By racking his brain Gord could recall seeing basins such as the one before him drawn in the ancient engineering diagrams. They were spotted along the course of each canal to serve as waterholes, more or less, for those not able to tap the central pool, the reservoir far beneath the old citadel. Gord berated himself mentally for not considering the possibility that the cistern might plunge into such a basin. What had the drawings indicated? The basins were dish-shaped and had a central depth of twenty feet… which meant that bones and box were twenty feet below the black water!
“Godsdamn you, Theobald!” Gord screamed this out, and the echoes gave it back to him in a broken taunt: “…damn… damn… damn… you… you… you… Theobald… eobald… bald… aid… aid.” As if in answer to the cry, the dark surface of the circular basin rolled and heaved-and something rose above the inky waters.
Gord turned at the sound of it breaking the surface, and the full beam of the lantern fell upon the thing that was there. What the monstrosity was he couldn’t tell. If ropes and rotting seaweed were intertwined and covered with the black ooze found at the bottom of a stagnant pond, a correct picture of the thing would begin to take shape. Add to that the trailing tendrils of a monstrous jellyfish and the thick tentacles of a great octopus. Finish it off with encrustations of things, vast bumps like rotting anemones, broader patches that resembled nothing other than masses of exposed intestines, and excrescencies that might have been putrescent mollusks without their protective shells.
That is what reared up from the black waters of the basin, and Gord wanted to flee at the sight of it. But there was no place to run.
Gord stood, more paralyzed with fear than steadfast because of bravery, and the light of his lantern brought the creature into stark relief as it heaved its way through the water, making the inky liquid dance under the illumination, drawing closer by a yard with each heave of its rotten, slinking body. The horror made him cringe, and his feet moved instinctively, taking him back along the conduit, but only one foot for each yard the creature was covering. There could only be one end to this encounter.
As the monster thrashed toward him, beating the ebon waters into a dark froth with its furious passage, Gord kept his eyes fixed upon the thing, backing still, sword now pointed at the ghastly abomination. As if hypnotized he watched the scene before him, and was quietly amazed to see that parts of the horror were breaking off as it advanced.
A massive tentacle broke into writhing pieces as it came. Bits of stuff, the rotted growths and adhering pieces, flew away or slid off the mass with audible, sucking pops. The thing was disintegrating before his eyes! At the same time, its rush was slowing, but it still gained on him. Now it was within the canal, and its bulk was evident. Its congealed mass of a body was vaguely seal-shaped, as large as a great walrus, and had a necklike protrusion that thrust toward the boy, snaking ahead with each convulsion of the monster’s body.
Gagging in terror as much as from the fetid stench that arose from the mass, Gord kept backing. Soon the monstrous thing would be upon him!
Smack! The form heaved up and came down closer still. Splash… plop…plop, plop-plop. The waves of displaced water struck the walls and his own legs, nearly knocking Gord off his feet, as pieces of rotten stuff continued to drop off.
Schlooop! It was drawing its body up again, this time with the long neck rearing as if it were a serpent coiling to strike. As if in slow motion Gord saw it all, and he finally realized what was happening. Under the bright light from his magical stone, the foul substances that composed the body of the thing were melting away, but the horror seemed totally unaware that it was dwindling, unaffected by its parts sloughing away in hunks and bits.
The reptilian forepart was high above Gord’s head now, its end bulbous, its neck melting away to show white beneath the blackness of rot and muck. But the thing was still coming on, and there could be no further retreat. The creature was upon him.
As the snakelike neck began to move forward and down, Gord grabbed the hilt of his sword with both of his small hands. Despite the chill, both of his palms were sweating freely. Holding on with all his might, Gord swung the puny blade to meet the terrible head as it swung down to smash him. Steel met corruption with a disgusting sound. There was a spray of putrid stuff everywhere, and then the head and neck were lying in the water just in front of him.
“Oh, gods!” The boy cried the words so loudly that they nearly deafened him, but at the same time he was comforted by the fact that he could speak-that meant he was still alive!
