Weasel's Luck

by Michael Williams

“Up on my shoulders, then,” Bayard hissed urgently. “When you’re inside, find your way back to that front door and unlatch it. That should be easy enough. The halls and the rooms inside should be the image of the di Caela keep, just as the keep is from the outside.”

  “I know, sir. But, for Huma’s lance-wielding sake, what if-”

  “You’d be no more dead there than you would be here.”

  Not the most encouraging of prospects. There or here. But Bayard was quite serene about the whole business.

  “Take heart and climb atop my shoulders.”

  I did, and surprisingly, it was a short jump to the window, which somehow seemed lower than Enid’s window at the di Caela keep. I leaped, clutched the sill, and pulled myself over. The room in front of me was dark.

  Behind me I heard Alfric pleading with Bayard, heard Bayard respond that, no, Alfric was far too heavy for such acrobatics and that besides, they needed him for the battle that was sure to come.

  “Now stop whining and face the garden,” Sir Robert chimed in. “They’ll come from that direction first, or I’m no tactician.”

  I set my dagger on the sill, stood in the darkened room, then looked behind me and below me once more, down to where Bayard stood, sword at the ready, looking up.

  “We’ll try to fight our way back around to the door,” he murmured.

  “Good luck to you, sir,” I offered.

  “Hurry,” he shot back, then smiled and winked at me—a most unSolamnic gesture.

  “The weasel’s luck to you, lad. Which as I gather, has not been bad yet.”

  Without stopping to think—as I should have—I plunged into the unlit room.

  I made two steps only, and then sunk to my knees in the dark floor. I cried out for Bayard, but stifled the cry when I heard it echoing down the halls of the keep, heard the sound of shouting and the clash of weapons outside the window—sounds that seemed so far away.

  I sunk farther, and thought of the quagmires in the Coastlund Swamp. I was sinking into the heart of the Scorpion, I figured. I flailed my arms around the floor of the chamber, striking solid stone at arm’s length, nearly as far from me as I could reach. Breasting through the nothingness like a swimmer in a dark, thick pool of something more solid than water, more liquid than the ground around him, I finally gained purchase on the floor and pulled myself up, out of the morass, discovering to my surprise, that I was entirely dry.

  “What is this?” I whispered, touching the floor in front of me to assure that no other pits had been set in the chambers. My hand brushed against a hurricane lamp, fully intact but lying on its side.

  Picking up the lamp, I fumbled in my pocket for a tinderbox, coming up with gloves only. I swore a stable groom’s curse and pressed on in the general direction of the door—or where Enid’s door was set in the corresponding room in Castle di Caela. Like a monstrous crab I scuttled across the dark floor, groping at the floor beside me for other places in the room where things were not quite solid.

  I found the door by the light that escaped from beneath it. The hall outside was eerily torchlit, but otherwise the image of the halls of Castle di Caela. Yet, on second look, it was not quite the image. Some small, unidentifiable thing was missing.

  Not five cautious steps down the hall, it occurred to me. Mechanical birds. The birds Enid had wound up and hated through the otherwise pampered days of her childhood.

  For the halls of the Scorpion’s Nest were silent.

  I sat, pondering the corridor ahead of me and behind me, and noticed at points that the walls were swirling as though tiny whirlpools, scarcely the size of a man’s fist, were embedded in them as some kind of bizarre ornament. The whirlpools turned hypnotically clockwise, as gray as the surrounding stones but liquid in texture and shimmering like liquid as they caught and reflected the torchlight.

  Walls that, like the floors, could swallow you entirely.

  I backed away from them and seated myself in the center of the corridor, those spiraling flaws in the wall at a safe arm’s length.

  I breathed heavily, the sound of the sigh racing down the corridor ahead of me, where it mingled with another distant sound, strangely and irritatingly familiar.

  The sound of whirring and chirping.

  So there was one, at least.

  It was just curiosity, a nosiness about other people’s houses and furnishings and decorations, that led me to follow the sound of the mechanical bird. That and the knowledge that the sound came from the direction of the great landing, below which was the main entrance to the keep—the door Bayard had charged me with unlocking.

