Opposite Directions

The next morning, Maeril sat at the brazier’s workbench with the lair sketch beneath her hand. The room smelled of cold ash and metal polish. High windows lit the bench; a banked forge occupied the far wall. There was one door, opening into the yard.

Elisa waited beside it. Firemind stood opposite Maeril, sorting scraps of brass from a shallow tray. Chime hovered near the rafters, and Hazarak rested against the wall behind the door, where anyone entering would have to turn to see him.

Rishi’s reply had reached Maeril over breakfast. After a few hours’ sleep, he had returned to work with Erik and found the barrier below ground. They meant to measure its depth while she kept this appointment.

Boots crossed the yard. Elisa opened the door to a dwarf carrying a leather case beneath one arm. His beard was divided into two thick plaits, both tucked inside his apron. He looked at Maeril, then at Firemind.

“I was told there was an engineer who wanted to discuss a fault,” the dwarf said.

“There is. I am Firemind.”

Elisa closed the door. Thorvin turned at the click of the latch and saw Hazarak.

“Thorvin Twinbeard?” Elisa asked.

“You already know that.”

He came to the bench but kept his case against his chest.

Maeril moved the lamp to give him a clear view of the drawing. “We have heard your warning about the Dream Nullifier. We need to know what changed.”

“Then ask about the machine. Why have you drawn the entrance?”

“Because we intend to use it,” Firemind said.

Thorvin stared at him. Then he stepped back from the bench. “I sent a warning. I did not offer to take you in.”

“We are asking how to reach the places you mentioned,” Elisa said.

“And when Xanathar finds out who told you?”

His eyes moved to the door. Maeril watched his weight shift before he took the first step.

“You are staying with us, Thorvin,” Firemind said.

Thorvin tried to pass Hazarak. The dragonborn caught his forearm and held him beside the door. The leather case struck the floor between their feet.

“Take your hand off me,” Thorvin said.

“Come back to the bench,” Hazarak said. “I will let go when you sit.”

Thorvin pulled once. Hazarak moved with him, keeping the arm close to the dwarf’s side.

Maeril pushed a chair away from the bench with her foot. “There is room here.”

Hazarak brought him to it. Firemind retrieved the case and set it beyond Thorvin’s reach. When the dwarf sat, Hazarak released his arm and returned to the door.

Thorvin rubbed his sleeve. “For how long?”

“Until we are through the lair,” Firemind said. “A few days, if that is what it takes. You will have a room and guards. Whether you spend those days with your hands tied depends on what you try to do.”

Maeril put a pencil on the paper in front of him. “I would prefer you able to hold a pencil. It makes this considerably less tedious.”

“Your friend said a private conversation,” Thorvin said.

“He arranged the meeting,” Elisa said. “He did not know we meant to keep you.”

“You have been sending pieces of the truth out,” Firemind said. “We need enough to act on. I will not send you back knowing where we intend to enter.”

Thorvin looked at each of them. When his gaze reached Maeril, she left the pencil where it was.

He picked it up. “Your second passage is wrong.”

Firemind turned the sketch toward him.

“The stair ends here,” Thorvin said. “This door takes you into the main halls. You will meet guards before you reach either of those rooms.”

He drew a shorter line beside it. “There is a service door in the right-hand wall at the foot of the stair. Another carved eye, smaller than the first. That passage runs behind the audience chamber. You can reach the machinery from it.”

“And the room with Sylgar?” Elisa asked.

Thorvin added a branch. “Through here. I have worked in both. I cannot promise who you will find between them.”

“Show me the service door,” Firemind said.

Thorvin drew a circle, then the eye beside it. A second sketch showed a rod and a hooked lever behind the stone. “Press the eye. This lifts the catch.”

Firemind studied the sketch without touching it. Then he took a short brass strip from the tray and laid it over the drawn lever. “The catch is clear here.”

He turned the strip a little farther, following the arc Thorvin had marked. “What moves during the rest?”

