The Dungeoneers

by Jeffery Russell

  Cardamon gave an undignified squeak as the tentacle around his head vanished, robbing him of the staff’s support and sending him tumbling backwards off of Nibbly’s shoulders. He crashed to the ground just in time for Dadger to trip over him and grab at Nibbly in an attempt to stay up, pulling all three of them into a tangled pile.

  Rasp snickered.

  “I’m lookin’ forward to tellin’ Thud about whatever the hells you lot is doin’ so he can write that up as ‘Plan D’.”

  -16-

  Everything hurt.

  Durham opened his eyes to complete darkness. His brain reminded him that he was laying bare-assed on a couch next to a shattered skeleton in a parlor deep beneath a necromancer’s crypt. His adventuring legacy, so far, seemed to frequently involve him being without pants. Taking all of that into account he tried to convince himself that things could only get better but he wasn’t very convincing. He sat up slowly, every muscle protesting. How long did I sleep? Long enough that all of the lanterns in the room had burned down but beyond that? He eased himself to his feet and realized that there was a pillow stuck to his butt. He peeled it off gently and poked carefully at the wound. It was crusted and sticky but no longer bleeding. Where did I leave the lantern? He remembered setting it down when he was trying to open the door from the cavern. Had he moved it inside with his pack? He carefully made his way across the room, navigating by banging his shins into various unseen pieces of furniture that all seemed to be comprised entirely of sharp corners. Eventually he encountered a wall which was stubbornly not the door that he’d been trying to find. Right? Left? He chose left and felt his way along until he came to a corner. He sighed and began feeling his way back the way he’d came.

  There was a noise.

  A scratching sound that sounded exactly like claws against wood. Insistent, loud, deep and grating. Something from the cave, trying to get in. The door latch had been bent to uselessness when he’d kicked it open, hanging loosely from the shattered frame. The only thing holding the door shut was the spike he’d wedged into the floor. It occurred to him that his mace was back by the couch somewhere. Lantern or mace? How had he managed to scatter every useful thing that he had to every part of the room other than where he was?

  Scritch, scritch, scritch.

  He had a pretty good idea of where the mace was but if he went after it he’d still be in the dark. He had only the vaguest notion of where the lantern was but if he managed to find it then getting to the mace would be much easier. Unfortunately his idea of where the lantern had ended up was in the same direction where the something with claws was. He made for the door. Whatever it was hadn’t gotten in yet. If the spike could hold just long enough…

  Scritch, scritch, scritch.

  It grew louder as he inched closer. His mouth was dry and tasted like revisited cookie.

  He found the lantern through the expedient method of kicking it with his foot. It flared to light as the pixie woke up but promptly went rolling across the room. He scrambled after it, scooping it up with one hand and then dashing to the couch and grabbing his mace. He spun around to face the door.

  The scratching had stopped.

  On the inside of the door he could see long fresh grooves.

  Not outside trying to get in. Inside with him and trying to get out.

  The pixie was low on cake and the lantern wasn’t enough to light the whole room. The corners lay deep in darkness. The furniture cast long wavering shadows across the rug.

  Something moved in the far corner, the same corner he’d found in the process of trying to find the lantern. Stalking him from the darkness while he stood like a fool in a pool of light. A situation easy enough to reverse. He rolled the lantern across the room.

  Whatever sort of creature it had once been it was now a twisted thing of bone and hair and and dried meat, crouched in the corner, poised to spring. Its shadow was huge and distorted against the wall. It was precisely at this moment that Durham realized that he still didn’t have any pants on.

  The thing leapt.

  Durham dove backwards over the couch which did absolutely nothing to improve his physical condition. He scrambled into a crouch, mace in hand and risked a look over the back of the couch. The skeletal thing had leapt at the lantern rather than at him. It now held it in its massive jaws, the light shining out from inside of its skull giving it the appearance of a pumpkin-jack. Its bony tail flickered at the sight of its prey and it dashed across the room at him. He readied the mace and braced himself to swing.

