The Next Threshold

Erik’s tunnel turned cruel in its final reach.

Until then, the passage had felt like his work: measured, ugly, and trustworthy. Timber supported the old brick ribs, sackcloth muffled every scrape, and chalk marks warned of bad mortar, loose fill, or a turn too narrow for broad shoulders. Beneath Kolat Towers, the careful passage narrowed into a raw cut through clay.

Rishi went sideways, his quarterstaff bundled against him. Ahead, Maeril stopped so suddenly that he stopped with her.

The cramped earth pinned her tail against one leg. She touched the low ceiling, then raised her fingers into what looked like empty space. They stopped against something Rishi could not see. A white gleam woke in the wards at her cuff.

“Erik found the bottom of a wizard’s bad idea,” she whispered.

The force field descended below the foundations, but Erik had found its buried limit. The tunnel passed beneath it with less than a hand’s breadth to spare.

Maeril flattened herself against the clay and slid beneath the barrier. Rishi followed one measured movement at a time, feeling its cold pressure close above his shoulders. When his healer’s kit caught, he stopped and eased the strap free by feel.

The pressure passed behind them.

The tunnel rose beneath drier ground and ended at a wooden panel marked by three chalk cuts and a circle.

Safe enough. Quiet if patient.

Maeril looked back at Rishi, mud streaking the pale burn marks around her blind eye.

“Safe enough,” she mouthed.

He nodded.

They lifted the panel together. Oiled hinges moved without complaint, and cold air fell from a dark room smelling of salt, fat, and packed meat.

Maeril entered first. Rishi folded himself through the opening after her, keeping his staff from striking the floor. They lowered the panel but left one finger’s width beneath it so they could find the route again.

Crates crowded the storeroom, the nearest stamped with a guild seal for salters and packers.

A line of continual flame showed beneath an iron-bound door. From beyond it came low voices, the scrape of a chair, and the tap of cards against stone.

Maeril crouched and reached into a hollow between two crates. Darkness folded around her fingers, and the familiar that had flown as a hawk emerged as a small black spider, dull as soot.

The familiar slipped beneath the door. Maeril closed her living eye.

Through the spider’s eyes, Maeril followed the dining room from the storeroom door to an open doorway opposite. A long stone table stood between them, with a clear lane along its left side. Beyond the far doorway was a kitchen; the lowest steps of a curved stair were visible past an unused stove.

Two men in worn black armor sat opposite each other halfway along the table. A woman occupied the near end, her chair close to the storeroom door. She gathered the coins from the last hand of cards, leaving the others waiting.

“You said one more hand,” one of the men said.

“Then deal,” the woman said.

The guard reached for the deck. The woman tapped one coin he had missed, and he pushed it toward her. A brass ring engraved with an M caught the light as she took it.

Maeril left the spider above the kitchen doorway and returned to her own sight. Rishi waited beside the latch.

“Two guards and their leader,” she whispered. “The woman nearest us. There’s room to pass on the left of the table, and a stair through the kitchen at the far end.”

“Can you hold them?”

“I’ll try the pattern above the table. Stay behind the frame until the colors fade. Keep your eyes down when you go through.”

“Anyone still moving stays away from you and the stair.”

“And quietly, if they let us.”

Rishi laid his staff beside the crates, clear of the doorway. He eased the latch back and waited for her nod.

The door opened. Maeril stepped to the threshold and lifted her free hand.

Green-black, frost-white, and gold unfolded over the cards. The man holding the deck stopped with his thumb beneath a card. Across from him, the other guard rose halfway from his chair and sank back, staring. The colors faded, leaving both men motionless.

Their leader blinked hard and shoved her chair back. She turned toward the lane, drawing breath to call.

Rishi came through on Maeril’s left. He stepped across the woman’s path and drove an open hand into her chest. Her breath left in a grunt. She drew her sword and cut at his arm; he turned with the blow, catching her sleeve above the wrist.

The woman struck at him with her free hand and forced him back toward the doorway. Maeril moved against the frame, keeping her staff close. He passed in front of her, pulling the sword arm with him, and turned the woman into the storeroom.

Her blade struck a crate with a crack. Rishi stepped past her sword arm before she could recover it. One short blow beneath the jaw dropped her against him.

He lowered her between the crates and checked her breathing. Maeril kept her attention on the working that held the two men at the table. Neither had turned toward the noise.

Wood scraped overhead as Rishi bound the woman’s wrists.

Maeril sent the spider through the kitchen and up the underside of the stair. She closed her eye to borrow its sight.

An orc sat in an overstuffed chair in the room above. A large book lay open on his knees, but he was watching the stair. He lifted his head. “What have you broken down there?”

He waited, one finger still holding his place. Then he closed the book, stood, and laid it on the seat.

