The Forgotten Catacombs

"Wait," Decius called. "I have another proposal." The king half-turned back to face him, his yellow eyes darting past Decius to Ephia and her nakedness. He continued stroking himself as he leered at her.

"Take me to this door to the surface and I will show you a way to the surface, where there are other women you can take."

"Decius, are you mad?" Ephia hissed.

"Calm down, girl," he whispered back, "I know what I'm doing here. Now step out where they can see you in all your naked glory. I need them thinking about breeding, not my offer."

Ephia did as she was told, stepping out from behind him and raising the lantern above her pretty blonde head to shower herself in its cool white light. She looked like a statue of a goddess, nude and surrounded by tiny worshippers. The gremlins emerged from hiding to ogle her, cocks in hand.

"There is an entire city above, big village," he continued to the gremlin king, whose attention was wholly focused on the spectacle before him. "You can find a dozen women up there, many women just like her. Take them at night, bring them down here and make your tribe grow."

"Yes, yes," the king murmured over the sound of his hand on his cock, "many women, many more us."

"You can't be thinking of going through with this," Ephia whispered furiously, "You would give them a woman to be their brood slave?"

"Calm down, Ephia," Decius cut in before she could give the game away, "We are going to the Arcani already. We might as well give them two foes to turn their swords on."

That calmed her down. Meanwhile, the gremlin king was coming around to the offer. The other gremlins crowded around him, chittering and screeching among themselves.

"Yes!" he proclaimed at last, leering at Ephia again. "You give us surface, many women! We make broodmothers many! Each of us get broodmother, make many tribes!"

"I agree," Decius said, "but first you must show me to the door. The bronze door that the people use."

"Yes, yes," the king muttered. "We show you door. Come, with me." He turned and began to march from the room, his broken staff tapping on the stones with each step.

Carefully, Decius and Ephia moved through the village, warily eyeing each hut for an ambush. Decius found himself concerned that, once in the middle of the village, the gremlins would all swarm him by some prearranged signal and take Ephia for themselves. He wished the girl a better fate that being the broodmother to a village of gremlins

But the signal and ambush never came, and they passed through the village unharmed, though followed by many hungry stares. They went down the corridor after the white-haired gremlin and his entourage and were followed at a distance by another group of gremlins, who peered at them around corners and muttered to themselves.

Their path through the Catacombs wound around bends and up and down short flights of stairs, until at last they came to a flight that went up to a bronze door.

"There!" the king screeched. "There is door! You open door and show us way to women."

"Yes, that was the deal," Decius agreed. He beckoned to Ephia and they began to climb the stairs together, keeping an eye out for wards the Arcani might have left. Decius spied a rune of warning inscribed on the stair before the door and stepped on it deliberately. His trained sorcerer's mind detected the alarm it set off.

He stepped up to the door and checked over his shoulder. The gremlins were waiting at the bottom of the stair, crouched in anticipation. He listened at the heavy bronze door, and heard muffled noises on the other side, but could not make out the specifics. Decius took a deep breath and cast the charm of opening. The bolts slid open.

Clutching the khopesh in his hand, he pushed the door open. The room on the other side, for it was a room, was lit by candlelight. It was of masonry, and well maintained. He shoved it all the way opened and stopped.

Opposite the portal, he was confronted by a shield wall of five men holding swords and wide shields emblazoned with the Emperor's Eye; the symbol of the Arcani. Behind them stood five more men with flintlocks readied, and a man wearing the gold-trimmed red sash of an Arcani prefect.

He raised his signet ring. "I am Decius Sallax Capricius and this is Ephia," he continued, then gestured to the girl.

"Of the Senues family in Valair," she added.

"There is a tribe of gremlins behind us, with whom we have bartered passage out of the Catacombs. They think we mean to let them out onto the surface."

"That we most certainly will not," the prefect snapped in the native accent of the Imperial City. "What were you doing down in the cellars, naked?" he demanded.

"We were in the lower Cellars when we encountered a group of thieves led by the rogue sorcerer Fabius Cinereus Aeramen. He was accompanied by two men from the Cabal of the Ebon Chalice and I suspect there are more. He stole a large tome from the Cellars."

The Arcani prefect smirked at the unanswered portion of his question.

"Come in and close the door behind you," he ordered. "Men, shoot any gremlin that comes running."

Decius stepped out of the doorway and heaved the door shut. Down below, the gremlins screeched at the betrayal.

"Lie, you lie!" they shouted, "give us women! Many women for tribe! Humans lie!"

The door slammed shut with a rattling bang and cut off their curses.

"Now that I've let you onto my side of the portal," the prefect continued, "throw me your rings so that I might verify your story."

Decius and Ephia obeyed, now standing before the Arcani completely naked and without even jewelry. The prefect made a show of inspecting them and then threw them back.

"Very well, your rings are convincing enough. Stand down, men." The soldiers lowered their shields and flintlocks but did not disperse. "How long ago were these warlocks in the Cellars?"

"Perhaps an hour or two," Decius replied. "They will be gone by now, but I know where they are going."

