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Heaven's Back Door

Something moved on the stone bridge. Considering what one had to go through to get there, any traffic was remarkable. It made duty in the pass boring but easy. Coton wrapped the statuette in a rag and stowed it with his stone-cutting tools in the hut.

The warrior was armed with a sword. She stopped about 20 feet from the bridge's terminus. "I seek to enter Heaven!"

"Sorry," Coton replied. "This passage is barred. Unless you have a Token?"

She trotted forward and drew a dagger with her right hand. Answer enough. Her movements betrayed no augmentation, so he did not draw his sword. She thrust for his throat; he caught the blade between his palms and twisted it out of her hand. The dagger was moving toward his belly. He kicked her wrist, followed with a punch to her stomach, and another kick to the forehead. She lay on her back on the bridge, stunned. The dagger was still falling; it would be minutes yet before it hit anything. Coton sequestered her sword and sat down to wait.

After a while she stirred and rolled to her feet, groaning.

"Heaven doesn't guard the door with amateurs," Coton started to say, but the words wouldn't come. She had palmed something, perhaps an amulet, and it emitted a spell that robbed him of the power of movement.

She grinned weakly and brushed blond hair out of her eyes. "No offense, but I really must go through," she said. "I need to retrieve someone who doesn't belong there. I will spare you as you spared me." As she passed between the onyx pillars that flanked the entrance, the gargoyle atop the southern pillar leaped into the air and flapped swiftly out of sight towards the fortress at the inner end of the trail. The other fell upon the woman, mouth wide open. Coton couldn't see what happened next, but she re-entered his field of view moments later, bleeding profusely from gouges in her right arm. "I didn't count on it being this difficult just to get in," she panted, ripping strips from his shirt to bind her wound. Then she was gone. He heard a clink as she retrieved her sword from his room.

"Good luck," he wanted to say, but the spell was just wearing off, and it came out "gag loog." She might make it if she started being careful.

Publ. Drowning Atlantis