by Marc Secchia
“This way,” Snatcher commanded, unlimbering his club. He looked even more fearsome now that his disguise had been dropped.
Kevin bleated, “Where are we going?”
“You idiot, you gave us away!” she hissed.
The Witch grabbed him by the scruff of the neck. She thrust Kevin downstairs at arm’s length, riding his angry counter-swipe with a sharp cackle of amusement. He was far from impressed, but was too busy trying to keep his balance to fight her off effectively.
The staircase swept downward in a steep spiral, cased in ancient dark bricks, which looked as though they had been burned at some point in time. The railing was bronze decorated with stylised skulls. Dark Wizard décor, he thought. Tasteful. Next they would find skeletons artfully arranged on the walls. They needed to find torches somewhere.
Three-quarters of the way to the landing below they ran into a posse of Trolls, who had organised an effective shield-wall and were keeping the Lurk at bay with jabbing thrusts of their long spears. Akê-Akê’s arrows felled one or two, but this was no gaggle of green younglings that confronted them. A sharp altercation developed on the narrow staircase as Kevin, Alliathiune and Amadorn were forced to take cover from arrows skittering off the steps near their heads. The Witch’s first spell had fizzled on a Troll shield, but her waving hands had now conjured up a barrier that allowed her to work unhindered. Amadorn muttered something about enclosed spaces to Alliathiune, who watched proceedings with considerably less concern than Kevin felt was warranted. What did he know, anyway?
Troll feet thumped on the stairs behind them. Kevin heard a clash of steel; Hunter’s battle-cry resounded from the walls.
The Head Witch smiled grimly as she extended her cupped hands toward the massed Trolls. Suddenly she flicked them forward. The Trolls fell back with howls of pain; four stalwarts of the first rank simply melted down into their boots, as though they were butter thrown into a hot pan. Snatcher rushed this gap with his club smashing from side to side, driving them back. The Trolls broke and ran.
Alliathiune grabbed Kevin’s hand and pulled him after her as they ran down the staircase after Snatcher and Akê-Akê, who cleared the way with a combination of twanging bowstring and crushing blows. But there were dangers all around–Trolls appearing suddenly out of side rooms and passages, the alarm being raised ahead of them, a choking acidic mist quickly cleared by the Druid. Their progress rapidly declined into a running skirmish, and from there to a regrouping and more cautious progress. Hunter sprinted up behind them, bloodied and torn but grinning hugely, just as they broke out into a large chamber that guarded the main entrance to the dungeons.
Flat black hangings concealed guard-holes around the perimeter, hewn for the most part out of solid rock, and the ceiling was supported by massive pillars of speckled granite. To their left they saw a short corridor leading to a sturdy metal grating which could be raised to provide access to the cells, and this was guarded by two Trolls in massive body armour and winged helmets. The air smelled of damp and rust, and the only form of lighting was torches smouldering in sconces upon the water-streaked walls and a great brazier in the centre of the chamber. And before this another handful of enemies awaited them.
“Oh hellfre,” moaned Kevin. “More Trolls!”
Amadorn raised his staff. “Leave this to me. Close your eyes.”
He paused, however, as a Troll but half the size of the others broke ranks and stepped forward. He wore a tattered robe of animal skins and bore a staff that looked far too heavy for his frail paws. Stooped and hoary he might have been, but his eyes blazed clear and lucid from beneath beetling ridges that had been dyed into yellow zig-zags, similarly to his hair and short beard.
“What’s this?” asked the Witch.
“It’s a Troll Shaman,” said Akê-Akê. “I’ve dealt with his kind before.”
“Him and his five apprentices,” she said, casting icy eyes over their opponent.
“Sacrifices,” the Faun corrected her. “He will sacrifice these zealots and raise them as living corpses to fuel his magic, which is much tainted with the black arts of necromancy and illmaugrax-casting.”
“What should we do?”
The Faun seemed to grow indefinably taller. He shucked his bow, slipped the quiver off his shoulder, loosed the mace from his belt and let it drop beside his other weapons. With his hands he swept back his fringe to reveal the scarification patterns on his forehead. His bearing was princely, his eye clear and cool, his manner unshakeable.
