Shadow Blizzard

I was running. Again. I went flying into a hall with just a few of the ordinary walking dead shambling about. One shuffled toward me and blocked my path. I smashed straight into him at top speed. A foul stench in my nostrils. We both fell. I did a forward roll and jumped back up, cursing the ugly brute for getting in my way.

I heard wheezing behind me. All I could do was run.

So I ran.

9 The Deal

I went flying into another hall. It was quite small, with a pool of water splashing against one of the walls. There were two ways out. And eight torches. Urged on by the sound of wheezing, I started running across the hall, when suddenly corpses started pouring in through both exits. And the ones chasing me came flying in behind. I only had a few seconds. I leapt across the three yards of water in the pool in a single bound, found myself standing on someone’s tomb, scrambled up the wall using lumps and projections that were almost invisible, and clambered onto the second-story coffin.

I caught my breath. Looked around. The view from up here was remarkable. Five yards of empty space below me, and straight ahead of me—a hall crammed full of corpses. The dead had gathered together from almost the entire Sector of Heroes. They stood staring in silence.

If I went down, I’d be eaten. I could never break through and escape. But if I sat up here, I’d die of hunger— somehow I didn’t think anyone was planning to feed me. All I could do was hope for rescue and play “stare” with the walking dead. But I soon got fed up with that—my guards’ faces were absolutely repulsive, and they didn’t exactly make me feel like playing games.

The first thing I did, of course, was try to get my breath back and recover a bit. Running huge distances takes all your strength. When my breathing was back to normal and my heart had stopped trying to jump out of my chest, I took a look around. A stone box three yards long and a yard wide—plenty of space to accommodate an uninvited guest. A massive lid with an inscription on it: The favorite cupbearer of the Sixth Count of Patia. For some strange reason, they’d forgotten to inscribe the cupbearer’s name on the stone. And the date of his death, too. But someone very creative had left a moss-covered bottle on his coffin.

I inspected this surprise with a skeptical eye. The name and numbers molded into the glass told me it was wine and it was at least four hundred years old. I had nothing else to do, so I took out my knife and cut the seal off the cork. Since I didn’t have a corkscrew, I pushed the cork into the bottle. I took a sniff. Tried it. And gasped in approval. This wine was worth real money.

I was still hoping to get out of there alive, but an hour later I realized the repulsive creatures had absolutely no intention of going away, and I abandoned all hope of a happy ending. Either I went down and they ate me, or I died of hunger. But then, even if the zombies did back off, I’d wandered too far astray while I was running and now I could never find the way back to my bag with the maps of Hrad Spein. And without the maps … Without the maps, I’d never get to the eighth level, let alone find my way out of this place. In other words, I was as good as dead. All I had left was the canvas bag on my back with the sweater and the emeralds and the one vial I’d put in there, but there were no maps or food in it.…

The outcome of all this was that I polished off the wine, and I felt just fine, without a care in the world. Until I awoke with a hangover.…

*   *   *

By the end of the second day my stomach had stopped rumbling in fury, but the hunger pains hadn’t gone away. Nothing had changed. The corpses hadn’t gone away, either.

“Well, what are looking at, you brutes?”

Naturally, I didn’t get any answer. Nobody even hissed. I was simply ignored in the most insolent manner you could possibly imagine. I would have fired my crossbow at the vile creatures, but I didn’t have any more bolts. The only thing I could do was fling the empty bottle at the crowd. It somersaulted in the air a few times and smashed into one of the dead men, demolishing half of his rotten head. The dead man wasn’t bothered in the least by this strange circumstance and he just stood there.

“Having fun?”

The voice that rang out in the hall came as such a shock that I jumped.

He was standing in the shadow of a column and I could only see the vague outline of the dark silhouette with massive wings. The golden eyes were watching me with veiled mockery. The Messenger wasn’t paying any attention to the walking dead, and they were ignoring him.

“Something of the kind.”

I tried hard to sound calm, but the treacherous squeak in my voice gave me away.

The servant of the Master! The Messenger! Here! In the hall! Right in front of me!

My mouth went dry, my palms started to sweat, and my spine dissolved. Now I knew beyond any doubt who had herded the corpses in here and why.

“I have a proposition for you,” said the Messenger.

“What is it?” I asked, finding enough courage not to faint.

“You’ve come a long way through the Palaces of Bone, thief. Not many can boast of that. How annoying to end up trapped, and by these stupid monsters. Tell me, are you planning to stay long?”

“Until I get bored.”

I didn’t know what the Messenger and his Master had cooked up, but they weren’t going to frighten me. There was no way I could be any more frightened than I already was.

“Mmmm? I think you’re already bored. Or am I wrong?”

I didn’t answer, and I thought I saw the Messenger smile.

“All right, Harold. Let’s stop playing games and get down to business.”

“What business is that, Messenger?”

“Oh! I see you know my name!” he said, and chuckled again. “Did you just guess, or were you eavesdropping when you were wandering round my Master’s property? How is your wound, by the way? You took off to the Primordial World—I see they still heal people as well as ever there!”

Once again I didn’t answer, and once again he pretended not to notice.

“I’ve been sent by the Master. Sent to offer you a way out of this trap. Are you interested, or should I leave?”

“I’m interested.”

“Good. Abandon the Commission, forget about the Rainbow Horn, and you will be rewarded.”

“How? Are you going to rip my belly open again?”

“Oh, don’t be so touchy! If I wanted to, I’d have killed you by now. How much did the king offer you? Fifty thousand? How would you like an offer of, say, three hundred thousand? Not enough? Perhaps you prefer the sound of eight hundred thousand? Name your price, thief.”

Uh-huh, sure. I might get the gold, but only if he left it on my coffin. So I wasn’t going for any deals that came from lads like him.

“I’m perfectly happy with the price offered by the king. A Commission…”

The Messenger snorted loudly to express his contempt.

“A Commission? What are you, some kind of nobleman? Since when do thieves keep their word?”

Why did everyone take such a liking to the word “thief”? First those shadows in the world of Chaos, and now him! I had my own professional principles. And I wasn’t insane, so I had no intention of violating a Commission. It was more than my life was worth.

“Ah … so you’re afraid of violating the Commission and upsetting your beloved Sagot?” he said, apparently reading my thoughts. “You men are too much in awe of those you call the gods. Don’t worry, thief. The gods are nothing but a gang of good-for-nothing layabouts, and they are all subservient to the Master. There’s no need to be afraid, no one will punish you for violating the Commission. The Master will make sure of that, as soon as you agree.”

The gods were subservient to the Master? Well, that was news!