The dead creature lowered its head onto the table and hissed in fury, like oil poured onto a red-hot skillet, then started writhing and jerking about. It really put its heart into it (except, of course, that it didn’t have one), and the table started shifting across the floor.
“I shall free my-self an-y-way!”
Every syllable was accompanied by a sharp jerk that set the table shuddering. The staple at the dead creature’s waist started to yield ever so slightly.
I decided it would be better to go on my way and not tempt fate. The creature’s spine was pinned down along its entire length, and it would have to jerk for at least a week. But the most important thing was to make a start. The first restraint had already yielded, and the others would follow. Water wears away stone, as they say. I wasn’t going to hang about to observe what would happen when this thing broke free.
For the next few minutes after that, nothing strange, let alone unpleasant, happened, for which Sagot be praised and glorified forever! The floor rose up a very slight incline and the torch lit up the dreary gray blocks of stone gleaming with the underground damp, and the inscriptions scrawled on the walls by someone’s careless hand. The ceiling retreated to a great height, so that the flame of the torch could no longer pick it out of the gloom. A slight echo appeared, doubling the sound of every step I took, and I had to walk almost on tiptoe.
The Messenger and the woman had dissolved into the darkness, and now there was no way that I could possibly catch up with them.
“Start with the Lower South Level,” said the Messenger’s voice, spreading along the corridor. I dropped the torch on the floor and stamped it out with my foot. “The Master has no more need of them.”
“Can I…?” asked Blag, his voice trembling with excitement.
“I don’t care what you do, Lost Soul,” the Messenger replied, and every word was full of contempt. “If you want to eat them, then eat them; if you want to carve trinkets out of their bones, then do it; but first do as I have told you.”
“Of course, my lord! Old Blag will take care of their bones. Oh, yes! He’ll take care of them.”
The voices seemed to come from all around me. They enveloped me, so that I couldn’t tell where the speakers were. I was sure that the Messenger and the old man weren’t in the corridor, or they would definitely have seen the light of my torch. It sounded as if they were talking somewhere behind the wall, but I hadn’t seen any door while the torch was still alight.
“Permit me to say, my lord … Please forgive me if it is none of my business … but you shouldn’t have let that girl go.”
The sound of Blag’s voice was coming from right above my head now. Were they walking on the ceiling, or what?
“Just do as I told you!” the Messenger snapped. “Otherwise you’ll find yourself back in the place the Master found you, feeding the worms again!”
Blag started muttering in fright and the section of wall directly in front of me slid to one side, revealing a room that was lit by a lantern. I didn’t even have time to jump aside; the secret door opened so suddenly that I was caught in the circle of light. Blag was coming out into the corridor and he saw me.
I swear on Kli-Kli’s head that I saw a momentary flash of amazement in those black pools of eyes. The old man grinned, baring his rotten teeth, and I flung his own weapon—the bone—at him without bothering to think.
I must say that I’m no great master at throwing ordinary knives, let alone bones. But this time someone must have guided my hand.
I didn’t hit the old man, but I did hit the oil lamp in his hand. It exploded, and the flame threw itself on Blag like a polecat crazed with hunger. The old man howled, dropped onto the floor, and started rolling around, trying to put out the fire. The flames enveloped him completely, devouring his clothes and his flesh. I stood there, completely spellbound by this terrible sight, and only noticed the frenzied gleam of a pair of amber-yellow eyes at the very last moment.
A black shadow sprang at me, I instinctively jumped back, and the clawed hand extended to tear out my heart missed.
Almost missed.
The claws ripped open my shirt, and then a clump of pain exploded somewhere in the region of my stomach. I think I just had time to yell before the world splintered into a thousand excruciating shards.
6
Friends And Enemies
The black night of the universe and the icy fire of magic. A world within a world, a dream within a dream, a drop within a drop, a mirror within a mirror …
I’ve been here once before.
When was that? An eternity earlier or an eternity later?
Ah yes! I think I remember—it was in the distant future, on that day when Miralissa bound the Key of the Doors of Hrad Spein to my consciousness. On that memorable evening I fell through into the black night of Nothingness, into a dream of a dream, filled with fiery flakes of the crimson flame of Kronk-a-Mor.
But unlike last time, this time I felt cold … very cold.…
My body was racked by agonizing cramps. The only things I could feel were the cold and the pain. But which of these two evils was causing me more suffering? Just at the moment I couldn’t give a rotten damn; all I wanted, with every nerve in my body, was to get out of there to somewhere a bit more welcoming and a bit less mysterious. But this time nothing came of my futile efforts to escape from Nothingness. There was no dark elfess there to help me, I was absolutely helpless and freezing … colder and colder.
Cold-cold-cold-cold-cold …
After a while I had the feeling that a tangle of gluttonous leeches had invaded my stomach, inflicting a pain more appalling than anything I could have imagined. If not for the cold swirling of the sharp, prickly snowflakes, constantly distracting me from the hot coals blazing in my belly, the pain would have driven me out of my mind. There was no question of actually looking at what the Messenger’s talons had done to my stomach: I was afraid I would pass out if I even caught a glimpse of it.
The pain pulsated and increased, doubling and multiplying inside me, like the infinite reflections in the mirror maze of a dream. It unfolded its sharp petals all the way through my body, driving me to the brink of insanity. Now I knew what the most terrible torture of all is.
Through the silent swirling dance of the fiery snowflakes I could hear a regular tapping sound, but it took me a while to realize that it was my teeth beating out a tattoo in honor of the master of this world—the fiery snow, bringer of an icy death.
The wind of the darkness, the wind that had once brought me dreams of the past, dreams of those who were long dead—men, elves, gnomes, orcs, and many other creatures—sprang to life, flinging sharp crystals of icy fire into my face.
I tried to dodge away, or at least protect my face against the snowflakes with my hands, but my pitiful efforts only infuriated the leeches of pain in my stomach. The moment they sensed that I was busy with something else, that I had stopped trying to control them, they started gnawing into my guts, and I howled out in pain and horror.
They pulsated in unison, breathing together, but if you knew that they are not all-powerful, they could be defeated.
But the cold was pitiless, heartless, and indifferent to everything alive. This thing was trying to put me to sleep, to bring me false warmth and peace, to carry my mind off into the river of eternal forgetfulness and dreams that flowed into the sea of Death.
I’m cold! Sagot, I’m so cold!
In the darkness the fiery snowflakes swirled together into a gigantic pillar of flame, falling on my hands and melting, turning into crimson steam.
The black Nothing of magic, the world of dreams and phantoms of the past, has its own, different, laws.
