Dragondoom: A Novel of Mithgar

by Dennis L McKiernan

  “But Thork,” exclaimed Elyn, “it must be seven or eight hundred feet to the valley floor. Besides, I know not how to rappel.”

  “More like a thousand feet, Princess. And as to rappelling, it is a mere matter to teach you,” replied Thork. “And I think that we only have to drop some two hundred feet or so ere we come to where the slopes can be climbed down.”

  “Ah, but Thork,” responded Elyn, “if your estimate be right, then we rappel two hundred feet or so, and that leaves some seven hundred feet to climb down: not a swift task. And should it come to that, and they somehow discover our route, say, by finding a dangling rope, then we are like to be greeted by a welcoming committee when we at last come to the valley floor.

  “Even so, given no easier choice, rope it shall be; we can search for it as we look for the other: provisions, Adon’s Hammer.”

  Slowly, cautiously, they worked their way downward through the building, Thork retracing his steps through the veerings of the night before, Elyn following, coming at last to the great room on the main floor. And the wan light of day struggled with shadow, pressing it back here and there. And even though the writhing murk yet confused Elyn, still it was daylight and she could see: dimly in places where the dark clotted thickly, clear where the light prevailed. Yet, there were places where the blackness was complete, and she saw not at all, and neither did Thork.

  Stepping to the door, warily they peered outside. The Sun was on high, and Humans warded the walls. In the bailey, swarthy Men occasionally passed to and fro, and the two could hear the hammering of iron on anvil.

  “Let us look for a storeroom,” Elyn said quietly, “and take what provisions we need: food, rope, whatever else. Then we will set watch, and cipher out the castle routine: when the guards change; when, if ever, the portcullis is raised, the gate opened; and where Andrak keeps himself, if not that black tower.”

  “Princess, this doorway be not the place to spy out the practices of this keep,” responded Thork. “There be window slits high up that we can peer through to note these things. Aye, let us find provisions, then set watch, but from a safer place than this.”

  They found a storeroom off the kitchen. Cured meat hung from overhead beams, yet it was dark, and unknown, and Elyn was revulsed by its smell and shape, and so they took none. Dried lentil beans filled sacks, and oats, and some type of bulbous legume. In one corner Thork found a large supply of field rations, a box of crue among these. Hefting the small crate upon his shoulder, he declared, “This is all that I would take, my Lady, though, by my beard, the beans would make a welcome change.”

  Elyn filled a meager cloth bag with the beans and tied its top, and then the two warriors slipped out of the storeroom and through the kitchen and up the stairs to the attic.

  On the second floor in the southeast corner of the building they found a musty storage room stacked with furniture; yet it was a room with a window slit overlooking the bailey. From the window they could observe the southern walls of the keep, the main gate, and the black tower abutted against the fortress walls.

  And so they watched the rest of that day and part of the night and all the next day and night as well, slipping down from their attic hideaway to observe the strongholt’s routine.

  They discovered that Men warded the walls from false dawn till after dusk, and Rutchen warders patrolled the nighttide through. Too, on both evenings just after darkness fell, a Hèlsteed-drawn chariot was brought to the black tower and tethered, yet Andrak had not driven it again since that first night. But while the chariot sat outside the ebon turret, the portcullis was raised, the gate was opened, and the drawbridge was winched outward to span the gap, and the watch atop the walls was doubled.

  “This is when we must escape with the Kammerling, Thork,” hissed Elyn when she saw the pattern. “We must trust to the amulet and walk out past the warders, for then the way is open.”

  “Mayhap, Lady,” answered Thork. “Yet remember, yesternight when first we saw Andrak, the portcullis was down until he returned in his chariot. And so, if this pattern holds true, should we try to escape while he is away, we will either have to find a way past those bars, or slip through when they are opened for him, or wait until the following night.”

  Elyn said nought, but nodded her agreement, and they continued to spy out through the window slit.

