“Quite so. Now, it seems to me that little Anna’s idea of traipsing around that dungeon didn’t go all that well. Shan’t be doing that again, eh, boys and girls? I’d rather cover myself in blood and go make dirty with a shark.”
The girl put her hand in the air, as though this was a bloody classroom.
“What, lass?”
“I think you are being too dismissive of the dungeon, Captain Pickering,” she said. “You love loot, yes?”
“Booty, we calls it, lass. Not loot.”
“Dungeons are full of booty. It’s what they’re famous for.”
“Famous or not, we lost good men going down into that pit, and only you and Freckles there survived. How you got out when some tough, well-salted lads met their fate, I do not know. I do not care either, my pretty little pearl. All I know is this; Endliver Pickering learns from his mistakes.”
“Doesn’t it hurt your pride, Captain?” persisted the girl. “To know that whatever is in the dungeon beat you?”
“Pickerings do not concern ourselves with pride. We aren’t the vengeful types. No, I won’t be riskin’ my lads on tomfoolery like that. End of discussion. Any further raisings of the topic will be met with punishment as befits our types; a nice little walk off the plank. When the ship’s ready and we get back out to sea, that is.”
“I suppose if you’ve made your mind up,” said the girl, “I’ll shut up and stop pestering you.”
“Aye. Now, I hear tell of a village someway south, that’s-”
Endliver stopped talking. For a second his mind completely fogged. He couldn’t form words, couldn’t even finish a thought, as though his ideas were sea breams swimming away when they saw his shadow.
And then his mind cleared again, and he realized that he had a better plan.
“On second thought, lads,” he said. “We will visit the dungeon after all. All of us. There’s booty to be had, and we will take it, or my name ain’t Endliver Pickering.”
CHAPTER 11
The squawking of ravens filled my dungeon, four of them fluttering around my core chamber and talking at once so that it became just a cacophony of shrieking sounds. Errant feathers dislodged from their wings and twirled to the ground, while plops of dung fell from their arses like the beginnings of an autumn snow shower.
“Enough! Speak to me separately,” I said. “Poe, you first.”
The conversation took a long time, as conversations with ravens do, but the end result was that it gave me the best news I’d had in days.
“Tomlin,” I said, sending my core voice out through the dungeon.
When my kobold joined me, his apron was covered in sickly yellow stains. He pinched the material. “Tomlin asked Cynthia to mix special food for essence vines,” he said. “They grow quicker now.”
“Yes, I noticed that my essence had been replenishing quicker lately. Well done, Tomlin.”
“Thank you, Dark Lord. Need something?”
“When was the last time you saw Eric the barbarian?”
“He is looking for Shadow. Five days since he visited dungeon.”
“Hmm. He normally stays out for a week at a time, doesn’t he?”
“Need Eric, Dark Lord?”
“As it happens, I want to spare him a trip. We’ve found Shadow.”
“Alive?”
“Alive.”
Tomlin’s face was a picture at that moment. A look of surprise at first, before morphing into a grin that made the whites of his eyes stand out. And then a struggle appeared on his features as he fought desperately to avoid showing how happy he was.
“Where is she? Near? Far?”
“We know that a boy and a girl entered the dungeon with some heroes. Tragically…for nobody…the heroes died. Tragically for me, the young lad and lass escaped. Razensen also heard them talking about ships and got the impression they would normally be out at sea but were stuck on land for a while. Well, there is no coastline within hundreds of miles from the wasteland but, if you go far enough west, there’s a small oasis. Barely a puddle, actually, but these buggers are camping near it and must have journeyed to the dungeon on horseback. I don’t know what they were doing in the wasteland in the first place, though, unless they were actually looking for my dungeon.”
“What do we do, Dark Lord? What do we do?”
“Settle down, Tomlin. Poe?”
Squawk! “Shiny things?” said the bird.
“Tomlin is going to attach a note to your leg. Find Eric, wherever he is, and make sure he reads it. We need him here.”
Wylie, attending the strategy meeting as a representative for my kobolds, gagged on Eric’s stench and inched away from him. The barbarian swept his glorious, free-flowing hair back and slouched on a rock, oblivious to the effect of his reek.
