The Diamond - J. Robert King [22]
This could only be a way into Undermountain.
The cacophony of shouts, roars, and shrieks grew deafening. It sounded as if whoever was down there wouldn't survive much longer.
A smooth stone floor became visible below. It belonged to a small chamber, sporting only a door of iron-banded oak in one wall. Leaping from the ladder, Noph landed in a crouch. His feet stirred thick dust as he rushed toward the door. A fat oak beam was cradled across it; the brackets that held it glowed with blue motes of power.
The circling sparks settled into letters, spelling out a clear warning: DO NOT OPEN UNDER PAIN OF DEATH.
"Open up!" a man shouted, from just beyond the barred door. It shuddered with blows from fists or hammers or axes but did not give way. There was a slim crack between the boards, and an eye glared at Noph through it. "Open up, or we'll die!"
Noph looked again at the stern inscription. "You'll have to find another way out!"
"There is no other way out, blast you! We're barely holding off a pair of deep ogres. Open up!"
"Then I'll be barely staving them off," Noph pointed out. "Besides, there's an inscription. A prohibition. A law. I can't compromise the security of-"
"Yes, yes, Piergeiron's Palace! We know! We're agents of his… or some of us are!"
"But under penalty of death-"
"It's the death of four or the death of one, lad. Save your own skin and you've doomed ours. Open the door, and we can fight side by side."
The choice was obvious. It was written large in enchanted letters before him. If the folk trapped on the other side really were agents of Piergeiron, they'd not ask him to defy laws and jeopardize the security of the palace. What if the deep ogres won past, and climbed up to rampage through the palace? More likely there were no deep ogres, and this was a band of villains wanting to trick their way into the palace. What were the lives of four unknowns worth in the balance against his? The choice was obvious.
A terrible scream came through the door, followed by a wet thrashing sound.
"I feel like a gods-damned traitor," Noph hissed, heaving the beam out of its bracket.
The enspelled timber had not even struck the floor before the door crashed open. Noph fell back, sword hissing out.
A moon-faced man tumbled through first, his fancy clothes much slashed and beribboned with blood. Stumbling over him came a soot-besmirched dwarf.
"Belgin! Rings!" Noph gasped. "What-?"
A slender woman in glimmering armor staggered out next.
"Aleena!" Noph yelped.
A weak, answering smile showed through the blood and grime on her face as she collapsed beside the others. There was a man behind her, a silver-garbed paladin. Miltiades! The paladin backed slowly into the room, his warhammer ringing and swinging with the profound, determined motion of a blacksmith's maul.
His anvil was a gigantic creature. Its eyes-dinner plates awash in blood-glowed furiously from grimy folds of flesh. The sheer weight of the ogre's lips shaped a permanent scowl around jagged green teeth. Hands as big as men groped from the darkness, snatching at the paladin's armor. Only the persistent, ringing blows of the hammer kept those hands at bay.
If the ogre emerged from the cramped passage, they'd all be slain. And another beast would follow the first.
A sudden flare of flame drew Noph's eyes. The oak beam he'd pulled from the door was afire. It rattled and gave off a high whistling as the magics laid on it did their work. The heat coming off it was already enough to shrivel the cobwebs clinging to Noph into smoky tracers.
The choice was obvious.
The young hero dropped his sword, bent, and hefted the hissing beam. Fire raced across his hands and up his arms. Agony stabbed through him. He snarled, heaving the timber above his head, and lunged at the ogre, thrusting it like a spear into the monster's gaping maw. One end distended the squalling