  After a long while: “Thork, I ween that Adon’s Hammer is most likely to be in the ebon tower,” declared Elyn. “Yet I also ween that the tower holds Andrak’s quarters, and I would rather explore that place when he is not about. Let us wait until he rides that chariot out ere we look within for the Kammerling. In that case, should we be successful, even though Andrak will be away and the portcullis will be down and locked, we will not need to contend with that barway, for we can merely use what rope we have and go over the wall. But in the meantime, given that he remains within his tower, let us begin searching out the rest of the keep, for it is possible that the Kammerling lies within quarters other than those of the black turret, though I doubt it.”

  And so, on the third day they began to explore the keep, looking for the hiding place of the Kammerling, though both agreed that the most likely place for the hammer to be was indeed the tower.

  The castle was a nightmare of confusion; it was just as the Wolfmage had said of Andrak: “. . . he too knows that art of concealment, and weaves his . . . magic . . . to remain hidden.” And Elyn was bewildered by the twists and turns and strange edges in the veering stone hallways, and disoriented by the coiling, whispering shadows, and at times she swore that they were lost, that they had come this way before; but Thork’s sense of direction, of location, was not fooled, and he led them through the mind-twisting labyrinth.

  One to hide, and one to guide, thought Elyn, and she knew that she would be hopelessly lost without Thork and his remarkable Dwarven ability.

  And though they looked most carefully through all the rooms on all three floors—chart rooms, wardrooms, living quarters, storerooms, and the like—no trace of the Kammerling did they find.

  And often they interrupted their search to stand quietly in the coiling shadows as swart Men or dark Spawn or corpse-white Guula strode past.

  They found doorways that led to veering, shadowed, muttering passages within the fortress walls, hallways that seemed to bend unnaturally, turning upon themselves—though there was not room within the bulwarks to do so—twisting corridors made of dark stone and warded with iron doors every ten paces or so, doors that could be slammed and barred ’gainst hostile forces, though all the metal portals stood open, save one: “My feet tell me that this be a door into the dark tower, Princess,” said Thork, his voice hushed. Stealthily, the Dwarf pressed upon the panel, to no avail. “Barred on the inside, I deem.”

  “Let us away from here, Thork,” breathed Elyn, “for it is day, and Andrak is not gone, and dwells inside.”

  And so they pressed onward through the coiling murk within the angled passages inside the dark battlements, searching for but not finding a starsilver hammer.

  They discovered an interior doorway that led into a stable and smithy bordering upon the bailey, and inside the stalls were horses; yet when Elyn pointed out that the mounts gave them another means of escape, could they but get past the gate and bridge, Thork refused, declaring that he would never ride on the back of a horse—a pony, yes, but never a horse—and about it he would say no more.

  At the back wall of the stables they found a tunnel leading inward, down into the stone of the spire, where underground, illuminated by torches, past three pairs of closed unguarded wooden doors, they came into the Hèlsteed stables. And the creatures exuded a foetid miasma, a foul stench that made both Elyn’s and Thork’s gorge rise, and they were like to vomit from the smell of it. Yet they endured long enough to search out the place, to no avail.

  Too, they passed down the twisting stairs from the great hall, past more sets of shut wooden doors, and found themselves in the Rutchen quarters, delved from stone
, safe from sunlight. Rutcha and Drōkha dwelled within, as well as the Corpse Folk, the Guula, so named by Elyn . . . though Thork called all three by their Châkka names:khs, Hrōks, and Khōls. And these environs, too, had a foul stench, and it was all the two could do to stay long enough to gauge that the Kammerling was not within.

  And they discovered a passage that led from the quarters of the Spawn to the Hèlsteed stables, a passage that they had missed in the murk when they had been in those foul mews earlier.

  And elsewhere they found rope, in plentiful supply, and took that which was needed to rappel down from the spire, and stored it in their attic hideaway.

  And through it all, the shadows silently muttered and whispered and tittered insanely, and both Elyn and Thork felt as if they were slipping toward the edge of madness from it. They did not rest well and nerves became frayed and tempers short, yet they realized the effect this twisting murk was having upon them and they did their best to compensate.

  Thus passed four more days.

  It was beyond midnight on the seventh night of their arrival at Andrak’s holt that Elyn was awakened from a restless sleep by Thork.

