by Max Anthony
Rasmus reappeared. “Good work,” he said, immediately piecing things together.
“What happened?” asked Jera. “It just collapsed and died.”
“A showboating wizard,” said Rasmus. “It likely cast an instruction of death at you. Completely unnecessary in the circumstances, yet it has worked to our advantage.”
“My ring,” said Jera, understanding flooding in.
“Yes, your ring of spell reflection,” said Rasmus. “They’re amongst the most powerful of the magical ring family and guaranteed to ruin a wizard’s day. It is best practise to cast a non-fatal spell first in situations where one suspects the presence of such a ring.”
Jera gave thanks for the protection the ring had afforded her. It had saved her life twice now and though it would only function infrequently, on both occasions it had been invaluable. The lucky adventurer is the one who lives, she thought, reminded of the words that both Rasmus and Viddo had said to her on many an occasion.
Rasmus ensured the door was closed, so that no ghasts would hear the noises and come to investigate. With that done, he started talking to himself. “Now, then,” he said. “I feel as if I am overlooking something. A minor detail, yet one which I should attend to.”
“Viddo?” asked Jera, helpfully indicating the location of the immobile thief. The encircling ice had now completely melted, leaving the thief’s skin blue. He could blink, though could not move any other part of his body.
“Ah yes, Viddo,” said Rasmus as if he’d entirely forgotten about his friend’s presence. He inspected the thief carefully, as if pondering something. “I won’t waste my final dispel, if that’s fine with you?” he asked, raising his voice as if he were speaking to someone who was slow to comprehend. “I expect that everything will expire shortly.”
It didn’t take long before Viddo was moving again. He shivered for a while, though his skin quickly regained its normal healthy glow. “I can’t believe it was hiding behind the door!” he exclaimed hotly. He raised a leg as if to kick the dead wizard and then lowered it. “I should be grateful for the lesson.”
“He was using a spell of greater invisibility,” added Rasmus by way of consolation. “And he mazed me three times. The spell is an especially tedious one to memorise and I usually get bored after the first time. Who knows how many more he had at the ready?”
“Our opponent lies dead. We should honour his memory by pillaging anything we can lay our hands on,” replied Viddo.
“It’s what he would have wanted,” added the wizard.
Jera shook her head and smiled at these words. The two of them were beyond belief sometimes, though she found herself secretly beguiled by the devil-may-care attitude. Not that she’d subscribe to such methods herself, of course.
With the death of the occupant, the room was now ready for searching. The combat had been almost entirely fought at a magical, non-explosive level, therefore there was little overt destruction. The trio clustered around the table. The items they’d seen when they’d first entered turned out to be a teapot, cup and saucer, along with a piece of paper that had the words ‘must find the key’ written upon it several times.
“This poor fellow must have been completely mad,” said Rasmus, reading the writing, whilst also lifting the lid from the teapot. The contents were cooling and no one wanted to risk sampling the dark brown liquid.
“I wonder what this missing key unlocks,” said Viddo. “Surely it must relate to something worth stealing.”
“Or a locked cell containing many undead,” suggested Jera, in an unusually cynical appraisal of the odds.
There was a set of three shelves standing against one of the walls. Upon these shelves were several ornaments of an unconventional style, as well as nine gold coins. The coins vanished, as did a rolled-up scroll, which Rasmus examined happily. It took him only a few moments to memorise the contents and copy them to his brain. The scroll crumbled away to a powder finer than dust, which the wizard batted away from his robes.
Through the doorway was another of the square rooms. It contained an uncomfortable-looking and unmade bed, a dresser with chair and a wooden chest against one wall. Upon the floor was a moth-eaten rug and there was a plant of an unknown variety in a pot, which looked healthy and well-watered.
Viddo completed his checking procedures to ensure the room was trap-free. Once he’d declared it safe, they set about searching it, naturally descending upon the chest as the location with the greatest likelihood of reward. It wasn’t locked and Viddo lifted the lid up, to reveal a modest quantity of coins, as well as an elaborate plate helmet and some manner of black-cloth garment.
Jera was the only one interested in the helmet, so she picked it out first and examined it. The item had two large horns protruding from opposite sides and had a faceguard that raised and lowered. When lowered, the visor showed the features of a snarling and ferocious creature. She gave the helmet to Viddo, who studied it and decided that magic was present.
Next, was the black cloth garment. Viddo gave it a shake to unfold it, finding that he was holding a pair of trousers with a narrow waist and particularly wide, baggy legs. These were also magical and he gave them to Rasmus for identification, along with the helmet.
“Worth identifying both?” asked the wizard.
“I think so. Both feel quite potent and the helmet might have an additional property.”
“Very well,” said Rasmus, casting a spell of identification over the helmet. “A helmet of berserk rage,” he said, handing it to Jera. She put it on. It looked oversized and unusual in comparison to all of her other armour.
“Do I look silly?” she asked.
“Don’t lower the visor until you really need to,” warned Viddo, sidestepping the question. “What about the trousers?” he asked Rasmus.
“A thief’s ridiculously baggy pantaloons of blade dancing,” said Rasmus.
