The Dungeoneers

by Jeffery Russell

  “Ah,” the skull said agreeably.

  “A few days ago, bored in a guard hutch. Now I’m in a necromancer lich’s study in a crypt beneath a ruined city with a bleeding butt and no pants. I’m not sure how I got here and I’m not sure how to get out of here. The place is full of death traps and roaming dead things that seem intent on having me join their ranks.”

  “Well, I can help you there!” the skull said, a shining note of brightness in its voice. “I know this place inside and out. Was right here while Alaham worked out the designs for it.”

  Durham scratched at his beard. “That’s quite the tempting offer.”

  “Well, of course it is! Your situation is bound to improve with a guide.”

  “Look, let’s drop the pretense shall we Alaham?”

  The skull fell silent. Squitters sat down with a click.

  “Clever, clever,” it finally said. “What gave me away?”

  “Several things. First being that you have complete intelligence in a dungeon where all of the other skeletons have nothing of the sort. Second, you claimed that you couldn’t remember your name then a minute later claimed that memories don’t degrade for undead indicating to me that you were being deliberately obtuse. Third, Squitters was happy to see you in spite of the fact that I can’t think of much a talking skull could do to endear itself to a dog other than letting him gnaw on you, which you don’t show any signs of. Plus you referred to cookies as ‘biscuits’. Everyone around these parts calls them cookies. According to a history I read on Alaham he’s from Abilane, where they call them biscuits.”

  “That’s a remarkably thin stream of conjectures, impressive though they may be.”

  “Yes, which is why I confronted you with it and let you confirm it for me.”

  “Squitters, I believe I’ve been outplayed,” Alaham said. “Subterfuge was never my strong point.” Squitters wagged his tail.

  The skull rose from the desk, the candle flame on its head dancing with the motion, sending shadows skittering around the room. It floated into the air, hanging in a position approximate to where it would be had it a body beneath it.

  “Most impressive,” Alaham said. “Most impressive indeed. Quite delightful, really.”

  Durham pursed his lips and arched his eyebrows. “That’s a good trick, floating about without a body.”

  “Ah, thank you. Rather simple really, comparatively.”

  “Where IS your body, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “Oh, it’s around here somewhere. Think I might have left it in the hall closet last time I used it. With the umbrellas. That’s why I had it out, if I remember correctly. Went topside and needed something to hold an umbrella with.”

  There was a rattle from the hall. A headless skeleton, the bones smooth and polished, stumbled into the room. It reached out and took the floating skull with both hands and placed it on the stump of its neck, twisting it back and forth a bit as if screwing it into place.

  “There we are,” Alaham said. He reached out and plucked a dusty black robe from a hook on the wall and shrugged his way into it. Durham found it disquieting watching the bare bones twist and move. The robe was a bit of a relief.

  “You’re not what I expected.” He said.

  “Met a few necromancers before, have you?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Liches, then?”

  Durham shook his head.

  “Quite all right. You’re not what I would have expected from a city guardsman either.”

  “How do you know that?”

  The skull’s grin glinted. “Oh, you’d be surprised what I know. For instance, you came here with a group of dwarves that call themselves ‘The Dungeoneers’ in search of the legendary Mace of Guffin.” He said the last in a deep dramatic tone, mocking. “An artifact so horrible, so powerful that nary a word is spoken of it and its dangers are completely unknown.” His voice went back to normal. “Bit suspect, that, don’t you think? To be fair, I do have a green mace around but it’s green because it’s made of bronze and I left it lying on a shelf for a few years.”

  “You’re very well informed…”

  “I should be. After all, I’m the one who hired them to come and arranged for you to be with them.”

  “ME? My being here…”

  “…was an accident? So you said. A mis-delivered message from a thin pageboy with curly blond hair and a missing tooth, eh? Not all of my minions are skeletons.” Alaham laughed. “You’re a clever one, yes, but you seem to have completely missed the big lie in favor of finding the little ones.”

  “You actually think I’ll believe that the dwarves are in on this?”

