Shadow Chaser

5 Conversations In The Dark

I walked along a wide, dark corridor with walls of rough-hewn stone, covered with either moss or lichen. There was practically no light at all and I had to keep my hand on the wall in order not to miss a sudden turn.

The ceiling danced up and down like an earthworm trying to fly. Three times I hit the top of my head against it, but then after I took a few more steps I could stretch my hand up as far as I could reach without feeling any obstacle—there was nothing but empty darkness and a slight draft.

A thousand questions came swarming into my mind. How had I gotten here? Where was I walking to? Why? What was I looking for in the darkness of this underground cellar? And was it really a cellar?

That didn’t seem very likely, especially bearing in mind that every twenty-five paces my hand ran into a metal door with a small barred window in it. Twenty paces of crude stone and moss under my fingers, then they felt cold metal, dewed with the underground dampness. And then another twenty paces of stone. It all gave me the impression that I was on the lowest level of some immense prison.

The corridor seemed endless. Sometimes I heard groans and muttering from behind the doors, but mostly all there was behind them was a deafening silence. Who were the inmates of those underground cells? Prisoners, madmen, or the souls of people barred for all eternity from taking the path into the light or the darkness? I had no answer to these questions, and no real desire to find out who was actually in those cells.

As I walked past yet another door, I heard insane, cackling laughter from behind it. It took me by surprise, and I sprang away, recoiling to the opposite wall, and starting to walk faster in order to leave the insane prisoner behind as quickly as possible. But the sound of that laughter came after me along the walls and the ceiling, beating me on the back and forcing me to hurry on my way.

After three eternities, when I had completely lost count of my steps, I thought I caught a faint scent of the sea.

Yes, that was what the Port City in Avendoom smelled like, when the wind was blowing from the direction of the docks. It was the smell of salt and seaweed, of drops of seawater thrown into the air by waves crashing against the pier, the smell of the seagulls who meet the fishing boats in the evening. The smell of a cool freshness, the smell of fish, the smell of the sea breeze and freedom.

The inky blackness receded slowly, dreadfully slowly, revealing the ghostly outlines of the corridor. There was a timid beam of daylight shining down from somewhere up above.

I stopped and raised my head to look at the small spot of blue sky that I could see through a little window in the ceiling far beyond my reach. A ray of sunlight fell on my face and I involuntarily narrowed my eyes. I could hear a loud, regular sighing, as if a weary giant were resting somewhere nearby after a long day of hard work. The sea was somewhere close, and the sound of breaking waves was very clear.

The sea? But how was that possible? How could there be any sea here? Where was I then? And most important of all, how had I got here?

I certainly wasn’t going to find any answers loitering, so I said good-bye to the light, dove back into the unwelcoming gloom, and walked on along the corridor. It took a long time for my eyes to adjust to the darkness and once I almost lost my footing and took a tumble. I stopped and stretched out my right foot, feeling at the floor.

Just as I thought.

Steps.

Unfortunately, they led downward, into a blackness that was even darker and more impenetrable (if that was actually possible). I stood there, wondering what I should do next.

Going down into the lower vaults of the prison was not a very attractive option. Sagot only knew what I might run into down there. And I could wander around in the dark for a very, very long time. There were only two things I could do: go back to the very beginning of my journey, or walk down the steps and look for a stairway leading up.

The first choice was actually more rational than the second, but I simply couldn’t face the long and tiring journey back. Which meant I could only go on. I gathered myself and started walking down slowly. I didn’t have an oil lamp, or a torch, let alone a magical light, and I had to grope my way along. On the way down, I kept one hand on the wall and counted the steps. There were sixty-four of them, steep and well worn. They led me into another corridor that was the twin brother of the first. The same inky-black darkness, the same cold, musty, damp air that sent shivers down my spine. The same walls of crude stone covered with rough moss or lichen, the same metal doors with barred openings. But there was just one difference, which I noticed when I started counting my steps. The doors in the wall were set a hundred yards apart instead of twenty.

It was a lot colder here than in the upper corridor and after a while I started shivering, without really noticing it. In the darkness I had to walk slowly; I was afraid of running into an unexpected obstacle or simply falling into a pit. When I had walked past seven doors on my right, the walls changed. The coarse stonework and the moss disappeared, giving way to solid basalt. Whoever the builders were, they had cut the rest of the corridor straight through the rock. I began to suspect that I had ended up in a prison built by gnomes or dwarves.

Far ahead in the darkness I caught a brief blink of light, like a tiny glowworm. I stopped, pressed myself back against the wall, and started gazing into the distance. The little light blinked again. From the look of it, it was probably the flame of an oil lamp that wasn’t quite burning properly yet. The light was swaying gently from side to side in time with someone’s steps and slowly moving away from me.

I didn’t stop to think. A light meant rational beings, even if they might not be very kindly disposed toward unexpected visitors. I had to avoid getting too close to the unknown individual carrying the lantern, remain inconspicuous, and hope that my inadvertent guide would lead me out of this strange, confusing, and mysterious prison.

I dashed forward, ignoring the danger of stumbling over some unexpected obstacle and breaking my legs. Catching up with the stranger proved quite easy—he was plodding along with all the speed of an ogre gorged on human flesh.

