by Rachel Ford
“Keep talking,” Ceinwen said. “We’ll come to you.”
Karag did, and they followed the sound of his voice. He hoisted Ceinwen up first. “Careful. It’s a low ceiling. Don’t bump your head.”
She grunted, and then called, “I’m in.”
Next, Karag lifted Jack. It was a weird sensation, to be pulled off your feet in the pitch blackness, and his head seemed to spin a little at the feeling of it. Still, he kept his hands out in front of him, and in a moment one of them met with a stone wall. The other slipped into empty space. “Lower,” he told the giant.
“Right. Better?”
Jack felt around, and his hands met no resistance. “I think so.”
“Okay. Hurry. This thing is almost on top of us.”
Jack clutched through the open air for something to grab onto. In a moment, he felt solid stone under himself. He reached a hand upward and felt a ceiling perhaps an inch over his head. “I’m in.”
“Right. I need to get into the other tunnel. No time to follow. I’ll be with you in a moment.”
This, though, proved to be unfounded optimism on the giant’s part – because as soon as the ceiling plate passed, a rock panel slid into place at the end of the tunnel. Jack heard the grinding of stone, and he pressed his hand into what had once been open air – and found his way blocked.
“No,” Ceinwen said, “no. We can’t leave Karag.”
So they grunted and groaned and pushed with all their might against the panel. They took turns working at it, first one and then the other expending their energy. But the stone didn’t shift.
Finally, Jack said, “We have to go, Ceinwen. I’m sure Karag’s okay. He probably ducked back into the other tunnel.”
“What if it closed too? What if he was stuck out there? What if – what if the plate got him, the way it got Arath?”
“Then – I’m sorry, but, he’s already dead. I don’t think that’s what happened, though. I think we need to kill Krampus, and then we’ll be able to find him – him, and Er’c, and Shimmerfax.”
She stayed silent for a long moment. “You’re right. I’m sorry, Jack. I didn’t mean to lose my calm. It will not happen again.”
After dealing with the ranger’s meltdown, hers seemed pretty tame by comparison to Jack. But he said only, “Don’t worry about it, Ceinwen. Come on. Let’s go get our friends.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
They crawled through utter blackness for a good fifteen minutes. Once or twice, they thought they’d hit a dead end. But with a careful examination of the tunnel, they found a side passage, or a ladder leading upward, or some other continuation of their way.
Jack wondered more than once if there had been a way out in the lower passage all along that Arath, in his hysterical state, had missed. Had the ranger felt a wall ahead of him, and just started to panic without looking further?
He didn’t know. He hoped, if that way existed, Karag would find it.
Ceinwen, meanwhile, set her mind to darker thoughts. “I’m going to mount that demon’s horned head on my wall,” she told Jack rather abruptly.
“What?”
“As a trophy, when we’re done with this quest. I’m going to mount his head on my wall.”
“Oh. Well, that, uh, sounds nice.”
“No. I don’t want it to be nice. I want it so that I’ll remember. So that every time I see it, I can recall this moment: what it felt like to almost be beaten.
“And then I’ll remember that I won, in the end. That no matter how dark – literally or otherwise – matters seem, good always triumphs in the end.”
Jack thought that was a hopelessly naïve outlook. He didn’t consider himself a history buff by any stretch of the imagination. But he knew enough to know that nothing was ever as black and white as that. There were more villains whose names wound up in the winner’s ledger than heroes. Indeed, on balance, history tended to demonstrate the reverse: good rarely triumphed, and even when it did, it was only after a great deal of suffering and loss.
It seemed like neither the time nor place to share such morose reflections, though. So he said, “Good plan.”
She went silent for another long stretch. “Do you think we’ll find them? Karag and Er’c, and the others?”
“I’m sure we will. Good always triumphs, remember?”
“Yes. But – well, I’m fonder of him than I imagined I would ever be. But I’m not quite certain we can count Karag among the good, can we?”
That was a fair point, so Jack said, “But he is on our side.”
