Chapter Eleven #2
Nithscalpa’s botched claim to be Master of the Dungeon had cost us dearly.
Even in the old days, when I was Master at the height of my power, flush with new-found magic, and all the Denizens bowed to me, the Dungeon would have been hard pressed to resist this assault.
Now, with so many of the big beasts of the upper levels slain, it was a slaughter.
I lay there on my plinth, unable to do anything except listen.
A crash – that would be the east door of the Gallery of Flints.
Stirge-birds nested there, and I imagined I could hear the frantic beating of their wings as the flock took flight, long sharp beaks like stilettos thirsting for blood.
Then, a series of thumps. The Gallery of Flints no doubt had an annotated entry in some RAS ledger, noting the right weapons to bring to that fight.
Heavily laden weighted nets brought the stirge-birds down.
Another crash as they broke down the west door. Closer still.
I remember looking around my tomb at the remnants of my second life.
The sarcophagus where that wretched slime had sucked my bones.
The footstool where Clove sat. The scrapes left in my plastered wall by the horns of the minotaur.
And, most of all, Bait. Her ragged blanket in the corner, the fading charcoal writing on the wall from long-abandoned lessons, her little collection of treasures from above and below. She’d brought life to my tomb.
They took a sledgehammer to my door. Each dolorous blow cracked chunks from the plaster. Antiquarian Survey, indeed! Brigands and looters, the lot of them.
Then they were in.
They stuffed me into a sack.
I would say “all went dark, and I knew no more”, as a dramatic way to end this section, but, as you know, I can see in the dark. But there was very little to see in there, and the thick fabric muffled all sounds. So, all went sack, and I knew no more.
Bait was deep in the Dungeon, in regions where no living human had ever trespassed – and she would have argued fiercely, then, that she was no living human anyway, she just happened to look like one.
It took a long time for word of the assault to reach her.
One of the new goblins – a particularly frightful young spawn named Fuglog, found her in a red-litten chamber with walls of jacinth.
“Bait! Bait!”
“Shh!” She muffled the larger of the goblin’s mouths. The things that dwelt in the red-litten chamber were not good to wake.
“Come home,” Fuglog whispered through the smallest of his neck mouths. “There’s trouble! The Arcade’s gone! Adventurers! Adventurers came for us!”
She dragged him into a quiet corridor, and listened to his tale of horror.
Fuglog had so much so say, words came pouring out of all four of his functional mouths, and even his vestigial fifth mouth injected the occasional exclamation or wail of woe. Bait had to sift through his jabber, and what she learned was this:
The first assaults on the Dungeon had been bloody for both sides, but in the end it was the RATS who’d retreated.
They’d withdrawn down the mountain. Nixie scouts in the river reported that some of the adventurers had ridden on to Dunshelm Keep in haste, no doubt bearing the spoils of this first incursion, but the others had remained in an encampment at Neb’s village until reinforcements arrived.
Their adventure was not over – this was not a raid, but something more.
They had returned to the Entrance Hall to mount a second assault.
They were bent on clearing the Dungeon. Many Denizens had been slain.
Many more taken prisoner. Clickglee and a handful of other goblins had holed up in a hole on the Sixth, but few of the other denizens of the upper level had escaped.
“Only-Sister?” asked Bait.
“In chains, and muzzled, and her tail docked,” said Fuglog. “The human woman – they thought she was the manticore’s prisoner. They took her too.” “She smells!” added his fifth mouth.
“And Cornish,” continued Fuglog’s first mouth. “Coronation,” offered the second. “Cornewlish,” tried the third. “Mister skull!” clarified the fourth. “His tomb’s been looted.” “Smashed.”
I am not trying to keep you in suspense. Obviously, I survived, or how else would I be here to tell this tale? If I add the occasional embellishment, it is only partly for your entertainment.
I tell it this way because I am a liar, and a scapegrace. Like the carnival barker I was, I stall, waiting for the curtain.
In the time of Yrn Kyos, the Dungeon had three underlords. As the rhyme of the Rule reminds us, Obey ye the lords of the Dungeon: gargoyle and dragon and ghast/ And trouble ye not the Master, he who was first here and last.
The dragon was gone – and anyway, if we’re being precise about such matters, the dragon referenced in the rhyme was not Nithscalpa, but his dam.
The only gargoyle left was Old Throte, and he was bound to the Tower, and would not leave it easily.
