there?
Those portals had been too smal to pass an adult. The man-size ones, in theory, could only be activated from the other end.
The racket his crowd made would have to have been heard. The hum might be somebody making a getaway.
He sent a demon ahead, backed by an iron statue. The demon, shrunken down to a beetle of human size, entered the kitchen walking upright on unnatural y robust rear legs, feeling the air ahead with antennae half as long as it was tal . Its wings lay on its back like fitted plate, polished purple-black. The statue, the one that had fal en earlier, clanked behind clumsily, right leg squealing as it dragged through the first few inches of each step. It had not been maintained. Old Meddler wished there had been time for an overhaul. There had been no time for years. Not a minute to invest in routine upkeep. Too often, not a minute for desperately needed sleep.
This task had become impossible once he lost his ancient associate.
A bad choice made, that time.
Old Meddler seldom acknowledged mistakes, even to himself. He did not make mistakes. He was who he was.
He was what he was. He could not make mistakes.
Even so, that sloppy choice had cost him like none other since the cluster that got him sentenced to this hel . It had, worse, cost him the closest thing he had to a friend.
So now the Old Man was dead. Al that he had done to help, when he had been awake, had piled itself onto Old Meddler’s weary shoulders.
So. There was no time for maintenance. No time for anything but handling the crisis of the moment.
Retina-blistering emerald light flared. A green shaft ripped through the demonic beetle, hit the iron statue in the right abdomen. Chunks of demon chitin flew, revealing the inside of the thing’s wing case to be orange and the body beneath as red and orange. Stuff flew off the iron statue, too. It staggered back a long step, leaning slightly, like a man kicked in the gut.
That flying stuff might have been globules of molten metal.
They splattered, then hardened quickly.
This was not possible.
Blindness came.
He did not panic. He knew flash blindness was not permanent. He had lost vision this way before. He would recover, not as quickly as he might like. But…
That bolt, however generated, had immense power behind it, of a level not seen since… No, even the Nawami Crusades had produced no blast savage enough to pierce the frontal armor of an iron statue. Had it? This world had seen nothing like this. Someone had tapped directly into…
He could not concentrate. His eyes hurt. The pain threatened to become the focus of his existence. Despite past experience he had trouble managing his fear of blindness—though he must remain calm and control ed. He was deeply vulnerable at this moment, even with demons and iron statues to shield him.
The event had not been an attack. He understood that when no fol ow-up came. The demon had triggered some trap.
Maybe there was competition for this place. Underground movement often wasted energy on internecine murder rather than battle the object of rebel ion.
Or maybe he had been expected. That would explain the magnitude of the blast.
Unlikely, though. There was no way anyone could have predicted his visit. Some overly bright Tervola was determined to make a convincing statement to any fel ow Tervola who stumbled onto his handiwork.
One of those master sorcerers had found the golden key, a way to suck power off the transfer streams. Must have. The dream had been out there for ages. No lesser source could have delivered that emerald violence.
Had he truly seen molten metal fly? He did now recal a similar instance in one rare moment where the Great One had chosen to inject himself directly into the Nawami conflict.
The Great One had used power stolen from the transfer streams. He had made himself a god by finding the way, and later became a denizen of the transfer streams, existing in al eras simultaneously while also constituting a paral el, prior entity in the world outside. The Great One inside had been the Great One the Dread Empire defeated in the eastern waste. Shinsan had gone on to root his fetch out and engineer its annihilation—though not before it reached back and fathered itself in an age long gone.
Those absurdities should have claimed devoted examination ever since. How could that happen? It had despite the logical implausibility. Could there be an even stronger ascendant coming now? Ssu-ma Shih-ka’i, whose ingenuity brought the Deliverer down? No! Not some ridiculous farmer grown too big for his trousers! But who else? There was no other significant name associated with those events. Not amongst the living.
Clearly, he had not looked where he should. But that was too hard when you were alone. Tactics devoured your time, leaving none to linger over the meaning of what might be happening behind what was distracting you at the moment.
His vision began to clear. He discerned frozen shapes.
Disinclined to trigger another trap, his companions awaited his instructions.
The stricken demon had settled to the floor. Its birdlike skinny legs projected into the kitchen. Its through and through wound stil produced wisps of black mist. Greenish ichors streaked the color where a wing and wing case had been ripped away. It was trying to reinstal something that had fal en out of its chest.
It was a demon. Its wound should not be mortal, in this world, but to survive it dared not flee to its own realm even though here it could survive only as a cripple.
The stricken iron statue remained fixed, almost unbalanced, in the process of taking an awkward step. The green shaft had not driven through but there was a six-inch circle of bluish purple shine on the statue’s back, bulging, where the light would have emerged had it not spent so much energy skewering the demon first.
Old Meddler’s vision continued to improve. He eyed that bulge. How could anyone set random traps that powerful?
Where had they gotten the know-how?
Better question. More important question, right now. Were there more such traps? It was not reasonable that his evil luck should be so foul that he would trigger the worst trap first stumble. Far more likely that it was one of a battery.
“The perfect response to an improbable event,” he said, softly, punctuating with a tired sigh. “Stay put.” He readied the Windmjirnerhorn.
So. Yes. There were more traps, impressive in number, but with disposition and trigger choices that seemed naive.
Once you knew they were there you could deal with them easily. People as sophisticated as the Tervola ought to have built a network so cunning that the triggering of one instantly rendered the rest more sensitive.
Suppose they had been set in haste, to deal with an anticipated intrusion by mundane burglars? The traps could polish off a battalion of regular bandits. Unless that notion was what the trap builders wanted put into the head of a more sophisticated intruder.
Unless…
The curse of being Old Meddler was overthinking and seeing everything through the murky lens of his own twisted character. Of assuming that everyone was as warped of mind and motive as he.
He eliminated the most obvious traps. Even so, the iron statues triggered several more, better disguised, as they assisted his futile search the next few days.
Old Meddler grew increasingly disgruntled. He had one healthy demon left. The statue smitten by the green light had not moved since. It stil communicated but that made it no less an oversize, man-shape heap of scrap.
He had planned to spend a few hours recuperating once he arrived, before investing a few more recovering weapons and tools from hiding places beneath the fortress. Magden Norath had left a lot. Old Meddler had hidden his own reserves here and elsewhere across the archipelago.
He had come to the emergency against which al that stuff had been cached.
Only… The hiding places were empty. Covert after covert, whatever had been hidden was gone, as though someone who knew every cache had systematical y rid them of anything that might ever be of use to the Old
