by Kris Schnee
They noticed the new hallway and spoke excitedly. Opus watched Marie writing, which let him guess at another word here and there like "floor" and "stone". While they were delving into that area he unleashed his skeleton warriors, trying to force another fight.
It went splendidly. The clumsy monsters scored several minor cuts and one long shallow wound on the men, who fought back with fury. The woman took some kind of metal wand out of a pocket, shouted to the men, then caused it to explode. Instead of hurting her, the pipe blasted the remaining skeleton with astonishing noise and smoke, sending a metal pellet bouncing off the walls. When had people learned to make such a weapon? Opus was glad to have his minions defeated after doing some good damage.
The men and the boy grinned fiercely. They seemed to be having fun despite the bloodshed. Warriors were the same in any era, it seemed. The woman was less eager for battle, scolded them, and bandaged their wounds.
Have courage, Opus wished to tell them, and explore what I've made.
Marie whistled toward the entrance. A fifth person arrived, this one dressed in black with a white stripe on his collar and wearing only a helmet as a concession to practical exploration. He advanced warily down into the ruins and spoke with the others, who talked about the skeletons.
Then, Opus was heartened. They'd said spiritus; they'd read and understood his writing! Next time they left and returned, he could tell them more.
Opus mentally blinked. He was eager to have his tiny realm explored, glad for battle and the chance to hurt without killing. Maybe he'd been a bit of a gladiator at heart as well as an architect.
When the visitors got downstairs, Opus sicced his rat skeletons on them. In the confusion of the new fight everyone got hurt again, but the people kicked and stomped his creations to oblivion. Excellent! They gathered the coins, examined each detail of the ruin, and again reached the subterranean pool with its mysterious glyphs. The unarmed man in black crept closer while the others stood guard. "Spirit," said the man, in a wondering tone.
Are you a priest? Opus wondered. What can you do for me?
The man chanted in a bastardized version of Latin, mangling the pronunciation, but the words were mostly recognizable. "Oh Lord, we pray that whatever spirits lie here are commended to you. May they find peace and forgiveness."
Whatever "lord" this man was praying to, Opus wished he would show up. Nothing obviously magical happened; he didn't ascend to the heavens as a god like some departed emperor. Useless! The entire plan of bringing a priest here was useless! What was he supposed to do now, rot forever in a place of death while unable to talk with these barbarian gawkers?
The priest drew back in fright. The water of the pool was burbling and frothing from Opus' frustration. Go away so that I can write to you! thought Opus.
As if sensing his mood, the people retreated like the tide, leaving him once more alone in the darkness.
* * *
He began writing and drawing more. He used his walls to tell the story of a mason killed under a belching mountain of fire. The more he wrote in one spot the harder it seemed to be to continue, as though any given patch of stone became immune to his magical carving. He could rewrite the "spirit" remark he'd already written, but he had to put a few words here and another few there, scattering anything he tried to say. He gave a silent scream and hurled pebbles back and forth. Was there no end to his limitations?
No one was coming to see him anyway; maybe they'd decided he'd been "laid to rest" and no further prayers were necessary. Forever. Opus tore holes in his walls, carved new hallways and expanded them into rooms, and blocked off the main route to the basement stairs so that any more intruders would have to take a roundabout path. He made yet more skeletons to kill anyone who came in, to spite them for leaving him trapped like this. He made a concealed pit to drop people onto sharp stone spikes and a section of ceiling he could collapse without breaking his halls forever. He threw new coins around to lure people right into his traps.
After his tantrum of malicious construction, Opus' energy ran low and his mood began to calm. Fine; the priest hadn't been able to free him, but there was still a chance to be rescued somehow. Since he couldn't lay out his entire story in one place, he used what little spare power remained to him to write a few more words here and there, spelling out fragments of what was wrong. "Blood strengthens me," he explained in one place, and "Can you free me?" in another.