“Allowance for wear.”

Firemind moved the strip back to the point where it would clear the catch. “That would be a generous allowance. You would have replaced the whole catch before it wore that far. What else does it lift?”

Thorvin set the pencil down.

Maeril could see the unused sweep now: most of the movement, with nothing drawn in its path. Firemind left the strip across it and waited.

“A hammer,” the dwarf said. “It strikes a gong in the guard alcove. Someone comes to see what has been brought through.”

“Does it ring for every delivery?” Elisa asked.

“Someone has to admit them. The door can be opened from the stair. The guards decide whether you go any farther.”

Firemind slid the pencil back under Thorvin’s hand. “Draw the hammer. Then show me how you reach it when it needs repair.”

The new lines passed behind the eye. Thorvin marked a small cover beneath it, then a pin through the hammer’s pivot. “The cover comes off from below. Hold the hammer down while you lift the catch, and it will not strike. Let it rise too far and it falls when you release it.”

Firemind picked up a length of stiff wire. He bent it around the brass strip, adjusted the angle, and tried the movement with his thumb. “Room for a fork here?”

Thorvin leaned closer. “If the tines are narrow. The collar is wider behind the cover.”

Firemind changed the bend and held it against the drawing. “Then I can keep it down while I work the catch.”

“Until you open the door.”

“What changes when it opens?” Elisa asked.

“The weight takes over. Stone on rollers. If you let it run, it hits the stop.”

Elisa put a finger beside the door. “Then someone holds it while he works. Can it be eased shut behind us?”

“From inside, yes.”

Hazarak came closer to look at the drawing. Firemind handed him the brass strip to hold against the line of the door while he tested the wire again.

Maeril drew the second sheet out from beneath the map. “Now the Nullifier. Where does its working meet the dream?”

Thorvin put the pencil to the paper, stopped, and looked at her. “I maintain the frame, the moving parts, and the connections. I did not devise every enchantment inside it.”

“Then show me what you maintain.”

He drew a framework around a set of inscribed plates. Maeril leaned closer when he marked the connections between them. The pattern was incomplete, but there was enough to ask a better question.

“Those plates carry the same working in sequence?”

“They should. It keeps the dreams contained while Xanathar sleeps.”

“And when they no longer agree?”

“I check the spacing. Clean the contacts. Replace anything worn. The sound settles.”

“What did it sound like when that worked?” Chime asked.

Thorvin looked up. Chime descended into the lamplight, and he drew back in his chair.

“Chime asked the question,” Chime said. “Would you hum it?”

The dwarf glanced at Firemind, who was still holding the wire against the drawing.

Thorvin gave a low, steady note. Chime answered with one a little higher. He shook his head, and they lowered it until he nodded.

“Like that,” Thorvin said. “Now there is another sound underneath it. It catches, then runs past the first.”

Chime held the note for a moment longer before falling silent.

“Does it change when you disconnect the moving parts?” Firemind asked.

“It remains. I stopped the drive. The lower sound kept going.”

Maeril put her fingertip beside the inscribed plates. She had begun following the sequence as though a worn contact might explain it. She took her hand away. “Then repairing the drive may not repair this.”

“I told it that.”

“What did Xanathar say?” Elisa asked.

“It told me to repair it anyway.”

For a moment, only a cart passing beyond the yard broke the quiet.

“Did the change begin before it had the Stone?” Maeril asked.

“I noticed it afterward. That is what I can tell you.”

“And you have heard the Stone speak,” Firemind said.

“I heard it yesterday while I was working near the bowl. No one was touching it.”

“Is it still there?” Elisa asked.

“I have not seen it today. Xanathar moves things. Then it accuses people of moving them.”

Maeril marked yesterday’s sighting beside the room. Neither sketch told them where the Stone would be tonight.

Elisa drew his attention away from the papers. “When are you expected back below?”

