The Wall Is Down

Rishi crouched on the last invisible step, keeping his head below the opening. Maeril stopped one tread beneath him. The spider crossed the lip and disappeared along the ceiling inside.

She closed her eye. Above them, one of the chanting voices faltered, then hurried to catch the others.

“Three apprentices around a blood circle. A barlgura inside it.” Her eye opened. “It stirred when that boy lost his place. The circle held it.”

Her hand lifted toward the opening. “I am about to be a very bad person.”

“Tell me.”

“I can break the circle from here. It will turn on them.”

“Can you send it back?”

“When I can see it myself. They are standing within reach of its hands.”

“They may be dead before then.”

She met his gaze. “Yes, they may.”

Rishi listened to the young voices chanting above him. They served the man who had taken Lysaerra. Every delay left her longer in his hands.

They are still people, Rishi reminded himself.

Maeril kept her hand raised and waited.

Rishi shifted his grip until both hands settled on the staff. “Break the circle. Banish it when you have sight. I take anyone it leaves standing.”

Her unmaking crossed the threshold. The chanting lasted two heartbeats longer.

The first scream ended in a heavy impact. A brazier rang against stone. Blue-white light flashed through the opening, and the demon roared over the remaining voices.

A tremor passed through Rishi’s shoulders. Maeril laid two fingers against his sleeve. He breathed once beneath her touch.

They withdrew several steps. Running feet crossed the room above; heavier bounds followed, then climbed away from them. Maeril leaned toward the opening with her spell hand lifted. Nothing passed within her sight.

She closed her eye again. “One apprentice is still running. There’s another stair on the far side of the room. I’m sending the spider after them.”

Metal crashed overhead.

“An iron construct has caught the demon at the top. The boy’s gone past it.” Her fingers tightened against the wall. “The spider can get above them. I still need to see it from here to banish it.”

Her eye found him again. Rishi nodded toward the opening. “Then we move while it’s occupied.”

They entered the summoning chamber under the noise of the fighting. Smoke hung over a broken circle and spilled coals. One apprentice lay folded near the wall. Another had fallen with his hand closed around a half-removed brass ring. A matching ring shone on the first boy’s hand.

Rishi slowed beside them. Maeril touched the middle of his back. Across the room, a stone stair climbed along the wall toward the crashing metal. He tightened his grip on the staff and went toward it.

The last crash shook dust over them before they reached the top. Beyond the doorway, iron limbs lay among the remains of a worktable. A gauntlet closed on nothing beside Rishi’s sandal, then relaxed. The construct’s breastplate had folded nearly in half. A broken wooden stair rose from the far side of the workshop.

Maeril stopped against the doorframe and closed her eye. “The spider followed the boy up that stair. The demon has caught him in a passage.”

A scream broke off above them. Rishi started forward.

“Wait,” Maeril said. “Something is coming out of the walls.”

He stopped beside the broken table. Heavy feet struck the floor overhead, then scraped. The sound became a wet, dragging cough.

Maeril’s mouth tightened. “It’s trying to get back to the stair.”

One last impact shook the boards. Rishi waited with his eyes on the upper opening.

Maeril opened her eye. “The demon is dead. The vapour killed it. Stay out of that passage.”

Rishi tested the boards beyond the broken table with his weight. They creaked but held. He picked a path through the iron wreckage to the wooden stair and pressed his staff against each damaged tread before climbing. Where boards had broken away, he kept to the stone edge against the wall. Maeril followed within reach.

The stair ended at the mouth of a straight corridor. Rishi stopped below its threshold. Rows of small vents pierced both walls near the floor. Vapour still curled from them around the demon’s open mouth; its body lay twisted toward the stair, one hand stretched short of the entrance. Farther along lay the last apprentice, his chest crushed and his ring still on his outstretched hand.

At the far end of the corridor stood a closed door.

A bitter smell reached Rishi. He edged back from the threshold, putting one hand against Maeril’s arm. “We are not walking through that.”

She looked past his shoulder to the door. “I can take us beyond it. Keep hold of me.”

The spider returned along the ceiling from above the bodies and vanished over her raised palm. Her fingers closed around Rishi’s sleeve, and the tower disappeared.

For an instant, her grip was the only fixed thing in the world. Then his sandals met stone on the other side of the closed door, disturbing a skin of dust. Maeril opened her hand, and the spider stepped out of empty air onto it.

Rishi raised a light. A rotting crate stuffed with discarded furniture stood against one wall of the narrow room. Opposite it, the lines of a complex rune cut through the grime.

Maeril rolled back her sleeves and checked the floor and mortar before settling into a detection ritual. Rishi held the light for her. She pointed out the pivot seam of a secret door near the corner, then returned to the carving.

“What did you find?” Rishi asked.

“The tower’s throat.”

She held a fingertip above the center of the rune. “The field is tied into this carving. We need to break the stone.”

“We will warn every defender in the tower.”

