turned into a blur of steel. He almost drove me into a corner but, fortunately for me, the stairway was close by and I started scrambling up it as fast as I could. I forgot all about the precious stones—now I had to save my own skin. When I’d covered a quarter of the eleven yards that separated the ceiling from the floor, I felt the stairs shudder.
After a quick glance down, I started moving my arms and legs twice as fast. The skeleton wasn’t planning on stopping halfway. Throwing the shield away and grasping the yataghan in its teeth (what a sight that was!), the dead orc came scrambling nimbly up after me. I must say, he climbed a lot better than I did, and he caught up with me at a height of about nine yards.
There was nothing else for it; I had to take desperate measures. I grabbed hold of the banister rail with both hands, waited until there was almost no distance at all between my enemy and me, then slammed both boots into the yellow skull with all my might.
My enemy went crashing down onto the floor and was smashed to smithereens.
I didn’t really feel like going back down again. What if there was another surprise waiting for me? For always used to tell me to be content with a little and never make money more important than my own life. As usual, the old thief and priest of Sagot was right. I’d better follow his advice and be happy with what I already had in my bag.
A minute later I was back in the familiar purple and silver halls of the fourth level and I had to use another light. I looked round to see where I was, and chuckled. Whatever happens is always for the best. The gallery leading to the stairway down to the fifth level started from the hall that I was in.
I certainly hadn’t been hoping that somehow, completely out of the blue, I would end up in the Halls of the Slumbering Whisper, which turned out not to be halls at all, but the gallery that led to the fifth level. Naturally, no one had warned me where I was, and there were no indications at all on the maps.
The gallery was lined completely with black marble with white flecks. Marble floor, marble walls, marble columns on the right of the balcony. I walked up to the edge and looked down. There was only just enough light for me to see the floor of the hall down below.
I thought I heard something.…
I stopped and listened. Yes, my ears hadn’t deceived me, there was definitely a hissing sound. I looked around, but couldn’t see the source of the sound anywhere nearby. It seemed to be coming from inside my own head. I marked the unexpected sound down to an overactive imagination, stopped thinking about it, and carried on.
About a hundred paces farther on I thought I could hear vague, indistinguishable words starting to take shape through the hissing, but no matter how hard I strained my ears, I couldn’t make out what they meant.
I found the dead man about twenty paces later. All that was left of him was a heap of bones. Ah, but wait, men don’t have fangs growing out of their lower jaws. Like the skeleton that had almost chopped me into stewing steak, this was either an elf or an orc, but I could thank my lucky stars that this skeleton wasn’t going to attack me.
By this point the hissing had changed to a totally incomprehensible muttering, as if the speaker had stuffed his mouth full of hot porridge. Twenty yards farther on there was another corpse waiting for me, and in the next five minutes I counted twenty-six skeletons. But there was no way of telling what they had died of or how they had gotten there.
The muttering was hammering away insistently at the door of my mind now, as if some bastard had stuffed an entire hive of angry bees who could talk into my head. I could only pick out occasional words from the ragged droning—“blood,” “die,” “brain,” and the like.
Well, let’s just say the words I heard weren’t exactly the kind that would cheer my heart. I could feel the muttering in my head, and the corpses that kept turning up with increasing regularity set my nerves on edge, so I started singing a simple little tune to crowd out the voices, but it didn’t really do much good.
The next corpse was a great surprise. This was no heap of old bones, but a perfectly fresh body. I would have wagered my soul that only a few hours earlier this lad was still alive and well, and not planning to die.
I’d seen him at Mole Castle with Balistan Pargaid—from which I could draw the conclusion that Lafresa and her companions had already walked through the gallery and gained a few hours on me. What a cunning bitch!
But at least things were a bit clearer with this corpse. Even a thick-witted Doralissian could tell what the lad had died of. He’d stuck a yard of iron into his own chest a few times—in other words, he’d committed suicide. His hand was still clutching the handle of the dagger sticking out of his chest.
The muttering was pulsing in my head like a dull ache now. I frowned and ground my teeth, but I couldn’t understand just what foul plague could have affected me like this.
Five steps farther on the whisper suddenly broke into a howling chorus of triumph in my head, making me drop to my knees and squeeze my head in my hands. I was swamped by a wave of universal revulsion and horror.
I didn’t just hear words. There was everything here—visions of unbelievable horror, the smell of decomposing corpses, the taste of death-worms on my tongue, the sensation of rummaging through a corpse’s belly. The voices were insistent, calling me to them, chanting a song that set me howling in horror and excruciating pain. My senses were completely confused, but absolutely everything was clamoring for and craving my death, urging me to take out my knife and thrust it into my throat.
The song rumbled on, massaging my mind insistently with its soft, slippery fingers. Every word, every chord of the voices brought new horrors that crept into my ears, blinded my eyes, smothered my tongue.…
That was when I realized that I’d found my way into the Halls of the Slumbering Whisper, but there was nothing I could do about it now. The voices were stronger than me, and I was slowly, inexorably going out of my mind. I wanted to take a few steps and throw myself off the edge of the balcony, or beat my brains out against the wall, or turn my knife on myself.
I had to do something, anything, to stop THIS! Against the will of my faintly glimmering mind, my hand reached out to the handle of my knife. As Sagot is my witness, I tried to fight it, but the struggle was like trying to smash a massive boulder with a twig. The voices INSISTED that I had to die, and it was impossible not to submit.
Just as he did in Hargan’s Wasteland, Valder spoke in a barely audible whisper:
“I’ll help!”
The voices howled in unison with the irresistible torrent of the song and retreated to the very boundaries of hearing. My hand obeyed my will once again.
“Quick, Harold, I can only give you a minute! At this moment that’s as much as I can do!” said the dead archmagician.
I jumped to my feet and dashed back toward the place where the voices still had no power over me. My hands were shaking, but I managed to fish the cotton earplugs out of my bag and stick them into my ears. The muttering came closer again, so that I could almost make out the words. It took me another ten precious seconds to take out the vial with the liquid that neutralized any hostile magic for a couple of minutes. I tore the seal open with my teeth and poured the contents into my mouth. The bitter taste flooded over my tongue and my stomach protested and shuddered, almost turning me inside out. I had to make an effort to hold the foul muck down.
“That’s it, I can’t do any more!” Valder declared, and the dam he had created burst and collapsed.
The voices came back, but now they were just voices, mouthing abominations without any visions to support them. The bitter liquid was working—but for how long? Casting aside all doubt and hesitation, I rushed forward, hoping to get through the gallery before the defensive magic weakened enough for the whispering voices to take control again.
“Kill yourself! Go to the darkness! Die! Die! Die! Blood! Kill!” the voices whispered in powerless fury. “Stop! Wait! Die, it’s so easy!”
I ignored the whispers, gritted my teeth, and kept dashing on as fast as I could, constantly leaping over the bones that lay in my way.
I came across another two of Balistan Pargaid’s men, but where were the others? Had Lafresa managed to fight off the whispers?
The voices sensed a moment of weakness and moved in, whispering and threatening every possible kind of nightmare and all the pain in the world. It was really hard for me not to stop, and to keep on running. The bitter
