"Naught can stand 'gainst courage and valor, Lord Gallowglass!"
"Yeah, but anything can stand against stupidity. With respect, Sir Beaubras, we might do better to consider a more indirect approach."
Beaubras turned, frowning at the impatience in Rod's tone. "Thou has ne'er spoke in such fashion to me aforetime, Lord Gallowglass. I must needs think thou dost know more of this craft than thou dost tell."
"What—invading a castle? Well, I've been in on it once or twice, and I've found that courage and valor are no excuse for not using common sense."
"Why, how wouldst thou come within, then? That keep is impregnable!"
"An interesting hypothesis," Rod said, nodding, "but you can always attack any hypothesis by questioning the assumptions on which it's based, Sir Knight."
"And on what is this castle based?"
"Why, on the cliff," Modwis rumbled.
"Exactly." Rod pointed. "And unless my eyes deceive me, Sir Beaubras, I see a crack in that foundation."
The knight and dwarf looked and, sure enough, there was an irregular line zigzagging down the side of the cliff.
" 'Tis but a hairline," Beaubras protested.
"Aye, but is not the whole castle only a child's toy, from this distance?" Modwis asked. "From the ground nearby, that hairline might be a crevasse."
"Assuredly, they who built the keep would have known of it!"
"And decided to build, anyway." Rod nodded. "So either their escalier doesn't go all the way to the top, or it's just as strongly guarded as the gate. This way, though, they can't see us approaching—at least, not if we wait for nightfall."
Sir Beaubras looked dubious, but he shook his head with a sigh and dismounted. "Thou art haply in error, Lord Gallowglass, yet if thou hast the right of it, thou dost offer a more sure road to my lady than the more obvious. Come, pitch our tents again! An we are going to work o' night, we must sleep while we may."
It was times like this that Rod was glad Beaubras wore black armor and rode a black horse. The lowland lay still and dark; even an overcast obligingly hid the moon. But high above them, the keep of High Dudgeon glittered with late light. Snatches of song and laughter drifted down to them.
"Even their laughter sounds nasty," Rod muttered.
"None can rejoice with a light heart in such a place," Modwis agreed. "They must ever be probing to discern at whom they may sneer, and to whom they must bow— ever, for this ranking may change at any moment."
" 'Tis at Lady Aggravated whim," Sir Beaubras agreed. "Who shall be Queen of the Hill an she is overthrown?"
"Let's try the experiment, shall we?" Rod said. "As soon as we can get up there. Let's see, now—where is the base of that crack in the cliff?"
"Off to your right, Rod, and around the bend of the rock face," Fess answered. "My light amplification is boosted to maximum, but the contrast is causing difficulties."
Rod sighed. "Ah, wouldn't it be nice if we could see sentries in the dark."
Beaubras gave him a peculiar look, but Fess answered, "I have activated my infrared receptors, too, Rod. At this moment, there are only traces of small animals."
"Around this way," Rod instructed the knight. "It winds down around the corner.''
It wasn't exactly a crevasse, but it was certainly wider than a man, spiraling down the cliff face and into the ground, its shadows darker than the granite.
"Canst thou not give us light, wizard?" Beaubras hissed.
Rod glanced up. The castle walls blended into the rock without the slightest trace of an overhang, but they were only thirty feet away, and the chances of a sentry looking straight down from the battlements were small. "It's worth the risk." Rod drew his dagger, twisted the pommel, and pointed it at the crack.
Nothing happened.
"Why dost thou wait?"
"I'd, uh, like to be a lot closer before I show a light," Rod improvised, wondering frantically what had gone wrong. He was sure he had recharged the batteries.
Batteries.
He was in a magical realm, and batteries weren't magic. They didn't work here.
However, his own magic did. He cupped a palm and frowned at it, imagining a ball of light in his hand.
The fox fire glowed to life.
Modwis caught his breath, and Beaubras murmured in wonder, "Thou art a wizard."
"More than I know, apparently." Rod turned the will-o'-the-wisp toward the crack, cupping his other hand behind it to keep the back-glow from dazzling his eyes.
