by Alexey Pehov
After another eternity of time, after the sixth wide turn of the spiral, it started getting brighter in the corridor. At first I thought it was my eyes playing tricks, but the darkness retreated, giving way to a thick twilight. After another ten paces I was surrounded by a pale gray light that seemed to flow out of the walls. I could see perfectly well, and I had to struggle to stop myself putting the torch out.
The floor under my feet began sloping down even more sharply, until it was like a steep hill. I had to walk very slowly and carefully in order not to miss my step and go slithering down on my backside. The light was still there and, after hesitating for a moment, I tossed the torch away. The hill came to a sudden end, the floor leveled out, the corridor turned a corner, and I saw what I’d already despaired of seeing—the entrance to the first level of the Palaces of Bone.
Well, when I call it an entrance, that’s a slight exaggeration. There was nothing left of it. The stairway connecting the Threshold of Hrad Spein with the first level had collapsed, and the upper part that remained led down into a gaping hole.
I cautiously walked up to the edge of the hole and looked down.
Four steps, and then empty space. The path continued about eight yards away from me and the fragments of the stairway lay in a heap. It was all very strange … Very strange … What lousy skunk could have smashed it like that?
Oh yes, it had been smashed, all right, otherwise why would the surviving steps be so thickly covered in soot and even melted in places? Someone used a spell on the stairway before I got there. And there was no doubt that this someone was Lafresa.
But I couldn’t quite understand the logic. In the first place, how were she and Balistan Pargaid and his men planning to get back out now? And in the second place, it was rather strange, to say the least, for her to think that I wouldn’t be able to get down. No, of course, jumping from that height was a sure way to shatter all your bones into tiny little pieces, but there are other ways of getting down from high spots apart from jumping. For instance, an elfin cobweb rope that sticks to any surface and naturally lifts its owner to any height he wants.
Lafresa was no fool, and she must have known I could get down. That meant things weren’t as simple as they looked and there was a warm welcome in store for me, complete with royal orchestra and heralds. It was better to check a hundred times over that there was no danger before I jumped down the demon’s throat.
I had to lie on the floor and hang over the hole to study the spot where I would land as painstakingly as possible.
Mmm, yes.
A magnificently lit corridor with burning torches on the walls and a heap of stones, splinters, and fine dust on the floor. The torches were no surprise, they’d been blazing away here for thousands of years, and they’d keep burning for at least as long—the shamanic magic wouldn’t let the flames go out.
It was time to reach into my bag and take out a vial of a certain magical substance. I lay down on my stomach again and poured a few drops straight down onto the heap of rubble.
What I saw exceeded my wildest expectations. In fact, to be honest, I was so surprised I almost tumbled over the edge. Because there was a creature sitting on the rubble heap. The beast had been hidden by a spell that made it invisible until I splashed the magical liquid on it.
Anyway, it was sprawling right underneath the hole with its jaws wide open, waiting patiently for supper to drop in. This monster must have been born in the charming but definitely insane head of my friend Lafresa. There couldn’t be any natural beast in the world that consisted of nothing but jaws and row upon row upon row of blinding-white, dagger-sharp teeth! With a bit of an effort, an entire knight on horseback could have been forced down the throat of that hungry monster.
What a devious snake Lafresa was; what a magnificent trap she had set for me! I imagined how astonished I would have been to climb down the rope and find myself in the belly of this ravenous beast. What an inglorious way to go, and at the very first level of the Palaces of Bone!
I felt like shooting a crossbow bolt straight down the monster’s throat, but what I needed for that was a ballista, not a crossbow. An ordinary bolt wouldn’t even touch it. And Kli-Kli’s medallion probably wouldn’t be any use against a nightmare like this.
I furiously felt around on the floor, picked up a fragment of stone a bit larger than my fist, and tossed it right into the middle of those gaping jaws. The trap worked perfectly. When the stone landed, the toothy mouth slammed shut.
Snap!
I hope that gives you indigestion!
The stone wasn’t to the monster’s liking, and it disappeared, with a deafening pop.
What in the name of … A trap that only works once and then isn’t needed again!
But I’m far too suspicious by nature to fall for the sudden disappearance trick. So I used a few more drops of the liquid that revealed any hidden magical traps. Nothing. The jaws really were gone.
Even so, I felt a bit apprehensive as I climbed down the rope. So for my own peace of mind, when there were only two yards left to the floor, I took one hand off the rope, reached into my bag, and dropped a stone I’d brought along. It clattered on the floor, no one was waiting underneath me. I climbed down and mentally ordered the cobweb rope to release its grip, then coiled it up and attached it to my belt.
Time to be moving on.
Now I was in a large empty hall with eight lighted torches. There was an opening in each wall, and it took me a few seconds to get my bearings from the maps. At that depth it was absolutely impossible to tell which way was north and which way was south, but fortunately for me the Hall of Arrival, as it was called in the maps, had a very clear sign for anyone foolish enough to visit the Palaces of Bone. To discover which way was which, you just had to raise your head and look up at the ceiling, on which someone’s skillful hands had marked out a huge arrow to tell the traveler which way was north. And according to the arrow, I had to go through the opening on the far right.
