Sometime around the second city block, I decided I had become very tired of the whole notion of running.
I'd just done six or seven minutes of high-stress calisthenics, the kind of fighting that used up a great deal of resources very, very quickly, and left you trembling and exhausted, no matter how few injuries you've managed to sustain. I hadn't so much as been scratched during the encounter in the streets, and yet I felt certain I was going to die a horrible death if I didn't find a patch of ground somewhere and just lie down for a spell. My limbs felt heavy, and my breathing was coming in ragged gasps.
As I continued plodding forward, I periodically glimpsed through my lens to follow my quarry's progress and make sure I hadn't lost him. Connor wasn't going very fast, probably due to his limp, and wasn't trying anything clever or bothering to attempt to hide amongst back-street rubble like he'd done during our previous encounter. Possibly he didn't even know I was behind him, though I wasn't going to assume that. There was nothing that I was going to take for granted about this kid anymore, nothing at all.
It turned out that I hadn't really needed the tracking gem this time – Connor ended up running straight to the very first place I would have thought to look for him anyways, probably the only place he could think of going.
I slowed my pace to a walk once in sight of his fortress-like dwelling, and took a few moments to inspect it.
The old Jaedemus Keep was the sort of building they had in mind when they'd invented the word 'dilapidated'. It still looked like a fairly solid five-story building at its core, and it possessed some very respectable stonework, but the outside was dark and dirty, and evidence of neglect and ruin was everywhere you looked. A couple of fruit trees in the front had withered and died, wooden shingles had split and turned grey from exposure to the elements, and what may have once been elegant banners had been shredded to rags of an indeterminate color long ago.
If there weren't a dozen rumors going around about this place being haunted, then the locals simply weren't paying attention.
I checked the lens again. He was upstairs already, at the very top of the ominous structure, and had made it there much faster than I would have considered humanly possible.
Yeah, of course he had.
After climbing over the rather exaggeratedly aggressive iron fence, I quickly skirted the perimeter of the yard, and, under the cover of a few trees that hadn't yet died, I jogged around to the front door. The aging cobwebs running across it told me that Connor hadn't come this way, and thus the door was very likely rigged with an alarm or trap.
The back door was very much the same, and there weren't any windows on the main floor. The closest approachable window was a second-story one, with most of the remaining windows located much higher up. That really wouldn't have been a problem except for the unusual way the keep had been constructed. About two floors up the brick and stone angled away from the center of the keep and became nearly unclimbable, flaring out to form a base for some impressive looking towers set into the side. Very little wall surface was strictly vertical, and dangling from the underside of a rain-slick precipice isn't exactly my idea of a fun time. Even without the rain, and with ample time to do it, attempting something like that risked dashing my brains out on the stone cobbles below.
Second floor window, then. Probably trapped as well. I'd just have to be extra careful.
I scampered up the climbable portion of the wall. The rain picked up a bit just as I neared the window, wind-driven droplets of water smacking into my face and gently tapping my cloak. As much as I wished to get inside and out of the rain, entering this place was not something I wanted to rush. This kid had proved himself to be unusually adept when it came to opportunistic traps, which meant this was going to be just as dangerous as breaking into an active Lord's keep, if not more so.
Opening the window took less time than I'd feared. I managed to crack the rusty lock protecting it with a quick snip of one of my tools. The window opened out, so I applied some oil to the outside of the hinges before slowly pulling the two iron and glass panes apart, hearing only the faintest squeak of protest.
It was a small room. Dark, but then I hadn't really expected torches or anything to be lit in an abandoned keep. I couldn't really see anything except for the floor, which was illuminated by the cloud-darkened sky behind me. The tiles looked like good quality stone, all uniformly square, the sort that just beg for a pressure plate or other weight sensitive trap. I needed something to test the floor with, something solid that I could push against floor tiles, but that wasn't too terribly valuable, just in case it got blown to smithereens. Something like my collapsible metal baton.
The last time I'd seen that particular item it had been laying in the middle of the street several blocks away. I gave a mental sigh.
I came to the conclusion that my saber was expendable enough, drawing it silently as I clung to the stonework around the window. If it got damaged, well, I'd been considering picking up a new one anyways.
Bracing myself, I touched the point to the most inviting looking floor tile. Nothing. Seemed solid. I pushed against it, leaning half-through the window to put a decent amount of weight on it. Still nothing.
I rapped the tile sharply with the point of my sword.
Thwip!
