Chapter Twelve
To explain, I must go back to what happened after the RATS looted me from the Dungeon.
Like Bait, they threw a bag over my head and brought me down the road to Dunshelm.
Unlike Bait, I was all head; unlike Bait, I was no valuable hostage to be treated gently.
I was loot. I shared my sack with a few glowing mushrooms, the claws of a broken gargoyle and some ancient scrolls from the temple quarter.
At the keep, I was dumped with a trove of other trophies on a table in the South Tower.
From my shelf, I watched blue-cloaked RAS acolytes sort through the debris, looking for objects of magical potency.
The lost coins of Orphir’s hoary metaphor, little nuggets of congealed sorcery.
Across the room was a butcher’s workshop of unlikely meats – the dissected remains of slain Dungeon Denizens.
Mistress Clove might tell you that the proper terms for such butchery are specific to the species, so one might unlace a coney, unbrace a mallard, break a deer, or disfigure a peacock.
Faced with the unlikely creatures of the underworld, the RAS had invented new forms of butchery.
Unwind a hagworm, devalue a kobold, blunt a stirge.
Unroll a troll.
Disarm a goblin.
I do not mean to be facetious. I make jokes to shield myself from the horror.
Those creatures were my neighbours. Some even my friends.
When I was the Master of the Dungeon, I thought of them as monsters – perils to be avoided, minions to be commanded, tools to be used.
I was not one of them. I was only temporarily in the dark.
Then I died. Through a whim of the Dungeon I became a talking skull.
It took me a long time to think of my undeath as meaning a state distinct from either dead or alive, and not just a prolonged and twisted form of death.
It took me a long time to accept that I was still .
. . not alive, but extant, unfinished. At first, I wallowed in cold despair, telling myself that I was gnawed by torments.
Woe is me, I can’t walk, can’t taste, can’t drink, can’t know the pleasures of wine or women.
Slowly, I came to two realisations.
First, without a body, all those pains and gnawing torments were just habits. I did not truly hunger, I just felt like I should be hungry; I did not thirst, I was just used to drinking. All those phantom pains could be dismissed by an effort of will, if I was willing to embrace this new form.
Second, I was one of them now, the Dungeon crew.
I was a Denizen. My human life was behind me, and in retrospect it had been a hollow one.
Racing to stay one step ahead of my creditors, trading on second-hand echoes of an enchanted age, never making anything of worth.
I was as hollow a man as I was a skull. As a Denizen, I could start again.
Bait helped with this; I saw the Dungeon through her eyes, and discovered it anew.
So I lived – after my fashion – for years.
But as I sat on the shelf and watched them dissect the remains of dead Denizens, fear swallowed me. I swore I would cling to my “un” with all the strength left in my old jaws.
I watched as they sorted items into three categories.
There was a junk pile, for things of no worth, no residual magic. Everything from that pile was destined for the castle midden.
There was the Table of Obvious Potency, where they put those things that were clearly magical.
Glowing stones all in a pile, carvings that writhed and twisted when you looked at them out of the corner of your eye socket.
Undeniable magic. All that stuff was bound for the mortar and pestle and the rendering vat.
They’d grind it up, boil it down, chase those elusive wisps of enchantment.
Turn the mystery of the unknown reaches into something tractable. Drag the numinous into the enumerable.
I did not want to end up in either pile. I had no wish to be ground to bone dust, nor did I wish to end up entombed in the shit-pile of this accursed castle. I knew the sort of men who ended up in the border watch: fearsome in battle, fearsome in diet, quarrelsome in bowels. Neither fate appealed.
But there was a middle table, where they put things about which they were uncertain. Things that might be magical, things worthy of further study. To qualify for that table, I needed to appear almost enchanted. Not unmagical.
When they weren’t looking, I’d jawbone myself over a little, shifting my position.
I’d mutter at the edge of hearing. I’d glare at them when their backs were turned – my eye sockets are empty, but they’d still feel the weight of my gaze.
I was quite pleased with myself when one acolyte – Nala, in fact, though I did not know her then – moved me to the maybe pile.
I waited there with my comrades in uncertainty, my merry band of maybes.