  Relying on my memories of the keep’s exterior, it was not hard to remember where I was. Down the hall straight ahead of me, eyes carefully fixed on the floor to avoid stepping into one of those whirlpools of liquid stone, I picked up a larger, wider hall. This large hall led straight to the landing, and I rested my hands carefully on the banister before I trusted it to support my weight.

  Down this hall I went and turned right, into a hall of statuary. Which contained marble di Caelas, but none I had seen commemorated in Sir Robert’s palace.

  Instead, it was the family in all its darkest moments.

  For here was Mariel di Caela, reclining on a marble divan, marble cats at her throat, her eyes, her breast. It was even more gruesome because it was so white, so smooth.

  And Denis di Caela, bearing a marble rat in a marble cage. Not to mention Simon di Caela, basking contentedly forever like a huge white iguana.

  It was almost obscene.

  Presiding over the lot of them was another statue I had never seen—that of a man hooded and seated on a skeletal throne, sculptured scorpions twisting over the arms of the chair and the man himself.

  Old Benedict di Caela, enthroned in the dark of brothers’ negligence.

  I moved past the door that would have been Dannelle’s in a safer world I recalled most fondly, most despairingly. I continued down the hall to the right, sidestepping a quagmire, then again to the left, then right again until I faced the hallway, where, to my right, the siege of Ergoth raged silently and motionlessly, forever, in paint upon the wall.

  At the end of that hall, the mechanical bird was grinding and singing, grinding and singing again.

  When the bird paused, I heard voices. Two of them, both raised in anger, coming from the door opposite the mural.

  The door which, in Castle di Caela, had led to the balcony overlooking the great hall.

  I opened the door a crack, saw darkness, and smelled expensive cloth and the slight whiff of decay. Beyond that was darkness and, more clearly now, I could hear voices.

  One was sweet and high and melodious, one low and melodious and deadly.

  Enid and the Scorpion.

  Obviously, they were not getting along.

  I stood not six feet from a set of curtains that resembled those of the Castle di Caela, right down to the velvet and the stitchery—as much as I could tell in the gray dimness of the balcony I was on. Beyond those curtains the voices rose and ebbed in the old duet of argument.

  I closed the door behind me.

  “Remember, you are my prisoner, my dear.” The Scorpion’s voice rose coldly, menacingly.

  Enid, bless her soul, was not intimidated in the least.

  “You cannot have this arrangement both ways, Cousin Benedict. Either I am your hostage, and therefore you should keep me in confinement under lock and key, as is the custom with hostages, or I am the singular, although reluctant, object of your affections, in which case you are no more dear to me than those clicking vermin outside the door.”

  “What if I were to untie you, Lady Enid?” The Scorpion’s voice slipped back into its old ways—smooth and honeyed and terribly inviting. “If I do so, will you look on me with any … greater regard?”

  Slowly I creeped toward the opening in the curtains, drawn by the faint crack of light. I stirred the floor with my hands, remembering my adventures in the chambers and on the landing, remembering
Alfric’s tumble from a balcony where stone was stone and curtains were curtains.

  Her answer came as I touched the cloth and began to part the heavy velvet ever so slightly. Enid’s voice swelled even louder, riding a wave of scorn and amusement.

  “Oh, Benedict, Benedict. You could untie me and grant me full run of your castle, and I would still regard you with indifference. I would, however, appreciate the favor, and I might ask Sir Robert to be a little less severe with you when he comes to rescue me.”

  She was bluffing the Scorpion, bluffing him well and considerably. I looked through the curtains and saw the both of them.

  Enid was seated in a straight-backed wooden chair, all blond and brown-eyed and surpassing beautiful. Also fearless and surpassing angry.

  Across from her sat old Benedict—the Scorpion of my apprehensions and nightmares—crouched and hooded on his skeletal throne, which looked strangely smaller, strangely more flimsy, less menacing.

