Dream (32 page)

The Goblins were game, he had to give them that: they rallied and charged across the caltrops straight into a hail of arrows, slung bullets, throwing axes, throwing knives, and a couple of Jeff’s crossbow bolts. Only two survived to reach melee range, where Fred, out of hand axes, was waiting for them, not even bothering to Rage.

Cleaning up after the fight had taken longer than the fight itself.

Their destination was a chamber with a couple of crude tables and benches, some piles of straw for sleeping, niches hacked into the walls for storage, and a hole in the floor for a privy. It was lit by a dull yellow crystal hanging from a rusty metal loop, and stank of violent death, an uncleaned privy and unwashed bodies.

The chamber had been excavated via magical means as evidenced by the smooth stone, now much defaced with Goblin graffiti. In the northeast corner a ten-foot length of smooth corridor ended in a dark red wall that appeared to be made of some textured material with a richly-carved green disk set into its center. Unlike the rest of the area the corridor and the wall or door did not appear to have been touched by the Goblins.

“Well, there it is,” Shad jerked his chin towards the door as he scrubbed his throwing knives clean with a fistful of straw. “Derek, you’re up.”

“Yeah.” The Shadowmancer knelt at the red panel, pulling the stone bottle and the leather bag from his pouch. “I think the door is porcelain.”

“That’s odd,” Jeff observed. “What’s the green part?”

“It’s an inset disk, might be jade or something similar.” Derek ran his hands over the door. “It’s warm…getting warmer.”

“The door or the disk?”

“Both.”

“Let’s get this done,” Shad said as he inserted knives with intact charms into the scabbards tacked to the inside of his shield. “It might just get warm in cycles.”

Derek carefully removed a silk handkerchief from the bag, and dripped a light, clear oil from the stone bottle onto it. Working quickly but without haste he rubbed the oil onto the green disk.

There was a noise, the nature of which none of the Talons could later agree upon, and then the door collapsed into red dust that was swirled into the chamber by a cold gust of wind that smelled of freshly-falling snow, the Talons’ balls of light winking out as the dust reached them although the yellowing light crystal hanging from the ceiling merely swayed on its length of leather cord.

From beyond the now-empty doorway they heard the sound of a stone object crash to the floor and shatter.

Shad drew his sword. “Well,
shit
.”

Chapter Sixteen

Derek scrambled backwards into the chamber as the Black Talons formed into a battle line.

“Could we run?” Sam asked, fitting a lead ball into the pouch of his sling.

“Better to fight here than get tracked down in the tunnels,” Jeff sighed. “At least we might slow her down a little.”

“Maybe,” the Shadowmancer gasped as he staggered to his feet and joined them. “That wind drained my power reserve. She’s obviously a major hitter.”

“Surrender?” Sam ventured.

“That’s up to you,” Shad said. “Me, I’m not so inclined.”

“Doesn’t seem to be a viable option,” Fred agreed.

Without fanfare Fu Hao stepped into the chamber’s weak light, a slender young Asian woman who reminded Derek of the female cop on the new
Hawaii Five-Oh
. She wore the loose tunic, pants, and sandals he associated with coolies, except that this outfit looked like silk and was decorated with dragons and fanciful swirls of embroidered color.

Planting her hands on her hips, she surveyed the filthy chamber, the stacked Goblin corpses, and the grim-faced Black Talons with a dissatisfied look. “It took you long enough.”

The Talons gaped at her.

Shaking her head, she flipped a small plate of something into the air in the manner of someone flipping a coin and her garments became unadorned dark blue cotton. “Wait here,” she snapped and returned to the shadowy chamber beyond where the door had been. A light came into being beyond the line of sight of the doorway, and they heard another stone object shatter on the floor.

“What the hell is going on?” Jeff whispered.

“She was expecting us, or someone,” Derek whispered back. “Maybe we should stand down.”

“Might as well,” Shad sheathed his sword. “If she can change clothes with a spell we’re out-gunned. I though you said she was like Derek, Sam. A ‘mancer.”

“Sam, you were told that by Astkar, right?” Jeff pointed out.

“Yeah,” the Bard muttered.

“She doesn’t have the shoulder thing,” the shop teacher continued. “I don’t think she has a class or level. She’s old-school for this place, the old rules.”

“Why is she young?” Fred whispered. “Sam said she fought sixty campaigns in China.”

“That’s how it went-sometimes those who got directly banished came here younger and looking different, also with modified abilities,” the Bard whispered. “The old books are clear on that.”

Fu Hao emerged with a ball of light bobbing over her head and a pair of Chinese swords on a belt around her waist. She was carrying a pack by one strap, and cloth bandoliers loaded with what looked like dozens of small plates cut from tortoise shells crisscrossed her chest. “Here,” she tossed her pack to Fred. “Carry that. Let’s go.”

“Go where?” Shad asked in as polite a tone as he could manage.

“To war.” Realizing they weren’t following, she stopped and faced them. “The task is only half-done.”

“What task? We were sent here to refresh the lock on your prison,” Shad said carefully. “We aren’t even from this…
world
.”

“Of course you aren’t. An outlander’s touch was the only thing that could break the seal, and there haven’t been outlanders in a thousand years or more,” Fu Hao snapped.

“Ah.” Shad glanced at the others. “See, we were operating under…different assumptions.”

Fu Hao rolled her eyes. “What assumptions? Keep it brief.”

“What happened to Chinese customs of greeting…” Sam interrupted.

“A thousand years in a cell is what happened,” Fu Hao cut the Bard off. “And we are not in China, nor do I even remember how to speak Chinese. All that became as smoke when I was banished here. I never looked like this, nor could I do in China what I can do here. But I am still Fu Hao, and because of that they shall regret many things.”

