And the Devil Will Drag You Under

by Jack L. Chalker

  The elderly man headed Briefing. After greeting her, he went back to an enormous file cabinet, rummaged through a drawer, and came up with a thick folder. "Castle Zondar's one of the ones we keep up front, since everybody wants to hear about it," he explained in a melodious baritone. "Not too many go through with it, though." He paused a moment. "Going up the cliff face?"

  "Yes," she told him. "And I'm interested only in the tower-the Hall of the Sleeper, to be exact."

  A bushy white eyebrow shot up. "That's interesting," he replied. "Well, we suggest going to the tower di­rectly, then, bypassing all the other crap. It means an extra fifty-meter climb, which is rough; but doing it that way bypasses a lot of foolishness as well. There is a guard position on top of the tower, and patrolling guards at the tower base on the roof of the castle. Get as far over to the right as possible and angle yourself so that once you're onto the tower proper, you'll be out of sight of the lower guards. There are no shortcuts, though. You can enter only at the top or along the guard wall."

  Jill looked at his diagrams and recalled the blue-prints. That would mean a sheer climb of almost a hundred and ten meters straight up, the last fifty on a curved surface! She protested as much to the briefer.

  "That's true," he admitted, "but then you only have to go down two levels rather than up fourteen with all the attendant risks not only of discovery but of tripping alarms, running into people-or things worse than people. The top guard basically tends the lighthouse at the top, and he's the only human you'd have to bother with under normal circumstances. He guards against an attack by air-sorcerers can do some interesting things, sometimes with as simple a thing as a carpet-by a simple trick. The fuel to the lighthouse is carefully measured and metered to last only ten minutes, after which a complex mechanism must be operated in the proper sequence. Otherwise the light goes out and, quite literally, all hell will break loose. There are two rather enormous gaunts, for example, bound to the top, circling around the tower. They won't bother you as long as the light burns, and they won't pick you off the side, either. They are, in effect, incorporeal as long as the light shines. Let the light go out and they will land, devouring everything on top."

  She gulped a little. "What is a gaunt, anyway?"

  He shrugged. "Who knows? Amorphous black crea­tures of sorcery that eat flesh. Need any more details? I've never known anyone to meet up with one and live, so that's the best I can tell you."

  "That's enough," she assured him. "So the light has to burn until I'm down in the tower."

  "All the time, if you intend to get out," he re­sponded. "The guard is almost certainly just a bored and perfectly ordinary watchman. Just wait on the side of the wall until he goes and rekindles the lamp. Climb up onto the tower, get around, and when he comes out just pace him around the tower and go in and down. No reason he should have to know you're there until you're on the way out, if he doesn't have to."

  There was more, and it was all practical advice given in a simple, matter-of-fact way. Finally, the briefing was over.

  "Tell me," she said hesitantly. "I've explained gen­erally what I'm after, where-the whole thing. In all honesty, what do you think my chances are, assuming I'm good and in the proper condition for this?"

  The man shrugged. "Getting in, I’d say excellent. Getting down to the Hall of the Sleeper, fair to good. Getting into the Hall, fair. Finding what you're after there-well, who knows? If it's there, probably fair to good. Getting out again, poor. Getting back down the side and to town here-hell, I wouldn't bet a button on that."

  That was exactly what she wanted to hear, for all her information showed that the major problems were in escaping; the primary security both human and supernatural was also geared to catching whoever had managed to get in.

  But she didn't have to get out.

  She hoped.

  Spells and Charms turned out to be a short class on basic stuff anybody could do-some for luck, some for silence, a number for misdirection, and the like. She was delighted when she tried a couple and they worked -although she was warned that, first, the spells were no panacea, and second, they required concentrated willpower which might not be possible if, say, you were surrounded by a host of armed guards trying to kill you.

  In general, a cross repelled vampires only if you first had a chance to pull it out and, second, if the vampire was a Christian. There were no vampires likely in the tower, but the principle was the same.

  The climbing equipment was perfect and well made for the type of stone involved. The pitons, for example, were fastened with a type of glue that supposedly would hold a hundred kilograms and therefore prevented the need to bang holes noisily in solid granite.

  The magic repellers turned out to be a series of small blessings and numerous charms that would pro­tect her, it was claimed, from some of the more basic, routine stuff.

  Jill felt set-but by the time she was through the crash course, it was after five in the morning and dawn was fast approaching. She would not be able to go after the gem until the next night, and she had almost no money.

  The larcenous part of her brain that contained the unusually strong Yoni came up with a simple remedy. Returning to her room at the inn, she decided that she could practice and also get some needed cash in a simple way. She took a couple of the pitons and the glue, crawled out her window, and hand-walked two stories up on the pitons to the next room. She opened the shutters slightly, crept in-thankful that this so­ciety also hadn't invented the glass window or screens -and snatched the purse of an obese middle-aged couple still snoring soundly. They had really bolted their door and barricaded it with a chair besides, but that didn't matter.

  Going back, one of the pitons loosened and came off in her hand. It wasn't critical-she made the leap to the next one easily-but it was a nerve-racking experience. The damned things had to be in just right, obviously, or the glue wouldn't hold. It didn't occur to her until she was back in the room that if the piton she'd jumped to had also loosened, she'd have fallen a good nine or ten meters to the stone alleyway below.