As I ran, I passed a staircase leading upward (that was where the lantern-carrier had come from), but decided not to take it, because I didn’t want to go stumbling through the dark again. When I got close to the man ahead of me, I could see from the hunched back, the shuffling walk, the wrinkled, trembling hand clutching the lantern, and the gray hair that he was definitely very old. He was dressed in old, tattered, dirty-gray rags. But I would have bet my last gold piece that some time long, long ago those rags had been a magnificent doublet.

The massive bunch of keys hanging on his worn belt jangled ominously in time to his shuffling gait. One hand was holding a bowl or a plate. The other was trembling slightly as it held the lantern out at arm’s length, so that his shadow, enlarged several times over, danced on the wall.

I crept along several steps behind the old man, trying to keep two yards outside the boundary of the light. He shuffled his feet, groaning and swearing under his breath. Once he gave a hoarse cough. I was afraid he might fall to pieces as he moved, without ever reaching the place where his trek was supposed to take him. But, fortunately for me, the corridor suddenly came to an end and the jailer, as I had begun to think of him, halted with a grunt beside the final door. He put the bowl and the lantern down on the floor and took the bunch of keys off his belt.

Mumbling cantankerously, he sorted through the keys, until eventually he settled on one and tried it in the lock, but it didn’t work. The jailer cursed the darkness and the father who had begotten him and started jangling the bunch again, looking for a key that would fit better.

At this point it dawned on me that when the old man started walking back, I would be right in his path, if I didn’t make a run for that staircase in a hurry. But running in pitch-darkness without making a noise when I couldn’t see the walls or the steps was a rather difficult proposition. The old man might be a slow walker, but even if he didn’t follow closely enough to see me, he was bound to hear me.

He kept fiddling with the keys, and I tried desperately to think of a way out of this unpleasant situation. I could always smash the old man across the head, but then what guarantee was there that I would find the way back up without him? The new stairway could quite easily lead me into a new labyrinth where I would wander until the end of time. So attacking him was out.

There was no place along his route where I could hide—the lantern lit up the corridor from side to side, and no matter how hard I tried to squeeze back against the wall, a blind mole would be able to spot me. But opposite the door where the old man was standing, there was the doorway of another cell.

And I do mean doorway, because there was no door, just a pitch-black opening leading into a cell that had to be empty.The door was lying on the floor of the corridor, with its hinges torn off, formidable dents in its steel surface, and the bars on its window twisted and skewed.

I didn’t know who they’d been keeping in that cell, but when I saw what the prisoner had done to the door, I didn’t envy the guards when the creature broke out. And it was definitely a creature! No human being could possibly have made dents like that in a five-inch-thick sheet of steel (unless he’d spent three hundred years constantly hammering his thick head against it).

The old man finally found a key, picked the lantern up off the floor to examine his find in brighter light, clicked his tongue in satisfaction, and started playing with the lock. I slipped past him just two steps away and ducked into the dark cell.

The old man stopped trying to turn the key and sniffed the air rapidly, like a hunting dog that has caught the scent of a fox. But right then I wasn’t concerned about the old man’s eccentricities. I almost jumped straight back out into the corridor, because the empty cell stank as if an army of gnomes had been puking in it for the last ten years.

I covered my nose with the sleeve of my jacket and tried to breathe through my mouth. It wasn’t easy, because the smell was so bad that my eyes started watering. And while I stoically struggled against the stench, the old man stood as still as a statue beside the door that he was trying to unlock.

Eventually the jailer took another long sniff at the air and shook his head as if he was driving away some delusion. Oh, come on, granddad! There’s no way you can smell me through this stench! Not even if you have the nose of an imperial dog!

The old man started struggling with the stubborn lock again. Meanwhile I tried to keep the remains of my breakfast in my stomach. If I ever got out of these subterranean vaults, I’d have to throw away my stinking clothes and climb into a hot bath for a month.

The lock finally surrendered with a clang and the old man gave a triumphant laugh. There was a creak of rusty, unoiled hinges. He picked up the bowl and walked into the cell, lighting his way with the lantern.

I heard a faint clanking of chains.

“Woken up, have you?” the old man wheezed in a hoarse voice. “I expect you’re hungry after three days, eh?”

The answer was silence. A chain clanked again, as if the prisoner had moved.

“Ah, you’re so proud!” The old man laughed. “Well, well! Here’s some water for you. I’m sorry, I forgot the bread, left it in the watch house. But don’t you worry, my beauties, I will definitely bring it on my next round. In a couple of days.”

He gave an evil laugh.

I glanced out of my hiding place, hoping to see what was happening in the opposite cell, but all I could make out was the dim glow of the lantern and the old man’s back.

“Well, I’m off. Enjoy your stay. And drink your water. Of course, it’s not peacock in mushroom sauce or strawberries and cream, but it’s very tasty all the same!”

The old man walked out of the cell and the door creaked as it started to close.

“Stop!” Ah, so one of the prisoners was a woman. It was a clear, resonant voice, one used to giving orders.

“Well, I never!” the old man exclaimed in surprise, and stopped. “She spoke. What do you want?”

“Take off the chain.”

“And is there anything else you’d like?”

“Do as I say and you’ll get a thousand gold pieces.”

“Don’t abase yourself in front of him, Leta!” another woman said in a harsh voice.

“A thousand? Oho, that’s a lot!” the old man croaked, and the door of the cell started creaking again.

