Chapter Nine #6
There’s also the eastern dungeon, below the Chasm Hall and beyond the caves.
A crevasse splits the Dungeon in twain between west and east. The upper dungeon, that is – the lower levels all connect up, but not even I know all the turnings of that labyrinth.
The crevasse leads to the surface, and on the lip of that precipice stands Yrn Kyos’ Tower, the Master’s Tower – and around and behind that, unscalable mountains and cliffs and unpleasantness.
The only way to reach the tower, therefore, is to pass through the caves, reach the foot of the crevasse, and then climb up the nearly-but-not-quite unscalable cliffside, or brave the nigh-unsurvivable corridors of the eastern dungeon.
But Nithscalpa had made his lair at the bottom of the crevasse, in the Vale of Mists.
He was not so large when Orphir and I came that way, fifty years ago. He was thin then, no bigger than a house cat, all tail and wings and hate. Recently hatched from some long-dormant egg. The furnace of his belly had not yet kindled, so all he could do was spit acid at us.
I could have wrung his neck then and saved us all the suffering.
But I could have done many things differently.
Now Sir Rudyard and his company followed the same path I’d taken many years before.
They came to the foot of the crevasse. The air was sweeter, a cold mountain breeze from far above – and oh! the glimpse of stars, a tiny patch of sky far, far above. They sank to their knees, gasping and spluttering, giving thanks that they had survived the passage of the caves. They were alive!
Then they heard it. An animal roaring, furious beyond measure, bellowing like a demon. The sound of metal smashing on metal, straining, rattling.
“Is that . . .” Offa mouthed the dragon.
Sir Rudyard tried leafing through his bestiary, but the fumes had turned the pages into an illegible mush.
“It does not sound like, ah, our quarry,” he whispered, “but the foe must be near. Look!” He pointed at deep gouges in the cliffs above, left by the dragon’s claws as it crawled out of its lair like a monstrous bat.
“The moment is at hand,” he whispered, frowning as the distant roaring threatened to interrupt his monologue.
“I have prepared some words.” He took the inspiring speech he had prepared from inside his armour, but mercifully it, too, had been reduced to illegibility. “But perhaps now is not the time.”
Sir Rudyard too sat down and looked up at the little patch of sky.
Far above, over the mountain, dawn was coming, and with it the morning and the promise of breakfast. There, in the dark of the Dungeon, he found he could not remember the taste of eggs or bacon, or the sounds of the castle waking up around him.
He struggled to recall the time when the skies had not been blackened by smoke, when his days had not been endless worries, when it had seemed like the walls of order might endure against the tide of chaos.
Sir Rudyard wanted, very much, to live.
While the company rested, Neb slipped away. Bait had shadowed them since the temple-wraiths. She’d whispered directions, and he’d nudged Rudyard accordingly. She had guided them through the Dungeon, an unseen presence in the shadows.
Now he could see her. There was just enough starlight for him to make out her faintest outline. He had never seen her so tense, so twisted up with fear.
“Careful,” she said. “Don’t touch that.” She pointed towards a cloth-wrapped bundle, wet and bloody. “It’s poison.”
In the distance, the beast roared again.
“That’s my minotaur,” said Bait in a small voice. She wiped her face, then turned to Neb and sniffed, “You smell.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s all right. We’re downwind, here. And remember, Nithscalpa’s blind on his right side, so keep to his right. You’ve got to stab between the gaps in his scales, that’s where he’s softest. And let the others go first, let them get eaten. You’re not to get burnt.”
“I won’t.”
“Third-Sister did. I saw her burn. He wanted to burn me, and got her.” She glared at him. “No more dying.”
“I won’t,” he lied.
“She told me a story once. I can’t tell it to you, cos you don’t speak the Dungeon Tongue, but I’m going to tell it to him, only I’m going to change the ending of it.”
Neb had no idea what Bait was talking about. Greatly daring, he reached out and squeezed her shoulder. She moved like a trap snapping shut, hugging him fiercely and tightly. “No more dying,” she whispered in his ear.
Even though it was neither the time nor the place for such things, he held on a moment longer than he should have.
“I knew it!” snarled Offa, bounding out of the dark, grabbing at them. Neb swung a fist, but Offa was bigger. His elbow smashed into Neb’s face, knocking the boy to the ground. Bait flung herself at Offa, teeth bared. He caught her, slammed her back down.
“Changeling! I knew it! Nonsense about secret entrances, all too bloody easy!”
“Quiet,” she pleaded. “He’ll hear you!”
He kicked her in the stomach. “I heard you, eh? Let them get eaten! Feeding us to the dragon, is it? Luring us down here as bait!” His sword was in his hand now.
“I—” She tried to say I want the dragon dead too, maybe, or some other plea. I’m not what you think I am. But in that moment of terror, she fell back into the Dungeon Tongue, and all that came out sounded like a monstrous snarl.
His face twisted in disgust. “Changeling!” he hissed. “Treacherous monster!” He raised his sword.
And froze.
Caught in a paralytic ray.
“Eye see you.”