Spinner of Lies

“We should see how it works,” said Jaul.

The young man walked across the courtyard to the misted archway.

“Jaul, don’t mess with that!” Chant said. He stuffed his pipe away and went to his son at the arch.

“Don’t treat me like I’m an idiot, Pa,” said Jaul, his voice quiet.

“Sorry. The Gatekeeper rattled me. And with Demascus and Riltana still hurt, I’m a little overexcited. I didn’t meant to-”

Jaul waved his hands. “Whatever.”

Chant felt the headway he’d been making with his son pull back like a retreating tide. “No, you’re right, Jaul. Let’s have a look at this and see if we can figure it out together.”

The pawnbroker lifted a finger and began to trace the line of symbols decorating the arch. He knew a fair bit about secret alphabets.…

“Do you know what it says?” said Jaul.

“Something about this portal leading to worlds other than our own,” he lied, though he expected it was true enough, anyway.

“Gaffing,” Jaul replied, his voice awed.

Chant nodded. “Exactly.”

“How do we activate it?”

Sharkbite, Chant thought. How should I know? Probably just walk in … Except that this entrance could be part of a network, not a direct link to someplace else. Raneger had suggested such might be the case. If they just walked in, who knew where they’d end up? They should try to figure out how to specify an endpoint.

He glanced back across the courtyard where Demascus and Riltana were trading friendly insults. “Hey, take a look at this, will you?” he called. “The arch seems straightforward enough. Jaul and I think we’ve got it under control, but we’d like a second …”

Something wasn’t right. Gray mist carpeted the entrance tunnel, low and dark, spreading toward his friends. “Demascus!” Chant yelled.

The deva glanced up at Chant and Jaul, looking away from the fog. Chant frantically gesticulated and said, “Behind you!”

The deva glanced back to the courtyard entrance, just in time to see a figure resolve in the mist. A woman with red fingernails like daggers and colorless eyes with tiny voids instead of irises. The red-nailed woman leaped, smashing into him before the deva could get to his feet, and bore him to the sand-strewn floor. She clasped the deva’s head in both hands and tried to bite his neck.

Behind her, dozens of humanoid shapes popped up like mushrooms after a rain. They charged into the courtyard, a flood of pale flesh. Their thrashing limbs blocked Chant’s view of Demascus. From their throats issued jubilant howls.

Waukeen’s empty purse, he thought. We’re trapped! Unless …

“Jaul, through the portal!” he yelled. “Now!”

Chant’s crossbow was in his hand. He didn’t remember drawing it. He aimed at a black-skinned genasi with blood-colored szuldar looking his way. He fired. The single bolt became three, multiplied by the wizardry forged into his weapon. The wooden bolts struck home, and the vampire howled as it burned to ash.

A half-dozen vampires on the periphery turned to look at him and Jaul. His son, meanwhile, stood slack- jawed, too surprised to be properly afraid.

“Through the portal, Jaul!” Chant shouted again. “I’ll cover you.”

“We … we don’t know where it goes! It might-”

“Anywhere’s better than here. Don’t worry, I’m right behind you!”

He hip-checked his son. His girth against Jaul’s lean frame was no contest. The young man tumbled into the mist and was gone. Chant slapped another bolt into his hand crossbow, cranked it back with practiced speed, and fired another three-shot salvo at the advancing, leering vampires. Two went up with satisfying whooshes of flame. The other three paused, expressions of concern flitting over their features.

A voice, possibly female, bellowed, “Where are the paintings, thief? Norjah has sent me to collect them.”

Demascus was suddenly next to Chant, as if he’d been there all along but just edged out of an obscuring shadow. Several of the wounds closed by the healing elixir were laid raw and dripping again, with several new ragged red scrawls.

“Demascus, through the portal!” Chant said. He fired another bolt. This time he dusted three vampires, but only because they were so thickly clotted in the courtyard it would have been more remarkable had he missed.

Demascus took a deep breath and did not go through the portal. Of course not, the damn deva had a hero streak that ran a mile deep. Which was even more evident when he wasn’t channeling the residue of his former glory.

“There’s Riltana!” yelled Demascus, pointing with the tip of his red-runed sword.

The windsoul was running toward them from the far corner of the room, using the heads of the massed vampires like stepping-stones. It was so ridiculous that Chant half gasped, half laughed at the sight.

And then a black iron blade nearly skewered him, barely stopped by a parry from Demascus to a viperquick strike by a vampire in a ragged leather jacket. With a whirl of swords too quick for Chant to follow, the deva disarmed the vampire with one sword and lopped off the creature’s head with the other. Tar-colored blood spattered them both.

“Get her!” screamed the red-nailed leader of the horde. Fanged faces turned in confusion. Of the three or four dozen enraged vampires in the crush, only a few thought to look up. By then the windsoul was past, and more than a few got a heel to the face for their trouble. She reached the arch and dove through. Gone, just like Jaul.

“I hope this goes someplace,” said Demascus, “and doesn’t just disintegrate us, like that green devil face.”

“Devil face? What-?” said Chant.

“I’ll tell you later,” said Damascus, as he fell rather than stepped into the mist.

“Great,” muttered the pawnbroker, stepping through. Vapor, the hue of summertime blooms, swamped his vision.

When the mist cleared, Jaul, Demascus, and Riltana were waiting for him.

“Not disintegrated,” said Demascus, and chuckled.

“Waukeen’s empty purse!” Chant said. “As if we didn’t have enough to worry about, and you go putting notions like that in my head.”

“Well, it was a concern,” said the deva. His mouth twitched on the edge of a grin.

“Where are we?” asked Jaul. The corridor in which they stood was built from the same stone blocks as the courtyard on the other side of the portal. Chant glanced behind him and was relieved to see a misted arch. He’d worried they’d entered someplace without an exit. The naked stone of the corridor stretched only a few tens of feet before it was overrun with a layer of thick gray spiderwebs. Chant couldn’t tell if webs covered the corridor surfaces or actually subsumed it-he suspected the latter. Instead of a square-cut corridor, the path forward was a spiraling woven tunnel.

“A passage only a drow could love,” said Demascus. “We might not be in the world any more, my friends. And if we step into that web tunnel … but I can’t be certain.”

“We should move,” said Riltana, glancing back at the arch. Blood slicked her scalp, and her eyes were tired. “If we can step through without any special key, the vampires will be able to do the same.” Demascus nodded.

“Excuse me, but no one mentioned vampires before,” said Chant. “Why are they chasing us? What paintings were they talking about? And how’d they know where to find us?”

Riltana looked at the floor. The woman vampire had said something about a thief. So it was the windsoul who had provoked them! He should have known.

“Something to talk about once we find someplace safer,” said Demascus. “Let’s move.”

They hustled down the corridor. Under Chant’s feet, the woven floor was only slightly adhesive-sticky enough