Chapter 215: The Door in the Bluff

The iron portcullis of Lornfell’s north gate was still wet with morning fog when the guards winched it up at sunrise.

Arthur sat in the saddle of a rented bay gelding just outside the guardhouse, flexing his left wrist inside Brunhilda’s leather bracer. He’d tested Whisperwind at the range yesterday afternoon. A little stiffness remained, but he could shoot again.

Beside him, Felix was checking the leather harness that held Aegis Bulwark against his mount’s flank. A fresh band of dark, forge-blued steel ran along the bottom rim of the shield where Brunhilda had repaired the damage from the quarry fight.

"You’ve checked that buckle three times since the stable," Emily said, riding up on a broad-shouldered roan with her Titan Knuckles hooked to her belt.

"These rented saddles aren’t made for carrying shields," Felix said, giving the strap one last tug before climbing into the stirrups. "If that buckle snaps on a hill, the horse is going to kick me off."

Chloe rode up behind them, balancing a cloth-wrapped bundle on her pommel while she tucked her medical satchel securely against her hip. She pulled three warm cheese pastries from the cloth and handed them around.

"Eat before we hit the river road," Chloe said, taking a bite of her own. "I’m not stopping an hour out of the gate because Arthur forgot to visit the dining hall."

"I was busy getting the horses," Arthur said, taking the pastry with his right hand. He ate half of it in one bite, grinning as he looked down the open dirt highway winding into the northern mist. "And I’m in a great mood. Nobody’s complaining today."

"It’s six in the morning," Felix muttered around a mouthful of bread. "Give it an hour."

Arthur tapped his heels against the gelding’s ribs and led them out onto the road.

For the first two hours, they shared the highway with flat-bed farm wagons hauling cabbages toward the city markets and a pair of municipal road-wardens riding south in mud-splattered cloaks. Past the crossroads at Miller’s Ford, the cultivated fields gave way to scrub alder and long stretches of wet pasture. A stone wayside pillar stood at the bend where the main road forked east, its base stacked with dried autumn heather left by passing drovers.

Arthur guided the group onto the narrower western track that followed the curve of the river.

"When you said the tomb was up in the bluffs," Felix said, eyeing the pale limestone ridges rising through the trees ahead, "did you mean there’s a proper entrance, or are we lowering ourselves down another collapsed cistern on a rope?"

"There’s a door," Arthur said. "Carved stone. Proper stairs."

"He told me the shrine at Saint Orlan’s was just a quick ride up the highway," Emily told Chloe, resting one hand on her thigh as her roan stepped over a flooded wheel rut. "We ended up knee-deep in thornbushes fighting a pack of corpse-eaters."

"The road was fine," Arthur said. "The shrine was just off the path."

"Up a mud bank," Emily added.

"You needed the exercise."

Emily kicked her boot lightly against his stirrup as she rode past him.

By late morning, the wagon ruts vanished entirely at an abandoned timber-felling clearing near the wide bend of the river. They tethered the horses inside a three-sided cedar pole shed out of the wind, left them with nosebags of oats, and slung their packs over their shoulders.

The climb up from the riverbank was steeper than Arthur remembered.

On a monitor, moving a character from the river bend to the upper limestone shelf had taken ten seconds of holding down a key while watching the stamina bar tick down a fraction. In person, it meant twenty minutes of hauling himself up loose gray scree and wet pine needles while the recurve tips of Whisperwind caught on low-hanging juniper branches.

Halfway up the second ridge, Felix’s boot broke through a crust of rotten shale, sending a shower of small stones rattling down the gully before he caught himself on an exposed cedar root.

"Proper stairs," Felix said, breathing hard beneath the weight of his shield.

"The stairs are inside," Arthur said, reaching the flat shelf at the base of the upper cliff face and wiping his forehead on his sleeve.

He stepped to the edge of the drop-off, looking back down at the river to line up the sharp elbow of the water with the twin limestone pinnacles across the valley. Once he had the angle, he turned toward the pale rock wall and triggered Eagle Eye.

The cliff face snapped into crisp focus.

Further along the bluff, where a dry wash had spilled a fan of boulders against the cliff, a straight, vertical seam cut through the layered limestone. Thick coils of dead winter creeper hung over a recessed cleft in the rock, and the stone directly beneath the vines had been dressed with a mason’s chisel centuries ago.

"Up there," Arthur said, pointing toward the dry wash. "Behind the rockfall."

They scrambled across the slope to the cleft. Up close, a fallen slab of weathered limestone blocked most of the narrow opening.

Felix leaned Aegis Bulwark against the cliff wall, checked how the stone was wedged, and waved Emily over. Together, they braced their shoulders under the lip and heaved. The slab broke loose, sliding down into the wash in a grinding shower of gravel.

Arthur stepped into the cleared gap, brushing away a curtain of brittle brown vines with his forearm.

Set back into the shadow of the cleft stood a door of seamless, matte-black basalt. Unlike the crumbling pale limestone around it, the dark stone showed no frost cracks or moss. Cut into the center of the slab, at chest height, were three distinct sockets arranged in a tight triangle: a narrow vertical slot, a wider recess with an angled lower lip, and a small, seven-sided depression no bigger than a walnut.

Felix stepped up behind Arthur, wiping limestone dust from his gauntlets as he looked at the three holes in the stone. "Well. I’ll be damned."

Arthur unbuckled the top flap of his pack, pulled out the linen bundle, and unfolded it on a flat rock beside the door.

He took the notched bar from Saint Orlan’s first and slid it into the vertical slot on the left. The black metal glided smoothly into the stone, seating at the back of the recess with a heavy click.

Next, he picked up Kaelen’s jagged plate and fitted the uneven teeth into the lower socket. Something heavy shifted deep inside the door.

