The World Has a Center

Rishi carried Duhlark down the invisible stair, keeping the box clear of the wall while Maeril followed a step behind. At the last turn, iron scraped stone.

“Careful. That stone is original,” Duhlark said.

Maeril said, “If you want reverence, you must stop being easy to carry.”

They reached the landing above the library and went through to the reading room. Grim sat bound against the wall. He looked up as they entered. His signed copy of Volo’s Guide to Monsters rested safely on the ottoman.

Maeril stopped beside it. “Damn.”

Rishi set Duhlark’s box on the floor. “You feel sorry for him.”

“No.”

He waited.

“I feel practical guilt,” she said.

She dusted the cover with her sleeve while Rishi knelt beside Grim. He checked the cord around the orc’s wrists, then removed the gag.

Grim worked his jaw. His eyes moved from Rishi to Maeril, then fixed on the box between them. “You became stranger while I was waiting.”

Maeril crouched in front of him. “You sound disappointed.”

“You tied me up and came back with a dead wizard in cookware.”

The box rattled. “Cookware?”

Grim flinched. “It speaks.”

“He is Duhlark Kolat,” Maeril said. “Speaking is his chief remaining vice.”

“I have others.”

Maeril set the book on her knee. “There is a door beside the library entrance. You sent us upstairs.”

Grim’s gaze returned to the box. “You asked about the stairs.”

“I asked how to reach the circle.”

He tested the cord around his wrists. Rishi waited beside him.

“I thought something up there would kill you,” Grim said. “It seemed worth trying.”

Rishi sat back on his heels, leaving the knots intact.

Maeril opened the book to its inscription and held it up. “You appear to possess a little sense.”

“This feels like an insult.”

“It is an opening offer. You chose a poor employer, you guarded a bloodstained rug for him, and you may be an evil bastard. Yet I suspect you would rather die old with a book in the sun than young in this tower or somewhat later in a Watchful Order cell.”

His gaze lingered on the inscription before he looked back at her.

Maeril nodded toward the box. “The alternative involves a dead wizard eager to burn Manshoon’s servants.”

Duhlark brightened. “A civic service.”

Rishi looked at Maeril. “I did not know you were such a negotiator.”

“I sell soup to guards and smugglers. This is the same problem with fewer vegetables.”

Grim tested the rope at his wrists. “What do you want?”

“A guide. You show us the door, and from now on you walk where we walk.”

“And if something attacks?”

“You will have a reason to warn us early.”

“You let me go?”

“We let you live. Freedom is a later negotiation.”

Grim considered Rishi, the burning skull, and the open door behind them. “My weapons?”

“No.”

“My dignity?”

Maeril looked at the rope around his ankles. “Beyond my authority.”

He laughed once despite himself.

Rishi untied Grim’s feet and rebound his wrists in front.

Maeril gave him the book.

Grim drew it to his chest and ran one thumb over the edge of the cover. “Temporary. I help you reach the circle. You keep the skull from burning me.”

Maeril raised a finger. “You may already be planning to try again.”

Grim froze.

“You are free to think about it,” Maeril continued. “If thought becomes action, Rishi will not be as gentle the second time.”

Grim studied Rishi’s hands. “I understand the temporary nature of things.”

Grim rose and turned toward the library door.

Rishi lifted the box by its strap. “Before the bridge, we free Gondafrey.”

The orc looked back. “The circle is in the other tower.”

“She is in this one.”

If they failed beyond the circle, she would still be waiting here.

Maeril steadied the box while he put the strap over his shoulder. “Show us the way, Duhlark.”

The skull directed them through a passage on the other side of the reading room and up a narrow stair. Six staffs hung along the wall of the landing above it.

“Keep clear until I have spoken,” Duhlark said.

He gave an old command through the bars. One staff twitched against its brackets, then settled. Rishi kept Grim beside him as they passed.

The holding cell stood beyond the landing. An ornate M had been worked into the glyph on its iron-bound door. Through the narrow barred window, a gargoyle waited in the gloom.

Her face carried human weariness.

“If you are good,” she called, “open the door and help me cleanse these towers. If you are evil, open it and fight. Either would improve the evening.”

Maeril examined the glyph from a safe distance, resting her weight on her staff. She glanced at the box. “Can your great burning intellect unmake a ward?”

“I can burn, blind, strike with force, and conjure flame.”

“Can you dispel it?”

“No.”

“Useless.”

“I did not design this mark.”

The gargoyle moved to the window. “That voice.”

Duhlark’s fire drew back.

“Lady Gondafrey,” he said.

Stone claws closed around the bars. “Duhlark Kolat.”

“I persist.”

“Good. I had feared justice might lack a defendant.”

Maeril raised her staff. Her unmaking entered Manshoon’s sigil and separated one line of magic from another. The M burned white, fought to hold its shape, then fell into sparks.

She lowered her hand and leaned against the wall. Rishi waited until she nodded toward the lock.

Rishi tried the keys taken from the guards’ leader. The third turned. He opened the door and stepped aside.

Gondafrey rose slowly. Stone wings unfolded from the wall. Her claws met the threshold with careful weight, but her posture belonged to a Watch officer walking into a room where order had failed.

She examined her hands before looking at Duhlark. “He made this body.”

“Yes,” Maeril said.

“Can you remove it?”

Maeril looked from Gondafrey’s hands to her face. She did not raise her staff again.

