knew of the race of the Secondborn, I’d say the lads were preparing the appalling Green Leaf torture for the orcs.
Of course, all this was very impressive, but the Doors didn’t have what was most important to me—a keyhole that the Key I had brought could fit into. I almost went blind staring at that surface as I walked from one corner to the other, but I didn’t find even the tiniest opening. As if it wasn’t enough that the surrounding gloom and the blue haze of the two corridors were beginning to set my nerves on edge, there was something not quite right about the Doors, too. But I just couldn’t understand exactly what it was that had been bothering me since the moment I walked up to them.
Calm down, Harold, calm down. I had the Key, and it was created to open the Doors. So it must open them, and all I had to do to find the keyhole was exercise my imagination.
I tried coming at the question from every possible angle, but I got nowhere. Maybe it was some kind of elfin joke—to make Doors that didn’t open? But then, why in the name of darkness had they gone to all the trouble of bringing in the dwarves to make the Key? Not just for the fun of it, surely?
But eventually I found the answer. It was concealed in the figures on the Doors, or rather, in one of them. In the lower left corner there was a figure of a tall elf. He was holding his right hand out, palm upward, and it was hollow. The color of the glass made the hollow almost invisible, in fact it was barely even a hollow, just a slight irregularity that was lost among the dozens of figures embossed into the Doors. But the size of the hollow was exactly right for the Key to be set into it.
I pulled the chain with the Key on it out from under my shirt and set the slim, elegant, icy-crystal artifact in the elf’s hand. The crystal flashed with a purple light and for a moment the elf’s entire figure lit up. The transparent Key turned exactly the same color as the Doors and fused into a single whole with them.
And then a glowing purple line ran from the bottom to the top of the huge Doors, right at their very center, and they started slowly opening toward me without a sound. I had to step back so that they wouldn’t catch me. I felt something snap gently in my chest, and I realized that the bonds with which Miralissa had tied the Key to me had broken. Which was hardly surprising: I’d opened the Doors and the bonds were no longer needed. The artifact had done its job.
“The bonds are strong,” the Key purred. “Run!”
Run? But the Doors had only just opened!
“Run away! The smell of the enemy!” the Key whispered in farewell, and fell silent.
The smell of the enemy? What did that mean?
I sniffed the air and caught a faint scent of strawberries. Lafresa!
“Kill him!” a man’s voice barked in the darkness.
Maybe sometimes I’m not all that bright, maybe I’m as dense as a cork, maybe I don’t know how to use a sword, but there’s one thing that can’t be denied—in a really tight spot I think with the speed of lightning and run even faster.
When Count Balistan Pargaid roared his command, I was already far away from the Doors and flying along the corridor on the left as fast as I could go. In the distance someone yelled that I had to be caught, others shouted for me to stop immediately or it would be worse for me. Naturally, I had no intention of stopping. Fortunately, the group that had been waiting for me to open the Doors hadn’t brought any crossbows along, otherwise I would have been dispatched into the light already. There was only one thing they could do now—try to catch up and put a few holes in me. I had one slight advantage over the Master’s jackals—I started running a lot sooner than they did, and running in chain mail with swords is a lot harder than running without them.
I hurtled along the endless corridor flooded with blue light, praying to Sagot for an intersection so that I could confuse the chase. But it was just my luck, there wasn’t a single branch off the corridor—its walls just moved farther apart, its ceiling rose even higher, and every second blue lamp went out.
That made the place even gloomier—the murk was so thick, it felt like I was running through a phantom world, wallowing in a syrupy bluish haze. The blue light made everything that was happening seem unreal.
The lights on the ceiling were blurred spots rushing past above my head. The floor was laid with slabs of white marble with gold veins, just like in the Hall of the Doors, but fortunately it didn’t glow. On the other hand, I could hear the tramping feet and menacing roars of my pursuers very clearly. The idiots still hadn’t realized that yelling your head off in places like Hrad Spein can be bad for your health. I had a good lead, so I could afford to look round to see what my chances of surviving today’s race looked like.
The thick blue haze filled the corridor, so I could only see about a hundred paces. But I’d opened up a much bigger lead than that, so there was nothing in my field of vision yet. There was no time to think things over— Balistan Pargaid’s dogs would be there at any moment, and then only a miracle would save me.
There were broad decorative friezes running along the walls of the corridor, with stone gargoyles, each twice the height of a man, grinning down at me. The sculptor had created a set of brutes who were absolutely identical— they all had heads in the form of human skulls and unnaturally long hands with three fingers. The gargoyles were leaning over the corridor, looking for all the world as if one of them would come to life and jump down. I suddenly had an idea that just might work.
I leapt up onto the frieze, flung one leg over a gargoyle’s thigh, heaved myself up, grabbed the statue’s neck, and hid between its back and the wall of the corridor.
A magnificent spot. In the first place, the men chasing me were not likely to look up. In the second place, they couldn’t see me, and, in the third place, I had a fine view of everything.
For a second I thought the gargoyle’s stone back trembled slightly. It was absolute nonsense, of course—in that blue murk you could imagine seeing anything. I took the crossbow out from behind my back and waited for my guests.
After about ten long, but far from tedious seconds my pursuers appeared. Count Balistan Pargaid had sent four soldiers after me and these lads didn’t look any different from the other two who had got lost in the maze of the second level. Just as I expected, the lads didn’t even bother to look round. They were putting all their energy into yelling and waving their swords about. The four of them ran past my hiding place, howling triumphantly, and disappeared into the blue haze. Well, I thought I’d sit there for a while and wait until they got tired of running and then clear off.
How brilliantly Lafresa had fooled me! But it was my own fault for underestimating a dangerous enemy. After all, I knew how important she was to the Master’s intrigues, and you’d be hard put to find another sorceress to match her anywhere. No wonder the woman had managed to find the way to the Doors and avoid the traps and also prepare a pleasant welcome for me. I couldn’t imagine how she’d guessed I would reach the Doors, too, but the Master’s servant had certainly made the right decision.
Without the Key, Lafresa wasn’t able to open the Doors, so the only thing she could do was wait until the blockhead who was bound to the artifact opened them for her. I’d done exactly what she expected, and then Balistan Pargaid’s men had swung into action, thirsting for my blood. Yes, there was a faint scent of strawberries in the air near the Doors, that was what had been bothering me, but I hadn’t taken any notice, and if not for the magical Key …
A long, appalling howl of pain and terror rang down the corridor and I hiccupped in surprise. A hesitant moment of silence, and then another choking scream. And another. The hair on my head stirred and stood up on end. I pressed myself against the gargoyle’s back as hard as I could and tried to dissolve into thin air.
“Save me, Sagra! Save me, Sagra! A-a-agh! Save me, Sagra!”
A man came dashing out of the haze, screaming—one out of the four who had just been chasing me.
The man tossed his sword away and went dashing back toward the Hall of the Doors, calling on Sagra to help him. As usually happens, the goddess of war didn’t heed his call. But someone else did. A gargoyle on the wall opposite me turned its head toward the soldier’s howls.
At first I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me in the strange light, but then the fingers on the long hands moved, the shoulders twitched, and, just as the man was running past the gargoyle, the stone monster leapt down nimbly off the frieze, landing on the man with all its weight.
The lad never even knew what hit him. The monster picked the body up by the legs with its long hands, swung hard, and smacked the dead man’s head against the frieze. There was a sound like a nut cracking and a dark spot appeared on the stone. The gargoyle went back to its usual place and froze in the same position as before,
