carefully spanned the gap to the shelf, barely able to cross with his short legs. There he made a few passes over Pinch's fakes and then casually replaced them with the goods the rogue had handed over. The dwarf studied the frauds for a moment and then casually tossed them through the insubstantial floor.
By the time Iron-Biter leapt back to Pinch's side of the concealed pit, the rogue could feel his ribs creak, crushed to the limit of their bearing. 'I… die,' he struggled to say with the last air in his lungs, 'there will be… questions.'
Iron-Biter looked down, his beard bristling as his lips curled in a broad smile. 'You are a fool, Janol, Pinch, or whomever. No one at this court cares about you. Your disappearance will ease their worries. You were never missed and never wanted here.'
With that, the dwarf seized the edge of the arras and spun Pinch to the edge of the pit. 'Let the worms have you!' and with a single, twisted syllable, the rug suddenly released its hold and Pinch rolled through the floor and into the darkness.
15
Released from the carpet's brocade embrace, Pinch fell into the fetid darkness. In the absence of light and form, only his heartbeat set the length of his fall. In the two beats it took to hit bottom, Pinch's thoughts were a dichotomy of the disquieting certainty of absolute death and the black pleasure of malevolent joy. Doom acquired a dark humor.
I'm going to die as maggot food. Not the best of epitaphs-but at least nobody will know.
Pinch smashed into the squirming mass, writhing in eager expectation of his arrival as if the blind, pulpy white worms could sense his coming. It was like landing in a bed of eggs, although eggs don't wriggle and scrape underfoot. They were a deeper churning sea of corruption than expected, and Pinch's body crashed into them like a rock hurled into the waves, splattering the maggots against the tower walls
Nonetheless, there was solid rock below, and though his plunge was slowed by the greasy, hungry mash, Pinch cracked the bottom with a brutal blow. Ribs aching, wind gone, bleeding from his scalp, the rogue lay dazed in the center of an ichor-stained crater of grublike life.
Almost immediately the living walls of that crater began to flow inward, the vermin tumbling over each other in a churning, squeaking wave. Collectively they hungered for him. They flowed over Pinch's legs, flooded through the rips and tears of his doublet, poured into his eyes and ears, and wriggled into his mouth and nose. They crawled over his tongue with their sweet, wet bodies. Pinch could not hold back his desperate spasms for air, but each breath ended in a choking gurgle as the fat maggots plopped down his throat. Things crawled under his hose, rippled beneath the cloth of his doublet, and burrowed into his hair. And all the time the little rasping mouths gnawed and scraped, a thousand stings until his skin was awash with slime and blood.
The morbid detachment of his fall was strangled out of the rogue by the doom that was upon him. His death was real and here, choking in lungfuls of mindless larvae, eaten slowly and helplessly alive in this bed of maggots. Frantic, without thought, without plan, Pinch thrashed madly, puking his guts as he weakly fought to gain his feet. The weight of the vermin crushed him, the smooth stone floor was slick with their pulped bodies, so that all he could do was flail like a drowning man. Kill them, smash them, pulp them-it was all he could think of to do; a completely hopeless effort against the countless numbers that filled the pit.
Like a madman Pinch slipped and smashed all about the floor, scattering the bones of his unfortunate predecessors, tripping over their now-worthless weapons. He raged and choked and spit, but none of it made a bit of difference. The maggots kept crawling, greedily lapping up the oozy stew of skin, ichor, blood and sweat that coated Pinch's skin.
In desperation, the man ripped at his clothes, determined to eliminate the hiding places of his tormentors. His boots were full of a squishy mass, his hose drooping with pockets of larva. Without a concern for the cost or the tailoring, he rent it all to shreds: the parti-colored stockings from Waterdeep, the Chessentian black silk doublet. He was determined to have it all off, even in patches and shreds. It was the only thought his panic-gripped mind could fixate on.
It was in the process of that tearing and rending that Pinch's fingers closed on something hard and metal next to his chest. The man didn't consider what it was or why it chose now to come to his grasp, but seized on it as a weapon, something to crush the hateful maggots with. Fingers clenched about the object and swung it over his head to strike with more force than was ever necessary.
Just as he was about to hammer home, a sun exploded in his grasp. Coruscating light flared from between his fingers and probed throughout the pit. Where it touched the maggot-thick floor, the ground bubbled and sizzled in a seething roast of putrid flesh. The maggots shrieked with the hissing pop of their fat bodies as their guts boiled away. Cloying smoke, the scent of burned fat and boiled vinegar, filled the tower and roiled out the pit-hole like a chimney. It was wet and thick, half steam, half ash, and it clung to Pinch but he was too amazed to notice.
The rogue was frozen, too incredulous to move. His hand burned like he'd pulled a coal from the fire, but even that could not break his paralysis. At best he twisted his gaze up, trying to see what was happening to his hand, but the light burned until his eyes ached and his forearm vanished into the brilliance. It was as if he had thrust his hand into the sun like a protean god playing with the heavens.
What is happening to me?
There were no answers. The blaze continued until Pinch's eyes could no longer stand it. The pain racked his hand. Gradually the sizzling squeaks of the maggots faded and the roils of smoke began to fade away. And then the light was gone.
Pinch dropped the thing like a hot stone; it had scorched his hand like one. It hit the ground with a metallic clank. Pinch looked at his hand and there, crusted in the burned flesh of his palm, was the brand of a half-sun. The edges were charred black and the impression oozed no blood, the flesh seared shut by the heat. Gingerly, Pinch tried to flex his hand, only to be stopped by a wave of pain.
Around him the smoke was clearing and as it went, the man's eyes, watering almost shut, also slowly cleared. In the dim light, he could see the room clearly for the first time. The maggots were gone, save for a feeble few that wiggled in the heaps of powdery ash that covered the floor. The bones of other thieves were still there, scoured whiter than they had ever been. Their weapons gleamed in the dim light from above, spotlessly free of rust, like a knight's armor after his squire has finished with it. The walls were pinkish white and marked with fountains of soot.
Numbly Pinch brushed away the larva that still clung to the shreds of his clothes or had wormed their way into his curly hair. He sweated blood and slime, his clothes were in tatters or burned to ash, and his hand throbbed with pain, but Pinch could only marvel that he was still alive.
He spotted the thing he'd held, lying in the ash at his feet. It was the half-sun disk of the Morninglord, the artifact he'd stolen in Elturel. He was afraid to touch it.
Wisps of smoke seemed to rise up from the amulet, but at last he hesitantly lifted it by its broken thong. Close up it looked unchanged, the same chunk of inert jewelry it had always been. When he compared it to his hand, he could see immediately that the brand and the design were the same.
What had happened? This was the amulet of the Dawnbreaker or something like that, Lissa had claimed. Somehow, he must have triggered its power or done something that brought it to life. Try as he could, though, he couldn't figure what. Fear overrode all his memories of the moment when it had happened.
'Pinch!' Sprite's thin voice echoed from above. Pinch looked up to see a little curly head peering through the floor.
'Sprite?'
'Gods, you're alive!' they blurted in unison.
'What happened, Pinch?'
'Sprite, get me a rope.'
'First I gets jumped by a dwarf and then when I come up here I nearly choke in the smoke coming out of the floor, and that's how I knew you was down there.'