  “Why would they object to escorting you to visit?”

  Durham felt a lump of pure unease in his chest. It seemed to be gnawing on things indiscriminately.

  “You did all of that to bring ME here?”

  “Well, yes. I couldn’t just send you an invitation. ‘Dear Durham, please come visit crypt beneath ruined city, love, Alaham the necromancer lich.’ Can’t imagine that you’d have exactly leapt at the opportunity.”

  “But why me?”

  “Because, dear boy, you are my last living descendant. You are my heir.”

  Durham opened his mouth then realized that he had nothing to say and closed it again. He opened it again, certain that there really was something he should be saying but, once again, came up blank and closed it once more. Perhaps the third time would be the charm?

  “Er…”

  Nope.

  “Yes, yes,” Alaham said. “Quite a lot to take in, no mistake. Follow me and perhaps I can clear things up a bit for you. This way.” He swept out of the room, robes trailing behind him, Squitters bouncing relentlessly at his feet.

  “I’ve been at this for a long time,” Alaham went on. “And I’m ready for a change of scenery. To travel. To see the world. But I can’t very well leave my tomb with no ruler, now, can I?

  They reached the end of the hall, passing through an opening into a small room with a strange contraption in the middle. It was made of bones and looked almost like a very large basket. A spine with a skull atop it extended up from one end of it. Alaham stepped through an opening in the side and sat on a row of femurs that extended horizontally across the middle. Durham realized the the thing was a cart of sorts, though it seemed lacking in wheels. Alaham patted the bone bench next to him. Durham swallowed, climbed in and sat. Squitters leapt in after them, putting his paws on the front of the cart and wagging his spindly tail. The cart rose in the air with a lurch, skeletal legs unfolding beneath it. It began to walk, carrying the three of them down another hallway.

  “There’s no creature that looks like this, is there?” Durham asked, having tried and failed to mentally resolve the cart into something with muscle and skin.

  “No,” Alaham said. “And that is why I’m widely regarded as the greatest of all Necromancers, if you’ll pardon my saying so. I’m the only one with the skill to recombine bones into new and wondrous things. My imagination is the only limit and I have an excellent imagination, again, if you’ll pardon my saying so. I can combine the bones in any way I like, add a skull and animate away!” He reached up and rapped a knuckle against the skull that adorned the cart. It hung just above and behind their heads, looking out between them. “This chap here is our cart. We rest within him and his legs carry us forward.”

  “How did your body move with no skull?”

  “Ah, that was a different bit of magic entirely.” He pressed a finger to where his lips would have been. Durham understood the gesture but could have done without it.

  “I thought that you…uh…animated things by tying their souls back to their skeletons.”

  “That is what many think. In fact, if you were to ask other necromancers, that is likely what they would say as well. But what is a soul other than a swirl of magical energy in the shape of what it inhabits? I learned that one can make the shape and then form the magic to it. And magic, wh
y, magic can take any shape at all. I’d warrant, for example, that you’ve not seen one of those before.” He pointed as they emerged into the most horrifying place Durham had ever seen in his life.

  The room appeared to be a workshop. Long tables were arrayed in even rows, their surfaces stained dark and covered in piles of bones. Half formed creations were scattered about, mid-assembly, from tiny and delicate looking to larger ones made from bones that must have come from great beasts. Beasts with tusks and claws, horns and spikes. Shelves lined with dozens of skulls ran the length of one wall, some human, many not. Charnel stench hung above the tables with the solidity of a mist. The room was lit with guttering light from chandeliers above. The chandeliers themselves were made of bones, artfully placed together in intricate patterns of macabre beauty. The candles rested on skulls at the center of whorls of scapula atop arching arms adorned with dangling humerus. The ribs of the arched ceiling had more bone ornamentation, arranged into elaborate designs. The room buzzed with clouds of flies, making the room’s surfaces seem to writhe in the flickering light. The thing Alaham was pointing at lurked in the shadows across the room from the skull wall. It had a long body, low to the ground, six freakishly long legs along the sides, extending above its back and folding at the knee like a spider. Its torso curved up like a scorpion tail, a bull skull instead of a stinger adorning the top. Four arms extended from the front of the thing, two with claws, two with massive pincers. The thing advanced out of the shadows, talons clicking on the stone floor. The spiked tip of its tail weaved back and forth like a dancing snake.

