by Brian Daley
He was borne through, wondering whether they intended to wall him up, chain him, or simply fling him down a dry cistern. He hoped it would be whichever was quickest. He was carried down into the catacombs of Virtuary, struggling uselessly. Torches threw guttering light onto the patched and blotchy masonry of the groin-vaulted ceiling. Cobwebs and dust had gathered everywhere, and there was a terrible stench of decay and corruption. They passed enormous columns of the foundation of the place and walls of bedrock. Crassmor’s hackles were up, but not from the dank chill.
From narrow passageways between the colossal columns, the unusual procession came out at last into an open area beneath a ceiling supported by lesser columns. Passing under a free-standing arch, Crassmor read the inscription: “All Things Cyclical Demand Governance.”
They carried him into a circle of heavy stone biers, tombs aligned with their ends pointed at some central spot. The group stopped there and the knight was spread-eagled across stone, some table or altar. He heard the clang of his sword being set aside. There was a complaint of rusty metal and the gritty sound of encrusted chain links. Heavy breathing and the creaking of stubborn hinges indicated effort.
“These manacles are useless,” someone commented, “and the leg chains as well. They haven’t been used since Grand Abbot Moloko’s stewardship, I would wager. I suppose we could bind him well enough with our waist cords.”
“No, Tomat,” Furd answered absently. “I know a little something that is more reliable. It wouldn’t do for all of us to be walking around Virtuary without our belts, or to have him free himself somehow.” Crassmor could see Furd staring around in the dark, empty space.
“The summoning spell will work, won’t it, Abbot?” one monk asked.
With high indignation, Furd shot back, “Work? Shame on your lack of faith! That just earned you penance. Our revered predecessors have never failed the Klybesians! We have been, er, attending to the ungodly for hundreds of years in just this fashion.”
The monk muttered an apology. Furd went on. “Quiet this sinner, and you shall see.” He pushed aside two of the monks. The Klybesians were bending to the task of holding the squirming Crassmor. Furd looked into his nephew’s face. A hand was removed from the knight’s mouth at Furd’s gesture.
Another hand slipped the medallion off over Crassmor’s head. He began pleading at once. “Uncle, I know we haven’t been great favorites of one another, but I have seen the errors of my ways, I swear it. You have always been the forgiving, generous, loving sort—”
“Hush, hush,” Furd bade, unheeding. The hand returned, to stop Crassmor’s carefully assembled fibs. The abbot began mystic finger passes in the air before Crassmor’s eyes, calling Klybesian magic into play. He left little contours of green light in the air.
“Sleep, sleep,” Furd chanted. “This spell of somnolence will ease you over. Rest; all will be finished before you know it.”
All what? the knight tried to shriek; it came out a muffled raving. He found the finger passes strangely restful, his eyelids an insuperable weight. He seemed to drift for a while, as he had in the Jade Dome.
He began to revive after a bit, hearing Furd’s voice in the distance in loud incantation. It was discordant, using a language the knight didn’t recognize. Crassmor stirred lazily, finding that he was still held. “He wakes, Lord Abbot,” one of the monks called.
Furd broke off his chant in irritation. “Only for the moment. I shall renew the spell ere we depart. Now, be silent! I reach the most critical portion of the summoning.”
Somehow, Crassmor was unbothered by that. Sleep was all he cared for now. He drifted, warm and comfortable, back toward slumber, vaguely curious about what Furd was summoning. Perhaps he’d ask his uncle, after a little nap…
There was the hollow scraping of a heavy stone slab or lid. It penetrated even the somnolence spell, striking to the core of self-preservation in Crassmor, evoking a spasm of effort. He couldn’t lift his head; his limbs wouldn’t answer his commands, though he was no longer held. He settled for flopping his head in the direction of the sound, a major exertion. He opened his eyes through sheer willpower, spurred by a feeling of dread.
The Klybesians were hurrying back the way they’d come, torches bobbing in the darkness. From a nearby light, he knew they’d left a torch or two behind. Last in line was Furd, herding the rest along. Crassmor thought blurrily that he was glad to see the back of them. He was about to resume his rest when he remembered the sound he’d heard.
