Sagaria

by John Dahlgren

  “And now,” said Sir Tombin in sepulchral tones, “to the dungeons. I can’t help telling you, old chap, that I’m not looking forward to what we might find there.”

  Samzing gave him a significant look. Under the green amphibian skin, his old friend looked ashen.

  “You’ve been inside dungeons before?”

  “Yes. Not in a very long time though.” Sir Tombin took a deep breath. “Still not long enough. The sights you see in dungeons are never pretty.”

  Memo chose this moment to poke his spectacles out of Samzing’s pocket.

  “I can tell you all about dungeons,” he announced, undaunted by the events of the past couple of hours. “The first thing you need to understand is that—”

  “Memo,” said Samzing, “I have a piece of advice for you.”

  “Can’t it wait until after I’ve—”

  “Shut up. Stow it. Put a sock in it.”

  “But—”

  “Now.”

  With much muttering of things like, “Well, that’s not very nice,” Memo settled back down in the pocket.

  Sir Tombin shrugged. “We’d better not delay the moment further.”

  The clanging of their feet on the metal rungs was the only sound they heard as they descended the spiral staircase. At the bottom, they found the Palace of Shadows shrouded in silence. The dragon throne no longer seemed so intimidating, just rather foolishly ostentatious. The rubies that had been the dragon’s glowing eyes were lifeless now. Standing in front of the over-gilt monstrosity, Sir Tombin stripped off his suit of Shadow Knight armor and left its pieces scattered on the floor. Other suits of armor lay there too, deserted by wearers who’d evaporated into mist.

  They passed through the great hall and once outside, they chose a route at whim. Every direction was as good as any other; they didn’t have the first idea where the dungeons might be.

  It was the noise that betrayed the location at last – the clangor being raised by the only occupants left alive in this castle of the vanished. Led by Sir Tombin, the band hurried down dark stone steps until they were far underground. There they found themselves in a long, wide, damp corridor, its hewn-rock walls fitfully lit by not just the usual sconce-mounted torches, but also the redder light from the embers of a couple of big, cylindrical braziers. Samzing had some idea of the purpose of these braziers, a suspicion confirmed when he spied a pair of large, vicious-looking tongs glowing red-hot in one. He shuddered.

  Off the passage, which was apparently only the start of a labyrinth of similar passages, were the barred doorways of a dozen or so cells. Sir Tombin found the empty clothing of a jailer and fumbled through it until he’d located a big key-ring containing a single, massive key.

  “It seems that they kept things simple,” he muttered, mostly to himself.

  Moving quickly, he unlocked the six cell doors down one side of the corridor, slamming two of them shut again immediately with a wrinkling of his nostrils and a mumbled, “Too late.”

  Coming along behind him, Samzing went briefly into each of the other four cells to investigate the condition of their occupants. All four of the men he spoke to were in surprisingly reasonable health. Although they showed the signs of beatings, they explained that they were only recently incarcerated and hadn’t been seriously tortured yet. The other two prisoners on the line, they said, had been men brought here after dreadful floggings in the slave mines who were nearly dead on arrival. It was no wonder that they’d succumbed since. The torture cells, they helpfully informed Samzing, were further downstairs. “Leastways, that’s where all the screaming comes from.”

  It took the companions the best part of twenty minutes to deal with the prisoners in the first passage, and all the while, Samzing was increasingly impatient to get moving. Luckily, Sir Tombin found more keys and was able to despatch the fitter of the first batch of prisoners to other parts of the dungeon complex. He told them to release everyone who could still walk and to report back to him should they discover Grandpa Melwin.

  The stench of death was gagging. Cheireanna, Sir Tombin and Samzing were working their way through their fourth block of cells (Samzing had thought that he would never view such horrors as he witnessed that day) when one of the men they’d first freed came bustling back from a particularly dark downward stairway.

  “There’s a guy down there,” he said, then had to pause for a moment or two to get his breath back before starting again. “There’s a guy down there claims he’s the Melwin geezer you’re wantin’.”

