Shadow Blizzard

6 The Masters Of Gloom

Counting steps in Hrad Spein had become a habit. It helped distract me from my gloomy thoughts. Only this time the counting wasn’t really helping much. At 573 all the black thoughts came down on me so hard that I lost count and gave up.

Lafresa was still ahead of me in the race for the Rainbow Horn, and she still had the Key—I’d never get out of the Palaces without that. She found her way unerringly through the labyrinth of dead halls, moving on as if she was strolling along Parade Street, taking no notice of the menaces lurking on every side, and paying for her safe passage with the late Balistan Pargaid’s men.

By my calculation there were no more than twelve of them left. Probably not even that many. Who knew which path the blue-eyed witch had led her little detachment along and how many bodies I hadn’t noticed? In fact it was quite likely that now the Master’s woman-servant was continuing on her way alone.

The first of the main dangers—the Halls of the Slumbering Whisper foretold in the verse riddle—was behind me now, but the fun was only just beginning. How did it go on in the scroll …

Through the halls of the Slumbering Echo and Darkness

Past the blind, unseeing Kaiyu guards,

’Neath the gaze of Giants who burn all to ash,

To the graves of the Great Ones who died in battle …

Encouraging lines, weren’t they?

I woke from a nightmare, although I couldn’t remember what horrors I’d been dreaming of. All that was left of the dream was a stabbing pain in my chest and an immense weariness, as if I hadn’t slept at all.

The rest I had allowed myself on the final turn of the staircase hadn’t brought the relief I’d been hoping for, and I set off in a depressed mood.

The fatigue of the last week weighed on my shoulders like a heavy burden, pressing me down. I was only just starting to realize that the journey through Hrad Spein wasn’t as easy as I’d thought. The constant tension, the constant anticipation of danger, were having an even worse effect on my health than all the distance I’d tramped from the entrance of the Palaces to the entrance to the fifth level.

I got up with a groan (unfortunately, stone steps are not the most comfortable place to sleep) and stretched my numb arms and legs. Hundreds of tiny needles started wandering over my body, pricking me first in one place, then another. But strangely enough, this minor discomfort pepped me up better than anything else could have done, and I reached the fifth level in a perfectly cheerful state of mind.

The fifth level. The very first hall—and once again an unexpected change in the decor. Where was the gold, where was the subtle elegance, where was the charm of the statues and the delightful visual beauty of the walls? All of that had been left behind on the third and fourth levels of the underground Palaces. Here there were only monotonous stone walls with mediocre paintings, and the floor was made of flagstones about two square yards in size, carelessly aligned with each other.

I noticed that all the slabs on the floor had different colors and markings, and not all of them would have met with aesthetic approval from a decent artist. Most likely someone had laid the slabs out in a huge mosaic, but because it was so immense, there was no way I could see what it showed. Every hall had its own mosaic, its own set of colors on the floor, but by the meager light of my little magical lamp it was impossible for me to make out the overall picture.

I didn’t know why these halls were called the Halls of the Slumbering Darkness; as far as I could tell, this honorary title could easily have been awarded to any of the unlit spaces from the third level on.

I tramped through the underground labyrinth for half a day, only occasionally checking the maps and starting a new light—the number of those was dwindling rapidly. I tried not to think about the time when I would have to grope my way along by touch.

It was a lot cooler down here than on the upper levels. Essentially I was wandering through huge natural caves with graves in the roughly worked walls, mosaic floors, and stalactites and stalagmites that had grown together to form fantastical fairy-tale columns.

The fifth level seemed to go on forever, and the cave-halls seemed boundless. The farther I walked, the more I felt enveloped in the dead cobweb of decline from the former majesty of the Palaces of Bone.

The columns were covered in lumps and bulges and in some places water dripped from the ceiling and the first signs of future columns had appeared on the mosaic floor. I couldn’t see the walls, they were a very long way off, and I tramped on and on, taking my bearings from the path laid out in red slabs.

Sometimes it branched into two, three, four, or even eight new paths, and I had to leaf through the papers for a long time, straining my eyes and my brain as I tried to compare the orcish squiggles on the maps and on the flagstones of the floor.

The constant darkness was enough to drive anyone crazy! I would have sold my soul for a helping of well-roasted meat, a pint of beer, and a ray of sunshine. The gods be praised, at least I wasn’t short of water. There was more than enough of that here. Once I even crossed a little hump-backed bridge over a small lake of black water as smooth as a mirror.

The underground caves came to an end and the gloomy halls of the Palaces of Bone began again. It got warmer, water stopped dripping down the walls, and the smell of damp disappeared, giving way to a faint smell of decomposition.

