Chapter Seven
The woman’s name was Nala-of-the-Royal-Antiquarian-Survey; so she had introduced herself to Sir Rudyard, and later to Bait.
The child cannot be faulted for thinking it was all one name; she was distracted by the knife at her throat.
The adventurers took Bait to the South Tower and held her prisoner there all through the following day, while Nala-of-the-Royal-Antiquarian-Survey did cryptic operations with powders and glass jars and needles and a droplet of Bait’s blood.
A modest mob, stirred up by Mistress Clove, gathered at the foot of the tower and bayed for considerably more than a single droplet of Bait’s blood.
They shouted and howled, all save Mistress Clove, who sat at the back of the crowd, scraping her kitchen knives off a step to sharpen them.
Threatening as this gesture seemed, it was more an expression of her apprehension than anything else – she knew that Sir Rudyard craved order above all else, and that she would be blamed for this chaos.
All that could save her place in the castle was a quick and clear adjudication that she had been right all along, that Bait was indeed a monstrous changeling, and that Clove had been vigilant and righteous in her actions.
She scraped until knives, nerves and day wore thin. When it became clear that the changeling was not going to be publicly executed anytime soon, the crowd melted away, leaving only a miserable Neb all alone in the doorway of the chapel, wondering what would become of his friend.
The following morning, Sir Rudyard breakfasted with Nala.
The lord of Dunshelm Keep was nervous; the welcome banquet had been overshadowed by the attempted murder, and he feared that a bad report of his own stewardship would be sent back to the king.
He found himself piling up bits of egg like a defensive embankment.
“I, er, well, um,” he ventured bravely.
“The child doesn’t appear to be a changeling,” said Nala. “Exceedingly strange, yes, but human.”
“Of course, of course!” said Rudyard. “I wouldn’t invite some monster into my castle! I know my duty! To hold the ramparts of civilisation against . . . against . . . ah, things.”
“Quite. Tell me, where did the girl come from?”
Rudyard waved his fork towards the mountain. “Lost in the woods. Kidnapped by a wood-hag or somesuch. Rescued her, of course. Looked for family. No sign. Very sad. More tea?”
“She said as much.” In fact Bait had said very little, but, in the last day, Nala’s agents had fanned out across the region, gathering accounts and rumours. She knew more about the events of the previous winter than Sir Rudyard did. “She may be of use to the RAS. I’ll keep her, if you don’t mind.”
Sir Rudyard was only too happy to acquiesce.
*
Bait took the news with less enthusiasm than Nala expected.
“If I was a changeling, I’d belong down below, wouldn’t I?”
“If you were a changeling, child, then you’d belong in a noose. I don’t think either of us want that.”
So began the third phase of Bait’s time at the keep.
All was change and upheaval. Bait was elevated from the lowliest of scullions to the exalted position of Nala’s maid and unofficial assistant, and given quarters in the South Tower.
The other servants looked at her with suspicion; even though the word was put out that she was wholly human, rumours did not cease.
What sort of thing, they muttered, needs an official proclamation that they’re human?
Sir Rudyard also decreed that Bait must not leave the South Tower except in the company of Nala.
The penalty for defying this decree was not specified, but, given how eager Offa and the others had been to mete out justice, it was well that Bait found other amusements in the tower.
Her new duties were much less laborious.
Mistress Clove had piled chore upon chore, but Nala asked for little except never-ending cups of tea or the fetching of books from the sizeable trunk she’d brought with her from the capital, the one with RAS stamped in brass on the lid.
When Nala discovered that Bait could read, she even permitted the girl to borrow some of the histories.
Bliss it was for Bait to curl up on a chair in the unfamiliar spring sunlight, with a book in hand and no one else around.
She found dead people in books much more to her taste than living people; their thoughts and desires were all spelled out clearly on the page, their words not larded with cryptic implications and indecipherable tones, and, most of all, she could skip back or ahead if needed.
If she disliked a king of old, she could kill him by turning two or three pages, and then there was a new cast of lords and ladies.
If she wished to linger, she could reread the same page again and again, as timeless as the Dungeon.
She read on after sunset, her sensitive fingers reading the shape of the inked letters in the dark like she’d navigated by crack and stone-feel below.