One night while Opus slumbered in the half-aware state that came from having spent his magic, there was murmuring outside his ruins. Opus let his cursor drift there and discovered a new expedition, not of hardy warriors but of three boys and an older girl. All were crudely armed with clubs and knives, dressed in tough padded clothes and leather, and carrying backpacks. The girl even had some kind of mechanical bow. Ah, a handheld crossbow in the style of a siege engine. Clever bit of design.
What brings you here? thought Opus. He recognized two of the boys including Daniel but not the others, though the third boy resembled the priest. Maybe his son? That wasn't likely to do him any good. Opus resigned himself to trying once again to hurt his guests without scaring them off for good.
He started off with one of the bone-rats to gauge their skill. These kids knew what they were doing this time; they smashed it without taking a scratch. When they began finding the coins they grew excited. He smiled; he wished he'd been able to have such an adventure himself. Still he had a grim job to do. He winced when they discovered the pit trap the hard way. Daniel fell right onto it and took a nasty gash to each leg. Perhaps Opus had made the spikes too long and sharp. He'd have to tone them down next time.
An argument broke out between Daniel and the priest's boy. They'd just found the inscription about blood. The girl had to pull them apart. Opus made out the third boy saying, "Any spirit of blood is bad!"
Opus probably could have explained that better.
The quartet patched up Daniel's bleeding legs and kept going. The priest's kid muttered in Latin, "Sanguine, sanguinus... What's the proper form?"
He knew Latin like his father! Of course; he'd been able to read the inscription. He might be the best bet for trying to communicate, if he would leave and return after giving Opus a chance to write again.
Opus held back his humanoid skeletons but assaulted the guests with three rats in the second room. This battle was tougher for them, but the girl's crossbow smashed one of them and a flurry of kicks and swinging clubs broke the others. Opus was impressed. If he wasn't able to draw more blood, though, he'd have trouble replenishing his power.
They reached the original temple rooms and looked at everything, collecting a little more treasure. The girl said something that gave them all pause. The priest's boy addressed the empty air in bad Latin: "New coins, spirit? Do you make coins?" They'd caught onto the fact that the ruin's wealth was reappearing after being raided.
Since he couldn't answer, the visitors shrugged and kept going. The girl took off an ivory hair-clip, shook her hair free, and set the clip down on the floor. Clever of her; she'd want to see if he could copy it. He'd do so once they'd left.
He had an unarmed pair of skeletons ambush them at the base of the stairs. They were more successful than he'd hoped, gashing one boy across the face and sending the other sprawling to the ground with a deep slash across his arm. He watched in horror, barely able to control his minions once he'd set them loose. There was blood, yes, but at the price of possibly killing these people! He silently urged them to fight, but for several seconds the monsters just kept up their attempt at mindless slaughter. At last the downed boy tripped one of the creatures and crashed it into the other, which gave everyone a chance to leap on the enemies and pound them into submission. Then it was over; the bones were broken and still. Opus' guests lay bleeding and whimpering on the floor.
Had he simply overdone things by using two instead of one, or was he a monster for trying at all?
He tried to harden his heart. Roman boys had to be tough in a fight if
they were to be worth anything, and here, even the girl had knowingly walked into danger. Still, he had his price of admission now. He held back his few remaining minions.
The explorers helped each other up and comforted each other. They pressed onward across the basement's several rooms, thankfully spotting the pit trap and hopping over it. Soon they'd made it to the final chamber, which now had stairs leading down to the enchanted pool.
The priest's boy was shaking. He'd been the one to take the worst single wound, which was staining a bandage red around his right arm. "Spirit, why? What did we do?"
Opus could only growl silently, churning his pond in frustration at being unable to tell them what was wrong.
"There!" said the girl. "The water moved."
Another boy chattered excitedly with her. Then the Latin-speaker nodded and stepped forward. "Spirit. Can you understand me? Shake the water again for yes."
Opus reached into the magic of the water, barely understandable even to him, and did all he could to make it ripple and froth on command.
"It worked!" said the priest's boy. He spoke with the others in barbarian tongue. Then: "Pax? Bellum? Hosti, amici?" Peace or war, enemy or friend?
That was a hard one to answer. Opus kept silent.
"Then... You need blood for some reason?"
