Shadow Blizzard

by Alexey Pehov

  Without any squeamishness (bones are just bones), I moved the skeleton aside and picked the bag up off the floor. The cloth had been turned stiff and dark by blood that had soaked into it. There was a book in the bag but, unfortunately, I couldn’t make out what was written in it—it was almost entirely blotted out by the blood. I tried turning the pages, but they were stuck together, and only a few of them yielded to my insistent efforts. Darkness! It was impossible to read anything, although I could see that the book had been used for writing in the margins.

  … a … ch … 6

  … fe … int … t … ap …

  Mmm, yes, I can’t make out a thing. Maybe it would be easier on the later pages?

  As I leafed through the book, I came across one inscription that I could just barely make out.

  … arch 28

  D ors locke … going to look for a wa rou … Blue l t brings d ath!

  Aha! So the expedition had reached the Doors leading into the third level. What was “Blue l t”? Perhaps light?

  On the last page there wasn’t a single drop of blood, but the only piece of writing was almost illegible and I had to struggle to make out the scribble. Whoever wrote it seemed to have been in a great hurry.

  April 2

  The lieutenant is dead, the beast squashed him as flat as a pancake. Siart and Shu have gone to the steps.

  Poor fellow.… What was it that crept up out of the depths and crushed his head?

  I cast a wary glance round the empty hall and the entrance to the next one. But whatever it was that had killed the poor man, it had gone away a long time ago, so I walked on without making any attempt to hide.

  There were no tombs here, just tall square columns set on broad bases. They seemed to go on forever. The ceiling glowed faintly and that made the hall seem obscure and endless. I began sticking close to the columns. Darkness only knew what came over me, but suddenly I didn’t like this place at all. I was about a quarter of the way across it when the trouble started.

  The entire hall was suddenly filled with an appalling rasping sound and I froze, taken completely by surprise. After eight seconds of deafening silence, the rasping was repeated and two columns ahead of me, three long, deep scratches appeared in the wall. As if a set of powerful, invisible talons had scraped furrows into the stone. I was dumbfounded and my teeth started chattering. Then a new set of scratches appeared on the next column, and I heard the same terrifying rasping sound.

  The piercing noise set all my teeth on edge.

  I didn’t waste any time trying to figure out what was happening; I just took off at top speed in the opposite direction. The column behind me exploded in a cloud of grit and splinters. Something struck me a painful blow on the right shoulder and almost knocked me off my feet.

  Boo-oom! Boo-oom!

  The heavy footsteps and rasping noises were right behind me, but I kept hurtling along as fast as I could and didn’t look back (in the Palaces of Bone, the penalty for excessive curiosity was death). The columns flickered past on the right and the left, but the way out of the hall suddenly seemed an impossible distance away. As ill luck would have it, the cobweb-rope I thought I had attached so securely slipped off my belt and fell to the floor. There was no question of stopping to pick it up—my life was more important to me than all the magical rope in the world.

  Whatever it was that was chasing me, it wasn’t going to give up, and another three columns snapped behind me, spraying out crumbs of stone, as if some enraged giant was pummelling them with his fists. But what kind of strength did it take to smash a stone column as thick as a hundred-year-old oak?

  I darted into the hall where the dead guardsman was lying, skipped over his body, ran the whole length of the room, and stopped at the far doorway. Whatever the beast might be, the exit from the hall of columns was too narrow for it. The footsteps came closer, but I swear by Sagot that I couldn’t see anyone!

  I heard that terrible rasping sound again, and then a large section of the wall beside the entrance to the hall of columns groaned as if it were alive, and collapsed in a heap of rubble.

  Boo-oom! Boo-oom!

  The invisible monster stepped on the guardsman’s skeleton, reducing it to fine dust, and then came in my direction, with the obvious intention of doing the same to good old Harold.

  I believe I actually squealed before I turned and ran without thinking about which way I should turn or worrying about getting lost. I just wanted to save my skin. I could still hear that terrible booming noise and the rumble of collapsing walls behind me. I dashed into a corridor, turned left, then right, then left again.…

  * * *

  Long after the monster’s rumbling faded away in the distance, I was still too frightened to stop running. I only realized I was lost when I didn’t have any more strength left to run.

  Cursing the world and everything in it, I sat down on the floor and leaned back against a sarcophagus. Come what may, but Harold wasn’t going to run anymore. The longer I spent dashing through the dim corridors, the less chance there was that I would ever find my way back. The shoulder that had been hit by a fragment of the column was aching painfully. I was obviously going to have a massive bruise there. What I ought to do right now was take a rest, catch my breath, and think about where exactly I was.

  What had really happened was that everything had begun just as calmly and innocently as on the first level, and I had committed the unforgivable sin of relaxing too much because I wasn’t expecting any trouble. Apart from losing my way, I’d lost the rope as well. And without the cobweb I couldn’t get back out, because Milady Lafresa had smashed the staircase and there was no way I could get across that eight-meter gap. The odds on croaking in Hrad Spein had suddenly shortened dramatically. There was no point in trying to retrieve the rope—I wasn’t certain I could find the way back and I didn’t really feel like sticking my nose into the Wall Smasher’s lair again.

