Another Day, Another Dungeon

by Greg Costikyan

  "I say," said a voice from behind. "What's all this?"

  The lich turned. The speaker was a stout man in formal dress, carrying a walking stick.

  "What's it to you, meat puppet?" the lich whispered harshly.

  The man turned red. "Now see here," it said. "Merely because you're a man of the cloth, you can't expect—"

  The lich threw back its cowl. Its skull grinned in the daylight.

  The stout man's eyes bugged, then turned up in his head. He tumbled to the sidewalk, his walking stick rolling into the gutter.

  The lich reentered the basement and pulled the steel door closed. It felt faintly better.

  Definitely a headache, it thought. The pain was worse than ever. It wondered why these ailments of the flesh still plagued it.

  "My word," said Jasper. "Look behind us."

  Wentworth turned and peered at the carpet following them. "Gadzooks!" he said. "I believe that's Pratchitt. Who's the muscle boy?" "Don't know," said Jasper.

  Morglop emitted a faint moan. He was lying flat on the carpet, his hands clutching desperately at the fringe.

  "How'd they know we planned to spy on them?" asked Jasper. "Bloody mysterious," said Wentworth, "but we've got to lose them. Afreet! We must lose that carpet."

  "No, sahib, is not possible." "Don't give me that, you monkey!"

  It shook its turban sadly. "Reckless flying bad. License be yank. Against regulation."

  "One pound argentum if we lose them, you pirate."

  "Now sahib be talking!" said the afreet. Suddenly, the carpet yanked into a sharp turn. Morglop moaned a little louder.

  Wentworth's carpet turned suddenly and increased speed. "Follow them!" ordered Nick.

  "Aye, sahib, aye," said the afreet, and their carpet turned, too. Nick and Kraki leaned into the turn and clutched at the carpet edge.

  "Vhat is problem?" grumbled Kraki. "Ve yust vant to talk to them." Nick was tight-Tipped. "Evil flees where no man pursueth," he said. "Vhat?"

  "I wasn't sure Wentworth was involved, but he is. Otherwise, why would he run from us?"

  "Yah," said Kraki. "Maybe is demon summoner?" "Maybe," said Nick grimly.

  The carpet swooped and turned sharply, dogging its prey. "They're still following," said Jasper.

  "This calls for strong measures," said Wentworth, pulling a flask from inside his tunic. "Driver, loop back over them."

  The afreet looked at him. "One shillingi."

  With a curse, Wentworth tossed the creature a coin.

  The carpet went into an immediate inside loop. For a long moment, the city was below their heads. Morglop moaned again. "Bravo," said Jasper. Wentworth dropped the flask. It tumbled toward their foe. . . .

  Nick and Kraki looked up as the Boars' carpet flew overhead. A flask tumbled toward them. "Evade!" shouted Nick.

  Their carpet darted right. The flask exploded with a whump!

  Kraki stood up. "Bastards!" he shouted, waving his fist. "Cowards!" The carpet turned sharply, and he almost fell over the side. Nick grabbed him and pulled him back.

  "Be careful," Nick said.

  Kraki drew his sword with a snick. "Fly under them," he told the afreet. The afreet glanced at the sword worriedly. "I try, sahib," it said. They swerved after the Boars' carpet. The Boars tried to lose their pursuers. Their carpet swivelled around the minaret of a temple and climbed sharply toward a cloud.

  Suddenly, thick white fog hung around them. It was cool in the cloud. They broke out of the mist. The other carpet was above and to the left. "Hah!" said the afreet. "In blind spot."

  "Where are they?" said Wentworth. He and Jasper scanned the sky. "We lose," said the afreet confidently.

  A sword came stabbing up through the carpet. It missed Morglop's thigh by inches. It disappeared and stabbed up again, in a different place. "My carpet!" wailed the afreet. Chattering in rage, it zoomed into a climb.

  Everyone clutched the fibers desperately. Morglop's green skin couldn't turn white, but it was definitely turning pastel.

  The carpet zigged and zagged, almost tossing them off with each swerve. It dived directly toward a temple dome and veered aside at the last instant. Doggedly, Nick and Kraki followed. "Bad thing," said the afreet. "You pay if this carpet be damage." Nick nodded.

