When they finally reached the entrance to the catacombs, a heavy wooden door reinforced with bars of rusted metal confronted them. Grinda wondered if the handle would even work. There were no footprints in front of the entrance but plenty of weathered warning signs.
RATS AND BATS! one sign said.
BEWARE THE ACID LEECHES! another cautioned.
WATCH OUT FOR THE TONGUES! FOR REALS, but it included an illustration that didn’t look like any real tongue Grinda had ever seen.
THE HORRORS OF YORE! yet another sign warned.
AND BEES!!!!! the last one cried out, its lettering drawn in an unsteady mad hand, the excess of exclamation points obviously placed there to inspire fear.
“I have so many questions,” Poltro said. “It all starts out just fine, rats and bats being the sort of thing you’d expect in the catacombs, but then it all goes a bit wobbly, doesn’t it? Are the acid leeches made of acid, or injecting their victims with acid, or are they actually leeching acid from your blood and tissue? The adjective is ambiguous. And these tongues, now: Are they hanging out by themselves, so to speak, or hiding inside something’s mouth? If they are in something’s mouth, how are we supposed to watch for them? And aren’t catacombs at least partially defined by a complete lack of sunshine, which would not be an ideal growing environment for flowers, and without flowers you’re probably not going to have bees at all, right? Much less BEES!!!!! with surplus punctuation.”
“There’s an easy way to find out,” Fia said, twisting the creaky handle until the mechanism slid open with a screech and clunk. She hauled the door open, and an unholy fusty funk of death and black licorice assailed their nostrils.
“Interesting,” Gustave commented. “Y’all go first.”
“Specifically Lord Toby and Poltro,” Fia amended, “for your crimes against goatkind.”
“There are no such crimes,” the Dark Lord huffed. “I was enchanted. And you can’t be mad at someone for being enchanted. That’s double jeopardy.”
“Hold on,” Grinda said, peering into the entrance. Light penetrated only so far into the yawning orifice, and she doubted there would be handy torch sconces around. Time to try out the new wand. She withdrew it, traced a circle in the air as it pointed downward, and chanted, “Krogla svetloba.” A small tempest of topsoil whipped up from the ground, formed a sphere of dust, and began to glow from within. It dropped into her outstretched hand, and she presented it to Poltro. “It’s fragile,” she explained, “but at least you’ll be able to see where you’re going in the dark.”
The so-called Dark Lord snorted contemptuously. “There’s no need for such cumbersome trinkets,” he said, fishing a small vial from his pack, the contents of which glowed green. “I have a much better solution.”
He unscrewed the lid, shook out a tiny bit of the green stuff onto his fingertips, and placed his hand flat against the wall on the right-hand side.
“What’s that, m’lord?” Poltro asked.
Toby’s voice glided into pomposity like hairless arms into the sweeping sleeves of a comfortable robe. “A curious kind of algae that thrives in darkness and emits its own light. I can spur its miraculous growth and spare us the need for these dirt balls.” He turned to the wall and intoned in a more respectful voice, “Gleep na globin sobol.” The algae bloomed and spread underneath his fingers and then rapidly raced down the rock of the hallway, providing a faint eldritch glow to which their eyes would soon adjust.
“That’s so much more useful than bread,” Fia murmured, and when everyone looked at her, remembering that his almost-crackers had once been their only source of nutrition, she hastened to add, “I mean right now, anyway.”
“It’s quite useful, I’m thinking,” Poltro said, tossing Grinda’s globe back to her; the sphere promptly crumbled when the sand witch tried to catch it. “We can walk in there and have both hands free, which will be terribly handy if one might need a dagger in one hand and a turkey legge in the other or if, say, one must swat away some bees.”
The Dark Lord looked supremely smug as he sauntered to the other side of the corridor and repeated the process with the algae. With the glow coming from both sides and even the beginnings of the ceiling lighting up, nothing would surprise them in the dark.
In fact, a skulking rat intent on skullduggery squeaked its dismay at the sudden illumination and scampered off into the cavernous depths, trying to find someplace appropriately dark in which to skulldig.
“Yes, this is good,” Argabella said. “I need both hands to play my lute.”
Grinda ground her teeth while Lord Toby preened and fondled his beard extensions as if they had made him infinitely wiser than she. Some of the glowing algae got in his beard, she noted, and nobody said anything. He was an occasionally useful fool, and she would need to remind herself of his usefulness when his foolishness tested her patience.
Like now, when she needed to protect them. “Hold still, please,” she said, waving her wand to encompass the entire group. “I’m going to cast a seeming on us before we enter. We are all just grains of sand, something that looks exactly like whatever the denizens of these catacombs are used to seeing. Do nothing to disturb them or their environment and they shouldn’t even notice us.”
Lord Toby snorted derisively. “Seemings,” he said with disdain. “Illusions can’t match the practical arts.”
Grinda quietly reminded herself not to turn him into a crab. He might prove to be practical later in human form; the glowing algae trick, much as she hated to admit it, was a good one. “It is not a question of matching. It is merely pooling our talents to maximize our chances of survival.”
