Chapter One #2
“I have done as I was commanded,” said the gargoyle.
“If you still have a complaint, you may take it up with the Master of the Dungeon. But I warn you, I am the guardian of the tower, and while Orphir resides there I am bound to protect him.” And with that, he raised his weathered head.
Two obsidian eyes stared unflinching into the dragon’s one.
Nithscalpa was wounded. His fires were low. And there was no good eating in a stone gargoyle.
“I will not forget this insult. Or the one who delivered it.”
Throte brushed the ash from his wings, gave a stiff bow and stomped off down the corridor.
With a sulphurous snort, Nithscalpa slithered back to his bed.
He coiled up, laying his head on his tail, and twisted about until he found a position comfortable for his swollen and tender eye socket.
The entire mountain shook as he tossed and turned.
Mighty beyond compare is the sulk of a dragon.
Slowly, he drifted towards sleep. When dragons sleep, they sleep for a long time, and brood upon their hoard. Sleep would heal his wounds.
He did not notice a single shape bobbing amid the sulphurous fumes and stalactites near the roof of his lair, and neither did Throte.
Many eyes watched the gargoyle’s departure.
I was busy contemplating the new crack in my wall when there came a knock at the door of my tomb. I would have frowned if frowning was an option.
“I can hardly get up to greet you so you might as well come in.”
The door only scraped open a fraction. I caught sight of glittering obsidian and stony snout.
“Mind this,” said Throte. “And say nothing.” He thrust something into my tomb and shut the door again.
The something was a human child, maybe two or three years old.
She stood there, swaying on her chubby legs, then sat down heavily.
She appeared infuriated by this, as if her legs were disobedient.
Her face was – well, my first impression was that her face was fleshy, but that’s what I thought about all humans those days.
Let me retroactively correct the observation, and say that her expression was intent, as if her whole being was focused on a point about six inches ahead, and that she would puzzle out all the secrets of that point no matter what.
It was pitch dark in my tomb, but still she stared intently, and I almost wondered if she too could see in the dark.
She was bleeding from several small wounds, but they too did not discomfit her. They discomfited me – the smell of human blood attracts trouble in the Dungeon. Fortunately, Throte had closed my door solidly.
Presently, she clambered back to her unsteady feet and toddled around my tomb, feeling her way through the dark with outstretched hands. There was not much to disturb, other than my old bones. She disturbed them. Stubby little fingers went straight into my right eye socket.
“Stop that,” I said.
“No,” she said.
I couldn’t tell if she had not understood me, or if she was disobedient and wilful, or both.
“Stop that, or there will—”
“No.”
“I am the archmage Cornelius and I—”
“No.”
She was correct there, I must admit. I was the archmage.
“You—”
“No.”
Conversation continued in this fashion until Throte returned.
“A human child.”
“The dragon stole it and brought it to Master Orphir,” said Throte, “and then Master Orphir told me to bring it to the dragon.”
“There seems to be an unnecessary step in there between kidnapping and supper.”
Carven brow cannot furrow, but I could tell he was deep in thought. Throte was so old that for him to think a new thought required effort. “Orphir did something to the child first. He took blood from her.”
“There are countless arcane rituals that might use an innocent’s blood, none of them pleasant. But why did you bring the child here, instead of doing as commanded?” The child had, at this point, curled up to rest her head against Throte’s clawed foot.
“I do not know,” he admitted after a long time.
“I am bound to serve the Master of the tower, whoever that might be. That command was graven into my heart when I was carved, and never have I disobeyed it until now. I am guardian of the tower. I have defended it against many intruders. But . . .” he curled his massive hands into fists.
“They were all worthy foes. Each took their life and gambled it fairly. This human is . . . unworked stone. An infant. This . . . this is unfair.”
“I meant here, to my tomb, instead of anywhere else in the Dungeon.”
“You were human,” said the gargoyle slowly.
“What has that to do with anything?”
“You know how to . . .” he waved a stony claw at the child. “How to human.”
“Many begged to differ. Some differed with swords, if you recall.”
Throte nodded. “Where else can I take it?”
“Well, if you’re not giving it to the dragon, and you’re not going to let some wandering monster have it, I suppose you could bring it back to human lands.”
