Cadderly came down the rope slowly and in control, using a technique he had seen illustrated in a manuscript. He held the rope both in front of and behind him, looping it under one thigh and using his legs to control his descent. He had heard the dwarven brothers grumbling while he was tying off the rope, so he knew that they had survived the fall. That fact offered some comfort, at least. As he neared the stone floor, within the area of torchlight, he saw Pikel running about in circles, with Ivan close on his heels, smacking out the last wisps of smoke from his brother's smoldering behind.
"Oo, oo, oo, oo!" Pikel cried, slapping at his own rump whenever he got the chance.
"Hold still, ye stinking oak kisser!" Ivan bellowed, whacking wildly.
"Quiet," Cadderly cautioned them as he dropped down to the tunnel.
"Oo," Pikel replied, giving one last brisk rub. The dwarf then noticed the stonework in the walls and forgot all about the
sting. He wandered off happily to investigate.
"Somebody wanted to keep us outa here," Ivan reasoned. "His fire-wards got me brother good, right on the backside!"
Cadderly agreed with the dwarfs conclusion and sensed that he should know who had set out the glyphs, that he had seen someone in the same room as the bottle ... .
He couldn't remember, though, and he had no time now to meditate and explore his suspicions. More importantly, neither dwarf had suffered any real damage; Ivan's antler-topped helmet had even been cleaned a bit by the jolt.
"How far to yer cursed flask?" Ivan asked. "Do ye think we'll be seeing more of the magical barriers?" Ivan's face lit up at the notion. "You gotta let a dwarf walk first if you think so, ye know." He pounded a fist onto his breastplate. "A dwarf can take it. A dwarf can eat it up and spit it back at the one who set it! Do ye think we'll be meeting that one? The one who put the fire-ward up there? I've a word to speak with that one. He burned me brother! No, I'm not for letting one go and bum me brother!"
The look in Ivan's eyes grew ever more distant as he spoke, and Cadderly realized that the dwarf was walking a tentative line of control. Off to the side, Pikel, too, had become overly consumed.
He was down on his hands and knees, sniffing at the cracks in the wall and uttering an excited
"Oo!" every so often. A dozen frantic spiders scurried to get free of their own webs, hopelessly entangled in Pikel's tough beard.
Cadderly set his rock crystal spindle-disks spinning end-around-end in front of Ivan's face and used his light tube to focus a narrow beam on them. The dwarf's talking faded away as he fell more and more into the mesmerizing dance of the light on the disks' many facets.
"Remember why we are here," Cadderly prompted the dwarf. "Concentrate, Ivan Bouldershoulder. If we do not remove the curse, then all the library, the Edificant Library, will be lost." Cadderly couldn't be certain whether his words or the dancing light on the disks had reminded Ivan to resist the stubborn curse, but whatever the cause, the dwarfs eyes popped wide, as if he had just come from a deep slumber, and he shook his head so wildly that he had to lean on his double-bladed axe to keep from falling over.
"Which way, lad?" the now lucid dwarf asked.
"That's more to the point," Cadderly remarked under his breath. He glanced over at Pikel and wondered if the same technique would be needed on him. It didn't matter, Cadderly decided at once.
Pikel wasn't really wide awake even when he was wide awake.
Cadderly looked down at the floor, searching for some sign of his previous passing, but found nothing. He sent his light down to either side of the bricked corridor, but both ways seemed identical and jogged no memories for him.
"This way," he decided simply to get them moving, and he stepped past Ivan. "Do bring your brother." Cadderly heard a clang over his shoulder-axe on cooking pot, he supposed- and Ivan and Pikel came hustling up to his side a moment later.
After many dead ends and many circular treks that brought them right back to where they had started, they came to an ancient storage area of wide corridors lined with rotted crates. "I was here," Cadderly insisted, speaking the words aloud in an attempt to jog his memory.
Ivan dropped to the floor, seeking to confirm Cadderly's declaration. As with all the corridors, though, no dear tracks were disenable. Clearly the dust had been recently disturbed, but either someone had deliberately brushed away any sure signs or simply too many had passed by this point for the dwarf to track.