I didn’t like that smell at all. Why was there still a stink, if the age of the burial sites on this level was measured in centuries and everything that could rot ought to have rotted away, leaving mostly bones? That aroma of old death made me feel vaguely anxious, but a smell is just a smell, and so far nothing worse had happened.

There was a light breeze blowing in the Halls of the Slumbering Darkness. It sang somewhere up under the ceiling, making a constant eerie hmmmmmm. When I first heard the sound, I thought it was the terrible whispering coming back, but after what seemed like an age drenched in cold sweat, with my knees trembling, I realized that it was only the wind.

I walked on until I came up against a wall. It was slightly concave for some reason, and I was surprised by this, so I allowed myself the luxury of ordering the light to burn at full brightness.

The magical light picked an immense column out of the darkness—it was so big that it would have taken forty men holding hands to put their arms round it (assuming they joined hands first, of course). Mmm, yes … many of the trees in Zagraba could have envied the thickness and height of this stone monster. And there were hundreds of these columns in the hall. I walked past the stone giants, feeling like a pitiful little bug. The morose gray monsters soared upward out of the light, hanging silently over the uninvited guest and threatening to drop the distant vault of the ceiling on his head.

A vague sense of alarm stayed with me all the way through this place, with its constantly howling wind—hmmmmm—dismal grayness, and faint smell of decomposition.… At one point, when cold shivers suddenly started running down my back for the hundredth time, I decided, for some reason that I didn’t understand, that I ought to look round as quickly as possible. I don’t know if it was my impulse or Valder’s. A single fleeting glance was enough to make me hide the light under my jacket and order it to go out.

Far, far away, at the very beginning of the columned hall, there was a faint sprinkling of orange dots. There could be no doubt that they were torches. I could see several dozen of the bright blinking points. They would disappear behind a column and then reappear again, advancing slowly but surely in my direction.

I would have wagered my soul that the torch-bearers couldn’t be Balistan Pargaid’s men. There couldn’t be many left from the group that had come down into the Palaces of Bone with Lafresa.… But this group numbered fifty or sixty. So it was someone else parading through the hall.

Hoping that I’d managed to hide the light in time and the strangers hadn’t noticed it, I darted behind a column close to the wall and as far as possible from the center of the hall. Were the strangers actually looking for me or was this their regular daily stroll around the local sights? Just to be on the safe side I got the crossbow ready, pulled my hood up over my head, and pressed myself back against the wall.

Hmmmmmmm.

The wind of the ancient halls sang a lullaby to the slumbering gloom of eternity. The sound of the wind was a faint dreary note in my ears and the only thing I could hear above it was the desperate pounding of my heart. For a long time there was no other sound but my heartbeat and the lullaby of the wind. And then the Halls of the Slumbering Darkness shuddered and the night awoke.

The steps came closer and closer.… First an orange glow appeared on the distant columns, and then I could hear the strangers’ heavy snuffling as they breathed. On the one hand that was good—if they snuffled, it meant they were alive. But on the other hand …

I didn’t finish what I was thinking, because at last I saw them, and I immediately wanted to be ten leagues away. It’s not every day you get to see the images on walls come to life. Somehow I hadn’t been expecting to see living examples of the creatures that the makers of the Palaces of Bone had depicted with such obsessive accuracy in their statues, paintings, and mosaics.

Half birds, half bears that even the Order didn’t know about (I was sure of that!). The creatures walked past me—tall, about the same height as an ogre, massively built, almost square, with thick arms and legs and bare clawed feet. Large, elongated heads rather like a bear’s, with little ears, round birdlike eyes, and small curved beaks that gleamed like steel in the light of the torches.

These strange, in fact absurd creatures were dressed in loose violet robes. The shapeless tunics almost completely covered their bodies, leaving only the hands, feet, and heads exposed to view, all covered with reddish fur. Or perhaps it wasn’t fur, but feathers. From that distance it was hard for me to tell.

No jewelry and no weapons. I could sense that the creatures were strong, confident, and … old. Not even old, but ancient—their age could rival eternity itself.

“They are the world,” Valder suddenly whispered. “They came to Siala at the moment of its birth. The firstborn were not the ogres and certainly not the orcs.… These beings lived at the very beginning of the Dark Era. A race that was once mighty, and alien even to the ogres, now condemned to live here. Quite different from us. Absolutely alien … Look, Harold, there they are—the firstborn of this world.”

