"Quiet," Cadderly cautioned them as he dropped down to the tunnel.
"Oo," Pikel replied, giving one last brisk rub. The dwarf then noticed the stonework in the walls and forgot all about the sting. He wandered off happily to investigate.
"Somebody wanted to keep us outa here," Ivan reasoned. "His fire-wards got me brother good, right on the backside!"
Cadderly agreed with the dwarf's conclusion and sensed that he should know who had set out the glyphs, that he had seen someone in the same room as the bottle ... .
He couldn't remember, though, and he had no time now to meditate and explore his suspicions. More importantly, neither dwarf had suffered any real damage; Ivan's antler-topped helmet had even been cleaned a bit by the jolt.
"How far to yer cursed flask?" Ivan asked. "Do ye think we'll be seeing more of the magical barriers?" Ivan's face lit up at the notion. "You gotta let a dwarf walk first if you think so, ye know." He pounded a fist onto his breastplate. "A dwarf can take it. A dwarf can eat it up and spit it back at the one who set it! Do ye think we'll be meeting that one? The one who put the fire-ward up there? I've a word to speak with that one. He burned me brother! No, I'm not for letting one go and burn me brother!"
The look in Ivan's eyes grew ever more distant as he spoke, and Cadderly realized that the dwarf was walking a tentative line of control. Off to the side, Pikel, too, had become overly consumed. He was down on his hands and knees, sniffing at the cracks in the wall and uttering an excited "Oo!" every so often. A dozen frantic spiders scurried to get free of their own webs, hopelessly entangled in Pikel's tough beard.
Cadderly set his rock crystal spindle-disks spinning end-around-end in front of Ivan's face and used his light tube to focus a narrow beam on them. The dwarf's talking faded away as he fell more and more into the mesmerizing dance of the light on the disks' many facets.
"Remember why we are here," Cadderly prompted the dwarf. "Concentrate, Ivan Bouldershoulder. If we do not remove the curse, then all the library, the Edificant Library, will be lost." Cadderly couldn't be certain whether his words or the dancing light on the disks had reminded Ivan to resist the stubborn curse, but whatever the cause, the dwarf's eyes popped wide, as if he had just come from a deep slumber, and he shook his head so wildly that he had to lean on his double-bladed axe to keep from falling over.
"Which way, lad?" the now lucid dwarf asked.
"That's more to the point," Cadderly remarked under his breath. He glanced over at Pikel and wondered if the same technique would be needed on him. It didn't matter, Cadderly decided at once. Pikel wasn't really wide awake even when he was wide awake.
Cadderly looked down at the floor, searching for some sign of his previous passing, but found nothing. He sent his light down to either side of the bricked corridor, but both ways seemed identical and jogged no memories for him.
"This way," he decided simply to get them moving, and he stepped past Ivan. "Do bring your brother." Cadderly heard a clang over his shoulder―axe on cooking pot, he supposed―and Ivan and Pikel came hustling up to his side a moment later.
After many dead ends and many circular treks that brought them right back to where they had started, they came to an ancient storage area of wide corridors lined with rotted crates. "I was here," Cadderly insisted, speaking the words aloud in an attempt to jog his memory.
Ivan dropped to the floor, seeking to confirm Cadderly's declaration. As with all the corridors, though, no dear tracks were disenable. Clearly the dust had been recently disturbed, but either someone had deliberately brushed away any sure signs or simply too many had passed by this point for the dwarf to track.
Cadderly closed his eyes and tried to envision his previous passage. Many images of his wanderings in the tunnels flooded through him, scenes of skeletons and corridors lined with sinister-looking alcoves, but they wouldn't connect in any logical pattern. They had no focal point, no starting ground where Cadderly could begin to sort them out.
Then he heard the heartbeat.
Somewhere in the unseen distance, water was dripping, steadily, rhythmically. That sound had been here with him, Cadderly knew. It came from no particular direction, and he had not used it as any sort of a guiding beacon his first time through, but now, he realized, it could guide his memory. For, though its interval was constant, its volume became louder and more insistent at some bends in the passages, softer and more distant at others. Too engaged with other pressing problems his first time through, Cadderly had only noticed it on a subconscious level, but that had left an imprint on his memory. Now Cadderly trusted his instincts. Instead of cluttering his consciousness with futile worries, he moved along and let his subconscious memories guide his steps.