  “Sir Robert! Sir Robert!” the Scorpion called mockingly. “My dear, your father is a blustering, reckless fool.”

  “Which is why you had to steal his daughter, rather than confront him directly,” Enid answered merrily, ironically.

  “You think he will come and rescue you. Oh, yes, Lady Enid, he will walk into the arms of my soldiers, into the arrows and the daggers of the long dead men of Neraka—the ‘generations from the grass,’ as the prophecy calls them. He will feel the Scorpion’s sting, my sweet one.”

  The Scorpion leaned back on his throne and laughed richly, venomously. From the folds of his robe he drew something that shone, something that glittered, and he began to speak as he held the pendulum to the light, swinging it back and forth like a cheap carnival hypnotist.

  I did not notice the swirling gray stone near the railing of the balcony, and it was all I could do to grab the curtain as I fell through it. My stifled cry of alarm was not stifled enough. Both Enid and the Scorpion looked up at me from their seats in the great hall.

  For the first time, I saw clearly that Enid’s hands were tied to the arms of her chair. And the eyes of the Scorpion glowed red, glowed blue, glowed white.

  “Welcome, Weasel,” he purred, clutching the arms of his throne with a grip that whitened his knuckles. “We were just getting ready to … discuss you.”

  CHAPTER 19

  “We can always discuss this later, if you’d like,” I offered, but the Scorpion was having none of it. He leaned forward on his throne, his eyes spiraling though all the colors of fire until they took on the white of the fire’s very center.

  “I think I have no further need of you,” he snarled, his voice stripped of its deadly music, become something harsh and remotely human. We were in his country now, where he had no more need of masks.

  He pointed at the floor below me, the golden pendant dangling from his long, pale index finger.

  The spot of floor to which he pointed began to turn, twist, and glitter, much like the walls and floors of the corridors through which I had passed. But this vortex was black, not the slate gray of the walls and the other floors.

  I squinted and looked closer.

  A blanket of scorpions covered the floor beneath me. They flickered and twisted in the torchlight, poisonous tails aloft. To fall into their midst would make you pray on the way down that the fall itself would kill you.

  Slowly, ever so carefully, I tried to pull myself up the curtain and over the railing of the balcony, praying to Gilean, to Mishakal, to whatever god or goddess came to mind for a strongly woven fabric in my hands, for careful carpentry on the railing and no more illusions where I was headed. The mechanical bird chattered again in the hall outside.

  I sighed and whispered to myself, “Now just climb up and tunnel your way out of here, Weasel.”

  Then I saw the giant scorpion, its black scales shimmering, its sharp tail raised, as it began a slow climb down the curtain, clutching the hem and the stitchery on its way toward my hands.

  Things like this compose your worst nightmares. I reached for the railing, only to have my hand pass through it as though it were made of smoke.

  There was nothing of substance to serve as a lifeline. I let myself down the curtain as far as I could, hand over hand like I was descending a rope. Then I thought of the boiling throng of creatures below me and stopped where I was, not daring to move down any farther, lest I run out of curtain.

  Still the giant scorpion approached me, its black tail raised and its delicate legs dancing over the soft drapery.

  “Get away!” I hissed. The thing paused, tail turning in the air like a black leaf catching moisture or sunlight, then hopped threateningly in my direction before pausing ironically on a gold tassel not a yard from my hands.

  “Such heroism!” the Scorpion drawled ironically. “A creature not a tenth your size, and you shy from him as though he were … poison?” His laughter rose into a piercing howl; the scorpions below me churned more frantically, and Enid covered her ears.

  “You’re not known for picking the fair fight yourself, Benedict!” Enid shouted angrily. She was saying something more, but her words warred with his laughter and lost.

  Finally, when the laughter subsided, Benedict looked up at me. With a strange, demented tenderness he smiled, but I could see his glowing eyes sink farther and farther into their sockets, and the framework of the skull emerging from the pale, yellowed skin.

  “You did me good service once, did you not, Galen Pathwarden?”

  The verminous thing above me paused in its descent, as its master spoke. “As reward for your service, little Weasel, you shall live longer than all your friends.”

