The Paladin Caper (47 page)

“Yes.” Desidora nodded. “They don’t actually use it as an anvil, though. It’s ornamental.”

Then she got it.

“And the Temple of Pesyr,” Pyvic said, nodding in approval, “holds nothing that is purely ornamental.” He strode up through the pews to the altar, where Dairy was already looking at it. “You’ve found our gate. Loch would be proud.”

Desidora blinked through the magic, then let a little more of the death aura wash back over her to fight through the glare as she headed toward the altar as well. It had no particular aura around it, but in a room filled with overwhelming magic, that in itself was peculiar.

Dairy’s brow furrowed in a thoughtful frown. “Captain Pyvic, that reminds me of something I wanted to ask earlier. You said that you missed Captain Loch.”

Pyvic raised an eyebrow and looked from the altar to the young man. “I’m not sure me wishing the lady I love was here matters right now, Dairy.”

Dairy shook his head. “No, you said you
missed
her, and when I talked to Loch one time, she said that you and she were both scouts, and scouts never said that they missed one another.”

“Oh.” Pyvic laughed and clapped Dairy on the shoulder. “I can see how it would be confusing if Loch explained it that way. The truth is . . .”

His fist slammed into Dairy’s gut.

Desidora froze, then broke into a run.

“. . . that you shouldn’t be asking stupid questions like that in the first place,” Pyvic said, still in the same friendly conversational style, as his elbow came up and then slammed down onto Dairy’s back. The young man fell, tried to push himself to his feet, and then collapsed, groaning. “You were my creation, son.” He hauled Dairy up with one hand and slammed him across the anvil. “Your job was to let us back into this world, and then die. Your friend Desidora fouled my plans.”

His fist slammed down onto Dairy’s chest, smashing the young man into the anvil, and a noise like a great bell rocked the temple. Desidora staggered as a wave of sheer power crashed into her.

“But since you’re so intent on learning about the Shadowlands . . .” Pyvic went on, and brought his fist down again. Again, magic blasted out from the impact, and Desidora fell to her knees. Dairy seemed smaller on the altar now, or farther away. “. . . why don’t you take a good close look?”

Pyvic brought his fist down one more time, and this time Desidora fought through the wave of magic that smashed into her.

But it was too late.

The altar was bare as Pyvic turned back to her, smiling.

“Smith Lively of Byn-kodar,” he said, and tore off the sleeve of his shirt to reveal the paladin band glittering on his upper arm. “A pleasure to meet you, Sister.”

The Hunter golems rose up in the mining lift, and, just like that, everything was clear for Ululenia.

Indomitable, Tern, you will deal with the children of the ancients,
she said, and she let the elves and dwarves slip from her grip.
And if there is kindness within you, do not tell Dairy what I became.

Then she charged.

They were hunters, pursuers, stalkers, as wolves or great cats or the fox after the rabbit. They were vicious, and they were deadly.

So was she.

They brought their spears up to meet her charge, but they were slow, surprised, and she didn’t hit them in her normal shape, but instead slunk through their lines as a shining white weasel, then ripped out the leg of one Hunter as a wolf, and then darted up as a hummingbird as their spears came down.

She was the terrible pain whose beauty made it worth the risk. She was the fairy mistress who lured the innocent away and sent them back as old men. She was sex and regret and all the unfair lessons of nature.

She flexed her power, in the air over the Hunters, and a vine, dark and thorned but good nevertheless, sprouted from the wall, coiled around the control lever for the lift, and pulled it back to descent.

She smashed back down into them as a great white bear, and their spears raked her hide, and it hurt, it burned like fire, but at least it was an honest hurt, and she roared and ripped and tore with fangs and claws as the Hunters swarmed around her.

The fight was too much for the old lift, and something snapped. She felt it as the Hunters did, and was at once the hummingbird again, but as the lift fell, a silver net flew out and fell over her, and its poisonous links wracked her with pain. And she fell, just as the Hunters did, as the lift rattled and bucked and slid and finally crashed, far below.

The impact shocked and bruised her but also flung her free, and as she landed, she was herself again, or what she was now, anyway. Not a unicorn but a nightmare, her clawed hooves and fanged muzzle things of terror instead of beauty. She shrieked out a challenge to the Hunters, and they rose to their feet, shaken and battered but still ready to fight.

She had forgotten the kobolds, the little magical fox people of the mine. They lurked at the edge of the cavern, slipping into the walls as easily as shadows, clearly afraid.

She imagined the taste of their throats, crushed in her jaws, and then shook her head and looked back to the Hunters. There was no life in them to steal, but they were the enemy. The little kobolds were not.

If she were to die, she would do so fighting those who deserved it, red in tooth and claw.

She lunged, slashed, ripped.

They were fast, even battered and broken as they were, and she smashed one apart, but the others sent spears into her flank, and she kicked and clawed, but they danced away. The pain was an all-consuming fire, burning away the magic that would let her shift and change, and so she stayed the monster that she was, and shrieked another challenge, and as two of them came at her, her clawed hooves struck down their spears, and with her jaws, she ripped one of their heads off.

The third sank his spear into her side from behind, and she screamed and kicked, and though she sent him skidding across the floor, he had struck deep, and she staggered, her back legs weak and shaky.