“That’s a sign that you need a bath,” I said. “When kobolds cannot handle your stink.”
“By the axe, Beno, give a man a break! I’ve been wandering the bloody wasteland for weeks now, sweating in places I didn’t even know a man could sweat. There aren’t exactly any fancy boudoirs or bathhouses out here.”
“You can use my pool, barbarian,” said Razensen.
“Bath your poxing self,” added Kainhelm, my narkleer who was standing beside his best pal Razensen. Kainhelm was covered from skeletal head to skeletal toe in a red paste designed to limit the harm of the deathly energy rays he emitted.
“Bloody hell. Never imagined a dungeon would be full of such fussy sods,” said Eric.
In a blink he stripped from his girdle and furs, and walked naked over to Razensen’s pool and jumped in.
“By the axe, this is colder than a wizard’s balls!”
“Cold wakes the mind,” growled Razensen. “But it would take all the icebergs in Xynnar to awaken yours.”
Eric swam half a lap, then headed back to the side of the pool and clung on to it, his head above water, his fantastic, really fantastic, hair sodden against his scalp.
“So, you found the little wolf, eh?” he said. “Good. I need a meal, some mead, and then I’m ready to set out again.”
“We need to make a plan. Poe and his team spotted where the witch and her men are camped. It’s quite a journey across the wasteland, but we have the advantage of time and surprise, and by all accounts they are new to this terrain. We, on the other hand, know it well. Planned just right, we can hit them before they even put on their britches, and we’ll have Shadow back without a single drop of blood spilled. Well, of our blood, anyway. Spill as much as you like of theirs.”
“Is the kobold worth it?” asked Razensen.
“Excuse me?”
“Unless you truly think it is possible to kill these people without a single loss, then you must weigh the value of Shadow against those who may die. Is her life worth more than others?”
I thought about Shadow, and how I’d sent her to Hogsfeate to kill the mayor. If I hadn’t sent her on a mission away from the dungeon she’d never have been taken.
I thought about the demented kobolds and bone guys we’d had to put out of their misery. If I hadn’t divided my time between the dungeon, Yondersun, and Hogsfeate, they would still be here.
I couldn’t correct those mistakes, but I could still do the best for my dungeon. I could try and make up for things.
“This isn’t just about Shadow,” I said. “It’s about the witch. A power like hers could be tremendous for my dungeon. If I use my alchemy chamber to dissolve her corpse, I can give her gifts to my dungeon mates, making us all stronger. We can do this. We can get Shadow back, and boost the dungeon beyond recognition.”
Footsteps rapidly approached, and soon, Tomlin was standing in the chamber, panting.
“Horrible raven returned from another flight,” he said, gasping for breath. “Witch and men are less than a day from dungeon.”
“What? They were all the way across the wasteland!”
“Horrible bird has seen them, Dark Lord!”
“This doesn’t make any sense at all. It was onl
y today that the ravens…oh, demons’ arses.”
“What is it, Stone?” asked Razensen.
“The witch beguiled our creature’s minds earlier, yes? Made them demented? I believe she must have done the same to the ravens. Filled their little bird minds with lies, hiding the fact that the girl and her gang are already on their way here. Evidently, this beguilement had its limits, if it has worn off.”
“Perhaps her powers have a range, then. The birds were in the air!”
“Quite right, Eric. The birds were in the air. Or, she could be like most of us who rely on mystic abilities; she has to let them recuperate. Whatever it is, I don’t give an imp’s balls. She’s on her way, and we need to prepare.”
“Shiny things! Shiny things!”
“Shut up about that,” I told Poe. “We need more information. Now, how many people did you see?”
The raven turned its back on me and stubbornly muttered “Shiny things.”
“Damn you. Eric?”
The barbarian laughed. “I much prefer your birds to the ones you find out there in the wild. At least they make you laugh as well as crapping all over you.” He took a coin from his purse at the pool edge and flicked it over to the bird.
“Shiny things!”