He wondered why Fess made no comment. Ordinarily, any new phenomenon was enough to send the robot into a tizzy. But the great black horse only paced slowly toward the gouge in the rock, and Rod thrust the ball of light in, looking about.
The crack was about three feet wide, and perhaps ten feet deep.
"That's why the builders didn't worry," Rod murmured. "It doesn't go deep enough to weaken the support."
" Tis not a knight's view," Beaubras pointed out.
"No." But Rod was peering downward, his attention caught by the lower depths. "I, uh, don't see any bottom here…"
Fess looked down, too, opening his mouth. A bat suddenly fell spinning down the shaft, its ears dazzled by the supersonic the robot had just emitted. "Sonar indicates bottom at fifty feet, Rod."
"Don't the riverboat captains wish they'd had you," Rod muttered. To Beaubras, he said, "It goes down for another fifty feet. Think the face is rough enough to climb?"
The knight, with a full load of armor, looked up into the gloom, frowning.
"There is a stairway," Modwis rumbled.
Rod looked—and, sure enough, what he had mistaken for natural irregularities were indeed a set of rough-hewn, uneven steps. He felt his scalp prickle. "What is this, an invitation to dinner?" He wondered who was supposed to be the main course.
But Beaubras shook his head, smiling again. "Nay, Lord Gallowglass. 'Tis the postern gate. No knight would build a castle that had only one door.''
Rod relaxed a little. "But if the castle-builder knew about it, it will be strongly defended."
f'Aye, yet only with such wards as he could render harmless—and what one man can knit, another can unravel. My misgivings are answered; it is naught that valor and courage cannot meet." He swung down from his horse and clanked toward the cliff. "Come, gentles! Let us walk!"
Rod stared. Then he glanced back at the knight's horse, jumped down, and caught up with Beaubras. "Aren't you going to tether your mount?"
"Nay. He will hide himself, and come at my whistle."
Talk about training.
Beaubras smiled. "Wherefore dost thou not tether thy beast, Lord Gallowglass?"
"Oh, he'll, uh, come at my whistle, too." Rod took time for a quick glance back at Fess.
"I shall, Rod," the robot assured him, "and the portcullis cannot keep me out. Call at the first indication of need."
"Thanks, Old Iron." Rod turned back to Beaubras with a grin, just as Modwis caught up. "Shall we go?"
They stepped onto the rock face, lit by Rod's will-o'-the wisp. He tried to ignore the flat denial his stomach was giving him—it felt as though he were trying to walk up the side of the cliff like a fly, stairway or no. His skin crawled at the thought of the fifty-foot drop just an inch away—it might not look all that bad, but it was enough to kill. It would be more than enough, as they climbed higher. "Uh, you might want to look for handholds, gentlemen." He suited the action to the word, finding a narrow cleft with his fingertips. "Just in case."
"In which case, Lord Gallowglass?" Modwis called up.
Black on black, leathery wings and putrid smell, flapping in Rod's face. He swallowed a cry of fright, emitting only a choked yelp as his body swung back, and he clawed frantically at the cliff face. Then it was gone, and he had to haul himself in while his stomach did backflips.
"Thou hadst but to say," Modwis rumbled. "We do comprehend words."
"Well, you know how it is, actions speak louder, and all that." Rod drew a trembling hand across
his brow, removed a fine sheen of sweat, and trudged on up, clawing for fingerholds as he went.
Then it was all over his face, clutching at his arms and chest, unseen but grasping. The ghost light revealed a vast many-legged monster running toward his eyes. Rod gasped and jerked back. " 'Ware!"
Metal hissed behind him, and Beaubras's sword tip probed past his shoulder. Cobwebs gathered in faint traceries on the metal, and the monster jolted, then swung aside. Perspective returned, and the vast obscenity was suddenly reduced to an ordinary spider, though a very large one, the size of Rod's palm. It scuttled away toward the top of its web, but the sword tip slashed through it, and it tumbled into the abyss.
"It was just a spider," Rod said in faint protest.
" 'Twas as deadly as the greatest dragon," Modwis answered. " 'Twas a Death's-Scythe spider, with venom that can fell an ox in a minute."