A small, vicious looking dart shot out of the darkness and struck the sword with a clank before careening off the blade and skipping over a couple of floor tiles. The point of the dart was coated with an oily brown substance of some sort. I suspected that allowing it to come into contact with my skin wouldn't be a particularly healthy thing to do.
The nice thing about projectile traps is this - once they're sprung, most of them need to be re-armed by the person who set them. Even though the entire hallway could be practically bristling with sharp, pointy, poison-laced darts, this floor tile was now very likely safe. I tapped it again to see if there was any play in the tile, the sort of thing that indicates a spent pressure-plate trap, the tip of my sword producing another loud clanging noise.
Thwip-tang!
A second dart dashed itself upon my sword before skittering away across the stone squares.
I'd struck the same tile, I was sure of it, and that wasn't good at all. It was about then that I also realized two rather strange things about what had just happened.
Both darts had come from down the hallway, not from the bricks in one of the nearby adjacent walls, where dart traps were typically concealed. As well, both darts had struck my sword perhaps a couple of inches away from the floor.
The boots I wear when burgling are high-topped and quite thick. If you're spotted while stealing something that doesn't belong to you, your most useful asset becomes your feet, and so I take great care to give mine as much protection as I can. Many other Lords feel the same way.
So then, why the deuce would anyone intentionally aim a light projectile like that at an intruder's feet, the one place it was almost certain they'd be sufficiently armored?
I pushed against another floor tile lightly, this time one that was two squares away from the first, nearest the wall.
Nothing. I tapped it forcefully.
Thwip-clink!
Odd. Still striking my sword near the floor, still from down the hallway. Completely different tile, too. On a hunch, I struck the side of the inside wall with my sword, near a crumbling piece of mortar.
Thwip-crack!
Instead of foot height, the dart streaked to where I'd hit the wall, about shoulder height, before ricocheting and spinning crazily away. Whatever was guarding the hallway was triggered by sound.
How in the hell?
Normally if I encountered something like this, I would either spend an hour carefully considering how to best proceed down the hallway, or I'd give the entire thing up as a bad job and have Cyrus spend an evening doing research. Right now I didn't have time for the former, or the latter.
I considered the matter. Very silently.
This was the only way I could get into the keep without risking entry through the front or back doors, which might be rigged with something even worse. A trap like this was, by nature, one half of a combination of traps. It encouraged you to move silently and slowly to bypass it, so no doubt I would find something that made me wish to suddenly move quickly, and perhaps make a noise in the process. I pondered how it could be dealt with.
After about a minute, I came within a hair's breadth of suicidally snapping my fingers with realization.
Leaning through the windowsill, I extended my sword and spent a little time experimenting with exactly how loud a noise needed to be before a dart was launched. It didn't take long to figure out – a whispering scrape didn't trigger anything, but a tap on the stones about the same volume as a quiet cough was just enough. I also tested how long it took to reload darts by rapping the floor several times in succession, noting that a new dart appeared every two seconds or so.
Praying to the god of silence, I eased my way through the open window, soundlessly. Soon I was inside what might have been a small storage room, standing beside the window, staring into the inky blackness of the hallway, remaining absolutely still.
I reminded myself to breathe.
My hand reached with agonizing slowness to my vest, sliding its way very carefully to an inside pocket, two fingers gingerly taking a hold of a cool, spherical object. I pulled my hand out of my vest just as slowly, pulling the bauble out and inspecting it in the insufficient light.
I cursed, mentally, put it gently into one of my outside vest pockets and tried again. I found the small orb I was looking for on my fourth try, about a minute after entering the hallway.
Just as I'd been about to take a slow, anxious breath and begin the first step in my plan, the hallway became illuminated by a jag of lightning, and a thunderous boom erupted from outside. I heard a click and a 'thwip!', catching the barest trace of movement as a dart shot purposefully past my right shoulder, right out the open window.
Right where I'd been perched. If there'd been any thunder at all during that whole time I'd been just sitting there, considering what I should do, I would have very likely taken a dart right in the chest.
Gulp . . .
After whispering a few quick prayers to the god of luck, (as well as a quick nod to the god of fools . . . ) I tossed the bauble into the far corner by the window. It struck the floor with a light click, which was followed by a dart smacking into it a moment later.
Peals of loud, maniacal laughter erupted from the sphere.
A steady stream of darts began launching themselves directly at the giggling marble at two-second intervals, one after the other, each managing to strike its target with remarkable precision. Each new shot sent the sphere rolling or bouncing in a different direction, each hit producing new roars of laughter from the noisy little gadget. I took a shallow breath, timed the appearance of the darts, and started moving down the hallway in short, stuttering bursts.