  The monstrosity skidded to a halt a few feet away and dropped the lantern. It bounced once and rolled to a stop at his feet. The thing waited in a half-crouch, chest to the floor, hindquarters high, tail vibrating back and forth like a snake rattle.

  Durham hesitated. He gave the lantern a light kick, rolling it away. The skeletal thing scampered after it, tail wagging. Durham let out a long breath and lowered the mace. He’d found someone’s undead pet dog. It looked to be, or have been, some sort of terrier. It had patches of curly hair in places, bushy eyebrows that hung over its eye-sockets and a beard that looked like the mop in the guard’s loo back home. It bounded back over to him and dropped the lantern at his feet again. He knelt down and tentatively scratched it on the side of its skull. The dog leaned into his hand, tail still wagging, then gave his hand a lick. The experience was exactly like being licked by a mummy. The dog spun around in a circle and then began bouncing up and down with little grunts. Durham imagined that the skeletal butler hadn’t been much for playing fetch. There was a chain around its neck. More of a bracelet, really, considering its neck was a spine.

  “Sit!” Durham said.

  It sat. Its mouth hung open as if it were panting. Durham examined the tag on the collar. “Squitters” it read. The name had been inked on in the handwriting of a child.

  An image came to Durham’s mind of a boy, weeping over the death of his best friend. Anger at death. Beginning the search for a way to reverse it. A long and strange path from there to Alaham the Lich Lord.

  ᴥᴥᴥ

  Nibbly carefully eased the door open. They’d shuttered the lamps and Cardamon had gone over the door for traps and then oiled its hinges. The door led onto a wooden balcony overlooking and encircling a cavern chamber with the size and look of a church. The floor of the cavern was crowded with robed figures, lined up on benches, their attention on a tall figure on a podium at the end of the room. The candelabras along the walls did little to penetrate the shadows of the balcony. The dwarves crept in, peering down on the proceedings.

  “Now you all received the scroll with the chant on it yesterday,” the tall figure was saying. “Has everyone had a chance to memorize it?” His voice was dry and his face was withered and pinched as if someone had stuck a straw in him and sucked out most of his juices.

  A hand was raised in the congregation. “I thought it was written down so we didn’t need to memorize it?”

  The withered man sighed. “You’re going to have a fine time reading a scroll and doing the gestures at the same time, hmmm? It’s not a long chant. Just muddle along with the repetitions until you pick it up. Now, did everyone get their packet of dried fleshwasps from the bin in the back? Those are your components,”

  “I thought those were a snack,” came a voice.

  “You ate them?” The witherman looked amused. “Well, that should prove a very brief educational experience for you. With any luck someone will take pity and reanimate you. I hope they were delicious. Now, I’ve been informed that there have been some complaints about your skeletal minions being commandeered. Please understand that for the purposes of the ritual, all animated entities must remain under Alaham’s control. Don’t worry though. At the conclusion of the ritual there will be plenty of skeletons to go around, eh?” He winked. “Please remember that the human involved in the ritual is not to be harmed under any circumstances that are outside of the ritual. Alaham has vowed that if anyone damages him prematurely that they will spe
nd the rest of their eternal life chained to a wall with a skeleton guard whose sole purpose is to repeatedly remove and reattach random body parts.”

  “I make about five hunnert, give or take,” Rasp whispered in Nibbly’s ear.

  “Recommendations?”

  Rasp gave a glum shake of his head. “Barrels of oil and a torch but don’t think we gots the time to bring ‘em in. Think they’s preparin’ to leave for this ritual thingy.”

  “We’ll have to figure a way to hit ‘em there then, once we know where they’re going.”