Naturally, the universal law of Harold’s good luck determined that this opening led into the darkest and narrowest corridor. And unlike the other three, which were wider and brighter, this one ran upward instead of down. I stopped at the entrance and listened carefully.
Not a murmur. Not a sound. Just a single torch burning about forty paces ahead of me. Was this really my way? I had to reach into my bag and check the maps again. Yes, it looked right. I cast another wistful look at the more inviting corridors, but there was nothing to be done, I had to trust the map.
The passage to the halls that followed was so narrow that my shoulders touched the walls and I had to walk half-sideways, like a crab. And I felt so frightened by the stories about the reawakened evil of the ogre’s bones that I kept stopping to listen to the silence.
Fortunately for me, the silence remained just that, silence, and I didn’t hear any strange or inexplicable sounds. I walked past the first torch, then a second, and a third. The corridor kept rising gently upward and I started getting more and more worried that I was going the wrong way, even though this was definitely the way shown on the map. As far as I understood things, the eighth level ought to be below the first, not above it. Up there above me was Zagraba, not a complex of the burial chambers. I stopped at the seventh torch and tried to take it out of its bracket. It was a waste of time—the torch was set absolutely solid and it wouldn’t budge.
The slow climb came to an end, the corridor took a sharp right-angled turn and led me out into a small space with two passages branching off it. Here it was as bright as in the first hall, and there was no need to check the map. I remembered which way I had to go.
* * *
It took me six hours to reach the stairway leading to the second level. Not so very long, if you think about it. To be quite honest, I must say I wasn’t really very impressed by the first level. It would be a lie to say I was actually disappointed, but the rumors about Hrad Spein seemed to have been seriously exaggerated.
And I was hop
ing the rest of my journey would be just as tedious and boring. In fact, though, I shouldn’t really have expected anything else on the first level. Not even men had ever buried anyone here; it was more of a general entrance. The levels of the ogres were very far away, and the Doors on the third level protected everything above them against the evil of the depths. The human burial sites started on the second level, and there were some on the third level, too (where the dead had been buried off to the sides of the Doors). And on the sixth level, too, of course, where the bones of the heroic warriors lay. Grok’s grave, down on the eighth level, was something of an exception to the rule.
The entire first level had turned out to be a tangled network of halls, corridors, and rooms. Twice I lost my way, checked the map, and had to retrace my steps, looking for the right passage. Everywhere I found dreary walls of gray basalt with no decorations of any kind, and sometimes the surfaces were crudely worked. Three times I came across stairways leading down into darkness, but I prudently avoided going down them. Who could tell how far they might take me out of my way—and they weren’t shown on the maps, anyway. Four times I stopped to rest. The dreariness and semi-darkness in this place were terribly depressing, my eyes and my head and my legs all ached unmercifully, and when I finally reached the stairway I needed I heaved a sigh of something very much like relief.
The silence of the mute halls weighed heavy on my ears and I felt like howling, just to hear some kind of living sound. Surprisingly enough, even at that depth it wasn’t cold; in fact, if anything it was actually warm. And best of all, there were no drafts, not even a breath of wind, and the flames of the torches burned steadily without trembling and setting the shadows dancing across the walls. At the same time the air in the halls was as fresh and clean as if I was strolling through Zagraba, not wandering through the catacombs. There must have been some magic involved in that, too.
Anyway, the impressions I took away from the first level made up a rather blurred picture. Fortunately for me, the quatrain from the verse riddle hadn’t come true. Which quatrain was that? This one:
If you are artful and brave, bold and quick,
If your step is light and your thought is keen,
You will avoid the tricks that we have set there,
But be wary of earth and water and fire.
So far, Sagot be praised, none of this had happened. And I was hoping that none of the other verses in that stupid little poem from the magicians of the Order would come true, either.
But even though I hadn’t run into anyone, I was still desperately tired. Maybe because, out of old habit, I had stuck close to the walls, running from half-shadow to shadow, trying to avoid the brightly lit spots and stopping every two minutes to listen to the silence. So I was mentally tired as well as physically.
I found a comfortable place for a rest, in the far corner of the hall, where the walls were hung with thick shade. The journey had left me ravenously hungry, and I wolfed down another half biscuit without the slightest hesitation. The magical biscuit was a thin slab no larger than my hand. After eating half of one I felt as full as if I’d dined at a king’s feast and worked my way through a hundred and one different dishes. It was filling all right, but not very tasty. At best its taste could be compared to bread, and at worst to moldy straw. You could eat it, but you couldn’t really enjoy it. Unless, of course, you happened to be a horse.
When I finished chewing the biscuit, I washed it down with water from the flask and settled down for the night. I needed at least a short rest to restore my strength. I set the crossbow down beside me and fell asleep.
I can’t say that I slept like a baby. Hrad Spein isn’t exactly the best place for sweet dreams. I hovered in the boundary zone between sleeping and waking, sometimes sinking deeper into sleep, sometimes rising to the surface. It was a very nervous kind of sleep, and I opened my eyes about six times and grabbed the crossbow, but there was no danger and the hall was as empty as ever, with just the torch twinkling on the far wall.
