by J. R. Rain
Crazy bitch, I thought, although I couldn’t deny the allure of the dungeon system. Here, there were no rights, no rules, no respect for life. Here, people were brought to be tortured and to be killed.
Interesting, I thought. Very interesting.
Not interesting, Sam. Get a hold of yourself.
The idea of feasting upon a prisoner, a man or woman who had nowhere to run or hide, was growing inside me. I’d never seen such conditions before. At least, not in this life, and it was causing a nearly uncontrollable stirring—
And that’s when I felt an ungodly smack upside my head.
“Snap out of it,” said Allison in my ear. “Not joking. We save her baby, and we get out, and you get yourself home to your packets of blood.”
“Fine,” I said.
The dungeons had many levels, each seemingly worse than the last. The prisoners’ screams grew louder, the begging more desperate, the torture devices more deplorable (and interesting). Desperate cries and ragged whimpering filled the air. Not to mention, the deeper we got, the creepier the dungeon masters became, many of whom watched us from holes in the wall, surrounded by their bloodied and arcane tools of the trade. I saw lots of spikes, gears, blades and stone grinders. I was buzzing, and it was all I could do to not run my tongue along one of those bloodied gears.
Eww, Sam. Just eww.
One dungeon master looked up, then bowed deeply when he saw our entourage. The queen merely nodded at him. I noted he had been sharpening what appeared to be a collar of spikes. Incidentally, the spikes were projected inward. I found this more interesting than I should have.
Focus, Sam.
The deeper we got, the darker the dungeons became. Rory snatched a torch from a wall sconce, and, shortly, we left even the dungeons behind. Rory seemed to know the way, and we all followed him. My own eyes had adjusted nicely, and I could see the never-ending flow of energy illuminating the air. Many tunnel offshoots branched off, but Rory confidently led the way down what appeared to be a main tunnel.
The tunnel dead-ended at another flight of stone steps, these seemingly danker and slipperier than the others. He reached back and took the queen’s hand, leaving Allison and me to our own devices. I couldn’t help but note the way both Rory’s and the queen’s fingers intertwined. Allison caught it too in the dancing torchlight. What Allison didn’t catch was the way their two auras sort of blended together to form one big aura. These two were in love, and I suspected things were about to get juicy if Charlie would ever finish the damn book.
The stairs led down into another hallway, this one seemingly forgotten and narrower than the others. I noted that Sir Rory’s shoulders nearly spanned the entire hallway. I might have noted this with far more curiosity than Kingsley would have appreciated.
Luckily, the narrow tunnel widened considerably, which did wonders for my claustrophobia. Many more tunnels branched this way and that, some, oddly angling down and up, at such degrees that a human would probably either tumble out of them and skid straight down.
Remember the dungeon dragon? Allie asked me, her telepathic words reaching only me.
I nearly snapped my fingers, until I remembered just how fierce the creature was that patrolled these nether regions. Indeed, upon closer inspection, I could see what very easily could have been claw marks... and burn marks. Yes, here be dragons.
Soon the main tunnel ended in a pile of boulders, and I knew, from having read the book, exactly where we were. The Cursed Dungeon. Here, the ceiling had also dropped, forcing the big knight to duck. He seemed irritable.
“This is it,” said Sir Rory.
“Are you sure she is here, Lady Tam Tam?” asked the queen. She haltingly touched the closest boulder with her palm.
“Aye,” I said, then, after seeing Allie’s disapproving glare, I cleared my throat and said, “Yes.”
“And you know this how, sorceress?” asked Rory.
“Technically,” I said, jabbing a thumb at Allison, “she’s closer to being a sorceress than I am—”
A low growl cut me off. I couldn’t help but note that Rory’s massive hands were laced with scars. I also noted the hands were opening and closing. If I had to guess, they were itching to close around my neck, or the hilt of his sword. Either way, my ass was in trouble.
Allison jumped in. “We were so told by the Creator.”