“I cannot stray so far from the tower.”
“Well, I can hardly take it. You’re sure you want to keep it alive?”
The gargoyle rumbled a growl, which surprised me.
“All right. Then . . . then bring it to the goblins. They might not eat it. Not immediately, anyway.”
Throte considered that proposal for what felt like a long time, then said, “I shall bring it to the trapsmiths.” He scooped the sleeping child up in his claws. “Then I must return to the tower.”
I considered that proposal for a much shorter period. “You can’t just drop a human child in front of the goblins and walk away! You’ll need . . .” I gritted my teeth, which was one of the few gestures still available to me. “Take me along. I’ll explain it to them.”
With me in one hand, and the sleeping child in the other, Throte hurried to the Trapsmiths’ Arcade. Every pebble of him wanted to return to the wizard’s tower atop the Dungeon. A gargoyle deprived of its perch is like a man who needs to relieve himself. He shuffles, he fidgets, he moves with haste.
The Trapsmiths’ Arcade . . . Imagine, if you will, a great vertical shaft like a well in the Dungeon’s depths.
It’s hard to tell how deep it goes, even if you’re a Denizen who can see in the dark.
A crossroads of the underworld – a dozen corridors and three levels meet here.
Bridges – some of ancient stone, some of rickety timber or rope or yellowed bone – span the well to connect these subterranean roads.
Stairs spiral along the walls, made slippery and treacherous by the snail-trail rivulets of water that trickle down the walls, tasting of mountain rock and soil and spilled blood.
Damp air breeds eerie fog. There’s a little light here, shed by goblin torches that flicker greenly.
A good spot for both lurking and looming.
Now, imagine that a tribe of industrious mice gnawed the walls of the well and the surrounding corridors for centuries, excavating dozens of little tunnels and hiding holes.
The Dungeon Denizens – the monsters doing all the lurking and looming – are for the most part too big to enter these side tunnels.
Certainly, a gargoyle like Throte would have struggled to fit his head into a goblin tunnel, let alone the rest of his body.
My head’s smaller and I had already left my body behind – I am one of the few Denizens to have been inside the goblin warren, and I knew it to be warm and snug.
Such things don’t matter to a skull, but they do to the living.
I could think of few places in the whole Dungeon better suited to a human child than the Trapsmiths’ Arcade.
Apart from, of course, the trapsmiths.
Everyone in the Dungeon knows the goblins.
They sprout from the scrapings of church bells and old door hinges, from rotting meat and fetid mushrooms. They have sharp teeth and clever hands, and a knack for making and fixing things, especially things that are also sharp and clever.
Concealed spikes, hidden needles, secret doors, triggers for pit traps.
Every Denizen wants a goblin trap or three to guard their lair.
The Arcade appeared deserted when we arrived, apart from a pair of trolls hurrying along an upper corridor.
Throte squatted down, hunching his shoulders forward to hide the human child and me beneath his stone wings.
The bigger troll sniffed, scenting the child’s blood on the air, but a glare from Throte hurried him along.
Throte clapped. Out came the goblins. Dozens upon dozens of them, and no two alike.
On average they were three feet tall. On average they had two arms and legs, two ears and eyes, and a great many sharp teeth.
Some carried trays laden with trinkets and petty treasures, or well-worn tools, or schematics for traps, or suspicious meats on sticks.
They crowded around Throte, pawing and tugging at his stony knees.
The gargoyle was a rare sight on this level of the Dungeon – and a human child, even rarer.
They tried scrabbling up his legs to reach her, but Throte waded through the crowd and shook them off.
“Is it a present?” the goblins cried. “Is it a meat?”
“No,” said Throte. “It’s a human.”
“Humans are meat.”
“It’s not to be eaten.”
“Whyever not?” the goblins chorused.
This, I felt, was my moment to shine. Talking, after all, was one thing I could still do, and I had been preparing my speech while Throte carried us through the corridors.
It was eloquent, compelling, calibrated to appeal to the goblin audience while still packed full of abstruse historical allusions. I was rather proud of it.
“Because,” I began, whereupon a daring goblin knocked me from Throte’s grasp and threw me into a corner. A concealed trapdoor popped open in the ceiling just above Throte, and clever hands snatched the child away from him.