The sleep did me a world of good. At least, I woke feeling refreshed and—most surprising of all—safe and sound. No one had tried to bite off my leg or my head while I was sleeping, for which I immediately rendered thanks to Sagot.
I paused for a short while at the broad stone stairway that swept down into darkness. I didn’t know what might be hidden down there in the gloom, and I didn’t feel like testing my skin against the sharpness of some ugly monster’s teeth. But no matter how long I stood there, the Rainbow Horn wouldn’t come crawling up to meet me. I sighed, took out a light, gave it a shake to make it flare into life, and put my foot on the first step of the stairway leading to the second level.
It was absolutely pitch black on the stairway, and if not for my cold magical light, it would have taken me at least an hour to get down.
The steps kept going down. They didn’t curl round into a spiral, they didn’t dance about like a drunken viper, they just stretched on and on, leading me deeper and deeper, and the feeble light of my magical lamp barely even reached the ceiling.
Before I reached the second level, I counted 1,244 steps. It will always remain a mystery who built this monstrously long stairway, carving the steps straight into the body of the earth, but in my mind I cursed them roundly, especially when I thought about climbing back up again.
I was surprised by how different the second level was from the first.
In the first place, the ceilings here were all vaulted, not flat. In the second place, the walls didn’t look bare and lifeless. In one hall after another there were images on the walls, and even inscriptions. Some of them were in human language, although the ancient letters were very elaborate. And most of them were signs indicating the way to the various sections, and saying which burial place was where.
In the second place, there were lots of stone gargoyles, one planted almost every hundred paces, in fact. The statues all seemed absolutely different; at least while I walked along, I didn’t see two that were the same. The unknown sculptors had created gargoyles of every possible size and set them in the most incredible poses. Many of the statues were so hideous that just looking at them was enough to set your knees trembling.
Water was running out of one gargoyle’s mouth in a jingling, silvery thread and falling into a shallow chalice that the statue was holding in its hands. I tasted the water gingerly. It didn’t seem to be poisoned, so I took the opportunity to drink my fill and top up my flask.
In the third place, on the second level there were no torches. Fire only flickered in the open palms of the gargoyles or in small cages up under the ceiling. But for the most part there were no flames at all, and the light flowed straight out of the ceiling. In some places it only glowed very faintly, and then the hall was flooded with a dense, obscure twilight.
The reputation of the Palaces of Bone as the most gigantic graveyard in the world was well deserved. In addition to the architecture, pictures on the walls, and gargoyles by the dozen, the Palaces were also the resting place of thousands and thousands who had departed to the light.
There were two sarcophagi waiting to greet me at the very entrance to the second level. Stone boxes with massive lids that were obviously tremendously heavy. Out of simple curiosity I went up to one and read the man’s name and date of death on the plaque. He had been buried more than seven hundred years earlier. I walked on, occasionally stopping at one coffin or another out of curiosity, to learn the name of the departed. But my curiosity was soon exhausted; there were far too many sarcophagi—if I’d read the names of all the dead, I’d have been stuck there for ten years—and I had to keep looking around desperately to make sure, Sagot forbid, that I didn’t turn off into the wrong corridor.
Sometimes the stone boxes were piled up on top of each other, reaching right up to the ceiling, or hidden away in niches in the walls, which started to look like the honeycomb in a bees’ nest. And very often there was a carved likeness of the dead man on the lid of his sarcophagus. More often than that
, especially in the halls farther away from the stairway, the dead had been buried in the walls, and the niches closed off, or in the floor, with a gravestone left on the spot as a memento.
I thought there would never be an end to all those halls, corridors, galleries, passages, rooms, and stairways. And everywhere I went I was greeted by the silence of the graveyard, graves beyond count, and gargoyles, who followed the visitor to this place with their sightless stone eyes.
I came across my first body after wandering through the second level for a long time, on my way ignoring several stairways that led down to the third level. (The only way I wanted to get into the third level was through the Doors; that was what I had the Key for, after all. And any detour around the Doors made about as much sense as plunging headfirst into a whirlpool or running naked into a burning house.)
The body was lying on the floor with its arms and legs flung out, and the man must have been dead for a few months at least, because his clothes were well rotted and there was no flesh left on his bones.
To be quite frank, this is exactly the kind of dead body I prefer, because they cause the least trouble. Only I didn’t like the look of his clothes, because they were gray and blue. And any brainless sparrow could have seen that this wasn’t a civilian outfit, but a military uniform. The uniform of a member of the royal guard. The broken sword lying beside the man’s remains also confirmed that he had been a soldier.
The lad could have been a member of the first expedition, the one that had been sent to get the Rainbow Horn in the late winter or early spring. That time no one had returned to the surface, and Alistan Markauz had lost more than forty of his men in the Palaces of Bone. This warrior was one of them. Or perhaps I was mistaken, and the dead man was a member of the second expedition who had found his final resting place in the gloomy depths of these catacombs.
His skull had been crushed thoroughly and I wondered what could have killed him. I leaned down to study the body more closely and my eye was caught by a black bag lying underneath it.