Cadderly dosed his eyes and tried to envision his previous passage. Many images of his wanderings in the tunnels flooded through him, scenes of skeletons and corridors lined with sinister-looking alcoves, but they wouldn't connect in any logical pattern. They had no focal point, no starting ground where Cadderly could begin to sort them out.
Then he heard the heartbeat.
Somewhere in the unseen distance, water was dripping, steadily, rhythmically. That sound had been here with him, Cadderly knew. It came from no particular direction, and he had not used it as any sort of a guiding beacon his first time through, but now, he realized, it could guide his memory.
For, though its interval was constant, its volume became louder and more insistent at some bends in the passages, softer and more distant at others. Too engaged with other pressing problems his first time through, Cadderly had only noticed it on a subconscious level, but that had left an imprint on his memory. Now Cadderly trusted his instincts. Instead of cluttering his consciousness with futile worries, he moved along and let his subconscious memories guide his steps.
Ivan and Pikel didn't question him; they had nothing better to suggest. It wasn't until they came to a three-way arch, and Cadderly's face brightened noticeably, that even Cadderly really believed he knew where he was going.
"To the left," Cadderly insisted, and indeed, the left archway was less thick with cobwebs than the right, as if someone had passed through there. Cadderly turned back to the dwarves just as he started under the archway, a look of trepidation, even outright dread, on his face.
"What've ye seen?" Ivan demanded, and he pushed his way past Cadderly, under the arches.
"The skeletons," Cadderly started to explain.
Pikel hopped to his guard, and Ivan held his torch far out in front, peering into the dusty gloom.
"I see no skeletons!" Ivan remarked after a short pause.
The encounter with the walking dead remained a nightmarish blur for Cadderly. He couldn't quite remember where he had encountered the skeletons, and he didn't know why the thought had suddenly come to him now. "They might be in this area," he offered in a whisper. "Something makes me believe they are nearby."
Ivan and Pikel relaxed visibly and leaned to the side in unison to glance at each other around the young scholar. "Come on, then," Ivan huffed, following his torch's clearing fire into the left passage.
"The skeletons," Cadderly announced again as soon as he came through the archway. He knew this place, a crate-lined corridor wide enough for ten to walk abreast. A bit farther, alcoves lined the corridor's walls on both sides.
"We going to start that again?" asked Ivan.
Cadderly waved Percival tight beam in the direction of the alcoves. "In there," he explained.
His warning seemed ominous, at least to him, but the dwarves reacted to it as though it was an invitation. Rather than dim the lights and creep along, they both leaped out in front and strode defiantly down the center of the corridor, stopping in front of the first alcove.
"Oo oi" remarked Pikel.
"Ye're right, lad," agreed Ivan. "It's a skeleton." He propped his axe up on one shoulder, put his other hand on his hip, and walked right up to the alcove.
"Well?" he cried at the bones. "Are ye going to just sit there and rot, or are you going to come out and block me way?"
Cadderly came up tentatively, despite the dwarves' bravado.
"Just as ye said," Ivan said to him when he arrived, "but not moving about much, as I see it."
"They were moving," Cadderly insisted, "chasing me."
The brothers leaned to the side-they were getting used to this maneuver-and glanced at each other around Cadderly.
"I did not dream it!" Cadderly snarled at them, taking a step to the side to block their exchanged stares. "Look!" He started for the skeleton, then had second thoughts about that course and put his tight beam into the alcove instead. "See the cobwebs hanging freely in there? And the bits of web on the bones? They were attached, but now the webs hang free. Either this skeleton has been out of the alcove recently, or someone came down here and cut the strands from it, to make it look as though it has been out of the alcove."
"Yerself was the only one down here," Ivan blurted before he even realized the accusatory connotations of his statement.
"Do you believe I cut the strands?" Cadderly cried. "I would not want to go near the thing. Why would I waste the time and effort to do that?"
