Chapter Nine #4
For the first time, pinned as she was in the crack, the river shoving her painfully against every rock, she felt fear.
It was not only that she was taking a perilous route in – it was the Dungeon itself that terrified her.
She was entering it like a human, like one of the surface folk, an unwelcome intruder.
She had no lair to retreat to – not the cosy niches of the goblin tunnels with their stink of copper and sweat, not Cornelius’ schoolroom where the narrator of this tale had instructed her with such wit and verve that she might have momentarily forgotten her mortal terror in favour of sudden belated appreciation for his diligent instruction, not the Entrance Hall she’d once claimed as her own. She was a trespasser here.
Icy water splashed in her face, and she couldn’t catch her breath.
The dark beneath the mountain wasn’t soothing any more, it wasn’t welcoming, gently yielding its mysteries through touch and subtle sound – it was the dark of the abyss, the pit opening up before her.
She felt as though a wraith was nearby, that her strength was ebbing away even as she needed every ounce of it just to hold her place against the current.
I don’t want to die, she thought, whatever and whoever I really am, I want to live.
Be like a nixie, Bait thought, and that somehow helped.
She squeezed and shoved and dragged and suddenly she was through, at the foot of the Falls of Night, the waters crashing down on her from far above.
She inched over to the edge of the shaft, where the flow was a little less furious, and began to climb.
The freezing water numbed her fingers so much that she could not grip the stone.
She climbed by bracing herself against the far wall of the shaft, inching up with stiff limbs like a spider.
Sharp rocks dug into her bloodied back. Her knees were a butcher’s block of scrapes and cuts.
It was so very hard. It was so dark she could not tell if she was in the Dungeon or the grave.
Run and hide, said the goblin in her. Goblins avoided effort and strife. Build the trap and wait for your enemy to fall into it. But she could not make a snare big enough to catch a dragon. She had to keep climbing.
Fight, roared the minotaur. But Bait was no warrior. She didn’t even have the strength for this first step, this first obstacle. And the minotaur was gone, anyway. She was alone. No one could protect her.
Gloop, said Gloop, and that helped, too. The corridor slime didn’t think, and thinking wasn’t needed here. She just needed to move, inch by inch, nothing except the next foothold, the next bit of rock. To cling to the face of the waterfall even as the river ripped away everything else . . .
Then, at the top, unseen hands grabbed her and pulled her over the lip. They carried her to the bank of the Buried River, pushing her onto the bank, working the water from her lungs, making her gasp, making her breathe, making her live. Bait, what are you doing here?
“I came back,” said Bait.
“Alone?” asked one of the nixies, wistfully. “We’ve seen you with mortals. Did you bring nothing for us to eat?”
But the leader of the nixies shushed her companion. “Give her a chance to rest. Can you imagine how much work it must be, dragging all those bones around?”
“Unthinkable!”
“So unnecessary!”
“We could always get rid of them,” suggested a third, trying to be helpful. “Drown and join us, Bait. We’ve always liked your name.”
“I need—” Bait rolled over and vomited –
At least, I assume she did. I heard all this later, from Bait and from the nixies, and neither of them added details like that.
To hear them talk, this whole episode could be summarised in a few words.
Bait climbed up the Falls of Night, rested with the nixies a while, then continued on her way.
It was the nixies who mentioned the part about bones being heavy and unnecessary, which I took as a personal attack, while it was Bait who asked me, curiously, if she really would become a nixie if she drowned in the river.
Neither of them put as much emphasis on the physical act of survival.
That is, I suppose, my contribution. I was, then, more and more conscious of my limitations.
Being a talking skull is better than being a silent and unthinking skull, especially if you’re like me and delight in verbiage.
But all my words and wisdom had been utterly useless when it came to the dragon.
I’d become, quite literally, a burden. Mere baggage, to be left behind when Bait set off on this quest of vengeance.
She could have stuffed me into a bag or some such, instead of leaving me with a mopey manticore. But why bring along a talking skull?
*
“I need,” continued Bait, wiping her mouth, “to get down to the Sixth.”
“Good fortune to you, sister,” said the nixies. They helped her stand, retrieved her damp belongings from the water. Then they slipped back into the stream.
“Wait!”
“What is it, sister?”
“I’ve left Gloop in a badger sett down by the riverbank. Will you check on him?”