“I don’t know what you will do,” he declared. “There is nothing that ordinary spell-casting can do against the illmaugrax, nor will any weapon formed of the earth prevail against their strength. But Akê-Akê Redpath will deal with these vermin who dare oppose our path. I am a Faun Loremaster, the son of a Loremaster, and I hold the secrets of my clan. I swear that I will sweep these scum clean off Feynard’s face and ensure that Indomalion’s bright eye is never again sullied with their presence. Do not wait to discern my fate. I will rejoin you as I am able.”
Kevin shook his head. “But you can’t–”
“But he can,” said Amadorn, fiercely. “This is his choice. We have other battles to fight. There’ll be a thousand Trolls on those steps soon, lad. Hurry.”
He didn’t understand, but admired the Faun nevertheless. Kevin and his companions quickly circled around the chamber, ignoring the small group of Trolls arrayed against Akê-Akê. They raced down the short corridor toward the cells. Hunter and Snatcher leaped ahead to deal with more Troll guards. Metal scraped against metal. From behind came an unearthly scream that made Kevin’s hair stand on end and Alliathiune’s complexion pale.
“It is a perversion of life,” she whispered, clutching his hand so tightly he could feel the bones grinding together. “How can Akê-Akê stand against them? Nay, do not look back, good Kevin. Keep to the fore and do not lose heart.”
“This place stinks.”
“Evil has permeated the very fabric of this keep, good Kevin. Can you not feel it all around you?”
He sniffed the air like a dog scenting the breeze. “I sense … something. And I don’t like it. Pitterdown Manor felt like this, some darktimes.”
“Courage, good Kevin.”
Snatcher’s thundering roar echoed around the chamber as he struck a killing blow. Hunter’s satisfied hiss was quick to follow, but she bled heavily from a gash that had opened her thigh from hip to knee.
The Witch tore strips off her robe. “Here.”
“Thanks.” Hunter bound the wound with practised skill, but her canines were bared in pain. She took up her sword. “Lead on. It is but a scratch.”
Alliathiune touched her shoulder. “Strength to you, noble Mancat.”
The slit yellow eyes cleared slightly. “I will survive, good Dryad. But your aid is welcome.”
Kevin reached out. “Strength to you, noble Mancat.”
The Mancat yowled. Her tail smouldered slightly, but the wound was gone.
“Gently, good outlander!” Amadorn admonished him. “Feel the magic, don’t just let it loose. What did you do?”
“A reversal,” said Kevin.
“A reversal?” The Druid looked as confused as he.
“I reversed the wound.”
Alliathiune gasped. “Did that woman in the Utharian Wet not say, ‘Yours is a power of opposites’?”
“Opposites,” mused Kevin, feeling something click in his mind–only, he was not at all sure of what it was.
“Opposites?” snorted the Witch. “What nonsense is that? Riddles fit for a Tomalia? Quick, good Druid, the gate.”
Amadorn rifled the Troll bodies for keys and unlocked the padlocks which prevented access to the cells. Chains rattled as the grating rose, and then Snatcher smashed the ratchet mechanism so that they could not be trapped within.
“Er, Alliathiune, what did Akê-Akê say to the Troll back there?”
Even in the light of torches set in sconces, he could see her blush. “Er,
I understood that he said you had worms rotting your brain–”
“–and that you were born with your head up a slug’s unmentionables,” finished the Witch. “Mind like a sewer, our Faun.”
Alliathiune grabbed his hand. “Come on.”
Kevin ran on, deeper into the stinking dungeon, down the rows of empty cells with their iron doors and interiors as black as sin. Amadorn and the Witch had snagged torches from the outer chamber to light their way, for the occasional smoky lantern or sconce was insufficient to banish the shadows and dark places. He had no doubt that Snatcher or Hunter could see easily in the dark, but he was not cut of the same cloth as they!
At some considerable length their echoing footsteps found pause at a junction of eight such corridors leading off it like the spokes of a wheel, and Kevin began to appreciate the extent of Shadowmoon Keep’s dungeons. The other ways were unlit, cold, looming like open mouths waiting to consume the unwary. He would not like to be trapped down here. Oh, for a breath of fresh air in the Forest’s cool byways!
“Ah!” said Amadorn, holding his torch aloft. “Is this the trapdoor we are looking for?”