“Tomorrow morning. I ordered new castings. They will not be ready to collect before then.”

“Does someone come to fetch you?”

“I bring them back myself. It knows I am staying aboveground.”

She turned to Firemind. “We can go tonight. Before he fails to return.”

Thorvin’s jaw tightened. “And I remain locked in your room.”

“Yes,” Firemind said. “The guards will know you are an engineer. Do not make them discover it through the lock.”

Maeril folded the drawings only after Thorvin had marked the cover’s position and the turns in the service passage. Firemind took the wire with him.

By late morning, she was following Thorvin through a side entrance of Renaer’s house. Hazarak had ridden beside him in the closed carriage. Two household guards now waited outside a ground-floor room with a barred window and a narrow bed. Renaer watched while Firemind handed over the leather case and the tools found in Thorvin’s sleeves.

Thorvin looked at the room, then at its owner. “Am I waiting for him to come back?”

“You are in my custody,” Renaer said. “When I have word that the operation is over, I will arrange your release. If they cannot send word, I will make inquiries myself.”

“And until then?”

“You will be fed. You can sleep. Speak to the guards if you need something. You will deal with me.”

Maeril stepped aside as Thorvin entered. The door closed, and one of the guards turned the key.

She tucked the machine sketch into her book. Rishi’s message was waiting upstairs.

That afternoon, Rishi was bracing a timber with his shoulder when Maeril’s staff tapped the cistern steps behind him. Erik stood beside the new opening, one hand on a support while a worker drove the last wedge beneath it.

“It has the weight now,” Erik said. “Come clear.”

Rishi eased away. The timber stayed where they had put it.

Maeril lowered herself onto the step to adjust the binding above her boot. Clay had already marked her hem. “We have Thorvin’s drawings. He is at Renaer’s, complaining about the accommodation.”

“Was he hurt?”

“His arm was held. He has all his fingers and used them to correct the map.”

She rose and held out her hand for the lantern. “Show me where the probe stopped.”

The passage beyond the cistern ran through the old service cut, its brick walls broken in places by packed earth. At the far end, beneath the tower foundations, the crew had cleared a low working space. Rishi followed Maeril on his knees. Erik remained at the wider turn with his measuring cord and a board covered in chalk marks.

The end of the passage looked open. Rishi had already struck it twice with a length of timber that would go no farther.

Maeril unwrapped a pinch of incense. Rishi held the lantern while she lit it, then waited as she worked through a reading of the magic. Her gaze followed something beyond the smoke that he could not see.

“The same field,” Maeril said. “The earth has not interrupted it.”

“Here are the measurements,” Erik said.

Rishi passed the board forward. Three marks recorded where probes had met the barrier. A fourth lay lower, where the crew had cut into the clay above a shelf of hard stone.

“The lowest one went through,” Erik added. “We cleared along it by hand.”

Maeril took the measuring rod she had sent with her note. At the lowest mark, she slid it forward without resistance. She raised it slowly. The wood stopped with a soft tap.

She withdrew it, moved a little to one side, and repeated the movement. Rishi held the lantern behind her shoulder.

At last she raised the rod until it just touched the barrier’s lower edge and held it level. “It ends here.”

Erik fed the cord forward. Rishi measured the opening beneath the rod.

There was room for his chest with less than a hand’s breadth above it. His kit would have to come off his shoulder.

“Can we lower the floor?” Rishi asked.

“Solid stone under that clay. Cutting it would carry through the foundations. We would have to stay here hammering.”

Maeril looked along the narrow opening. “I would rather arrive before someone comes to ask what the noise is.”

Rishi eased back enough to unfold the cloth sling they had made in the cistern. He drew its straps flat, keeping the knots outside the part that would pass beneath the field. “If Lysaerra cannot move herself, we bring her through lying down. I go ahead and support her head. You guide her shoulders.”

Maeril pressed the empty cloth flat with her palm. “We will have to take the packs through separately.”