“Five thousand!” I could hear a note of despair in Leta’s voice.

The door kept on closing.

“Ten! Ten thousand!”

The door slammed with a crash, and I shuddered. That crash seemed to bring the sky tumbling down onto the earth. The bunch of keys jangled again, and I moved away from the wall beside the doorway, where I had been all this time, and retreated deeper into the cell, away from the light.

From my new position I would be able to see the old man’s face—and I simply had to see the face of a man who could refuse ten thousand gold pieces in such a simple, offhand manner.

The key grated in the lock and the old man hung the bunch on his belt and turned toward me. What I saw frightened me.

Very badly.

The last time I had been so frightened was that night when I climbed into the Forbidden Territory and met the charming and hungry jolly weeper.

The old man had parchment-yellow skin, a straight, sharp nose, bloodless blue lips, a dirty, unkempt beard, and his eyes … His eyes terrified me so much that my knees started shaking. The old fogey had cold, agate eyes without any sign of pupils or an iris. How can you call two opaque pits of darkness eyes?

They were deader than stone, colder than ice, more indifferent than eternity.

Such things simply shouldn’t exist in our world.

I couldn’t withstand that gaze, and I staggered backward.

All the universal laws of misery united to place a piece of rubbish under my feet. And you don’t need to be a genius to guess that the garbage made a deafening clang. To me it sounded loud enough to be heard on the other side of Siala.

The old man, as was only to be expected, froze on the spot and stared with those dead black eyes straight at the spot where I was hiding.

I couldn’t think of anything better to do than to pretend I was a log or a lump of stone. In other words, I tried not to move, or even to breathe.

The old man drew in air through his nose and I prayed to Sagot that he wouldn’t catch my scent. This jailer with two pools of blackness instead of eyes frightened me so badly, I could have wet my drawers.

The old man shifted the lantern from his right hand to his left and took out a weapon. What it resembled most of all was … Well, what can a large human shinbone sharpened at one end resemble? Only a sharpened bone, nothing else.

In the light of the lantern the bone looked yellow, except that its sharp end, which was shaped just like the point of a spear, was a dirty, rusty color—the color of dried blood. The old man grinned and I caught a glimpse of yellow stumps of rotten teeth. He took a firmer grip on his strange weapon, raised his lantern, and moved in my direction.

Don’t believe anyone who tells you that in the final few seconds before death a man’s entire past life flashes in front of his eyes like a galloping herd of Doralissian horses.

It’s a lie. A deliberate, barefaced, godless lie.

I didn’t notice any visions passing through my mind in those few seconds. Who can pay attention to visions when his knees are knocking in sheer terror? The hideous old man had decided to do away with me, there could be no doubt about it.

Either the god of all thieves heard my prayer, or the smell, which I had almost managed to get used to, offended the jailer’s sensitive nose, but either way, he stopped three steps outside the doorway of my refuge. The old man was looking straight at me, and the light cast by his lantern ended just five yards away from my feet. If the monstrous freak had taken just a few more steps forward, the light would have reached me.

I cursed my own careless curiosity. If I’d used my head, I would have pressed myself back against the wall and not just stood there like a statue in the middle of the cell, facing the doorway and hoping that the darkness would protect me from the old man’s eyes.

Those black eyes gazed in my direction without blinking, and my heart pounded thunderously in my chest, louder than a blacksmith’s hammer. I was amazed that the old man couldn’t hear it. He stared for a long time. For a very long time, at least a minute, which felt to me like a year, during which I aged an entire century.

“Damned rats,” the old man wheezed eventually. “Still breeding, the lousy creatures. What do they eat down here, anyway?”

He stuck his spear-bone away somewhere under his rags, shifted the lantern from his left hand to his right, and shuffled off down the corridor toward the stairway. Once he was gone, all I could see was a small piece of the corridor and the door of the cell in which the two female prisoners were languishing. The farther away the old man moved, the dimmer the light in the corridor became.

I didn’t do anything insanely stupid like trying to creep along behind the jailer. Any desire to leave my stinking cell had evaporated the moment I saw his eyes. It would be better to wait and then make my way slowly and quietly to the stairs, even if they did lead into pitch-darkness.

So I stayed where I was.

What if, instead of going up the nearest stairway, I walked to the one that had led me into this corridor and then staggered back to the place where I had come round, and looked for a different way out? I didn’t feel too lazy to cover the immense distance back anymore. I was prepared to do anything at all, up to and including flattening the Mountains of the Dwarves, just as long as I didn’t meet that old man again. The sound of shuffling feet faded away and a deafening silence filled the corridor. But there was still light! The light of the lantern hadn’t completely disappeared. There was a thick, deep twilight in the corridor.…

The old man had stopped before he got to the stairway. But why, darkness devour him?

Keeping my eyes fixed on the doorway, I took a careful step to the left, then another, and another, and another.

And then I almost had a heart attack! On my word of honor, no one had ever managed to frighten me so badly twice in such a short time before.

The monster hadn’t gone away at all. He’d stretched his withered body out on the floor and he was looking into the cell. If I’d stayed in the same spot where I’d been standing only a few seconds earlier, I wouldn’t have noticed him. And if I’d done something even more stupid and moved toward the doorway instead of stepping to the left, I would have come face-to-face with him. And now this monster in human form was staring intently at the very spot where I had just been.