Then he noticed the tomb lid’s movement.
“Our revered predecessors,” Furd had said; that plainly meant Klybesians. Dead ones! It came to Crassmor in a flash. Sleep spell or no, he struggled to sit up, gurgling horror he couldn’t enunciate, in a hysterical effort to throw off the spell before the dead came fully to life.
Furd caught the choked sound. The abbot looked back from where he stood, fingers flying through the passes again, their green light reinforcing the somnolence. “Sleep, sleep,” he chanted, but he was plainly eager to be away. Somewhere, another tomb lid was sliding open.
And me with no magic of my own, Crassmor regretted. It’s all so unfair—Ho! The tripwire in his brain was triggered as simply as that. He tried to speak. There were more scrapings now, tomb lids unmoved in years now loosened by Furd’s cantation. When they finally slid aside, the dead would come forth. Already, dry, skeletal rattlings, eager jostlings of creatures resentful of the living, could be heard.
Welling panic gave Crassmor just enough strength to get out the all-important word. “P-peace?”
“Yes, yes,” Furd rasped, redoubling the finger passes. “Peace. Know total and eternal peace. Now, sleep!”
Crassmor’s eyes closed; he never heard Furd’s departure or the final sliding aside of tomb covers. But deep within him a turbulence had started, something incompatible with the somnolence spell. A trembling began at the marrow of his bones, spreading outward in shudders of increasing violence. Soon his arms and legs twitched and jumped in convulsive leaps, and his head and torso shook.
“May you never know peace” had been the last curse thrown at him by Fanarion that night in John’s Winch. That curse had taken, as he already knew to his own regret and by di Cagliostro’s confirmation. Crassmor had gotten his uncle to incorporate the word, setting magic against magic. They weren’t particularly powerful spells, but now they were mutually antagonistic.
He felt strange currents flowing through him, his teeth chattering and breath coming unevenly, stretching him tight as a lyre string. Just as he thought that he could bear no more and that his muscles must pull loose of their moorings the terrible tension was gone. He slumped back down, breathing regularly, head clear. The urge to sleep had left him completely.
He was wondering if Fanarion’s other spell, that misfortunes pursue him, had been dissipated as well when he felt something grip his arm.
Crassmor unlidded his eyes in utter hysteria. The tombs had opened at Furd’s command, letting forth the mummified bodies of Klybesians long since dead. Empty eye sockets glared down at him from skulls that grinned mirthlessly. Clothing and skin flaked away with each movement, dead jaws clicked, and he heard the tread of feet whose shoes were falling away to rot, leaving only bone to plow the dust and drag and clack on the stone.
A dozen of the things closed in around the slab, reaching, grinning. Their finger bones clawed at him as they prepared to perform their office of execution. No living Klybesian was supposed to do murder, at least not directly. That abjuration apparently didn’t extend to animated bodies of the dead, a technicality that satisfied the monks.
Crassmor broke his paralysis with a scream, breaking free of the clutching of the Klybesian dead, pounding and beating at them, shaking and twisting. To his surprise, he broke through their ring. Scrambling off the sacrificial slab, he threw himself at one of the nearby pillars, all in blind panic, before they could stop him.
He fought down some of his hysteria, looking around for a weapon, w
eighing his tactical situation. He wondered if he should simply run, but knew he would have to grab a torch first; he’d like as not knock himself cold against a pillar otherwise.
He became aware of something clinging to his shoulder. It was a bony hand that had maintained its grip when he’d fought free. He beat it off with his fist, yelling at the top of his lungs without realizing it. The dead things were closing in on him, limping and shuffling, reaching.
He looked around frantically for Shhing, without success. Then what the frailty of that clinging hand implied occurred to him—brittle, bones and decayed cartilage.
He understood the meaning of the manacles and leg irons on the sacrificial slab. Until now, victims had always been fastened down and helpless. Crassmor was supposed to have been under Furd’s sleep spell. It had been many years since these zombies had been last raised to do a Klybesian murder. Even with the monks’ mummification techniques, even with the resurrecting spell, how fragile had the aging corpses become over centuries? Very, if that broken hand means anything, he concluded.
