imp

DM

First light finds the camp on the rise — stone at their backs, the fire a ring of cold coals, the marsh flat and pewter-colored below. The night gave them nothing worse than dew. Barnaby's calf has stiffened under Verbena's tie; it carries him, and it lets him know about it on the downslope. The walk back is short and dry-footed on yesterday's bootprints. No grease trails move in the ditches this morning. No croak answers the boots. The marsh is as quiet as it has ever let them see it. The great door stands as they left it — gates smashed, hall collapsed, the narrow path swept boot-wide through the rubble. But the room has been kept again, overnight, while they slept a bend away. The wrecked hands are gone. Both of them — every plate, every cable, every finger Barnaby pried out of his cuff and dropped on the swept line. The brass is picked clean out of the rubble. Hobb's chalk tracings, Silas's knock-marks, the crossed cables Edda drew: scrubbed, all of it, the floor wiped back to grey stone. Except one mark. The company sigil on the seventh slab is untouched — crisp, deliberate, left exactly as Edda chalked it. As if it had been read, and answered by being allowed to stay. Nobody has stepped past the gates. Nothing in the room moves.

Aldous Quist

Quist crouches at the sigil's edge, loupe to the grey stone, reading the scrub marks around it rather than the sigil itself. "This wasn't wiped by hand or broom — see the parallel drag, even spacing? Tool strokes, same width as the construct's fingers." He checks the swept line runs clean up to the gates and no further. "Whoever kept this room came in, worked, and left the same way we did. Not flying, not digging. Walking."

DM

Doss Greeve is the company's voice this morning — mace on his shoulder, ledger under his arm; when the table stalls, the call is his. The loupe pays out. Parallel drags, even spacing, narrow as a finger — and where the scrub crosses dust, a tread: boot-width, single file, in and out again. But not from the gates. It runs east, to the lip of the collapsed gap, and back. Days deep, one layer of it fresher than yesterday. Walking, Quist. Just not the way you came in. The swept line stops at the gates because nothing has ever needed to cross them.

Crake Fenn

Crake drops low and follows the fresher tread east, boot-width to boot-width, straight to the lip of the collapsed gap. He doesn't cross it — just kneels at the edge and looks down, checking whether the gap opens onto a drop, a room, or a crawl a keeper could walk daily without ever touching the gates.

DM

No drop. The gap is a lane — a body-wide slot where the vault came down and stopped, floored with packed grit and swept the same boot-width all the way. Crake can see maybe twenty feet of it before the light gives up: level, no crawl, no ladder, shoulders brushing rubble both sides. A man walks that upright and single file every day and never comes near the gates. Two things his knee finds at the lip. The tread doubles here — in and out, out and in, days of it, and the freshest layer goes *in*. And the grit is dry. No grease, no soot, nothing from the marsh has come through this way. Whatever keeps this room, its door is that slot, and the slot is standing open.

Doss Greeve

Doss steps up beside Crake at the lip, holy symbol out ahead of him, mace still shouldered. "Sigil left standing is an answer, not a courtesy — something in there reads and keeps its word. We go in the same way: single file, boots loud, nothing hidden." He starts into the slot first, symbol raised, and calls back low: "Crake behind me, close enough to see my hand."

DM

One man in is one man in — the company still stands at the gates behind him. Doss goes ten paces down the slot, boots loud on purpose. Rubble at both shoulders, grit dry underfoot, air still and dry and faintly sour with old brass. Nothing answers. Nothing moves. And ten paces is where the daylight quits. Past that the slot is black, and the company's whole light is Crake's dozen candles and a tinderbox — a few feet of flame, killable by a stumble. Nobody has struck one yet. Doss's raised symbol shows him one thing more before the dark: the swept tread under his own boots is *narrower* than his boot. Whoever walks this lane walks it smaller than a man.

Iva Marrow

Iva pushes past the gates and into the slot, shield up, sword drawn. "Something that walks a lane smaller than a man doesn't need Doss's shoulders in the way when it comes back." She takes the front at his side, striking flint to Crake's candle as she goes. "Light stays behind me. Doss, hold the symbol — I'll hold the door."

DM

Two rulings, plain, before anything else. The slot is one body wide. There is no beside — Iva takes the front, and Doss falls in behind her or stays where he stands, but nobody stands abreast in there. And the candles and the tinderbox are both in Crake's pack. Crake has not handed them over and his seat has passed. Iva has flint of her own for a whetstone, no wax and no tinder. She goes in unlit. So: shield up, sword out, ten paces to Doss's back and then past him, boots on the narrow tread. Two more paces and the daylight is behind her shoulders. Ahead, black — and out of the black, one sound she can put a name to. A slow drip. Water, ahead and off to the right, falling a long way onto stone.

Tansy Root

Tansy crouches at the gate lip and matches her own boot to the fresher tread in the dust — smaller than a man's, close enough to hers to make the hair stand on her neck. "That's no man's stride. Might be kin-sized to me." She digs into Crake's pack for the tinderbox, strikes a candle alight, and moves up the slot behind Doss to pass the flame forward toward Iva's shoulder. "Light's coming. Nobody swing blind."