“Then we do.”

He folded the sling and set it where he could reach it on their return.

The old service cut continued beyond the barrier into a low pocket beneath a wooden panel. Once Maeril had checked the boundary, Rishi followed one worker through, leaving his kit with her. They kept the lantern hooded and lifted out the loose rubble by hand. Rishi passed the pieces back until the space beneath the panel was clear.

He did not raise it. Footsteps crossed the boards overhead once, stopped, then moved away.

The worker waited beside him. Rishi held up a hand until the sound was gone.

Together they worked a little oil into the hinges from below and wrapped the exposed edge of a support in sackcloth. The worker marked the panel with three chalk cuts and a circle.

Rishi backed out through the narrow passage, collecting his kit from Maeril before they returned to the cistern. Erik sent the men ahead with the remaining sacks. He followed slowly, leaving Rishi and Maeril beside the lantern while she cleaned clay from her fingers.

“Does crossing below it disturb the working?” Rishi asked.

“Nothing I could feel changed when you went through. I cannot promise that nothing inside noticed.”

She scraped beneath one nail with the edge of a wooden splinter, then stopped. “We have found a way under his wall. I keep wanting that to mean we have found a way past him.”

Rishi sat beside her.

“Manshoon prepares,” Maeril said. “He has had years to decide what should happen to someone who gets this far.”

“You are afraid.”

“Of course I am. I prefer villains with less history and a smaller chance of preparing for whatever clever thing I prepare.”

She set the splinter down and held out her dirty hand.

Rishi took it. “We can still stop when we see what is ahead.”

“Provided we recognize the thing worth stopping for.”

He turned her hand over and wiped the clay from her palm with the clean edge of his sleeve. “Then we both look.”

Maeril watched him finish. She closed her fingers around his before reaching for her staff. “Come on. I want food before I examine another impossible crossing.”

When Rishi and Maeril returned to Renaer’s workroom that evening, Firemind had clamped a small arrangement of brass and wood to the table. Elisa stood beside it with a folded strip of leather. A dark green dragonborn held the edge of a weighted board upright while Chime watched from the other side.

“Rishi, this is Hazarak,” Elisa said. “He has agreed to come with us.”

Rishi met the dragonborn’s gaze. “I am glad you are here.”

Hazarak inclined his head, keeping one hand on the board.

Firemind eased a forked tool through a gap between two scraps of wood. A little hammer beneath them moved, stopped, and stayed down while he lifted a catch with his other hand. “Now the door.”

Hazarak let the board move. Elisa put the leather against the place where its edge would meet the bench. It came to rest without a knock.

Elisa put the strip into a pocket at her hip. “We will need that ready before he opens it.”

Rishi set down his staff. “What happens if that hammer moves?”

“It rings a gong for the guards. Thorvin left that part out of his first drawing.”

He released the tool slowly, watching the hammer descend.

Maeril came around to inspect the gap. “Will that fit behind the cover?”

“If his measurements are right. I made the second fork narrower.”

Two tools lay beside the model. He put them into separate loops inside his sleeve.

Elisa brought Rishi a plate before he could sit on the stool where a set of shears lay open. He moved them, accepted the food, and watched her pull her scarf aside. Her thumb found the sunburst beneath it without catching in the cloth.

The mantle over her darkened robe covered the padded shoulders of her chain shirt. Firemind checked the opening at her wrist while she reached across the table.

“It pulls here when I lift my arm,” Elisa said.

He loosened a stitch. She tried again and nodded.

His own tools had vanished into dark folds and reinforced seams. Rishi could see the outline of one only when Firemind bent over the lamp.

“These should get us past a first glance,” Firemind said. “If anyone asks which crew we belong to, I will answer.”

“And I will try not to offer to mend their bandages before we are through the door,” Elisa said.

Rishi nearly smiled over his plate.