Every time I heard a dart launch I took two quick steps down the hall and froze, using the time it took for the trap to re-arm itself as my window of opportunity.
Thwip! Step step. Thwip! Step step.
After about ten of these, I calmly walked past the strange dart-launching device that was hanging from the ceiling, sending missile after missile down the hallway with a soft 'phoot' sound. At about the twelfth step I actually smiled at my own cleverness.
Then, after shuffle-step number fifteen, I found the second half of the trap.
An innocent-looking tile made the slightest clicking sound as I stepped on it, depressing the tiniest bit. Shortly after, I heard the whispering hiss of gas being piped into the hallway, and saw that two very solid-looking doors at the end of it were sliding themselves shut in almost perfect silence.
Crap. Just the sort of thing that makes a guy want to move in a hurry.
Taking a deep, carefully silent breath, I turned my shuffle-steps into huge strides, trying to cover as much distance as I could during my two seconds, eyes watching as the doors inched their way shut. They were closing too fast, and I was still about thirty feet away. I wasn't going to make it at my current speed.
Still holding my breath, I took my sword in my left hand and swung at the nearby wall, striking it sharply and taking off down the hallway a split-second later. After a couple of steps I began rapping the stone wall with the point of my sword every time I took a step, hoping that the clanging noise was louder than the noise my boots were making as I ran frantically down the hallway. Darts careened off the wall, one right after the other, some of them alarmingly close.
The doors were two-thirds closed now. I settled for extending my arm to my left, the point of my sword now steadily screeching loudly against the stone bricks of the wall as I quickened my pace to a sprint, hoping it would be enough.
I threw myself head-first through the rapidly shrinking gap between the doors, sailing through the air and landing hard on the floor beyond it, exhaling an explosive 'hoof!' sound as I did.
Then I cursed, and rolled.
A dart sailed through the narrow space between the doors, struck the cobbles I'd been sprawled on top of a mere moment ago, and skipped down the hallway out of view.
The doors finished closing with an apologetic groan, followed by a soft 'click'. Aside from the rapid pounding inside my chest, the only sounds I could make out were the muffled laughter from the other side of the door, as well as a sharp 'thwip' every couple of seconds, the security device still dutifully launching dart after dart at the offending noise.
I lay there several moments, thinking.
That hallway was like nothing I'd ever seen, or heard of . . . or even imagined. It was the kind of impossibly scary thing you might expect to see guarding a very well protected vault, and yet here it was in an unobtrusive hallway. I certainly didn't want to encounter any of the other surprises this place might have in store for me, or some of its better protected areas. No, I needed to get back outside, so I could stick to climbing cold, rain-slick, crumbling rock. Much safer.
I glanced around briefly. This new room was an extension of the hallway, one that led to a large spiral staircase built beside what I assumed was the outside wall of the keep. There was some light coming from it, and as I stood I dipped my head to the left so I could make out the light source.
Another window. Perfect.
It was a reasonable size, weathered glass, arched at the top and set high into the far stairwell wall, an impressive set of spiral stairs standing between me and it. There were a couple of wooden beams around and above it, constructed as part of the support for the stairwell. It looked like a simple grapple would work when it came to getting up there, and the climb wasn't much – about fifteen feet or so. It was low enough that I might be able to walk up to the irregular stone-brick wall and climb up within a few seconds, but I'd have to enter the stairwell to do that.
I was extremely leery of setting a single foot on the stairs, given my recent experience in the hallway, so I opted to remain where I was to start with.
My hands rummaged through my pack until they found my grapple. After inspecting it and securing the rope it was attached to, I swung it a few times and let it fly.
I missed the wooden bracket on my first attempt, my hook and rope bouncing and clattering against the side of the wall, then falling into the stairwell below it. There was a 'clunk' as the iron hook landed on the worn-looking carpet of the steps, and then . . .
The grapple, the stairwell, the window, the entire scene in front of me simply winked out of existence.
I stared at the black expanse of nothing in front of me for a few moments, not really knowing what to think.
Dumbly, I tugged on the bit of rope I still held and pulled it close until I could see the end of it. It had been severed, cleanly, and gave every indication of having been on fire a mere second or two ago. There were scorch marks on the end, and it was warm to touch.
The stairwell scene blinked back into existence a few seconds later, and I saw my blackened grapple laying on the floor at the base of the stairs. It was smoking slightly.
I decided I had no wish to enter the stairwell. That seemed like a terrible idea all of a sudden.