“Hey, are you talking about talent pools?” Poltro asked. “I’ve heard of those but haven’t ever seen one. Cutter said I probably never will, so I’d like to prove him wrong. I’m not much for swimming, though. Think they have one in Songlen? And do they allow swimmy wings?”
No one knew quite how to answer that, so she received a visual chorus of shrugs, and then they entered the Catacombs of Yore, two by two. Toby and Poltro took the front, Fia and Argabella walked behind them, and Gustave took up a spot in the rear with Grinda, keeping suspicious yellow eyes on her at all times. The goat went up in Grinda’s estimation; he was the only one clever enough to recognize how dangerous she was.
For a good half hour there was only the single hallway and no terrors to speak of. Few rats or bats either, and those they saw took no interest in them. But the smell of rot grew stronger as they probed more deeply into the wide tunnel, and soon enough passages opened up to either side. The main hall also changed its nature, adding scalloped hollows set into the walls in which muslin-wrapped bodies of expired Pellions had been deposited, only to be chewed and gnawed on by the creatures living there.
Something loud and large buzzed by Poltro’s head, startling her. “Cor! What was that?” She squinted after it. “Was that one o’ them bees the sign warned us about? Didn’t seem beeish. Looked gray to me.”
“Hmm. That could be interesting,” Toby said, but refused to elaborate.
“I can’t help but notice,” Argabella said, “that some of the bodies don’t appear to be stored properly in the little recessed shelving unit thingie doodads. Like, maybe they weren’t already dead? Like, maybe they died here?”
Grinda noticed that, too. A couple of bodies were sprawled on the ground and did not appear to have ever been wrapped up. And there were more of the strange gray bees now.
The sand witch craned her head to peer between Fia and Argabella. There were more bodies ahead on the catacomb floor, some of them just scattered bones and skulls at this point. And Toby was accelerating, obviously excited, and in the wrong sort of way for a journey through a cave full of corpses and bees.
“This could be truly remarkable,” his voice floated back to them. The words were furry around the edges because of all the buzz
ing. He was walking straight into a veritable swarm of the things. “Yes. Yes,” he said, growing more excited. “Oh, yes!”
“What is it, Lord Toby?” Fia asked.
“Come see!” He was practically dancing, and they could see him pointing at one side of the hallway, presumably where a body was stored. When they reached him, they were surrounded by hundreds of the gray furry insects looping through the air, each one slow and fat like a bumblebee except somehow not appearing very friendly. And what he was pointing to, Grinda saw, was a skeleton’s rib cage that had become the framework for a hive.
“They’re necrobees! Real necrobees!”
“Don’t you mean zom-bees?” Gustave quipped, but everyone ignored him.
“Beg your pardon, sir?” the rogue asked.
The Dark Lord sighed. “They don’t collect pollen, Poltro. They have been mutated. They eat the dead—mostly the skin—and turn it into one of the most prized substances in the world: flesh honey.”
Argabella gagged and covered her mouth. “Auggh! That is nasty!”
“No, no—well, yes. But a single spoonful is supposed to add ten years to your life!”
Grinda had to interrupt. “I’m sorry, Lord Toby, but this mutation can’t be natural. Someone had to do this to them.”
“Absolutely correct! A diabolical piece of magic, but so powerful one cannot help but be in awe. And I think you know only one mage could have accomplished this: the infamous eastern scalawag—that rascal!—the Dread Necromancer, Steve.”
Fia’s fists clenched, and her muscles bunched and rippled. “Gah! Not Steve! I hate that guy!”
“You know him?” Lord Toby said, his estimation of Fia visibly creeping upward.
“Let’s just say he’s one of the reasons I came to the west.”
“I don’t suppose,” Poltro said, nervously eyeing the swarm around her, “the Dread Necromancer Steve thought to make his mutated bees harmless?”
“Oh, no! They’re lethal in the extreme,” Toby said cheerfully. “A single sting means certain death.”
The buzzing around them got ominously louder.
“So, uh…shall we move on?”
“Yes. As soon as I admit to Grinda that seemings do have their uses. We should all be dead by now and adding our bones to the fabulous charnel house you already see here.” He sounded way too delighted for someone standing ankle deep in bones and bees, but the sand witch had never expected to hear him act even the tiniest bit humble.
“Oh.” Grinda felt genuinely surprised. “Thank you, Lord Toby.”
“Might you also have a way for us to get some flesh honey without dying?” he asked.
Argabella made a horking noise. “Auggh. No, please don’t say that, Lord Toby. It just gets worse in my head every time I hear it. I just threw up a little bit in my mouth.”
“I don’t have a way to do that, sorry,” Grinda replied, annoyed that he knew so much more about this newfangled flesh honey than she did. “If they’re anything like regular bees, the moment you invade their hive, they will notice you despite my seeming. Let’s move on and not tempt fate any longer.” She took great pains to hide how very much she wanted a spoonful—or, actually, jarful—of the honey for herself. At the end of each day, the youthfulness spells hung about her like layers of frayed, broken spiderwebs, and she was well enough aware that the wrinkle treatments were making her more and more smeary every year. Still, many an old witch had died in pursuit of a bit of age magic like this flesh honey, and their corpses looked just magnificent. Until something worse than necrobees ate them.