Maeril opened her own eye again. Rishi was drawing the first guard backward through the doorway, the man’s heels sliding over the floor. The woman lay bound and gagged beside the crates, her sword out of reach.

“An orc,” Maeril said. “He’s coming down.”

She set her staff aside and took out cord. Rishi lowered the guard beside his leader and went back for the other. Maeril removed the first man’s knife, then bound and gagged him. The enchantment held while she worked.

Rishi brought the second man through and stripped off his weapons. A matching brass ring came out of the guard’s belt pouch. He put it beside Maeril’s knee and crossed the dining room toward the kitchen.

Maeril had the second man’s wrists bound when the stair creaked. The footsteps paused above the turn.

“Has someone forgotten how to answer?” the orc called from above.

Maeril finished the last gag and ankle binding, then released the spell. One guard stirred against the cord. She checked the knots, took the ring from the floor and the other from the woman’s hand, and unhooked the keys from her belt. The keys went into a scrap of cloth; the rings into her pocket.

With her staff in hand again, she reached the dining-room doorway. Beyond the table, Rishi stood beside the foot of the stair, hidden from above by its curve. He glanced toward her. She nodded once.

A boot appeared on the lowest turn, then the orc’s hand on the central post. He came down looking toward the dining room. His gaze caught Maeril as he stepped onto the kitchen floor.

Rishi caught his arm before he could turn back. The orc drove an elbow behind him and tried to pull free; Rishi moved with him, turning him against the wall beside the stair. His free hand closed over the orc’s mouth.

Maeril crossed the room. The orc heaved once against Rishi’s hold. His boots scraped the floor, but the trapped arm stayed behind him.

“Stop fighting,” Rishi said. “We will let you speak.”

The orc looked from him to Maeril. His shoulders lowered a little.

“Back upstairs,” she said. “Slowly.”

Rishi uncovered his mouth but kept control of the arm. They climbed together, with Maeril close behind. At the top, he brought the orc clear of the stair and sat him on a worn rug between a couch and the overstuffed chair.

Maeril removed his weapon belt and put it behind the couch before taking the ottoman. She rested her staff across her knees. Old blood marked the rug beneath the orc’s boots. Beyond the furniture, a closed door led farther into the tower.

“Did you kill the others downstairs?” the orc asked.

“They’re alive,” Maeril said. “Bound in the storeroom.”

He looked toward the stair, then back at Rishi’s hand on his arm.

“We are looking for Lysaerra Harlowe,” Maeril continued. “A woman taken alive for memory work.”

“I don’t know the name.”

Maeril waited.

“I don’t,” the orc repeated. “I sit here. I read. I stop fools going where they shouldn’t.”

“Where do the important captives go?”

The orc’s eyes lifted toward the ceiling. “The circle at the top of the outer tower. That’s how the real people go in and out.”

Maeril took out the leader’s ring. Conjuration hummed through the brass against her fingertips. “This opens it?”

His face answered before he nodded.

“Who carries them?”

“Lieutenants. Apprentices. Some of the knife-devils.”

“What lies between us and the circle?”

He glanced at the closed door. “The library’s through there. You can see the stair going down. The one going up is hidden. Keep to the wall when you find it.”

“The sanctum?” Maeril asked.

“Never been. Don’t want to. People come back quieter or prouder. Both are bad.”

Maeril stood and rested her staff against the wall. “Thank you.”

He shifted forward. “You’ll let me go?”

“No. I will be polite about it.”

Rishi brought the orc’s other hand behind his back and bound the wrists together. The orc opened his mouth, looked at Maeril, and shut it again. She helped secure his ankles, then gagged him. They settled him against the wall, clear of the stair and the door.

Maeril put the ring back beside the other and passed Rishi the wrapped keys. He slipped them into his pouch.

As she rose, her eye caught the book on the chair. Gold lettering showed through the wear on its spine.

She turned it enough to read the cover. “Volo’s Guide to Monsters.”

Her thumb followed the worn edge of the binding. Someone had been reading it often. She picked it up and opened the front cover; a handwritten dedication filled the first page. “For Grim. I hope you find the orc chapter illuminating!”

Grim watched her hands.

Maeril looked from the dedication to its owner, then closed the cover carefully. “Do not let me become the kind of person who steals a man’s signed book.”

“We have standards,” Rishi said.

“Tragic.”

She set it safely on the ottoman.

Rishi slipped downstairs for his staff and returned, setting it against the wall beside the closed door.

For a few breaths, neither moved. Grim shifted against the wall, his gaze still on the book.

Maeril took up her staff, leaned one shoulder against the wall, and eased the weight off her bad leg. All that kneeling over knots had left it aching.

Rishi flexed his hands. “This was probably the easy part.”

She closed her eye. “Why do you make everything so enjoyable?”

He looked from the door to her. “Because I love you.”

She smiled. “Love you too.”