Just then a corpse came grasping at him. A total unwillingness to die made him slap the thing’s hand away violently. The horrible-smelling corpse was spun around by the force of the blow, sinking to its knees, struggling feebly to rise again. The knight hopped forward a step and kicked with all his might; the thing’s skull went flying off its body into the darkness. What remained of the body sprawled in the deep dust, kicking weakly, scrabbling to rise but not appearing likely to do so.
A weight landed on the knight’s shoulders. He squirmed, reached, and dragged a second zombie from him. The odor it gave off was appalling, but it struggled with a surprising lack of strength. He raised it up and hurled it against the pillar with all his might. It hit with a cracking of bones and fell to the floor in a heap of dust and ruin.
“You’re all falling apart!” he shouted at them in triumph, dancing a little in the wavering torchlight. He advanced at the nearest of the slow-moving things, sticking his tongue out at it and feinting and jabbing, striking too rapidly for it to counter. “You’re crumbling!”
He ducked, weaved, and cuffed the thing at will. Confused, it batted at him hopelessly. Bobbing under its grasping bony arms, he came up behind it and gave it a hearty shove. It went down on its face, three of its toes breaking off.
Crassmor had already gone on to the next, filled with elation. The creatures had stopped now; it had come to them dimly that things were not as they should be.
The knight began an energetic approach on his next adversary, with exaggerated infighting moves, feinting and crying, “Hah! Stand and deliver, old bag o’ bones!”
The corpse made to retreat, but Crassmor got a foot behind its knee and gave it a push. It fell, and he jumped on it with both feet, hearing rib bones cave in and its spine give.
He sprang at another. It managed by chance to strike him with its left hand, a blow of pitifully little power. The blow angered him, though, changing all his fear to fury. He tore the offending arm off, flinging it into the distance with all his might, then punched the corpse as hard as he could. Another skull sailed through the air. He broke apart the remainder of it with his hands and kicked bone from bone with his feet.
Whirling, he found that the corpses were retreating in every direction. Running for their lives, as it were? he babbled to himself giddily. He ran to where one was lowering itself back into the only safety it knew, the confines of its tomb, pulling uselessly at the heavy cover.
It saw him coming, and the thing drew back from him, cringing into a corner of its tomb, seeking to get back even farther. Its bones made pitiful scratchings on the stone. Speechless, it still communicated mindless fear.
Crassmor, hands out to drag it forth, suddenly stopped, ashamed. Several mummies were finding their way back to the sanctuary of their resting places. The others, such as could still move, were gone from the circle of torchlight. The knight found that he had no more stomach for terrorizing or destroying these pathetic things; it was bad enough simply to leave them here.
“How do I get out of this place?” he demanded of the one, before him. “Come, tell; this Virtuary is a warren to those who know it. There must be underground exits from this valley!”
The thing only persisted in trying to get as far away from him as it possibly could. He bellowed, “Tell me, or I’ll smash you to flinders!”
It stopped, shifted. A single fleshless finger was extended, pointing off at a row of pillars. Crassmor went back to the sacrificial slab, searched, and found Shhing there. Of his parrying dagger there was no sign. Taking up a torch, he peered along the row of pillars. A faint path had been worn in the stone by centuries of monkish comings and goings. In the distance he saw a small door in a fountain wall, and thought of underground passageways and postern gates.
He went a few more steps. There were deep-etched arrowheads on every third pillar, giving the way to the door. He paused for a last look behind him. The dead Klybesian had pulled its hand back into the tomb.
With dirt and cobwebs from the underground passageways of Virtuary in his hair and on his clothes, Crassmor was at large. He was riding an old nag commandeered—an adjudicator might have called it stolen—from her owner, a gentleman farmer. He’d seen nothing of the Klybesians or their hirelings and didn’t know if they were ahead of or behind him. Aware that Willow was alert to trouble, he’d resolved that he must secure help and not simply rush to the Jade Dome. Arriving slightly sooner with one extra sword would be less likely to be of use than coming somewhat later with many.