Opus frothed the water.
"Are you of the Devil? The spirit of... mal? Malus?" When Opus didn't answer, figuring that would be taken as a no, the boy considered and spoke. "You hurt people, yet you create treasure. Do you know of the true God?"
The others shrugged at Opus' silence. The Latin-speaker said, "Then will you... listen about Him, in return for blood?"
Opus wanted to laugh and to bang his phantom head on the walls. The barbarian boy wanted to teach him about whatever tribal god he favored? Fine. If he ever reached the point of being capable of muttering a prayer he'd do so, along with a back-handed thanks to fickle Fortuna for giving him this new half-existence. Opus conveyed, "Yes."
The little priest nodded, and undid the bandage on his arm, wincing. His friends objected but he held out the wound over Opus' pond and let a few drops fall into the water. Opus felt as empowered by them as by any of the blood he'd shed violently; maybe even more so despite the donation's small size. This was a strange source of power.
The boy spoke haltingly at length about his god, until the others got bored and interrupted. Opus had no context for understanding any of it through the broken Latin, though it did sound a little like a cult he'd heard of in his day. The Mithraists, maybe? Reluctantly Opus' would-be teacher left off with the lecture, but he asked, "Would you like people to come back?"
Opus bubbled the water with enthusiasm. If their parents returned, he could begin to converse with them directly! Together they'd find some way to free him. These were earnest barbarians, able to fight and read and think.
The young group stared into the mystic pond for a while, talking with each other, then turned to go. Then, one of them hefted a few of the coins and spoke in an attempt at Latin: "Thank you."
Opus felt a faint warmth, though his body was gone.
* * *
There was no contact the next day. Opus spent the time and his power to redraw his domain, adding carvings wherever he could fit a few words. "Was a mason. Spirit trapped here. Can create things. Blood fuels my powers. Don't want to kill. How to escape?"
He duplicated the girl's hair clip to prove her hunch right, along with restocking his coins and skeletons. He wished he had some more variety in his materials. He copied one of the temple's tapestries and used it to cover a pit trap he'd designed to cause shallow cuts. He fussed around with redesigning the halls and defenses so as to give him a fair chance at scoring some wounds without too much harm to anyone. Seeing how people had dealt with his tricks before let him spend happy hours imagining how he might solve his own challenges. Happy? He wondered at his own mood. He'd felt dread at the thought of bringing misery and death to the people who'd come to explore, but so long as he was more careful, they might enjoy a good fight and the shifting labyrinth he'd made for them.
The next day the adult adventurers returned: the priest, one of the moustachioed explorers, and the woman Marie. The men had brought clubs and simple wooden shields. As soon as they'd climbed down into the ashen entryway the priest called out in Latin, "Spirit! My name is Pierre. I understand you're going to attack us. You attacked my son, but he says you listened to him tell you of God. If you let us pass..."
The others argued. The priest reddened. "Fine. If you let us pass after a fight, we would like to speak with you again."
Marie held a staff in one hand and had her explosive wand tucked into her belt. She was the one to discover the two identical hair-clips. (Opus had kept a third copy hidden away.) She took notes excitedly, more pleased by that than by the few coins the others were scrounging.
Since they were a wary group, dressed again in tough clothing and well armed for bashing bones, he unleashed two pick-wielding skeletons and two rodent ones at once. It was a good fight, but not hard enough for him to draw blood. The guests were battered but basically unhurt as they stood amid the broken foes. They even managed to detect the pit trap he'd hidden under a fallen tapestry. Opus began to worry that he'd spent his energy without a chance to refill it.
When the explorers found the various inscriptions, they chattered and took notes using the priest for translation. Good. Maybe they'd ask the right questions.
They reached the lower level, and Opus ambushed them with all his remaining forces and a rock-fall trap. A brawl broke out, but the priest whipped out one of those exploding-pellet weapons too, and used it to blast one minion just before it could score a good hit. The rest fell quickly to the others' attacks. And no blood! Opus cursed silently. Were they hoping to starve him and leave him helpless?
