A Thief in the Night

chapter Thirty-two

The five of them moved cautiously toward the center of the room. Mörget moved restlessly around the rest of them, his axe always pointed toward the darkness. Slag moved forward as if there was nothing at all to worry about.

Croy wished he could feel as confident.

The Vincularium was supposed to be empty. That had been a fact of life for as long as he could remember. Every knight of Skrae knew the story of the place, and that it was shunned. The king—and the king’s father, and all his antecedents, as far as Croy knew—had always treated the place as something to be forgotten about, a legacy of a dark past no one wanted to dredge up. Everyone agreed there was no need to guard it, because no one would be foolish enough to go inside. Whether or not it was haunted was a question of theology rather than anything practical.

Yet Mörget had tracked his demon here, and now they had proof they were not alone. It was not a question of whether they were in danger inside the abandoned dwarven city. It was only a question of what form that danger would take.

The weathered cobblestones under their feet were the only thing Croy could see in that dark place. His lantern illuminated nothing else for a long while as they moved, so that he almost felt they were wandering through a limitless space with a floor and no other features whatsoever—some other realm, like the pit of the Bloodgod but with less tortured souls and more of the emptiness of pointless existence. He could imagine such a place as the afterlife for those who had been neither good nor evil while alive, those who had accomplished nothing at all. The thought sent a shiver down his back. For a man like Croy, who endeavored always to make the world a better place, such inactivity and pointlessness was the ultimate sin.

Such thoughts did little to ease his anticipations.

When he first spotted a faint pale outline in the distance, he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him. Yet as they approached, it became more distinct. Something square and light in color, maybe five feet high. When they came close enough to see it in detail, Croy thought it looked like a very small house. It had a peaked roof and plain walls. Dwarven runes were inscribed on one wall, but they were in a formal, overwrought script he could not decipher at all.

Slag saw Croy’s interest and waved to get his attention. Then the dwarf pressed his hands together as if in prayer and closed his eyes.

Thinking he understood, Croy drew a small medallion from inside his tunic. The golden cornucopia was the symbol of the Lady, and he wore it always on a chain around his neck. He had received it when he made a pilgrimage to Her shrine at Strayburn. Now, he was asking if the little house was a dwarven shrine or altar.

Slag looked confused. Then he rolled his eyes. With a sigh that sounded like a windstorm in that silent place, he lay down on the cobbles and repeated his earlier gesture, hands pressed together and eyes closed.

Croy understood then, and took an immediate step backward. The little house was a dwarven sarcophagus. Definitely something he wanted to avoid.

Unfortunately he had little choice. As they proceeded farther toward the center of the enormous chamber, more of the mausoleums appeared in their light. First a rare scattering, then more and more until they had to wind their way between the closely spaced tombs, climbing over some in places. They came in a variety of shapes and sizes—some were just slabs set into the cobbles, others stout obelisks, and one was even spherical, standing on four stout legs. Yet they were alike in their plainness and height. None were so high Croy could not see over them.

A city of dwarven dead, a field of ancient bones hidden away in the darkness under the world.

Such a place could not help but be haunted. The hair on Croy’s neck stood on end, and he wanted to be away as quickly as possible. Yet the demon must lie somewhere beyond. Only duty could get him through that terrible place.

In time the tombs grew farther apart, and eventually the last of them fell behind, just a pale shadow in the dimness. They kept walking, moving toward the center of the chamber. It seemed impossible that such a large space could exist under the ground, yet the cobbles showed no sign of giving out.

At least—not until they did, with a suddenness that nearly spelled Croy’s doom. Without warning the floor simply ended, opening up into empty space. He managed to stop well clear of the edge, but Malden had no warning and blundered into him from behind. Croy spread his arms and legs to try to balance on the edge, but one of his feet went over and he felt his balance shifting. It seemed he was falling into the gloom, into nothingness—and his panicked brain thought that pit must go down forever.

Then Mörget’s massive hands caught his arms and roughly hauled him back, away from the edge. Croy let out a desperate breath and calmed himself. He brushed down the front of his brigantine and tried to control his vertigo.

Malden mimed an apology, spreading his hands outward in supplication. Croy nodded brusquely, then reached up to quietly slap Mörget’s arm in thanks. The barbarian just shrugged.

The five of them spread out along the edge, their lights showing only where the floor ended and the abyss began. The edge was curved, like the wall they’d left behind, but it was more obvious here. It seemed the center of the round room was only empty space.

It was not perfectly featureless, however. The little light that strayed down into the abysm showed it was lined by a sheer wall of closely fit bricks. Knobs of some colorless fungus stood out from the bricks like ears and noses.

Slag held up one hand, two fingers pointing down. He bent and then straightened each in turn to suggest a pair of legs walking down a flight of stairs. Croy nodded and together they headed around the edge of the pit, careful to watch their footing.

They found no stairs leading down. However, off to the left the featureless floor was interrupted by a pillar of smooth rock that stretched upward into the dark. The pillar stood athwart the edge, descending into the depths just as it lifted upward. Bolted to this pillar was a massive iron chain, as thick as Croy’s bicep, that stretched across the pit, much like the line Slag had used to bisect his charcoal circle. Malden was already examining this chain as if he intended to walk on it.

Mörget stripped off his pack and rummaged inside it. He took out a carefully folded tent and started ripping it to pieces. It quickly became apparent what he had in mind. He broke a piece from one of the tent poles, then tore a strip of canvas and wrapped it tightly around the end of the pole. The canvas was waxed to make it waterproof, but that also made it highly flammable. Lighting it from the candle in his lantern, Mörget soon had a wildly burning torch in his hand.

Before Croy could stop him, the barbarian whirled around and tossed his torch far out over the face of the abyss. It fell rapidly away from them, letting them see a little more as it fluttered past.

The pit was illuminated only for a moment, but in that time Croy made out several interesting details. The opening in the floor was at least two hundred feet across. It was perfectly circular, and it was crossed only by three massive chains like the one Malden was investigating. The chains met in the center of the pit, where they anchored an enormous round globe of crystal, thirty feet across.

Croy could not begin to guess what purpose that globe served. He was far too busy, anyway, following the brand with his eyes as it fell into the depths. He could see the pit went down for hundreds of feet, maybe even a thousand. It was perfectly cylindrical in shape, and its walls were everywhere streaked and encrusted with the fungal growths. It was not, however, totally uniform. Around its circumference countless openings showed—some small and square, like windows, others very broad like galleries. The pit must be like a vast tower turned inside out, so that its various floors were on the outside of its wall. Floors was the correct word, he thought—from where he stood, he could look down on dozens of levels of the dwarven city. Every one of those galleries might open on whole suites of rooms, broad halls, winding tunnels—even other shafts like this one.

For the first time Croy had an inkling of the vast size of the Vincularium. He had seen what the dwarves called cities in the North, and was disappointed by how cramped and narrow they were. He had always imagined the Vincularium would be the same: a small village’s worth of homes and workshops built into a series of enlarged mine shafts.

This city, though, might be as big as the Free City of Ness, if all of its houses and churches and palaces and shops and manufactories were stacked neatly on top of each other, then buried under a mountain. The entirety of Helstrow could have been dropped into that central shaft and not filled its volume.

“By Sadu’s burning arsehole,” Malden swore aloud. After the prolonged silence, Croy felt the words like rocks raining down on his shoulders. He tried to shush the thief, but the others ignored him.

“Indeed,” Cythera said. “Slag, did you have any idea it could be so big?”

Even the dwarf looked awestruck. “F*ck no.”