“Yes, you have your shiny thing. Now, how many people are heading here?” I said.
“Thirty! Thirty!”
“That’s a poxing army!” said Kainhelm. “A blight on their ancestors!”
“If we had a timemage with us, perhaps blighting their ancestors would help,” I said. “But as we don’t, we are core-deep in a big, steaming pat.”
“Ask the gnome and the goblin to throw a few warm bodies your way,” said Eric.
“Chief Reginal and Chief Galatee? Perhaps. Tomlin, can you visit the chiefs and explain our plight and see if they can spare any soldiers, please?”
“Tomlin wants to help in the fight.”
“Really? You?”
“If Shadow is there…”
I couldn’t believe my non-existent ears. Tomlin was so cowardly that chickens kept posters of him in their coops to inspire themselves not to be as gutless. For him to volunteer to fight spoke a lot about what Shadow meant to him. The problem was that he had no combat experience. He was a bloody essence gardener, after all, and he was my best one. I wouldn’t let him get himself killed. I couldn’t send him to fight, but nor would I embarrass him in front of Eric, Razensen, and Kainhelm.
“Tomlin, there will be plenty of time for you to fight, but right now I need someone to speak to the chiefs while I plan things, and I trust you with this job. You’re level-headed enough to deal with the chiefs. Okay?”
“Yes, Dark Lord,” said Tomlin, and scampered away.
“Now, we’ll prepare for the worst,” I said. “Let’s say we have 30 men and the witch in my dungeon. What do we do? Eric, I take it you will fight?”
The barbarian, still in the pool, shrugged. “You paid me to watch your mimic in Hogsfeate. I didn’t charge you extra to look for the little wolf, because I like her. But if you want me to fight, you will have to loosen your purse. I want to be compensated for the coin I just gave to the raven, too. I don’t fancy trying to get it back from him.”
“Quite rightly; they are buggers when it comes to their shiny things. Very well. I think I can scrape the gold to pay you a little extra. Kainhelm, how about you?”
“Yes, poxing core, of course I will fight alongside my friend Razensen.”
“Which brings me to your unit, Razensen.”
“What unit?” asked the bogan. “They’ve all gone to the ice!”
“Exactly. Having you commanding a separate team of monsters has proven invaluable, but we’ll need to furnish you with new monsters. Tougher ones. The problem is, I only have a certain amount of essence to use, and I also need to build traps.”
“Traps?” said Eric. “More like toys, if you beg my humble pardon. A man can step around a pit in the ground. He can’t step around my axe.”
“A pit in the ground, Eric? Oh, you really have no idea of the sophistication a core is capable of, do you? You think we resort to digging holes in the mud?”
“You have two pitfalls near the very first chamber!”
“A clever person thinks in such complex thoughts that they sometimes miss the simple ones,” I said. “Most heroes train to disarm all kinds of complex traps, so much so that they forget the lessons they learned in their apprenticeship, and they don’t take care around simple things like bear traps. It is a fascinating psychological phenomenon. But these chumps crossing the wasteland aren’t heroes. They will be heroes by definition when they enter my lair, but they won’t be heroes by training. I believe I could rid myself of most of them easily. The witch is the problem.”
Kainhelm scratched his bony chin with a long, bony finger. “Is there a way to…pox it, what am I try to say? Hmm. Is there a way to prevent the little sorceress using magic?”
“There are alchemic solutions that can dull a mage’s powers.”
“Then we have her! Stop her powers, and I’ll tear her little blighted guts out and I will add her skin to my skin cape.”
“I asked Cynthia about this a while ago. She doesn’t have any of the materials needed for such a paste, and she couldn’t source them for me. We can’t deal with the witch that way.”
Eric took some water in his mouth, tipped his head back, and then blew it out as if he was a fountain. “Many moons back…” he began.
“You know that Razensen bathes in there, don’t you, Eric?”
The barbarian shrugged. “So? I’ve drunk from worse water sources, let me tell you. There’s no pool too murky, no hole too muddy to shame Eric the barbarian. Now, many moons back, I was journeying across the Cocklepuj outbacks when I encountered an Octantine Bush Goyle. Any of you undergrounders heard of them?”