“True. Anyway, he’s a tenacious fellow. If anyone can get out of trouble, well, I suppose it’d be him.”
Jack was about to answer in the affirmative when he put his weight down on nothing at all. His hand shot downward, through empty air; and, caught so unawares as he was, the rest of him followed, screaming.
He felt a little like a fool to have fallen – literally – for the same trick twice in a day. But a moment later, he landed with a loud splash in an icy, fast moving stream. “Mother trucker,” he gasped.
Then something landed on his head. It felt like a pair of boots. Jack went down, and water filled his nose and mouth. Gasping and sputtering, he clawed his way to the surface. “What the…”
“Jack?” Ceinwen’s voice called above the sound of rushing water. “Jack, where are you?”
“Here. Was that – was that you that landed on my head?”
“Sorry. I heard you fall, and I figured I should follow you.”
He frowned into the darkness. “Thanks. I think.”
“Are you alright?”
“More or less.” His brain felt a little knocked about, but he had more pressing things to worry about. “I don’t suppose you have any idea where this goes?”
“No. But I can hear a current, and – I think – a waterfall.”
Jack nodded, though she couldn’t see him. He was pretty sure he could hear the same thing. Which meant they had only one option. “We need to get to shore, stat.”
“Right. I wish we could see. That’d make finding the shore a lot easier.”
“That’d make everything a lot easier. Just pick a direction, and swim.”
“We should pick the same direction.”
“Right. Okay, that way.”
“What way?”
He frowned. He’d been pointing, but of course, she couldn’t see that. “Follow my voice.”
“Okay.”
So Jack swam to his left, babbling the whole way – which rather winded him, since he was fighting a powerful current. Still, he made it to a bit of cold rock, and pulled himself onto the slippery surface. “Just another few yards,” he told the elf woman.
“Keep talking,” she said. “I’m swimming toward…oh heck.” Her voice took on a note of urgency.
Jack felt his pulse spike. He couldn’t see anything, but Ceinwen wasn’t one to panic. So if she sounded like that – well, something serious was afoot. “Ceinwen? What’s going on?”
She spluttered and gasped out, “Current…pulling me…down.”
Jack listened for the sound of her splashing, and then dove back into the water. He tried to head in her direction. But the current seemed to have a will of its own. Where before the water had been swift and steady, now it churned this way and that. Every time he got near Ceinwen, the current would pull him in an entirely different direction.
On and on he struggled, but his efforts only took him further and further from the elf woman. Her voice grew faint, until he couldn’t make it out at all above the rushing water. Still he struggled, and went on struggling for a good, long time.
But at last, carried along by the unrelenting pull of the water, Jack surrendered. He just gave up. He’d lost his companions. He’d worn himself out, until he seemed to have no energy left at all. And all he could think about was getting home and getting out of the game.
And Jordan. He wished her shift had started. He wished he could talk to her. She’d know wha
t he should do. “Jordan would know…”
Then, Jack blacked out.
He opened his eyes an unknown length of time later and found himself blinking into the light of a campfire.
“Jack?” a familiar voice asked.
He raised his head and looked around. To his surprise, he saw the young orc. “Er’c?”
The other man flashed a snaggletoothed smile. “Well, I guess your head is alright after all.”
“What do you mean?”
“You were muttering, and – well, you didn’t look quite…there.” Jack frowned, but the young man shrugged. “I think you must have hit your head. That water was moving pretty fast.”
All of a sudden, Jack remembered the river, and being thrashed about. “How did I get here? And where is ‘here’?”
“I’m not sure where we’re at. It’s some kind of tunnel under the castle. But how you got here is simple: I fished you out of the water. I thought you might have been Krampus at first, trying to escape. I suppose that’s what his plan is, if the Winters get through the last of his defenses: escape by this river. It probably leads out to some mountain stream.
“But, at any rate, I saw you floating by, and I pulled you out, and brought you over to the fire.”
“Oh. Well, uh, thank you. I think you saved my life.”
He shrugged again. “No problem.”