Snatcher nodded. “Behold, noble Druid, the ancient sigil of the Labyrinth.”
He leaned forward, with the others, to examine the black anticlockwise spiral charcoal-etched into the wooden surface. “Indeed, good Lurk. The legends speak of two such entry points to the Labyrinth–one here, in the dungeons, and the other beneath the laboratories once used by Ozark the Dark to perpetrate his foulest workings and most depraved imaginings on living creatures. Here he cast the failed remnants of his filthy experiments. Here lies danger beyond what we have encountered so far.”
The Witch said, “Less words and more action suit my mood, noble Druid. Let us draw these bolts aside and enter the Labyrinth.”
“At once. Noble Lurk?”
The Lurk threw the mighty bolts that crossed the trapdoor in four places and drew them aside with a deafening screeching and some considerable effort. He raised the block of wood and wrestled it to one side.
“Whatever is down there must long since have woken,” said Alliathiune, peering past Kevin’s shoulder to the dark hole thus revealed.
This was not what he wanted to hear. Ravening monsters, lurking at the base of those steps for the first foolhardy traveller to venture within? Why did the Magisoul have to be hidden in such a godforsaken hell-hole? His nerves were shot already and there were still those Dragons to pass that Amberthurn had mentioned.
But the Lurk was already halfway down the stairs, peering about with care. “Nothing down here but a sandy chamber,” he rumbled.
The Mancat’s ears pricked up. “Trolls, coming this way.”
“From where?”
“One of these side tunnels. See how the light flickers on the walls?” She paused, then hissed, “Many, many Trolls, friends. A great multitude.”
“We will be trapped within!”
“Peace, good Kevin.”
“Not if I have ought to do with it,” said Hunter.
“And I,” Amadorn agreed. “They are many–perhaps too many even for the prowess of the finest Mancat that e’er bestrode Driadorn’s fair hills.” And he turned to the others. “We will keep the path clear for your return. You must secure the Magisoul. That is our paramount purpose. Only promise that you will return to the Sacred Well and complete there the restoration of our precious land.”
“We will,” said Alliathiune.
He addressed Kevin swiftly. “We find ourselves, as upon many prior occasions, bound to your fate, noble outlander. Never forget that you are Driadorn’s champion, the champion of the incomparable Seventy-Seven Hills–our birthplace and Mother to all Her creatures. Save them. Save us all.”
Snatcher laid his heavy paw on Amadorn’s shoulder. His huge eyes blinked slowly in the half-light, the Deep Sight momentarily washing over and through the Druid. “Until we meet again, good Druid. And we will meet again.”
Amadorn smiled at this. “Strength to you, good Lurk. Now go you swiftly.”
“Forthwith.”
At the Lurk’s low growl, Kevin, Alliathiune, and the Witch hurried after, down into the Labyrinth.
While the dungeons had been built into the foundations of Shadowmoon Keep in some places and carved from the basal rock in others, the Labyrinth appeared to be a rabbit-warren of tunnels that were naturally smooth–easily tall enough for Kevin, but a squeeze for the mountainous Lurk in the main. He wondered how they had come to be. It would have taken an inordinate effort to build such a maze. From what he could see, the tunnels doubled back and forth, criss-crossed and passed under or over each other with no discernable pattern. It was hard not to imagine a horde of mice had turned the bedrock into Swiss cheese.
The air was dry and crisp, as brittle as old paper, and had a very faintly peppery tang that made one’s throat itch.
“I’ll mark the way,” said the Witch, digging into her pockets. “We should be on our guard.”
“Good idea, Witch.”
They filed along behind Snatcher, slowly exploring what seemed to be a likely route into the Labyrinth. But in less than a turn it became apparent that there would be no help in finding the door that Amberthurn had mentioned. The tunnels were indistinguishable in appearance. They would have been hopelessly lost save for the markings that the Witch scratched on the walls at short intervals. They crossed their own path twice.
“If such a creature as this lives,” said Kevin, indicating a large skull lying across the tunnel ahead, “then we would have to be careful. We haven’t seen a single living thing, however. I cannot imagine Ozark’s creatures would find any sustenance down here–can you? These tunnels are as clean as a whistle. Unless there’s something else down here?”
