by Ed Greenwood
Just ahead of them, the velduke slowed sharply, and then started to curse.
"What is it, Darendarr?" Taeauna asked, hurrying to join him.
"We're too late," Deldragon snapped, his ice-blue eyes blazing. "Too glorming late."
Right in front of his boots, the blood and bodies began. Dark Helms, here and huddled in a heap far down the passage. Between them, unarmored men in aprons and homespun: cooks and scullions.
Rod peered down at them and winced, feeling more than a little queasy. "If they've found your kitchens…" he said warningly, feeling even more queasy at the thought of food.
"Exactly," the velduke said grimly, stroking his mustache. "Amandur! Belros! Turn you around and go get as many men as you can and lead them to the kitchens. We'll be heading for the well. Again. Once you hold the kitchens, send most of your blades on to the well to join us. We'll be there. Alive or dead."
"But, lord!" Amandur protested. "Leave you, now? Alone down here?"
"I'm not alone. I stand with an Aumrarr and a man of mysteries. I need both of you to go, in case you encounter invaders; one man, alone, as you have just hinted, stands less chance of making it."
"Lord," Belros rumbled. "We hear and obey. Keep yourself alive, and so will we, and you'll have your blades right soon. Soon, I said; if I were you, I'd dawdle on my way to the well."
"And have them poison it, and doom us all?"
"Oh. Glorming bloody shit. Uh, lord."
Iskarra's boots felt like rocks clamped around her ankles, and her bony chest burned. Live or die, she'd not be running much farther. The thunder of Dark Helm boots was like a cruel roaring of waves crashing on rocks behind her. Not far enough behind her.
They'd catch up to her, soon. Even sooner, if a lorn came winging out of the darkness again. She could barely hold her hairpin now, let alone stab anything with it. Not that it mattered.
Not that anything mattered, without her Gar.
Let a Falconfar without Garfist Gulkoon in it be also a Falconfar without old Iskarra. Not that it would remember either of them, a day and a night from now.
Except for one Arlsakran, glorm him. And his poor daughters, all fourteen of them, if he hadn't worn any of them out and into early graves yet. He'd remember them. Much comfort would it do him.
No, she didn't much care now…
Hold! What was that, there?
Iskarra peered, stumbled, slowed hastily to keep from falling, and peered again. A grating! The first she'd seen, along all these passages, and it was askew. She looked back. No, too dark for them to see her. She bent and tugged at it and it came up in her hand.
There was a shaft down there, more than big enough for her. Right. If all she had to worry about was dozens of Dark Helms pissing on her head, so be it. She dropped her dagger into it and heard it plink off stone immediately. Ten feet down, not more.
She followed it, feet first, holding the grating above her like a hat.
And landed hard; the shaft was five feet deep, if that, but at least she had room to gently place the grating back into place above her, without any clangs or clanks. She found her dagger, and thrust it point-first into the deep darkness around her, hoping to stab anything that was lurking there before it did worse to her.
Nothing came at her out of the darkness, and she was able to snatch her breath back at last.
She was in some sort of dusty, disused basin that had once gathered some sort of liquid from overhead. Hmm, might still gather rainwater, down pipes from above. It didn't smell like a privy-sluice. And it was large enough for her to get right in under the passage floor, out of view. So she did, lying down and keeping quiet.
Just in time.
"Glork! Glorm and bloody glork! There's a way-moot here! Anybody see which way she went?"
"No," a deeper voice said gloomily. "Why the lorn aren't flying ahead of us, I don't know."
The first voice chuckled nastily. "She killed two of 'em, in less time as it takes me to say it, that's why. All of a sudden like, they decided hunting that little lass wasn't in their orders. Well, I'm not wasting time on her, either. Our orders were to bring the fat one back alive, and we've got him. She'll never be fat."
"Ah. Good idea," the deeper voice said, as two pairs of boots scraped stone right above Iskarra's head. A moment later, two streams of urine came hissing and spattering down through the grating, wetting the wall not far from her.
