by epubBillie
"You have what we came to take back," the swordsman said. He had an odd, harshly buzzing accent, probably from some country district or other. That would explain the old-fashioned cut of his clothes, too.
"If you mean the book, I came by it fairly. I'm a bookseller, and I bought it," Karl said, more defiantly than he felt. After all, he was telling the truth. More or less the truth.
"We pay," the swordsman said, "even though it was stolen from us." He effortlessly plucked the book from Karl's grasp, then dropped a heavy drawstring purse to the ground. Karl pulled the purse open as the swordsman paged through the book, and gasped when he saw that it was crammed full of Gold Crowns. Then his gasp turned to a frightened squeak as the swordsman grabbed the front of his shirt and lifted him clear off the ground. "The map," the swordsman said, his face inches from Karl's own. His breath was sharply acid, and his eyes glittered crazily in the light of a nearby street-lamp. "We want the map."
"Put me down and I'll tell you where it is," Karl managed to gasp, and then his heels struck the pavement hard as the swordsman let go. Karl tugged at his dishevelled shirt, hotly aware of the group of students who had turned to snigger at this contretemps.
"Where," the swordsman said.
"Back at the shop," Karl lied, knowing it was in his pocket. He had seen an opportunity to make even more money, enough to set him up for life, maybe. A purse full of Gold Crowns could be spent in a night, if you were foolish enough. But if the map led to buried treasure, and there were legends of all sorts of dwarfish hoards hidden in the catacombs and corridors of the city beneath the city, then anything was possible. And although Karl was clever, he was also inexperienced enough to harbour the belief that no matter what, he wasn't anywhere near to dying.
So he added quickly, "But we don't have to go back there, and face that wizard. He was the one who stole the book from you, wasn't he?"
"His apprentice," the swordsman admitted. "We nearly caught him, but he jumped over the edge of the Cliff of Sighs, and when we got down amongst the trees and found his body, the book was gone."
"But now you have the book, and fortunately for you, I am at your service. I found the map, and looked at it long enough to memorize it." This was the truth; Karl had an exceptional memory for things that might be useful to him. He said, with more confidence than he felt, "I can take you past the traps, lead you to the treasure, once we are close enough."
"Treasure," the swordsman said. "You wish to share this treasure."
"Let's call it a finder's fee."
The swordsman closed his eyes and began to mutter to himself - or more precisely, buzz and chatter in his odd dialect. Obviously he was thinking hard, and obviously thinking hard did not come easily. At last he said, "We are agreed, then. You help, for a fee."
"On your word that you will give me ten per cent of what we find, and not harm me in any way," Karl said, as steadily as he could.
"We give our word," the swordsman said, with an alacrity that made Karl wish he had asked for fifteen, or even twenty per cent. He added, "Now you will lead us to the nearest entrance to the sewers, where we will begin our journey."
Karl smiled. "It's easy to see you're a stranger to the city. The main sewer entrances are guarded by the City Watch. Even a swordsman like yourself will not be able to outfight the Watch. Er, what is your name, anyhow?"
"You may call us Argo."
"Well, I'm Karl. But don't worry, I know another way, although you may have to pay a kind of admission fee. There's a tavern down in the Ostwald district, the Drowned Rat, which has a way into the sewers in its cellar. You just have to pay the landlord, that's all."
"You have all the money, now."
"Do I? Oh, I see. Well, I suppose it is a kind of investment. Come on then, Argo. The place I'm thinking of is on the other side of the city."
Karl wasn't as confident as he had sounded. He knew about the Drowned Rat and its secret passages into the sewer network only by rumour, and he had made up the story about the entrance fee on the spot. As he and the swordsman made their way deeper into the narrow streets of Ostwald, what little confidence Karl had soon evaporated.
There were no streetlights in Ostwald, and the mean, crowded streets were illuminated only by what light fell through heavily curtained windows, or the red flames of torches a few people carried. Karl kept as close to the swordsman as he could - not an easy task, because the man strode along at a rapid pace, the darkness and the ill-favoured crowds slowing him down not at all.