"Well, where is it?" the prefect snapped, "I am not interested in playing your games, sorcerer."

"They will be at the Jester's Cap," Decius replied coolly. "They said they planned to take ship in the early morning."

"They said?" the prefect asked suspiciously, "To you?"

"To each other, I merely overheard," Decius replied.

"I see. You just happened to overhear." He looked away, down the room's connecting hallway and called to someone unseen, "Titus, gather a score of men. We have warlocks at the Jester's Cap."

"You will come with us, sorcerer," the prefect said sternly. "You must point out these warlocks to me." To one of his men he commanded, "get these two some clothes."

An hour later, in new clothes, they waited with the Arcani in the shadows outside the Jester's Cap, a modest tavern and inn a half-mile from the Collegia's gates. The prefect Aelius had dispatched his second with half the group to watch the far side of the Cap. There was no way out. Decius tried to peer across the street into the inn's common room, hoping to see Aeramen reading his book. Instead, he saw only common folk ending their night.

A runner came from the opposite side. He slipped through the darkened street to stand next to Aelius.

"We are in position," he said. Aelius nodded and stepped forward, his men falling in line. They drew sword of bronze and marched mechanically to the door of the inn. Two men took up guard outside while the rest plunged in, Decius following.

Inside, the tables were sparsely occupied and none by men Decius recognized. Aelius looked to Decius and shook his head. Patrons and the innkeep recognized the Arcani badges on their collars and assumed nonthreatening stances. Leaving a guard in the common room, they went up the stairs. Moving with practiced speed, they threw open each room and searched the occupants. Decius recognized at once the man who had attacked him in the library with the khopesh.

"That's one of them!" he called out to Aelius, who ordered him men to seize the warlock. The Laraeboi man responded with a blast of fire, but the incantations and bronze amulets of the Arcani protected them. They slashed through the man's sorcerous weavings and brought him down. Decius did not recognize the other occupant of the room, but his pack had the trappings of a warlock as well, so the Arcani arrested him, too.

In the next room, Decius recognized the demonbinder and the Arcani took him down as easily as the first man, arresting his bedmate in the same struggle. All four men's packs betrayed their craft and they were taken away in shackles.

But Aeramen remained unaccounted for.

"Where is the last man? The rogue with the stolen book?" Aelius demanded, but Decius had no answer. "Did you warn him?" the prefect demanded.

"Warn him? I turned you onto these sorcerers in the first place!" Decius snapped back.

"I have no patience for the games of sorcerers," the prefect growled. "A renegade from the collegia is a renegade from the emperor! I will not suffer traitors."

"I am no friend of his," Decius replied coldly, "If I knew where he was, I would send you there."

Aelius said nothing, but his eyes shot daggers at Decius. For his part, Decius was unconcerned. Today had been one of his more amicable interactions with the Arcani, so he counted that as a stroke of luck.

A young soldier of the Arcani approached them. "Prefect, all the warlocks have been identified. They are Adenet Rousse, an unsanctioned sorcerer from Armannais, Vanules Gruitt, a demonbinder, Rhamenes of Thespum, a deserter from the Oracular Temple of Ishar, and Praxte, formerly a prince of Sabras."

"Interesting company your renegade keeps," the prefect mused. "A prince, an oracular acolyte, a demonbinder and a foreign spy." Turning to his man, the prefect returned to giving orders. "March them to the Castle and throw them in the dungeon. Put out the word that we are seeking the arrest of Fabius Cinereus Aeramen, who has stolen an arcane tome from the library. Send men to patrol the docks and the roads out of the city. He will not escape us."

Leaving the Arcani to their work, Decius went down to Ephia, who was standing in the inn's fenced courtyard with her back against the wall and her eyes half closed in weariness.

"What a night!" he said, taking a place on the wall next to her.

"And it's not over yet," she replied. "I will be going back into the cellars to retrieve my clothes. Would you like to come along?"

"I suppose I need to do the same," he said. "And I still have not found my scroll."

"The Master Archivist will be there in the morning," Ephia reassured him, then looked to the reddening sky. "And morning is not so far away."

"Then back to the collegia it is," Decius declared, but Ephia made a sad face. "What is it now, girl?"

"It has been an exhausting night. I thought that perhaps you might delay your departure and spend the day resting? In my bed?" she proposed.

"With that look I doubt I'll get much rest!" he laughed, cupping her chin in his hand. "But I suppose I can delay my departure for a day. This affair with the warlocks will make a good excuse to be late."

Ephia smiled radiantly. "And when you're next in the Imperial City--"

"Yes, yes!" Decius cut her off, "the emperor's orgy, I haven't forgotten my promise!"

"Now let us go back to the library to find our clothes, and then to my bedroom to lose them again!"

Arm in arm, they went off into the early morning city. From the mouth of a darkened alley, Fabius Cinereus Aeramen watched them go, his manticore-skin sack over his shoulder. Scowling, the tall sorcerer turned and vanished down the alley before the Arcani saw.