Ivan and Pikel didn't question him; they had nothing better to suggest. It wasn't until they came to a three-way arch, and Cadderly's face brightened noticeably, that even Cadderly really believed he knew where he was going.
"To the left," Cadderly insisted, and indeed, the left archway was less thick with cobwebs than the right, as if someone had passed through there. Cadderly turned back to the dwarves just as he started under the archway, a look of trepidation, even outright dread, on his face.
"What've ye seen?" Ivan demanded, and he pushed his way past Cadderly, under the arches.
"The skeletons," Cadderly started to explain.
Pikel hopped to his guard, and Ivan held his torch far out in front, peering into the dusty gloom. "I see no skeletons!" Ivan remarked after a short pause.
The encounter with the walking dead remained a nightmarish blur for Cadderly. He couldn't quite remember where he had encountered the skeletons, and he didn't know why the thought had suddenly come to him now. "They might be in this area," he offered in a whisper. "Something makes me believe they are nearby."
Ivan and Pikel relaxed visibly and leaned to the side in unison to glance at each other around the young scholar. "Come on, then," Ivan huffed, following his torch's clearing fire into the left passage.
"The skeletons," Cadderly announced again as soon as he came through the archway. He knew this place, a crate-lined corridor wide enough for ten to walk abreast. A bit farther, alcoves lined the corridor's walls on both sides.
"We going to start that again?" asked Ivan.
Cadderly waved his tight beam in the direction of the alcoves. "In there," he explained.
His warning seemed ominous, at least to him, but the dwarves reacted to it as though it was an invitation. Rather than dim the lights and creep along, they both leaped out in front and strode defiantly down the center of the corridor, stopping in front of the first alcove.
"Oo oi" remarked Pikel.
"Ye're right, lad," agreed Ivan. "It's a skeleton." He propped his axe up on one shoulder, put his other hand on his hip, and walked right up to the alcove.
"Well?" he cried at the bones. "Are ye going to just sit there and rot, or are you going to come out and block me way?"
Cadderly came up tentatively, despite the dwarves' bravado.
"Just as ye said," Ivan said to him when he arrived, "but not moving about much, as I see it."
"They were moving," Cadderly insisted, "chasing me."
The brothers leaned to the side―they were getting used to this maneuver―and glanced at each other around Cadderly.
"I did not dream it!" Cadderly snarled at them, taking a step to the side to block their exchanged stares. "Look!" He started for the skeleton, then had second thoughts about that course and put his tight beam into the alcove instead. "See the cobwebs hanging freely in there? And the bits of web on the bones? They were attached, but now the webs hang free. Either this skeleton has been out of the alcove recently, or someone came down here and cut the strands from it, to make it look as though it has been out of the alcove."
"Yerself was the only one down here," Ivan blurted before he even realized the accusatory connotations of his statement.
"Do you believe I cut the strands?" Cadderly cried. "I would not want to go ne
ar the thing. Why would I waste the time and effort to do that?"
Again came the dwarven lean-and-look maneuver, but when Ivan came up straight this time, his expression was less doubting. "Then why are they sitting tight?" he asked. "If they want a fight, why ... ?"
"Because we did not attack them!" Cadderly interrupted suddenly. "Of course," he continued, the revelation coming clearer. "The skeletons did not rise against me until I attacked one of them."
"Why'd ye hit a pile of bones?" Ivan had to ask.
"I did not," Cadderly stuttered. "I mean... I thought I saw it move."
"Aha!" cried Pikel.
Ivan elaborated on his excited brother's conclusion. "Then the skeleton moved before ye hit it, and ye're wrong now in yer thinking."
"No, it did not move!" Cadderly shot back. "I thought it had, but it was only a rat or a mouse, or something like that."
"Mouses don't look like bones," Ivan said dryly. Cadderly expected the remark.
Pikel squeaked and crinkled his nose, putting on his best rodent face.