Thoughts of raising a force at House Tarrant had been dismissed at once. That would bring him into conflict with di Cagliostro, delaying him. For that matter, Crassmor wasn’t certain that he wouldn’t meet interference from his father. Added to this was the fact that he was away from the Order without permission, having violated his brief leave.
Not knowing whom else he might trust or who, for that matter, would trust him, Crassmor elected to seek the Lost Boys. But contacting them at Gateshield presented another problem, since the fortress was on the alert, all its entrances closely guarded. Being caught outside would amount to disaster, what with the Grand Master’s habit of cautiously and slowly sorting out any issue.
As he rode, Crassmor considered the possibilities. Maybe he’d be lucky and some of the Lost Boys would be on guard. If they weren’t, on the other hand, they would probably stay clear of the sleeping quarters, where officers of the Order would prevent merrymaking. The kitchens and wine cellars would be off limits to all, but most especially to those scoundrels. The Great Hall would hold no attraction, since no celebration would be permitted there now.
The masters-at-arms and fuglemen would undoubtedly be looking for all otherwise unoccupied knights to hie them down to the drill fields and lists, which lay outside the fortress, to sharpen their battle skills. There they’d have the opportunity to slip off from the more conscientious knights for some relaxation.
And so, when he arrived at Gateshield, Crassmor rode to the drill field reining up before the deserted reviewing stand. Knights of Onn were dueling and exercising, casting and shooting at targets with assorted weapons, clustering to talk and pass time. Nowhere could Crassmor see his friends until he heard raucous, conspiratorial laughter. He spotted a group of men who were lounging in the gloom under the reviewing stand, with backs against its uprights—the Lost Boys, ignoring their hard-practicing fellows.
There was a dice game in progress. Crassmor saw a number of bottles, jugs, and decanters being passed from hand to hand, lit by the slots of sunlight that penetrated there. He dismounted; his nag, completely done in, stood with head lowered and legs trembling. He bent over to go in under the reviewing stand, pulling, back his hood.
Hoowar Roisterer was there, and Crane, along with Pony-Keg. Griffin, sitting in one of the larger pools of light, was penning another of his scholarly monographs. Crassmor was surprised to see an outsider among them, his cousin Bint, looking moody and
taking his turn at a drinking jar when it came his way.
Arananth had thrown herself into life at court, unwilling to stay at House Tarrant while Bint was confined to Gateshield. The gifts and poems and flowers he’d had delivered to her had brought only the briefest, most noncommittal messages in response; she was simply taken with the social whirl of Dreambourn. Bint had found that he didn’t hold it against her, but somehow he no longer wished the companionship of the more proper and upright knights.
The Lost Boys inspected the newcomer as he stepped into a shaft of sunlight. “Might be Crassmor,” Hoowar hazarded, “save that if the bumpkin has any sense left, he’ll stay clear of this place and the Grand Master for good.”
“’Tis as I did always say,” Pony-Keg contributed. “That beard did a great service in concealing an altogether unprepossessing chin.”
“Cannot say that I am much taken with the dyed hair either,” Crane added, his bucktoothed smirk making him look like a fourteen-year-old. “Have you considered a periwig, good Crassmor?”
“I have need of you all,” Crassmor panted in reply.
Hoowar Roisterer cocked an eye at him and rumbled unhappily, then backhanded beer foam from his mustache. “You arrive breathing hard and all in a commotion?” he observed. “Anxious for aid and most intense? Go away, Crassmor; this smacks to me of sword work!”
“It is in poor taste,” Crane added.
“Violates all our traditions,” Sir Logran the Wooer pointed out.
“I wonder if dinner’s ready yet?” Pony-Keg asked Griffin, who only shrugged and grinned.
Crassmor hadn’t moved; he knew just how they felt. Hoowar snarled, “Begone! This poor little jug’s young yet and has no one else, but me to care for it!”
“Harken to me!” the Tarrant son roared, throwing himself at the stout knight. He stopped when Hoowar raised the drinking vessel, threatening swift reprisal. Crassmor went on. “There is a force of arms on its way even now to the Jade Dome. They mean to raid and to slay.”