The Lure of the Basilisk

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  The room he was in was dark, though not so black as the dining hall; traces of light slipped in under half a dozen closed doors on two sides of the chamber, and shuttered windows on a third. He was apparently very near indeed to that portion of the palace Shang used for his personal quarters. Garth’s eyes were already adjusted to the dark; after closing the door and turning away from the lit cracks, he had little difficulty in discerning the contents of the room. He immediately realized how wrong his assumptions had been.

  He was in a kitchen; Shang had merely been obtaining a snack. One wall was lined with cupboards and cabinets, with an open arch in their midst that must lead to the larder and pantry. Around a corner must be the scullery, to judge from the pans that lay near. One wall was taken up mostly with assorted ovens and a huge open hearth. Tables and counters were scattered around, and the air smelled of vegetables and cooked meat.

  Garth accepted his error with a shrug; he should have expected the next room to a dining hall to be a kitchen, and he had not. It was a mistake, but it was past and would not be made again. He was where he was, and would have to make the best of it. In fact, he told himself, this was a good place to be. The crypts were, of course, under the palace; therefore the palace cellars were a likely place to find an entrance, and the kitchen was the natural place to find an entrance to the cellars. Unquestionably one, or maybe several, of the many doors opened on stairs to the cellars. The only question was, which door?

  Well, it was a safe assumption that the cellars were not illuminated at the moment, which eliminated from consideration those doors that showed light; that left three doors in the main portion of the kitchen, and perhaps others in the pantries and scullery.

  He began to inch his way across the room toward the nearest of the unlit doors. His boots scraped slightly on the flagstone floor, so he switched to slow, careful strides, lifting his feet straight up, advancing them, and placing them gingerly down. He was perhaps halfway across the darkened kitchen when his moving foot collided in midstride with a kettle that lay on its side where it had been flung by Shang — who was rather a sloppy housekeeper. The copper pot rolled aside, rattling, when the toe of his foot struck it; he was thrown off balance and caught himself only at the cost of a loud thud as his foot hit the floor and his hand grabbed at a nearby table. He froze.

  The kettle had scarcely stopped rolling when he heard the wizard’s approaching footsteps. His right hand fell once again to his sword, while his left slipped inside his cloak, seeking the pocket where he had put the so-called Jewel of Blindness, as he told himself that if ever he needed magical aid it was now.

  Groping, he found the pocket; he did not dare take his eyes from the general direction of the lit doorways, as he had no way of knowing which one was about to burst open and admit Shang. Being unaware from what direction the attack was to come, he could not afford to be looking the wrong way when it arrived. His three forgers fumbled about, his thumbs hooked over the pocket’s edge to catch anything that fell. He felt the hard lump of the gem, and started to draw it forth.

  A door slammed open, flung back against the wall.

  The wizard stood framed in the doorway, a black silhouette against the torch lit room beyond. Garth was blinded momentarily by the sudden light, but nonetheless his sword was drawn and ready by the time the door had stopped its abrupt movement; his left hand was also held out before him, the Jewel of Blindness clutched tightly in his fist.

  To his astonishment, Shang ignored him; he said nothing, made no threatening move. Instead he peered into the gloomy kitchen as a drunkard would peer into an empty bottle, as if he had expected and wanted to see something that wasn’t there.

  Not yet accepting his good fortune, Garth held his breath and stood ready, the slow realization that something was wrong seeping into his brain; be could not see the end of his sword, which should be well within his field of vision. Had he drawn the dirk by mistake? No, the weight difference would have told him of his error. He looked down, to be suddenly overwhelmed with a most peculiar form of vertigo; he could not see his hands, nor his legs, nor any other portion of his body or attire; his sword was as invisible as air. It was a very strange and unsettling experience, as if he were somehow adrift in midair; yet his other senses told him that he still stood with his feet firmly on the ground, with sword in hand.

  Chapter Six

  Shang stood in the doorway for a long moment, staring into the seemingly empty darkness. Then, with a shrug, he stepped back a pace and reached to one side, his hand disappearing around the doorframe to reappear almost immediately, clutching the stub of a torch. Casually, as though he had dismissed the possibility of an ambush, the wizard strolled into the kitchen and looked about. Seeing the kettle where it lay by Garth’s now-invisible boot, he crossed the room, picked it up, and placed it on the table with a slight frown. Garth stood utterly unmoving, not even daring to breathe for fear he should be detected somehow. The wizard’s hand passed within a few inches of his foot, and the overman wondered what would happen should Shang touch him. Elmil had said the jewel rendered the user invisible, inaudible, and intangible; then would the wizard’s hand pass through him? Would he feel it? Would it harm him?