“Or unless his monsters don’t need ordinary food,” Alliathiune suggested. “Perhaps they hibernate for Leaven seasons without end, only to awake when flame-haired outlanders set foot in the dreaded Labyrinth!”
“Oh, very scary!”
“You looked worried for a … what was that? I heard something.”
Snatcher’s club swung down off his shoulder. “Stand back.”
The scratching noise was repeated.
With one accord, the four remaining companions drew back slightly and peered down the tunnel, where they beheld their first monster. It was a pathetic little thing, about the size of a dog, with the feet of a chicken and a cat’s head. It approached them with an ingratiating tilt of its large, dark eyes.
“People?”
“Who are you? What are you?” demanded the Witch.
“People. Nice people. Izzit like nice people.”
“You are called Izzit?”
“Izzit.” The little head bobbed gently. “First people Izzit see for many seasons.”
“Are there any other monsters down here?” asked the Witch, who had clearly appointed herself chief inquisitor.
“Monsters? What monsters?”
“Ozark’s experiments.”
“Izzit see no monsters.”
Indicating an empty tunnel did not amuse the Witch, who knelt in the dusty tunnel, put her eyes very close to the creature’s, and said, “People nice if Izzit tell the truth. If Izzit not tell the truth–poof!” And a wisp of smoke curled out of her palm.
The creature leaped back in alarm, trembling.
“There, now, you scared it!” Alliathiune huffed. “What was the point of that?”
“I wouldn’t want to be led into a trap.”
“Nice Izzit,” said the Dryad, holding out her hand. “Would Izzit like some waycrust?” She coaxed the creature until it fed out of her hand, and soon it was growling as she scratched it behind the tufted ears.
The Witch scowled at them.
Kevin said, “Would he know about the door?”
“Possibly …”
“Why don’t you ask him?”
“He’s probably too simple a creature, good Kevin.”
“Dark Wizard ta
ke monsters. Very many monsters,” the creature said solemnly. “Much blood fetch Yamka from underworld.” As one creature, they stared at Izzit. “Yamka turn Izzit into Izzit,” it added, sadly.
It took Kevin nearly a minute to put it all together. “The Kraleon!” he gasped.
Izzit screamed and leaped into the Dryad’s arms.
The Witch grated, “How, by the Hills, did you guess that?”
“Don’t say his name. Don’t!” whimpered the creature. “He knows, he does. Eyes everywhere. Ears in the walls. He mean to Izzit. Mean, mean, mean.”
Alliathiune calmed the creature down, murmuring that they would never let the ‘bad thing get Izzit again’.
Meantime, the Witch whispered aside to Kevin and Snatcher, “Good news and bad. Sounds like the Labyrinth might be clear, but we’ve learned of a foe a hundred times more dangerous. Blood sacrifices to somehow gather the power to bring this creature–don’t name it, Izzit is right–into the living realms. I fear greatly for our Forest.”
“Don’t name it?” Kevin frowned. “Isn’t that superstitious …?”
His voice trailed off under the Witch’s scornful gaze. But he was saved from further embarrassment as an explosion sounded far away.
“We must hurry,” said the Dryad. “Izzit, do you know the way to a magical door here in the Labyrinth?”
“Door? Izzit know door!”
Kevin folded his arms and muttered, ‘Told you so,’ because he knew it would annoy Alliathiune. Izzit bounced up and down on his ridiculous chicken feet and insisted to the Witch that he knew which door they were talking about and could take them there without delay. In a trice, they rushed after the bounding creature as he led them through the maze, navigating as though he knew the way blindfolded. Kevin decided that he did not entirely trust this Izzit creature–especially not since he had cuddled up in Alliathiune’s arms like that.
But Izzit was as good as his word. Shortly, he beamed at Alliathiune’s praise as the foursome–now five if they included Izzit in their number–gathered before a low, arched doorway. The arch itself was marble, according to Snatcher, finely carved and decorated with arcane symbols in a language unknown to any of them. The door appeared to be made of stone, although it was impossible to say what kind it might be. There was no other visible markings save for the keyhole, which was slightly recessed into the surface and made of a substance that the Witch identified as derivative of korialite, the magical stone. It had a hole for the shaft of a key, and space for two flanges above and below, about two inches from top to bottom.