And, of course, there had been no Master since Orphir’s departure for sunnier climes.
That left the ghast.
Bait went to the ghast.
*
In all her years in the Dungeon she’d never dared enter those halls claimed by the ghast. I had never gone there either.
Not while I was alive, not while I was not.
Even when I was Master, I told myself that some mysteries were best left unplumbed.
Bait had skirted round them, mapped their boundaries, scoured the corridors for signs of hoofprints.
She’d taken notes in her book, but black spores infested the pages, and she’d torn them out before the mould spread.
We had taught her to survive in the Dungeon, and that means caution. Only a fool – or an adventurer – delves beyond their level.
Now she walked amid fruiting bodies and strange growths sprouting over every surface.
Glowing striated bands on the skin of certain overlarge mushrooms filled the halls with unearthly light.
The air thick with spores, hot like fever.
Faces leered from the fungal murk, and she could not tell if they were being digested or being born.
Bait raised her voice and recited the formal language I’d taught her.
“I ask for permission to enter this lair. I promise not to hunt without your leave, or take any treasure, or do anything except talk to ghast.”
One of the faces spoke. “He is already here.”
The ghast’s long slimy fingers settled on Bait’s shoulders from behind. She’d not heard the ghast sneak up behind her – and she knew that if those fingers touched her bare flesh she’d be dissolved. Only a few rags and the mercy of the ghast lay between Bait and death.
“Human child,” globbered the ghast, “you should not be here.”
Slowly, but insistently, Bait began to turn around. The ghast had to kill her or release her, and she’d entered his lair under the protection of the Rules.
He released her.
She looked up at him.
“I want to talk to you.”
His voice was like slugs dragged across sharp rocks. “No one wishes to talk to me.”
“The Dungeon’s under attack,” she insisted.
“Humans, from the surface. Lots of them. And they know our ways. They’re like a monster you can’t hurt – like their head and all the vital organs are safe up on the surface, and it’s sending these iron tentacles down to hunt us. Break one and it grows more.”
“But they are human still. The Master bound me to watch over the lower levels. No living humans have come here. Except you.” The ghast licked his fingers, as if he could taste some quality about her. “What are you, child?”
“We need your help. They’ve captured Only-Sister, and Cornelius, and—”
“So?”
“We have to rescue them!”
The ghast gurgled words older than the Dungeon Tongue. “These are the Rules,” he said. “The keeping of the Dungeon is the common task of all. I keep the lower levels. Dragon the upper, gargoyle Throte the Master’s Tower. I keep. I wait. I do not rescue. This Yrn Kyos commanded, long ago.”
“If you won’t help me—” said Bait, then stopped. She had nothing that could threaten the ghast. “If you won’t help me, then show me the quickest way out.”
“The dragon,” said the ghast thoughtfully, “is dead. Your doing, yes?”
“Not just me.”
“Oh, nothing is forgotten by the dark. And the kill was yours, not mine.” The ghast settled back on its haunches. “But you did not need to kill him.”
“We.”
A flash of rotten teeth. “You could have left the Dungeon. Fled into sunlit lands where we Denizens do not go.”
“I wanted to stay.”
The ghast chuckled. It was not a pleasant sound.
Indeed, there are fewer less pleasant sounds, and I am including in this accounting “the sound of a dagger penetrating your own ribcage” and the words “oh, it’s you”, both of which I am familiar with from my own experiences.
“You said, Nithscalpa must die. This is power.”
“Will you help me or not?” demanded Bait.
“Follow.”
Bait has never told me what she saw down there.
I do not believe she has spoken of it to anyone.
There are sketches in her book, though, from which I can draw certain inferences.
The ghast, I think, led her down through the fungal caves, through chasms of fecund darkness where even shadows fester.
Down through the shattered foundations of the earth, past silent sentinels whose very existence is only hinted at obscurely in the grimoires of Yrn Kyos. Down beyond knowledge or sanity.
Until at last they came to a sealed door. On the lintel of the door was a human skull, yellowed and ancient, and when it saw Bait it chattered, calling out “nay, nay, nay” until its jawbone cracked. Upon the door was graven the Rune of Yrn Kyos.
The Dungeon was not a prison, but this door had a warden.
I imagine the ghast leaned in close, and whispered in poor Bait’s ear, saying: No Denizen can open the door. The Rules forbid it. Only the Master can open this door.
He said something similar to me, once, when I became Master, but I was a coward.