“What happened?”
cried Alliathiune, very much back to herself.
“Some sort of cancellation,”
the Witch replied. “There is a magic about this Keep that prevents dissembling. Our disguise is ruined!”
“Protection,” added
Amadorn. “A subtle trap.”
“So someone wants to identify anyone entering the Keep?”
“Or protect against magic-aided attack, good outlander. And judging by the boots on these stairs, their cries have been heeded.”
“This way,” Snatcher commanded, unlimbering his club. He looked even more fearsome now that his disguise had been dropped.
Kevin bleated, “Where are we going?”
“You idiot, you gave us away!” she hissed.
The Witch grabbed him by the scruff of the neck. She thrust Kevin downstairs at arm’s length, riding his angry counter-swipe with a sharp cackle of amusement. He was far from impressed, but was too busy trying to keep his balance to fight her off effectively.
The staircase swept downward in a steep spiral, cased in ancient dark bricks, which looked as though they had been burned at some point in time.
The railing was bronze decorated with stylised skulls. Dark Wizard décor, he thought. Tasteful. Next they would find skeletons artfully arranged on the walls. They needed to find torches somewhere.
Three-quarters of the way to
the landing below they ran into a posse of Trolls, who had organised an effective shield-wall and were keeping the Lurk at bay with jabbing thrusts of their long spears. Akê-Akê’s arrows felled one or two, but this was no gaggle of green younglings that confronted them. A sharp altercation developed on the narrow staircase as Kevin, Alliathiune and Amadorn were forced to take cover from arrows skittering off the steps near their heads. The Witch’s first spell had fizzled on a Troll shield, but her waving hands had now conjured up a barrier that allowed her to work unhindered. Amadorn muttered something about enclosed spaces to Alliathiune, who watched proceedings with considerably less concern than Kevin felt was warranted. What did he know, anyway?
Troll feet thumped on the stairs behind them. Kevin heard
a clash of steel; Hunter’s battle-cry resounded from the walls.
The Head Witch smiled grimly as she extended her cupped hands toward the massed Trolls. Suddenly she flicked them forward. The Trol
ls fell back with howls of pain; four stalwarts of the first rank simply melted down into their boots, as though they were butter thrown into a hot pan. Snatcher rushed this gap with his club smashing from side to side, driving them back. The Trolls broke and ran.
Alliathiune grabbed
Kevin’s hand and pulled him after her as they ran down the staircase after Snatcher and Akê-Akê, who cleared the way with a combination of twanging bowstring and crushing blows. But there were dangers all around–Trolls appearing suddenly out of side rooms and passages, the alarm being raised ahead of them, a choking acidic mist quickly cleared by the Druid. Their progress rapidly declined into a running skirmish, and from there to a regrouping and more cautious progress. Hunter sprinted up behind them, bloodied and torn but grinning hugely, just as they broke out into a large chamber that guarded the main entrance to the dungeons.
Flat black hangings concealed guard-holes around the perimeter, hewn for the most part out of solid rock, and the ceiling was suppo
rted by massive pillars of speckled granite. To their left they saw a short corridor leading to a sturdy metal grating which could be raised to provide access to the cells, and this was guarded by two Trolls in massive body armour and winged helmets. The air smelled of damp and rust, and the only form of lighting was torches smouldering in sconces upon the water-streaked walls and a great brazier in the centre of the chamber. And before this another handful of enemies awaited them.
“Oh
hellfre,” moaned Kevin. “More Trolls!”
Amadorn raised his staff. “Leave this to me.
Close your eyes.”
He paused, however, as a Troll but half the size of the others broke ranks and stepped forward. He
wore a tattered robe of animal skins and bore a staff that looked far too heavy for his frail paws. Stooped and hoary he might have been, but his eyes blazed clear and lucid from beneath beetling ridges that had been dyed into yellow zig-zags, similarly to his hair and short beard.
“What’s this?” asked the Witch.
“It’s a Troll Shaman,” said Akê-Akê. “I’ve dealt with his kind before.”
“Him and his five apprentices,” she said, casting icy eyes over their opponent.
