And then the light slid forward, merged with the barrier, and disappeared.
The first thing Perennius did was to wedge his pole so that the armor hung across the face of the portal. He could not assume that what was a barrier to him barred also the Guardian and its weapons. Calvus had projected the agent into a world whose uncertainties went much deeper than questions of provincial governors and border security. It was easier to doubt whether or not a wall was solid than to worry about a line of defense a thousand miles away. In the case of the wall, there were precautions Perennius himself could take. If the question made the task more involuted, well, solving problems was the greatest merit in life.
The air had begun to smell stale at the instant the light was sucked away.
Perennius did not know what had happened to Calvus or the light, but he restrained his initial impulse to scram-
ble back through the darkness. “Some effort” the tall woman had said. Perhaps it had grown too great, forcing her to pause for a moment like a porter leaning his burden against a wall. The glow might resume any time. If Perennius were running back, it would show him as a fool and a coward – after he had insisted that he was willing to go down with no light at all.
The agent picked carefully at the barrier with the point of his dagger. The surface had the slight roughness of the limestone with which it merged at the edges. Whereas the soft rock crumbled when he scraped at it, the steel had no effect whatever on the material of the barrier. Given time, Perennius could cut away the plug intact, like a miner who encounters a huge nugget of native copper in a deep mine. Given time. Even in close quarters, even blind and encased in armor whose leather padding was slimy with sweat …
And perhaps Calvus was a cinder blasted by the creature which now crept to eliminate the last threat. To eliminate Perennius, pinned hopelessly against the closed entrance to its lair.
The agent felt through his knees the whisper behind him which his ears could not hear for the din of blood in them.
Perennius turned. He did not shift his curtain of mail. Remembering how Gaius’ spatha had caught and channeled blasts away from him, Perennius drew his own sword and advanced it toward the darkness. Sap softly resisted the steel’s leaving its sheath. The blade stirred the muggy air with the odor of fresh-cut vegetation. The agent wondered if the first bolt would catapult him backwards, stunned and ready to be finished at leisure. He focused all his will down into the point of the dagger in his right hand. By the gods, he would lunge against the blue-white bolt like a boar on the spear that spitted it, determined to rend its slayer.
“Aulus,” Calvus called from just around the last turning, “I needed to be closer to manipulate the barrier. I apologize for leaving you in the dark this way.”
“No problem,” the agent lied. “Glad you’ve got an answer to this wall. I sure didn’t.” Perennius could not find the mouth of his scabbard. His sword scraped twice on his thigh armor, then dropped to the ground so that Calvus could clutch the agent’s empty hand. Her touch was firm and cooling, even through the gauntlet.
The tall woman slipped past Perennius in the narrow way. Far more awkwardly, the agent also turned. He could hear the rustle of the draped armor as Calvus reached beneath it to finger the barrier directly. “Yes …” she murmured. Then she slid back past the agent, a whisper in the darkness. Her fingers rested at the nape of Perennius’ neck, where the gorget buckled beneath the brass of the headpiece. “Be ready, Aulus Perennius,” she said.
The door pivoted inward in a hundred or more narrow wedges from its circumference. The fact and the motion were limned by the glaucous light on the other side of the portal. The door’s suction pulled a draft past the agent, the reverse of the pistoning thump at his approach when it had closed. A thunderbolt lashed the sudden opening and blew a gap of white fire in the heart of the ring-mail curtain.