What a cunning devil! How furtively and silently he had come back! He had even duped me. May the darkness drink my blood—it had all been a pretense.

As the old man got up off the floor, his hand dived under his doublet and whipped out his weapon. My back was instantly soaked in cold sweat.

In only two heartbeats the old man leapt into the center of the corridor, stood facing the doorway, and with a movement almost too quick to see, flung the bone at the spot where he thought I was standing. The bone whined as if it were alive as it flew through the air and shot right across the cell, crashing into the far wall with a dull thud and falling to the floor.

My would-be killer grunted in surprise and scratched the back of his head thoughtfully.

“It really is rats,” he said in a rather disappointed voice. “Oh, what a bone I’ve wasted! I’m not sticking my nose into this dump until that smell’s gone.”

Muttering and swearing, he set off in the direction of his lantern. The sound of shuffling feet receded, the corridor turned darker, and soon the impenetrable darkness returned.

I tried to calm the insane pounding of my heart, which was all set to jump right out of my ribcage. I’d been lucky. If I hadn’t moved from my old spot that bone would have been stuck in my chest. The old man had thrown it so quickly that I couldn’t possibly have dodged it; I wouldn’t even have realized what had happened.

I had been saved by good luck, the help of Sagot, and the caprice of fate. My heartfelt thanks went to all of them for allowing me to keep my life.

The old man’s footsteps faded away. My eyes had become so used to the darkness now that I could make out the contours of the doorway. It was very, very quiet all around me, but my fear was still as strong as ever. I was quite simply afraid to move a muscle. What if this was just another cunning trick? I’d already seen how silently he could move. He could easily have pretended to be leaving, taken the lantern away, and could be waiting for me now in the darkness of the corridor!

Waiting … in the darkness of the corridor.…

A cold shudder ran between my shoulder blades and down my back. I distinctly felt the hair on my head move. That cursed old man with his cursed black eyes was as tricky as a dozen orcs and he could quite easily be waiting in ambush, ready to send me on my final walk into the light.

“Stop, Harold, stop! Stop thinking about it, otherwise the fear will seep into your very bones! A few more thoughts like that, and you’ll start to panic. You’re a thief. The calm, calculating master thief known as Shadow Harold. A menace to every rich man’s treasure chest. The Harold that little green goblins with sharp tongues call the Dancer in the Shadows. You’ve never given way to panic while you were working, so don’t give way to it now! Keep calm.… Keep calm.… Calm your breathing now, that’s it.… Breathe in, breathe out.… Well done! Now get out of here, before things get even worse.”

I don’t know if I muttered these words myself or if someone invisible whispered them in my ear, but, with an angry snarl and clatter of teeth, the fear retreated.

Wandering about unarmed in the dark is an absolutely crazy idea, so I held my breath and walked to the back wall of the cell, where the bone had fallen to the floor. I felt around blindly with my feet for a long time, trying to find it. My eyes were watering from the stench and my nose felt as if someone had emptied a wagonload of Garrakian pepper into it, but eventually I found the bone and picked it up.

It was heavy! As I weighed the weapon in my hand, I immediately felt safer. If, Sagot forbid, something went wrong, at least I would have a weapon. I stuck it under my belt and cautiously peeped out of the cell into the corridor.

Nothing and nobody. Black darkness.

I couldn’t see the light of the lantern; the old man must have already reached the stairway. After the stupefying stench of the cell, the stale, musty air of the corridor seemed like refreshing nectar of the gods to me.

I couldn’t get those cursed black eyes out of my mind—I knew they would haunt my nightmares forever. Ah, if only Eel was with me.…

Eel! How could I have forgotten about him!

The veil of forgetfulness fell away and all the previous events of the day flashed through my mind. I remembered what had happened that morning.

First the walk to the mansion and estate of the unknown servant of the Master, then the attack by supporters of the Nameless One, our escape on that absurd wagon, and the crash into the wall before we were taken prisoner and I lost consciousness. And then I had come to in the corridors of this underground prison.

But if I was here, then what had they done with the Garrakian? And why had they left me on the floor of the corridor and not put me in a cell, like the other prisoners? And there was another strange thing—I didn’t feel as if I’d gone flying into the wall of that house at full speed.… My arms and legs were all sound, my side wasn’t smarting. I felt as if I could easily sprint a hundred yards with the guards chasing me.

Was I asleep? It didn’t really feel like it. So I had to find Eel and set him free. He had to be somewhere around here. Poking my nose into every cell was pointless—there were too many of them. And I could easily run into serious trouble if I opened the wrong one. I couldn’t tell who might be waiting for me inside. The best idea was to steal into the watch house and take a look at the register of prisoners—there had to be one of those in a prison, even if the warders here were old men with black voids where their eyes ought to be.

I set off along the corridor in the direction of the stairway, but stopped before I had taken ten steps. The women prisoners! How could I have forgotten about them? The women must know what prison this was. And there was no way I could just leave them to the mercy of that cursed old man. Maybe I ought to try to let them out, since the Nameless One’s supporters hadn’t touched the lock picks in my pocket.

A blizzard of contradictory thoughts immediately started swirling around in my head.

“Harold, you’re not a knight on a white horse from some sickly sweet children’s fairy tale,” whispered a voice with a slightly cynical tone. “Take your arms and your legs and scram, get as far away from there as possible! You won’t save the women anyway.”