"If we just leave them alone, they might let us pass," Cadderly reasoned. "Whoever animated them probably gave them instructions to defend themselves."
Ivan thought about it for a moment, then nodded. The reasoning seemed sound enough. He motioned to his brother, and Pikel understood the silent request. The green-bearded dwarf pushed Cadderly out of the way, lowered his club like a battering ram, and, before the startled young scholar could move to stop him, charged full speed into the alcove. The terrific impact reduced the skull to a pile of flecks and dust and Pikel's continuing momentum scattered the rest of the bones in every direction.
"That one won't be getting up to fight us," remarked a satisfied Ivan, brushing a rib off his brother's shoulder as Pikel came back out.
Cadderly stood perfectly still, his mouth hanging open in absolute disbelief.
"We had to check it," Ivan insisted. "Ye want to be leaving walking skeletons behind us?"
"Uh oh," groaned Pikel. Cadderly and Ivan turned at the call, Cadderly's light beam showing the source of Pikel's dismay. This skeleton would not rise to fight them, as Ivan had said, but dozens of others were already up and moving.
Ivan clapped Cadderly hard on the back. "Good thinking, lad!" the dwarf congratulated him. "Ye were right! It took a hit to rouse them!"
"That is a good thing?" Cadderly asked. Images of his last trip through here came rushing back to him, particularly when he had backed away from the first skeleton he had struck, into the waiting grasp of another. Cadderly spun to the side. The skeleton from across the corridor was nearly upon him.
Pikel had seen it, too. Undaunted, the dwarf grasped his club with both hands down low on the handle and stepped in with a mighty roundhouse swing, catching the monster on the side of the head and sending the skull soaring down the corridor behind them. The remaining bones just stood shakily for the moment it took Pikel to smash them down.
Cadderly watched the batted skull until it disappeared into the darkness, then he shouted, "Run!"
"Run!" Ivan echoed, dropping his torch, and he and Pikel charged down the corridor, straight at the advancing host.
That wasn't exactly what Cadderly had in mind, but when he realized that there was no way he was going to turn the wild brothers around, he shrugged his shoulders, took out his spindle-disks, and followed, seriously pondering the value of friendship when weighed against the burdens.
The closest skeletons did not react quickly enough to the dwarven charge. Ivan sliced one cleanly in half with a great cut of his axe, but then, on his back swing, snagged the weapon's other head in the rib cage of his next intended victim. Never one to quibble over finesse, the dwarf heaved mightily, pulling his weapon and the entangled skeleton into the air around him and then slamming the whole jumble into the next nearest monster. The two skeletons were hopelessly hooked together, but so was Ivan's axe.
"I need ye, me brother!" Ivan cried as yet another skeleton moved in on him, reaching for his face with dirty, sharp finger bones.
Pikel had fared better initially, plowing into the first ranks like a boulder bouncing down a mountainside, breaking three skeletons apart and pushing the rest back several feet. The rush had not been without consequences, though, for Pikel stumbled down to one knee before he could halt his momentum. The fearless undead came in all around the dwarf, advancing from every angle. Pikel grasped his club down low, held it out to arm's length, and began turning fast circles.
The skeletons were mindless creatures, not thinking fighters. Their outstretched arms leading, they came right in fearlessly, stupidly, and Pikel's whirling club whittled them down, fingers, hands, and arms. The dwarf laughed wildly as each bone went humming away, thinking he could keep this up forever.
Then Pikel heard his brother's call. He stopped his spin and tried to discern the right direction, then sent his stubby legs pumping in place, building momentum.
"Oooo!" the dwarf roared, and off he sprang, bursting out the side of the skeletal ring. Unfortunately, his dizziness had deceived him, and as soon as he broke clear of the ring, he slammed headfirst into the corridor's brick wall.
"Oo," came a hollow echo from under the pot helmet of the now seated Pikel.
Only a single skeleton had slipped between the dwarves to face Cadderly, odds that the young scholar thought he could handle. He danced about, up on the balls of his feet as Danica once had shown him, flicking out a few warning shots with his spindle-disks.