“Of course,” I said. “Eight-limbed murderous trolls that were created by a mad mage centuries ago. He was lonely and needed a creature that would double as security and a pet, if I remember rightly. They escaped from his tower and began breeding. After they slaughtered a load of nearby peasants, the mage was hanged.”
“Damned mages and their abominations,” said Razensen.
Kainhelm’s face flushed with fury. He would normally have unleashed it in a torrent of abuse but seeing that his friend was the cause of it, he seemed to hold back. “Narkleers like me were created at a mage’s hand, plague it!”
“I never meant offense, my friend. It is just that mages take it upon themselves to create these monsters and give no thought to the delicate balance of nature. They do not see that introducing a predator or prey to a food chain can break it. The bogans were nearly destroyed when a damned mage created a flying polar bear. It took us decades to exterminate the creatures, and many of us were sent to the ice in doing do.”
“Poor old Kainhelm has never had people of his own to hunt alongside,” muttered the narkleer. “We are always solitary.”
“Well, not when you have your pal Razensen with you. You’ll always have a hunting partner in me.”
“Thank you, you poxing bogan. Thank you.”
“Flying bears aside, I don’t get involved in moral questions,” said Eric, “Nor do I care. Answer me this. The bush goyles were never hunted to extinction, were they?”
“Who’d be mad enough to hunt something as big as a troll, but with eight gigantic arms?” I said.
“Eric the barbican, that’s who! I was travelin’ out west, and I saw one. By the axe, I thought, I could get a pretty penny or two for this bugger’s skin. So, I tried to fight it. The problem was, the goyle bugger had eight arms, and he was holding clubs in each one.”
“Is there a point to this poxing tale? I hear enough of this rubbish when the blighted core tries to tell me about the latest book he has read!” said Kainhelm.
“Well, my narkleer pal, there’s a point alright. I stopped thinking about fighting the goyle as one impossible-to-beat beast and in
stead imagined its eight club-wielding arms were eight little beasts that I had to deal with separately. I changed the way I moved, the way I fought it, and I lopped off each limb one by one instead of trying to handle them all.”
“You think we should separate the group of men and fight them that way,” I said. “That might work.”
“More like, separate the witch from the blokes. We’ll kill all her pals, and then we only have her and her spells to worry about.”
“Good, good!” I said. “A few trick tunnels and false doors will separate them easily enough, and I know certain traps and puzzles that will get the job done. Razensen, I will also furnish you with a new unit of monsters. It seems that we have a plan, my friends, and now I have lots of work to do.”
CHAPTER 12
“Hello? Endliver? Pirates?” said Anna, turning in a circle, wincing when she put weight on her bad leg.
“Pirates?” said Utta, shaking his head. “Don’t you know their names? We’ve traveled with them for long enough.”
“I didn’t think it was important. I only remember Endliver’s because he keeps saying it all the time. Where are they, anyway?”
“The dungeon separated us on purpose. I’ve heard of things like this. Remember the module on dungeon cores at school?”
“I was never assigned that class,” said Anna. “I had to take Demonology Basics instead.”
“I suppose then that your Prophecy Tablet would have been about capturing a demon and taming its will, or something. You know, if we’d graduated.”
Anna nodded. “Well, I got a prophesy tablet all the same, didn’t I?”
“Not one that belonged to you, though. I wonder what happened to the poor kid we took it from.”
“Without his prophecy tablet, he wouldn’t be able to graduate. Not really my problem, Utta. Not yours, neither. Cheer up! He’ll be fine! Let’s focus on this pesky dungeon and its little tricks. Now, what are we dealing with?”
A stone door slid into place behind Captain Endliver and his men, trapping them in a tomb of some sort. It was dark. Not as dark as the sea as night, of course. That was true darkness. A beautiful kind, one that came with the sounds of the ocean, the sighing and screaming of that wild, watery beast. This darkness was soulless. That of a pit underground where there was no life and no beauty. Endliver missed his boat, and he missed the waves and the little fishies.
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