“Oh, yes I will!” retorted a different voice. “Could you just leave someone to rot in the dark if you had even the ghost of a chance of saving them?”

Oho! So I had not just one, but two inner voices! Plus my own voice, and Valder’s as well! Four in all! It was time to book a room with padded walls in the Hospital of the Ten Martyrs.

“Yes, I could,” the first voice replied. “Wandering around in the dark with two women who are half dead from starvation is sheer lunacy. We’d never make it.”

“Say what you like, but I’m at least going to try to save them.”

“All right,” the first voice said to the second after a pause. “But afterwards don’t say I didn’t warn you. But then … What if we can grab ourselves the ten thousand gold pieces that woman offered the old man? Ten here and fifty from the king when we deliver on the Commission…”

I went back to the cell where the female prisoners were languishing.

Very carefully, so that I wouldn’t make the slightest sound, I put the lock pick with the triangular notch into the keyhole and tried to turn it. It didn’t work. Hmm, let’s try the one with four prongs and the size zero-one-eight groove. Right, now … that was it! Or at least, something in the lock had given a quiet click.

This wasn’t a simple lock, though. It had at least nine springs and two secret ones. Catch one of those by accident and you had to start the job all over again. It must have been made by dwarves. The short folk had done their usual good job, and now it would cost me no end of effort to get the door open. I would have to work on a lock like that for anything from two to fifteen minutes.

“Don’t be in such a hurry. Think. These women weren’t afraid of the old man,” I suddenly heard a voice say inside my head.

I shuddered. It wasn’t one of my own “inner voices,” the sides of a stupid quarrel with myself, it was the voice of Valder, the archmagician who had died several centuries earlier and had now found a refuge inside my hospitable head, which welcomes anyone at all who wants to come in.

“Do you think so?” I thought in fright.

“Yes. Did that old man frighten you?”

“Do you really have to ask?”

“Me, too, although I saw it all with an entirely different vision, but while they were talking the women’s voices didn’t even tremble. So should we really…” Valder’s whisper inside my head stopped for a moment. “Should you really go barging into the spiders’ den?”

“What is this place where I’ve … where we’ve ended up?”

“I don’t know. I can’t remember.” It was the first time I could recall the magician not knowing something. “Suddenly we were here, that’s all.… As if someone had just dropped us here.…”

“Suddenly we were here? That is, some kind individual just snaps his fingers and bang!—here I am in prison?”

In my mind I wished away the zealous clicker’s fingers, together with the rest of his hand. That would teach him to go sending decent people off to Sagot only knew where!

“What should I do?” I asked Valder, just to be on the safe side.

“It’s your head,” the answer came back. “You decide what you should do.”

“Oh no, I beg your pardon! Thanks to you, it isn’t just my head anymore!” I snapped back at the archmagician. “You climbed into it without asking permission, and now, if you would be so kind, since you have no intention of disappearing from it, advise me. What should I do?”

This time the answer was silence. The damned archmagician had disappeared, just as he had done before. It was as if he didn’t even exist. But I wasn’t going to be fooled like that. Valder only pretended to be dumb until some genuine magical danger threatened my skin. He had already got me out of several really tight corners, and I had no doubt that he would do the same again.

Some people might say that the archmagician and I had a mutually advantageous collaboration going, with Valder saving me from dangerous situations and me offering his soul rest and temporary forgetfulness in a corner of my mind. Well, now, everyone who thinks that’s great can just shut his mouth and keep it shut! They just don’t know what it’s like sharing your own head with another person, even if he did die a long, long time ago and he doesn’t interfere in my business until things are looking really desperate.

It’s a very unpleasant feeling, being able to sense someone else inside yourself and remembering things that never happened in your life. Although I can’t deny that if the archmagician hadn’t been with me, my eyes would have been eaten away by death-worms long ago.

“All right, the darkness take you. You can keep your damn mouth shut until you turn blue!” I swore under my breath.

I had no time to make any decision about what to do, though. I suddenly heard the sound of footsteps approaching from the direction of the stairway. Whoever the newcomer was, he was walking with a firm, confident stride, and walking in my direction. I thought how strange it was that all the jailers were in the mood for wandering the corridors today. For had always taught me to be afraid of people who strolled blithely through places where you ought to tiptoe and avoid attracting any unnecessary attention. If he was so noisy, it meant he wasn’t afraid. If he wasn’t afraid, it meant he could be dangerous. If he could be dangerous, he was someone I ought to avoid if I possibly could.

I had always tried to follow my old teacher’s wise advice, which was why I was still alive and well. I had no intention of doing anything different this time around.

I ducked into the cell with the open doorway. It already felt like home—the stench crept up into my nose, but this time I was able to adjust to it much more quickly than before. I stood where I could see the door of the female prisoners’ cell, and listened to the approaching steps.

The footfalls were only about five yards away from my sanctuary. Three … two …

The newcomer had a dark-lantern and although I could see an orange crescent in the dark, I couldn’t make out anything else around it. There was just the outline of a shadow in the darkness that had scarcely paled at all.

The newcomer stopped and the door gave a pitiful creak. I stared as hard as I could, but it was impossible to see anything in the pitch-black darkness. All I could do was keep my ears open.

The newcomer walked into the cell and I heard a chain jangle again.