  “Show us,” said Sir Tombin grimly.

  The begrimed prisoner stood indecisively where he was, clearly reluctant to go back the way he had come. “I’m not sure you want to see what there is to show.”

  “Don’t be a fool, man! We haven’t a moment to spare.”

  “Down there is where they did the very worst of things.”

  “I’m a soldier, not a chambermaid. Get moving.”

  The man was still unwilling. “He’s in Chamber 1001. It has its own special key. I couldn’t get in; I just heard him shouting through the door. If you could call it shouting – it was more like the creak of hinges, it was. Poor bugger.”

  “What do you mean, Chamber 1001?”

  The man shuddered. “I don’t even like to say the name. None of us do. It’s the torture chamber reserved for those prisoners for whom the Shadow Master reserved his most particular, his most inventive, his most excruciating tortures. They say the screams from there could sometimes be heard in all three worlds.”

  “All the more reason for speed,” insisted Sir Tombin. “Now!”

  “Your choice. Bring a torch.”

  Following their hesitant guide, Sir Tombin, with Cheireanna behind him, ran down further flights of stone stairs until it seemed that they must soon reach the center of the world.

  At last, they came to the bottom of that evil pit. In the fitful light of the torch, Sir Tombin saw a large iron door at the end of a passage. The stones beneath his feet as he crept forward seemed to be veined with blood. Cheireanna came behind him. Samzing had obviously fallen behind. The guide seemed incapable of coming any farther. The Frogly Knight wasn’t surprised when he heard a sudden clatter of footsteps as the man finally lost his nerve and fled toward the higher levels.

  Into the iron of the door letters had been etched a foot tall:

  Sir Tombin shivered. There was a chill emanating from the door. A chill made by the screams of a thousand men, women and children as they made their way down a long, slow and painful road to death. He could feel their agony filling the filthy air around him, could feel it filling up his soul. Yesterday, he would have followed their guide and fled. Much had happened since yesterday, though – not least that he had died and been reborn. The goddess Tamash had taken his soul from his dying body into the land of the dead, to nurture it until her healing waters in this world had restored his tissues and healed his mortal wounds. In the process, she had given him an extra strength of soul, a strength that he was now drawing upon.

  There was an empty suit of armor lying in front of the door, with a morning star beside it that had seen much use. One of Arkanamon’s elite guards, by the looks of things. Where a sword might have hung, there was instead a key in the shape of a claw.

  “Help me,” said the husk of what had once been a voice.

  Melwin.

  Sagandran’s grandfather.

  Still alive.

  Sir Tombin had expected to find Arkanamon down here, but it was clear that he’d read the Shadow Master’s intentions wrong.

  “Help is at hand,” he cried, stopping to prize the claw-shaped key from the armor’s waist.

  When they came into Chamber 1001, Sir Tombin’s first reaction was that the old man must surely be dead.

  In the middle of the room was a large, horseshoe-shaped machine. Suspended in midair within the curve of the horseshoe was the frail, naked figure of an elderly man. On his head was a helmet from the top of which led a tube that lost itself
somewhere in the midst of the machine. The tube pulsated redly, as if ablaze. A round pool of what looked like molten black metal sizzled beneath the man’s feet.

  “Help me,” came that whisper again.

  Sir Tombin looked frantically around him. How to release his friend’s grandfather from this hellish machinery?

  There were levers sticking out at crazy angles all over the Shadow Master’s torture device. One of them must surely be the “off” switch, but which one? Another of them could be the switch to increase the pain a thousandfold, and Sir Tombin would never know until he’d pulled it.

  The tone of Melwin’s moaning changed.

  He’s trying to tell me something, thought Sir Tombin.

  The face of the suspended man shifted into a terrible mask as he forced his mouth to form the words. “Behind … you.”

  Before Sir Tombin could turn, an arm clasped his neck.

  “We meet again.” The Shadow Master chuckled. “I had hoped it would be the boy who came here in search of this old dotard, but one can’t be lucky every time, can one?”

  The pressure around the Frogly Knight’s throat increased perceptibly.