Rod went limp with aftereffects. Apparently there were a lot of things about Grandfather's kingdom that he hadn't known.
He wondered if Grandfather had.
"We must press on," Beaubras murmured. "Yet 'ware these beasts, Master Gallowglass—if there is one, there may be many."
"Inspiring thought." Rod hoped he'd hidden the quaver in his voice. He pulled himself together and groped on up the stair, holding his fox fire higher.
They were halfway up when the kobold hit.
It came hopping and leaping down the stair toward them, whooping and giggling with glee, a bat-eared, snub-nosed, fang-toothed obscenity with gorilla's arms and talons for fingers.
" 'Tis a thing of evil!" Beaubras gasped, and his sword snickered out. Rod braced himself to keep from falling back against the knight, fervently reminding himself that anything in here, the lord of the keep must have known a way to guard against!
Then the kobold was on him, all teeth and claws, ripping a huge gash in Rod's cheek, another in his side. Rod cried out as fear flared though him, and the knight's sword thrust past him, skewering the kobold neatly—but it only gibbered and cackled, and clawed up Rod's chest as it strove to reach Beaubras.
Anger followed the fright, a searing anger that revealed, in sudden clarity, the impossibility that a member of the elfin kind could be pierced with Cold Iron and not even feel it—and could have claws that could rend but, now that Rod thought of it, brought no pain, nor blood. Suddenly, Rod knew what he was facing, though how it had been made, he couldn't guess.
Beaubras bellowed, slashing, and Rod just barely managed to grab the knight's arm, throwing his own weight back against the cliff, as Beaubras thrust too hard and jolted toward the drop. His weight hauled at Rod, then swung back, while Rod glared at the kobold, willing it away, willing it to appear as it really was…
And a huge moth battered Modwis with its wings, upon which were two great ovals suggesting evil-looking eyes. But only the moth was there; the kobold was gone.
With an oath, the dwarf swatted the insect away. It bumbled on down the rock face, bouncing off the cliff, then turned, arrowing back toward the will-o'-the-wisp that floated where Rod had left it.
"I thank thee, Lord Gallowglass," the dwarf gasped, "though how thou didst banish that fell sprite, I know not."
"Easy—it was never really there." Rod took a deep breath to stop his voice from trembling. "Whoever built this castle laid a very thorough illusion-spell on this stair. He knew the counterspell, of course, but no intruder would. Almost did its job, too." '
"It would have," said Beaubras, "hadst thou not been with us."
"And I would be decorating the floor of this shaft now if you hadn't speared that spider for me. Hey, maybe the three of us will make it, after all. Want to take the lead, Modwis? The next monster should be yours."
"By thy leave, I'll decline the honor."
"Yeah, it would be a little tough to squeeze past us on this stair. Next monster ought to be in about another twenty feet, gents, if they keep on coming regularly. All ready?"
"Lead on," Beaubras grunted.
Rod toiled upward, trying to look jaunty.
But the attack didn't come, and didn't come, and Rod found himself going more and more slowly, sweat running down his sides, waiting and waiting.
Then, suddenly, the sides of the shaft were gone. Hardly able to believe it, Rod stepped out into a large open space. He stepped aside—carefully, but there were no more stairs—to let Beaubras out. The knight stepped up, muttering, and Modwis followed. Rod thought of more light, and the fox fire brightened. He held it up high, turning slowly. The crack of night sky was gone; they were in some kind of cave.
"We made it," Rod whispered, not quite believing it. "We're inside the keep—and nothing else attacked us."
"Not fully inside yet." Modwis pointed.
Light winked off faceted surfaces. Rod stepped closer, frowning, and saw a large oaken door set in the rock wall, fastened with a large, gleaming steel lock.
" 'Tis enchanted 'gainst rust," Beaubras murmured in wonder.
"Makes sense, if they only want to use the key every dozen years or so." Rod frowned though, and stepped closer to investigate—steel made stainless by any means struck a warning note within him.
But it wasn't the lock he needed to guard against, for, as he bent down to investigate, something flickered through the light, pain seared his calf, and Modwis shouted, kicking and stabbing at something beside Rod, before the light dimmed, and Rod felt himself tumbling into the shaft, down and down, into darkness.