“Hello.”

This time it was the second woman who spoke first.

“The most important thing is always to be polite, is that right, Lafresa?” the unexpected visitor asked in a mocking tone. The moment I heard that voice, I wished I was a thousand leagues away!

Darkness! A h’san’kor and a thousand demons! May they roast the soles of my feet on a frying pan! May I be caught red-handed every time for the rest of my life! Now I was really in trouble.

I recognized him. I had only heard his voice twice before, but both times I really wished I wasn’t there. It was the Master’s faithful servant, the one they called the Messenger.

“And what else do I have, apart from politeness?” The woman’s voice sounded bitter. “Or did you expect me to start begging you to spare my life?”

“Only the Master can spare your life,” the creature replied bleakly. “I am merely the Messenger who carries out his will. And as for not begging me … you will. If I want you to. You certainly will, Lafresa.”

The woman didn’t answer.

“Well, now,” the Messenger chuckled, without waiting for an answer. He sounded quite human now. “I see Blag is keeping you on nothing but water.”

“I’ll rip his heart out!” Leta hissed furiously.

“I don’t think that would do him any harm,” the Messenger chuckled. “You ought to know how to deal with Soulless Ones. It’s simpler to cut Blag’s head off than try to tear out a useless organ.… Although I can offer you some hope—you may soon be able to carry out your threat, my dear Leta. I’ve been thinking more and more often about making you into the same kind of Soulless One as old Blag. Our mutual friend needs an assistant … for various kinds of … pleasures.”

“You were always fond of foul jokes, slave!” the woman replied contemptuously.

Now I felt delighted that I hadn’t tried to save their lives. Anyone who talked with the Messenger on equal terms was no companion for me.

“And for all your short life you have been distinguished by tremendous conceit,” the Messenger parried mockingly. “You took too much upon yourself, my dear Leta, as did the lovely Lafresa here, and you have paid for it.”

“I have always been faithful and carried out all the Master’s orders!” Leta retorted furiously.

“Always? Come now, Leta! Don’t try to deceive an old friend. There’s only you, me, and Lafresa here; you can feel free to tell me how you managed to bungle such a simple task.”

“We did everything just as the Master ordered! For the good of—”

“Don’t give me any speeches about the good of the cause! Leave that for the priests and those tawdry peacocks who call themselves noblemen. Come on, tell me why your purple cloud didn’t work!” the Messenger barked. “Why does the Master still not have the Key?”

A purple cloud! Was the Master’s faithful dog talking about the shamanic storm? It certainly sounded as if he meant the abomination that had almost wiped out our group in Hargan’s Wasteland.

“I don’t understand how it happened,” the woman said in a tired voice. “You know I did everything carefully and correctly, just as I was told. The servants killed all of the Nameless One’s shamans—they were hunting the travelers, too—then we used the brew they had prepared and concealed the spell with a storm so that, darkness forbid, the Order would not get wind of anything, and we sent the magic off on the right wind. Everything was carefully calculated, and no one should have survived. Neither the elves nor the elfess had enough knowledge to oppose me. They couldn’t have destroyed the cloud!”

“But they did!” the Messenger retorted implacably.

“It wasn’t them,” Leta argued. “You can smell the shamanism of the dark elves and the Firstborn a league away, and there was nothing.”

“Don’t make excuses!” Lafresa exclaimed shrilly. “He’s nothing but a servant.”

“It wasn’t them,” the other woman insisted stubbornly, taking no notice of what Lafresa had said.

“Not them? Then who? In the name of the Font of Bloody Dew, tell me who!” the Messenger hissed.

“I don’t know. Someone powerful. And probably a magician, because we couldn’t sense anything. Someone you didn’t take into account.”

And his name was Valder. It was my acquaintance who had shattered the purple cloud into a million tiny shreds and saved our group.

“Stop lying! You’re walking a knife edge as it is. Everything was taken into account. Everything! Or do you expect me to believe that there’s a magician hiding among those ants? Player from Avendoom didn’t say anything about any powerful magician. Nobody from the Order went with the group, he made sure of that!”

“I don’t trust Player,” Leta muttered. “He’s a fox who could mess up our plans at any moment.”

“Immortality and knowledge make a magnificent incentive for loyalty.”

“If he’s so loyal to our cause, then why is the thief still alive?”

“The plans have changed.”

“That’s stupid!”

This woman would have done better to follow Lafresa’s example and say nothing, if she wanted to live a bit longer.

“Just a little more and I’ll rip your tongue out, girl! It’s not for you to discuss the will of the Master.”

“No threats, please, Messenger! I knew you in another life, servant of the Master, so save your eloquence for the sheep. You’ll find them much easier to frighten than me!”

“Oh, yes, they’re much more compliant than you are. But you’re no different from them. You’re just as mortal, although you can remember all your previous lives. But we’re not talking about the servants, we’re talking about you and your friend here. You made a mistake, you failed to justify the Master’s trust, and that’s why you’re here, waiting to pay the penalty.”

“Is that why you came? How low the one they now call the Messenger has fallen! Well, I’m ready to die,” Lafresa declared proudly.

“Have you any last words you would like to say?”

“No.”

Leta laughed hoarsely and hysterically: “Unlike you I can always return to the House of Love. But you, my dear J—”

The man suddenly started wheezing. Now that was something we’d seen before. When this character got upset, he liked to grab the nearest person within reach round the neck.