  “Princess, make haste,” urged the Dwarf. “Just now Andrak’s chariot clattered out through the gate and across the bridge. Swift, let us search the tower; if we are successful, we will leave this accursed place tonight, Rage Hammer in hand.”

  Elyn scrambled to her knees and sorted through her goods, shoving crue into her kit as well as the small bag of beans. It was their plan to bear their packs and all their weapons into the tower, for should they quickly locate the Kammerling, they would immediately leave over the wall by rope and across the bridge ere Andrak returned, or by rappelling down the spire in the event the bridge was haled back onto this side, the long rope even now coiled and set at the window at the far west end of the attic. Thork, too, assembled his belongings, preparing to go. Their waterskins were full, for each evening they refilled them from one of the water barrels in the shadows of the Men’s quarters, anticipating that they would need to leave in haste. Elyn strapped on her saber and set her sling to her belt. Fastening her bow and quiver to her pack, she stood and shouldered the gear.

  “Ready, Thork,” she said, determination in her voice.

  Latching a final buckle, Thork shouldered his own pack, the cloth-covered Dragonhide shield affixed thereupon. “Let us be gone from this madness,” he growled, his eyes sweeping across the twisting muttering darkness, and he turned and stepped toward the stairwell, Elyn following.

  By the warped route wrenching through the fortress walls, they came to the closed steel door leading into Andrak’s tower. Yet it was still barred on the opposite side, and they could not get through.

  “The bailey, Thork,” whispered Elyn. “It is our only way.”

  Grimly, Thork nodded. “Aye, the bailey.”

  The black tower loomed upward in the night, its ebon sides seeming to suck at the torchlight sputtering across the courtyard, its sloped roof consuming the feeble starlight dimly gleaming down through rents in the gathering clouds. The Hèlsteed chariot was gone and the portcullis was down, closed, and would remain so until Andrak’s return, and a cold swirling wind stirred across the cobbles and spiralled along the walls, wreathing about the tower and up. Two Rutch warders squatted at the foot of the steps leading up to the door, casting knucklebones by the guttering torchlight and cursing one another in Slûk, the slobbering, drooling speech of their kind.

  Quietly, Elyn drew her saber; Thork’s axe was already in his hands. “If they detect us,” breathed Elyn, “I’ll take the one on the left.” Thork nodded, and sliding through the shadows at the base of the walls, toward the stairs they went, once again trusting to the power of the silveron nugget.

  The quarrelling Rutcha showed no sign of awareness as the two slipped past and glided up the steps, the soft-moaning chill wind eddying about them.

  At the top, a short landing led to a door made of planks of a strange black wood. Dark iron bands bound the portal, held in place by metal studs. An iron ring depended from a shaft jutting from the mouth of a grinning casting of a gargoyle’s head, the black metal face leering lasciviously.

  Thork examined the loop and stem carefully, then cautiously turned the ring and pulled. With a quiet snick the door came free and could now be swung inward. Yet they paused a moment, readying themselves, for they did not know what might await them within the ebon turret, what might be warding the Kammerling. Even so, saber in hand, her eye on the unheeding Rutcha below, Elyn motioned for Thork to enter. The Dwarf shifted his axe to one hand and eased the dark portal open just wide enough to slip through, and he disappeared inside, closely followed by the Princess. And then Thork softly closed the door behind. Absorbed by their game, the Rutcha did not note that aught was amiss and continued their squabbling over the turn of the dice.

  The Lady and the Dwarf stood with their backs to the door, axe and saber ready, expecting attack from within, yet nought came charging at them. They found themselves inside a shadow-wrapped chamber, the twisting darkness tittering insanely, below the threshold of hearing. Silent chanting plucked at their senses, and an unheard obscene muttering filled them with loathing. And into this noiseless gyring, giggling black murk stepped warrior and warrior, eyes alert, Elyn’s seeing only wavering ebon shapes.