  Enid shot an angry glance at me, reminded, no doubt, of the stories of my betrayals.

  I looked remorseful and shrugged, or at least as much as I could while hanging from a drapery.

  Her anger softened. Helplessly we stared at one another. Helplessly I dangled. Above me and below me, the cluttering poisonous things awaited their orders. I was left in wicked suspension.

  Dimly through the halls, I could hear someone pounding at the door—the door I had tried to get to, to open. The Scorpion cupped his hand to his ear, ironically.

  “We have visitors, my dear! Don’t get up. I’ll answer the door!” he exclaimed, then burst once again into laughter. “It should be my father-in-law, if I am not mistaken.”

  He turned to me, his eyes glowing.

  “And I am never mistaken. For after your verbal gymnastics, your long nights with poetry and history and Solamnic lore, it is I who broke the code of the prophecy, not Bayard, who nursed it for a lifetime, nor Sir Robert, who pondered it like his father did and his father before him.

  “I like to think that a little bit of … the bardic soul resides within me,” he mused, and leaned back on his throne exultantly.

  “If it does, Uncle Benedict, I’d wager it is lonely,” Enid retorted.

  “Silence, child,” Benedict commanded softly, almost soothingly. “For your … bridal time is nigh.”

  From the folds of his robe he drew a dagger. It shimmered in the off-yellow light of the hall as he placed it delicately on the arm of his throne. Just as he did, the door to the Great Hall shivered and burst from its hinges.

  Bayard and Sir Robert stood in the doorway, swords drawn. Sir Robert’s left hand was tangled in Alfric’s hair, which he had used as a rein to guide my reluctant brother to the spot. Alfric puffed and whimpered.

  “Welcome,” the Scorpion intoned ominously. “I have awaited you, Bayard Brightblade. And you … Sir Robert.

  “There is time—not much time, but time enough—to take up our quarrel of four centuries. But first, let us cover a wound more freshly opened, a factional dispute of scarcely thirty years back.”

  He held out his hands, palms up, and raised them slowly above his head. Its chain entwined in the fingers of his left hand, the pendulum dangled and glittered.

  “Let my friends resume their quarrel … where your high-and-mighty Order fanc
ies it has put all quarrel to rest,” he pronounced casually. “Let ‘generations from the grass arise and lay the curse aside.’ ”

  Beneath me the scorpions began to scatter, the floor of the hall to shake and crack.

  When the attention of its master turned elsewhere, my enemy from above resumed his scrambling descent.

  “Stop right there!” I threatened, trying to sound menacing, then clamping my mouth shut in the realization that the creature might be following the sound of my voice. I reached into the mist for my belt and the knife that hung …

  Did not hang.

  I remembered the windowsill through which I had entered this castle, the glitter of iron in the light of the red moon. My dagger was conveniently three corridors away, forgotten on a windowsill beyond my reach.

  In vain I fumbled through my pockets for anything sharp or heavy. At last my desperate hand rested on something rough, thick, and leathery.

  “The gloves!” I hissed, and the scorpion creeped down the curtain, now within a foot of my one clinging hand.

  I slipped on a glove, using one hand and my mouth in a movement that, given other circumstances, I’d have dismissed as acrobatic if not downright impossible. Agility had always been my strong suit, and the suit was stretched to its limit of strength there at the end of the Scorpion’s curtains.

  The merchant who had sold them to me had boasted of the gloves’ sturdiness, that indeed they could “stand up to a knife if they were called to do so, young sir.”

  As the scorpion tested the fabric not six inches from my hand, its jointed leg strumming the rough embroidery, I reached forward and grabbed the creature with my gloved hand, gripping it as hard as I could.

  I heard the sound of its skeleton crackle and felt something breaking in the padded palm of my hand. The lethal tail wound its way out of my grip from between my fingers, arched and plunged harmlessly time and again into the thick, resilient leather.

  For once, a merchant had not lied.

  I hurled the remnants of the creature from me and watched them fall in fragments to the floor of the hall.