“You didn’t see anyone else, did you? Like Ceinwen or Karag?”
“No.”
Jack nodded and pushed himself onto his feet. “We’ve got to find them. Come on.”
“Hold a minute, Jack. We’ve got a plan.”
“We?”
“Me and Migli: we dropped down here together.”
Despite himself, Jack made a face. Of all his companions, Migli was probably the last one he wanted to see. The last living one, anyway, now that Arath had become a human pancake. “Migli, eh? Where is he? Hiding somewhere?”
“He’s tunneling a way out for us.”
Jack frowned. “He’s what?”
“Tunneling through the stone. It’s quite hard – too hard even for me. But Migli is a dwarf, and he’s got a dwarf’s touch. Stone obeys his command.”
“Wait. You’re telling me that Migli’s actually working?”
“Of course.”
Jack sat back down, stunned. “Well put me in a pudding and call me a plum.”
“Boss?”
He’d meant to say son-of-a-bitch, so of course he could understand the boy’s confusion. But he waved it away. “Never mind. How long is it going to take, do you think?”
“Not long. Last I checked, he was nearly through.”
Migli being useful had been surprise enough. But Migli being efficient, too? It was practically a Christmas miracle. So he nodded and moved a little closer to the fire. Might as well be warm, he figured, as he waited.
But he didn’t wait long. Within five minutes, the dwarf came trundling into sight, a pickaxe over his shoulder and a smile on his broad face. “I’m through; and what’s better is, I’ve reached a stone hall –” He cut off suddenly, catching sight of Jack. “Well, you’re alive after all. Er’c thought you would be.”
Which sounded a lot to Jack like Migli hadn’t thought he’d make it. “As you see. But let’s go – we have to find the others before we lose them like we lost Arath.”
This, of course, took some explaining. So as they made their way through a darkened natural stone passage, and then from that passage through the hole Migli had chiseled into a stone block hall, he told his companions of his most recent adventures.
Er’c seemed most distressed to learn of Ceinwen’s disappearance, and assured Jack half a dozen times that he hadn’t missed her. “She didn’t come this way. I’m quite sure of that. I would have seen her and pulled her out the same way I did you.”
Migli was stuck on the ranger’s death. “A bad business, but what a song it shall be.”
“Good to see your priorities haven’t changed, Migli.”
“Life is fleeting, but verse is forever. There is no greater honor than to remember good friends in good song.”
By now, they’d squeezed into a hallway that looked exactly like any number of the hallways they’d already traversed in Krampus’s lair. But Er’c said, “Ah, this is most fortuitous. We seem to have come out near where we fell.”
So for the second time, Jack stood back and let his companions take the lead. Migli didn’t budge, but Er’c started to walk toward a far door.
The door led into a vestibule, guarded by two stone sentries that promptly sprang to life at their approach. By this point, Jack’s enthusiasm for putting down demonic beasts had all but evaporated. He just wanted to get out of Krampus’s lair, and off the island, sooner rather than later. Still, there was no way forward except through the stone beasts. So he charged with as much zeal as he could muster. So did Er’c. Migli stayed somewhere in the background, just out of sight.
Jack’s opponent was a huge, winged monster, with razor sharp claws and fangs that looked like they could tear through the mountainside itself. It moved with an inhuman speed, and the ground shook when it leaped. It took everything Jack had to avoid being crushed under its tremendous weight or shredded or diced by those claws and teeth.
And as with the other gargoyles he’d met so far, his sword proved less than effective at dispatching them. It could barely pierce the creature’s stone hide, and so each blow dealt a minimal amount of damage. He used the blade as a kind of club to ward away strikes but relied on his fire magic for his killing. It was a slow business, siphoning away the other’s hit points. But eventually, the monster crashed to the floor, quite dead.
To Jack’s disappointment, he left behind no loot or other salvageable items. So he turned his attention to Er’c, and the last gargoyle. But the young orc had the monster a moment away from death.