  The enemy carpet dived straight at a dome. Their own afreet anticipated the enemy's last-minute swerve, turning before the other carpet did. Unfortunately, they turned left, while the enemy carpet turned right.

  When they rounded the dome, they saw the Boars flying off toward the east. The enemy had gained distance in the trip around the dome. Nick and Kraki followed grimly. The enemy carpet began to climb. The speeds of both carpets dropped as they gained altitude.

  "Uh oh," said the afreet. "What's the matter?" said Nick. "Heading for Morning Temple." "What's that?" asked Kraki.

  Wentworth turned white. "No," he said. "Not there." The afreet glared at him. "You want I lose?"

  "Yes, but—"

  "Get flat on carpet. Minimize wind resistance."

  "Ahem," said Jasper. "Sorry, brothers, but I believe it best that I meet you at Cobblers Lane. . . ."

  The point of green light flitted away from the carpet and headed north. "Coward," muttered Morglop.

  "You'd do the same, if you could fly," said Wentworth.

  The cyclops peeled his eye open to see where they were heading. He shut it again with a shudder.

  The Boars' carpet broke into a sudden dive. It gained speed rapidly as it headed toward a vast temple complex. White-domed buildings stretched for nearly a mile by the River Jones, with manicured gardens among them. A wall kept out the rest of the city.

  "I follow?" said the afreet hesitantly.

  "No," said Nick after a long pause. "Too risky." Their carpet broke away.

  "Vhat is problem?" asked Kraki. "Watch," said Nick.

  The Boars' carpet was a mile up when it passed over the wall of Morning Temple. It started to plummet.

  "The whole temple's a null-magic zone," said Nick. "The Sons of the Morning think magic is wrong. Unnatural. They won't use it."

  Kraki watched, speechless. Only the momentum of the Boars' carpet kept it sailing over the temple. It flapped in the breeze as it fell in a parabola.

  "If they don't clear the far wall, they're dead," said Nick. They fell.

  Wentworth pulled a flask from one of his many pockets and took a sip. They fell.

  Morglop opened his eye and, mesmerized, could not shut it again. He stared grimly at oncoming death.

  They fell.

  The wall approached. The afreet keened a prayer. They fell.

  The wall was growing larger. Morglop made a choking noise. They fell.

  They were going to hit. Wentworth began to turn transparent at the edges.

  They cleared the wall. The magic came back.

  The carpet snapped rigid. They slammed into its surface as it pulled upward. At the bottom of its arc, it scraped the ground, but then they were aloft again.

  "Grab me!" yelled Wentworth. Morglop took his arm.

  The alchemist fluttered in the breeze like a flag. Only Morglop's grip kept Wentworth from flying into the sky.

  "What is it?" said the cyclops, surprised.

  "I took a potion of weightlessness," said Wentworth, somewhat shamefaced. "I didn't think we were going to make it."

  "Nice of you to offer me sip," said Morglop, more than a little nastily.

  "I only had the one dose," said Wentworth defensively. "There wasn't time."

  "Yah, sure." Morglop suddenly noticed that the buildings below looked awfully tiny. He gripped Wentworth tight enough to make the alchemist squeak and closed his own eye equally tight.

  "They make it?" said Kraki.

  "Think so," said Nick after a moment. "Where take sahib?" said the afreet.

  "Tell you what," said Nick slowly. "What say we ransack Wentworth's shop? Since he's gone and all."

  The barbarian grinned. "Sounds like fun," he said. "Back to F
en Street," said Nicholas Pratchitt.

  The lich stood in the basement, staring motionless at the ray of light that shone between the steel doors. I need a drink, it thought. Or a smoke. Or a hallucinogenic drug. Or anything. It really didn't matter.

  Of course, it thought, I couldn't do anything with a drink. Except wet my robe.

  If it didn't capture the humans, the baroness would use its skull for an ashtray.

  Perhaps I ought to make a break for the city limits, it thought. No, that was a stupid idea. The baroness would track it down. And outside the city, it was so much harder to find victims.

  The zombies stood around, motionless. They're no help, thought the lich, they're brainless. Well, actually, not brainless. Their brains were rotting into mush, but they did have brains of a sort. What I mean is, thought the lich, they don't have any intelligence. They make me sick.

  Well, not sick, exactly. It didn't have anything to feel sick with. They made it feel as if it wished it could feel sick.

