“That’s a shame,” said the elf, plunging the dagger into the man’s chest up to the hilt.
The prisoner shuddered and went limp. Without showing any sign of emotion, Egrassa pulled the dagger out and wiped it on the dead man’s clothes.
“Deler! Hallas!” Alistan Markauz called to the dwarf and the gnome. “Bury these three. There’s no point in us hanging about any longer.”
And that was the end of the matter, except for the dwarf and the gnome muttering discontentedly that they were soldiers, not gravediggers.
“Well, how do you like it, Harold?” Eel asked me when I walked away to one side.
“Elves,” I said with a shrug, thinking he was asking how I felt about the recent killing.
“That’s not what I meant,” Eel said with a frown. “I meant the entrance to Hrad Spein.”
“Why, where is it?” I gasped.
Kli-Kli heaved a tragic sigh. “Harold, you’re hopeless! What do you think that is, if not the entrance?”
“A hill?” I asked in amazement.
“A hill!” Kli-Kli teased me, pulling a silly face. “Open your eyes, will you! What kind of hill, may you choke on a bone, is that? Go on, walk round it!”
“All right! All right! Just stop yammering,” I said, trying to calm the goblin down. “I’ve got a splitting headache from that squeal of yours.”
It really was the entrance to Hrad Spein, or at least, on closer examination the hill turned out to be artificial. It was hardly surprising that I hadn’t realized—the structure was so old (from the start of the Dark Era, after all!) that the back of it was all overgrown with grass and bushes. When I walked round it to the other side, though, I realized I’d got the era wrong.
Of course the gates weren’t from the Dark Era at all (although that was when unknown beings had founded the first and deepest levels of Hrad Spein). The gates had appeared much, much later, during the period when the orcs and the elves were in their heyday. It was just that after the ancient evil awoke in the Palaces of Bone and elves and orcs (and, after them, men) left the burial chambers to be demolished by the centuries, the gates fell into decay and were overgrown by the forest.
After all, Zagraba, and especially the Golden Forest, hadn’t always been here. The trees had been advancing for thousands of years. And they advanced until they swallowed up the gates and concealed them from prying eyes.
From this side the hill looked as if it had been sliced vertically with a knife. And instead of grass and bushes there was a gaping square entrance four times the height of a man. The rays of sunlight slanted into it and fell on a stone floor.
I shuddered.
“Well, how do you like it, Harold?” the Garrakian asked again.
“Are we really here, then?” I still didn’t believe it.
“The corridor stretches for a thousand yards, gradually sloping down. It’s a long tramp from here to the first level,” said Kli-Kli, waving his hand jauntily.
“You’re a real expert on the subject, jester. So can you tell me what’s written over the entrance and what those statues are at the sides?”
“I don’t know orcic, Harold, ask Egrassa what that scribble says. And as for the statues, they were carved out of the solid rock, see? And they’re so badly decayed, there’s no way to tell who they once depicted.”
“Hey, you historians!” shouted Hallas. “Let’s go and get the camp laid out, you’ll have time enough to feast your eyes on that!”
“And so,” Alistan Markauz began when everyone was gathered together (apart from Lamplighter and Eel, who had been sent to stand guard at the entrance to Hrad Spein), “Balistan Pargaid and his men are already down below.”
“May something down there gobble them up!” was the kind-hearted goblin’s sincere wish for our enemies.
“They’re two days ahead of us, thief. You have maps of the Palaces of Bone. Where do you think they could be now?”
“Anywhere at all, milord,” I answered the count, after a moment’s thought. “It’s a genuine maze starting from the very first level, if they don’t have maps.…”
Everyone understood what I had in mind. In Hrad Spein without maps you were a dead man for sure. Fortunately, I did have maps; I’d made a special excursion into the Forbidden Territory in Avendoom to get them. So I would find the way to the eighth level, where the Rainbow Horn was. That is, I’d be able to find the way, but would I actually get there?
“I think we should start out straightaway,” said Alistan Markauz, tugging on his mustache.
“It will be night soon, milord. Let’s wait until morning,” Hallas began cautiously. “I don’t like the idea of climbing down that hole in the dark.”
“Night, day … what’s the difference? Down below it’s always night anyway. Pargaid and that woman want to steal a march on us and take the Horn, in order to take it to the Master.”
“They won’t be able to steal a march on us, milord,” I said, chuckling sardonically. “They don’t have the Key, and the Doors on the third level can’t be opened without it. If they don’t have a map, and Lafresa decides to make a detour … Well, that will take them a couple of months.”
“A couple of months?” the dwarf asked incredulously.
“This is Hrad Spein below us,” said Egrassa, stamping on the ground. “I hate to shatter your rosy illusions, Deler, but the Palaces of Bone are a lot bigger than all your underground cities in the Mountains of the Dwarves. Hrad Spein is like a gigantic layer cake, it’s dozens of leagues deep and wide. It was worked on by ogres, orcs, men, and others we don’t even know about. So Harold is right. If you don’t go through the Doors, you can lose a great deal of time searching for ways round them.”
“And run into some very big problems,” Kli-Kli bleated.
“So do you suggest we should wait until morning, too,” the captain of the guard asked the elf, ignoring the goblin.
“Best go down well rested.”
Milord Rat pursed his lips and nodded reluctantly.
“All right. That’s what we’ll do. Then let’s decide who’s going with Harold, and who’s staying up here.”
“I think that’s for Harold to decide,” said Egrassa, and looked at me.
“The thief should decide?” Alistan Markauz said in amazement.
“Certainly. He knows best who should go with him and who should stay.”
“All right,” the count hissed. “What do you say, thief ?”
I took a deep breath and said, “No one’s going with me.”
“What? Have you gone completely insane?”
I was afraid Alistan Markauz was about to have a stroke.
“No, milord.” I decided to say exactly what I thought about our crazy excursion to Hrad Spein. “When you led us out of Avendoom, I didn’t interfere and I did what you said. And when we were walking through Zagraba, you did what Egrassa told you. I don’t need anyone else to go into the Palaces of Bone with me. You’d only be a burden to me.”
“We’re soldiers, Harold, not a burden,” Deler said resentfully. “Who’s going to save you from those zombies?”
“That’s just the point,” I sighed. “On my own, I’ll slip past a corpse unnoticed or simply run away, but with you I’ll get into a fight every time. I won’t be able to look out for you in there, too.”
“We can look out for ourselves, thief.” Alistan Markauz didn’t like what I’d said very much. “How am I going to protect you if I stay up here?”
“You have led us to Hrad Spein and performed your duty, milord. And in addition, they say the lower levels are flooded and I’ll have to swim, and you’re wearing too much heavy metal.”
“Then I’ll take off my armor.”
“Milord, I’ll move fast, but with you … Just don’t interfere with me carrying out the Commission.”
“What about Balistan Pargaid’s men?”
