by Zac Gorman
His speech was garbled, but Thisby could’ve sworn he asked for Donato.
“No. It’s Thisby,” she said.
Mingus was so exhausted that he could barely maintain his shape. He was practically a liquid when Thisby scooped him into his jar. Bero seemed to be coming to his senses.
“My spell books,” he said faintly.
“They’re not here,” said Thisby.
“Small one. Belt,” he said.
Thisby checked his belt pockets and discovered he was correct. There was the small leather-bound pocket-size spell book. The cover was a bit burned, but it was more or less intact. She pulled it out and tried to hand it to him, but he refused.
“You need . . . to read it,” he wheezed.
Thisby exchanged looks with Mingus, who sloshed around in his lantern, barely able to hold himself together.
“I can’t,” she said. “I’m not magic.”
Bero let out a laugh that quickly turned into a cough.
“There’s no . . . secret . . . of magic,” he rasped.
Bero closed his eyes momentarily, and Thisby flipped frantically through the book, looking for a healing spell. She nudged Bero awake and showed him pages that looked like they might be right.
“This one?” she asked.
Bero shook his head.
“How about this one?” she asked, turning the page.
He shook his head again.
Finally she found a spell that had a picture of ice crystals at the bottom of the page. Maybe it would help with his burns. She showed Bero the page, and he nodded.
“Read the words in your head,” he mumbled. “Place your hand . . . on your chest.”
“Not on you?” she asked.
He shook his head no again and closed his eyes.
“Hurry,” he said.
Thisby took a deep breath, placed her hand on her chest, and read.
She’d never tried to read magic before, and it was far more difficult than she realized. The words seemed to change as she read them, as if they were trying to escape her understanding. It was more than reading, it was like the words were a wild animal she was trying to corner. She had to restart twice, but on the third attempt she felt something slide into place in her mind. She’d cornered the meaning at last, and now it slid into her brain fully formed. It was a frightening thing to comprehend.
Thisby froze. Not out of panic but because something had gone terribly wrong.
Every muscle in her body had locked in place. Even the small ones, the little ones that she didn’t even know had been moving automatically until they no longer could. She couldn’t move her mouth to yell for help, she couldn’t even blink her eyes. All she could do was stare, her eyes fixed straight ahead at a permanent focal distance of about two feet in front of her face.
In her periphery, she saw Bero struggle into a sitting position and pluck the spell book from her numb hand. He opened it, recited something that she couldn’t comprehend, and then climbed to his feet, looking much better than he had a moment ago, his fresh wounds fading into old scars before her eyes.
Bero disappeared from her view. After what felt like an eternity, because now every moment she couldn’t move felt like forever, he returned with his bag of spell books and stepped out in front of Thisby with a wide smile.
“I’m actually sorry about this,” he said, his voice sounding alien and distant.
“I suppose that was the last test then,” he continued. “The fail-safe. I assumed there’d be one. Only someone who truly understands magic could open the door, yet nobody who understands magic was allowed to enter the tournament. It has a simple elegance, I suppose, but it’s far from foolproof. After all, you figured it out, right? And you didn’t even know enough about magic not to cast a paralysis spell on yourself.”
A single tear rolled down Thisby’s cheek, only it wasn’t from sadness or anger but from not being able to blink.
“Crying? Really?” said Bero mockingly, followed by a tut-tut clucking noise that made Thisby want to scream and punch him in the face, neither of which she could do for obvious reasons. “Don’t worry. You’re not going to die. You’ll wake up soon enough. In fact, come tomorrow morning you’ll carry on as gamekeeper. Just like you always wanted. Only you’ll do so under Umberfallian rule. Under my rule. It won’t be as bad as you think. You might even learn to like it. If everything goes according to plan and you play along nicely, there’s even room for promotion. You won’t be Master, but those are the breaks, I suppose. Again, I’m truly sorry I had to do this to you. It’ll all be over soon, though, and then everything will be back to normal. You understand, right?”
Thisby was red-hot with anger.
“By the way, I just wanted to let you know, Vas didn’t have anything to do with this. His father hired me and Donato to help him win the Scrattle. Can you imagine? Anyway, I changed the plan. He was never meant to be Master; he never even wanted the job. I did. So it goes. Goodbye, Thisby. I’ll see you in the morning.”
With that Bero faded out of focus as he walked into Castle Grimstone.
The Wretched Scrattle would be over soon. Bero would win. Umberfall would win. And once they claimed the dungeon in the name of Umberfall, a war with Nth would be inevitable. The Black Mountain was doomed.
Thisby felt herself begin to drift into something between sleep and passing out. Her immobile eyes began to darken as the world softened into nothingness. Her last waking thought was that this was exactly why you should never trust a wizard.
There was still no answer. Annoyed, the Master snapped his scrobble closed and stuffed it back into his pocket next to the now mostly empty bottle of facial moisturizer—prison, it turned out, was very dry. But that wasn’t even the worst of it.
Prison was also cold and it smelled bad and the Master was convinced that he was due to go crazy from boredom at any moment. There was a way out, but he’d been putting it off with the vain hope that Thisby might still come through for him, though it was seeming less likely by the minute.