  So, the way back into the sunshine was closed off. I had no doubt at all that there were other ways out of the Palaces of Bone. At the very least, there were four main entrances. The west entrance was somewhere in the middle of Zagraba, but that was hundreds of leagues away. There were another two entrances near spurs of the Mountains of the Dwarves, but after the evil awoke in the burial chambers, the dwarves had blocked off the entrances closest to their kingdom just to be on the safe side. So I could forget about the main entrances. But apart from them, there had to be less-important entrances as well. There had to be, but would I be able to find them?

  Wandering aimlessly round the second level and clinging to the elusive shadow of a hope wasn’t going to get me anywhere, so I took the maps out of my bag and started poring over them in the dim light. It took me more than half an hour to find an old stairway leading up to the surface from the first level. According to my calculations, provided that the stairway had survived all these thousands of years, to get to it from the Doors I would have to walk two leagues on the second level and five on the first. A long, long way, but it could have been worse.

  Well then, after (that is, if) I got the Horn, I would have a chance of getting out of the burial chambers, although I would be a huge distance away from the place where our group was waiting. But I’d still rather be stuck in some unfamiliar stretch of forest than starve to death in these dreary stone halls. (Just who was the rat who first invented the story that it was incredibly beautiful down here?)

  The most important problem I had to face now was that I had no idea which part of the second level I was in. In my panic-stricken race against the Wall Smasher, I had completely lost my sense of direction, and now only the maps could help me find the right way to go. I had to find some distinctive and unusual hall, then locate it on the map and take my bearings.

  An easy enough little task at first sight, but in practice it turned out to be very far from simple. In this sector all the halls and corridors were very similar. Half-light, graves, and hundreds of gargoyles. The longer I wandered through the ston
e labyrinth of this vast mausoleum, the more desperate I became.

  Hall, corridor, room, intersection, hall, hall, corridor, half-light, and gargoyles. Those cursed monsters with the ghoulish faces affected my nerves far more badly than a hundred goblin jesters high on charm-weed. My legs were aching, I had to take another break and have a bite to eat. I was still somewhere on the level of men, but there wasn’t a single sign or mark anywhere on the walls. I had been staggering around Hrad Spein for a day and a half now, but I still hadn’t reached the Doors. And Lafresa was still on the loose somewhere, with the Master’s servants. It would be highly unpleasant to bump into them just at the wrong moment.

  Finally, when I was just about ready to start howling out loud, I came out into a huge hall where all the sarcophaguses were arranged in the form of an immense eight-pointed star. On closer inspection, the hall also proved to be star-shaped, only it had five points.

  I had to get the maps out again. I found the star hall fairly quickly—I’d have had to be blind not to spot it. But when I traced the route from there to the Doors I gave a low whistle—I’d really gone a long, long way off track. So now I had a long walk ahead of me. And this route looked far more dangerous than the one the magicians of the Order had marked on the map—there was nothing to show the locations of the traps or any other pleasant surprises that might be in store for me. Everything that I’d been giving such a wide berth could turn up right under my very nose now. There was no point in retracing my steps—I was so far astray that the walk back and the onward journey to the third level would be far longer than the route from here to the Doors. And not for a moment did I forget about the monster that had almost flattened me into the floor. I didn’t want to end up anywhere near those feet again!

  I set off, every now and then cursing the damned magicians who had hidden the Rainbow Horn so far down, the builders of the Palaces of Bone who had created this endless maze, monsters that wouldn’t sit still in their corners, and myself, for tying the cobweb rope on my belt so badly.

  * * *

  After walking through forty-three more halls, I ran into a trap, but fortunately it had already been activated. A short section of corridor with a hole where the floor ought to have been. A pit about three yards deep, with sharp steel spikes set thickly across its bottom. And lying on the bottom was a skeleton with spikes sticking up through its ribs like young saplings. The poor fellow had failed to notice the trap and paid with his life.

  The problem here was that Harold, unfortunately, was not a flea. Even if I took a good run up, I wouldn’t be able to jump across a gap of more than fifteen yards. The harsh reality was that I would tumble into the pit halfway across.

  A dead end.

  There was no way around it, I had to get across that pit or waste another day going back and looking for another route to the Doors.

  A close study of the gap where the floor had been revealed that there were long, wide slots in the wall that could easily hold the flagstones that had disappeared. Did that mean there was some kind of concealed mechanism and, if it could be activated, the stones would move back into place over the pit, giving me a chance to carry on?

  It seemed likely.

  After further investigation of the scene I noticed a rectangular block of stone protruding from the ceiling. There was the answer to the riddle. Only it was so far away from me that it might as well have been on the moon, especially if you took into account the fact that the cobweb-rope was irretrievably lost.

  But I still had my crossbow. I took aim and pressed the trigger. The bolt struck a spark from the ceiling beside the block and bounced off, falling down into the pit. All right, so we’d have to try a different approach. I lay down on my back so that the projecting section of the ceiling was right above my head and held my weapon with both hands.

  Clang!