Weird mushrooms, an ancient shield, the head of a statue from the manticores’ lair, some scales that could have come from Nithscalpa.
I had no plan, beyond surviving another day.
Orphir swept into the room, for he was Master of the RAS in addition to his thousand other duties, and only he had the expertise to sift through the assortment of uncertainties.
I rather gave myself away when he arrived, for my jaw dropped at the sight of him.
You must understand I’ve known Orphir for more than fifty years – we were students of Master Pentsable together, then mountebanks and alchemists together.
We shared a prison cell, a sentence, a barracks in the border keep.
We set out to the Dungeon together, faced its perils together.
As brothers in arms we braved the tower.
And, yes, I did steal the tower from him, and, yes, he did stab me, but as I said, brothers.
Siblings may quarrel, even hate one another, but the bond remains.
My jaw dropped at the sight of his garments, all ermine furs and robes of silk and golden thread, fingers dripping with rings and jewels.
When we were, sequentially, Master of the Dungeon, the place was sorely lacking in tailoring.
I would have traded anything for a robe so fine as that one.
My jaw dropped yet further when I saw the train of courtiers, generals, messengers, and acolytes who followed after him, hanging on his every word.
Wealth, power, magic – we thought we’d find those things in the Dungeon, but Orphir had them in the surface world.
Now, it must be said that the man had aged terribly, and I speak as a talking skull. At least when my face rotted, worms dealt with it promptly. Orphir concealed his decay beneath a whole theatre troupe’s worth of greasepaint. I no longer slept; neither it seemed did he, but he actually needed it.
He saw me, froze – then let out a low chuckle. He picked me off the shelf.
“Is that mislabelled, your grace?” asked an acolyte.
“Oh no. Absolutely worthless. One can tell by the shape of the skull. This fellow was immensely stupid and untalented. And remarkably ugly.” All his sycophants chorused agreement.
“Shall I have it destroyed, your grace?”
“No. I’ll do that myself.”
*
Orphir destroyed me by taking me to dinner.
His chambers were luxurious by the standards of Dunshelm, in that there was a fire in the grate and clean rushes on the floor.
From the kitchens he ordered up such a feast as to require Mistress Clove’s successor to take down the big recipe books from the top shelf.
From the cellars were fetched fine wines; the serving girls were the comeliest in the neighbourhood.
I was a skull; I could appreciate none of these things.
He perched me on a stool on the far side of the table.
The master of the world – at least, until the rebel armies came over the hill – poured himself a really big glass of red.
“To your very good health, m’colleague,” he toasted.
“Hurtful,” I said. “But not as hurtful as when—”
“We parted on such poor terms—”
“—you threw me into a pit—”
“—that I feel I should somehow make amends—”
“—after murdering me!”
“—recompense, even.”
“Go on,” I said.
“It is good to be the king,” he said, “but better to be the power behind the king. I do what I please, unbound by any law or custom. My knowledge of the Art has grown a hundredfold since we parted, Cornelius. I shaped the affairs of nations. I have taken my revenge on all those who opposed me. Taken my pleasures, too. We set out to find our fortunes, only I succeeded. Now I want to share a portion of that victory with you.”
“Out of the goodness of your heart? I think not.”
“Why is that so hard to believe?”
“Because I know you.”
Orphir swirled his wine, then knocked back half the glass.
“I need your help. Just for a while. I can’t fight this damned rebellion when I’m being called to change Arus’ bloody bedpan or mop his fevered brow every five minutes to keep the old coot alive, and I can’t tend to him while I’m needed to oversee the clearing of the Dungeon, and I can’t make use of the magic gleaned from the Dungeon to put down the rebels because I’m too busy keeping the army from collapsing, and so on and so on.
No problem is intractable in itself, but I cannot solve one while distracted by the rest. I need .
. . what did you once call me? A Grand Vizier. A Deputy Chancellor. An assistant.”
“You have a whole institute full of acolytes.”
“Acolytes and apprentices, yes. But none I can rely on. None who have the long experience and comity of old colleagues. We were comrades once, Cornelius. There’s no one else worthy of my trust.”
“You mean, you don’t dare let any of them look behind the curtain, and see that you’re not the great and powerful archmage. You want me because I already know what you are.”
His voice grew cold.