Chapter Fourteen #2
This was typical of Bait – to her mind, the most notable thing about me was not that I was a talking skull.
“Exactly.”
“Where is Bait?”
“In the keep.”
“Is she a prisoner?”
“Presently – yes.”
His eyes flickered between my borrowed finery, the lack of chains or other impediments and the traces of dinner still visible on my jowls.
“You’re not a prisoner,” he said in a tone that suggested I might make a good hostage.
“The situation is fluid. You are correct in that I am not presently incarcerated, although I am no stranger to the inside of a cage, and have no intention of letting our Bait remain in one a moment longer than can be helped.”
“I’ll rescue her,” he declared.
“Unless you have an army hidden in that cloak,” I said, “attempting to do so would be folly. The castle’s stuffed full of guards, and you’ve no one to guide you through the dangers this time.”
“I’ll come back with an army,” he swore, “if I must.”
“I take it, as you’re lurking with intent outside, that you’re with the rebels. I am, too, in spirit, but we must be cautious and clever. Tell me, how close are they?”
“A day’s ride.”
“How many soldiers do they have?”
“Enough to take the keep, if they must.”
His courage was admirable. His grasp of tactics less so.
“I know Orphir, and he does get a bit murderous when he feels trapped. At best, it’ll be a victory drenched in the blood of prisoners like our dear Bait, and everyone else in the castle, too, friend and foe alike.
And that’s assuming you win, which is far from a foregone conclusion.
More likely, it’s a slaughter on both sides, with Orphir winning on points. ”
“I cannot stand idle!”
“Well, sit down then. Let me think.”
We sat side by side on the damp grass as dusk closed around us. The mountains in the distance were a deeper black against the starry sky. Looking up, I thought I saw a tongue of flame near the Dungeon Door. Neb saw it, too.
“A dragon?” He shuddered.
“The RAS. Excavating the Dungeon.” I was briefly fascinated by the sensation of the dampness of the grass creeping through my robe to chill my bottom.
I had missed out on so many sensations as a skull.
To be alive is a cornucopia of wonders, if only one notices.
“To be honest, magic’s the problem. It renders conventional tactics rather useless.
Orphir’s gathered more sorcerous power that any wizard in hundreds of years.
I don’t know what’s he’s capable of, morally or magically. ”
Neb jumped up. “Then I shall slay him!”
“The last person to try that ended up a bull. I think, for now, the best thing to do is tell your rebel friends to hold back. Stay out of sight in the woods. I have the run of the castle – I’ll see what I can learn about Orphir’s intentions, and the castle’s defences.
Maybe I can do for you what Bait did in the dragon’s lair, eh? ”
Alas, he trusted me. He swore that he would tell the rebels to do exactly as I’d suggested, and he’d wait for my signal. He dashed off into the night, leaving me on the soggy hillside to contemplate the metaphorical treasure I’d found by chance.
I was now in possession of vital intelligence about Orphir’s foes, their numbers and disposition.
I could go up to the Chancellor’s room – a light still burned in his window, so he was doubtless still hard at work web-weaving and scheming – and say to him, esteemed colleague, the rebels are lurking only a short distance away in the woods, so we must prepare for their assault, or sally forth and take them unawares, or maybe brew up a blasting-spell or whatever works best. With this betrayal, I reaffirm our old partnership – let us be kings together, the secret masters behind the throne of our puppet queen. And then we could cackle in symphony.
Equally, on the other side of the coin, I could do as I’d suggested to Neb.
I could find some weakness in the keep’s defences, find allies among the castle’s defenders, sabotage Orphir’s schemes, bring down the corrupt Chancellor, long live the revolution, down with the king and so forth.
Heroic, but unprofitable even if it worked.
Both options carried terrible risk. If I backed Orphir, and the rebels carried the day, I’d hang alongside him.
If I aided the rebels, and Orphir still won, then I did not doubt he would take special pains in finding a suitably grisly fate for me.
Killing me and throwing my skull down a well would not be enough this time.
Now that I had skin again, I was minded to save it.
But how? I sat there under the stars, turning the matter over and over in my mind.
I had spent so long as an immobile skull, a piece of bony baggage to be carted this way and that or stored on a shelf, that it was strange to have any influence over my own destiny.