"I thought they'd never get him tied. Fought like a stabtentacles, he did."
"He's only half-tied now! What they did in the end was tie the three lorn wrapped around his arms to each other, with his arms somewhere inside the bundle, so to speak. I wonder if he'll manage to strangle any of them before we get back to the wizard."
"Ho, now there's something worth betting on," the nasty-voiced Dark Helm observed as he started back the way he'd come.
Iskarra lay there in the darkness, wondering how long she should wait before getting back up into the passage again. If Garfist was alive, she had to find where they were taking him.
To a wizard. He was probably doomed anyway.
"But we doomed must stick together," she whispered to herself in the darkness, and got to her feet again.
The smell of what the Dark Helms had done reminded her that it was high time she relieved herself, too. She squatted right next to their wet, to keep the rest of the basin dry.
If the Falcon flew high, she and Garfist might soon need it again.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“We turn aside here," Deldragon murmured, absently stroking his flaxen mustache, his eyes very blue in the glow of his sword. "I'm going to open a door, and I need you both to be very, very quiet. Step carefully, and put out a hand to touch my back as we move forward. Things are going to be dark."
The velduke quelled the faint magical sword-glow that had been giving them light enough to see by, and Rod and Taeauna heard the faintest of metallic scrapings as he lifted a metal rod out of a hasp, and swung wide a door they could barely see.
Beyond it, light was streaming up out of a stout iron grating in the stone floor of a room. The velduke approached cautiously; the radiance below was growing stronger, moving in the cellar level below them, to the sound of boots tramping from Rod's right toward his left, the light of a lantern moving with them. Taeauna reached her hand back for Rod, took hold of his arm, and towed him gently in a wide circle around the grating, keeping well back from it, so they were looking down through it at an angle, rather than standing at its edge peering down.
Rod looked, and saw.
A long, narrow cellar passage stretched straight as an arrow below, passing beneath the grating. There were doors in its walls here and there, and striding along it, right underneath him and heading steadily on down the passage, were twenty or thirty Dark Helms, carrying a large, securely tied bundle in their midst.
The bundle looked like a large, burly-limbed human with three or four lorn wrapped around him that had been lashed together into one helpless mass. Helpless, but squirming. Rod was sure he'd seen something straining to move within all those bindings. The light was coming from lanterns carried by the Dark Helms, and was already lessening, moving away from the grating.
"Toward the well," the velduke murmured. His voice was barely more than a whisper, and every bit as grim as an old gravedigger Rod had once talked to, who'd been burying his old wartime buddies, one after another, as their times ran out.
"So is there a way down, hereabouts?" Taeauna asked just as quietly, her slender but strong arms reaching out to tow Rod and Deldragon close together, so they could whisper and clearly be heard. "Or do we rush along on this level, try to get ahead of them, and descend somewhere closer to the well?"
"We can either go about three chambers that way, and down a staircase that'll let us travel parallel to the Helms," Deldragon replied, "or, yes, we…"
He stiffened, broke off, and stared down through the grating. Rod and Taeauna turned, did the same, and found themselves looking down at a lone woman; skel
eton-thin and not young, yet somehow alluring. She was skulking along as silently as possible, staring ahead as if she knew full well she was following the now-vanished Dark Helms.
She was looking all around as she came, too, peering alertly everywhere. She didn't miss noticing the grating, and gave it a long, steady stare, just as if she could see the three people standing motionless in the dark room above her, their heads close together.
Then she moved on, out of their view, and Deldragon was shaking his head in amazement and towing Rod and Taeauna on across the room to a door on its far wall.
When they were through it and he'd closed it behind them, the velduke caused his sword to glow again, and over its faint, ghostly light told them, "That woman; I met her years ago, in a Stormar port, and never thought to see her here. She'll be up to no good, however she came to be inside my walls. I'm going to follow her."
"This is your home, Darendarr, and your fight," Taeauna murmured. "We're with you. Yet tell us more of yon woman. 'Years ago,' you said; you're sure this is the same person?"