“You throw the Lord’s name out often, little shadow. How can we trust you?”
Little Shadow, thought Allison. I like it!
“They emerged from the wardrobe,” said Queen Autumn, stepping away from the wall and dusting off her hands.
“Did they now?” asked Rory.
“They did, and you will have to trust me, my knight. They have answers. I feel it. Especially, here in this place.”
I snapped my fingers. “The Good Magician Canterbury.”
Rory arched an eyebrow. “You know much for a stranger.”
I ignored him. Or, rather, I ignored him cautiously. I said, “The Good Magician Canterbury was found dead at the same time the princess was discovered missing.” In the World of Dur, only the Good Magician Canterbury had access to the cursed dungeon.
“Perhaps he was coerced into opening the gate,” said the queen, “just before he was murdered.”
She was close. The good magician had, in fact, been blackmailed. After all, the Foul Wizard Xander had proof—supplied from Caleb Squire—that the good magician wasn’t so good, after all. That he’d made a pact with the Dark One. A pact that gave the court magician nearly unstoppable power. I told them as much.
“He was blackmailed, then, to open the dungeon,” asked Sir Rory.
“Yes,” I said, although I really, really wanted to say aye.
The knight looked at his queen. “The spell,” he said simply.
I knew of the spell, of course—any reader would have known that the princess had a protection spell placed on her by the Good Magician Canterbury, who really was good, even if he had a dark past. The spell ensured she would live to a ripe old age.
“And so Xander did the next best thing—he sealed her away in the Cursed Dungeon. With a sleeping spell.”
“Thus giving him access to the throne,” said Sir Rory. “By God, I will have his head!”
“In due time, my knight. First...”
“Yes, of course, my queen. First, we must find the babe. But how?”
I knew from Charlie’s draft of the book that the cell was called impenetrable for a reason. Access to it was only available through magical means. Last I checked, Allison was about as magical as they came. But she shook her head when she picked up my thoughts.
I am, and I’m not, Sam. My skills are power skills. I can blast things. I can bind things with energy. I can illuminate things. I have no clue how to enchant something. Or how to break an enchantment. I’ve only been at this a few years, and, besides, I think we are dealing with a whole new magical system.
I nodded, thinking hard. What if we went back to Charlie and asked him to edit the book, to write in a new description of the dungeon that isn’t quite as impenetrable as everyone thinks?
Allison shook her head. I suspect he would merely create an alternative or parallel world, where another queen and another Rory are able to easily rescue her daughter. And if I know writers—
You don’t, Allie.
Well, from what I had gathered, they never like to make it easy on their characters. They like to throw a lot of shit at them, and watch their characters wade through it. It’s fun for them as writers, and fun for readers.
Allison might have hit upon some truth. I thought: So, in this draft of the story, the dungeon is impenetrable and the queen is screwed unless we can either resurrect the Good Magician Canterbury, or find another way into the dungeon.
“You two are awfully quiet,” said the queen. I wasn’t very surprised to see Rory with his arm around her. I knew from the draft we had read that they had not yet been intimate, but they had been oh... so... close.
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“They speak mindspeak, Your Highness,” said Rory. “Have you not seen the way they look at each other? The little shadow even gestures sometimes, although no words are spoken.”
I blinked, until I remembered we were the little shadows.
I’m not sure it’s a compliment, Sam, thought Allie.
I shrugged, and the queen now spoke. “Yes, I see it now!”
“And what have you concluded, dark angels?” asked Rory, who, with his massive shoulders pressed up against the ceiling, looked a bit like Atlas carrying the weight of the world.
I spoke for the two of us. “We have concluded that Wench Allison is unable to break through to your daughter.”
“Then we are without hope—”
“But,” I said, cutting off a queen for the first time in my life, “I still have a few tricks up my sleeve.”
Chapter Thirty-two
The end of the tunnel was little more than a pile of rocks.