Maeril took a small brazier to the cleared end of the room. The hawk settled beside it. She opened her book, measured incense onto the coals, and began the familiar working. Rishi kept the nearest chair clear while the others lowered their voices.

Over the next hour, Rishi ate, cleaned the tunnel dirt from his kit, and mended a torn seam at his knee.

When Maeril closed her book, the hawk was gone. A small black spider rested on the cover. She held a finger beside it, and it climbed into her palm. “Something that can look beneath a door without inviting an argument about the size of its wings.”

She let it disappear into the fold at her cuff and came back to the table.

Renaer brought four wax-sealed healing potions. Firemind put one into an inner pocket and another at his belt. He fitted the remaining two into Elisa’s pouches, one on either side. “Can you reach both?”

She tested the openings before fastening them. “Even with one hand. Thank you, Renaer.”

“Bring back the glass if you can. I would like something to complain about afterward.”

Rishi drew the tower sketch into the space beside the corrected sewer route. “The passage is ready. We can go under the barrier. Beyond it, we still have to find how they reach the place where Maeril thinks Lysaerra is held.”

“The separate sanctum,” Maeril said. “I can feel the connection from outside; I have not seen the way through.”

Firemind touched the fork inside his sleeve. “We have a service route and a way to open its door. The Stone may still be near the bowl. If it is not, we search toward the machinery.”

“And listen before touching,” Chime said. “The new sound continued when Thorvin stopped the drive.”

Hazarak looked down the line joining the stair and the service passage. “When we turn back, who closes the door?”

“I do,” Firemind said. “You stay between us and anything following.”

“I get clear first, with anyone who needs help,” Elisa said. “Chime, stay where we can hear you.”

“I can watch the next turn while you close it,” Chime said.

Hazarak tapped the narrow part of the passage. “If we lose this way out, we stay together until we find another.”

Firemind looked at him, then nodded.

Rishi rested his hand beside the two maps. “Anyone coming back with the wounded goes to Mereth at the Spires of the Morning. Leave word there for the others.”

“I spoke to her today,” Elisa said. “She knows we may need a quiet entrance and somewhere to lie down. She will be ready.”

“We cannot promise to arrive together,” Maeril said. “We can promise not to spend the morning searching the city for the wrong door.”

Rishi folded his map. There was nothing on it beyond the wooden panel. He slid it into his belt beside the cloth he had kept for Lysaerra’s hands.

Near midnight, Rishi followed the others through Renaer’s side gate. Rain had stopped, leaving the alley bright where lamplight caught the puddles. Firemind held the gate while Elisa passed; Chime floated out above her shoulder. Hazarak walked to the mouth of the alley and looked along the street.

Maeril stood beside Rishi while he drank coffee from a clay flask. She held out her hand, and he passed it to her. After a small mouthful, she returned it, resting her hand over his as he fitted the stopper.

Firemind came toward them. He had fastened his cloak, but one hand remained beneath it at the strap across his chest. “Before we go. Thank you for coming with her.”

He glanced at Elisa, then back at Rishi. “For bringing me back to life.”

Rishi put the flask away. “You came back. We held the door.”

Firemind looked down for a moment. When Rishi offered his hand, he took it and held on.

Chime drifted closer. “The door-holding was load-bearing.”

Firemind let out a small breath through his nose. He released Rishi’s hand as Elisa joined them.

She embraced Rishi, careful of the tools at his belt. He felt her fingers tighten against his back before she stepped away. “Find her. Bring her somewhere with windows.”

Her gaze moved to Maeril. “And I would like to see both of you there.”

Maeril took her hand. “Leave us a place at the table.”

The Watch bell began to strike midnight. Hazarak turned from the street. “The road is clear. We should move.”

Firemind drew Elisa’s hood forward where it had slipped back. Chime rose to his shoulder, and the three followed Hazarak toward the Castle Ward.

Rishi waited until Elisa’s hood disappeared beyond the corner. Then he and Maeril took the street toward Erik’s tunnel.