“And anyone outside can get in.”

She kept studying the lines beneath her finger.

“What else?” Rishi asked.

“It has a reply prepared for anyone who damages it. Hostile. Beyond that, the workmanship is being coy.”

Maeril bit the side of her thumb.

She looked at his shoulders, the set of his hips, the length of his arms. Her eye narrowed with calculation.

Rishi knew that look. “No.”

“You do not know the proposal.”

“I know your face.”

Rishi looked from her to the rune. Then he planted his staff against the wall and set his feet. “All right.”

She put one palm against his chest. “Remember to breathe.”

The spell took his answer away.

His ribs expanded around an enormous inhalation. Hands that had learned how much pressure closed an artery swelled into fists large enough to break a chest. His arms lengthened and dragged his shoulders wider. Fur covered robe, cord, wraps, and skin until every familiar boundary of his body had been replaced.

He tried to straighten. His scalp brushed the ceiling.

“Mind your head. The ceiling was not included.”

Rishi lowered himself onto his knuckles. His weight settled there with an ease he had never learned. The arms reached so far ahead of him that Maeril stood between his hands.

Smell crowded in: old mortar, dry webs, Maeril’s ink and smoke. His heartbeat filled his ears. He had watched her become other creatures; he had not understood how much body there would be to manage.

He found her scent beneath the rest—moss after rain, singed cloth, the home he had chosen—and breathed.

Maeril leaned back to meet his eyes. Her mouth curved as she looked from his shoulders to the wall.

He tried to speak. A deep hoot filled the chamber.

“Yes, I am pleased too.”

She stepped out from between his hands, still smiling. Rishi looked at her for a moment, then turned toward the rune.

“Break it.”

He braced one hand against the floor and drove the other into the carving. Three nested lines cracked. White force flashed across the wall, and he rose into a second blow that split the stone through its center.

The tower went rigid around them.

Its answer passed through the walls instead of the air: a deep structural cry that ran from buried foundation to roof. Dust poured from the ceiling. Windows rattled in distant rooms. The invisible shell outside drew tight for one final instant.

Then it was gone.

The pressure changed. Damp night air entered through cracks and casements that had been sealed for years. Wind touched Kolat stone. Somewhere beyond the tower, rain could fall where old conjuration had always turned it aside.

Waterdeep had been allowed in.

Beside him, Maeril grinned. “Yes.”

The damaged rune answered.

Red flesh pushed out through the broken geometry. A creature forced its way into the chamber as if the wall had opened a wound. It landed on clawed feet, wet-skinned and broad-limbed, with a mouth too wide for its head.

The slaad looked at Maeril.

Rishi dropped to his knuckles and swung between them. His staff stood against the wall, absurdly slight.

Something larger, Rishi thought.

One hand closed around the rotting crate. He swept it into the creature’s face, furniture and all. Boards and chair legs burst around them. The slaad struck the wall beneath the broken rune and dropped into the rubble.

It came up laughing and hurled itself onto him.

Claws hooked his shoulder and opened his chest. Rishi caught the climbing body behind the ribs and drove it to the floor. It raked his forearm as it tore loose, and his reaching hand struck the wall beyond it. Mortar crumbled over his fingers. He had far more arm than the room allowed.

Maeril had flattened herself beside the secret door, clear of his elbows. The slaad crouched to spring. Her fingers flicked, and its head jerked under her spell.

Rishi’s fist caught it before it left the floor and drove it into the ruined wall. It rebounded, claws opening his side and thigh. He seized it with both hands and battered it against the stone until dust rolled over his wrists.

“Leave some tower standing, Rish. We still have to climb it.”

The claws dug for the tendons in his arm. Rishi released it before they found them. It landed low and gathered itself to come at him again, but Maeril’s next spell broke its timing. Its head snapped aside, exposing its ribs to his fist. His other hand drove it down. Its left arm folded beneath it.

“Now.”

Rishi planted his feet and brought both fists down. The first impact crushed the slaad into the rubble. The second left it still.

He settled onto his knuckles over it, breathing hard enough to stir the dust around his feet. Blood matted his fur where the claws had found him. The wounds hurt, but his shoulders held steady.

Maeril came away from the wall and examined the cuts. She laid her palm against his forearm. Beside it, her hand looked very small. “I do like this form.”

Her gaze traveled up his arm to his shoulder. Rishi knew that calculating look too. “I could bring twice as many books.”

He pointed to the secret door. She measured his shoulders against the opening and sighed. “You cannot even speak, and you still have objections.”

The spell ended.

Mass contracted around him. The overwhelming smells receded. His heartbeat became private again. Fur resolved into cloth.

Rishi stood with his shoulders still braced for a body he no longer occupied. He flexed his fingers, tested his jaw, and straightened. “Interesting.”

“A triumph of articulate reflection.”

He looked at the slaad’s ruin. “We would not have survived it like this.”

“No. We would have learned something very briefly.”