  He had no opportunity to find out, as Shang did not happen to touch him. Instead, the thaumaturge, after restoring the kettle to its place, used his bit of torch to light a hanging oil lamp, then tossed the stub into the fireplace, where it was lost amid a shower of grey ash. The lamp flared up brightly for an instant, then subsided to a smoky and malodorous glow as Shang began opening and rummaging in various cabinets; he placed a plate of cheese on the table beside the kettle, then continued, apparently searching for something. Finally, with a noise of disgust, he slammed the last cabinet and crossed to a door, the same door Garth had planned to try. In the flickering lamplight the overman noticed that a heavy padlock held the door shut. He carefully considered, as quickly as he could, what this could signify; why would one door be locked when others were not? It guarded something valuable — perhaps the crypts, where the basilisk lived?

  He had no time for further thought, as Shang turned a massive key in the lock and swung the door open; if he was to get inside that door speed was essential. He ran through the door a fraction of a second before the wizard himself stepped casually through, pulling it shut behind him.

  Unfortunately, the door opened on a narrow landing at the head of a staircase; Garth lost his balance as a result of his mad dash and stumbled awkwardly halfway down the long flight before he managed to grasp to rail and halt his headlong progress. To his astonishment, he felt no bumps or bruises from his numerous impacts with both stairs and railing, nor did he make a sound; the silence was, in fact, rather eerie and horrible, as if he no longer really existed.

  As the door slammed, shutting off the dim light from the kitchen, a bright little flame suddenly flashed into being; Garth saw with a curious mixture of fear and fascination that it came directly from the wizard’s finger. Shang used it to light a torch that stood ready in a bracket above the landing, then extinguished it with a gesture and picked up the much brighter torch.

  Looking around, Garth saw that he was more or less at the midpoint of approximately two dozen steps, hewn of some dull grey stone. On one side of the steps ran a wall of rough blocks of the same stone, while on the other there was a black iron railing to which Garth was clinging. Beyond the railing there extended a sizable wine cellar, with damp stone walls on either side and intricate, ancient stone vaulting overhead, its limits lost in the darkness beyond the torch’s glow; in the portion that could be seen stood countless old and bewebbed wine-racks, some full, some empty, some in intermediate states. The light shifted, and Garth turned his gaze upward again to see Shang approaching. Not caring to risk a collision, he backed hastily down the steps, keeping a few paces ahead of the wizard until they both stood at the bottom, where Garth stepped aside and permitted Shang to move unimpeded to the neares
t rack of bottles.

  As he did, Garth was reprimanding himself for making another unjustified assumption; it was much more natural that Shang would seek a bit of wine to go with his cheese than that he would go prowling unarmed into the catacombs.

  As if to confirm that the overman had acted hastily, Shang said loudly, “Ah! Perfect!” He drew forth a cobwebby bottle, dark liquid visible through its murky glass, then turned back toward the stairs. Garth remained where he was, attempting to plan his next move.

  Although Shang’s visit to the cellar had been in no way connected with the crypts, it was still perfectly possible that an entrance was to be found somewhere amid the wine-racks; since Garth was already down here it would do no harm to check. Therefore he would let the wizard leave, investigate, and then leave himself if he found nothing. It was only when he heard the padlock clicking back into place that he realized he had forgotten about it. He would either have to wait until the wizard was thirsty again or use his axe to hack open the door when it came time to depart. He felt rather foolish.

  However, since there was nothing he could do about it, he would make the best of the situation and carry on with his intention of searching the cellar. Fortunately, Shang had not bothered to douse the torch, but had merely stuck it back in its bracket, still lit. Garth wondered if this meant he would be returning shortly. Presumably he would be, in order to restock the wine-cupboards in the kitchen. Therefore it would be advisable to work quickly, so as to have the torch back into its holder when Shang should return. Garth decided he could count on only as much time as it took a man to drink a rather small bottle of wine, which left no time for delay. He hurried up the steps and reached up to take the torch from its place. He closed his fingers around it and tugged. It did not move. Startled, he pulled again; again, the torch remained as motionless as the cellar wall. Garth removed his hand, then replaced it and tried again; still the wood refused to budge. Perhaps it was enchanted? It seemed rather unlikely that the wizard would bother with ensorcelling a torch in a wine cellar. Perhaps his invisible fingers were in the wrong place, and he was trying to move the bracket? But no, he distinctly felt the rough grain of the wood.

  Studying his invisible hand, a horrible thought suddenly struck him: where was his sword? He felt where its hilt should be, and found nothing; his left hand still clutched the Jewel of Blindness, but his right hand had been empty since he staggered on the stairway and grabbed at the railing. He must have dropped the weapon, either in the kitchen or on the stairs; he could see no trace of it. Either it was still invisible, or it lay now on the kitchen floor as clear proof of his presence. It occurred to him that it was very well indeed that it had been the sword he had dropped, rather than the gem, which was his only means of restoring himself to visibility. To avoid any risk of losing it as well, he carefully tucked it into a pouch at his belt, a rather tricky proceeding while invisible. With both hands free, he then reached up and grasped the torch again, carefully feeling its shaft where it met the iron bracket. He could detect no latch or other impediment. He applied his full strength, which should have torn the entire bracket from its mountings; the torch did not so much as flicker. Either it was indeed enchanted, or this was some side effect of his intangible state . . . probably the latter. After all, could intangibles such as fear or courage lift a torch from its resting place? He descended the stairs once more and chose a bottle at random; he could not budge it, any more than he could lift the torch. Likewise, he realized, even if he found the door to the crypts, he would be unable to open it. Well, he decided, such details were best left until actually encountered. He was unsure he would be able to resume his invisibility once he broke it — assuming he could break it — and did not care to abandon his best protection against discovery until the last possible moment.