  “You’ve lost, you swine,” Sir Tombin blurted past the ring of pain that was slowly constricting his throat.

  “What difference will that make to you when you’re dead?”

  “Then kill me and let the old man go.”

  “I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction.”

  Sir Tombin bellowed in fury.

  “Let me tell you what we’re going to do, Quackie. That is what your friends call you, isn’t it? I’m going to give my masterpiece its final outing. You’re going to watch while I push the machine right up to its very maximum. The beauty of my beast is that it does no physical injury to its victims. It kills them through agony alone, and that’s the way it’s going to kill the brat’s grandfather – by inflicting so much pain that he can’t bear to stay alive any longer. Then, when you’ve watched him die, it’ll be your turn.”

  Sir Tombin redoubled his efforts to break free of the Shadow Master’s grip, but to no avail.

  “There’s someone I’d like you to meet,” said Arkanamon.

  From behind the horseshoe-shaped device stepped a man who looked almost more evil than Arkanamon. He was tall and gaunt with a skeletal thinness, and he had eyes that burned a vile, dirty red. Greasy hair hung to his shoulders.

  “Here’s Dr. Sullykong, the most talented of all my pain doctors,” murmured Arkanamon into Sir Tombin’s ear. “No need to be so surprised, dear frog, to find one of my most trusted servants still alive. I never needed to snatch Sullykong’s soul from him, you see. It was already so beautifully evil when first I encountered it.”

  Sullykong cackled proudly.

  “Let’s get started, shall we?” said Arkanamon. “Sullykong, give the old rooster the ultimate dose.”

  The pain doctor spoke for the first time. “But that’ll kill him, and he’ll scream so much the froggy guy may die as well.” Dr. Sullykong talked with such a bland voice, it sounded as if he were merely discussing with a patient how to best administer his vitamins.

  “Just do it,” said the Shadow Master. “Let me be the judge of whether my decision is the right one!”

  The pain doctor shrugged. “Okay, boss.”

  But before he could move, he was struck from behind. The pressure of Arkanamon’s grip around Sir Tombin’s neck abruptly decreased.

  “What is this?” cried the Shadow Master.

  Before them, Sullykong crumpled to his knees, then fell flat on his face onto the cold stone floor … revealing the figure standing behind him.

  It was Cheireanna, clutching the morning star that had been lying beside the empty suit of armor outside the chamber door.

  Blood dripped from the spikes of the morning star.

  Blood and something spongier.

  Sullykong’s blood. Sullykong’s brains.

  Cheireanna grinned. She ran forward with the speed of the wind.

  “What in the—” cried the Shadow Master, raising an arm to defend himself as the morning star whistled toward his face. At the same time he lost his grip around Sir Tombin’s throat.

  The Frogly Knight collapsed onto the stone floor gasping for air. There was a whoop of violently displaced air. Sir Tombin, clutching his throat, his breath whining like a punctured organ pipe, saw the Shadow Master’s form disappear just as the morning star went singing through empty air.

  Cheireanna was thrown off balance, but had the presence of mind to let go of the weapon. It crashed into a far corner of the room.

  Where did he go, dammit? thought Sir Tombin. Samzing stripped him of his magic, so he can’t have cast a disappearing spell. Besides, that would be all wrong anyway. He must always have been able to move as quickly as that.

  There was a shout of laughter from the passageway.

  “I’m not done yet!”

  “Can you walk?” asked Sir Tombin. Under Melwin’s guidance, he’d been able to free the old man from the machine’s ghastly embrace.

  Grandpa Melwin gave a wry smile. “Barely.”

  “What did they do to you?”

  Although the man was clearly very weak, his body seemed to bear no bruises, cuts, burns or other signs of torture. Cheireanna produced an only slightly bloodstained robe from somewhere and Sir Tombin wrapped it round Melwin’s shoulders. It was cold down here, but the cold wasn’t all that was making Sagandran’s grandfather shiver.

