“There’s a narrow staircase on the left,” said Paul, “just a little further on.” I noticed he’d drawn his sword- not that it would do any good. “It’s partially blocked by fallen stone, but it’s passable.”
“Theodora,” I said, “light the others back to the doorway and stay there until I get back. And if-”
But it was no use. In spite of what we had seen so far, and in spite of having to assert through chattering teeth that they were not at all frightened, Paul and Theodora had not given up their intention of accompanying me. Gwennie and Justinia claimed they preferred staying with the rest of us, even if it meant advancing through giant cockroaches, to waiting alone with hot walls and the moaning and clattering and no magic to keep a damp torch lit. Three of them, not knowing magic, might not be as susceptible as I was to the disembodied and demonic terror pouring out of the storage cellars-but Theodora was.
No time to argue. “Then let’s hurry,” I said and strode forward. Pushing against waves of horror was like pushing against the tide. I kept my feet moving with sheer will. The rattling of bones kept coming closer, as insects scurried out from underfoot. Paul’s narrow stairway was an empty black opening in the tunnel wall.
Good thing it wasn’t any further or I might not have made it. I felt inside the opening with my hand-not as warm as the tunnel where we stood. When I thrust in the torch it was to see worn and cracked stone stairs spiraling upwards. There would be halls, chambers, and passages higher up, some certainly roofless, but some doubtless still whole, and Antonia had to be up there.
I led the way again, climbing as quickly as I could on the uneven steps, my heart pounding wildly. The staircase was so narrow that there was scarcely room for my shoulders between the stone central post and the outer curved wall. A little rivulet of water found its way down the spiral, making surfaces slick and forcing me to be careful when I wanted to do nothing but run and run. The moaning and the rattling faded behind us. Someone slipped but caught themselves after a hard thump.
“Do you think the children had to climb all these stairs?” Gwennie whispered.
“I’m sure they were brought in the front way,” I whispered back. Wild terror receded as we climbed- unfortunately rational terror did not. “But we couldn’t even
I spoke confidently, but whatever hope I had was a desperate one. Someone who went to the trouble to make his castle invisible and to surround it with dark clouds would certainly have set up spells to detect a wizard sneaking in.
How far had we come? It was impossible to tell distances, except to know that we had climbed high enough that my legs were aching. My wet clothes had begun drying on my back into clammy stiffness. This had once been an expensive black wool suit, I recalled, bought just for Celia’s vocation at the nunnery.
Ahead I thought I could pick up the smell of rain-washed air over the general mustiness, and then I began to hear a louder dripping. We came around a twist of the stair and saw Paul’s “partial blockage” before us.
Part of the wall had collapsed inward, leaving a gaping opening looking out into night. Rain still lashed down. I redoubled the fire spell on my torch and put it and my head outside-still sheer cliff above and below, but we must be getting close to the top.
The collapsed wall covered the staircase with chunks of stone, but beyond it continued to spiral upwards. The stones cast heavy shadows in the torch light-had that been another viper? No, I tried to reassure myself, just another shadow.
“You have to climb carefully over the loose stones,” said Paul. “It was daylight when I did this before, but-”
I stopped him and lifted myself with magic to fly up and over. One at a time I then lifted Gwennie, Paul, and Justinia to bring them past the obstacle and up beside me. Theodora flew unaided, holding the flaring torch well away from herself. Gwennie, impressed, started to say something but didn’t.
Flying spells, I thought as Theodora found her footing, would announce to any wizard paying attention that another wizard had arrived. I would feel more comfortable about this if I could pick up the slightest trace of
“We’re almost there,” said Paul quietly. “We’ll come out in what was once the kitchen. The roof is long gone, but there’s another passage-still covered-that should take us to the great hall in the central keep. That’s the most intact part of the castle: the children may be there.”
A final turn of the stair, and we staggered out onto a level if gritty surface, next to an enormous fireplace. Ducking under the stone mantle to shelter from the rain, now falling harder than ever, we all paused to catch our breaths.
I kept straining to pick up any sound over the rain’s steady drumming or any magical indication of who else was in this ruined castle, but still found nothing. I lifted an eyebrow at Theodora, but she shook her head. “I haven’t sensed her again since that one time.”
“This way,” said Paul. Back under an arched roof, we tried to walk quietly, but five sets of feet on flagstones sent echoes running up and down the passage around us. The light from our torches was too dim to see any distance ahead or behind, though it made our shadows on the stone walls grotesque and gigantic. Little puffs of wind tugged at our damp hair.
Suddenly the torches went out. We all crashed together in the dark, then Theodora and I desperately tried to relight them. It was no use. Plenty of unburned wood remained, but our fire spells no longer seemed effective.
And then, down the passageway ahead of us, I saw a small yellow light, like a candle flame. As we all held our breaths we could hear the steady tap of approaching feet.
The dead torch fell from stiff fingers. “No use running,” I said quietly. “They’ve found us.”
Paul and I stood with the women behind us, waiting for whomever was coming. The cold knot in my stomach already knew. Someone dressed in black satin emerged from the shadows. Just before he came close enough to pick out the features on the white face, Paul gave a sudden, startled grunt and dropped his sword.
I looked down. The blade had transformed itself into a black and white striped snake that now slithered away. Paul reached for the knife at his belt but I nudged him and shook my head.
The person kept on coming. I could see his face now clearly, dead white, split by a smile that showed an unusually large number of sharp teeth. One of the cheeks was just a little crooked; the eyes, behind half-lowered translucent lids, were expressionless stones.
“Daimbert, we meet again,” he said in a friendly tone.
One of the women behind me gave a brief moan of terror. I took a deep breath. “Greetings, Prince Vlad,” I said.
II
“As I recall,” he said, looking me up and down and still smiling, “we had not finished our negotiations when you left my castle so abruptly, the last time we met. I believe I was explaining to you why you should bring me the treasure from the eastern deserts that a certain ruby ring would reveal….”
As I recalled it, when we had last met I had nearly killed him and he had called down curses on my retreating back. But if he wanted to talk for a while before he murdered me that was fine-it gave me time to try desperately to think of a way to get the others out of here.
“You were about to agree to bring whatever you found back to me,” he continued. I wished he wouldn’t keep showing his teeth as he talked, or that his stone eyes would blink, or
For a second I considered agreeing with him, telling him that I would be happy to have his company searching the East for treasure, and that when we split what we found I would even let him have the larger share.
But I dismissed this as a ploy. Spending weeks or months crossing the eastern kingdoms and the deserts