So, a fireball later, they were advancing into the next room, with Migli – now that the danger had passed – once more close at their heels. Here, they saw a huge chamber, quite princely in its dimensions. But it hadn’t been furnished with fine chairs or tables or anything else. Great torture devices lined the way. Cages, with shivering goat men and women imprisoned inside hung from the ceiling. An iron maiden sat against a far wall, and a rack lay to the side of the room. In the central area sat a great, blazing firepit with an iron grate over it. A stand housing a whole slew of horrible looking prongs and tongs sat to the side. They put a shiver up Jack’s back. But nothing like the shudder he got from the iron manacles spaced at four separate, equidistant points along the iron grate. The spot was unoccupied at the moment, but it didn’t take much imagination to figure out how those manacles over a firepit had been used: some poor devil had been chained up and roasted on the iron grate. Probably, he figured, many poor devils over the years.
I just hope I don’t end up one of them. Then, brushing this rather horrible thought aside, he moved to leave the room.
“We should free the prisoners,” Er’c whispered.
“We should get out of here,” Migli said.
They were both right, but Jack opted for Migli’s route first. “We’ll free them once we kill Krampus.”
Er’c looked like the answer didn’t sit well with him, but he nodded all the same. “Right.”
They moved on, and a few of the prisoners cried for them to stay and help. “I didn’t mean to burn his plate,” someone said.
“Please: let me go.”
Migli shushed them rather brusquely. “Be silent, fools.”
“We’ll be back,” Er’c promised.
“Be careful,” one of the goat creatures said. “He’s in there, but he’s very angry. Something’s happened.”
Jack headed deeper into Krampus’s lair. The next room seemed to be a kind of office. A desk and chair faced the two doors. Broadcasting equipment sat on the desk, and shelves of books lined the wall. A small, portable rack sat folded up against the wall. For all your on-the-go torture needs, Jack tho
ught sourly.
On the far wall, he saw a large glass window and a control panel. Jack headed to the window, and saw with a measure of surprise that he was looking out at the same great chamber that they’d stepped into not so very long ago – the room where the floor had given out, and plunged them into pits.
He glanced at the buttons on the control panel. They were labeled with runes, or pictographs. He couldn’t be sure which. Some seemed to depict trap doors. Others looked like water and fire.
He pressed a button marked with a curious circle, filled with odd symbols. In the great room, a hole opened in the floor directly inside the doorway. “Sugar. I guess we know how we ended up in the pit,” he said.
“That’s what got you – you, Ceinwen, Arath and Karag. But Migli and I fell into a room of mirrors,” the orc boy said. He pointed to a different rune, this one an oblong. “I’ll bet this is it.” He pressed it, and a new hole opened in the floor, a few feet from the first.
Migli shuddered, and Er’c nodded in a satisfied fashion. “Sure enough.”
“What about Shimmerfax?” Jack wondered. The last he remembered, the battlecorn had been with the party right before they all plummeted to their various prisons.
“I don’t know,” Er’c admitted. “I saw you four fall, and then I was falling myself; I didn’t see what happened to poor Shimmerfax.”
“Well, we should move on,” the dwarf said, jutting his thumb toward the other room and adding, “before we wind up like those poor fools.”
Jack nodded. Migli’s phrasing left something to be desired, but he wasn’t wrong, either. Krampus would know they were here. He had to. And the longer he had to plan a welcome, well, the worse it would go for them. So they headed to the second of the two doors in the room.
This opened into a huge hall, lined with marble pillars that ran from the floor to the great, vaulted ceiling. The marble columns had been carved into a terrible medley of monsters. The tallest comprised the bottom of the pillars: great, hideous gargoyles, and multi-headed serpents, and horned beasts that all stood taller than any man. The sculptors had carved smaller beast perched on their shoulders – lesser demons, satyrs and grotesque, animal-like figures, all of whom stood about as tall as Jack. And a level above, on their shoulders, rested a third and smaller crew of demons. Child-sized monsters, cruel wolves and great rats adorned the tops of the pillars. They all had their hands and paws upraised toward the ceiling, as if supporting it.