The Master picked up the chunk of loose stone he’d pried from the back wall and weighed it in the palm of his hand before setting it down again. He’d give her one more chance to answer. Maybe two.
There were footsteps down the hall.
“Hello?” called the Master, nudging the chunk of stone under his mattress with the toe of his boot. “Are you coming to let me out? I’m very bored.”
There was no response.
“And my skin is dry,” he added.
Still nothing.
The Master walked over to the bars and peered down the hallway into darkness. The footsteps were growing closer, but there was no torchlight. Whatever was coming this way apparently didn’t need light to see. Something else was wrong, too. There was only one way into and out of the hold, from the stairway down at the barely lit end of the hall, but the footsteps were coming from the other direction. The Master’s pulse began to quicken.
“Marl?” he asked, knowing full well it wasn’t.
“No,” said a familiar voice from the darkness.
A shape began to swim out of the void, and the Master felt his breath catch in his throat. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out.
“How do I look?” said the figure.
The Master peered out from the bars at the last thing he’d expected to see: himself.
“Awful, I suppose,” said the creature who’d taken his shape.
There was one notable exception in the otherwise identical version of himself that made it possible to tell the two of them apart—aside from knowing which side of the bars they were on. This duplicate had a set of horrible yellow eyes with slits like a lizard. They were the kind that the Master had seen before in countless visions since coming to the Black Mountain. They belonged to the Eyes in the Dark.
“Impossible,” said the Master.
The Eyes in the Dark laughed. It was the Master’s own laugh, and it was strange to hear it coming from someone els
e.
“Is it now?” said the Eyes in the Dark.
“You’re not really him,” said the Master. “You’re something else. A doppelgänger. No. A boogeyman, is that it? Perhaps a cuco. Some creature that can take the form of its victim’s fears? Stop me if I’m getting warm.”
The Eyes in the Dark approached the bars, and the Master backed away.
“If you say so,” he said with a grin.
“The Eyes in the Dark is locked away in the Deep Down.”
“Perhaps,” said the Eyes in the Dark. “But not forever. Our time is coming.”
“I won’t have this conversation with a mirage,” said the Master.
The Eyes in the Dark pressed his face between the bars of the Master’s cell. The Master stepped back, watching in horror as the creature began to ooze between the bars, a copy of his own face stretching grotesquely, his body compressing like melting wax until it re-formed on the other side, on the inside of his cage.
The Master tripped backward over his own straw mattress and hit his head against the wall as he fell. He clutched the back of his head, feeling his hair growing warm and wet and sticky with blood from where it’d struck, while the Eyes in the Dark walked slowly forward toward where he sat.
“The end is coming. First for you. Then for the dungeon. Then for everyone,” said the creature, his yellow eyes shining.
The Master reached beneath his mattress and grabbed the chunk of stone, knowing it was now or never. Taking a deep breath, he slammed the stone into the right side of his mouth. The creature took a step back.
Fishing around in his mouth with two fingers, the Master removed a black tooth, shiny and wet with blood. He spit on the floor of his cell as he stood up, facing the bewildered creature.
“I was hopin’ I woodna’ hafta do dat,” he mumbled.
The Master threw the tooth against the back wall as hard as he could, and with a popping fizz a blackdoor portal ripped open.
The monster was still staring in disbelief when the Master jumped through the portal and disappeared from the dungeon for good.
“Thisby! Thisby!”
“. . .”
“Oh, no. You’re still frozen, aren’t you?”
“. . .”
“I’ll take that as a yes. Okay, I’m going to try to get out of my lantern. Don’t move.”
“. . .”
“That was a joke. Never mind.”
“. . .”
“Well, I thought it was funny.”
“. . .”
“Okay, I’m out! I’m gonna climb up your arm now.”
Thisby saw what she could only assume was Mingus sliding mere inches in front of her face. With her focal distance stuck beyond where he was, he looked more like a bluish blur than anything.
“I’m going to try my slime healing magic, okay? Although I guess I should call it ‘star jelly’ healing magic, huh?”
He paused.
“You don’t think Bero was making that stuff up, do you? Because he’s evil and all? Nah, probably not. I can’t think of a reason why he would. Never mind.”
He paused again.
“Oh, and Thisby? You’re really not going to like this. After it’s done, I think it’d probably be best if we never spoke of it again.”
The bluish blur disappeared from her vision, and for a while there was nothing.
The first sensation that came back to her was the feeling of choking. Then her vision returned and she felt warm all over as blood rushed back into her skin. Thisby collapsed to the ground and felt herself start to vomit up something warm, only it wasn’t bile that came out of her mouth but Mingus, slimy and wet and blue and screaming as loud as he could.
“Ahhhhhhh, I hate that!”
She coughed and rolled over, gasping for air.
“You taste terrible!” she yelled, spitting to get the taste from her mouth.
“It was no treat for me, either!” shouted Mingus, sliding as quickly as he could back into his open jar. “I really wish we could go one full year without somebody coughing me up like a hairball!”
“I’m sorry. Thank you,” said Thisby after she’d regained her composure.
“The real thanks will be us never talking about that again. Now come on, we have to stop Bero before he gets to the top of the castle!”