  And when she did think of it, it did nothing to help her sleep at all. A hundred-and-ten-meter climb on those pitons, she kept thinking.

  Finally, though, she did get to sleep.

  4

  The next evening they were still buzzing about the robbery in the inn. But since the couple weren't certain where they'd been burgled-Jill had left a couple of coins in the purse and put everything exactly right and taken in all the pitons-the glue came loose somehow when she mumbled a few little words-no suspicion was pointed at anyone. The police were essentially go­ing through the motions, anyway, in the belief that any idiot tourists who wanted to stay in a known thieves hangout for the thrills and experience got what they deserved.

  She looked around for Paibrush, but he didn't reappear. She started to worry about him a bit. If he really were the vengeful kind, he could easily tip the castle that she was coming and give her description. That would be a violation of the thieves’ honor code and could cause him horrible trouble, but that would happen only if she survived to file a complaint. He didn't seem the type, but one never knew. One more worry.

  She went to the Guild Hall early, shortly after sundown, for a final refresher and also to complain to the Equipment Department about the piton. All she got for that was a lecture on clean, smooth surfaces-the inn was masonry, not granite-and a snide comment to the effect that anybody who'd use granite piton glue on porous rock deserved what she got. She dropped the subject.

  The Guild Hall had more exits than an ant farm, all underground. She walked for what seemed like kilometers, including some very long stair climbs, with an elderly guide and finally wound up coming out of the cliff almost directly below the castle.

  The pitons were in a sack-enough, they'd claimed, for the distance and made of the same light yet super-hard alloy as the swords. She was certain that such a metal did not exist back home. The glue was puttylike and had been preapplied to the pitons; it would not
come off, and it would not stick to anything except rock, which simplified matters. There were some advantages to this institutionalized criminality after all.

  The guide wished her luck and was quickly gone. She was alone at the cliff base, her only light a crescent moon and the lighthouse beacon which shone more out than up. She blackened her face and pulled on the black skin-tight gloves and felt ready. The gloves were made of a rubberlike material; they wouldn't slip.

  The climb proved relatively easy, and, true to Equip­ment's promise, no piton glue failed, although she gingerly tested each one before pulling herself up to it. Each was almost a meter long, a dull tube really, and easy to work with. Several times they clattered in the large sack, but although she was certain on many occasions that someone must have heard her, there were no alarms. At no time was she particularly wor­ried about falling. The climb was easier than a lot of the gymnastics stuff she'd done, and a lot easier than some mountains she'd climbed in Alaska just for fun. No snow, almost no wind, and no oxygen problems.

  Taking it slow and easy, she made the guard wall at the tower's base in a little over an hour. Several times she saw the heads and shoulders of guardsmen who were armed with what looked like crossbows. One even looked out, but none seemed aware of her presence.

  Following the suggestions, Jill angled herself around to the right side of the tower, which was located at the seaward corner. She could proceed straight up now and barely be seen by the men on the walls. But it was bright as day up here thanks to the light in the tower, and that made her feel totally exposed. There's a measure of luck in anything dangerous, though, she told herself.

  Her luck held. She made the top of the tower in another twenty minutes or so. Once, only once, she dropped a piton, but thankfully it fell away from the tower and castle, and the noise of its fall by the time it struck something solid was muffled by the sounds of the ocean.

  The light itself was a giant polished mirror before which was the hot oil flame, its heat and smoke suffocating at times. It rotated by having an ox tied to a lever that turned the whole light on a turntable of some sort. How they got the ox up there and down again was a mystery. There was the expected residue of working oxen, but not thick and not old, and no real sign of a big feeding and watering area.

  The guard, who definitely did look bored, yawned as he followed the ox around. He wore a sword, but no other weapons were apparent-mostly just uniform, she guessed.

  She waited there on her uncertain perch just below the top of the wall, letting her ears tell her when it might be safe to look by the sound of the ox. The man stuck with the animal. There was very little else he could do, since there was barely enough room for the animal to walk around, and if be stood still the beast would only run him over in a couple of minutes. Besides, the smoke was terrible and the flame damned hot -but if he stayed behind the ox, he had the mirror between him and the flame, which helped a little.

  Finally, the man walked inside to pump his pumps and move his levers to let more fuel into the lamp reservoir. It was hot and uncomfortable, and he did it quickly. Jill didn't move the first time, since she wanted to see just what his routine was. What he did was come out and take the shortest path to the rear of the ox. That was handy.

  Just as a watched pot never seems to boil, a watched lamp reservoir never seems to go down. Soon Jill's feet and leg muscles started to ache like mad, and imagina­tion-at least she hoped it was just her imagination-started making the piton feel loose and uneven, as if it were about to drop off. She maintained her self-control, though, and when the man finally went back in to prime the lamp reservoir again, she moved up and out in front of the ox, which gave her a slight glimpse but didn't stop its monotonous walk. She crept silently ahead until she was sure she was far enough around so that the man wouldn't be able to see her ahead or, she hoped, just across. The lamp was terribly hot; she began perspiring immediately.