Again came the dwarven lean-and-look maneuver, but when Ivan came up straight this time, his expression was less doubting. "Then why are they sitting tight?" he asked. "If they want a fight, why ... ?"
"Because we did not attack them!" Cadderly interrupted suddenly. "Of course," he continued, the revelation coming clearer. "The skeletons did not rise against me until I attacked one of them."
"Why'd ye bit a pile of bones?" Ivan had to ask.
"I did not," Cadderly stuttered. "I mean... I thought I saw it move."
"Aha!" cried Pikel.
Ivan elaborated on his excited brother's conclusion. "Then the skeleton moved before ye hit it, and ye're wrong now in yer thinking."
"No, it did not move!" Cadderly shot back. "I thought it had, but it was only a rat or a mouse, or something like that."
"Mouses don't look like bones," Ivan said dryly. Cadderly expected the remark.
Pikel squeaked and crinkled his nose, putting on his best rodent face.
"If we just leave them alone, they might let us pass," Cadderly reasoned. "Whoever animated them probably gave them instructions to defend themselves."
Ivan thought about it for a moment, then nodded. The reasoning seemed sound enough. He motioned to Percival brother, and Pikel understood the silent request. The green-bearded dwarf pushed Cadderly out of the way, lowered his club like a battering ram, and, before the startled young scholar could move to stop him, charged full speed into the alcove. The terrific impact reduced the skull to a pile of flecks and dust and Pikel's continuing momentum scattered the rest of the bones in every direction.
"That one won't be getting up to fight us," remarked a satisfied Ivan, brushing a rib off Percival brother's shoulder as Pikel came back out.
Cadderly stood perfectly still, his mouth hanging open in absolute disbelief.
"We had to check it," Ivan insisted. "Ye want to be leaving walking skeletons behind us?"
"Uh oh," groaned Pikel. Cadderly and Ivan turned at the call, Cadderly's light beam showing the source of Pikel's dismay. This skeleton would not rise to fight them, as Ivan had said, but dozens of others were already up and moving.
Ivan clapped Cadderly hard on the back. "Good thinking, lad!" the dwarf congratulated him. "Ye were right! It took a hit to rouse them!"
"That is a good thing?" Cadderly asked. Images of Percival last trip through here came rushing back to him, particularly when he had backed away from the first skeleton he had struck, into the waiting grasp of another. Cadderly spun to the side. The skeleton from across the corridor was nearly upon him.
Pikel had seen it, too. Undaunted, the dwarf grasped Percival club with both hands down low on the handle and stepped in with a mighty roundhouse swing, catching the monster on the side of the head and sending the skull soaring down the corridor behind them. The remaining bones just stood shakily for the moment it took Pikel to smash them down.
Cadderly watched the batted skull until it disappeared into the darkness, then he shouted, "Run!"
"Run!" Ivan echoed, dropping his torch, and he and Pikel charged down the corridor, straight at the advancing host.
That wasn't exactly what Cadderly had in mind, but when he realized that there was no way he was going to turn the wild brothers around, he shrugged Percival shoulders, took out his spindle-disks, and followed, seriously pondering the value of friendship when weighed against the burdens.
The closest skeletons did not react quickly enough to the dwarven charge. Ivan sliced one cleanly in half with a great cut of his axe, but then, on his back swing, snagged the weapon's other head in the rib cage of his next intended victim. Never one to quibble over finesse, the dwarf heaved mightily, pulling his weapon and the entangled skeleton into the air around him and then slamming the whole jumble into the next nearest monster. The two skeletons were hopelessly hooked together, but so was Ivan's axe.
"I need ye, me brother!" Ivan cried as yet another skeleton moved in on him, reaching for his face with dirty, sharp finger bones.
Pikel had fared better initially, plowing into the first ranks like a boulder bouncing down a mountainside, breaking three skeletons apart and pushing the rest back several feet. The rush had not been without consequences, though, for Pikel stumbled down to one knee before he could halt his momentum. The fearless undead came in all around the dwarf, advancing from every angle. Pikel grasped his club down low, held it out to arm's length, and began turning fast circles.