That each and every rock had been created in the mind of my client was still something I was wrapping my own mind around. In a sense, I was inside Charlie’s mind, interacting with his imagination. Then again, wasn’t that the case with all writers? Weren’t readers, in essence, taking a peek inside a writer’s mind? And wasn’t the writer taking the reader by the hand and leading them on a journey of the imagination? It was a special kind of relationship, the writer and reader, and it was its own form of telepathy.
Something banged from somewhere above us. Indeed, dust sifted down from the ceiling.
Rory withdrew his blade. “The dungeon dragon cometh,” he said.
Hurry, Sam, thought Allison. And if you haven’t noticed, we’re kind of trapped. And did he just say cometh?
He did, and we were. Trapped that is.
I closed my eyes and cast out my thoughts in a wide net. I had attributed such skills to Elizabeth in the past, but now I suspected this skill was of my own soul’s doing: an ability to see in all directions, through any substance, usually up to about twenty feet. Now, I scanned through the wall and saw, well, more rock. I scanned the far wall, then the near wall. Then moved up and down the tunnel, scanning, but seeing nothing but more rock. No pockets of anything, no hidden chamber.
I went back to the end of the tunnel and climbed up onto the pile of rocks, ducking just under the ceiling. The tunnel shook some more, and now actual pebbles broke loose from the ceiling. Yeah, something was coming all right. And that something was huge and nasty.
Here, I closed my eyes just as I heard the first roar. I gasped, lost my concentration, tried again, this time pressing my head against the rock. There. A faint glow. It looked, in fact, like a star in a night sky. Just the smallest hint of light among the bedrock.
“Allison,” I said, scrambling down from the pile of boulders. “I need you to blast these rocks.”
“Blast?” She tore her gaze away from the tunnel entrance. Indeed, I could see movement in the far distance. Big movement. Rory stood his ground, with his sword out before him, the queen behind him.
“Yes. Obliterate the shit out of them. And while you’re at it, blast some of the wall, too, I need more room.”
“Okay, stand back. Everyone stand back.”
Except the other two weren’t really listening. Indeed, the fearless knight had moved forward further down the hall, now withdrawing his rapier. The two swords wouldn’t be much against the dungeon dragon, if my memory of the beast within the pages was anything like the real deal.
My friend stepped forward and did something I wouldn’t have thought of. The nearly invisible bubble that expanded from her raised hands was, in fact, a shield. It was, I was certain, her way of ensuring the tunnel didn’t cave in. She caught my eye and nodded. Yes, I was right. Next, she stretched out her hands toward the back end of the tunnel, closed her eyes. Her lips moved in a silent prayer or an incantation, or maybe a little bit of both. Now, energy of a very different kind swirled around her hands. Golden and bright, and unlike anything I had ever seen from her. It stopped swirling and next seemed to pulse. Her arms shook as the balls of light, like mini-suns, seemed to be gathering energy, building, building...
This is gonna be a doozy, I thought, suddenly thankful as hell for the bubble shield overhead.
A sounded emanated from her hand, a sort of subsonic whine, the sound of a jet engine. The sound grew steadily, and when nearly unbearable, two ungodly bright balls of light blasted from Allison’s hands and exploded into the crumbling rock wall. That Allison herself wasn’t launched backward from the sheer force coming out of her was a miracle in itself. In this case, Isaac Newton was dead wrong: for every force, there was most certainly not an equal and opposite reaction. At least, not when dealing with magic. I expected rock fragments to hurl in every direction. But not even a pebble.
“No, Sam,” said Allison. “I worked with the rock’s consciousness and asked it to change its basic elemental composition.”
“Um, what?” I asked, turning around to see a puff of what could only be described as... steam?
“A cloud, to be exact,” said Allison.
“You turned the rock into a cloud?”
“Well, water, and yes. The elements rearranged themselves for me.”
“Because you asked them to?”
“In a way. I also provided them the necessary energy to perform the transmutation—”
“The dragon, she comes!” shouted Rory.
