With a Single Spell

CHAPTER 17

The passageway sloped up across the full width of the front of the castle, Tobas judged, and was unbroken by any windows or ornamentation at all. It consisted of bare stone walls and floor, a simple barrel-vaulted ceiling, and nothing more. It had originally been level, of course, and the angle was not particularly steep even now. The pitch from side to side was greater than along its length, so that Peren and Tobas hung close to the right-hand side, walking along the bottom edge.

Despite the absolute simplicity of the corridor, or perhaps because of it, Tobas was certain that the entrance from the wizard’s study had once been concealed, though whether by shelves, draperies, or some other device he could not be sure amid the general ruin. Perhaps there had once been an illusion spell that had been dispersed when the castle’s magic ceased to function.

The corridor was narrow; Tobas had to keep his elbows close to his sides to avoid bumping the walls. Peren, who was thinner, had an easier time of it.

They were about two-thirds of the way along, Tobas judged from his memory of the Great Hall’s width, when Peren stopped so abruptly that Tobas ran into him; both staggered on the sloping floor, and Peren had to fall to one knee to keep from losing his torch.

“What is it?” Tobas whispered, speaking aloud in such a place was unthinkable.

“Look for yourself!” Peren said, pointing.

With the albino down on one knee, Tobas was able to see over his shoulder; he took a good look at the end of the corridor.

The right-hand wall continued unbroken for another forty or fifty feet, while the left-hand wall ended after thirty or so; from where they stood, Tobas could not see any details of the wider area, or room, or whatever it was they were approaching.

He could, however, see what Peren had seen, lying on the floor. He had never actually encountered one before, but there could be no mistaking it.

It was a human skeleton, the bones of the legs and feet protruding out into the corridor, the rest still invisible around the corner, or at any rate, Tobas assumed that the rest was there, just around the corner. The tattered remnants of velvet slippers were tangled with the bones of the feet.

A moment of unreasoning dread came and went, and he quickly recovered his calm. “What of it?” he said, doing his best to sound as if he had come across skeletons dozens of times before. “He’s dead. I want to see what’s up there. Let’s go on.”

“What killed him?” Peren whispered, horror-stricken.

“How should I know?” Tobas was quite uneasy enough without Peren adding to it; he was determined to move on before he lost his nerve, and was annoyed at the albino’s reluctance. “Probably he fell and hit his head when the castle crashed,” he guessed wildly.

Peren glanced back at Tobas, then ahead again, gathered his nerve, and nodded. “You’re probably right. Or maybe he was a burglar, and the wizard caught him there, and the castle crashed before the body could be removed.” He rose to his feet and started forward again.

Tobas followed, certain that something was wrong with Peren’s suggestion and trying to figure out what it was; as they reached the corner, he realized that the crash would not have prevented the survivors from removing bodies. There had undoubtedly been survivors, or else the castle would have been littered with corpses, or rather, by now, skeletons. If anyone had known this body was here, it would have been removed despite the castle’s fall.

He liked his own theory better, that the man, or woman, had died here in the crash, and none of the survivors had known this passage existed. Or if they had known about it, no one had thought to check it in the confusion and panic that must have ensued.

When he passed the end of the left-hand wall into the room, he paused and looked down at the skeleton first, while Peren held the torch close.

It had been a man, plainly. He had worn leather breeches and a dark tunic with gold embroidery; the golden threads still gleamed in the dessicated and decayed remnants. An assortment of rings mingled with the outstretched finger bones, ranging from a simple gold band to an ornate tangle of gems and metals that must have covered an entire joint from knuckle to knuckle. A wide leather belt was now reduced to a few blackened strands and a tarnished silver buckle, and the purse that had hung from it had rotted and spilled forth an assortment of blackened silver and corroded green bronze. No gold coins, though; the two youths were disappointed in that.

Beside the purse was a dagger, its sheath rotted; Tobas picked it up cautiously while Peren collected the coins.

Hilt and blade were black, black as chimney soot; there was no trace of the brown of rust. Fine detail work was still sharp in places where iron or steel would have lost its shape as it corroded.

Tobas rubbed at the pommel with his tunic, and although he could not work down to a clean shine, he wiped off enough of the black to convince himself, by both look and feel, that the dagger was silver.

Who would carry a silver dagger? Only a wizard. Steel held a better edge, barring enchantment, and was far cheaper.

Forgetting for a moment that he was in a place where wizardry could not work, he drew his own athame and touched the points of the two blades together. Peren watched with interest.

Nothing happened.

Even as he completed the experiment, Tobas cursed himself for a fool. The dagger’s owner was long dead, and magic did not work here. He could not test his belief that this skeleton had belonged to the castle’s master. He sheathed his own blade and stood up.

“I think that this was the wizard,” he said. “Or at any rate a wizard.”

Peren nodded. “The rings, they look magical.”