There were probably no more drunks here than along the Burgen Bahn, but while on that prosperous street drunkenness was merely the end result of too much high spirits, here it was due to a kind of savage desperation. Men far gone in their cups staggered along shouting curses at the world in general, and from more than one alley came the noises of fighting. Beggars with every kind of disfigurement and disease bawled out for alms, ignored by the poorly-dressed labourers and better-dressed thieves alike, their cries scarcely louder than the shrill cries of the whores who shouted down at potential clients from upper-storey windows of the close-packed timber-framed buildings.
Karl looked for the sign of the Drowned Rat with increasing desperation. For all his pretended knowledge of the city, he had rarely been in Ostwald, and didn't like it. He wanted nothing more than to find the tavern and get into the sewers beneath these dangerous streets, forgetting for the moment how much more dangerous the sewers could be. But when at last he did spy the sign, the last of his confidence seemed to ooze from the soles of his boots.
It was a tall, narrow ramshackle building, set a little apart from its neighbours, its filthy windows glowing sullenly, its door in deep shadow. Even as Karl and Argo approached it, a man staggered out, clutching the top of his head. Blood streamed down his face, suddenly bright as he staggered through the light of a nearby lamp set in the window of a whorehouse. He turned and bawled out, "Cutthroats! Lousy thieves! Sons of diseased mutant whores!" Then he groaned and clutched his head again and staggered on.
Argo, hardly seeming to notice the man, strode through the shadows and ducked beneath the tilted lintel of the tavern. Karl had to hurry to catch him up, slipping through the door just as a couple of heavyset thugs pushed it closed.
The main room of the tavern was almost as dark as the street outside, and hazed with yellow-grey smoke which gathered in thick reefs just beneath the sagging ceiling. Wolfish looking men sat at half a dozen rough tables scattered along the walls, and all were staring at the swordsman in unnerving and hostile silence.
Argo crossed to the counter, his boots rattling the loose floorboards, and said softly to the large, bearded man behind it, "We wish to enter the sewer system. We will pay whatever is necessary."
One of the ruffians behind Karl chuckled and dropped a huge, scarred hand on Karl's shoulder. "Your friend is a bold enough fellow, laddie. I always do like 'em bold."
The landlord spat into a glass and smeared the spit around with a grey rag. "We don't like strangers coming in here, friend. On your way now. I can't help you."
"We'll just have a word with 'em," the man holding Karl said. "Straighten 'em out, like."
"Whatever you want, lads," the landlord said indifferently, turning away as the second ruffian, his head brushing the ceiling, stalked towards Argo, a weighted cosh dangling from one paw. Karl started to shout a warning, but a foul-smelling hand clamped over his mouth and nose. Argo turned, his cloak flaring, as the cosh swept towards his head... and then suddenly he was to one side of the man, his sword flashing through the smoke. Something hit the floor with a thump, blood pattering after: it was the ruffian's hand, still holding the cosh. The wounded ruffian shrieked, and then Argo's sword flashed again, and the ruffian fell to the floor, his throat spraying blood.
The thug holding Karl started to back towards the door, ignoring the apprentice's struggles. There was a tingling pressure between Karl's eyes, at the bridge of his nose. For some reason he remembered the wizard's humiliating stare, and
when the ruffian let go of Karl's mouth to pull at the latch, Karl managed to shout out the spell of bafflement he'd seen in the book. It was the only thing he could think of, but to his amazement it worked.
The man let go of him and scratched at his head, his pig-like features twisted in confusion. He didn't seem to notice his companion, fallen on the floor in the centre of a widening pool of blood, or Karl, or Argo, who pushed Karl aside and ran the ruffian through with his already bloody blade, its steel scraping against ribs as he drew it out. For a moment, the man didn't seem to notice his mortal wound either, but then he gave a bubbling groan and toppled full-length, his fall rattling every flagon in the room.