“Ne-ver,” he hissed quietly. “Do you hear me? Never dare to speak my real name! Yes, thanks to Lafresa I was born in the House of Pain and the House of Fear, and I can never even touch Love, but now I am in the House of Power, and it is not for a little louse like you to speak my name!” The wheezing gradually became a gurgling, and then I heard the soft thud of a falling body—our messenger was a very affable fellow.

“If I had my way, you would never leave this cell, Lafresa. I haven’t forgotten. So when you meet the Master you can thank him in person for sparing your life! You’re lucky, there’s a job for you to do.”

“What can I do for my lord?” The surviving woman’s voice didn’t even tremble. She wasn’t saddened in the least by the death of her friend.

“You are one of only a few who can be trusted with the Key. You will take it and bring it here.”

“The Key?”

“Have you become hard of hearing? The artifact is in the hands of one of the servants. You will bring it back, or is that too difficult for you?”

“No … it’s not difficult. But why me?”

“You ask the right question. Leta could have been in your place. And any feeble human, even without your abilities, could have brought this thing to the Master, but the problem is that … the Key has been attached. The elfess has already worked her shamanism and now the bonds will have to be broken. Apart from you there are only five others who are capable of that. And to anticipate your question, the reason you have been chosen instead of them is as follows: Player is too busy in Avendoom and the others are too far away. And they would require a lot of time to prepare before they could even begin.… Knowing your natural gift for Kronk-a-Mor, I make bold to presume that you won’t need any preparation. Or almost none…”

“When does the Master need the Key?”

“In two weeks at the most.”

“It will take me four months to get to Ranneng from here.”

“You will be there the day after tomorrow. Collect the artifact, break the bond, bring it to the Master, and then, perhaps, our lord will forget your annoying blunder. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

“I shall need time. I have to wait for a propitious conjunction of the stars, otherwise the bonds will not break.”

“You have no time. Try not to make a mess of this.”

“Take off my chains.”

I heard a quiet clicking sound.

“Take the lantern and get out of here.”

“Gladly,” the woman responded.

“Remember, this time you’d better not make any mistakes, or it will be a long time before you see the House of Love again.”

“I shall remember your words, Messenger.”

I saw that the woman was short, with bare feet, but I couldn’t get a look at the features of her face. If this Lafresa was going to turn up out of the blue at the Nightingales’ mansion to collect the Key, somehow or other I had to get there in time to stop her. She walked off with the Messenger following her.

I waited for the sound of their footsteps to fade away.

“Harold, now you’ve stopped thinking altogether,” Valder remarked sulkily.

“Well, you’re a real chatterbox today,” I replied to the archmagician. “What’s the problem?”

“Did you hear what he said? It takes four months to get to Ranneng, but she’ll be there the day after tomorrow.” Then Valder disappeared again.

Ah, darkness! By the time I got to the city, the Key would probably already be gone! And I couldn’t warn Miralissa or Markauz, either. The only thing I could do—much as I loathed the idea—was follow those two and …

And what? Stop them? Or ask them to take me along?

Sagot, show me the way! I walked out of the cell and then, keeping one hand on the wall, set off toward the staircase, in the same direction the Messenger and the woman had gone earlier.

I tried to walk quickly and silently—as far as that was possible in the pitch-black darkness.

The pair I was following were fifteen yards ahead of me. I didn’t dare move any closer to the Master’s servants because I was afraid of being noticed, and I judged how far away they were by sound. As soon as their steps sounded quieter, I sped up and moved closer to the pair in front of me. If I overdid it and the sound started getting louder, I stopped and waited before carrying on.

We walked on like that until they came to the stairway. Then I had to wait for Lafresa and the Messenger to walk up before I could follow them.

It took me a long time to climb the stairs. In the first place, it was just as dark as ever, the steps were completely different sizes, and I had to feel my way along, so I could only move at a snail’s pace. In the second place, the stairway itself was very long: At first it went upward, then it started spiraling round and round, and it went on and on and on.

I felt as if I was going to offer up my soul to Sagot right there on that accursed stairway and, naturally, I lost sight of the pair I’d been following all this time.

When the steps finally ended, I peeped out cautiously into a corridor illuminated by widely spaced smoking torches. No one. No Messenger and no Lafresa. The massive stone-block walls were almost completely covered in soot, and the arched ceiling was far from clean, too. Here and there it still bore traces of genuine whitewash, but to my inexperienced eye they looked decades old. No doors in the walls, nothing but inscriptions in some language that I didn’t know—either ogric or the language of the Firstborn, I don’t have a clue about the writing of either race.

I hadn’t walked very far, perhaps a hundred or a hundred and fifty paces, when the corridor ended at another stairway, but this time there were only twenty steps at most. At the top of the steps the thick darkness started again. I put my foot on the first step, and my nose was immediately assailed by a faint, moldy odor of dust and decay.

“Oh, no,” I muttered to myself. I walked back a little way along the corridor and took a torch down off the wall.

The flame trembled and spat sparks in the draft that somehow managed to find its way into the underground maze. Then I walked up the steps into a small hall and swore out loud—I didn’t like what I saw one little bit.