“Not here,” Rishi answered. “Perhaps later, if we survive.”

Gondafrey accepted the truth with a tight nod. “Lady Gondafrey of Waterdeep. I served the Watch and Tyr. Enough of both remains.”

“Rishishura.”

“Maeril Greenward. Grim is helping us temporarily. Duhlark is in the box.”

“Where he belongs,” Gondafrey said.

Grim shifted his book. “Temporarily has become our governing principle.”

Gondafrey looked at Rishi. “Why open my cell?”

“Because you should never have been in it.”

Gondafrey’s claws loosened against the doorframe.

“We came for Lysaerra Harlowe, a mapmaker,” Maeril said. “Manshoon took her for what is missing from her memory. We mean to get her out.”

Gondafrey’s stone fingers curled. “Then we go.”

Maeril regarded their company. “We have acquired a knight with wings.”

“She is not a possession,” Duhlark said.

Gondafrey turned to his box. “You are not a man.”

He had no answer.

They returned to the reading room. Beside the library door, Grim tucked his book under one arm and slid his bound hands beneath the molding. Something clicked. A seam opened in what Rishi had taken for solid wall.

Grim pushed the panel outward. Rain-scented wind entered the room. A wooden bridge crossed to the outer tower, its boards wet now that the field no longer kept the weather out. No railing stood between the narrow span and the ground twenty feet below.

Rishi tested the first boards with his staff. They creaked beneath his weight.

“It is safe,” Grim said. “It merely sounds like that.”

“I designed it to tolerate fools,” Duhlark said.

Rishi went first, with Grim behind him. Maeril followed the orc, and Gondafrey came last, her wings partly open over the drop. Wind carried chimney soot and the noise of a cart far below. Rishi kept his eyes on the boards ahead.

An exterior walkway curved around the second tower to a door. Inside, a cramped landing held stairs going up and down. Grim pointed upward, then raised his bound hands toward a statue on a ledge beside the stair. “That one only shouts. Let it finish.”

The stone wizard floated from its ledge. Its mouth opened, and Duhlark’s voice filled the landing. “I am Duhlark Kolat, the great wizard and master of this tower! Leave at once or be destroyed by magic beyond your comprehension!”

Grim hid his mouth behind Volo’s book.

Maeril looked down at the cage. “It captured you.”

“The enunciation is excessive,” Duhlark said from the box.

The statue settled. Rishi followed Grim up the stairs, through a nearly bare library bearing Alcedor’s name and a second, fuller room marked with Duhlark’s. At the second doorway, Grim warned them to leave the books alone. They kept to the clear passage between the shelves.

The room at the top of the tower held the circle.

Faint light traveled through runes cut across the floor. Five locked chests stood against the walls. Four winged snakes shifted among the rafters. Above the circle hovered a round creature with one central eye and several smaller stalks.

Grim stopped on the stair. “Do not touch the chests.”

Maeril looked at the careful locks. “I had inferred that.”

“Infer it strongly.”

The eye-creature lowered until it faced Rishi. He showed it one of the five brass rings they had recovered.

The circle answered. Its hum rose, and the other tokens rang softly in Maeril’s pouch.

“Authorized transport tokens recognized,” the creature said.

Maeril told it, “We will use the circle and leave every chest untouched.”

“Chests remain guarded.”

Rishi stepped onto the outer edge of the runes. Maeril did not follow.

She faced Grim.

He tightened his hold on the book. “What?”

“You may stay.”

Suspicion entered his face before relief had the chance.

Maeril said, “If Manshoon sees you with us, he will know you helped. He will not care that the arrangement was forced or temporary.”

“If I stay here?”

“Surrender when the Watchful Order arrives. Tell them I say you cooperated under duress. Ask for Rulven Dathar. Keep your book. Or run, if you are determined to turn one poor decision into six.”

Grim searched her face for the condition.

She continued, “If you cross, you choose it. Rishi’s threat ends here. So does mine.”

Lady Gondafrey watched him. “You fear the city’s prison.”

“Yes.”

“And Manshoon?”

Grim did not answer.

Behind him, the stairs returned to an exposed tower, whatever justice the city would offer, and the master who might come back through the same circle. Before him waited Manshoon’s private refuge.

Grim held out Volo’s Guide to Monsters.

Maeril frowned. “What is this?”

“If I die in wizard hell, I do not want Volo watching.”

“You trust me with it?”

“I distrust everyone else more.”

Maeril took it carefully and put it in her pack. “I will keep it dry.”

“This remains temporary,” Grim said.

“Naturally.”

“I am not becoming good.”

“I never asked you to.”

He extended his bound wrists.

Maeril cut the rope.

Grim rubbed feeling back into his hands.

Rishi watched him from the circle. “Do not make me regret that.”

“Do you mean you personally or in a broad moral sense?”

Rishi held his gaze.

Grim nodded. “Personally. Understood.”

Gondafrey stepped onto the runes. “For Lysaerra Harlowe.”

Maeril entered beside her. “For the person. Never the key.”

Rishi raised the brass ring. Grim joined them last.

The circle warmed beneath their feet. Light passed from rune to rune until the design closed.

Maeril touched Rishi’s sleeve. He turned his wrist and caught her fingers.

The contact gave the world a center.

Kolat Towers disappeared.

For an instant, there was no rain, stone, breath, or direction.

Then Manshoon’s sanctum took them.