Ghosts of Ascalon (guild wars), Page 2

"It hurts a bit," Killeen said as she craned her neck around, the glow in her large eyes dimming. Then she noticed the grim look on Dougal's face, and she blinked and rallied herself enough to ask questions.

  "Do you think I'm dying? How can you tell? Is there some special way to know?" She tried to ask more, but a coughing fit stopped her. Her skin was lightening to a pale yellow around the wound and spreading to the rest of her body.

  While Dougal turned her over and held her, the norn and the golem began smashing a pack of spider-shaped shadows into a blue-black paste. Dougal hunkered down over the weakened sylvari to protect her from the flying bits of dried bone and arachnid with his body. He looked down at her face, golden and pale.

  Dougal realized he had violated his first rule. He was going to feel horrible if she died.

  He glanced back to see Gyda breathing hard and holding her hammer in a two-handed grip. Splats of spider corpses formed a ring around her. Clagg's golem had ground out a mushy blue mixture beneath its stone feet.

  Once the slaughter ended, Dougal saw that the sylvari had passed out, and he beckoned the others to her side.

  "Raven's wings," Gyda said, barely breathing hard from all the exertion. "She's getting paler than you, little man."

  "It's the poison," Dougal said. "It's working fast."

  Clagg climbed down from the harness on Breaker's front to get a better look at the sylvari. "I estimate she has only a few minutes remaining before the venom takes her. Do either of you have a potion, poultice, or spell that could aid her?"

  Gyda shrugged. Dougal grimaced and said, "Do I look like an alchemist to you?"

  "Given your background," Clagg said, "I thought you might have stolen one somewhere. No matter: I have something that should do the trick right here."

  Clagg rummaged around in a pack he wore strapped diagonally over one shoulder and across his chest, producing a clear vial filled with a viscous blue liquid. He dribbled the contents of the vial into Killeen's pale mouth, past lips that had gone dry as autumn leaves.

  Clagg stood back up and recorked the vial. "That should be sufficient to prevent her expiration," he said, "at least in the short term." He bent over the sylvari and said loudly, "This will be coming out of your share." Clagg smacked the norn on her kneecap and added, "Strap her body to the back of my golem."

  Gyda scooped up Killeen as if the sylvari were a limp doll.

  "If we take her straight back up to Divinity's Reach, she should be fine," Dougal said.

  "All too true," Clagg said, "but we've not made it this far to turn back now."

  "Forget it," Dougal said. "We're down a member. This expedition is over." He reached to take Killeen from Gyda. The norn was a statue and wouldn't let go. Brushing Dougal aside, Gyda moved around the back of the golem and began to laboriously craft a suitable lashing from rope and the back of the harness.

  Dougal glared at Gyda but spoke to Clagg. "We get back to the city and we get her taken care of. Then we come back later, when we're all healthy."

  "We don't have time for that," Clagg said as he scrambled back up into the armored seat hanging from his golem's chest.

  "This is a boneyard," said Dougal, exasperated, turning to glare at the asura. "They're all dead. I'm sure any other spiders will wait. What's the rush?"

  Clagg, now looking down at Dougal, raised his eyebrows and clicked his tongue. "If I figured out who is buried here, then others may have as well. Knowledge propagates. We press on. The Golem's Eye awaits."

  Dougal had seen the greed that danced in Clagg's eyes before in others. It was a herald for disaster. Greed made people careless, and in tombs like this, being careless made you dead.

  "That's insane. I'm heading back to the Skull Gate and Divinity's Reach. I know the way. I'll take Killeen with me." He moved toward the back of the golem, but Gyda's immense form loomed up before him.

  Clagg cleared his throat. "I'm afraid we can't let you abandon us quite yet," the asura said. "Your presence raises our chances of success, even if only by a few percent. That's why I hired you in the first place. You stay with us."

  Dougal snarled, more at himself than Clagg. "I don't have a sword."

  Clagg gave Dougal a cold smile. "I didn't hire you for your sword. I hired you for your mind, such as it is."

  Gyda let out a cruel chuckle.