Thisby took a deep breath and entered the castle, the mocking skulls that adorned the giant doors frozen in silent laughter as they closed slowly behind her.
“I hate magic,” she muttered under her breath.
Castle Grimstone swallowed her whole as the door shut, locking automatically with a cacophony of grinding gears and clanking mechanics. From the threshold of the castle, the impressive blackness of it was overwhelming. The tile, the walls, the ceiling, the decor, everything in the castle was as black as the night sky and dripping with an abundance of shapes and textures, which in the low light created an optical illusion that made Thisby feel as if she were floating in space. She gave her eyes a moment to adjust—after the intense brightness of the wisps, she was still seeing spots—and as soon as she was able, she stepped forward into the castle.
Chapter 18
The last time she’d been here, Thisby had needed Jono’s help to find her way to the Master’s room. With any luck, Bero was experiencing the same problem. It was her only hope.
Castle Grimstone was designed to be intentionally confusing to anybody who didn’t live there, and to this end, it was incredibly effective. There were winding hallways that doubled back on themselves, dead ends, and stairs that went up for four flights only to let out into a broom closet. Combined with the sheer amount of stuff—the cumulative legacy of generations of trophy-happy Masters—the castle was positively labyrinthine. Thisby’s best hope at finding the Master’s chamber was to combine the few bits and pieces that she could remember with a healthy dose of good old-fashioned luck.
Mingus’s green light guided the way as Thisby moved briskly through hallway after hallway. She passed libraries, bathrooms, bedrooms—even one children’s bedroom, which struck her as odd—before she heard cursing coming from up ahead. Mingus dimmed his glow, and Thisby crept along as quiet as a particularly stealthy mouse, rolling her feet the way Grunda had shown her all those years ago to avoid making noise. The cursing grew louder. It was coming from a room up ahead.
“Who needs this many bedrooms?” grunted the voice.
“Bero!” whispered Mingus before Thisby could shush him. They both knew who it was. There was no reason he had to say it out loud.
Thisby crouched low and crept close enough that she could peer through the crack in the bedroom door, where she caught the reflection of Bero in the mirror.
“Hide!” whispered Mingus. “You don’t want him to see you!”
“Of course I don’t want him to see me! There’s no reason to say it! You’re just going to get us caught if you keep saying things!” she whispered back angrily.
“Thisby? Is that you?” asked Bero, turning around.
He asked the question despite clearly recognizing Thisby’s voice. Apparently, it was just the day to say obvious things out loud.
Bero stepped cautiously away from the bed and pulled out the small spell book that was tucked into his belt. Thisby had no choice but to abandon stealth and run.
Bero sprang from the doorway and shouted an incantation. A bolt of lightning shot past Thisby’s head and exploded an old grandfather clock at the end of the hall. She turned the corner and heard another shot miss.
It was the first time since losing her backpack that Thisby was thankful she didn’t have it with her. Over the years of carrying it, she’d built up quite a lot of leg strength, so now, she was remarkably fast without it. There were more flashes of light and more explosions, but she could hear his voice recede as he chanted the incantations from farther and farther away. She was losing him. The two of them were essentially polar opposites; Bero was big and slow and Thisby was small and quick. If he hit her with a single spell,
she was done for, but as long as she could keep her distance, she might be able to outrun him all the way to the Master’s office—assuming she could find it.
Thisby turned to find a long hallway lined with suits of armor clearly not designed for human use; they were far too big and had far too many limbs. At the end of the hall was a set of double doors. When she had a moment of weakness and looked back the way she came, a lightning bolt nearly blasted her in the face for her troubles as Bero rounded the corner, firing at will. There was only one option left. She’d have to hope the double doors at the end of the hall didn’t lead into a dead end.
There’s an old expression that goes “hope in one hand, poop in the other, and see which fills up first.” Well, that’s the polite version (as polite a version as you can get, anyway). Thisby hadn’t heard that particular expression, but she understood the spirit of it better than most people her age, which was to say that she didn’t put a lot of stock in hope. And when she burst through the double doors to find herself in a sort of strange armory, her hopes, short-lived though they were, were immediately dashed. There was no other exit. The room was a dead end. Thisby knew full well which hand had filled up first.
The walls of the armory were lined with more inhuman suits of armor that leered menacingly at her as she entered. From Mingus’s swaying lantern, the armor almost seemed to move of its own accord, dancing in the blue-green light. Thisby reminded herself it was just an illusion and pressed on.
The middle of the room was divided into four long rows of glass display cases, which contained an incredible variety of rare and exotic weapons that were hard to imagine being functional in battle. Thisby ran her fingers over the glass as the curiosities contained within seemed to call out to her, mesmerizing her with questions. A sword-whip hybrid designed to look like a snake sat next to a crossbow that fired bolts forward and backward simultaneously. Two sets of barbed claws rested on a shelf above what appeared to be a helmet designed for a monstrous bird, far larger than anything of its kind Thisby had ever seen in the dungeon. She realized she’d let herself get momentarily distracted by the room’s oddities when she heard the doors open behind her, and she bumped into a rack of crooked arrows that went clattering to the ground.