  “Remember,” the witherman continued. “There’s going to be a lot of energy generated over the course of the ritual. If you have anything metal I strongly advise leaving it in your tray on the way out. I’m not sure what being a conduit to that much necromantic energy would do to you but we’ll have an interesting discussion about it while we scrape you off of the walls. I’ve also just received word that there is a group of dwarves within the dungeon.” He held up his scrawny hands to settle the murmuring. “Alaham assures me that the dungeon will keep them occupied and out of the way. However, on the off-chance that they stumble down into the caves you have complete license to kill them.”

  “How are we supposed to manage that without our skeletons?” an angry voice called.

  “I expect that necromancers worthy of inclusion in the ritual would have means of defending themselves that didn’t rely on minions, no? Try feeding them your fleshwasps, maybe. Likely a dwarven delicacy. Now, are there any other questions?”

  “Point of order…” someone in the audience began.

  “No questions? Excellent,” the witherman interrupted smoothly. “Remember there will be coffee and bagels in the organ pit after the ritual. Now, everyone line up by height and we will proceed into the cavern.”

  The room devolved into milling and muttering.

  “Is that a necromancer thing?” Leery whispered. “Being all shrively like that?”

  Nibbly had noticed it too. It wasn’t just the speaker that looked like he’d been drained dry; all of the necromancers were withered looking, their skin pale and papery. He’d noticed something else interesting as well. He motioned with his hand and the dwarves silently followed him back out into the hallway. They eased the door shut again and opened one of the faelamps a sliver.

  “They’s all wearin’ the same robes like what we found,” Nibbly said. A search of the crates back in the catacombs had confirmed Durham’s idea that the labels were clothing sizes. Several of the crates had had a few robes left in them, black and embroidered with occult symbols.

  “You ain’t seriously suggestin’…” Rasp said. “That’s the oldest and dumbest trick there is. Don’t know that any dwarves has done that in eight centuries lest they been clownin’ in a circus ring.”

  “That means they’ll never see it comin’,” Nibbly said.

  ᴥᴥᴥ

  The door on the left side of the hall turned out to be a bathroom. Durham stood for a moment, blinking stupidly at it, trying to rationalize why undead would need a bathroom. Undead physiology was something he hadn't gotten around to speculating on much but now his head was full of questions he wasn't certain he wanted answered. Had there been someone alive down here at some point? Had Alaham lived here as a necromancer before achieving lichdom? There was a lidded chamberpot in the corner, above it hung a semi-fossilized sponge that appeared to have been used followed by having not been used for several centuries. The other corner held a washbucket, long dry and adorned with cobwebs. A row of decorative clay pots lined a shelf on the wall, some with remnants of what may have once been flowers. Durham lifted the lid of the chamberpot. It smelled precisely how Durham imagined lich poop might smell. Durham closed the door on Squitters—he’d never been a fan of pets watching him in the bathroom. He made use of the chamberpot and then, feeling a bit better about things in general, went back out to check the door on the other side of the hall, Squitters clicking along beside him.

  It opened to reveal a study. A large wooden desk, sagging with age, piled with books and scrolls, quills and inkpots. A skull sat on the corner with a flickering candle melted on its head. Durham wondered if the skull's prior owner would be happy knowing his head would spend its days as a candleholder and then wondered who had lit the candle. Another skeletal servant? The far wall was filled with dusty jars filled with murky liquid and floating things. The ceiling was hung with strange animals, stuffed and glassy eyed. Some sort of preposterously sized lizard with rows of carrot sized teeth, a squirrel that appeared to be wearing a tiny suit and top hat, an owl posed as if about to pounce on the squirrel, a peculiar mummified half fish, half humanoid that Durham would have identified as a mermaid if the human half hadn't looked like a shaved monkey.

  Shelves were laden with carved boxes and vials, small statues of metal and stone, amulets, pestles, incense burners and several old coffee mugs. It reminded Durham of a shop he'd once visited where he'd somehow been persuaded to pay a handful of silver talons for some polished pebbles in a felt bag.

  He examined some of the books, handling them gingerly lest they disintegrate from age. The Infantinomicon was on top, which was full of baby names. A book of recipes called Unaussprechlichen Kuchen. De Feminae Mysteriis was just below that and seemed to contain dating advice. None of them struck him as being much help at the moment.