  Dougal looked at the other two tomb robbers. Without a blade, it wouldn't be a fair fight against either one, and even properly armed it would be a chancy encounter. Heading back alone would mean that Killeen would be left with them, and she would perish when their stupidity brought about their own demise.

  For a long moment Dougal glared at them, then turned, picked up his guttering torch, and pressed deeper into the crypts beneath the city. Gyda marched along behind him, kicking up bone fragments that bounced off Dougal's heels. Clagg guided Breaker after them from the rear, the golem showing no sign of noticing the unconscious Killeen's weight on its back. At each intersection, Clagg would check his glowing map and choose the most inconvenient route.

  Dougal spotted several more traps as they grew closer to the tomb, and he made quick work of them, rendering them useless. Similarly, the few locks he encountered were easily sprung by the fistful of steel tools he kept in a moleskin pouch. They moved forward in silence now, except for the regular orders from Clagg and Killeen's occasional moan. And through it Dougal thought about the asura whose tomb they were going to rob.

  Blimm.

  When Clagg first hired him, Dougal rooted through ancient texts and tomes in the city's archives but learned damned little about Blimm. He had to hope it would be enough. Blimm, a genius even by asuran standards, had lived a couple centuries back. He served his apprenticeship as a golemancer, a maker of golems, with Oola, another legendary member of that diminutive race. After leaving her service, Blimm made his home in what would become Divinity's Reach, where he made (supposedly) some amazing advances in golem construction that were now lost to time.

  Blimm's greatest triumph, according to Clagg, was the creation of a large mystic gemstone, infused with arcane energy. The stone was called the Golem's Eye, and apparently was lost along with Blimm's knowledge and the location of the asura's tomb.

  Until now. Clagg had uncovered that knowledge, and rounded up a krewe in the asura fashion: talents gathered together with a specific goal. For this goal, that meant spellcaster, muscle, trapspringer, and leadership, the leadership supposedly provided by Clagg and unquestioned by the rest, entered the crypts in search of the Golem's Eye.

  "Why have we stopped?" Clagg shouted from the back of the marching order.

  "We're stuck," said Dougal, trying to keep the relief out of his voice.

  He was faced with a simple thing, a door bound in bands of iron. Clagg piloted his golem forward and shook his head at the human's reluctance.

  "Open it," said Clagg.

  "Can't," said Dougal. "It's not locked, it's stuck. Swollen in the frame. The lock doesn't matter. It might as well be a wall."

  "I know how to handle walls," said Clagg. "Gyda?"

  The norn stepped up and motioned for the human and asura to step aside. Dougal pulled back, half hoping for some trap he hadn't seen to suddenly reveal itself.

  Gyda stood in front of the door, staring at it, and for a moment Dougal thought the norn was trying to wither the door with her glare. Then she growled a deep, feline growl. White fur began to sprout from her exposed flesh, and for a moment it was as if her armored form were overlaid with another, ghostly image of a great beast. Then the image solidified, and Gyda was transformed into a hulking two-legged feline, her pelt snow white with black spots, her armor and weapons subsumed into the new creation.

  Gyda had summoned her totem, the snow leopard. She sprang forward, her heavy paws slamming into the door.

  The door held, but the hinges did not, and the entire door flew off its frame and back into the room. Even Dougal was impressed with the norn's strength and prowess, and he started to say, "That was ver
y…"

  His praise died in his throat as Gyda snorted and said, "That is why your people are dying out and better races are taking your place."

  Dougal reddened with anger but just pressed past Gyda, holding his torch high, into another passage with more bones lining the wall. Dougal was convinced that Divinity's Reach, the shining human city, was built on a mountain of bones.

  "One thing I never understood about Blimm…" Dougal called back over his shoulder to Clagg.

  Clagg cackled. "I would guess a bookah like you could fill Blimm's tomb with the things you don't understand," he said.

  Dougal ignored the crack. "Bookah" was an asuran term for humans, and not a very complimentary one. "I always heard that asura traditionally burn their dead. But not Blimm. Why did he build a tomb in the first place?"

  "At the end of his life, he didn't believe in the Eternal Alchemy: that we are all part of a greater equation," said Clagg. "Blimm considered himself a function apart. That's likely why he made so much progress with necromantic constructs, using bone and dead flesh in his golemtric creations. He was willing to test ideas no lesser asura would consider."

