Chapter Eleven #4
Arterial blood, by the by, sparkles like rubies even in wan autumnal sunlight.
We tried anyway. Floor by floor, horror by horror.
Seven of us stepped over Something’s corpse.
Orphir and I hiked up our wizard’s robes to avoid trailing our skirts through the gore.
We slew the thing of knives and shadow, but worse awaited us as we climbed.
I think there were five of us left by the third floor, and only two by the time we made it to the topmost level.
Yrn Kyos was long gone – we found a suspicious patch of mould in a bedchamber on the fifth floor – and his throne lay empty.
The Master’s chair was carved of black stone and covered with intricate carvings that might have been a map of the whole Dungeon.
It was glorious, and imposing, and enchanted – and rather narrow. Only one of us could sit there.
And between us and the throne was Throte.
The gargoyle squatted on the windowsill, daring us to cross the gulf between the top of the stairs and the Master’s throne.
It was only a few feet, but the gargoyle’s arms were long, his claws sharp, and the last of our hired swordsmen was bleeding out on the floor below.
“Only the worthy may pass,” intoned Throte, “and I fear I must say that you are not. If you would be so kind as to step forward, I shall eviscerate you as neatly as possible. If you force me to chase you down the stairs, I shall be displeased. In my experience, it’s hard to get the blood out of all the little corners on the steps. ”
We ducked back down the stairs to confer.
“We could try a spell,” suggested Orphir. “There’s power enough here, I feel?”
“Absolutely,” I agreed, “and if that gargoyle were so charitable as to give us a few years to practise channeling that sorcery, I’m sure we could do something impressive with it.
I don’t see how it avails us now. I was counting on having a few meatshields left at this point, but the dolts keep dying. ”
“A spell we can work now, then,” said Orphir. “One of the classic incantations – if they’re going to work anywhere, it’s here.”
“The Charm of Forlorn Encystment?”
“Only works if the target’s standing on solid earth,” said Orphir. “The Irresistible Kindling of Pyroclastic Evocation?”
“If you believe the histories, that spell produces enough of a blast to level the whole tower. Now, I admit, the last time you tried that it didn’t produce enough of a spark to light a candle – but I’d still prefer something less risky to life and limb.”
The dying sellsword gurgled something. Orphir frowned at the interruption.
“Timon’s Sovereign Macabre Resurrection?”
“Requires an intact corpse. His arm’s hanging on by a thread.” Orphir snapped his fingers. “What if we both try the Azure Chains!”
I racked my brains to recall Pentsable’s lecture.
Given such a riveting topic as the theory and practice of reality-violating sorcerous secrets inherited from a vanished empire, it must have taken real talent on Pentsable’s part to make his lessons so dull.
“I think I remember it.” It was one of the few spells that we’d managed to eke out in the lowlands, even if the bonds we’d conjured there could barely restrain a determined duckling.
But Orphir was right – there was power here. We could both taste it.
“The Azure Chains, then,” I agreed. “You’re a better sorcerer than I – you draw the first node, and I’ll follow after.”
Orphir went first.
I didn’t follow after.
He chanted words of power. He conjured brilliant blue chains around Old Throte. It was terribly impressive – by the admittedly low standards of the modern age. It might have even held the gargoyle. But I was not inclined to trust in anything or anyone.
I ran right for the throne and settled my arse in it.
That’s how I became Master – through sacrificing others, through betraying friends, through technicalities and loopholes. It was far from worthy.
Bait stood before the tower all alone.
*
Between Bait and the empty throne were all the levels of the tower.
When I was Master, after the few years of practice in channeling power (which actually turned out to be a few decades), I’d replaced the tower’s guardians.
Orphir had done the same. A host of things of shadow and knives awaited poor Bait on every floor.
So she avoided the floors. There were windows six storeys above her. She climbed the outside of the tower, nimble fingers digging into cracks in the ancient mortar.
One level, two, and the wind caught her, rushing past her with the fury of a dragon – but she was a girl who had slain dragons, or at least arranged their deaths, so she hung on, and climbed.
Two levels, three, and the chasm yawned beneath her, a three-storey fall only the of foretaste what awaited her if she slipped.
If she slipped from any of three sides of the tower, she’d break on the rocks and then tumble down the cliffs; the other fall on offer was shorter but no less lethal, a plummet into the crevasse above Nithscalpa’s lair.
Her bones and the dragon’s bones would lie entangled in the Dungeon for ever, and she did not want that.
Three levels, four. Spirits pressed themselves against the glass, demon faces leering, demon voices calling.
Any normal intruder might have been so terrified as to willingly cast themselves into the void.
Bait was steeped in the horrors of the Dungeon, and so they did not frighten her unduly. She climbed past them.
Four levels, five, and Old Throte came crawling down the tower wall towards her like a stone lizard.
As a courtesy he enfolded her in his broken wings to ward off the wind, so they could converse in as civilised a manner as is possible for an ancient gargoyle and a strange child who both clung to the exterior of a wizard’s tower in the midst of howling winds.
“What are you doing here, Bait?”
She pointed away down the mountain, to where human lands nestled in green.
“You see it from up here, don’t you? You can see the RAS coming.
They took Cornelius and Only-Sister and lots of the other Denizens.
” She shrugged as best she could while clinging to the tower. “Something has to be done about that.”
“I am bound to defend the Master’s Tower against all intruders,” intoned Throte. “Leave this place, child, and we shall have no quarrel.”
“I’m not in the Master’s Tower, am I?” argued Bait. “I’m outside it.”
She squeezed past him and kept climbing. Throte scuttled after her.
“True enough,” said the gargoyle. “But the instant you cross the threshold, I am bound to stop you.”
“If you wanted to kill me, you could have given me to Nithscalpa years ago.”
“I spared you, child,” said the gargoyle, “for I did not think it right that a creature without wit or wile or claw should be treated as a foe. But know this: you have proven yourself worthy of my respect, and therefore I shall do my utmost to eviscerate you should I catch you.”
“I think,” said Bait, “that you want a good Master for the Dungeon. Someone who cares for this place like Yrn Kyos did. I think that’s why you didn’t kill me when you could have.”
“My own desires cannot sway me. I am bound to obey the Master’s commands.
Thus when you cross the threshold of the tower, I am bound to stop you.
” The gargoyle’s eyes glittered. “It does concern me that if you should enter by the southern window on the fifth floor, it will be more difficult to catch you.”
“That one over there?” Bait stopped climbing upwards and began to inch around the tower.
“That is the very one,” said Throte, “which would be most inconvenience.”