  “Could you tell me the time?” came a voice from behind him.

  Durham spun around. The room was still empty or, at least, empty of things that he would expect to talk.

  “It's only that I want to be polite,” the voice continued, “but I'm not quite sure whether to say 'good morning' or ‘good evening'. Perhaps 'good afternoon'?”

  The voice seemed to be coming from the skull on the desk. Durham narrowed his eyes at it.

  “I could, perhaps, just go with 'good day' but that always sounds to me like a farewell and I do hope that you're not intending to leave just yet.”

  “Who...?”

  “Ah, quite. Don't quite recall my name, sadly, but I'm the one with the candle on my head. Pleasure to meet you.”

  Durham looked around the room suspiciously.

  “Right here, on the desk. Pale, big smile,” the voice added helpfully.

  “Whoever that is, come out!” Durham said.

  “Just me, just me. I'd tell you something that only the two of us know to prove it but I can't think of anything that actually qualifies. Perhaps this will help?”

  Two glowing pinpoints of green light appeared in the skull's eye sockets. They flickered a couple of times as if blinking and then steadied.

  “Ah, there we go. Been a while since I've had call to do that. Bit out of practice, as it were.”

  “How are you talking?”

  “Well, I'm not. Not really. I'm...what would you say...thinking out loud? Yes. Thinking out loud. I'm just able to do it much more loudly than most people are.”

  “Skulls don't think, either.”

  “Well, no, but their contents do, eh? The skull is more of a house, I suppose you could say. Much like yours. A little house for you to ride around in.”

  “That's not the sort of thing that's usually possible.”

  The skull's pupil lights moved in such a way that would constitute rolling them had it any eyeballs to speak of.

  “You're in a necromancer's study and you're taking issue with a skull that talks?”

  “Fine,” Durham said. “So you're a talking skull. Now what?”

  “I'm still hoping that you'll tell me what time it is. Or the year, at least. I lost count some time ago.”

  “Ermmm, late afternoon? 875 is the year.”

  The skull made a sighing noise.

  “Nearly six hundred years, then,” it said.

  “Six hundred years as a talking skull?”

  “No, six hundred years since anyone's come into the study. Nothing else in here talks so it's been a bit dull.””

  “Why would Alaham animate his candle-holder
?”

  “Think he was having a bit of a laugh, really. After that I was someone to talk to when he was in here working. Most risen dead aren't much in the way of being conversationalists.”

  “So, you know quite a bit about him then?”

  “Alaham? I suppose. It's been a very long time. I'd actually assumed he was dead.”

  “He is, but apparently that doesn't seem to have inconvenienced him much.”

  “Ah, so that lich thing ended up working out for him, did it?” There was a long pause. “I guess…I guess he must be very busy now.”

  There was a noise like someone performing a drum roll on a set of teeth and Durham turned to see Squitters in the doorway, scratching his head with a bony foot.

  “Ah, is that Squitters?” the skull asked.

  At the sound of the skull’s voice Squitters jumped up with one of his ghostly barks and began bouncing up and down with a sound like a drunken tap-dancer.

  “Guess you two have met,” Durham said.

  “Well, naturally. It has been rather a long while but memories don’t really degrade when your head is a skull.”

  “I seem to be collecting Alaham’s cast-off friends,” Durham said. “Are there any more of you down here?”

  “There’s a butler somewhere. He comes in to dust once a decade or so but isn’t much for conversation. He makes biscuits and tea but it’s been a while since I’ve had any tasting apparatus, as it were, so can’t say if I’d recommend them or not.”

  “Right, tall chap. Skinny. We met.”

  “So…” the skull said. There was an awkward silence. “What brings you here?”

  Durham thought about that for a bit.

  “A string of accidents, I suppose you could say.” He sighed. “This is not where I’d ever had any intent of ending up at the moment.”