"That face is not one I could mistake, and she has the same bag-of-bones build, the same gait; that lilt of the hips that tells you you're seeing a woman and not a young and thin lad. No, I'm sure. That's Rosera, or so she called herself then."
"Then?" Rod asked eagerly, more than intrigued.
Deldragon gave him a wry smile. "Once upon a time, I was a young rake, wandering around the Stormar ports and farther afield, in part because my father told me in no uncertain terms, with the aid of a bull whip, what he'd do to me if I drank and wenched my way across Galath. I was in Hrathlar, I think it was, when I saw this Rosera."
Taeauna grinned. "Saw her how, Darendarr? Come, we're not of Bowrock; there's no need to be coy before our ears."
The velduke sighed as he opened a door into the next chamber, this one full of barrels, and led the way across it to another door. "Well, let's just say she was dancing on tables in a dockfront tavern then, and so slender and supple a pleasure-lass was she that she could travel around a bed full of half-drunken men so swiftly and with such ease that I thought she must be using magic. She was agile enough a little later to squeeze out a tiny window with all their purses while they slept, avoiding the bedchamber's barred and guarded door."
"This 'they' included you, didn't it?" Taeauna teased.
"Of course," Deldragon sighed, "but there's no need at all to spread this tale about. I heard much more about her in Hrathlar, after that, back in those days. Suffice it to say that she's the sort that's always up to something, making a living by sly means. So if she's here, now, it bodes ill for Bowrock. Not to mention that I dislike my cellars being full of unwanted guests I did not greet, nor welcomed, nor had even saw entering my home. Come!"
He opened the door into another dark room, threaded his way down it through a maze of stacked pots and tables of dust-covered carvings and tools, and down a stair, his blade glowing faintly and eerily in the gloom.
"I don't want to shout and chase her, mind," he warned. "I want to follow her and see where she leads us. And 1 doubt not but that means we'll have to be exceedingly, glorkingly quiet, unless she's gone deaf down the years since I saw her."
"She left quite an impression," the Aumrarr purred. "Was she that good?"
The velduke turned to regard her, held up his blade so its glow shone on his face and she could see him rolling his eyes, and sighed heavily. Then, without a word, he turned away to thrust open the door at the bottom of the stairs, and led them out into another passage.
"How blasted big is this keep?" Rod whispered to Taeauna, who gave him a wide, understanding grin by way of reply.
Then they were stepping out into one of the largest rooms he'd ever seen in his life. Not high-ceilinged, like a cathedral or one of those towering hotels with a central atrium that elevators slid up and down the many-balconied sides of, but more like some basements he'd been in, with rough pillars here and there in odd places. Except that those basements had been cluttered and small. This room seemed to be empty of everything except pillars and echoes, and was very, very big.
"Jesus," he muttered, not quite under his breath. "What would something this big ever be used for?"
"Living," Deldragon replied, striding off along one wall. Rod had to trot to keep up with him and hear the rest of his reply: "Every jack, lass, and child in Bowrock. If dragons come mating."
"Dragons come mating? What, they cast lustful eyes on humans and tear us apart trying to, uh… you know?"
The velduke sighed. "You are from a far country, aren't you? Not often, but often enough that everyone remembers it all, at least in cradle-tales; every two or three centuries, I suppose, dragons get the urge to mate. She-dragons fly around seeking suitable lairs, always stone cities or fortresses men have built, and take possession of them. Usually that means shattering many of the interior buildings to form a bed of stone she can lie on, and it always means slaying or driving out any humans in the place." "Oh."
"There's more than that, man. The drakes then get into the act; the male dragons. They roam the skies seeking likely-looking females lying waiting in their lairs, and try to conquer them in playful battles. If other males show up, the males end their wooing-frays and fight each other to the death, often wrecking much of the lair in the struggle, or crushing other buildings nearby when the vanquished dragon crashes to earth, dying, and often rolling around in its agonies. Those broken lairs don't seem to bother the she-dragons; they proceed to mate, then ferociously guard the area against all intrusion, including humans who've been there all along, but come to the notice of the wyrms, until the wyrmlings hatch, grow strong enough to fly, and depart with their mother. As I said, this doesn't happen often, but when it does…" The velduke stopped and swept his hand out in a slow flourish, to indicate the vast, echoing darkness before them.