Viddo took the garment. “Excellent!” he exclaimed. “I’ve always wanted a pair of these!” He paused for a moment. “Did the spell really give that exact description?”
“The spell is non-judgemental when it comes to fashion sense, whilst I am not,” replied Rasmus. “The magic merely referred to them as trousers of blade dancing and I felt that some additional clarification was needed.”
Viddo discarded his old black-cloth trousers and put this new pair on. “I think they look smart,” he said, looking anything but.
“You keep telling yourself that,” said Rasmus. Jera remained silent, since she was feeling slightly self-conscious at the fearsome helmet she was wearing.
The gold coins were quickly sifted from the mass of copper and silver, with there being forty-nine of the higher-value coins in total. “This gold gets heavy quickly,” said Viddo. “It would be nice to find some more gems or some platinum.”
“There is always our next opponent,” Rasmus responded, ever-hopeful about the future. “I am more concerned about where this wizard might keep his spellbook.” He’d already looked under the bed and in the dresser. There was no hiding place beneath the rug.
“Is it definitely going to be in here?” asked Jera.
“Not definitely. Many wizards will keep their spellbooks safe in an alternative plane of existence, and use complicated code words to summon it back to them. If we find nothing in this room, it seems likely that our dead opponent has carried his secret to the grave with him.”
“I am equally concerned about this key,” said Viddo. “The creature ascribed a great importance to it and, from what I overheard, it believed that the Baron would be displeased by its loss.”
“At home, we always hid a spare key underneath a plant pot,” said Jera. “In case we accidentally left the house without one.”
Viddo opened his mouth as if he’d willingly remonstrate with anyone who’d leave themselves vulnerable by putting their keys under a plant pot. Then, he thought better of it and strode to the potted plant, which he lifted with surprising gentleness. Underneath, was a key.
/> “Well I never!” said the thief. “It appears as though our dead wizard friend has been searching for a key for a considerable amount of time, and here is a key beneath his potted plant.”
“It might not be the missing key,” said Rasmus, feeling obliged to point it out.
“It may not be. On the other hand, the notion that it is appeals to me greatly.” Viddo pocketed the key, which was small, iron and designed to fit a lock of average difficulty.
They spent another few minutes searching the room. Rasmus was disappointed that there was no indication of how to recover the missing spellbook and Viddo was convinced there were no other hiding places within the two rooms occupied by their erstwhile opponent. With nothing else to be looted, they exited the rooms.
Having left the hunched wizard dead behind them, they resumed their search of the castle’s second floor. They were wary for more ghasts, which had shown themselves acrobatic enough to cling to ceilings, but there were no further attacks. The adventurers had no way of knowing how many of the undead had been kept in the cells and had simply assumed the worst – that there’d have been at least one in each.
They looked beyond a few of the doors they passed, finding rooms that were either completely empty, or which gave the impression they had been abandoned long before the castle itself. One thing was for sure: there was nothing worth stealing.
“No clues, either,” said Viddo, adding a second disappointment. They’d all been faintly hopeful that they might come across a room filled with exciting hints as to what the Baron had been up to before he vanished. As it was, they were left with the usual guesswork.
Eventually and without further incident, they came upon a flight of steps. These steps were bare stone and led upwards through a stairwell in the north wall of a long corridor they happened to be exploring. With no better options, they climbed from the second floor and up to the third.
17
The steps took them into a large room on the floor above. Thus far there’d been nothing symmetrical about the inner layout of the castle and each level had been arranged differently to the one below it. In Viddo’s experience, it was usual for there to be similarities, but here there were none. He approved.
This new room was bathed in a red light, slightly too bright for comfort, though this could have been a side-effect of their eyes being used to the illumination from Rasmus’ spell. There were doorways leading from three of the walls, with each of the exit corridors being lit with the same redness. Viddo listened carefully for signs of activity and checked the vicinity for traps, before giving the go-ahead for them to talk.
“Look at the lights,” said Rasmus. The illumination came from faceted crystals in the walls at head height, as well as others in the ceiling.
“I don’t see anything unusual,” admitted Viddo.
“They’re the same as the gems we found in the bodies of those ghasts, aren’t they?” asked Jera, catching on at once.
“They are – much weaker and more diluted versions, but they do indeed appear to be the same thing. To use blood for something which is so easily provided by a low-level wizard spell shows a callous disregard for life. It is quite infuriating to think that people may have been murdered simply to provide the same services that a five-copper wizard could perform.”
“This is the first sign we’ve seen of such profligacy,” said Viddo. “We are on the third floor now. There is one more floor above us, and then some additional floors for the two side towers. It could be that we are now approaching the more private areas of the castle, where normal employees were not permitted to tread.”
“We might be close to finding answers,” said Jera. “As well as creatures potentially even stronger than those we’ve already faced.”
“There’ll be nothing like that demon lord again,” said Rasmus. “It was a good job we faced it when it was so badly weakened.”
They peered along each of the exit corridors. There were no clues to be gleaned about which way might be the most advantageous, so they took the left-hand corridor on the basis that there was a door some way along, which might or might not open into a room filled with treasure. As it happened, there was nothing similar to treasure behind this door.