The skeletons were mindless creatures, not thinking fighters. Their outstretched arms leading, they came right in fearlessly, stupidly, and Pikel's whirling club whittled them down, fingers, hands, and arms. The dwarf laughed wildly as each bone went humming away, thinking he could keep this up forever.
Then Pikel heard his brother's call. He stopped his spin and tried to discern the right direction, then sent his stubby legs pumping in place, building momentum.
"Oooo!" the dwarf roared, and off he sprang, bursting out the side of the skeletal ring.
Unfortunately, his dizziness had deceived him, and as soon as he broke clear of the ring, he slammed headfirst into the corridor's brick wall.
"Oo," came a hollow echo from under the pot helmet of the now seated Pikel.
Only a single skeleton had slipped between the dwarves to face Cadderly, odds that the young scholar thought he could handle. He danced about, up on the balls of his feet as Danica once had shown him, flicking out a few warning shots with his spindle-disks.
The skeleton paid no heed to his dancing feints, or the harmless throws, and continued straight in for Cadderly's mass.
The spindle-disks smacked into its cheekbone and spun its head right around so that is was looking behind itself. Still the skeleton came on, and Cadderly fired again, this time trying to break the thing's body. As soon as he threw, he realized his error.
The disks slipped through the skeleton's rib cage, but got tangled when Cadderly tried to retract them. To make matters worse, the sudden tug of the snag tightened the loop on Cadderly's finger, binding him to the skeleton.
Blindly, the monster swiped out at him. Cadderly dove straight for the floor, took up his walking stick, and shoved it through the rib cage, hoping to dislodge his spindle-disks. As soon as the tip of the stick wedged into the skeleton's backbone, the crafty young scholar changed his tactics. An image of a fulcrum and lever popped into his mind and he let go of his walking stick, then slammed its head with all his might.
The rib fulcrum held firm and the shock of Cadderly's downward blow shot up along the skeleton's backbone and sent its head straight into the air, where it ricocheted off the corridor ceiling.
The shattering jolt broke apart the rest of the undead thing.
Cadderly congratulated himself many times as he worked both his weapons free, but his relief lasted only until he looked farther down the corridor, into the flickering light of Ivan's dropped torch. Both dwarves were down, Ivan unarmed and trying to keep out of one skeleton's reach, and Pikel, sitting near the other wall, his pot down to his shoulders, with a whole host of skeletons advancing on him.
* * * * *
Druzil peered suspiciously from between his folded bat wings at the dark and quiet altar room. The brazier fire was down to embers now-Barjin would not leave an interplanar gate burning while he slept-and there was no other light source. That hardly hindered the imp, who had spent eons wandering about the swirling gray mists of the lower planes.
All seemed as it should. To the side of the room, Barjin slept peacefully, confident that his victory was at hand. Mullivy and Khalif flanked the doorway, as still as death and instructed not to move unless one of the conditions set by Barjin had been met.
To Druzil's uneasy relief, none of those conditions apparently had. No intruders had entered the room, the door remained shut fast, and Druzil sensed no probing wizard eyes nor any distant call from Aballister.
The altar room's serenity did not diminish the imp's sense that something was amiss, though.
Something had disturbed Druzil's slumber; he had thought it another call from that persistent Aballister. Druzil tightened his wings and sank within himself, turning from his physical senses to the more subtle inner feelings, empathic sensations, that served an imp as well as eyes might serve a human. He pictured the area beyond the closed door, mentally probing the maze of twisting corridors.
The imp's bat wings popped open suddenly. The skeletons were up!
Druzil reached into his magical energies and faded to invisibility. A single flap of his wings carried him between Mullivy and the mummy, and he quickly uttered the key word to prevent Barjin's series of warding glyphs from exploding as he slipped out of the room. Then he was off, flying sometimes, creeping on clawed toes at others, picking his way carefully toward the outermost burial chambers. Already his physical hearing had confirmed what he had sensed, for a battle was in full swing.