All choices seemed equally perilous. Like a man lost in a dungeon maze, I’d pick one door, and then instantly think of a hundred reasons why danger was doubtless lurking behind that door and I should take another route.
Back and forth, back and forth, and after long hours of contemplation all I achieved was the first head cold of my second life.
My ruminations were interrupted by a ruminant.
In the early hours of the morn, horsemen in RAS livery emerged from the mists, and a prisoner in chains behind them.
They’d found it not in the Dungeon, but outside, roaming in the forest. Lost, confused, blinded by the sun.
Despite its prodigious size and strength, there had been no need to fight the creature.
It seemed childlike in demeanour. The only time it had grown aggressive was when they’d manacled it; the sight of chains disturbed the titan’s calm, and three RATS had been smeared across the hillside before they’d got a halter around its neck.
The monster seemed barely cognisant of its own impossible strength.
Once bound, it bowed its horned head and wept, but fought no more.
They’d led it down the mountain and through the woods to Dunshelm Keep.
I followed the mighty-thewed bulk of my erstwhile employer through the gate of the castle.
Even though the castle staff had become inured to wonder and terror in recent days, ever since a menagerie of monsters took up residence in their courtyard and an equally mythical hierarchy of lords and ladies took up residence in the keep, the arrival of the minotaur still drew a crowd.
Despite the sheer size of the beast, the stench, the slow might of his limbs – there was an undeniable sense, that morning, that things were coming to an end.
A rumour circulated that the Underhalls had been emptied, that there was nothing left in the Dungeon; untrue, but understandable.
The minotaur did seem a monster out of legend, a king of the underworld – and yet there, bound in chains, empty, he seemed pathetic in the wan morning light. The magic of the Dungeon had fled.
The poetic magic, that is. The actual sorcery was very much still there.
Orphir was awed by his own accidental creation.
“It’s a conduit, Cornelius,” he enthused.
“That’s why it grew so powerful. The spell kept working.
It soaked up the magic of the Dungeon, all these years.
A fatted calf, so to speak. Force-fed sorcery.
” He rubbed his hands at the thought of the minotaur’s spell-swollen liver.
His enthusiasm lent animation to his haggard face; I’d spent the night wracked by indecision and fear, but I looked fresh as a toothshroom next to him.
Ah, you don’t have toothshrooms up above. Fresh as a daisy, then. A toothshroom is what it sounds like.
“A testament to my own talent, wouldn’t you say?”
Certainly, the minotaur had grown even since the dragon’s death, piling muscle on muscle, horn on horn.
His hide was marked with a thousand scars, testament to the dangers of the Dungeon – but he was alive, and whatever foes had tested the beast were not.
Savage might matched by the innocence of Peledon’s mind; the beast showed no sign of recognising its surroundings.
I wondered if the minotaur had even been aware of its foes in the Dungeon, or if he’d reacted purely on instinct, swatting them away with a twitch of those massive arms.
“You meant to ruin Sir Peledon,” I pointed out. “Not turn him into an invincible monster.”
He did not appreciate this observation.
“Don’t presume to divine my intentions. And whatever the beast’s origin, its present form is what matters for my purposes.
” He waved his hand in dismissal. “I shall be occupied with research for the day, and I am not to be disturbed. Great works are afoot, and soon we shall be back where we belong, not in this sty of a castle.”
“Which great works, exactly?”
“Mine. My works. Yours are of lesser import. Tell me, have you finished familiarising yourself with the records of the minister of coin?”
I was. The coffers were mostly empty due to Orphir’s fruitless wars, although the treasures taken from the Dungeon had not yet been accounted for.
“Nearly, nearly.”
“The present minister of coin will not be in office for long. You must be able to replace him.” Once, in the more civilised phase of Orphir’s rise to power, that veiled threat would have meant that the minister was about to suffer a cirrhosis of the liver, or a sudden bout of madness, or some other coincidental magic-induced misfortune.
These days, with the whole court trapped in a small castle full of Orphir’s RAS minions, the minister faced a wholly uncoincidental stabbing or some such.
Subtlety goes out of the window in times of crisis.
So might the minister.
I went up to the royal ministry of coin, which was now crammed into a small chamber next to the garderobe in the keep. I tried to work through the minister’s ledgers, but the figures danced before my eyes and meant nothing to me.