  Thork led through the shifting whispering darkness, Elyn following behind, her hand touching his shoulder for guidance. Now and again Elyn could see, for fluttering torchlight from the bailey shone in through arrow slits spaced regularly along the perimeter, the feeble light occasionally penetrating the coiling dark, the circulating wind outside moaning softly past the slits, slits with solid wooden shutters on the inside that now stood open. Working their way through the writhing shadows, they determined that this first chamber consisted of an open circular floor; it was a gathering hall of some sort, perhaps sixty feet in diameter; the space was without furniture, empty, but etched into the floor were arcane designs that Thork scrupulously avoided, steering Elyn safely past them as well. All about, the walls of the tower reared upward into the muttering blackness, and an open stairwell of stone steps clung to the side and spiralled up into the deranged gloom.

  Up these steps went the two, and came into another chamber filled with twisting murk. And a heavy wooden trapdoor, horizontally hinged so that it could close off the stairwell, stood open against the wall. Again, window slits with open shutters allowed some wavering torchlight into the writhing darkness, and Elyn could perceive that they appeared to be in an alchemical laboratory, for alembics and vials and other vessels sat upon tables, and jars filled with arcane substances and labelled with a writhing script lined shelves above. Each of the tables had drawers, and now and again a chest was placed against the walls.

  “You search in the darkness, Thork,” said Elyn, sheathing her saber, “I’ll look in the light.”

  They pulled drawer after drawer, seeking the Kammerling, but within they found minerals and dried plants, dead animals mummified, and substances that they could not name. Books filled with the same writhing script were unearthed, and so too were rough gemstones, precious and semiprecious. Leaves and liquids and metals there were, as well as various ores and powders and unseen things sealed in small metal tins. Tools were found and glass burners filled with a clear fluid that Thork named zhar, an incendiary liquid that burned with incredible intensity. And they opened the chests to find more ores and minerals, more plants and desiccated animals, Human bones as well as those of Rutcha, and some that could not be named. And they measured to see if any of the chests held false bottoms in which the Kammerling could be hidden, to no avail.

  Long they searched and thoroughly, for an hour or more, and in this room they found the opposite side of the metal door that led into the fortress walls, barred . . . but no Kammerling did they find.

  And all about them the darkness seethed with unheard rituals.

  Across the chamber from where they entered, another op
en staircase pitched upward, and they climbed these steps to come into a smithy. Hot coals were in the forge, ruddy light struggling with the shadows, pressing back the blackness. Here, too, another stairwell trapdoor stood open against the wall, but the window slits were sealed tight, yet whether against the wind or daylight, they could not say.

  And the two searched this chamber for the Kammerling, as well. There were anvils and quenching tubs, one stained with a dark redness, and Elyn shuddered to see such. A myriad of tools there were: hammers and tongs and chisels, wedges, great pliers and shears, instruments for bending sheet metal at sharp angles as well as round bars of various diameters for hammering iron and other metals into curves. Ingot molds there were, and large crucibles. Too, there were small tools, some tiny, for fine work, for shaping jewelry, and minute crucibles as well.

  Strangely, to one side squatted a throne facing one of the tables, a great large blood-red chair with dark twisted arms ending in upturned clutching claws, the seat placed as if to watch work at the bench. Yet on the table were broken pliers, and bent tongs, an old rusted forge hammer with cracked helve and broken peen, blunted chisels, and other such. Thork noted it curiously, then, shaking his head in puzzlement, renewed his search.

  And Elyn and Thork looked into every drawer and bin, and another hour or so disappeared into the night and still no Kammerling did they find . . . ... and the silent mad tittering darkness seemed to scoff at their efforts.

  Again, stairs mounted upward on the opposite side of the room, and Thork and Elyn climbed through the curling murk and past an open trapdoor to the next floor, where they found a window-sealed, taper-lit chamber—dark struggling with light—that seemed to be a library of sorts, for it was filled with shelves laden with writings: great tomes and thin pamphlets there were, and scrolls tied with ribbons of various colors, thick books and papyrus sheets, rune stones and clay tablets. And some of the books seemed to be covered with the skins of animals: scaled, short-furred, leather, and some that Thork with loathing declared were Human or Dwarf or Elven skin, he knew not which. At one place along the wall, ensconced among the twisting coils of darkness were a desk and chair, and a slant-top sketching table and tall stool, and a bronze oil lamp for illumination; and the pen-and-ink drawing pinned to the table was a study of some hideous creature, flayed.