“Latrines,” said Viddo. “Lit by blood gems, no less.”
“Beautifully fitted latrines,” said Jera, admiring the marble cladding on the walls and the granite seat on the toilet bowls. “Must have been for someone important.”
They had no cause or desire to remain in the Baron’s latrines for an extended period and they exited onto the corridor, each wondering at the insanity of a man who would choose to use the blood of his subjects to provide the light in his toilets. The corridor continued without deviation for a good number of yards. It turned to the right and went on for another twenty yards.
“I’m sure we are walking just inside the outer wall here,” said Viddo. “Yet there are no windows.”
“I didn’t pay much attention to the layout of the windows when we were outside the castle walls,” said Rasmus. “It would be unusual to have no windows at all on a level.”
“The Baron must have been satisfied with the red light from his blood gems,” said Jera. “He seems to have been rather crueller than the tales suggested.”
“It’s easy to continue with one’s depravities when one rules a place that is far from anywhere. There may be a king who claimed sway over the Baron, but this king does not seem to have been in a hurry to garrison the castle after his noble’s disappearance.”
They reached another door, made from a dark and rough-grained hardwood. There was an aperture at face height, which they took turns to look through.
“I don’t think we need to go in there, do you?” asked Rasmus.
“I think I’d rather keep exploring,” said Jera.
“That corpse is wearing a gold ring on its little toe,” Viddo replied, as if this statement automatically defeated any objections.
Given what lay beyond, it was surprising that the door was unlocked. They entered a room that was thirty feet to a side and almost square. Blood gems kept this room adequately lit and allowed the trio to see full details of the horrors within. There were long-dead bodies dangling from the ceiling, with hardly two feet between each of the unfortunate victims. Some of the corpses were naked, some badly clothed. The dead all had lengths of thin, strong chain around their necks - these chains were attached to metal loops fixed to the ceiling. Three feet below each body was a hole in the floor. There was a five-feet wide area around the edge of the room that was clear for walking.
“They’ve had their throats cut by that device over there,” said Rasmus, pointing to a six-feet wooden stick, which had a stained metal blade attached perpendicular across the end. This instrument was mounted on a wooden stand fastened to one of the walls.
At the sound of the wizard’s voice, a low susurration started, which sounded like air hissing through distant bellows. The volume increased until it became a groaning noise, embodying pain, suffering and despair. Here and there, eyes opened in the shrunken heads of the dangling bodies, with one or two corpses swaying as they began to kick their legs violently.
“Does nothing stay dead, these days?” asked Rasmus of no-one in particular.
The groaning noise got no louder, yet Viddo felt it best that he close the door behind him, in case it brought other creatures to investigate. The bodies which had kicked and thrashed soon fell motionless, as if they’d done nothing more than mimic the last actions of their dying selves. Almost every one of the corpses had its eyes open and several dozen pairs stared unblinkingly at the adventurers.
“This is horrendous!” said Viddo. “They appear to be dead, yet their eyes look almost alive.”
“Another room for the harvesting of blood,” said a grim-faced Rasmus. He walked tentatively towards the closest of the holes in order that he could look inside it. There was a brown and flaky crust visible. As he stepped away, the dangling creature swung a kick at Rasmus, c
atching him in the shoulder. There wasn’t much weight behind the blow, so the wizard was mostly unhurt, yet had also learned a valuable lesson about not venturing too close. The zombie learned a valuable lesson of its own, when the annoyed wizard wrapped his arms tightly about its legs and pulled firmly downwards. There was a loud clicking sound and the undead closed its eyes, destroyed by this additional trauma to its neck.
“That’ll teach it not to kick me!” said Rasmus, who had only limited patience at the best of times, let alone when a zombie had the temerity to kick him in the shoulder.
“I don’t like it in here,” said Jera. “The smell is sickly and there has been too much suffering.”
“When Viddo’s got his eyes on gold, there’s little chance he’ll leave without it,” Rasmus advised her, not confessing that the same applied to him.
Dutifully, the thief pointed out the corpse he’d seen with the gold ring. It was almost in the centre of the room, surrounded by others. The ring would have certainly been stolen by whoever oversaw this room, except that the now-deceased owner had evidently managed to hide it on his foot. However, the concealing footwear must have perished sufficiently to fall off into the hole beneath.
“Having seen the violent response of that first zombie, I am confident that any humanity they might once have possessed is gone,” said Viddo. He darted for the legs of another zombie and wrapped his arms around them in the same manner that Rasmus had done. Then, he pulled downwards, producing another loud click and killing a second one. Rasmus killed a third, while Viddo killed two more.
Jera looked on, with absolutely no idea what to say. Was this right or was it wrong? She really didn’t know. There were five more clicking noises as more of the zombies found death visiting them for the second time in this room. Rasmus and Viddo returned to their place near the door, with the thief holding up a thick, gold band to the light. Several bodies hung limp behind them, whilst several others had started kicking vigorously, landing weak blows on the zombies around them.