  “Physically, hardly anything at all,” said Melwin. “Oh, they slapped me around a bit for fun, but they weren’t really serious about it. No – what Arkanamon perfected in this accursed device is a far more potent source of agony than that. What the machine is designed to do is deceive the mind.”

  Sir Tombin courteously waited while Melwin summoned the words to continue.

  “I witnessed all my loved ones meeting the most hideous deaths that human ingenuity could ever contrive. My dear wife, may her soul rest in peace. My daughter. My friends, young and old. Worst of all, my beloved grandson, Sagandran. They showed me these terrible scenes again and again, each time ratcheting the horror up a further notch. The vilest thing the machine did was deceive me into believing that I was tearing Sagandran apart with my bare hands, and in a way that was what saved me. It was too vile, too hideous. My mind rebelled against the very possibility of it. I started remembering being out in a boat with him, fishing peaceably, chewing the fat about whatever came into our heads. It was at that point I realized that I could always beat the machine. After that, whatever the images it tried to plant in my mind, I just put myself back in that rowing boat with Sagandran, and Arkanamon and his henchmen were powerless to hurt me. Not that I let them know that, of course.” The old man chuckled. “I howled and howled like it had only just been invented.”

  “You love Sagandran very much, don’t you?”

  “More than life itself.”

  “He’s here, you know.”

  “Here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Here in the Shadow World? In the Palace of Shadows?”

  “Yes. I’m not sure exactly where, but he’s being looked after by friends – or he was when I last saw him.”

  “Is he safe?

  “I can’t tell you that for sure, not with Arkanamon still on the loose. He’s no longer a sorcerer, but there’s nothing to stop him seizing a weapon and—”

  “Then why are you wasting time with me?” The old man pushed Sir Tombin away almost angrily. “I can make my own way out of this hellhole. Go after my grandson!”

  Sir Tombin looked at him intently. At last he nodded.

  “But leave me that morning star when you go,” said Melwin. “I have a mind to destroy this machine as best I’m able, so that no one else will ever be put through what I was put through. Besides, it will seem like revenge.”

  With Cheireanna in tow, Sir Tombin rushed up the stairways. Along the way to the open air, they picked up Samzing, Memo and Fl
ip. It was difficult to move rapidly through the throng of escaping prisoners, but they did their best. Many of the people they pushed past had been crippled by the torturers, and were being helped by their fellow prisoners. All of them wanted to see the meager light of day again as soon as they could, even if it was only the sallow, subdued light of the Shadow World’s day.

  At last, Sir Tombin and his friends were out in the open air. Off to the right was the grim wall of the slave mines and behind it they could hear, instead of screams and whipcracks, the roar of people cheering their new-found freedom.

  Sir Tombin put a webbed hand up to his forehead and scanned the sky. “I can’t believe they’d have gone far. They must have seen the minions of the Shadow Master dying and thought there was nothing more to fear. Unless—ah, no, I see them now.”

  Following his old friend’s gaze, Samzing could just detect, pale against the grimy-looking clouds and growing swiftly larger as it came toward them, the shape of the flying horse. Two darker blobs on the horse’s back must be Sagandran and Perima.

  Cheireanna uttered a guttural cry.

  What in the world could the girl be wanting now? Samzing turned as she pulled at his robe.

  One hand still held the sleeping Flip. With the other, once she was sure she’d attracted his attention, she pointed along the frontage of the Palace of Shadows. Beside a door there, a tall thin man was mounting a horse that was as black as the robes he wore.

  “Look,” she said, struggling with a word her throat was unaccustomed to forming. “Arkanamon.”

  “I see them! Samzing and Sir Tombin and Cheireanna!” cried Perima, pointing at the distant figures clustered beneath the castle wall.

  Sagandran, chin on her shoulder, saw his three friends. His heart felt suddenly heavy. There was no sign of Grandpa Melwin. Had the companions arrived at the Palace of Shadows too late to save the old man, whatever the Shadow Master might have claimed?

  “Oh, look,” continued Perima, bubbling happily. “They’re waving at us. Waving quite a lot, actually. I wonder why?”