  Or something like that.

  All I have left to look forward to, thought the lich, is a bleak future of unremitting labor in the cause of villainy.

  Work, work, work.

  It makes me sick, it thought. Well, not sick, it thought.

  It wished it had thought these things through before it rose from the dead.

  It wondered where Pratchitt was. It wondered what the hell it was supposed to do.

  VIII

  The carpet deposited Nick and Kraki on the roof of Wentworth's shop. "I said two shillings if we didn't catch them," said Nick. "But here's five."

  "Thank you, sahib," said the afreet, kissing Nick's hand. "Thank you, oh, thank you." It kissed his hand some more.

  "Yeah, yeah, sure," Nick said; withdrawing his hand and wiping it on his pants. The carpet zoomed away.

  "Door is locked," reported Kraki.

  "I'll open it," said Nick. He pulled a leather case from his coat pocket. Inside were his lock-picking tools.

  Kraki looked at them, grunted, and tore the door off its hinges. "Come on," he said, bounding down the stairs.

  Footsteps sounded in the shop above. The lich looked up at the floorboards speculatively.

  It went to the interior stairway and floated up the steps. It opened the overhead hatch.

  "Hmm," said Nick, looking about the shop. "Quite a supply of healing draught." He pocketed several small bottles.

  "Bah," said Kraki. "Vhat are ve looking for?"

  "Anything suspicious," said Nick. He sniffed. Was that the smell of rotten meat?

  "I think ve find it then," said Kraki. "What?" said Nick. He turned.

  A hatch in the wooden floor was open. The lich was rising up the stairs, its cowl thrown back. Behind it, zombies followed.

  "Mike!" said Nick, recognizing Yarrow's reanimated corpse. Kraki drew his sword with a scritch of steel.

  Nick backed toward the stairs to the roof, but the lich sped past him to block escape.

  Kraki advanced on the zombies. "Yah hah!" he shouted. He whapped off Yarrow's head. It tumbled to the floor.

  "You killed Mike," Nick accused the lich, drawing his own blade. "Do surrender, won't you?" whispered the lich. "I have the most splitting headache."

  Kraki chopped another zombie through the waist. It fell into two halves. Yarrow, headless, put his pig-sticker through Kraki's shoulder. Kraki twirled, and chopped Yarrow in half, too.

  "Bah," he spat in disgust as he watched both halves squirm. "How can you kill the dead?" He retreated, keeping his sword moving to ward off attack while he considered the problem.

  "No dice," said Nick to the lich. "Don't suppose you'd consider surrendering to us?"

  The lich made no reply, but gestured ritually and spoke a Word.

  Nick thrust his epee into the brown robe. The blade bent into a curve as it grated against bone.

  Kraki waded forward, slicing the arms off the zombie facing him. He'd decided to chop them up into bite-size pieces. They couldn't do much harm that way.

  Nick's blade was useless, a thrusting weapon against a creature with no flesh to thrust into. He threw the epee away and grabbed for the lich's arm, intending to break it. When he touched the lich, he realized he'd made a mistake. Suddenly, he was weak—too weak to stand. He fell awkwardly to the floor.

  Nick could feel weakness spreading from his limbs toward his vital organs, feel life slipping away as the lich drained life force from his frame . . .

  But apparently the lich wanted him debilitated, not dead. The creature moved away from Nick, and strode toward Kraki's back.

  "Watch out!" yelled Nick.

  Kraki whirled and sliced into the brown robe. The lich's ribs shattered. Its skull went flying.

  A zombie arm grabbed Kraki's ankles and tripped the barbarian. He fell and hit his head on the counter. While he was more or less defenseless, three zombies jumped him. Kraki rolled around on the floor, ripping at rotting flesh, but more zombies joined in.

  One zombie went and picked up the lich's skull. It carried the skull to Kraki and touched it to the barbarian. Kraki went limp.

  "Idiots," whispered the lich harshly. "Look at me! I've fallen all to pieces." The zombies combed the room, searching for fragments of lich. Nick and Kraki watched, weak as kittens, as zombies tied them up.

  "Can I give my friend a healing draught for his shoulder wound?" asked Nick.

  "No," whispered the skull petulantly. "Don't you fools know when to give up?"