At last, they reached the pond in the last room. The priest took the lead, saying, "Hail again, spirit. Maybe now we can speak. Do you understand?" A rumble of water. "Yes? Then, do you know a way that we can free you?"
Opus kept the water still.
"There must be a better way than this to talk, and better than waiting for another round of ghost-chiseling on the walls." The priest Pierre consulted with the others, until the other man came up with an idea. He set down a backpack full of tools and fashioned a board with letters on it, then lowered the thing until it was next to the water's edge. The priest said, "Can you move the water to point at these?"
Opus struggled. He could hardly move a pebble when anyone was inside this place, and the moment an intruder had so much as looked into the entryway he'd lost his power over a waving scrap of cloth. Yet he could still move the water of the pond, slowly and awkwardly. He gradually found a way to shift a tendril of water along the board's surface like a growing vine until it flowed a short way up to where a letter A was marked. So, with much patience from everyone, he became able to write in the visitors' presence. "KNOW NO WAY. SOME ANCIENT MAGIC HERE."
Pierre said, "Well, it doesn't look devilish. Spending blood as a power source, though... That's either evil or an appropriate sacrifice; I can't tell which. You are Roman?"
"YES."
The priest prayed over him, calling upon his god to release Opus' spirit to the next world, but nothing happened. Whatever bound Opus here seemed stronger than the barbarians' faith, or at least to be something that none of them rightly understood.
Echoing his thoughts, the man with the moustache said, "Scientia potentia est." Knowledge is power. It sounded like a slogan, maybe a creed of the new religion.
No one in the world understood the magic that bound him, so there was no way to overpower it.
Marie looked up from her notebook and spoke. Pierre translated: "We'll continue to study this place. There's a great deal to learn here. We had a good time battling our way through your maze. Even the children did, really, despite their injuries."
The others nodded, brandishing their weapons and smiling at the t
hought. "Do you have any more monsters to throw at us?" asked the priest.
Opus reached out to indicate "NO" on the writing-board, then "LATER." If ever, since he'd been so drained by preparing for today's expedition.
Except... he wasn't out of energy. To his surprise, he sensed the excitement and gratitude of these people, and felt buoyed by it!
"Thank you," said the woman. The others agreed. Opus' water danced; he felt nearly as strengthened as he'd been before spending his resources yesterday. He carefully spelled out, "FEEL STRONGER. EVEN WITHOUT BLOOD."
The priest startled. "What? Really? Could it be that God has given you a reprieve, so that you don't actually need blood sacrifice?"
"DON'T KNOW."
The people conferred. When they turned to him again Pierre said, "We have an idea. We'll come back and give you a chance to write if you want, but don't spend whatever power you have yet."
* * *
They returned for just a few minutes, to leave him an elaborate padded club and a similar shield. Fancier than the ones the expedition had just used against him. What were these; toys? The explorer who'd whipped them up explained, "If you don't really need to hurt people badly to recharge whatever motive force you have, then try fighting people with these instead of your picks and bony claws."
They brought him a few coins in their own style, too, and a pearl, a glittering sapphire, a torch, and a dozen other odds and ends. Opus' ghostly cursor flitted from one item to the next, judging how he could make use of everything. He didn't attack his guests this time, and they left saying, "It's an experiment! Let's see what you can do with these."
Once the people were gone, Opus went to work as though the new materials really were toys. He pulled them into a sealed-off alcove and began duplicating them, decorating his maze and filling it with treasure. To guard it he spawned squads of skeletons and this time armed them with the padded clubs and shields. There wasn't much else he could afford with his remaining power, but an idea struck him that none of the increasingly welcome intruders had thought of. Opus had water and gravel, limestone and ashes, and now a source of fire that he could multiply more or less at will. As a result, he had concrete. He forged it with his magic and sculpted a fine archway at the end of one hall as an experiment of his own. He didn't have the strength to make it lead anywhere, but with further visits there would be chances to do that. Opus was a craftsman being given chances to create, to sculpt the land around him, to build rooms and passageways and pillars and mysterious labyrinths however the mood took him. His only budget was what he'd earned with his own efforts.