  As soon as the man walked out to make his way back to his shield behind the ox, she rolled into the light structure and belly-crawled quickly to the small stone stairway opening. This is going to be tight and rough, she thought, but there was nothing else she could do. Momentarily she would be within two meters of the flame.

  Using the mirror as a shield, she got up quickly and made for the stairs at just the right, point. The heat was intense, unbearable; she was certain that she couldn't withstand it for more than a few seconds. But she made it down into the hole perfectly, then paused to catch her breath and let her body temperature cool down. She was drenched with perspiration and felt as if she had a high fever. She hoped she wasn't on fire.

  It was dark below except for a shaft of light coming from the opening above. She could see the base of the turntable near her and hear its creaky turning, even rear the sounds of man and animal on their long walk to nowhere just above-but there were no alarms.

  No human being could stand duty like the lighthouse keeper for very long. Jill felt confident that the guard was changed frequently, perhaps as frequently as every one to two hours. It didn't matter. She intended to wait for the guard change here, on the steps. It was a free ticket down.

  It was not, mercifully, a very long wait. She heard him first-a noise, someone moving far below-then heard the clanging of some chains and the lifting of some gates. She was exhausted, but this was only the beginning, and she forced herself into action.

  Finally there was a torch visible below, and when it was clearly in someone's hand she moved swiftly and silently over, judged the distance to the bottom part of the turntable, then leaped for it and held on with both hands. It was hot, but bearably hot. She had conceived this notion when she'd seen that this bottom part was made of thick hardwood. Had it been metal, it would certainly have been too hot to hold on to and would have forced a new plan.

  She turned slowly with the light and waited nerv­ously for the man with the torch to pass. For the briefest of moments the top of the tower would be lighted by that torch and she would be exposed. She hoped that the man was neither expecting the extraordi­nary nor looking for it.

  He wasn't. He was tall and thin, a gaunt man dressed as the other had been. His expression told her how much he hated going to work now. She had a bad moment when he stopped just below the opening to the top to wait for the shielded side to come around, but he was looking up there, to the light, and not at her.

  Finally he passed, and she was behind him, hanging in the darkness. Her arms ached and the heat trans­ferred from the top started to get to her, but she held on.

  A man with lighthouse duty doesn't stick around and talk much to his replacement when he's relieved, so it was only a minute or two before the original guard came down the steps, torch in hand. He was far too smoked up and heated up to be looking for visitors, and passed right by her. She let him get just ahead and below and swung herself back to the stairs, thank­ful for the slight glow from his torch and the light above. As she had hoped, the noise of the light itself masked her. The torch never wavered-and now she followed it, getting as close to the relieved guard as she dared.

  At the first level there was a gate and then a flat floor. Doors to several small chambers were revealed in the torchlight. She didn't like the iron gate at all, nor the fact that the guard took a big key off his belt and moved to unlock it. The noise seemed to disturb whoever or whatever was in the rooms. She could hear a gibbering and hissing and a lot of banging sounds, like an inhuman army of ghouls and other creatures clamoring for release. It scared the hell out of her but didn't seem to ruffle the guard at all.

  The key and gate were a different matter. There seemed only one key on his belt, so it was safe to as­sume that, even if there were more locks and gates, this key would fit. But she would need it-and that meant getting the guard.

  She didn't really have the size or strength to knock the man cold with a piton, blackjack style. That meant the dagger. She drew it, then hesitated as Mogart's voice seemed to echo in the back of her mind from some distant space and time.


  "Ever kill anyone, either of you? . . . Do you think you could do so? Could you kill if, by doing so, you could stop that thing up there from hitting the Earth, maybe even reverse a lot of what has happened here?" Well, here it was. The man had the key in the lock, was turning it. Now or never. An innocent man, just doing his job, maybe with a wife and kids somewhere. As in the alley with Paibrush, a force seemed to surge through her; the dagger went up, cocked, and sped unerringly to its target. The man stiffened and cried out in surprise and pain, then collapsed in a heap on the floor. He was still moving, though, still breath­ing. The commotion hadn't been heard by others above or below, but it certainly was heard by whatever lurked behind the doors. They seemed driven into a frenzy.

  Jill was quickly beside him, and he groaned as she reached down and took the key off his belt, then turned him slightly so she could pull out the dagger and wipe it on his clothing. There was a lot of blood, and for a moment she thought she was going to be sick.

  Then, suddenly, the body started undergoing a ter­rible transformation as she watched. It seemed to shrink and twist a bit and turn black; the man's eyes suddenly glowed a deep red and his face became something horrible, inhuman, more like a gargoyle than a human being.

  She was horrified and stepped back. He seemed to be growing stronger as he changed, becoming more and more a gargoyle that radiated pure hate and evil but without a trace of humanity.

  It's going to get up and come after me! Jill thought suddenly, then took out a piton and pounded the crea­ture's loathsome head with all her remaining strength, again and again and yet again! Blood and a terrible, clear ichor seemed to ooze as the thing screamed and was joined by the screams of others just beyond the doors on this level, yet it would not die.