The nixies laughed. “Assuredly!”
“And—” Bait swallowed. “I’ll be coming back this way after. With surface folk. I need you to promise to let them pass safely.”
The nixies stared at her, watery eyes suddenly hard and cold as ice. Bait stood her ground.
“For you,” they said, “we’ll do this thing.”
She made one necessary detour. First-Sister’s body had begun to rot, but was otherwise untouched by scavengers. Closing her eyes, summoning up a memory of Nala’s lessons, Bait drew her knife. After, she wrapped her precious bundle in heavy cloth, and was careful not to let it touch her skin.
Down she went, through the wraith-haunted temples of the Fifth.
She had to run now, abandoning stealth for haste.
Gossip and rumour spreads as quickly in the Dungeon as anywhere else.
Gravestone-silence unbroken for countless centuries?
Not if you speak the Dungeon Tongue! The shadows like fishwives in the market.
News that Bait had returned would soon reach the dragon’s ears; news that she’d opened a side door was a clap of thunder echoing through the halls. Speed mattered now.
But when she felt an unnatural chill in the air, she slowed.
Stopped.
Bowed.
Gambled.
“There are people coming.” Bait pointed down towards the long-sealed side door. “Living people.”
A ripple ran through the wraiths, like a breath of wind catching a ragged curtain. We hunger.
“You mustn’t take them. You have to let them pass.”
We hunger.
“You didn’t eat me.”
You are of the Dungeon.
“I wasn’t always, was I? And neither were you. Those people coming, they’re your kinfolk. The descendants of your kin. Many, many generations removed, but still your kin.”
Speaking as Bait’s history tutor, I might quibble with this assessment. I would put in a footnote, had I a foot. But I don’t, so I won’t, and neither did the wraiths.
We will not take the living this night.
“Thank you,” said Bait, and ran on.
The door was heavy with centuries, but Bait had grown strong.
“My,” said Sir Rudyard.
Both word and speaker were inadequate to the glories his upraised torch revealed.
Beyond the door was a temple of ophite and obsidian and marble, the faces of forgotten gods glaring down at him.
Dark archways swallowed the torchlight, hinting at unknown labyrinths beyond.
Gold gleamed in the dark recesses; gemstone eyes glittered behind green veils of moss and cobweb.
“My word,” he said, drawing together some tattered bits of authority. “It’s all, very . . . very . . .” He had no more idea how to finish the sentence than he had of how to navigate the labyrinth beyond. He coughed. “Very well. Let us proceed.”
Neb nudged Offa, and Offa took a faulting step towards the middle archway. Sir Rudyard handed him the torch. “Onwards!”
*
The wraiths fled before the living, then closed in behind them.
There’s a special terror in glimpsing a shadowy spectre vanishing just as the light catches it, so you’re never quite sure if you imagined it or not – but you’re absolutely sure, with this cold certainty that crawls down your spine one vertebra at a time to nest in your stomach, that there’s something behind you and you’re not imagining that.
They were herded through the temples. By the end of it, Sir Rudyard’s moustache was white with terror, and Offa was a whimpering ball of cold sweat, but they were all still alive.
Well, almost all. Bait had gone before them, preparing the way, but she couldn’t ward off all peril.
One poor wretch got skewered by a spiker, surviving only by sheer luck when the falling spike glanced off his collarbone.
Another panicked and fled into the darkness; Denizens know what happened to him, but no word or sign ever came back to the world above.
But still, nearly two dozen stalwart humans made it through the haunted halls.
They climbed the west stairs, past halls that stank of manticore, lugging all the supplies they’d brought with them up the steps.
Exhausted, they waded the Buried River and rested on the far side.
There were words and even laughter in the babble of the waters; Sir Rudyard frowned, consulted his bestiary, and decided that the best thing to do was studiously ignore it and make an inspiring speech.
“An excellent beginning!” he began. The blasphemy of his own voice against the Dungeon’s deep silence startled him. Inning . . . in . . . in . . . echoed the corridors. The river giggled.
He tried again, speaking in a stage whisper. “We have entered enemy territory! Be on your guard – but be of stout heart. A, er, well-guarded heart, stoutly . . . stouting. Our mission, our oath, is to watch the border, and not just watch, but guard!”
His rhetoric got away from him there – “guard” was almost a shout, and it too echoed. Guard . . . ard . . . ard . . .