The imp paused and considered the options before him. The skeletons were fighting, there could be no doubt, and that could only mean that intruders had come down to this level. Perhaps they had simply wandered down here in their curse-induced stupor, vagabond priests soon to be dispatched by the undead force, but Druzil could not dismiss the possibility that whoever it was had come with a more definite purpose in mind.
Druzil glanced over his shoulder, down the corridors that would take him back to Barjin. He was torn. If he sent his thoughts to Barjin, established that personal familiar-master telepathic link, he would be bringing his relationship with the priest to a level of which Aballister certainly would not approve. if the wizard back at Castle Trinity ever found out, he might well banish Druzil back to his home plane-a fate that the imp, with the chaos curse finally unleashed on the world, certainly did not desire.
Yet it was Barjin, the imp reminded himself, not Aballister, who had taken the forefront in this battle. Resourceful Barjin, the powerful priest, was the one who had struck boldly and effectively against the heart of law in the Snowflake region.
Druzil sent Percival thoughts careening down the corridors, into the altar room, and into the sleeping priest's mind. Barjin was awake in a second, and a moment later, he understood that danger had come to his domain.
I will divert them if they get past the skeletons, Druzil assured the priest, but prepare your defenses!
* * * * *
Ivan knew he was running out of room. One hand raked at his shoulder, and all that he got for his retaliatory punch was a torn fingernail. The experienced dwarf decided to use his head. He tucked his powerful little legs under him, and the next time the pursuing skeleton lunged for him, he sprang forward.
Ivan's helmet was fitted with the antlers of an eight-point deer, a trophy Ivan had bagged with a
"dwarven bow"-that being a hammer balanced for long-range throwing-in a challenge hunt against a visiting elf from Shilmista Forest. In mounting the horns on his helmet, clever Ivan had used an old lacquering trick involving several different metals, and he only prayed that they would prove strong enough now.
He drove into the skeleton's chest, knowing that his horns would likely be entangled, then he stood up and straightened his neck, hoisting the skeleton overhead. Ivan wasn't certain how much his maneuver had gained him, though, for the skeleton, suspended perpendicularly across the dwarfs shoulders, continued its raking attacks.
Ivan whipped his head back and forth, but the skeleton's sharp fingers found a hold on the side of his neck and dug a deep cut. Others were advancing.
Ivan found his answer along the side of the corridor, in an alcove. He could slip in there easily enough, but could the skeleton fit through, laid out sideways? Ivan lowered his head and charged, nearly bursting with laughter. The impact as the skeleton's head and legs connected with the arch surrounding the alcove slowed the dwarf only a step. Bones, dust, and webs flew, and Ivan's helmet nearly tore free of his head as the dwarf tumbled in headlong. He came back out into the corridor a moment later with half a rib cage and several web strands hanging loosely from his horns. He had defeated the immediate threat, but a whole corridor of enemies still remained.
Cadderly saved Pikel. The dazed dwarf sat near the wall, with a ringing in his ears that would last for a long time, and with a host of skeletons swiftly dosing.
"Druid, Pikel!" Cadderly yelled, trying to find something that would shake the dwarf back to reality. "Think like a druid. Envision the animals! Become an animal!"
Pikel lifted the front of his pot helmet and glanced absently toward Cadderly. "Eh?"
"Animals!" Cadderly screamed. "Druids and animals. An animal could get up and away! Spring .. .
snake, Pikel. Spring like a coiled snake!"
The pot helmet went back down over the dwarfs eyes, but Cadderly was not dismayed, for he heard a hissing sound coming from under it and he noticed the slight movement as Pikel tensed the muscles in his arms and legs.
A dozen skeletons reached for him.
And the coiled snake snapped.
Pikel came up in a wild rush, batting with both arms, kicking with both legs, even gnawing on one skeleton's forearm. As soon as he regained his footing, the dwarf scooped up his club and began the most vicious and frantic assault Cadderly had ever witnessed. He took a dozen hits but didn't care. Only one thought, the memory that his brother had called for him, rang clear in the would-be druid's mind.