  "And since he didn't fit in with other asura, he didn't want any of them to enjoy the results of his research," said Dougal.

  "Close, but that's not quite all of it," said Clagg. "He kept strange company in his later years. Humans. Necromancers. No offense, sapling," he added over his shoulder. Killeen responded with a grunted moan.

  "Sounds full of himself," said Gyda. The norn's interjection surprised Dougal, who had guessed she wouldn't bother listening to Clagg and him blather on. "But then, what asura isn't?"

  Clagg barked a cold laugh at that. "Many of my fellows have outsized egos, I agree, but Blimm was a raving paranoiac on top of that. They say that some of the best minds were the most disturbed. And Blimm was definitely disturbed."

  The passage beyond opened into a wide hall lit by unnatural light. At the far end, a staircase made of polished green stone banded in bronze led up to a great brazen door flanked by great bowls of blue-green flame that flickered from unnatural sources. The gilded frame of the door was carved with the swooping rays and tangents of the asuran alphabet, which danced in the unearthly radiance. Dougal, despite himself, was speechless.

  "Gentlefolk," said Clagg smugly, tucking away his glowing map, "we have arrived. Welcome to Blimm's tomb."

  They climbed the steps three abreast, Dougal flanked and overshadowed by the larger norn and asura-piloted golem. The stairs themselves were wide and flat, almost a ramp up to great double doors.

  Dougal shot a glance at Killeen, slung to the golem's back like a child in a cradleboard. She managed a weak smile and tried to raise an arm. Perhaps Clagg's potion was having some effect, or the sylvari's own recuperative powers were kicking in.

  They reached the top. Dougal feeling like a supplicant in the great temple. A large steel bas-relief image, as tall as Dougal himself, hung to one side, as if emerging from the wall itself. It portrayed the image of a golem of the ancient style staring back at all who approached. A bright red gem sat affixed in the carving's stubby head. Gyda gasped at the sight of it.

  The norn reached out and pried the gem from the door. She considered it for a moment, then squeezed it in her bare hand as if it were an overripe nut. It crunched between her fingers, and a moment later she opened her fist to let a handful of pink dust cascade from it.

  "A fake," she said with a dismissive sigh. "To have found such a grand treasure so easily would have shown a real lack of imagination on the part of your Blimm."

  Clagg scoffed. "You really think that an asura like Blimm would be foolish enough to leave the Golem's Eye mounted on the outside of the door?"

  Dougal barely stifled a laugh at the scorn dripping from Clagg's lips. It was good to see someone else at the end of Clagg's verbal lash.

  "I have seen things far more foolish in my own lands," Gyda said.

  "Or in any mirror you passed," Dougal muttered as he stepped forward to examine the writing scrawled over the door and frame.

  "Hold! What did you-"

  Dougal cut the norn off with a wave of his hand. "Shush. Reading."

  "You can read this?" said Clagg, with mild surprise.

  "You did bring me here for my mind," said Dougal, a little sharper than he had intended.

  He stared for a moment at the words carved into the surface of the door. They were written in asuran script but used an archaic dialect popular before the subterranean asura had been forced to the surface more than 250 years earlier. It was a half-mathematical, half-structured sentence, and the syntax would make a human scribe take to the bottle. Many asura could no longer even read it. According to Dougal's research, Blimm's paranoia had driven him to write his notes in this script for that exact reason.

  Dougal ran his fingers along the text as if he could peel the meaning from it with his fingernails. "It's very old, but I think I can make it out." He cleared his throat and began to read aloud: " 'Here lies Blimm, the greatest of the golemancers, favored counselor of Livia, apprentice to Oola, whose brilliance he has surpassed, the finest mind to grace Tyria in his or any other generation-' "

  "Yes, yes, yes," Clagg said impatiently. "Blah, blah, blah. Get on to the promises of curses on any who would disturb his rest. There may be something useful there."

  Dougal shrugged and skipped over the next several words. "Here we go: 'Let those who would dare to disturb his rest be cursed for eternity by the bones that line these tombs. Let the earth rise up against them and their remains serve as a testament of his greatness. Let their remains join those that surround him.' It goes on like that for a while."