  The block sank back smoothly and silently into the stone, until it was invisible. Something in the wall started humming quietly, and then the slabs of stone slid out of their recesses and started moving very slowly toward each other. I didn’t wait for them to come together and form an uninterrupted surface—it was far too likely that the trap would be rearmed.

  I jumped onto the moving slab on the left and hurried across, being careful not to tumble into the pit. I managed to step onto the normal surface before the slabs came together with a dull crump.

  After another two halls, there was another corridor with long slits in the walls, only this time they were at the level of my hips. Another nice little surprise, may the darkness take it!

  I walked over to a broken sarcophagus. I had no idea who it was that had tried to shatter the lid of the grave, but now the remains could easily be reached. A yellow skull grinned out at me. I picked it up and tossed it onto the floor of the corridor.

  Semicircular blades sprang out of the far ends of the slits and flew through the air with a whine until they reached the entrance, then stopped. So that was it. I could easily have been sliced into two Harolds. While the blades were withdrawing into the wall and the trap was being rearmed for the next unwary traveler, I slipped past and hurried on.

  So far all the traps had been fairly crude devices, but that only meant that they had been made by human hands. I expected the elves and orcs to be far more inventive in their methods for dispatching undesirable visitors to the sacred Palaces into the light.

  Quite a lot of time had gone by, and I felt very tired. This time I chose the site for my nest in the hands of a large, repulsive gargoyle. It cost me quite an effort to scramble up into the stone hands that were folded together to form a cup, but once I was up there, I felt as cozy as if I were nestling in Sagot’s pocket. I ate half a biscuit, took my boots off, laid my head on my bag, and my hand on my loaded crossbow, and slept like a baby.

  * * *

  I don’t know how long I slept—time passes imperceptibly in the catacombs, with no sun and no stars. I had to rely on hunger and fatigue to guide me, and since my fatigue had disappeared without a trace, it seemed quite possible that I’d been asleep for a long time. In any case, there was an urgent rumbling in my stomach, and I had to wolf down another half portion of my magical rations to keep it quiet.

  My body was numb from lying on stone for so long, and it was an effort to stand up, stretch, and pull on my boots. It was time to be moving on, there were no more than ten halls left before I reached the Doors.

  “Walk, walk, walk, and we still don’t get anywhere! Do you realize we’re lost in all these damned corridors!”

  I instinctively ducked down at the unexpected sound of a voice, but no one would have seen me, even standing fully upright. The gargoyle’s cupped hands made a magnificent hiding place.

  “And it’s all your fault!” said a second voice.

  “My fault?”

  “Who was it suddenly needed to take a leak? It’s your fault everyone went on ahead and we couldn’t find them! What a fool I was to stay with you!”

  “Don’t panic. Milord Balistan Pargaid doesn’t abandon his men.”

  “Sure, he’s been searching real hard for us for the last eight hours,” the second man snorted.

  The voices started moving away, and I decided I could jump up, grab the edge of the cup, and pull myself up to take a look. Two soldiers dressed in chain mail and carrying swords were slowly tramping in the direction that I’d just come from.

  The poor souls were lost. And serve them right. After another two halls they’d reach the trap that would reduce them to bloody pulp. And I certainly wasn’t going to try to stop them.

  So Balistan Pargaid and Lafresa had reached the second level. That was bad news. I just hoped they’d lost plenty of men on the way.

  I waited until the two men disappeared into the distant corridor, then jumped down and went on. The route from here was as straight as Parade Street, and I could go as far as the next intersection without worrying about a thing. The two lost sheep who had just tramped past would have activated any traps, and since they w
ere still alive, I could assume that there were no traps on the path ahead. I ran through the next six halls (just in case the lost men might suddenly decide to come back).

  In the seventh hall, where the walls were riddled with the black openings of corridors leading in every possible direction, I paused and rummaged through my papers, then stepped into the fourth corridor on the right. It was a little strange, to say the least—seven paces and then a sharp turn to the left, another seven paces and another turn to the left, then to the right, and so on for quite a long way, a kind of crooked-snake toy put together by a drunken child.

  I gave thanks to Sagot when I found myself facing a stairway. There were two stone sculptures waiting for me there—those familiar beasts, half bird and half bear. I wondered whose sick mind could have come up with the idea of such ugly monsters. It certainly couldn’t have been a man’s. When the stairway ended I found myself in a hall. A huge hall. And pitch dark, I couldn’t see a thing. I was just about to reach into the bag for my lights when the floor started glowing and a brightly lit path appeared, running out into the distance from under my feet.

  More magic, but at least this time it didn’t threaten instant death. The path ran on and on, showing me the way, until it stopped at the far wall, and at that point a bright rectangle blazed up at that. It was so far away that I didn’t realize what it was at first, but when I did … When I did, I gave thanks to Sagot.

  It was the Doors.

  5

  THROUGH THE SLUMBERING GLOOM

  My footsteps echoed off the white marble slabs of the floor and multiplied as they bounced about under the ceiling, fluttering like bats startled by the light of the torches.

  I felt a desperate urge to walk off the path into the surrounding gloom, where I would be less conspicuous but, darkness take me, the lighted path had been created especially for anyone coming this way to walk along, and Sagot only knew what was in store for me if I left it.