  “No,” Durham said. “Can’t say that I’ve seen one of those before.”

  “One of dozens of my masterpieces!” Alaham was rubbing his hands together with the delight of showing off his creations. His fingers made little raspy sounds. “If you’ll forgive my having dispensed with modesty long ago, I am the greatest artist in bone in all of history!”

  Durham would have hoped that a single bone creation would be enough to elevate one to the greatest artist in bone. It wasn’t a list that he felt it proper to be lengthy. He tore his gaze away from the thing’s dark sockets and fixed it gaze straight ahead as they moved through the room, trying to see as little of it as possible. That first look was going to haunt him until the end of his days, whether that moment came years from now or tomorrow. Durham was starting to reconcile himself to the fact that the lich really didn’t have any intent of killing him.

  Heir.

  That was a word Durham’s brain poked at as if it were a rotten tooth, shying away each time he tried to mentally latch onto it.

  Their walking bone chariot left the workshop and they entered a vast space of darkness. The return of the clicking noise and the natural stone floor told Durham that they’d emerged back into the central cave chamber. The cart carried them within the wavering pool of light coming from the candle that still flickered atop Alaham’s head. They came to a wall, rippled and melted looking. A long row of skeletal spines was attached to it, extending end to end up into the darkness. Each had a pair of shoulders with arms and hands affixed to it. The hands on the lowest spine grasped the edge of the cart and lifted it, raising it up so that the next pair of arms could grab them and lift them still higher. It wasn’t exactly a smooth process but definitely an effective one as the cart rose slowly up the wall. Up and up it went, the darkness around them still filled with the clicking and clattering noise.

  “What am I hearing?” he asked.

  Alaham made a bemused ‘hmmm’ noise. “Just wait,” he said. “You will see.”

  The cart finally arrived at its destination, stopping next to a narrow span of stone, a bridge through the darkness. Alaham stepped out of the cart and beckoned Durham to follow. Squitters came after, stepping gingerly on the narrow path.

  It led them out to a platform, rising from the cave floor far below. The dais was round, a great stalagmite that had been cut across, large enough to have held a small farmer’s market. At its center was a second dais, rising up to hold a great throne and an altar before it. The altar was carved from the cave rock and hoary with hanging lichen, the throne a conglomeration of bones. A stalactite, thick as a tree hung over them from the shadows above, a snarled knot of metal suspended below it with a dozen flickering torches at its ends. Around the edge of the dais stood a terrifyingly eerie ring of figures, robed and hooded in black, the hoods tall narrow cones with with shrouds covering their heads and faces. A wide flight of stone steps began at the edge, descending into the darkness toward the cavern floor.

  “Are you ready?” Alaham asked. He didn’t wait for an answer.

  “Behold!” he cried, gesturing grandly. The cavern bloomed dimly with points of light at Alaham’s gesture, giving Durham his first view of the boneworks, a merciless sense of its extent. And to think that he’d thought the workshop was the worst thing he’d ever seen.

  They were in a massive cave. So massive that the light was almost lost within it. And all around them were the boneworks.

  Hundreds, perhaps thousands of skeletons, clasped together into spinning gears, their skeletal bodies rigid, grasped hand to foot, arcing to form sweeping curves. Gigantic gears with tangled masses of bones as teeth, small gears with the skeleton’s spines interlocked. Gears both horizontal and vertical, some alone, some in intricate layers, clicking their way through their rotations along hubs, rails and spindles of skeletons with arms clasped around each other. Still more skeletons stood amidst the gears working the cranks, acting in place of springs and ratchets. Others clumped together as weights, raising and lowering as the wheels turned. Long ropes woven of sinew ran between the great wheels, pulling them, rotating them. The corridors of the maze hung in the midst, each section in its own twisted mockery of an orrery, ready to be spun, to be dropped, lifted, moved.