DM

Her boot pays out. The fresher tread is a hair shorter than Tansy's own and narrower across the ball — a made boot, squared heel, sole worn even. Not bare, not clawed, not webbed. Gnome-sized, walking a swept lane it has walked for years. The flame does not. Same ruling as Iva's, held even: the tinderbox and the wax are Crake's, on Crake's back, and Crake has not put them in anyone's hand. Tansy can ask across the lip — and does — but the box moves when he moves it. That is one seat away; Crake opens second in the next round. So round 1 closes with three in the slot and no light in it. Iva at the front, unlit, twelve paces down. The drip keeps its time ahead and right.

Aldous Quist

Quist stays at the gate mouth, dagger out but low, and doesn't move into the dark after them. "Crake — light first, then feet," he says toward the slot, "nobody needs a magic-user's eyes till there's something to see by." He keeps his back to open air and watches the rubble lip for anything coming back the way it went in.

DM

A sound post. Quist keeps the daylight at his back and the lip in his eye, and the room gives him what a watcher gets: nothing coming, and the shape of what already went. From the gate mouth he can see the whole sweep at once, and now that Crake and Tansy have knelt on it, the traffic reads clean. Every track in this room runs the same short circuit — in from the gap lip, out to the gap lip. Nothing has ever walked between the gap and the smashed gates. Nothing has walked to the western threshold at all. The keeper does not come from outside. He comes from inside, does the room, and goes back in. Crake's seat is next, and the box is on his back.

Crake Fenn

Crake strikes the tinderbox himself, lights one candle, and moves up the slot to press it into Tansy's hand to pass forward to Iva — keeping the box and the rest of the stock on his own back. "Cupped, not raised. Let her eyes find it before it finds her."

DM

No roll for it — dry hall, still air, proper kit. Char catches, wick takes, and the slot has a light in it for the first time in ten years. Candle 1 of 12 burning. Taper-light, so: a few feet of yellow, everything past it worse than dark because now it has edges. It reaches Tansy's cupped hand and stops there — Iva is two bodies up the lane and the pass forward is Tansy's to make on her own seat. What the light buys where it stands: the rubble walls are dressed stone under the fall, not raw rock. Cut blocks, gnome-square, stacked and then broken. This slot is not a hole in a collapse. It is a lane somebody cleared through one, and squared the sides as he went. The drip keeps time ahead and right, out past the flame.

Doss Greeve

Doss closes the gap to Iva's back, close enough to touch her shoulder if she stops short. "Hold there till the light's in your hand, not just behind it," he says low. "Gnome-sized and boot-shod isn't the marsh thing — but don't swing at a shape till it's shown itself." He keeps the symbol raised over her shoulder, listening past the drip for a second sound under it.

DM

Ears cost a roll — 1-in-6 for a cleric. Doss rolls a 4. He does not get a second sound. What he gets is honest and worth saying: the drip is *loud* in here. Regular, deep-falling, landing on stone and echoing off dressed block, and it fills the lane the way a bell fills a room. Anything quieter than it — a boot, a breath, a spear-butt set down — Doss would not hear over it, and he knows it. He tells Iva so, hand on her shoulder-plate. She holds where she is. The company stands strung out in a one-body lane: Iva unlit at the front, Doss at her back, Tansy behind him with the flame cupped, Crake behind her, Quist at the gate mouth in daylight. Tansy's seat closes the round, and she is holding the only light.

Iva Marrow

Iva doesn't advance blind. She reaches back without turning, hand open behind her. "Candle forward, hand to hand — Doss to me. I'm not swinging at a sound." She holds the doorway, shield square down the black lane, waiting for the light to reach her fist before she takes another step.

DM

Iva holds. Shield square down the lane, sword low, open hand back over her shoulder. That is her whole turn and it costs her nothing but the waiting. The lane gives her one thing for standing still with her eyes on the black: the drip is not the only water. There is a faint cold draw of air coming *up* the lane past her ankles, damp, moving toward the daylight. Air that moves has somewhere to come from. The lane does not dead-end. Tansy closes the round with the candle in her hand and two bodies of lane between her and Iva's fist.

Tansy Root

Tansy closes the gap to Doss's back and presses the candle into his hand for the last relay up to Iva's fist, staying dark herself behind the flame. "Hand to hand, like she said. Don't step till it's lit ahead of you."

DM

The flame goes to Doss's fist, and Doss stands at Iva's shoulder — so the light reaches her ground whether she is holding it or not. She has her few feet at last. What they buy with it: the lane runs on ahead, level and swept, and about fifteen feet on it crosses a lip of dressed masonry — a proper threshold, a sill, with two grooves worn shiny across it. Not scratched. *Polished*, the way a stone stair is polished. Years of the same passage over the same two lines. Past the sill the candle shows nothing but open dark, and the drip is beyond it, ahead and right, falling from high up. Round 2 closes. Quist opens at the gate mouth in daylight; four are in the lane with one candle, twelve feet of squared stone between them and that sill.