Now the silence in the room had a different edge to it. Karl discovered that his nose was bleeding, and dabbed at it with his sleeve. He pulled the dead man's knife from his belt while everyone was watching Argo. The latter stepped around the body of the ruffian who had first attacked him, kicking aside the severed hand, and up to the counter. He pulled at the landlord's beard, lifting the big man half over the counter and repeating his request to be allowed into the sewers, as if nothing at all had happened.
The landlord's eyes crossed in disbelief. For a moment, the sound of his beard coming away at the roots was the only sound in the room. "The cellar," he managed to say at last. "Of course. You just follow me."
The cellar was reached by a steep winding stair, its stone steps slippery with water that dribbled down the walls. Things moved in the darkness beyond the light of the landlord's upheld lantern. Rats, the landlord said, but the thing Karl glimpsed was twice as big as any rat he'd ever seen, and seemed to scurry away on more than four legs. Argo, indifferent to any danger as usual, followed the landlord into the darkest recess of the vaulted cellar without hesitation, past rotting casks and heaps of rubbish and broken furniture.
There was a low door set deep in the wet stones of the wall, barred with iron and held shut by massive bolts, which the landlord threw back with some effort. A rush of hot malodorous air gushed out as the landlord pulled the door open. Argo started through, and Karl said loudly, "We'll need light." He didn't want to go down there, but he could hardly expect to be allowed out of the tavern alive any other way. If he was going, he wanted to be able to see.
Argo turned and plucked the lantern from the landlord, then ducked under the lintel. As Karl followed, the landlord swore and slammed the door shut on their backs, yelling through the wood that they'd never get out, he'd see that they didn't. There was a rattle as he threw the bolts home. And then there was only the drip drip drip of water from overhead, and the faint rush of water somewhere below.
A winding stair led down to one of the sewer tributaries, a smelly brick-lined tunnel scarcely tall enough for Karl to stand up in, through which a stinking stream of brown liquid gurgled. In turn, this gave out onto one of the main channels, where high stone walks ran either side of a fast-running, filthy stream.
Argo raised the lantern, peered at Karl. He brushed a cold finger over the drying blood on the apprentice's upper lip, and put it in his mouth. "The price of magic," he said, after a moment.
"It was only a little spell, something I read in that book. I didn't even think it would work, but there was nothing else I could do."
"You are modest. But do not try and use your Art against us, I warn you. We are not bound by it."
Karl looked up at him, a shadow behind the lamplight, eyes glittering. "I didn't even know the spell would work," he said again. "Really. Now, where do we go?"
"We will take you to the beginning of the maze," Argo said. "Then you must lead the way."
Karl thought hard. "The map showed that there was a kind of big round room from which the maze started. There were drawings of statues all around its walls."
"I know it. That is where we must begin."
Black rats scampered away from the light of the lantern Argo carried. Looking back, Karl could see a hundred pairs of little red eyes watching from the safety of the darkness. Sometimes, tantalizingly, he could hear the noises of the streets above, the cries of beggars or food sellers, or the rattle of wagon wheels over cobbles. But soon Argo led him away from the main channel, down a rubble-strewn slope that dropped steeply through the living rock, down into the necropolis beneath the living city.
Karl soon lost all track of time. He knew only that he was tired and hungry and frightened... and thirsty too, for the tunnels that wound ever deeper into the rock were surprisingly dry, their floors coated with dust as fine as flour. With every moment he was growing more and more afraid, and he was beginning to wish that he had never seen the book, or tried to cheat von Stumpf of its price.
Worst of all, he kept thinking that he heard footsteps in the darkness at his back, a steady even pace that always stopped a moment or two after he stopped to listen. Although dwarfs still lived in certain parts of the underground tunnels, most were rumoured to be inhabited by mutants and worse. Anything could be out there in the darkness, anything at all, and the knife he had taken from the dead thug in the tavern seemed little enough protection. But Argo ignored Karl's fears, and, rather than growing tired, the swordsman seemed to gain strength as they descended through the tunnels. As if he were at home in them, as if the darkness and the weight of rock above - the weight of the whole city - were comfortably familiar. Certainly, he knew the way to go, although that was strange, too, now Karl thought about it. Hadn't Argo said that he was a stranger in the city? There was much more to the handsome young swordsman than met the eye.