"I'm a writer," Rod whispered. "Words aren't supposed to fail me. And 'holy shit' hardly seems appropriate, somehow."
"Oh, I don't know," Taeauna murmured, from just behind him. "They cover the matter pretty well, I'd say."
Deldragon turned with his hand on the ring of another door. "We go through a narrow spot, here. Stay close to me." He tugged, the door groaned open, and the ghostly glow of his blade moved into deep darkness.
The talons of the lorn were sharp, and embedded deeply, agonizingly, in his shoulders and nigh his elbows just below, on his left arm, and just above on his right. They were obviously trying to prevent him bending his arms.
Fair enough. He was obviously trying to kill them, by thrusting something strong, like his fingers, or sharp, like the little stabbing knife normally sheathed at the inside of his wrist deep into their eyes. The ropes so tightly wound around them all prevented either side getting away from the other, and with their wings bound so tightly against them, the lorn were unable to properly call upon their strong shoulder muscles to overpower the large and well-muscled human in their midst.
Wherefore one lorn was dead already, and dripping forth brains and life-blood in a slow trail of gore from one eyesocket, and another was frantically trying to drive its claws right.through the fat arm they were embedded in, in an attempt to stop the arm's owner from slowly sawing off the talons of its other claw, to clear a path to its eyes.
A vain attempt. Talon after talon was dropping off, leaking blood in the wake of the bundle, and not only were the Dark Helms not helping (a few simple blows about the human's head would have ended its attacks, surely), they were chuckling and talking of placing bets on what would happen next!
This left the most helpless lorn-the one hanging downwards, its face seeing only stone floor sliding endlessly past-seething, and the other one hissing and voiding itself in fear, as it lost talons amid much pain.
Those talons were iron-hard, but the fingers above them could be cut as readily as Garfist sliced meat on a fireside platter. And being as it didn't seem likely he'd ever see a fireside meal again, he went on carving, and remembering those sizzling
juices, the spiced sauces Isk prepared so superbly, the mouth-watering taste of the best roast boar they'd fire-spitted together…
His gut rumbled loudly in sudden hunger, suddenly filling both lorn with terror and causing them to sob involuntarily. Humans ate lorn? Had they but known!
The Dark Helms guffawed anew.
If Garfist died…
Iskarra winced at the thought, ran her fingers over the bony knuckles of the hand she was clutching her dagger with, and shook her head.
She'd go on, if she weren't dying herself by then. She'd not greet certain death by fighting hopeless odds, but she'd not abandon her old ox either, not while there was still a shred of hope, and if fighting for him landed her in a hopeless fray, then so be it.
Glorking, glorking wizards.
It had to be a wizard; who else could make Dark Helms and lorn work together? Or bring lorn down into dark cellars, where they'd never venture on their own, so hating the likelihood of not being able to fly; they even hated flying through windows into the largest rooms. So if she could hurl a dagger through a wizard's eye and then shout to the Dark Helms that the lorn had been promised them as meals, and start the Helms fighting the lorn…
It was a very slim chance for her, and less than that for Garfist, but at least they might not be the only ones who died this day.
"There's the wizard," Deldragon muttered, stroking his mustache. His voice was barely more than a whisper, and was almost lost to Rod and Taeauna in the humming of the gate.
Like the others, Rod knew what it was without anyone saying a word. A magical doorway linking the cellar of Deldragon's keep to somewhere else. It dominated the room, an arch of writhing, humming purple flame as high as three men. It burned without consuming anything, rooted in two small braziers at both ends but obviously not fueled by them. Two metal spheres were part of its flamings on one side of its curve, and a withered, shriveled, nigh-skeletal human dangled from them, his armor hanging loose or dropping off, piece by no-longer-fitting piece.