Castle Perilous

Middle Levels

Osmirik stopped in his tracks when he saw the giant creature sitting in the middle of the large domed chamber. Something told him it was a creature, although it looked in some respects more like a vegetable garden. On the whole it was of such complexity that the eye was at pains to make sense of it. Leaves, claws, stalks, legs — these appendages and more protruded from the beast at haphazard angles. Green and yellow fronds covered the body in most places, save for a few areas where strange feathers grew.

Osmirik backed off. It was a long way around the thing.

“Greetings,” came a voice emanating from an appendage resembling a cabbage head. It appeared to have a mouth.

Astonished, Osmirik halted.

“We bid thee greetings,” spoke another vegetable mouth.

Osmirik bowed stiffly. “A good day to you, sir … er, sirs.”

“It is polite,” the first head observed.

“Ask it what place this be,” suggested a third.

“Capital idea. Kind stranger, canst tell us how this place is called?”

“You are in Castle Perilous,” Osmirik answered, “the master whereof is Lord Incarnadine by name.”

“Might ye know, then, how we came to be here? We are unclear on the matter ourselves.”

“Unfortunately, I do not know. My apologies.”

“Tis nothing. Thou hast done us a kindness.”

“Ah, tis beyond hope,” lamented a fourth head.

“By the heavens, I think thee right,” said the first. “We shall never leave these walls.”

“Your pardon,” Osmirik said. “I have a question.”

“Yes?”

“How long have you been here?”

“A very long time. We think for at least a hundred cycles of the stars, albeit none are here to be seen.”

“And you have spoken to no one in all that time?”

“Thou’rt the first who deigneth to speak to us.”

“A pity,” Osmirik pronounced. “And an injustice.”

“Truly, for we have in that time composed nigh on two million lines of a new poetical work.”

Osmirik was somewhat taken aback. “You don’t say?”

“Yes. It is lyrico-pastoral in nature, with overtones of romantic melancholy. Likely as not, it would please thee greatly.”

Osmirik looked off, searching for the nearest exit. “Under ordinary circumstances, I would fain hear it. However —”

“We would be honored to perform it for thee,” the first head intoned. “Chorus, assemble!”

The cabbage heads rearranged themselves.

“Very well. Begin.”

All heads then chanted in unison:

“Hear us, O Demiurge, whose spirit deep abides

In soils which giveth life to each and all,

And bless these humble lays, that they may be

As seeds cast on fertile ground to germinate

And bear the fruit of Universal Love …”

“Mother Goddess, blank verse!” Osmirik murmured as the chorus droned on. He began sidling his way through the narrow space between creature and wall, smiling pleasantly and nodding enthusiastically. At length he made it to the other side, stood and listened a polite moment, bowed, and walked through an exit.

“Uncultured dolt,” came a voice at his back.

Osmirik exhaled, then shuddered. What next? he thought. After an outsized cabbage garden with a penchant for high-flown poesy, what could follow?

The floor opened up and swallowed him.

He slid, endlessly, down a dark spiraling pipe. He tried halting himself, but the angle was too steep and the walls inordinately slippery. He extended his arms and legs and let his body go as loose as possible, praying that the pipe would soon level off.

It did not. It widened, then tipped to vertical. Screaming, Osmirik plummeted in darkness.

The pipe ended and he shot through into open air. He was briefly conscious of falling through a great semidark chamber. Then came a violent shock —

He was underwater. Warm currents pulled him this way and that as he thrashed his way upwards, his lungs burning and his heart slamming against his breastbone. Just at the moment when he thought he could no longer keep himself from inhaling water, he broke the surface and gulped air.

He gagged and choked as the intolerable stench of raw sewage assailed his nostrils. He was swimming in the stuff. He looked around. The chamber was huge and generally spherical, a vast stone cesspool, and from the roof protruded the ends of numerous pipes.

He searched the darkness at the edges of the chamber. There appeared to be a bank or at least a ledge bordering the lake of offal. He began swimming toward it.

As he neared shore, something seized his right foot, briefly, then let go. He splashed and kicked furiously until his strength was at an end and the ledge was an unbridgeable arm’s reach away.

An arm reached for him, and he was pulled from the foul waters like the rotting carcass of a great fish.

“Fine day for a swim!” said a jolly voice. It belonged to a short, balding man wearing tights and a simple gray tunic.

After getting his breath, Osmirik wheezed, “I owe you a great debt.”

“Think nothing of it. I like company now and again. Tis aching lonely down here at times.”

“You are …?”

“Dodkin, Master of the Castle Waterworks, is what I’m called to my face. Shitmaster Dodkin, to other parts of me.”

“You have my perpetual gratitude, Master Dodkin. But tell me —” Osmirik coughed and spat. “However do you put up with the smell down here?”

With a puzzled frown, Dodkin sniffed the air. “What smell?”