The skeleton paid no heed to his dancing feints, or the harmless throws, and continued straight in for Cadderly's mass.
The spindle-disks smacked into its cheekbone and spun its head right around so that is was looking behind itself. Still the skeleton came on, and Cadderly fired again, this time trying to break the thing's body. As soon as he threw, he realized his error.
The disks slipped through the skeleton's rib cage, but got tangled when Cadderly tried to retract them. To make matters worse, the sudden tug of the snag tightened the loop on Cadderly's finger, binding him to the skeleton.
Blindly, the monster swiped out at him. Cadderly dove straight for the floor, took up his walking stick, and shoved it through the rib cage, hoping to dislodge his spindle-disks. As soon as the tip of the stick wedged into the skeleton's backbone, the crafty young scholar changed his tactics. An image of a fulcrum and lever popped into his mind and he let go of his walking stick, then slammed its head with all his might.
The rib fulcrum held firm and the shock of Cadderly's downward blow shot up along the skeleton's backbone and sent its head straight into the air, where it ricocheted off the corridor ceiling. The shattering jolt broke apart the rest of the undead thing.
Cadderly congratulated himself many times as he worked both his weapons free, but his relief lasted only until he looked farther down the corridor, into the flickering light of Ivan's dropped torch. Both dwarves were down, Ivan unarmed and trying to keep out of one skeleton's reach, and Pikel, sitting near the other wall, his pot down to his shoulders, with a whole host of skeletons advancing on him.
* * * * *
Druzil peered suspiciously from between his folded bat wings at the dark and quiet altar room. The brazier fire was down to embers now―Barjin would not leave an interplanar gate burning while he slept―and there was no other light source. That hardly hindered the imp, who had spent eons wandering about the swirling gray mists of the lower planes.
All seemed as it should. To the side of the room, Barjin slept peacefully, confident that his victory was at hand. Mullivy and Khalif flanked the doorway, as still as death and instructed not to move unless one of the conditions set by Barjin had been met.
To Druzil's uneasy relief, none of those conditions apparently had. No intruders had entered the room, the door remained shut fast, and Druzil sensed no probing wizard eyes nor any distant call from Aballister.
The altar room's serenity did not diminish the imp's sense that something was amiss, though. Something had
disturbed Druzil's slumber; he had thought it another call from that persistent Aballister. Druzil tightened his wings and sank within himself, turning from his physical senses to the more subtle inner feelings, empathic sensations, that served an imp as well as eyes might serve a human. He pictured the area beyond the closed door, mentally probing the maze of twisting corridors.
The imp's bat wings popped open suddenly. The skeletons were up!
Druzil reached into his magical energies and faded to invisibility. A single flap of his wings carried him between Mullivy and the mummy, and he quickly uttered the key word to prevent Barjin's series of warding glyphs from exploding as he slipped out of the room. Then he was off, flying sometimes, creeping on clawed toes at others, picking his way carefully toward the outermost burial chambers. Already his physical hearing had confirmed what he had sensed, for a battle was in full swing.
The imp paused and considered the options before him. The skeletons were fighting, there could be no doubt, and that could only mean that intruders had come down to this level. Perhaps they had simply wandered down here in their curse-induced stupor, vagabond priests soon to be dispatched by the undead force, but Druzil could not dismiss the possibility that whoever it was had come with a more definite purpose in mind.
Druzil glanced over his shoulder, down the corridors that would take him back to Barjin. He was torn. If he sent his thoughts to Barjin, established that personal familiar-master telepathic link, he would be bringing his relationship with the priest to a level of which Aballister certainly would not approve if the wizard back at Castle Trinity ever found out, he might well banish Druzil back to his home plane―a fate that the imp, with the chaos curse finally unleashed on the world, certainly did not desire.
Yet it was Barjin, the imp reminded himself, not Aballister, who had taken the forefront in this battle. Resourceful Barjin, the powerful priest, was the one who had struck boldly and effectively against the heart of law in the Snowflake region.
Druzil sent his thoughts careening down the corridors, into the altar room, and into the sleeping priest's mind. Barjin was awake in a second, and a moment later, he understood that danger had come to his domain.