The Road To The Doors
The torch hissed and spat furiously. It obviously didn’t like the idea of being carried down into the murky gloom of the world underground.
I stopped twice to look back. The first time was when I’d only walked a hundred and fifty paces along the corridor. I just wanted to take one last look at the sunlight.
A long, long way behind me, I could see a tiny bright rectangle.
The way out.
There it was, left behind now, the world of sunlight, the world of the living, and below my feet lay the world of darkness and the dead. When I looked back for the second time, the light had disappeared and there was nothing but the darkness all around.
My huge black shadow slid along the wall, dancing in time to the flames. After a while pictures and inscriptions in orcic appeared on the walls. At first they were faint and I could barely make them out (despite the constant darkness in this place, the colors used for the paintings and writing had faded very badly), but after I walked another two hundred yards, I could distinguish the images and letters.
I didn’t look very closely at the pictures, and I didn’t understand the writing. I only stopped once, when the torch picked out of the darkness a huge painting of an epic battle between ogres and some other beings, who were the spitting image of the creatures shown on the casket where Balistan Pargaid used to keep the Key.
The creatures—half birds, half bears—were fighting the ogres between the trunks of stylized trees. There was a squiggly inscription below the scene, but what it meant was a total mystery to me.
I walked for quite a long time. The corridor had no branches, and it bit deeper and deeper into the earth. I didn’t know exactly how deep I’d gone, but I took the opportunity to thank Sagot that I wasn’t afraid of underground places.
My steps echoed hollowly off the floor, bounced off the walls, and died away under the high ceiling. The torch started to fade and I had to stop to light a new one. I hadn’t even noticed the time passing. How long had I been tramping along this corridor?
The surprising thing was that it didn’t feel cold in here at all. Dry warm air blew into my face as it rose up toward the way out. I didn’t bother wondering where a breeze could come from at that depth. It could have been ventilation shafts, magic, or something else. Darkness only knew. All I knew was that there was a draft. And the most important thing was that it wasn’t chilly.
The flights of steps began. At first only three or four steps at a time, then they got longer and longer. Corridor, then steps, another hundred yards of corridor and then another stairway. Getting deeper and darker all the time.
I decided to make a halt and stopped. Leaning back against the wall, I arranged the torch so that it wouldn’t go out, stretched out my legs, and took a swallow of water from my flask. I’d tramped all this way and still had not reached the first level yet! I took the piece of drokr out of my bag, unfolded it, and took out the maps of Hrad Spein. I didn’t know exactly where I was at the moment, but soon the corridor would start twisting round into a spiral. Six huge turns leading down into the abyss, toward the first level of the Palaces of Bone. But I had to go on farther than that—to the eighth level. That was where the grave of General Grok was, and the Rainbow Horn was lying on his gravestone.
Long weary days of travel lay ahead before I could reach the eighth level. At least a week, even if I was lucky. A week to reach the eighth level—then how long would it take to get to the forty-eighth? Or even deeper, to where the levels had no names, where no living creatures had set foot for nine thousand years?
The corridor took a twist, and then another. I started winding round and round, getting deeper and deeper all the time.
The light picked another inscription out of the darkness and I stopped dead—it was written in human language.
I moved the torch close to the wall. Just as I’d thought—the letters were dark red. They were written in blood. Someone had patiently traced out just three words in large letters: DON’T GO DOWN! I stood there for a moment, looking at this warning, then walked on a few more paces and came across another two words: GET OUT!
After another eternity of time, after the sixth wide turn of the spiral, it started getting brighter in the corridor. At first I thought it was my eyes playing tricks, but the darkness retreated, giving way to a thick twilight. After another ten paces I was surrounded by a pale gray light that seemed to flow out of the walls. I could see perfectly well, and I had to struggle to stop myself putting the torch out.
The floor under my feet began sloping down even more sharply, until it was like a steep hill. I had to walk very slowly and carefully in order not to miss my step and go slithering down on my backside. The light was still there and, after hesitating for a moment, I tossed the torch away. The hill came to a sudden end, the floor leveled out, the corridor turned a corner, and I saw what I’d already despaired of seeing—the entrance to the first level of the Palaces of Bone.
Well, when I call it an entrance, that’s a slight exaggeration. There was nothing left of it. The stairway connecting the Threshold of Hrad Spein with the first level had collapsed, and the upper part that remained led down into a gaping hole.
I cautiously walked up to the edge of the hole and looked down.
Four steps, and then empty space. The path continued about eight yards away from me and the fragments of the stairway lay in a heap. It was all very strange … Very strange … What lousy skunk could have smashed it like that?
Oh yes, it had been smashed, all right, otherwise why would the surviving steps be so thickly covered in soot and even melted in places? Someone used a spell on the stairway before I got there. And there was no doubt that this someone was Lafresa.
But I couldn’t quite understand the logic. In the first place, how were she and Balistan Pargaid and his men planning to get back out now? And in the second place, it was rather strange, to say the least, for her to think that I wouldn’t be able to get down. No, of course, jumping from that height was a sure way to shatter all your bones into tiny little pieces, but there are other ways of getting down from high spots apart from jumping. For instance, an elfin cobweb rope that sticks to any surface and naturally lifts its owner to any height he wants.
Lafresa was no fool, and she must have known I could get down. That meant things weren’t as simple as they looked and there was a warm welcome in store for me, complete with royal orchestra and heralds. It was better to check a hundred times over that there was no danger before I jumped down the demon’s throat.
I had to lie on the floor and hang over the hole to study the spot where I would land as painstakingly as possible.
Mmm, yes.
A magnificently lit corridor with burning torches on the walls and a heap of stones, splinters, and fine dust on the floor. The torches were no surprise, they’d been blazing away here for thousands of years, and they’d keep burning for at least as long—the shamanic magic wouldn’t let the flames go out.
It was time to reach into my bag and take out a vial of a certain magical substance. I lay down on my stomach again and poured a few drops straight down onto the heap of rubble.
What I saw exceeded my wildest expectations. In fact, to be honest, I was so surprised I almost tumbled over the edge. Because there was a creature sitting on the rubble heap. The beast had been hidden by a spell that made it invisible until I splashed the magical liquid on it.
Anyway, it was sprawling right underneath the hole with its jaws wide open, waiting patiently for supper to drop in. This monster must have been born in the charming but definitely insane head of my friend Lafresa. There couldn’t be any natural beast in the world that consisted of nothing but jaws and row upon row upon row of blinding-white, dagger-sharp teeth! With a bit of an effort, an entire knight on horseback could have been forced down the throat of that hungry monster.
What a devious snake Lafresa was; what a magnificent trap she had set for me! I imagined how astonished I would have been to climb down the rope and find myself in the belly of this ravenous beast. What an inglorious way to go, and at the very first level of the Palaces of Bone!
I felt like shooting a crossbow bolt straight down the monster’s throat, but what I needed for that was a ballista, not a crossbow. An ordinary bolt wouldn’t even touch it. And Kli-Kli’s medallion probably wouldn’t be any