“Sacrifices,” the Faun corrected her. “He will sacrifice these zealots and raise them as living corpses to fuel his magic, which is much tainted with the black arts of necromancy and illmaugrax-casting.”
“What should we do?”
The Faun seemed to grow indefinably taller. He shucked his bow, slipped the quiver off his shoulder, loosed the mace from his belt and let it drop beside his other weapons. With his hands he swept back his fringe to reveal the scarification patterns on his forehead. His bearing was princely, his eye clear and cool, his manner unshakeable.
“I don’t know what you will do,” he declared. “There is nothing that ordinary spell
-casting can do against the illmaugrax, nor will any weapon formed of the earth prevail against their strength. But Akê-Akê Redpath will deal with these vermin who dare oppose our path. I am a Faun Loremaster, the son of a Loremaster, and I hold the secrets of my clan. I swear that I will sweep these scum clean off Feynard’s face and ensure that Indomalion’s bright eye is never again sullied with their presence. Do not wait to discern my fate. I will rejoin you as I am able.”
Kevin
shook his head. “But you can’t–”
“But he can,” said Amadorn, fiercely. “This is his choice. We have other battles to fight.
There’ll be a thousand Trolls on those steps soon, lad. Hurry.”
He didn’t understand
, but admired the Faun nevertheless. Kevin and his companions quickly circled around the chamber, ignoring the small group of Trolls arrayed against Akê-Akê. They raced down the short corridor toward the cells. Hunter and Snatcher leaped ahead to deal with more Troll guards. Metal scraped against metal. From behind came an unearthly scream that made Kevin’s hair stand on end and Alliathiune’s complexion pale.
“It is a perversion of life,” she whispered, clutching his hand so tightly he could feel the bones grinding together. “How can Akê-Akê stand against them? Nay, do not look back, good
Kevin. Keep to the fore and do not lose heart.”
“This place stinks.”
“Evil has permeated the very fabric of this keep, good Kevin. Can you not feel it all around you?”
He sniffed the air like a dog scenting the breeze. “I sens
e … something. And I don’t like it. Pitterdown Manor felt like this, some darktimes.”
“
Courage, good Kevin.”
Snatcher’s thundering roar echoed around the chamber as he struck a killing blow. Hunter’s satisfied hiss was quick to follow, but she
bled heavily from a gash that had opened her thigh from hip to knee.
The Witch
tore strips off her robe. “Here.”
“Thanks.” Hunter bound the wound with practised skill, but her canines were bared in pain. She took up her sword. “Lead on. It is but a scratch.”
Alliathiune touched her shoulder. “Strength to you, noble Mancat.”
The
slit yellow eyes cleared slightly. “I will survive, good Dryad. But your aid is welcome.”
Kevin reached out. “Strength to you, noble Mancat.”
The Mancat yowled. Her tail smouldered slightly, but the wound was gone.
“Gently, good outlander!” Amadorn admonished him. “Feel the magic, don’t just let it loose. What did you do?”
“A reversal,” said Kevin.
“A reversal?” The Druid looked as confused as he.
“I reversed the wound.”
Alliathiune gasped. “Did that woman in the Utharian Wet not say, ‘Yours is a power of opposites’?”
“Opposites,” mused Kevin, feeling something click in his mind–only, he was not at all sure of what it was.
“Opposites?” snorted the Witch. “What nonsense is that? Riddles fit for
a Tomalia? Quick, good Druid, the gate.”
Amadorn rifled the
Troll bodies for keys and unlocked the padlocks which prevented access to the cells. Chains rattled as the grating rose, and then Snatcher smashed the ratchet mechanism so that they could not be trapped within.
“Er, Alli
athiune, what did Akê-Akê say to the Troll back there?”
Even in the light of torches set in sconces, he could see her blush. “Er, I understood that he said you had worms rotting your brain–”
“–and that you were born with your head up a slug’s unmentionables,” finished the Witch. “Mind like a sewer, our Faun.”
Alliathiune grabbed his hand. “Come on.”