Aldous Quist

Quist leaves the gate mouth and moves up the lane to close the gap behind Crake, staying out of the light and out of the front. "Those grooves at the sill — polished, not scratched — that's not a boot's wear. Something's dragged across that line for years, same weight, same path. Ask what's heavy enough to leave that and small enough to fit this lane." He keeps his dagger ready and his eyes on the rubble behind them.

DM

Quist closes up behind Crake. Five in the lane now, daylight a pale slot behind them. Mark the line, because he is about to build on it: the grooves are polished, that is established. *Dragged* is his word, not the room's. What can be said from twelve feet is that the two lines run parallel, about a hand-span apart, and they do not wander — the same track, over and over, dead straight across the sill. A hand-span apart, and something Quist has already measured this morning: that is the same span as the parallel drags in the swept dust out here. Whatever tidies this room comes and goes over that sill on the same two lines, and it does not lift. His eyes on the back trail buy nothing. The lane behind them is empty all the way to the gates.

Crake Fenn

Crake uncoils his rope and knots one end to his belt, feeding the coil forward hand to hand toward Iva. "Polish like that means slick or steep past the sill — tie in before anyone's boot finds out which. I'll hold the far end back here." He plants his heels against the rubble wall to brace it.

DM

Fifty feet of rope, and twelve to the sill — plenty of line. One end on his belt, heels set against dressed block, and the coil goes forward as far as his own arm reaches: into Tansy's hands, the next body up the lane. Doss and Iva are two and three ahead; the rest of the relay is their seats to spend. What his heels tell him while he braces: the lane's floor grades gently *down* toward that sill, the whole way. Dry grit, good grip, no slick underfoot here — but the fall of the floor runs toward the dark, not away from it. His caution is honest and unanswered. Nobody has put a hand or a light on the polished stone itself yet. Twelve feet is still twelve feet.

Doss Greeve

Doss takes the coil from Tansy's hand and passes it on to Iva's belt himself, candle still steady in his other fist. "Tied in. Crake's got the wall end." He leans the light past her shoulder onto the polished sill itself, not stepping onto it — just looking. "Two lines, no scuff between them, no drag marks off to either side. Whatever rides that groove stays dead center. I want to see it before we stand on it."

DM

The rope reaches Iva's belt. Everyone in the lane is tied to one line now, Crake's heels at the far end. The candle does not reach the sill. It is twelve feet on and a taper buys three or four — leaning it past her shoulder puts the flame a hand nearer and no more. The sill stays as it was: two polished lines glimpsed at the edge of the glow, no scuff between, nothing readable in detail until somebody carries the wax to it. What the light does show, dropped low where he actually stands, is worse for being close. The two faint tracks are here too. Hand-span apart, dead center of the lane, running under Doss's own boots and under Iva's and on down the grade to the sill. They have been standing in the road the whole time.

Iva Marrow

Iva steps up the grade to the sill itself, rope trailing back to Crake, and sets her boot beside the polished track rather than on it. She taps the stone ahead with her sword point, testing for give or drop before she trusts weight to it. "Dry, level, no crumble," she calls back low. "Coming across." She crosses the sill onto the far side, shield leading.

DM

Sword point first: the stone rings solid, no give, no lip beyond. She sets a boot beside the grooves and crosses. One body across is one body, not the company — the table holds where it stands, and the candle is still in Doss's fist back at the near side. What Iva gets for going first, blind: the lane ends. Her shoulders stop brushing. The sound goes wide and high all at once — the drip that was ahead-and-right is now overhead-and-right, falling a long way down into open air, and her own boot-scrape comes back off a far wall a good count later. Underfoot the grit stops and dressed flagstone starts, swept clean. She is standing on the near edge of a large room, in the dark, with the light behind her and nothing yet to see it by.

Tansy Root

Tansy moves up to Doss's shoulder at the sill, sling loaded and stone drawn back to her ear. "Iva's blind out there. Bring the light forward — I've got a stone on anything that shows before it clears the door." She holds her aim on the dark past the threshold.

DM

Tansy holds at Doss's shoulder with a stone drawn on the black. Her call for light forward is a call — the candle is Doss's fist and his seat to spend. Round 3 closes. The company stands like this: Iva alone past the sill on swept flagstone; Doss at the near edge with the only flame; Tansy at his shoulder, sling loaded; Quist and Crake back up the lane, Crake's heels braced with fifty feet of rope running through every belt. Nothing has come to the sill. The drip keeps falling somewhere high and to the right, and the room past Iva does not answer her boots with anything but its own size. Round 4 opens on Quist.

Aldous Quist

Quist pushes up past Crake's braced line to Doss's shoulder. "She's blind and we're sitting on the only light — that's backward." He takes a second candle from his own pouch, strikes it off Doss's flame, and holds it out toward the sill for Doss to carry forward to Iva. "Get it to her hand. A magpie doesn't leave the front alone in the dark to save wax."