“Who will?” Shad asked.

“The Council of Twelve. Follow me; we shall return to the surface-I want to see a sky again. You can pester me there.”

Uneasy, the Black Talons followed her.

Fu Hao had a large straw coolie hat hanging on the back of her pack which she donned before briskly climbing the rungs to the surface.

Shad waved the Talons back from the shaft to the surface. “OK, we have been played, and played hard. Thoughts?”

“The box opened and we have our gut stones, the exit location, and the incantation,” Derek pointed out. “That part appears to be straight-forward.”

“Which means freeing her was the job, because Astkar set the box to open when the job was done,” Jeff observed grimly.

“Maybe he didn’t know about the lock,” Sam protested.

“He had to, or the box wouldn’t have opened,” Derek shook his head. “I didn’t refresh the lock, I opened it.”

“We’re through the looking glass, boys,” Shad was angry. “We’ve been lied to since we got here. Let’s get on the surface and see what happens next. Derek, empty the contents out of the box, and then ditch the box. Just in case.”

On the surface they found Fu Hao, a loosely-woven cloth tied over her eyes, standing with her arms out flung, drinking in the sunshine and fresh mountain breeze. No one was very surprised to see Astkar approaching from upslope, dressed as he had been the last time they had seen him, with a case much like the one that housed their Chest on his back and armed with an ornately carved staff of bone or ivory going tan with age.

“Well, well,” Jeff glared at the mage. “The local representative of the Ebon Assembly.”

“To be truthful, I am effectively the entirety of the Assembly,” the mage shrugged. “But the task was in all practical senses the one you agreed to perform and the payment was as promised. You may go home whenever you wish.”

“How did you get here so fast?” Derek asked.

“The group before you had a more complex task than you might have thought. One part was to establish a portal here so I could come when the matter was concluded.”

“They couldn’t sort out a few Goblins and open the lock as well?” Shad asked.

“They were not of your caliber-they had been here far longer and accomplished less. I knew that sooner or later the Council would make the mistake of bringing in outlanders such as yourselves.”

“Just to clip some Goblins?”

“No. We needed warriors, men of action, not dreamers. So did the Council, for other reasons. I expected that these needs would intersect nicely.”

“I’m happy for you. Now we’re leaving.” Shad started towards their cached gear.

“Stop.” Fu Hao’s voiced cracked through the air like a Sergeant-Majors’, and the Talons instinctively halted, except for Sam, who had yet to move. “First you must listen to the truth.”

“If I remember correctly, we just rescued you from a cell,” Shad snapped, his temper getting away from him. “No need to thank us because we got paid, but we don’t owe you anything.”

“You don’t. But what do you owe your home?”

The Talons shifted uneasily. “We’re paid up,” the Jinxman said quietly. “All our dues, in a place that in your day was called Babylon.”

Fu Hao nodded. “I fought in China, before China
was
. Did you see the thing through to the end?”

“Our part of it, yes. We were ordinary soldiers, not a general.”

“Good. Will you serve your homeland once again? Is risking your lives too much to ask one more time?”

“What does this place have to do with our home?”

“That is the truth you need to hear.”

“We’ve heard a lot of things since we were brought here. Most have turned out to be lies.”

“I was banished here, rightly so, and I may not leave, but I will fight for my land nonetheless, for
China
. I may be damned, but I will stand for my home. You were banished here, unjustly so, and you may leave; will you stand for
your
home?”

Shad could see why she had been so good at leading troops: he had been pissed and eager to leave, but the way she said what she did reached something in him. A glance at the other Talons showed that he wasn’t alone. “Say what you will.”

Fu Hao gestured, and Astkar stepped forward. “Fu Hao was imprisoned in the mountain. That is true. You were banished here by the Council, subject to twenty year’s duration, unless the conditions of your binding are met or you trick the bindings with the harnesses and incantation, which is true.”

“The truth you need to hear is the
why
. We have always been aware of your world, while your world forgot about us. The founders of the Council of Twelve were the banished who nurtured a hatred for the old world, the world of the banishers; they vowed revenge upon the old world. Others who had been banished, like Fu Hao, accepted what was done and intended to make new lives here. The Great Field is a legacy of the war between the two factions, a war which broke the great powers.”

“Long ago the Council of Twelve began to study the Great Field, and they discovered that the revenants were essentially outlanders. They discovered the secret of the revenant origins, and the truth behind certain old legends, and with generations of work they established what some of the first banished knew: that there can be roads between your world and ours.”

“They offered freedom to Fu Hao for her help, an offer which my Lady refused. The offer made my Lady aware of their efforts, and what the Council did not know was that her prison had windows, small ones, but sufficient to find and recruit those who shared her beliefs. Very few at any one time, but sufficient to follow the Council’s actions.”

“The Ebon Assembly,” Derek said.

“More name than we warranted, but yes. There is much to this of an arcane nature, there are endless details to a plan that has been developed by generations of long-lived mages, but you need not bother with any but the salient points. It was not your minor beliefs which re-shaped our world, but the Council discovering and exploiting those beliefs, such as they were. These minor beliefs opened the roads, to use a metaphor, between our world and yours, and changing the laws of learning in our world made the roads…stronger, to put it in simpler terms. From there they brought in the first seven outlanders, only to discover that they could not control them. They adjusted the roads based upon their errors and brought in more outlanders, telling them the purpose was to kill the seven intruders, but in reality the Council needed outlanders coming here, living here, and dying here.”

“Why?” Jeff asked.

“Because to use a metaphor the Council needed regular travel upon the roads between our world and yours, travel back and forth.”