Tobas had hardly noticed the rings, but he nodded agreement all the same. He had almost forgotten that the athame’s nature was a closely guarded secret and that ordinary people had no idea a wizard’s dagger was anything especially important, until Peren had reminded him with his remark; he had been assuming that Peren would have recognized the knife’s peculiarities for himself.

Peren raised the torch, which he had been holding down near the skeleton to aid Tobas’ investigation, and said, “I wonder what he was reaching for.”

“Probably just trying to regain his balance,” Tobas said. The skeleton did appear to be reaching out into the darkness; the left arm was bent as if supporting the shoulders, while the right was stretched out to its fullest extension, fingers spread.

“I guess you were right,” Peren said as he leaned down near the skull. “The fall killed him. See? The bone is cracked.” He pointed to where the forehead had been split and almost caved in. “He must have hit hard; I think he was running.”

The torch lit the domed skull an eerie orange-red, the cavities black with shadows that moved as the flame flickered. Tobas did not care to look at the dead man’s remains any longer; instead, he looked around at the space they were in.

The corridor opened out at this end into a room, almost twenty feet square, utterly bare and empty, save for one wall. The floor was blank stone; there was no furniture or debris. One side, to the right of the skeleton, was an extension of the right-hand wall of the corridor; on the wall opposite that hung the only adornment, a broad, dark tapestry.

Tobas stared at it, unable to make out details in the gloom, but certain that there was something odd about it. “Bring that light here,” he said.

Peren lifted the torch and rose from where he crouched by the broken skull. He took a few steps closer to the tapestry so that the torch lit the entire scene, and together the two adventurers stared at the hanging.

It was unlike any tapestry either of them had ever seen; it was all a single scene, depicted in incredible detail and absolutely flawless perspective, showing a pathway leading across a narrow band of rough stone toward the gates of a castle.

Above the pathway towered the castle itself, shown almost in its entirety, a very strange and forbidding castle built of gray and black stone, its every available feature carved into a leering, demonic face. The main entryway was a gaping, spike-toothed mouth, and two windows above it served as eyes, so that the castle itself seemed to have a malignant face as well. A gargoyle perched atop each merlon in the battlements; each corner was decorated with fiends standing upon one another’s shoulders for the full height of the structure. Towers hung out at odd angles, cantilevered without any signs of buttressing, topped with battlements of jagged spikes or conical roofs made to resemble furled bat wings. Inhuman, grinning faces, carved in black stone, peered over the tops of some of these, seeming to look straight out of the tapestry at the viewer.

The base of the castle stood on a rounded mass of rock, like a weathered mountaintop, with a few feet of clearance on each side and then cliffs dropping away out of sight or even seeming to curl back under. It was separated from the pathway by a narrow bridge of ropes and planking that was stretched across a yawning chasm.

To all sides of the castle and pathway, beyond a yard or so of stone, was simply space, limitless space, lit eerily from somewhere unseen with purple and crimson.

Tobas stared at it, studying it. It had none of the fuzziness or texture of an ordinary tapestry, no single underlying background color; it looked almost like a painting, or even a window, rather than mere cloth. Furthermore, it showed no trace of decay at all. At the very least, it was a truly fabulous work of art; he had never seen a tapestry so finely crafted and detailed.

Peren turned away, a trifle unsteadily. “I don’t like it,” he said. “That thing is hideous! No place like that could possibly exist, with those cliffs, that empty sky, and that foul light.”

Tobas glanced at him, then back at the tapestry, still fascinated. “It’s beautifully done, though. Look at the detail! You can see a red highlight there on that gargoyle’s fang and another here, that must be a spider web, that shiny line there. I’ve never seen anything like that. And the colors would probably be better in daylight; you know torches make everything look reddish and bring out the shadows.”

“I don’t like it,” Peren repeated, unswayed.

Tobas ignored this complaint and said, “Bring that light closer. Notice how it isn’t faded or worn? It looks brand-new.” Hesitantly, he reached out a finger and touched the cloth. It was cool and slick to the touch, a little like fine silk, with none of the warmth and give of the wool used in ordinary hangings.

Peren reluctantly brought the torch nearer so that Tobas could study the tapestry’s fabric more closely.

“Look at this,” Tobas said. “The fabric’s partly made out of metallic threads, gold, I’d guess. And the colors — I think that red is some sort of powdered gemstone. It looks like ruby.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Peren said. “Why would anyone make a tapestry out of gold and jewels? And if they did, why would they hide it up here?”

“It must be magic of some sort,” Tobas said, studying the demonic figures.

Peren took an involuntary step backward. “What sort?” “Oh, I don’t know; wizardry, probably, given where we are, but it could be something used in demonology, too, I suppose. If it’s wizardry, I can’t say what it was for; Roggit never mentioned anything like this. It might be something oracular, or maybe the wizard could use the tapestry to conjure up monsters. I don’t know; Roggit certainly didn’t have any magic of this sort.” He looked up to see how the tapestry was supported; it hung from loops around a metal bar. Tobas took the torch from Peren and held it up.