Kevin ran on, deeper into the stinking dungeon, down the rows of empty cells with their iron doors and interiors as black as sin. Amadorn and the Witch had snagged torches from the outer chamber to light their way, for the occasional smoky lantern or sconce was insufficient to banish the shadows and dark places. He had no doubt that Snatcher or Hunter could see easily in the dark, but he was not cut of the same cloth as they!
At
some considerable length their echoing footsteps found pause at a junction of eight such corridors leading off it like the spokes of a wheel, and Kevin began to appreciate the extent of Shadowmoon Keep’s dungeons. The other ways were unlit, cold, looming like open mouths waiting to consume the unwary. He would not like to be trapped down here. Oh, for a breath of fresh air in the Forest’s cool byways!
“Ah!” said Amadorn, holding his torch aloft. “Is this the trapdoor we are looking for?”
Snatcher nodded. “Behold, noble Druid, the ancient sigil of the Labyrinth.”
He leaned forward, with the others, to examine the black anticlockwise spiral charcoal-etched into the wooden surface. “Indeed, good Lurk. The legends speak of two such entry points to the Labyrinth–one here, in the dungeons, and the other beneath the laboratories once used by Ozark the Dark to perpetrate his foulest workings and most depraved imaginings on living creatures. Here he cast the failed remnants of his filthy experiments. Here lies danger beyond what we have encountered so far.”
The Witch said, “Less words and more action suit my mood, noble Druid. Let us draw these bolts aside and enter the Labyrinth.”
“
At once. Noble Lurk?”
The Lurk threw the mighty bolts that crossed the trapdoor in four places and drew them aside with a deafening screeching and some considerable effort. He raised the block of wood and wrestled it to one side.
“Whatever is down there must long since have woken,” said Alliathiune, peering past Kevin’s shoulder to the dark hole thus revealed.
This was not what he wanted to hear. Ravening monsters, lurking at the base of those steps for the first foolhardy traveller to venture within? Why did the
Magisoul have to be hidden in such a godforsaken hell-hole? His nerves were shot already and there were still those Dragons to pass that Amberthurn had mentioned.
But the Lurk was already halfway down the stairs, peering about with care. “Nothing down here but a sandy chamber,” he rumbled.
The Mancat’s ears pricked up. “Trolls, coming this way.”
“From where?”
“One of these side tunnels. See how the light flickers on the walls?” She paused, then hissed, “Many, many Trolls, friends. A great multitude.”
“We will be trapped within!”
“Peace, good Kevin.”
“Not if I have ought to do with it,” said Hunter.
“And I,” Amadorn agreed. “They are many–perhaps too many even for the prowess of the finest Mancat that e’er bestrode Driadorn’s fair hills.” And he turned to the others. “We will keep the path clear for your return. You must secure the Magisoul. That is our paramount purpose. Only promise that you will return to the Sacred Well and complete there the restoration of our precious land.”
“We will,” said Alliathiune.
He addressed Kevin swiftly. “We find ourselves, as upon many prior occasions, bound to your fate, noble outlander. Never forget that you are Driadorn’s champion, the champion of the incomparable Seventy-Seven Hills–our birthplace and Mother to all Her creatures. Save them. Save us all.”
Snatcher laid his heavy paw on
Amadorn’s shoulder. His huge eyes blinked slowly in the half-light, the Deep Sight momentarily washing over and through the Druid. “Until we meet again, good Druid. And we
will
meet again.”
Amadorn smiled at this. “
Strength to you, good Lurk. Now go you swiftly.”
“Forthwith.”
At the Lurk’s low growl, Kevin, Alliathiune, and the Witch hurried after, down into the Labyrinth.
While the dungeons had been built into the foundations of Shadowmoon Keep in some places and carved from the basal rock in others, the Labyrinth appeared to be a rabbit-warren of tunnels that were naturally smooth–easily tall enough for
Kevin, but a squeeze for the mountainous Lurk in the main. He wondered how they had come to be. It would have taken an inordinate effort to build such a maze. From what he could see, the tunnels doubled back and forth, criss-crossed and passed under or over each other with no discernable pattern. It was hard not to imagine a horde of mice had turned the bedrock into Swiss cheese.