Chapter Eleven
Rod seemed to have an affinity for dungeons; if there was one around, sooner or later, he'd wind up in it. It was a convenient place for baring the soul, not necessarily his.
In this case, he found out where he was after he got the aftertaste out of his mouth. The medicine hit him like a jolt of electricity, wrinkling his tongue with the intensity of its sourness and blowing off the back of his head. He levered himself up far enough to free a hand to feel his scalp, reassuring himself it was still there, and perforce opened his eyes.
He saw Beaubras, unhelmed and anxious, frowning down at him. His face lightened with relief when he saw Rod's eyes. "So, then. Thou'it with us once again."
"So it would seem." Rod wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Pffah! What was that stuff?"
"A restorative potion. The wizard who gave it assured that it would raise me from any wound, no matter how grievous, provided only that I could still swallow."
"But after that, would you really want to? Though I
have to admit, it works like a charm." He frowned. "Wait a minute—it is a charm."
"It hath restored thee most remarkably," Modwis rumbled.
"All right for you—you didn't have to take it. Wouldn't recommend it, would you, Beaubras?"
"I know not, friend," the knight said with a gentle smile. "I ha' ne'er tasted it."
"What!" Rod stared, appalled. "Your only dose of a magic restorative, and you gave it to me? What's going to happen when you're really badly hurt?"
"I will mend," the knight assured him. "I will ever have mine amulet."
"Oh, yes—the Astounding Amulet of Ambrosius." Beaubras wore a magic pendant that could turn into whatever charm he needed, to get him out of any bind that Grandfather had put him in. It had been Rory's standard deus ex machina, which Rod had always regarded with amused tolerance, once he had been taught about such things. All of a sudden, it didn't seem so lame an excuse, after all.
Still, Rod felt like a robber. He opened his mouth to protest again, but Modwis laid a hand on his arm. "Let it rest, Lord Gallowglass."
Rod locked gazes with him, and realized just how ungracious he was being. "I thank you deeply, Sir Knight," he said. "I stand in your debt."
"Then help me to rescue my lady," Beaubras enjoined him.
Rod looked up, managing a crooked smile. Then he frowned around at the gloom, relieved only by the yellow glow coming in through the grille in the door. "We don't seem to have come up in the world."
"Not so," Beaubras
assured him. "We have come into the keep. Our friend Modwis hath something of a gift with
Cold Iron and its intricacies, and hath managed most wondrously with the lock."
" 'Twas a gross old thing." There was too little light to tell, but Rod would have been willing to bet Modwis was flushed with pleasure at the compliment. " 'Twas quick enough work to turn it. In truth, the rust did withhold me longer than the mechanism."
Rod nodded slowly. "Very good, Master Modwis. Then the two of you hauled me in here, I take it?"
"The knight slew the serpent first," the dwarf rumbled.
Rod had a brief vision of a bisected carcass, and wondered whether it had been Beaubras's sword or his iron boot. "So. At least we're inside."
"Aye," said Modwis, "and with none the wiser, so far as we know."
"We have but to find the stair, and climb up to the hall," Beaubras assured him.
"Oh, is that all?" Rod levered himself to his feet cautiously, but was amazed to find not the slightest trace of headache or dizziness. "Say, that potion worked like magic!"
"What else?" Modwis murmured.
"Poor choice of phrase," Rod admitted.
"Here is a better," Beaubras offered. " 'Onward and upward!' "
"I think I've heard that somewhere before—but never mind. Which way is up?"
"Well asked," Beaubras admitted. "There is naught but a barren hallway which doth stretch out before us."
"You can see that much?" Rod peered into the darkness. "You've got better eyes than I have!"
"Nay—I went forth to scout, whiles the knight did tend thee," Modwis explained. " 'Tis naught but a narrow hall of stone blocks, with another door at its end."
"Another door?"
"Aye. Who can say where it doth lead?"
"We can, as soon as we've gone through it. Think you can handle the lock on this one, too?"
Modwis grinned. "Can an otter catch fish?"
"So I hear, though whenever they see me coming, they just play around."
"Then let us disport ourselves," Beaubras urged.
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