He saw Ivan coming out of the alcove and spotted Ivan's axe, caught fast in the tangle of two skeletons making their unsteady way toward Ivan. Pikel caught up to them long before they reached his brother.
The tree trunk club smashed again and again, beating the skeletons, punishing them for stealing Ivan's weapon.
"That'll be enough, brother," Ivan cried happily, scooping his axe from the bone pile. "There are walking foes still to smash!"
Cadderly outmaneuvered the slow-moving skeletons to rejoin the dwarves. "Which way?" he gasped.
"Forward," Ivan replied without hesitation.
"Oooi!" Pikel agreed.
"Just get between us," growled Ivan, blasting the skull from a skeleton who had ventured too near.
As they worked their way down the corridor, Cadderly's tactics improved. He kept his spindle-disks flying for skulls only-less chance of getting them hooked that way-and used his walking stick to ward off the reaching monsters.
Much more devastating to the skeletons were the two fighters flanking the young scholar. Pikel growled like a bear, barked like a dog, hooted like an owl, and hissed like a snake, but whatever sound came from his mouth did not alter his crushing attack routines with his tree trunk club.
Ivan was no less furious. The dwarf accepted a hit for every tat he gave out, but while the skeletons managed to inflict sometimes painful scratches, each of Ivan's strikes shattered another of their ranks into scattered and useless bones.
The trio worked its way through one archway, around several sharp comers, and through yet another archway. Soon more of the skeletal host was behind them than in front, and the gap only widened as less and less resistance stood to hinder their way. The dwarves seemed to enjoy the now lopsided fight and Cadderly had to continually remind them of their more important mission in order to prevent them from turning back to find more skeletons to whack.
Finally they came clear of the threat and Cadderly had a moment to pause and try to get his bearings. He knew that the door, the critical door with the light shining through, could not be too far from here, but the crisscrossing corridors offered few landmarks to jog his memory.
* * * * *
Druzil concluded from the sheer quantity of smashed skeletons that these invaders were not stupefied victims of the chaos curse. He quickly closed in behind the fleeing intruders, taking care, even though he was invisible, to keep to the safety of sheltered shadows. Never allowing Cadderly and the dwarves to get out of his sight, the imp used his telepathy to contact Barjin again, and this time he asked the cleric for direct help.
Give me the commands for the skeletons, Druzil demanded.
Barjin hesitated, his own evil methods forcing him to consider if the imp might be attempting to wrest control.
Give the words to me or prepare to face a formidable band, Druzil warned. I can serve you well now, my master, but only if you choose wisely.
Barjin had come out of his sleep to find danger suddenly close, and he meant to take no chances of losing what he had so painstakingly achieved. He still didn't trust the imp-no wise master ever would-but he figured that he could handle Druzil if it came down to that. Besides, if the imp tried to turn the skeletons against him, he could merely exert his own will and wrest back control of them.
Destroy the intruders! came Barjin's telepathic command, and he followed it with a careful recounting of all the command words and phrases recognizable by his skeletal force.
Druzil needed no prodding from Barjin; protecting the flask of his precious chaos curse was more important to him than it ever could be to the priest. He memorized all the proper phrases and inflections for handling the skeletons, then, seeing that Cadderly and the dwarves had stopped to rest in an out-of-the-way and empty passage, went back to retrieve the remaining undead forces.
The next time the intruders met them, the skeletons would not be a disorganized and directionless band. "We will surround and strike in unison," Druzil vowed to the skeletons, though the words meant nothing to the unthinking monsters. Druzil had to hear them, though. "We will tear apart the dwarves and the human," the imp went on, growing more excited. The chaotic imp couldn't immediately contain his hopes there, pondering the possibilities of taking the skeletal host against Barjin. Druzil dismissed the absurd notion as soon as he had thought of it. Barjin served him well for now, as Aballister had done.
But who could guess what the future might hold?