  "How absolutely human of Blimm. He must have spent far too much time in the sun," said Clagg. "Sounds like standard-issue warnings, though. All those tomb-door epitaphs read the same. 'Look on me and know fear,' 'Leave me be lest I haunt your nights,' and so on and so on. Toothless. "

  "That doesn't mean they're not true." Dougal scowled.

  "Please," said Clagg. "If these people had the power to do what they claimed, they'd still be wandering the world in one form or another. Those are just words."

  Gyda laughed at this, a low rumbling under which lay a note of malice. "If this Blimm of yours is beneath your notice, then why are we bothering to rob his grave?"

  "Blimm was one of the most impressive golemancers ever," said Clagg. He patted Breaker's stone chest. "Most of the time, you need several arcanic motivators to move a golem's exo-frame about at a reasonable speed: at least one for each joint, plus another for the senses. And you need to arrange them in a very particular way or it all falls apart.

  "Blimm, though, figured out a way to imbue a fist-sized ruby with the same amount of power as you see in Breaker here. His secret died with him, but legend has it that it was buried with him too. Once I get my hands on the Golem's Eye, I should be able to reverse engineer the process and establish myself as the greatest golemancer of this age."

  Gyda held up a large hand, her brow furrowed in what Dougal thought was confusion. "For someone so small, you talk a great deal. Let's find this ruby of yours and be gone. I would like to quit this place." She stared hard at the double doors, and Dougal knew what she was considering.

  "Hold on," he said, holding up his bag of tools. "Let's try this the easy way first."

  Dougal stepped up to the hole left in the golem's forehead. The bas-relief was hollow, and beyond it was a maze of thin wires and interlocking gears, some of them glowing softly of their own light. Dougal opened his moleskin pouch, selected a thin flat tool with an end that looked like an asuran summation sign, and slipped it into the gap. He twisted it, and the great double doors rumbled outward. Gyda and Clagg had to step back down the broad steps.

  The room within was circular, its walls and domed ceiling jutting with the bones that adorned the rest of the crypt. The granite floor was set with a pattern like slices of a pie, forming a series of concentric circles centered on the bier
in the middle of the room.

  The bier at the center of the pattern was a pile of skulls, although from the doorway Dougal was hard-pressed to say if they were real skulls or just carved stonework. Probably the former, he decided, to instill fear into would-be robbers. Atop the bier squatted a large marble box, its sides etched with the swirling script of the asura. Dominating the lid of the sarcophagus was a larger-than-life effigy of the deceased, dressed in ornate stone robes gilded with precious metals, its arms crossed over its chest.

  And hovering over the forehead of the reclining stone form floated a red gem the size of Clagg's fist. It turned and glimmered in the light from the door.

  Clagg had Breaker nudge Dougal forward. "Do your job," said Clagg.

  Dougal pushed back. "My job is to spring locks and locate traps."

  Clagg sniffed. "You are guaranteeing that there are no further traps and that that gem floating there is free for the taking?"

  Dougal did not respond, but Gyda clapped him on the back. "Get in there," she growled. "Get the ruby for us-or I'll toss you on top of the coffin from here."

  She reached for him, intent on carrying out her threat, and Dougal stepped into the room. Safe from his companions for the moment, he pulled a length of thin rope from his pack, uncoiled it, and tossed an end to Clagg. The asura made the rope fast around his golem's waist. Dougal held the rope with one hand, wrapping it over his wrist and letting it play out behind him as he advanced. The stonework felt spongy beneath his feet, like a road after a soaking spring rain. It looked solid enough, but Dougal chose his steps carefully as he moved toward the center of the room.

  On nearing the coffin, Dougal could clearly make out the asuran script that he'd seen on the door. From what he could read, it repeated many of the same warnings found on the doorplate, only in more strident and emphatic tones.

  Dougal dropped the remaining few loops of rope at his feet and stood on his toes, leaning over the sarcophagus perched atop its bier of bones. Above Blimm's forehead, the gem danced in the doorway's light, its facets catching and reflecting the glow. This was no paste-work fake.