Outside the windows of the South Tower, the year spun on.
As she feared, Mistress Clove was punished for her involvement in recent events.
Sir Rudyard took the opportunity to install a new cook, who exiled the old one from her lair.
Clove ended up nursemaid to Ysilde’s newborn, in whom she found no joy.
When she had ruled the kitchen, everyone had feared her; they had flinched and bowed when she made the slightest grumble, and those who had displeased her went hungry.
Now, she was powerless. The infant boy laughed at her when she snarled.
Everyone else ignored her as best they could.
With the resilience of youth, Offa recovered from his injuries.
He became enraptured by the battle-hardened warriors who had arrived with Nala, and spent his days lurking around the South Tower, as if hoping through osmosis to exchange his usual patina of baker’s flour for one of dried blood and iron resolve.
He was disappointed when the adventurers vanished on some mysterious errand.
He slouched back to the bakery, dreams of glory dashed.
Neb returned to his village. One night, he saw Nala’s adventurers making their way up the mountain slope. They bore torches, and long spears, and grim faces.
They were heading for the Dungeon Door.
“Have you met the king?”
“I have.” Nala drew back her ink-stained sleeve and showed Bait an ornate ring. The symbol of a burning torch, inlaid with red and yellow enamel. “He presented me with this when I was inducted into the Royal Antiquarian Society. King Arus is a great patron of scholars.”
“Is he soggy?”
It was Nala’s philosophy that all questions were valid, that the search for knowledge should not be impeded by doubt or fear or hidebound custom, and that any genuine enquiry should be answered as truthfully as possible. Conversation with Bait sorely tested Nala’s commitment to that philosophy.
“No more so than average, I suppose,” she answered, then hurried on before Bait could send the conversation down another blind corridor.
Nala opened one of the leather-bound tomes.
“So much history has been obscured by fear. The Chancellor says that the knowledge of the ancients is a lost treasure, buried in the dark, and it’s our task to bring back the light of learning. ”
“So you’re not treasure hunters then?” Bait had seen the adventurers depart, and had felt a sense of foreboding mixed with glee. The adventurers were dangerous, but so was the Dungeon. She remembered the crack of bones in the manticores’ lair.
“My companions,” said Nala ruefully, “are not motivated by scholarship to the same degree. But I was sent here to bring back knowledge, not gold.”
“Hmph.” Bait sat back. When she was queen, she decided, she’d ban adventurers going into dungeons for loot – but scholarship was another matter.
The more you knew in the Dungeon, the further you could go.
She pointed at one of the illustrations in Nala’s book.
“That one’s marked wrong. That’s not the god Hastur. It’s his high priest.”
“How do you know?”
“He told me. The high priest, not Hastur.” The high priest was a Denizen of the Fifth Level. A pleasant chap. You could have quite a nice chat with him from outside the effective range of his life drain. “He’s a wraith.”
“Ealdufrida—”
“Bait,” insisted Bait.
“How long were you lost in the Dungeon?”
“Never.”
“Well, how long were you down there?”
“Years and years. What was the queen like?”
Nala ignored Bait’s question and produced a scroll case.
From it, she unrolled a map and spread it out across the table.
There, in a grid of black ink squares, was home!
There was the Dungeon, all laid out in precise cartography.
The Dungeon Door, the Hall of Pillars, the Trapsmiths’ Arcade, the little cistern where they’d kept Gloop, the Buried River.
Oh, and there was the Chasm Hall of the minotaur, and Cornelius’ Tomb, and the rest. Corridors she’d walked in the dark now blazed on white parchment.
Secret ways laid bare! Homesickness crashed down on her like a collapsing ceiling.
“How much do you remember?”
“Everything.”
Let us leave the poor child in the castle, torn between above and below, and talk about another topic, to wit: me.
As you doubtless recall, I’d chosen to remain outside the Dungeon Door in case our Bait came home – a brief and uncharacteristic spate of sentiment.
I regretted my decision immediately. At first, the view was an interesting change; instead of the crumbling plaster of my tomb, my eye sockets looked out over the wind-bent sea of treetops, the mist-mantled mountains, the dirt track that wound down the slope, with patches of ancient worked stone poking through like bones, testament to the ancient city that now lay behind and beneath.