20 #2
Astarion blinked blood out of his eyes and let out a whimper for verisimilitude.
The other thing you learned in Szarr Palace was how to sound much more wounded than you actually were.
Fortunately, it appeared the skeletons were not terribly good at searches.
He still had a lockpick up each sleeve and two more, plus a holdout knife in his boots.
The troop of skeletons followed the mummy through the door that Yousen had pointed out earlier.
Up close, it was clear that the craftsman hadn’t been concerned with such niceties as “filing down the pointy bits” or “cleaning the skulls.”
Astarion’s jacket caught on a jagged piece of iron and tore, trailing threads.
So much for this outfit. Ah well, wearing velvet in a dungeon is always a risk.
The mummy led its troop along the ruined streets that Astarion had seen from above. The other skeletons had begun moving again. He saw some clearing debris from tumbledown buildings and others hauling stones. It appeared that renovations to the cult’s compound were ongoing.
The mummy reached another door, this one made of wood banded in iron, and pushed it open.
This section actually had intact ceilings, and the dark interior was lit by a single hanging brazier that burned with the same unpleasant greenish light as those outside.
The moving skeletons cast a symphony of shadows on the walls.
Another mummy sat at a table, playing solitaire. More skeletons flanked an unlit doorway on the far side of the room.
The card-playing mummy looked up. It had either been larger in life than the first one or more bloated when mummification had started, because it was enormous. Its shoulders looked like lumpy anvils strapped to its collarbone, and its linen-wrapped biceps were as big around as Astarion’s thighs.
“Another prisoner,” the first mummy said.
“Cell’s occupied,” the second one said. “Kill him.”
“Excuse me,” Astarion said, “but if I could make a suggestion…?”
Neither mummy appeared interested in his suggestions. One of the skeletons wrapped an arm around his throat. Astarion could feel the bones of its forearm pressing into his neck in two distinct lines.
“Inquisitor will want a look at this one. Kill the one in the cell.”
“Inquisitor wants a look at that one, too.”
“Then put them both in the cell.”
The card-playing mummy, evidently the jailor, contorted its waxy face into a much-put-upon expression. “Might kill each other.”
The first mummy shrugged, indicating that this was not actually its business.
“Told the Inquisitor one cell wasn’t enough, but no, had to keep turning them into tanks…”
The jailor pushed its chair back and stood.
It looked even more melted than the first mummy, its waxy flesh sliding slowly down its body, held in place by inadequate linen wrappings and what looked like improvised suspenders, if suspenders were made of chain and hooked directly into the muscle.
It loomed over Astarion, who didn’t have to try very hard to look cowed. In life, the creature must have been at least six and a half feet tall. “Fine,” it muttered. “I’ll take ’em. But if it dies, I’m telling the Inquisitor who ordered it.”
The first mummy shrugged again. The skeletons who had relieved Astarion of his daggers dropped them onto the table.
The jailor mummy shook its head and reached out with hands that appeared to have been cut back into usable fingers.
It performed a far more thorough pat down, removing the lockpicks from Astarion’s sleeves and yanking off his boots entirely.
He could feel the chill of its touch even through his jacket.
Damnation.
“Come on, then,” the jailor said, clamping one hand over Astarion’s arm. Since the options were to follow or to have it ripped out of the socket, Astarion chose to follow. Half a dozen skeletons trailed behind.
The corridor was surprisingly long, and it branched several times. At the end of one of the branches lay a room that had clearly been converted into a cell by virtue of driving iron bars into the floor and ceiling. Astarion could make out a humanoid figure slumped in one corner.
“Brought you a friend,” the jailor said with a gurgling laugh.
The mummy unlocked the door and swung it open. Four of the skeletons marched inside. Two held swords on the person in the corner, and the other two removed Astarion’s ropes and replaced them with manacles.
“You two play nice,” the jailor said, then turned and stomped away, with the skeletons clattering behind.
The other person in the cell moved with a faint metallic sound.
Armor of some kind, Astarion thought. The little cataloging voice in his mind pointed out that this was a bad thing for the person wearing it, because you didn’t leave armor on a prisoner unless you thought it would be easier to get it off their corpse in the immediate future.
“I’m glad for the company but sorry they caught you,” said a voice like golden gravel. “Are you badly hurt?”
“I’ll let you know in a moment.” Astarion drew up his knees and cautiously rubbed his cheeks against them, wishing that his hands hadn’t been manacled behind him.
Nothing in his face went crunch or twang or squish, which was a good sign.
His nose still hurt, and he was very aware of the bruise across his cheekbone where the mummy had struck him.
He blinked more blood out of his eyes. His ribs felt dreadful, but they didn’t stab when he breathed—at least, not any more than they stabbed when he didn’t breathe.
There was a spot on his right thigh where a skeleton had stomped that was going to bruise right down to the bone.
That is going to turn some truly magnificent colors, too.
All the blues and purples and apple greens. Pity I can’t frame it.
“As dreadfully impressive as all this looks, I can still fight.”
This was more or less true, though he would have said so even if it wasn’t.
There was no point in letting strangers know that you couldn’t fend them off.
He tried to turn his head to look at the other prisoner, and his neck spasmed with pain so intense that it was almost visible.
“Though I can say without fear of contradiction that I have felt better.”
“That I can fix,” said the melodious gravelly voice. The other man moved away from the wall. His feet were manacled, but his hands had only been tied with rope. He reached out and clapped his bound hands firmly on Astarion’s shoulder.
Something blazed up between them, something that felt like raw sunlight poured over his skin, a radiance that sang along Astarion’s nerves and sank into his blood.
For a moment, the sensation was almost pleasant, a burn as kindly as whiskey down his throat, but the whiskey turned to acid, and the burning built until it was a desert sun blazing down to bleach his bones beneath it, and every part of him fell back, screaming,
from the light that wasn’t light at all but something else, something terrible, something holy—
“Um,” said his cellmate. “It’s never done that before.”
Astarion came to himself pressed up against the bars, as far from the other man as his chain would allow. He looked down at his shoulder, expecting to see blackened skin or possibly even burnt bone where the man’s hand had gripped him.
The skin was smooth, without a trace of a blister. Despite causing the sensation of being burned alive from the outside in, the magic—it could only have been magic—had done absolutely nothing to him.
“Never do that again,” Astarion said in a voice that should have made his cellmate cower like a whipped dog.
His cellmate did not cower. He wasn’t even looking at Astarion. He was staring at his own hands as if he’d never seen them before, turning them over in apparent puzzlement.
The green light at the far end of the corridor offered just enough light for Astarion to make out colors, even if the colors were tinted green.
His cellmate was a large man with pupilless white eyes and skin that was probably golden.
There was a scabbed-over wound on his temple, and blood darkened the hair around it, but the rest gleamed like a newly minted coin—although, given the lighting, Astarion would be hard-pressed to guess the denomination.
His face could have been stamped on the selfsame coin—square jaw, aquiline nose, chiseled cheekbones, ears that came to a rounded point. Also, he seemed to be…glowing?
Nine Hells, he is. A faint radiance surrounded him, barely visible unless you looked straight at it.
It wasn’t strong enough to read by, but Astarion imagined it was useful for getting keys into keyholes in the dark.
Probably no one would notice in broad daylight, but in a dark cell, it became obvious.
Aasimar. A child of celestial beings. The white eyes were a dead giveaway, and the glow only cemented it. Astarion’s gaze traveled down across broad shoulders that still bore the ragged remains of a tabard, chain-encased biceps, a breastplate scarred from innumerable battles but still somehow shiny…
“Oh Hells,” said Astarion. “You’re a paladin.”
* * *