  He wondered again what had become of his sword; wherever it was, it was apparently still invisible, or else Shang would have come back seeking him upon finding it on the kitchen floor. It struck him that he would have heard it fall, ordinarily; the inaudibility the spell conferred apparently affected the user as well as everyone else. In trial, he attempted to shout, and discovered he could not hear himself do so. No wonder the bandits had been so disorganized in their attack; it was a wonder they had been as well grouped as they were. The result of long practice, no doubt. Well, at least he could still feel; the intangibility apparently wasn’t that complete.

  It was complete enough, though. He couldn’t move the torch, so he couldn’t very well search the walls with it. He remembered the torch stuck in his belt and, groping, found it; that he could still handle. He drew it forth, climbed the stairs once again, and held it to the flame of the lit one. Nothing happened; no flame appeared. He started to feel for the oiled tip, and burnt his fingers in doing so. It was afire. Naturally, though, the flames were as invisible as the torch, casting invisible light.

  Garth found himself wishing he knew the names of some appropriate gods to swear by; profanity seemed the only response in such a situation. Unfortunately, he did not. Like most overmen, he was an atheist, or at least an agnostic, refusing to listen to the babble of competing priesthoods without tangible evidence of the existence of the countless gods and goddesses they espoused. As a result of this widespread attitude, there were no priests of any description to be found in the Northern Waste.

  He carefully stamped out the invisible flame with his invisible boot, and caught the odor of invisible smoke. He wondered if Shang would be able to smell his presence. He had no idea how well humans could smell; it would seem that such prominent noses should be fairly sensitive but, recalling the foulness of Skelleth, he decided that the appearance must be deceiving.

  It seemed that the only thing to do was to search the walls as best he could in the dim light, working mostly by touch despite his inability to lift so much as a fallen leaf. He could still sense textures, though a silk drapery would give no more than a stone wall under his intangible fingers.

  To his surprise, he found that in a way the darkness was comforting; he didn’t expect to see his hands or feet in the dark, so their absence was much less distracting than in the light. He found his way without difficulty to the slightly damp and noticeably cool stone wall, and began cautiously feeling his way along, dodging around wine-racks when necessary, and likewise around cobwebs, which were as unbreakable as steel mesh to him now. Enough light trickled through the frames to keep him from actually colliding with anything. The miscellaneous projections he encountered were visible as patches of more complete darkness. No sort of detail could be made out, however; his explorations were of necessity tactile rather than visual.

  He gradually became absorbed in his task, noticing and mentally cataloging an intriguing variety of textures in the stone and losing all sense of time. It was only when he reached a corner and decided to take a brief rest that he noticed he was now in complete darkness, even the glow of the torch lost amid the intervening wine-racks. He had systematically explored at least a hundred feet of wall, inch by inch; it must have taken hours, he realized in astonishment, yet Shang had not returned. He had no idea of the time, but guessed that the sun must have risen.

  He rose from his comfortable crouch and strode back toward the far end of the cellar where the stairs were. As he did, he saw that the torchlight was dimmer than before. Breaking into a trot, he arrived at the foot of the stairs and saw that the torch had burnt down to a stub, too short to be held. In a moment it would go out. Further, there was nothing he could do to prevent it. He wondered whether some ill had befallen Shang, or whether he had merely forgotten about fetching more wine. It made little difference. As Garth watched, the flame flickered and died to a dull red glow that slowly faded.

  A slight uneasiness touched him briefly, but he shook it off. If something had happened to the wizard, he would have to break the invisibility spell in order to leave the cellar; if he could not break the spell he would be trapped indefinitely. Of course he wou
ld not die of thirst, but he thought it doubtful that an overman could live for very long on nothing but wine. It did not occur to him that he would be unable to get at the wine in his intangible state. Also, his mount still waited for him in the city outside; it would be hungry if no one fed it within the next day or so. Well, the warbeast could take care of itself; he had his own worries. He turned his attention back to the cellar walls.

  It was a long time later when he finally came across what was undoubtedly a door. The stone ended, there was a wooden frame, and set in a few inches was a wooden panel studded with iron spikes such as were used to discourage trespassers from attempting to break doors in with their shoulders. It was the first trace of anything other than solid stone he had found anywhere in the walls. Investigating further, he felt what were undoubtedly hinges; although he knew it was useless, he pushed against the opposite edge. It refused to yield. It would seem, he decided, that now was the appropriate time to try to turn himself visible once more. He reached into his belt-pouch and found the gem. Carefully, he tried to pull it out.

  It caught; one of it edges had snagged in the pouch’s lining.