Most of the tunnels were narrow and low-ceilinged, and once or twice they had to stop and backtrack when they came upon a cave-in that had blocked the way forward. On one occasion they disturbed a colony of bats which exploded around them in a fury of leather wings. Argo stood his ground, unperturbed, but Karl huddled on the floor until the creatures were gone. On another, they passed through a high ruined chamber, fungi of every description growing over the wreckage of a wooden floor. Some toadstools were taller even than Argo, and bracket fungi stepped up the rock walls, glowing with a virulent green light. On the way across, Karl stepped on a round growth which exploded in a cloud of spores that burned his nostrils like a dose of boiling hot pepper, making him sneeze uncontrollably. Argo, who didn't seem to be affected, had to wait until Karl could go on.
As they ducked through the narrow crack that led out of the chamber, Karl heard stealthy padding footsteps, many of them, all around in the darkness and coming closer and closer. Argo raised the lantern, and Karl saw a hundred or more small shadowy figures creeping along high ledges, stepping down slopes of rock scree. None was taller than three feet, and all were naked but for loincloths, their warty green skin smeared with dirt, their wide fanged mouths grinning, their pointed ears rising above bald pates. They were armed with pointed staves and crude hammers or axes. A tribe of dwarf goblins.
In the time it took Karl to realize what the creatures were, and to draw out the knife he had taken from the dead ruffian, the first of the goblins scuttled towards Argo, who drew out his sword while still holding up the lantern. The creatures hissed with fear and started back - even as Argo cut off their heads with a level sweep of his weapon. Others higher up began to pelt him with crude bombs stuffed with fungus spores. The poisonous dust fumed thickly around him, crackling in the flame of the lantern, but seemed not to affect him at all. He split one goblin almost in half, lopped off the arm of another. Two jumped on his back, and he ran backwards and crushed them against the rock wall.
Meanwhile, others were advancing on Karl. He managed to stick one with his knife, but it fell backwards, squealing in dismay, and pulled the haft of the knife from Karl's hand. Its companions grinned widely and raised their crude weapons higher, their slitted yellow eyes burning upon him. Karl backed away until stone hit his back, watching with dismay as the lead goblin, no bigger than a child but with the face of a psychotic toad, raised its notched axe. Karl felt the tickling pressure between his eyes again, and before he knew what he w
as doing he had thrown up his hands and gabbled out the spell of binding he had read in the book.
Instantly, every goblin in the chamber froze. One or two toppled off-balance and fell stiffly to the floor. The pressure between Karl's eyes became a knife blade prying at his brain. He fell to his knees and felt blood gush from his nostrils, as rich and hot as fresh gravy.
Argo calmly sheathed his sword and helped the apprentice to his feet. He ordered Karl to follow, and set off amongst the frozen goblins as if nothing had happened. Karl staggered after him, so weak that he could hardly stand, but frightened of being left in the dark with the goblins, who surely wouldn't remain bound by magic for long. The front of his jerkin was soaked in his blood, and he couldn't seem to stop the flow completely, although he pinched the wings of his nostrils shut, and later stuffed cobwebs up them. The price of magic. It was lucky there hadn't been any more goblins, and that they had been small, too. Otherwise the magic needed to bind them might have burst his body like an overripe tomato.
At last, they reached a huge round chamber, tall statues standing around its walls. In the centre was a kind of altar, a stone table ringed with skulls, its surface cut with channels and bearing the torn remnants of some obscene sacrifice. An animal, Karl hoped, and didn't look too closely in case his worst fears were realized. On the far side of the chamber a statue taller than all the rest was carved out of the living rock wall, half man, half beast, so tall that it was beheaded by darkness. Its right hand clutched a dozen snakes; its left held a staring human head by the hair. Between its hoofed feet was the narrow entrance to the maze.
