Chapter Seven #2
Then came the birds. Some damnable bastard of a rook flapped down and pecked at me, as if some scrap of brain remained in the recesses of my skull.
He knocked me from my plinth into the long grass.
Through resourceful jawboning, I managed to rock myself into a more dignified resting place, although my view was limited to the backside of a gorse bush.
There I remained for several months, while down in the valley Bait terrified villagers (who deserved it), befriended a boy I shall call Valourentius (because it annoys him), attempted the murder of Offa (who didn’t quite deserve it), visited the good squire (fruitless), escaped the murderous paranoia of Mistress Clove (in retrospect, justified) and consorted with enemies (but I’m getting ahead of myself).
That’s a skull joke.
It was in late spring, when the gorse bush had become a riot of yellow-gold that might have been pretty if it wasn’t right in my face, that I heard the tramp of booted feet. There were a dozen of them – feet, that is, which translated to a half-dozen adventurers.
At that point, they still had all their limbs.
I had none at all. My lack of locomotion was an undeniable drawback; I’d grown used to being carried about by Bait.
I considered calling out as the adventurers passed by.
A hearty “hail fellows, well met”, perhaps, to undercut the strangeness of being addressed by a talking skull.
Or I could have played into the guardian of the Dungeon threshold routine, and cried out “abandon hope, all ye who enter here”.
A riddle, too, would be traditional, but in that moment the only riddle I could think of was a rude one about onions.
But I had no idea how these adventurers would deal with a talking skull.
For every Dungeon-delver like Orphir or myself, who entered the underworld seeking knowledge instead of treasure (although, yes, treasure would not have been unwelcome), there were ten who sought only loot, and to such men a talking skull was just another Dungeon Denizen to be slain.
So, I remained silent.
“The Underhalls of Yrn Kyos,” muttered one, “few have returned alive from this pit.”
I was in no position to disagree.
“Map,” ordered another. The rustle of parchment. “Aye, this is the main door. Gargoyles just inside, alcoves left and right. Hammers out!”
I found this unsporting. When Orphir and I came here, we had no maps, unless you count some fragments of lore we’d pieced together from grimoires and crumbling scrolls.
We certainly didn’t have a freshly drawn map with all the perils marked.
We blundered around in suicidal ignorance, as is traditional.
The quintessence of the Dungeon is its unknowability, the mystery of what’s lurking in the dark beyond the next door.
Anything might be down there, peril and wonder entwined for ever.
“Then we make for the stair down to the second level, here. Then along to this well-way – naught to stop us there but goblins. Take it slow and watch for traps. Boar-spears for that part; the little runts hide in holes, it says.”
Another clatter of weapons, like a carpenter selecting the next tool. These adventurers were technically Tunnel Surveyors of the Royal Antiquarian Survey; I suspect that nomenclature came after we started calling them RATS.
“Then down again. The Chasm Hall. We’ll make camp there before the climb down into the eastern halls.”
I was taken aback by how bone-deep my anger ran.
I’d never really thought of myself as a Denizen.
First, I was an intruder in the Dungeon.
After I claimed the Tower of Yrn Kyos I was, for a while, the Dungeon’s master.
In that time, my relationship with the Dungeon was much like that of old Yrn’s – we were hermits in the wild wood, throwing the occasional scrap to the wolves prowling outside our door.
Even after Orphir relieved me of tower, life and limb, I still considered myself a sort of master emeritus, a detached observer of the Dungeon instead of someone who dwelt there.
But seeing these adventurers, these RATS, march in forewarned and forearmed infuriated me.
There was nothing I could do, however. I lay there with a face full of gorse and listened to the grinding cry of the gargoyles, the crunch of hammers on stone, until the last crash and the sudden silence, broken only by the sound of fighting men gasping for breath, or coughing in the clouds of stone dust thrown up by the destruction of the guardians.
One of the adventurers was injured. I could hear him whimpering, hissing, “Bind it! Bind it!” through clenched teeth.
One never forgets the sound of gushing arterial blood.
And that’s only the first room of the First Level, friends. There’s worse below.
The sound of their footsteps was just the first part of them to die away inside the mountain.
Bait’s time with Nala was brief, but they became friends.
