Pathfinder Tales: The Worldwound Gambit by Robin D. Laws

Author:Robin D. Laws
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781601253279
Publisher: Paizo Publishing, LLC
Published: 2011-07-12T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Riddles and Chaos

Taking Calabast’s hand was like plunging his own into boiling water, but without the heat. Twisted and branching lines of electricity surrounded Salim’s arm, as they had Neila’s, and then they were suddenly climbing farther, enveloping all three of them in a glow like swampfire. Salim had a quick glimpse of Neila, eyes closed and back arched, and then he was closing his own as the tingling climbed up his neck and over his face.

There was a soundless explosion that seemed to come at once from inside his head and outside of it. There was no noise—not in a physical sense—but rather the weight of the sound pressing on his skin and reverberating in his bones. There was a sudden, terrifying instant where he thought he might be deaf—the silence of the unheard thunderclap made him think of soldiers too close to an alchemist’s grenade, deafened by the concussion before the sound could even reach their brains. Then the wall of pressure lifted and eased, and he began to hear new noises, the bustle of Axis replaced by unfamiliar hoots and birdsong. He opened his eyes.

They were standing at the edge of a forest, its leaves brilliant red and yellow. Under their feet, the loam of the trees’ moldering foliage gave way to the gray stone of an outcropping that thrust suddenly and steeply up from the woods below. Though they were only a short distance up the promontory, it was enough for them to look out over the treetops and see the long, sinuous line of the forest’s edge, where it terminated sharply in a line of golden field, which in turn became a jagged cliff face and the rolling waves of a green sea. Bird-shaped things, some much larger than any avians Salim was used to, darted up from the forest canopy, screeching their wordless mating songs and battle cries as they chased each other through the open air and then dove back into the shelter of the trees.

At the top of the rock on which they stood—and which Salim could now see was a rise in the cliff face itself, sheer-walled and overhanging on its opposite side—stood a tower. It was perfectly cylindrical, and thick enough that despite its height it seemed to squat rather than soar. Time had taken its toll, and overshadowing the few narrow windows were yawning gaps in the stone where mortar had crumbled, sending man-sized blocks tumbling down. By far the worst damage had been to the crenelated crown, where fully half of the upper works had broken off in a jagged line, leaving the tower’s top ragged and lopsided.

“This is the Maelstrom?” Neila asked. The colored forest and darting birds apparently didn’t match her concept of perfect chaos.

“At the moment,” Salim said. “But that doesn’t hold a lot of bearing on what it’ll be next. That’s the problem.” He looked to Calabast. “Which way?”

In response, the automaton turned and began stomping up the rise toward the tower, confirming Salim’s suspicions.

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