“I’ll have to come back later better prepared,” Lord Toby said with the sort of foolish bravado that got men killed while spelunking. “Now that I know they’re here, I can return anytime.”
They carefully tiptoed through the bones of others who had obviously been even worse prepared, and once safely out of range of the buzzing, Argabella whispered to Fia in a perfectly audible voice, “So you dated a dread necromancer?”
“Very briefly,” Fia admitted. “A huge mistake. I don’t want to judge him on what he was into because everybody has their thing that works for them, but it didn’t work for me; that’s all I’m saying.”
“What was he into?”
Fia gestured to the bodies lying still all around them. “Death.”
Poltro pointed to the shelves, which now had slight rectangular bulges in the middle of them. “Those are new,” she said. “Okay if I take a closer look, m’lord?”
“Of course.”
Lord Toby touched his hand to either wall to keep the glowing algae growing in front of them and to shine light on the new architecture. Poltro brushed the dust from one of the rectangles and uncovered an inscription. “Oh. It’s a name and some dates. Very fancy. This must be where all the swell folks are stashed.”
Argabella pointed down the hall. “If that’s the case, whoever’s entombed there must have been very swell indeed.”
Grinda followed her direction and spied a collection of candles and a couple sticks of incense burning several niches down. As they drew closer, a hooded figure detached from the gloom and greeted them. Apparently, he was not fooled by the seeming. Grinda felt a thrill of fear twang up her magically fortified spine.
“Blessings to you, travelers. Welcome.” He put his hands up to show he was unarmed, perhaps in reaction to something Fia did involving creaking armor and unspoken threats of bodily harm. “I am a man of peace.”
Grinda thought that he was more a man of illness once they got closer. His skin tone and lack of a chin were very similar to Lord Toby’s, except his upper lip glistened with sweat that may have been the result of a fever. It couldn’t be from recent exercise; he seemed to be barely breathing at all. Dark circles under his eyes testified to a lack of sleep, however, and the eyes themselves hinted at a touch of madness—or perhaps that was just the greenish tint given off by the algal illumination. Grinda subtly readied her wand in case he proved to be hostile in spite of his protestations to the contrary. In her experience, people rarely pointed out how peaceful they were unless they were preparing to threaten violence and wanted you to be a bit more relaxed.
“And what is your purpose, my good sir?” Toby asked.
“I tend the final resting place of my master, the Most Glorious and Puissant Hirudo Brønsted, who illuminated the world with his knowledge. May I tell you how he conquered death very briefly? It is my duty and will allow me to rest.”
“Isn’t that him?” Toby pointed to the body resting behind the candles.
“Yes.”
“So…he’s dead.”
“Yes.”
“That would appear to belie the premise of your argument.”
“No, no, I promise, the truth is fascinating and instructive. Only a moment of your time.” The man gestured at them to come closer. “Behold his face. Is it not miraculously preserved? He has been dead for three hundred years, yet it appears he could wake from a nap at any moment!”
As curious as the others, Grinda drew closer to examine the person lying in repose, hands folded across his chest. A distinguished figure of dark brown skin and fine embroidered robes, Hirudo Brønsted indeed looked to be merely sleeping and not long dead.
“It truly is a marvel,” Lord Toby admitted. “How did he do this?”
“Leeches.”
Poltro flinched. “What?”
Grinda also registered that something was terribly wrong with that answer, but before she could process exactly why, the hooded man extended a finger toward the corpse and said, “Look there,” while audibly pulling a lever with his other hand, which was hidden by the bulk of his body. The floor dropped out from underneath them, and they succumbed to the merciless clutches of gravity.
Howls and lamentations and panicked bleats erupted from their throats as they fell, and these met the ma
d cackling of the man who’d gulled them into danger.
Grinda splashed into shallow water a couple of body lengths below, crumpling to her recently remagicked knees before standing quickly. It was only deep enough to reach her calves, but it was utterly dark, and getting out of the pit would be problematic. Magic could do many things, but the liquid in this cave seemed to have some sort of dampener that leeched away power, which was bad news for Grinda and Gustave in particular. Even Fia couldn’t jump high enough to escape the pit, and the maniac wasn’t going to keep the door open long anyway. It closed even as Grinda considered giving Fia as much of a boost as the wand could squeak out. She checked her wand to make sure it hadn’t broken in the fall—it hadn’t—but it felt light in her hand, the sensation reminding her of the disappointment of an empty pitcher of margaritas. In the last remaining seconds of light, she pulled some of Lord Toby’s algae off the walls and brought it down into the pit, where she redistributed it to the nearest wall, frowning as she did so. No wonder the algae worked—it wasn’t particularly magical, which meant Toby just liked carrying around tubs of parasitic goo. Her ankles didn’t feel right; she must have strained them or maybe even sprained them in the fall.