  The zombies shouldered the two humans. They filed down the stairs and into the basement.

  As his eyes adjusted to the darkness and his nose to the stench, Nick marvelled. He had never known these tunnels existed beneath the city.

  "Foul unearthly vights," muttered Kraki sleepily. "I vill destroy you all." He wrestled weakly with his bonds.

  The living, reflected the skull, are a royal pain in the neck. Well, not in the neck, perhaps, since it didn't seem to have one right now. A pain in the coronal suture or maybe in the lower part of the parietal bone. Its headache was worse than ever-which was quite distressing, considering that all it had left to ache was its head.

  "There," said Wentworth. "Land there."

  The carpet swept down to the flat slate roof of number eleven, Cobblers Lane. Morglop staggered off and collapsed.

  A point of green light was already hovering over the chimney pot. "There you are," said Jasper. "Glad to see you made it."

  "No thanks to you," muttered Morglop.

  The upper stories of the building, like those of many in Urf Durfal, protruded out over the street. Property taxes were based on a building's lot size; this was a way of gaining extra room without paying higher taxes. The slate flags that covered the roof sloped gently toward the edge of the building, but the shape of the building itself hid the Boars from viewers in the street. Conversely, by peering over the gutter, they could watch people going in and out of the building across Cobblers Lane-number twelve, Nick and Garni's building.

  "One pound, sahib," said the afreet, holding out a paw.

  Wentworth, still weightless, was hanging by one arm from the chimney. "Oh, bother," he said. "I don't have that much cash on me."

  The afreet chattered its anger. "Sahib promise! Say one pound if lose pursuit! This one lose bad persons! One pound!"

  "I'll have to write you a check. Morglop, give me a hand, will you?" "What?"

  "Just hold on to me, will you? I need both hands."

  While Morglop kept Wentworth from blowing away, the alchemist found a bottle of ink, a slip of paper, and a quill. He trimmed the quill with a penknife. He put the bottle of ink on the chimney—and it blew away. "Oh, bloody hell," said Wentworth. "The ink's weightless too."

  Not to be denied its payment, the afreet pursued the tumbling bottle and retrieved it. "How can this be?" asked Morglop. "You drank potion. Ink bottle not drink potion."

  "It's magic, you twit," said Wentworth irritably. "That's part of the enchantment. Covers ancillary items.
Otherwise, to be truly weightless you'd have to strip buck naked. Not the sort of sorcery a gentleman would practice, eh?"

  He dipped his quill in the ink and began to write the check. After a few strokes, his pen went dry.

  He examined the tip of the quill and tried again. It went dry again. "I'll be damned," he said. "The ink won't draw because it's weightless —nothing to push it down the quill. I'm sorry, my good, er, entity," he told the afreet, "but I'll have to ask you to come to my office to pick up your money."

  The afreet bared its teeth. "Is cheat! Is fraud! Carpet badly damage! Sahib be bad man!"

  Wentworth rolled his eyes. "Oh, really," he said. "Here's my card. Just come to the office any time tomorrow, there's a good creature, and I'll pay you the pound."

  The afreet stared uncomprehendingly at the piece of pasteboard. It hopped up and down on the carpet with its bandy and rather hairy little legs. "Pay now! Pay now!" it screamed.

  "Better pay," advised Jasper, hanging out over the edge of the roof. "People in the street are beginning to stare."

  Wentworth had a total of nine weightless shillings and four pence. Jasper had three shillings eightpence. Morglop had four shillings sixpence ha'penny.

  They dumped all this loose change into the afreet's outstretched paws. The creature's lip's moved as it counted the money, snatching after one or another of Wentworth's coins as the wind threatened to blow them away.

  "I'm afraid that will have to do," said Wentworth in an injured tone. The afreet glared at them, then took off, muttering to itself.

  There was a sausage vendor in the street, Jasper noticed. The sausages smelt wonderful. "I say," he said. "What are we going to do for lunch? We're flat broke, now."

  Morglop, who was feeling rather peckish, scowled.

  IX

  Being carried by zombies was not, Nick thought, particularly comfortable. One of his bearers had no remaining flesh to speak of; its shoulder bone stuck painfully into Nick's back. And the smell of rotting flesh was something awful.

  The tunnel led to a chamber where torches flickered. Nick craned to see where they were going.