We turned and saw it now: a hulking beast that veritably filled the tunnel to capacity, slithering along like a great subterranean snake. Indeed, I knew from Charlie’s description that the dragon had, in fact, evolved to move through the tunnels much like a serpent.
“My queen,” said Rory, dropping to a knee and taking her hand. “I will protect you until my last dying breath.”
As Rory rose and dashed down the tunnel, I said to Allison, “Go help Sir Loincloth. We don’t need him fried to a crisp. Last I checked, he’s the hero in the story. We can talk about the rock-to-water thing later.”
She grinned, turned, and raced off down the tunnel behind Rory. Already, I could see the energy forming around her hands. This time, a pale yellow energy. An energy, I knew, that meant business.
I turned once again to what had been a boulder-strewn end of the tunnel. Now it was something else, entirely. It was a tunnel that went deeper into the rock formation. I looked at the queen, and she looked at me, not sure what to do. I took her hand and said, “C’mon. It’s probably safer with me.”
Chapter Thirty-three
We headed deeper into the freshly blasted tunnel.
Not too much deeper, granted, but certainly deep enough to put a little distance between us and the ungodly racket going on out there.
You okay out there? I asked.
The dragon is magical, Sam. It can deflect my best stuff.
Okay, sounds like you have it under control.
But I just said—
She growled just as I signed off. Then again, it might have been the dragon growling, too. Either way, with Conan the Barbarian and the Wicked Witch of the West out there, I was pretty sure the dragon had its claws full.
I focused on the task at hand, which just so happened to be saving a baby from an eternity of prison. Although the tunnel had been hollowed out by some pretty cool witchcraft, and most of the walls were as smooth as a baby’s butt, that didn’t stop bigger rocks and clumps of dirt from dropping free from the ceiling with each explosion or thump from out in the hallway. I might be immortal, which means I would survive a cave-in. Which also meant I could be buried for an eternity, which sounded terrible.
“What do we do, Lady Tam Tam?” asked the queen.
I gave her credit. She sounded far stronger and calmer than she probably had any right to be.
“I have a plan. Kinda.”
“I am not familiar with this word, ‘kinda.’”
“It means it’s not a quite a plan.”
“Ah, well, not quite a plan is better tha
n no plan at all,” said the queen, and no truer words had ever been spoken.
With the queen huddled close and smelling of something completely foreign to me—a sort of sweet sage mixed with sea salt, undoubtedly what passed for perfume in this strange land—I closed my eyes and rested my palms on the stone. What I saw nearly knocked my socks off. Or my Asics. I had been expecting to see more rock, and maybe a fragment of light.
This time, I saw so much more.
Chapter Thirty-four
It was an open space, but just barely.
A man could sit in there, but not stand. A man could lie in there, but not fully. It was a hellish sort of prison, one that was entirely surrounded by many dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of layers of rock. In the ceiling, I could see vent holes, undoubtedly reaching the surface, perhaps even magically so. There was no door, no bed, no table, no stool. Only a small pocket of rock from which to suffer.
Sam, we can’t hold it off for much longer...
I nodded, then said to the queen, “I’ll be right back.”
“But where are you—”
Except I had already summoned the single flame, and within it, I saw the tiny stone cell. Most important, I saw what was hovering in the tiny cell: a baby girl, suspended in the air, and surrounded by blue light.
In a blink, I was gone.
***
I found myself on my back, within the stone chamber, and looking up at the hovering babe, wrapped in a dangling white shawl. Interestingly, my inner alarm sounded, buzzing just inside my right ear.
The little girl had been clearly enchanted; indeed, I could see the blue light pulsating around her. I suspected that same enchantment could, potentially, ensnare me. Warning heard and heeded.
I carefully eased myself up, avoiding the blue glow at all costs. There was barely enough room for me to sit up, much less navigate around the floating babe. Truly, this was a place for prisoners to go mad. I seriously questioned Charlie Reed’s own sanity. I mean, who thinks up these places?