The horrible body, meanwhile, deprived of its forepart, flapped and writhed. Tendrils and tentacles continued breaking away, or simply dissolved in the waters. Great sections of the unnatural agglomeration of stuff similarly disappeared, falling into bits, washing away; going into nothingness.
Gord watched this, his teeth chattering, eyes bulging, until there was nothing of the horror left to see. It took only a very brief time even in the slow current of the canal. In minutes the black water was as placid as a quiet pool, and even the noisome reek of the monster had wafted away along the great pipeline. Gord shook himself, reached into his shirt, and pulled out the small container of brandy with a trembling hand. Using his teeth to pull the cork, the boy downed the remaining liquor with a gulp and tossed the empty flask away without a thought.
“Hollering hags of Hades!” he uttered with a long, whooshing breath thereafter. Too weak to stand any longer, Gord put his back against the curving rock of the conduit and allowed his knees to buckle. Slowly he sank to a sitting position, the cold flow of the dark water washing his body all the way to his ribcage. He didn’t notice, for his eyes were riveted to something discernible in the water nearby. There, just under the surface, picked out by the light of the enspelled stone of his lantern, was a globular object, white and familiar somehow. Then he recognized it. The thing was a human skull!
With a shriek Gord rose, water flying from him as he stood. He still held his sword, and he used the weapon to strike at the grinning sphere of bone. There wasn’t sufficient water between skull and blade to lessen the force of his blows. The third time the edge struck bone, the thing broke into bits.
“There, Theobald, there!” Gord cried as he delivered the last stroke. “This time you’ll die forever!”
With that, he used his boot to kick the fragments, and they washed away into the deeper channel and out of sight, just as the other parts of the unnatural thing had done but a short time before.
The trauma of what had just transpired was gone. He had proved he was able to stand up to Theobald, both as a human and as a monstrous horror of the worst imaginable sort. The thing he had just fought had to have been fashioned from the remains of the beggarmaster. No other will could have been strong enough and evil enough to collect rottenness and filth into a congealed mass and make it have semblance of life and a purpose.
Oh, yes, the monster had had a purpose. It had lurked there by the treasure, waiting, growing, knowing that some day Gord would come there to find the iron box and take the wealth away. Then the thing that had been Theobald would strike. Revenge, assimilation of his body into its own bulk, and… and what? The thought made him shudder again, mentally and physically: unlife as a conglomerate thing, a lurking horror seeking other lives to consume, a oneness with Theobald.
“It was the lightstone that did it,” Gord said aloud as the realization came to him. The enspelled brilliance of his lantern destroyed the corrupt creation born of hatred, darkness, and vile stuff.
“I did well enough, Theobald, for I struck the blow that finally ended you. But the light weakened you, ate your form away, and made it possible.” He was exhilarated, almost satisfied, by what he had accomplished. He was almost ready to turn away then and there, forget about the treasure, and go back the way he had come. But he stayed-not out of greed, he told himself, but because to leave without the strongbox would be to give the beggarmaster a last triumph. Small it might be in relative terms, but the treasure was what the thing had held dear, and that too must be cleansed.
Hours later, Gord was back In the sunlight. It had taken a long time to find the iron container, even with the help of the light that water didn’t extinguish. When he located it, he fixed his leather thong to one handle and dragged it out of the muck that covered the bottom of the basin and into the channel of the canal that it fed. That finally done, he had broken the lock and seen the contents of the chest for the first time.
It was disappointing. But, all things considered, Gord supposed it had to be. Most of the coins were corroded brass, bronze, or copper-corroded because the chest was not waterproof. But there were some of more precious sort, enough silver, electrum, and gold too to fill one of his small pouches. Like the man, Theobald’s treasure was shabby and mean for the most part. Only cheap jewelry, glass, and valueless stones remained in the chest with the stained coins. Gord left the lot standing in the dark waters of the canal beneath Old City. If any others should ever find it, let them wonder.
Rather than try to climb back up by using the knotted cord, Gord decided to find an easier means of leaving