The bar was gold-plated, which explained why it was intact; even the brackets set into the stone wall gleamed golden. “Here,” Tobas said. “I’ll take this end; you take the other. We ought to be able to get it down.”

“Why do we want to?” Peren asked. “We should leave it where it is.”

“I want it, that’s why we should take it down. This is the only thing we’ve found in this wizard’s castle that’s obviously magic and looks as if it might still work, and I’m a wizard in need of more magic. Even if I can’t figure out how to use it myself, if I can get it back to Ethshar I can trade it to a wizard there for a few spells. If this wartime wizard thought it was important enough to be hidden away like this, to use up all this gold, and for him to be trying to reach it when he died, then it’s got to be something really powerful. It looks powerful. Even if no one knows what it’s for, it would look impressive enough in a wizard’s shop to please anybody. And if somebody can use it, and it’s as powerful as I think it is, this could set me up for life!”

His enthusiasm was not contagious. “I don’t like it,” Peren insisted. “It scares me.”

Tobas sighed. How could a man who had dashed out in a dragon’s face to rescue a companion be terrified by a mere picture? “Listen, Peren, it’s harmless here; no wizardry works, remember? Help me get it down; if you help me get it out of here, you can have first pick of all the other loot, everything you can carry. I’ll take this tapestry for my share.”

“You will?”

“I will.”

“It might be a demonological thing, you said.”

“It might be, but it probably isn’t, and maybe demonology doesn’t work here, either. Besides, if it’s wartime demonology, it might not work anymore anywhere, since the gods closed the old openings into Hell. The rules are different now.”

“But...”

“If it were dangerous, wouldn’t it already have done something? Come on and help me.”

“All right,” Peren said after another few seconds of hesitation. Reluctantly, he propped his torch up against a wall and crossed to the far end of the tapestry.

The brackets were above their heads, but by standing on tiptoe and stretching Tobas was able to push his end of the bar up and away from the wall. Peren, being taller and at least as strong, had an easier time of it.

Nothing terrible happened; it collapsed like any ordinary hanging. Once it was down, Tobas insisted that Peren help him roll it up around the bar, and together they reduced it to a compact bundle. It was surprisingly thin and light for its size; the rod was roughly an inch in diameter, the tapestry a good seven feet high, but the entire roll was only four inches thick.

It was so light, in fact, that Tobas had second thoughts, about his conclusion that thread-of-gold had been used. The bundle was eight or ten feet long, but weighed no more than a hundred and fifty pounds, at most. With effort, Tobas could carry it single-handed.

He hoisted it on his shoulder, staggering slightly on the sloping floor, while Peren recovered the torch and headed for the passageway.

“Wait a minute,” Tobas called. “What about the wizard’s rings? And that dagger of his is good silver.”

Peren stopped and looked down at the skeleton, then back at Tobas. “Are they enchanted?” “Who knows? The rings might be. The dagger, well, I think I know that spell, and with the wizard dead it would be broken, permanently. But I can’t be sure; after all, there’s so much here I don’t know. For all I can say, this no-magic area may have a permanent effect, I’m not sure my own magic will come back, even when we’re out of it and back in someplace normal. I’m just guessing.”

This was true, but he did somehow feel that his athame, at least, would still be enchanted when he left the area. After all, the dagger held a part of his soul, and he couldn’t imagine that it could have died permanently without his feeling something.

On that basis, he thought that any sort of magical imprinting, such as a major enchantment, would be effective again when removed from this eerie dead area. He certainly hoped so; he was counting on the tapestry to be powerful magic. He thought of the deadening effect as if spells were paintings, and magic the light that made them visible; the paintings could be taken into a dark room, and there they would be invisible, no more wonderful than blank board; but when returned to the light, the colors would be as bright as ever.

At least, he hoped that that was how it worked and that wizardry was more like color than fire, which, once extinguished, had to be rekindled.

Peren still hesitated over the skeleton, but at last, with a sudden grab, picked up the dagger and tucked it into his own belt. The rings he decided to leave, which Tobas had to admit was probably a wise decision.

Together, the two youths made their way back down the sloping corridor; Tobas needed Peren’s assistance to maneuver the long, heavy, awkward roll of tapestry around the corner and through the door into the study. Once it was safely through, he lowered it with a gasp of relief, letting it rest atop a pile of crumbling books.

“Are you really planning to haul that all the way back to Ethshar?” Peren asked, working the muscles of his back to relax them after the strain of helping Tobas with the ponderous roll of fabric.

Tobas, who had never been fond of strenuous lifting, was still trying to catch his breath; he nodded. He gulped air and, when he felt he could spare a little breath, said, “Yes, I am. I’ll carry it as far as Dwomor, then see about hiring a wagon or something. I think it’s worth it, I really do. But right now all I plan to do is eat dinner and then sleep in a wizard’s bed. What about you?”

Peren grinned in agreement.