“Three tugs of . . .” Hessler made an “oh” face and then added, “So you’re saying they’re dangerous?” As he asked the question, he pulled on the line leading up into the collapsed mining tunnel three times.

“Oh, they’re
crazy
dangerous,” Tern said, “and between an ogre and one of them and whatever you are, lady, no offense—”

“Troll,” said the bony woman.

The leather coil jerked in Hessler’s hand, once.

“We have
no
interest in fighting,” Tern went on, “so we absolutely surrender, and whichever of you
three tugs
us into custody can be assured that we will answer all questions and cooperate fully!”

Hessler tugged on the line three more times.

“No questions,” said the scorpion again, and moved forward with jerky hopping little motions.

“Wait,” said the bony woman, “if they surrender, their deaths are not demanded.”

The leather coil jerked in Hessler’s hand, twice this time.

“We are not murderers,” said the ogre.

“Not murder but deaths,” said the scorpion, and Tern knew enough of the dwarven war stories to know that him getting close was bad, but not
how
close, except that ten feet was almost certainly close enough to be bad.

“If you don’t accept our surrender, then, I mean, we
have
to fight back, right?” Tern raised her crossbow as well as her voice. “And you, scorpion, might know that this thing is dwarven crafted, and I’m carrying about two dozen different loadouts, so who knows what I might do with
three tugs
of my finger on the trigger?”

“Nothing,” said the scorpion. “Current setting, grapple-line.”

The leather coil jerked in Hessler’s hand, three times.

“Okay, that’s a valid point,” Tern said, “and
finally
, rockslide-victim-says-what?”

“What?” the bony woman asked.

Hessler lifted a hand to the end of the leather tube and focused upon it.

The magic in his hand, aimed at producing the brightest, flashiest magical radiance Hessler could manage, looped through the coils of the leather tube faster than the eye could follow, glittering radiance zipping up the side of the canyon wall and into the tunnel.

Looking up, Tern saw Icy leap from the collapsed tunnel just as the loudest noise Tern had ever heard reverberated from the canyon walls.

Then Hessler was pulling her into a frantic run as the rocks came pouring down.