The Laughter of Dark Gods

by David Pringle - (ebook by Undead)

  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 piglike 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 more 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 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 was 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. 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.

  “Now you will lead us,” Argo said, and handed Karl the lantern, his eyes glittering in the light.

  Through the red veils of his exhaustion, Karl called up his memory of the map. It was still in his pocket, but he didn’t dare draw it out. Argo could take it from him and leave him there, alone in the dark, prey to whatever was following them.

  The passageways of the maze were high and narrow, carved roughly out of granite as dark as obsidian. The rock absorbed the light of the lantern rather than reflecting it, so that Karl had to find the way by only the feeblest of glows. Still, considering the circumstances, he thought that he was doing well enough, turning right and left and right again, avoiding passages that turned into steep slippery slopes dropping to waterfilled shafts, slabs set in the floor that would tip the unwary into deep pits, a dozen sorts of mechanical trap that couldn’t be revealed by magic.

  Perhaps he was overconfident; or perhaps he was simply tired. In any event, he didn’t realize his mistake until one of the paving stones gave slightly with a fatal click under his foot, like a bone breaking. There was an ominous rumbling above, and then a steel grip snatched him back as the massive weight slammed down, fitting the passage precisely. The wind of its falling blew Karl’s hair back; the noise of its impact half-deafened him. When Argo let go of his shoulder, he fell to his knees. “You are a fool,” Argo hissed in his ear.

  “You can bet I’ll try and do better,” Karl said. The smooth stone of the deadweight was only inches from his tender, bloody nose. He was so shaken that he almost took out the map to make sure of the way, but he remembered that if he did Argo would take it and leave him here in the dark—with his head cut off too, as like as not.

  Right and left, deeper into the bowels of Middenheim Rock. The crushing weight of it seemed to press all life out of the stale black air. Karl had no room in his head for his fears or what he would do when they reached the treasure, no room for anything but remembering the route. Right and left, deeper and deeper until they reached the heart of the maze.

  It was a square chamber, with no way out but the passage which led into it. But dimly outlined by the glow of the lantern which Karl held, sketched in faded paint, was an ornate doorframe, the way to the treasure.

  Argo threw back his head and opened his mouth amazingly wide, and let out a chattering, inhuman cry Karl’s heart froze. Striding out of one of the dark passageways behind them came three skeletons, yellow bones gleaming in the lantern-light, feet clicking on the stone floor, eye sockets holding fell red glows. Each carried a notched, rusty sword, and one wore a golden helmet that an age ago had been cleft by a fearsome blow.

  “Our brothers,” Argo said, and whirled on Karl, his smooth, handsome face without expression. “Now you will tell us the password.”

  “P-p-password?”

  “You know it. Either you speak it now, or we will kill you and have your corpse speak it for us, when it has rotted enough for the magic to take hold.” Argo’s breath smelt like crushed ants; his eyes glittered more fiercely than ever. “Now, boy?”

  There was a flare of blue light. Argo collapsed and the three skeletons burst apart, bones crumbling to powder even before they hit the floor. Blinking, Karl saw the wizard step out of the shadows of the passageway, his white face grim.

  “A strange place to find a bookseller’s apprentice, and strange companions for him, too,” the wizard said. “Do you have any idea of how deeply you have meddled, my boy?”

  Karl could only shake his head. Blue spots still floated in his vision.

  “My apprentice was killed by this creature of Undeath,” the wizard said, nudging Argo’s body with the steel-shod toe of his boot. “He was bringing to me a map which led to a certain ancient treasure, treasure that in the wrong hands could do untold harm. He had hidden t
he map in a book of simple spells, the kind of thing a wizard’s apprentice would carry. But still, somehow, he was found out. He managed to gain entrance to the city, but before I could come to his rescue, he was cornered, at the Cliff of Sighs. He was a brave boy, and knew what would happen if the map were taken.

  “So he threw himself from the cliff, and was torn to pieces by the trees far below. Before I could rescue the book, and before this creature could lay his hands upon it, one of the scavengers found it, and brought it to you.”

  “You knew I had the book,” Karl said.

  “Oh yes. Never lie to a wizard, boy. Let that be your first lesson in your new life. I lent a little of my power to you, and waited until the creature found you. When you used the spells in the book, I was able to follow you by the traces of magic you left. Luckily enough for you, I arrived here just in time to use a spell of my own to unbind the magic which held the skeletons together.”

  “And Argo? Why was he—” And then Karl understood. “He was a deathless one too! That’s why the spell of binding that I used on the goblins didn’t affect him. And why their spore bombs didn’t affect him either.”

  “Indeed. Some poor man whose corpse was revived through necromancy.” The wizard pulled at his long black beard. “And now, you will want to see this treasure, no doubt. You may speak the password.”

  “I’ve had enough nosebleeds, thank you.”

  “The magic was laid down by the efforts of someone else, long ago. The word merely releases it.” The wizard held up the scrap of paper he’d somehow taken from Karl’s pocket. “If you won’t say the word, then I will.”

  So Karl said the word of unlocking, and a wooden door suddenly appeared in the sketched doorframe, and flew open with a thud that brought a cloud of dust from the ceiling.