  “What is it?” Durham asked. It seemed a phrase that didn’t quite cover the scope of the question.

  Alaham was almost dancing with delight. “I call it the Boneworks,” he said. “I must confess, I started out just trying to make a clock. Back when I was alive, ruling Tanahael. I had the idea for machines made of bone, animated bone to provide their power and motion. I figured that a clock for the city might be nice. Experimentation and civic improvement rolled into one. Once I realized my breakthrough, however, it became so much more.

  “I made it of bones from the crypts. It was much larger than the clockworks but still only a third the size it is now. I conceived it and built it, animating skeletons to assist me. It still took years. And then that glorious day when I turned it on. The day that has gone down in history as the death of Tanahael. I gave the command and it awoke, hungry for power, thirsty for life. And it took it, just as I’d planned, pulling on the souls of all of the life in Tanahael, drawing them all in, feeding itself until it had the strength for all of its mechanisms to go into motion. I’m a bit embarrassed to admit it but I may have even cackled maniacally when it began to work.”

  “You killed thousands,” Durham said.

  “No,” Alaham said. “I gave them immortality as part of my greatest creation. And I’ve been adding to it and refining it ever since, adding all of the bones from the city above until now, when it has become this thing of sheer magnificence. And now its construction is finished. Which is why I finally invited you here.”

  “But what is it for? What does it even do other than murder cities?”

  “Ah,” Alaham said. “I could tell you but that would spoil the surprise! Suffice it to say that it shall be an even greater work of magic than its creation. Perhaps, dare I say it, the greatest work of magic the world has ever seen. Even the Hermits will cower before what I am to achieve.”

  Durham wasn’t quite sure yet how he was supposed to fit into Alaham’s plan but was very sure that he didn’t want to know. He looked nervously at the ring of hooded figures surrounding the dais.

  “Who are they?”

  “My assistants!” Alaham said. “Not everything here is dead. N
ecromancers from across the entire face of the world have come to be a part of this moment. There are many more than what you see here. They are all about, preparing for the ceremony.”

  “What ceremony is that?” He didn’t recall a ceremony having been mentioned. Alaham seemed to have an entire parade of horrors to shuffle him through and now a ceremony to add to the end of it? A ceremony involving who knew how many necromancers and, presumably, the boneworks?

  “The magic, of course,” Alaham said. “The boneworks are finished, the necromancers assembled and now you have arrived. There is no reason to wait any longer. Tonight shall be the night that I have spent centuries working to bring about. Tonight you and I shall change the world.”

  “Ah,” Durham said. “THAT ceremony.” He wondered where the dwarves were, what they were doing, if they were even still alive. Surrounded by necromancers, skeletons and a lich, Durham felt excruciatingly alone.

  “I do have a few other matters to consider so I must beg your patience,” Alaham said. “There are no traps on the dais here and I’ve given the order that you’re not to be interfered with so you should be perfectly safe. Tea and biscuits are available-just ask one of the necromancers and they’ll see to it. Plenty of books to read as well and Squitters here to keep you company. Oh, and the green mace is lying about here somewhere if you care to dig it up so that you feel you’ve accomplished something.”

  The skull lifted from its body, letting it collapse, and floated down to rest on the arm of the throne. The lights in its sockets dimmed then went out.

  -17-

  “This shouldn’t be possible,” Ruby said from Ginny’s left. They were sitting on the edge of the hallway ceiling, legs dangling over the side. Thud was to Ginny’s right, wreathed in a haze of cigar smoke, having been utterly silent through a cigar and a half, frowning at the darkness. They sat atop their room with its six hallways extending out, only one of the dozens like it that the costonflagrationater had revealed, criss-crossing above and below each other in a spiderweb of stone corridors, all hanging high up in the emptiness of the cavern. All around them the boneworks clicked and rattled.