Chapter Sixteen #3
The RATS glanced at each other.
“The other monsters,” clarified Orphir. “Not the people. Dolts.”
“They’re people,” whispered Bait.
The RATS withdrew and shut the door. The cacophony of the Denizens grew louder still.
Orphir drew his dagger. “Then if it’s some comfort, know that you’ll be one with them in death.
I’ll mix your essence with theirs. I’ll conjure a better Aldebara than you’ve ever been.
” He put the dagger to Bait’s throat and drew blood.
“This is best for everyone. This is the only way you’ll ever be useful. ”
“No,” she said.
And she howled like a beast, adding her voice to the chorus that echoed off the stones.
The howling of the Denizens terrified the ordinary folk of the castle.
The courtyard emptied, ceded to the monsters.
Sir Rudyard hurried off to gather any guards that might be personally loyal to him, although they’d be no match for the RATS.
Nala and I huddled in an archway, watching the South Tower.
“Have you a weapon?” she asked.
I did not.
She drew back her cloak, and a thin blade gleamed. She advanced across the courtyard, brave in the sunlight.
The door of the South Tower opened and several RATS emerged.
Nala remonstrated with them; whether she tried to appeal to their better selves or if she merely sought to delay them in their bloody task, I do not know.
All I can say is that one of the RATS struck first. One blow knocked the blade from her hand, another sent her sprawling to the ground, stunned.
Blood sprayed from her mouth, staining the stones.
The minotaur grunted. RATS quailed.
Two of them picked up long spears. They vacillated, fearful of attacking the mighty minotaur.
Instead, they turned on the old bloodbeast squatting in the corner. He squealed in agony.
Only I spoke the Dungeon Tongue; only I could hear the meaning in what others heard as a monstrous squeal.
“You call those spears? In my day, we’d have called ’em toothpicks! Come closer and I’ll bite your—” His last words were drowned in a gurgle as the spear skewered him. Monstrous ichor gushed across the cobblestones, mixing with Nala’s blood.
The minotaur grunted again in distress. The RATS, heartened by the ease of their first kill, moved on to the next Denizen.
I crept forward to stand in the minotaur’s shadow.
“I told you once,” I said to him, “that I know no spell that can restore you to your original form. I cannot roll back the changes that have befallen you. But I can make a spell to make you anew again. Once more I have a body. I have fingers that can trace glyphs, a throat that can speak incantations.”
He stared at me, uncomprehending. If he’d lifted his tail and dropped a load of dung right there, it would have been fair comment. There was no need for a speech. I was malingering.
“What will come out of this spell, I do not know. I pray you, remember my sacrifice to others.”
I raised my hands to begin the spell, then stopped.
“I have no ready source of magic here, you understand. If we were in the Dungeon, I could draw on the ambient sorcery. But here . . .”
I glanced over at the South Tower, almost hoping that the guards might notice me. Heroic self-sacrifice is all the harder, you understand, when there’s no time pressure. It would have helped if someone was rushing over to stop me.
“Here all I have is my own self, conjured through sorcery. I’ll unravel the spell that created that and use the metaphorical thread to knit you a new mind.”
I raised my hands once more, stopped once more. I had been Master of the Dungeon, once. I had responsibilities.
“And don’t just save Bait. Save all of them.”
It would be self-serving, not to mention stomach-churning, for me to describe the experience of unravelling my own body. I’d like to say I bore it with dignity, but you probably heard my screaming echoing around the courtyard.
My second death was, if anything, less graceful than my first.
I did not know if unmaking my conjured body would also destroy the older wild magic that animated my skull.
There was every possibility that I might die heroically, and I’d like that taken into account.
Indeed, as my body melted, everything went dark, and I thought, this is it.
Goodbye, goodbye. Farewell, oh world, I do regret many things, but not this.
Then I thought wait, actually I could have just robbed magic from the South Tower instead of heroically sacrificing myself. I do wish I’d thought of that earlier.
Then I thought, I’m having a lot of thoughts for a dead man. I wonder why I can’t see anything.
The reason was that my eye sockets were full of what I shall tactfully describe as goo. The minotaur reached down and plucked me from the wreckage of my own body, and with his long cow tongue he licked me clean. I was a bare skull again.
With infinite gentleness, he placed me atop the roof of the stables.
Out of the way, where I would be safe.
Very carefully, he stepped over Nala’s unconscious form.
Then he tore the castle apart.