There was a skeleton lying stretched out on a crudely built wooden table. I could tell straightaway that it wasn’t human. To judge from the fangs, it had probably been an orc or an elf. And it had a rusty hatchet stuck in the top of its skull.

I’m not afraid of dead men, especially the kind that lie still and keep their mouths shut. I’m not even really worried by the wretches that members of the Order call “the arisen” and the simple folk call “wanderers” or simply “the living dead.” They’re fairly clumsy creatures, harmless as long as you keep away from their hands and teeth. And try not to get under their feet in general.

The living dead do exist, that’s a fact. But I’d never heard of living skeletons before. How can bones move if they have no muscles, tendons, pads of cartilage, and all the rest to connect them?

Two answers immediately came to mind: Either some idiot was jerking the bones about on strings, or the shamanism of the ogres was responsible—and that, of course, was entirely possible.

Anyway, I had no time to figure out why the skeleton lying on the table was jerking its legs about rather friskily and apparently trying to get up. I was concerned with a different question: Would it be able to do what it wanted and would that be dangerous for me?

The skeleton jerked its legs and tried to stand up. But it was getting nowhere, because some kind soul had pinned its spine to the table with huge iron staples.

I have to admit that curiosity is a failing of mine. I walked a little bit closer. The creature immediately turned its head in my direction and hissed. I swear by Sagot that it hissed, even though it had no lungs or tongue or any of the other things that decent people are supposed to have in order to make sounds.

The black holes of the eye sockets, with a myriad of crimson sparks swirling in them, were trained on me. “Free me, mortal!”

I was dumbfounded for a moment. If skeletons had learned to speak, it was time for me to move into the cemetery—the end of the world had to be near.

“Not in this life,” I replied grimly, and backed as far away as possible.

The dead creature lowered its head onto the table and hissed in fury, like oil poured onto a red-hot skillet, then started writhing and jerking about. It really put its heart into it (except, of course, that it didn’t have one), and the table started shifting across the floor.

“I shall free my-self an-y-way!”

Every syllable was accompanied by a sharp jerk that set the table shuddering. The staple at the dead creature’s waist started to yield ever so slightly.

I decided it would be better to go on my way and not tempt fate. The creature’s spine was pinned down along its entire length, and it would have to jerk for at least a week. But the most important thing was to make a start. The first restraint had already yielded, and the others would follow. Water wears away stone, as they say. I wasn’t going to hang about to observe what would happen when this thing broke free.

For the next few minutes after that, nothing strange, let alone unpleasant, happened, for which Sagot be praised and glorified forever! The floor rose up a very slight incline and the torch lit up the dreary gray blocks of stone gleaming with the underground damp, and the inscriptions scrawled on the walls by someone’s careless hand. The ceiling retreated to a great height, so that the flame of the torch could no longer pick it out of the gloom. A slight echo appeared, doubling the sound of every step I took, and I had to walk almost on tiptoe.

The Messenger and the woman had dissolved into the darkness, and now there was no way that I could possibly catch up with them.

“Start with the Lower South Level,” said the Messenger’s voice, spreading along the corridor. I dropped the torch on the floor and stamped it out with my foot. “The Master has no more need of them.”

“Can I…?” asked Blag, his voice trembling with excitement.

“I don’t care what you do, Lost Soul,” the Messenger replied, and every word was full of contempt. “If you want to eat them, then eat them; if you want to carve trinkets out of their bones, then do it; but first do as I have told you.”

“Of course, my lord! Old Blag will take care of their bones. Oh, yes! He’ll take care of them.”

The voices seemed to come from all around me. They enveloped me, so that I couldn’t tell where the speakers were. I was sure that the Messenger and the old man weren’t in the corridor, or they would definitely have seen the light of my torch. It sounded as if they were talking somewhere behind the wall, but I hadn’t seen any door while the torch was still alight.

“Permit me to say, my lord … Please forgive me if it is none of my business … but you shouldn’t have let that girl go.”

The sound of Blag’s voice was coming from right above my head now. Were they walking on the ceiling, or what?

“Just do as I told you!” the Messenger snapped. “Otherwise you’ll find yourself back in the place the Master found you, feeding the worms again!”

Blag started muttering in fright and the section of wall directly in front of me slid to one side, revealing a room that was lit by a lantern. I didn’t even have time to jump aside; the secret door opened so suddenly that I was caught in the circle of light. Blag was coming out into the corridor and he saw me.

I swear on Kli-Kli’s head that I saw a momentary flash of amazement in those black pools of eyes. The old man grinned, baring his rotten teeth, and I flung his own weapon—the bone—at him without bothering to think.

I must say that I’m no great master at throwing ordinary knives, let alone bones. But this time someone must have guided my hand.

I didn’t hit the old man, but I did hit the oil lamp in his hand. It exploded, and the flame threw itself on Blag like a polecat crazed with hunger. The old man howled, dropped onto the floor, and started rolling around, trying to put out the fire. The flames enveloped him completely, devouring his clothes and his flesh. I stood there, completely spellbound by this terrible sight, and only noticed the frenzied gleam of a pair of amber-yellow eyes at the very last moment.

A black shadow sprang at me, I instinctively jumped back, and the clawed hand extended to tear out my heart missed.

Almost missed.

The claws ripped open my shirt, and then a clump of pain exploded somewhere in the region of my stomach. I think I just had time to yell before the world splintered into a thousand excruciating shards.