The close confinement helped – everyone in the castle now feared Bait, and Nala was a stranger in those lands, so they were forced into each other’s company.
But more, Nala did not treat Bait as a child, and Bait, having no idea how a child should be, was more comfortable as an oddity.
It helped, too, that their chief topics of conversation included:
“Where might I find runes like these?”
“The Fourth Level, in the lair of the manticores.”
Or
“What lies beyond the Chalcedony Door on the Seventh Level?”
“A room of statues. They’re all hiding their faces, like they’re weeping, all but one.”
Or
“What’s the Dungeon Tongue word for a hagworm?”
Normal topics that Bait could easily comprehend, instead of Mistress Clove’s demands or even Neb’s well-meaning but confusing mumblings.
Nala recorded her answers solemnly in a leather-bound ledger, and promised that these notes would one day be enshrined in the great Royal Antiquarian Library.
It was curious for Bait to be part of something larger.
“I feel like a stone in a wall,” she observed one day.
“What do stones feel like?”
“Solid. Secure. They know where they belong, and what they have to do.”
“And what’s that?”
“Keep the wall up. Watch. Share secrets.”
Nala laughed. “How does a brick share secrets?”
Bait closed her eyes and ran her fingertips over the rough wall of the tower. “Like this. Twenty-four stones to the door from here. Then it’s thirty-three steps down to the courtyard.”
“Did the stone tell you that?”
Bait nodded.
“The leading theory at the RAS,” said Nala, “is that magic lingers in places where the psychic imprint of the old empire is still intact. Hence, abandoned ruins, lost cities, islands that have gone unvisited for centuries. That’s why you get all sorts of strange creatures in dungeons.”
“Like what?”
“Floating eyeballs and talking skulls. Not unusual to you, maybe, but to the rest of the kingdom they’re very strange.”
Outside the window, a swarm of creatures gobbled green worms that sprouted from the ground. Those were the creatures that grew clothes on their backs, not the ones that squirted cheese. Strange, thought Bait, was a matter of perspective.
“The purpose of this survey is to bring back relics and fragments that might retain a trace of this imprint. A thaumaturgical field, that’s what the Chancellor called it.
If such a field could be re-established elsewhere, then who knows what feats of magic might be possible?
” Nala rested her chin in her hand. “Recovering the works of the ancients, bringing about a magical renaissance! That’s the dream, Bait, not dragging a few coins out of the mire.
Building an empire of wonders, that’s what we’re doing here.
” She drummed her fingers on her cheek, which was the only cheek that Bait had ever seen free of pockmarks or scars or grime.
“You know,” Nala said thoughtfully, “you might have the makings of a genuine sorcerer. You spent a long time immersed in the thaumaturgic field, after all. You’re certainly worth further study. ”
Bait felt suddenly nervous. She stared at the mapped corridors of the Dungeon, as if by force of will she could transport herself back to the familiar, sheltering confines of the Arcade or the Chasm Hall.
In some distant part of her mind, she recalled needles and pain.
“Now?”
“Oh no, and not here.” Nala smiled. “When the expedition returns from the Underhalls, it’ll take me a few days to sort through the initial findings. Then it’s all going back to the capital, to the Antiquarian Institute. We’ll leave just after midsummer. Bait, would you be willing to come with us?”
The Antiquarian Institute was in the capital.
The palace was in the capital.
Her father the king was in the capital.
Tell them who you are. Tell them Sir Peledon sent you. Tell them to bring you home.
If the sight of the Dungeon map had been a cave-in, this was a pit trap yawning beneath her.
She clung to the lip of the metaphorical chasm, dangling above an unknown future.
What would it be like to leave the Dungeon behind?
To go to the far-off capital, and meet other humans?
Family, even, bound to her by ties of blood – which sounded more gory than any claw or tentacle in the Dungeon.
What would they demand of her? She tried to imagine the court, and all that came to mind was a great host of Cloves bedecked in jewelled gowns, of Offas both lesser and great, all baying for her death.
In that moment, she would sooner have faced the manticores again than go to the capital.
But.
Finger by finger, she let go.
King Arus needed her. For seven years he’d wept, believing her to be dead. She couldn’t leave him in soggy suffering. That was one finger.
She could be brave. That was another.
Nala would be there, and she liked Nala. A third.