The one before her leaped upon her and grabbed at her throat, and as pain burned across her, she realized that he was using his tangled net to choke the life from her. She reared, but it was too much, and she stumbled back, crashed into the wall, and fell.

It all hurt so much. It hurt enough to drive away the ugliness that had turned her into something else. Her horn flickered and went dark, but it took the claws with it, and Ululenia turned away, curled in upon herself, and tried to remember the happy bright days in the forest one last time.

Arms grabbed at her from all sides, pinning her to the wall, and then everything went black.

Twenty-One

T
ERN WATCHED
U
LULENIA
and the Hunter golems disappear into the red-glowing darkness of the mine below.

For a moment, the elves and dwarves were silent, neither moving nor making the ugly noises they had made while Ululenia had held them in thrall.

Then, as one, they slowly turned back to Tern and Icy.

“I was really hoping the Hunters had been controlling them,” Tern muttered.

She looked back to the lock. She’d made some progress, and in another five or ten minutes, she would have the damn thing open, assuming that the mind-controlled elves and dwarves gave her time to work instead of brutally hacking her to bits.

“They are not in control of themselves,” Icy said as they started to come forward, knives and hammers raised.

“Nope.”

“I cannot kill them, Tern.” Icy looked over at her, his face tight with anger. “I cannot.”

Tern nodded. “I’m not asking you to.”

She lifted her crossbow and slid in a bolt whose head was bright red and filled with explosive powder. “Run. I’ll buy you as much time as I can.”

Icy looked at her in shock. “Tern—”

“Damn it, Icy, get out of here.” Tern cranked the winch to ready her shot. “I can
maybe
burn them down if I use enough fire, but I can’t do it while worrying about you. You’re not a killer. You can’t do this.”

“Tern, you helped me convince Ululenia to spare them—”

“Ululenia
wanted
to kill them, Icy.” Tern raised her crossbow as the elves drew closer. “You think I want this? I want to get through that door and save lives.” She took a few steps back. “But in order to do that, I need these people not to hit me while I crack the lock.” She aimed, doused the head of the fire bolt with the accelerant, and gritted her teeth as her finger tightened on the trigger. “I’ve got no way to do that without killing them.”

“I do,” said Icy, and stepped in front of her.

The first elf stabbed at him, his motions fast but mechanical.

Icy checked the knife with the palm of his hand, chopped down on the elf’s wrist to send the weapon skidding away, twined his body around the elf’s outstretched arm, and threw the lean figure into a group of dwarves.

“Finish with the lock,” Icy said, as he caught a hammer and twisted it from the grasp of the dwarf who had swung it. “Neither we, nor they, will die here.” He ducked under the dwarf and spun into a hip throw that sent the dwarf gently to the ground, tripping others as he rolled.

Tern put her crossbow down and went back to the door, trusting that Icy was too busy not-killing-people to see her smile.

She worked the lock carefully. It was high-grade dwarven security augmented by newer crystal enchantments that had to have come from the ancients. She bypassed the primary fail-safes by convincing the lock it was already open, which was great except for how it made the lock not want to then
actually
open, and she had to get around
that
by manually working the tumblers with enough force to overcome the dead-state magnets without snapping anything critical in the process.

It took her closer to ten minutes than five, and as she worked, bodies hit the ground behind her.

Finally, the door chimed, clicked, and slid open, and Tern lowered her cramping hands and looked back.

Icy dodged a stab, caught it at the last moment to stop it from hitting another elf, twisted the knife away, swept both elves’ legs out from under them with a single circling kick, and came back to his feet, sweaty but smiling. “Nicely done,” he said.

There was a great pile of bodies around him, elves and dwarves prone and tangled amid a field of fallen knives and hammers and picks.

Tern saw not a single drop of blood.

“Same to you, Icy,” she said, smiling as she picked up her crossbow.

Icy ducked below a stab from behind without looking, reached between his own legs, and grabbed the leg of the elf who had tried to skewer him. He stood up, still holding the leg, and then let go. The elf hit the ground with a thud.

He was looking at Tern’s crossbow.

“You had the safety on.”

“Oops.” Tern let him see the smile this time. “Come on, let’s go find out what the bad guys are doing and screw up their plans.”

They walked into the processing center, and Icy shut the door behind them as Tern looked. She’d only caught a glimpse of it last time, but it looked like the damage had been repaired, and everything was back in full swing. Moving belts funneled crystals from one great machine to the next, polishing away imperfections and honing their natural magic into the precise power that the ancients required. There were no golems in the room any longer. The entire space had been automated, with little hooks and claws sorting crystals and plucking defective ones away with perfect precision.

“You were never going to kill them,” Icy said with an accusatory look.

“I don’t
like
killing people,” Tern said.

Icy glared. “Why did you not simply suggest that I disable them without killing them, then?”

“Because you swore an oath.” Tern met his look. “I don’t ask my friends to break their oaths.”

Icy smiled. “You merely help them discover ways to twist the letter in order to keep the spirit.”

“I’m a giver.” Tern walked past a row of moving belts. “Now, the
Lapitemperum
schematics said that there was a room back here, where—”

A door at the far end of the room swung open, and Westteich stepped out. He was clad in crystal, all of it smoky gray save the paladin band on his right forearm.