Stardeep_ The Dungeons - Bruce R. Cordell [8]
He unclenched his fist, revealing a distuibingly realistic mouth in the palm, complete with lips botdering a dark cavity where none should be, in which a too-sinuous tongue squirmed, dripping venom. The glove whispered, "I will eat your soul."
It always said that.
"Eat rock instead." Gage responded.
He turned the muttering palm toward the mortared wall and pressed, achieving complete contact. The eye on the other glove blinked stupidly, but the demon physically bound in the fabric of the thin gauntlets knew what he wanted.
The wall seemed to shrink away from his touch. A moment latet, every brick in the sealed window shivered and pulsed, each pushing away from the other in defiance of the mortar that held them. Gage pushed forward and the bricks dimpled, parted around his silhouette, then closed over after him. He was inside. Behind him, the bricked window settled back into perfect solidity, hardly any worse for wear. Not a trick he could pull very often.
Gage carried many hidden advantages-a half-dozen throwing knives secreted about his body; a broad leather belt stitched with pockets containing a spool of stiff wire, a petite oil tin, several miniature abrading files, a flask of pitch, and an assottment of alchemical mixtures; and of course, his catlike grace and exceptional mind.
All these tools and talents paled in comparison to his gloves, despite their penchant for sneaking out in the middle of the night and getting up to mischief. Not for the first time Gage thanked the Queen of Air, Akadi, on his good fortune in acquiring the gloves. A year ago, he'd taken a commission to pilfer a tome called Glyphs and Griffons from the library of the mage Tenambulum. Once he'd secured the book, he'd been unable to resist looking around Tenambulum's sanctum. The absent mage had a reputation as a demon catcher. Most of a day later, shivering and bleeding, Gage had emerged wearing the Hands of Paymon. Almost all the days since then had proved his choice a good one. Though he'd learned it was dangerous to rely on the gauntlets too entirely…
He stood in the cluttered interior of a small, nearly pitch black room. A storage closet of some sort? He produced one of his alchemical oddities-a clear glass vessel that produced light nearly equal to a candle when shaken. He shook. Crates, barrels, and boxes jumped into visibility, jammed and jumbled together. A fine layer of dust covered everything. No one had opened the door into this room for some time.
He sidled up to the doot, under which wan light peeked. He pressed an ear to the wood and held his breath. He heatd nothing save the beat of his own heart.
Unless the silence heralded an ambush, he'd penettated the lair without alerting the occupants. Although "penettated" was perhaps too optimistic a spin on the depth of his entry into Sathra's domain. Metaphorically, the closet was more like a ledge to which he clung by his fingers.
He sincerely doubted the prize he'd come to claim resided in the jumble of crates and barrels.
Nonetheless, he examined the contents of a wooden container; old habits were hard to break. He found dried fish-and it had gone bad. He crinkled his nose and replaced the barrel-head, careful not to touch the rancid contents. A foul smell could betray him as easily as too much noise ot straying into a sentinel's peripheral vision.
Back to the door. The hinges were chancy. He pulled the oil tin from his belt and dripped the lubricious fluid onto the two brass fittings. He stowed the canistet, waited a moment for the oil to penetrate, then eased the doot open a finger's breadth.
A hallway. Not very wide. Stairwell at the far end. Two other doors stood in view besides the one he peered from, one of which was ajar. A hanging lantern, its wick turned low, burned from the hallway's center. Both ends of the passage were thick with night shadows. Good.
Gage stowed his light and emerged from the storage closet. He eased the door shut and merged with the darkness.