I also didn't wish to pry the door behind me open and go back the way I came. I didn't want to move at all - I simply wanted to stand there, very still, not moving an inch. Forever.
After a while, my brain stopped gibbering in terror at my sudden predicament, and instead began working on the problem at hand. I'd thrown my grapple, and it had fallen short. The noise hadn't triggered the appearance of all that black – I'd heard the metal hook careen off of the wall and watched it fall to the steps below. Everything had happened when the metal grapple actually hit the steps.
The grapple was blackened, but not gone. The rope that had been attached to it had turned into a faint trail of ash. Whatever it was that happened beyond the veil of black, it affected things like rope much more than things like metal. Either way, I didn't want any part of my body even remotely near that space if and when the stairwell did that thing again.
When breaking into a Lord's keep, the objective is usually to try to get in and out without leaving any indication you'd been there in the first place. This was different. I could break this device, smash it to bits, do anything I wanted, just so long as I was able to get past it.
Taking my shortsword, I hacked the remaining rope (which was pretty useless, now that it no longer had a grapple) into smaller pieces to test out a few theories regarding the stairway itself. Many experimental tosses and several smoldering piles of ash later, I learned that the black curtain was triggered by anything coming into contact with the stairs, no matter how light. The wall, the trim, the bannister, no other area did anything, just the stairs.
So how could I break it?
I tried small bits of crumbling rock, some more pieces of rope, tossing them from a safe distance while trying to get a sense of the thing. Each time, the curtain of darkness would descent from out of nowhere, sit noiselessly in front of me for several seconds, and then disappear from view, leaving whatever I'd tossed into it either smoking ominously, or leaving no trace of it at all. Twenty or so times later, it became obvious there was no point in trying to use up all its 'charges', or whatever kept it running. I wasn't going to wear it down that way.
I tossed in various types of sling ammo - the kind that was used to douse torches, disable traps, corrode metal, explode into a ball of adhesive goo, remove the air from a confined space, nullify the presence of magic . . . all of which appeared to do nothing. I even screwed up my courage and tried tapping the bottommost step with the blade of my sword, which turned out to be a terrible idea. Once the curtain of darkness came down, my sword instantly became too hot to hold. I quickly let go and sent it clanging to the floor, where it sizzled and popped, a large black stripe now decorating its point.
In my desperation, I even tried a concussion flechette, tossing the explosive device onto one of the steps with much trepidation. The only difference between it an my previous results was a gentle 'pop' from beyond the veil, and the presence of some superficial shrapnel damage to the steps and wall around where the thing had landed.
The more I experimented, the more obvious it became – I had to scale the wall, up to the window, without any part of me touching the steps. Or rather, without anything whatsoever touching the steps.
That, or I could just sit there and wait to die from starvation.
It was a harder decision than you might think.
My burgling kit has quite a bit of stuff for climbing - things that were designed to help me climb a wall, pull me up to safety in case of an emergency, things like that. What I needed was something that could lift me up and get me to that wall in a hurry.
I knew of just the thing. If I could get onto the wall without touching the steps, I could easily climb the rest of the way. If I could get all the way to the window, so much the better.
After attaching a pair of climbing spikes to my palms, I reached into the satchel behind my waist and pulled out a medium-length rod that sort of resembled a crossbow, but without the 'bow' part. Once I'd retrieved it, I did an extremely serious check of all of my belongings, making sure that there was nothing on me that wasn't securely fastened to my person, or that might come loose while in the middle of climbing. Then, I checked everything a second time.
Then, I checked again.
Taking careful aim, I depressed the underside lever of the device, causing it to explode with a 'bang' and shoot a glowing sphere upwards. Lazy circles of twine corkscrewed behind it as the marble sped away from me and slammed high into the stone wall, approximately six feet above the window. Once that was done, I said a quick prayer and released the depressed lever, clutching the wooden stock of the rod for everything I was worth.
I was yanked into the air and sent hurtling towards the window. There was a slight 'pop' that came from one of my shoulders, the pain almost making me forget to position my legs to absorb the shock of the oncoming wall. Letting out a cry of effort, I twisted my legs beneath me and bent my knees, feet cushioning my impact against the unforgiving grey stone. I lightly pushed myself away from the wall, the device I held continuing to pull me upwards. A moment later, I was within arms reach of the window sill.
I reached out to grab onto the ledge with one hand, my other still desperately clinging to my climbing apparatus.
A section of stonework crumbled away in my gloved hand, pieces of stone and mortar scattering out of my grasp and bouncing off some of the neighboring stone, falling out of reach and towards the booby-trapped stairs below.