Arthur picked up the Black Prayer Bead last. He lined up the seven flat facets with the small socket on the right and pressed the stone in with his thumb.

It slid halfway down and stopped. The door remained shut.

Emily leaned in over his shoulder. "Is it stuck?"

Arthur looked at the tiny chipped notch beside the bead’s string-hole. He gripped the protruding end of the stone between his thumb and forefinger and twisted it to the left.

Something clicked behind the basalt face, and the bead sank flush into the socket.

For a moment, the cleft was quiet. Then a low, grinding rumble vibrated through the soles of their boots as the black slab pivoted inward, leaving a dark gap wide enough to slip through that smelled of cold stone and old grease.

Arthur stared at the opening, a grin slowly spreading across his face.

Fucking finally.

Emily pulled on her Titan Knuckles and nudged his shoulder with her fist. "Five silver well spent."

"Told you," Arthur said. He unslung Whisperwind from his back, holding the bow in his left hand while he drew the Necrotic Dagger from his belt sheath with his right. "Felix, take the front. The outer gallery wasn’t built for polite guests."

Felix lifted Aegis Bulwark, locked his left arm through the forearm straps, and unclipped a shuttered amber glow-lantern from his belt, hooking it to the side loop of his breastplate so the beam angled ahead of his shield.

They stepped past the pivoted basalt slab in single file.

Beyond the threshold, shallow steps led down into a long subterranean gallery built from fitted gray flagstones. Narrow alcoves lined both walls, their interiors hidden in shadow. Dust lay thick across the floor.

Felix moved slowly, keeping the reinforced bottom rim of his shield low to the floor. Emily stayed half a pace behind his right elbow, where she could swing clear of the iron slab.

Halfway down the gallery, Arthur stopped.

"Hold up," Arthur said quietly, triggering Eagle Eye.

Just ahead of Felix’s front boot, almost invisible against the dark mortar line between two flagstones, a thread of oxidized copper wire stretched ankle-high across the corridor. At throat height on the left wall, a row of tiny circular holes had been drilled into the shadow beneath a stone cornice.

"Tripwire," Arthur said, stepping up beside Felix and pointing the tip of the Necrotic Dagger at the floor. "And dart tubes in the mortar on the left. Step high, and don’t brush the wall."

Felix looked at the wire, then raised his shield slightly and stepped cleanly over it, planting his boot on the far stone. Emily followed, her eyes sweeping the alcoves ahead.

Chloe gathered the hem of her skirt in one hand and stepped over the copper thread right behind Arthur.

As her heel touched the flagstone, leather scraped softly against stone inside an alcove on the right.

A shape dropped out of the vertical recess in a low crouch.

It had been a man once, centuries ago, its dried flesh shrunk tight over bone and wrapped in overlapping bands of oiled linen and dark brigandine. It held a long, needle-pointed rondel dagger in each hand.

Felix turned immediately, driving Aegis Bulwark forward to slam the creature back into the wall.

The sentry slipped past the edge of Felix’s shield and lunged straight for Emily’s ribs.

Emily twisted her torso back. The rusted steel point skittered across the boiled leather of her cuirass with a sharp screech, leaving a white scratch across the hide. Before the sentry could draw its arm back for a second thrust, Emily dropped her weight and drove her right fist forward.

Her Titan Knuckles caught the sentry square on the collarbone. Dried bone snapped like dry kindling, and the impact knocked the creature sideways into the flagstones.

Behind them, a second figure slipped silently from an alcove on the left—right behind Felix’s shield line, moving straight for Chloe.

"Arthur!" Chloe backed hard against the wall, her hand already snatching a flash-powder vial from her belt loop.

The corridor was too narrow and too dark to bring Whisperwind up for a clean shot.

Arthur let the bow hang from his left hand, fixed his eyes on the deep pool of shadow behind the sentry’s heels, and triggered Shadow Step.

Arthur appeared behind the sentry just as it thrust a dagger toward Chloe.

He drove the Necrotic Dagger into its right shoulder. The thrust went wide, scraping the wall beside Chloe.

The sentry twisted toward him, slashing with the dagger in its left hand. Arthur yanked his blade free, ducked under the slash, and stabbed up beneath the rim of its skullcap.

Black necrotic mana flared along the steel as the point punched through dried sinew and neck bone. The sentry’s knees buckled immediately, and it collapsed onto the flagstones in a heap of brittle leather and notched iron.

Ahead of them, Felix slammed the lower edge of Aegis Bulwark down onto the first sentry’s arm, pinning it against the floor while Emily brought both gauntleted fists down on its skull with a single, echoing crunch.

The gallery went quiet again, save for the steady hiss of the oil wick inside Felix’s lantern.

Arthur pulled the Necrotic Dagger free and wiped the dry residue off the blade against the dead sentry’s brigandine.

"Chloe?" Arthur asked, glancing over his shoulder.

"Missed me," Chloe said, still catching her breath as she slid the unused flash vial back into her belt loop and looked down at the gouge in the mortar beside her arm. "Fast bastards, aren’t they?"

"Didn’t even try to fight the shield," Felix muttered, lifting Aegis Bulwark off the crushed sentry and kicking one of the dropped rondel daggers away with his boot. He looked at Emily. "Did it get through your vest?"

Emily ran her fingers over the long white score across the side of her leather cuirass. "Just scraped the wax off. If I’d stepped forward instead of back, it would’ve caught the gap under my arm."

Arthur walked past Felix to the end of the gallery, where the stone corridor opened onto the head of a wider spiral staircase descending into the rock of the bluff. The air rising from the stairwell was ice-cold.

He slid the Necrotic Dagger back into its sheath and lifted Whisperwind at the ready.

"Proper stairs," Arthur said, glancing back at Felix with a grin before starting down the steps. "Watch the walls on the way down."