I didn’t know how the archmagician knew about the half bird, half bears, but I literally gaped wide-eyed at the beasts.

They were walking past, only fifteen yards away from me. Walking in single file, snuffling loudly, and waddling from one foot to the other. Every third one was carrying what at first I had taken for torches. In fact they were knobbly black wooden staffs, polished until they shone, and set on the top of every one was a skull. Skulls of elves, orcs, men, and even ogres—they gave out an orange light very similar to the light of an ordinary flame.

One figure followed another until it seemed the procession would never end. The sound of snuffling, footsteps, claws scraping on the stone slabs of the floor. They drifted past me, these ships of ancient, bygone glory that had sunk to the bottom of the centuries, and their huge shadows slid ominously across the bodies of the columns. Finally the last of them, the eighty-sixth wayfarer, walked past me, and darkness fell.

Where had these creatures come from, what obscure depths of the Palaces of Bone had they lived in for all the millennia of Siala’s existence, what did they want, what did they aspire to? I didn’t know if they were dangerous, but, Sagot be praised, they had missed me. Darkness only knew how the firstborn (the genuine firstborn!) would react to an uninvited guest. Perhaps they’d greet him with open arms and lead him along a safe route straight to Grok’s grave and the Rainbow Horn, or perhaps they’d simply turn my skull into a new lamp without thinking twice about it. Something told me the second alternative was far more likely than the first.

But even so, I couldn’t just stay where I was. The column of creatures was moving in the direction I had to go in, and so I set out very quietly, scarcely even breathing, after the Ancient Ones.

I kept my distance so that—Sagot forbid—I wouldn’t be heard or, even worse, get caught in the circle of light from the skull-lamps. I crossed the entire gigantic hall, running from column to column. The string of lights ahead of me trembled and divided into three parts that flowed off into the labyrinthine corridors, and the hall went dark.

In all this time I didn’t hear a single word from the creatures. Where had the bird-bears gone, what goals were they pursuing, what did they want? Naturally, I didn’t go chasing after them to ask stupid questions. Wherever the creatures had gone, they weren’t going my way. In the literal or the figurative sense. My path led into a barely noticeable narrow corridor that began between the last two columns of the hall, but the three bands of Ancient Ones had taken other roads.

I felt a strong temptation to take out the maps and see where these creatures could be heading, but I ruthlessly suppressed this impulse of treacherous curiosity. The less you know, the better you sleep. I had no doubt that the bird-bears who had just walked through the columned hall had come to it from the depths of the levels without names, where no one had dared to go for the last seven thousand years.

“What do they want, Valder?” I blurted out.

Surprisingly enough, this time the archmagician condescended to answer me.

“They’re waiting, Harold.”

“Waiting? What for?”

He said nothing for a long time. A very long time. I thought I was never going to get an answer.

“A chance. A chance to come back to our world. They are a mistake of the gods, or perhaps of the one they call the Dancer in the Shadows. They were created as … as an experiment, as the first creatures, and they almost destroyed Siala, and were punished for it.… They are waiting for someone to smash the fetters that hold them in the bowels of the earth. Waiting and dreaming of their world being as it used to be. With no orcs, ogres, elves, and, of course, no men. They are waiting for the Holders of the Chain, those we are used to calling the Gray Ones, to bungle things, and the thread of equilibrium to snap, as it almost did on a fierce winter night many years ago.”

The dead archmagician’s words struck me like a physical blow.

I realized what he was hinting at.

“The Rainbow Horn?”

“Most likely. They were the ones who awoke the evil that was sleeping here. Their own evil. They can sense that the time is near.…”

“But how do you know all this?”

No reply. Valder disappeared, leaving me to my questions and doubts.

A meager supper, sleep that brought almost no relief, and back to the journey. The corridor led me into a cave where at last I could stop wasting lights and banging my nose against the wall.

It was every bit as large as the hall with the columns. Reddish orange walls, a ceiling with light beaming down from it and lighting up the whole place magnificently. And I could have sworn it wasn’t magical light, but absolutely genuine sunlight.

For the first two minutes my eyes, which had grown completely unused to anything like this, simply couldn’t see a thing. I squinted and tried to blink away the involuntary tears. But it cost me a lot of pain before I finally got used to it and could look at the world normally.

The light streaming from the ceiling more than sixty yards above my head was like the light of the evening sun shining through the leaves of a dense forest. It was something warm, gentle, not too bright, and, of course (after the gloom of the catacombs), unbelievably beautiful. This was probably the first time in a week of strolling through the Palaces of Bone that I felt grateful to the architects and magicians who had created such a miracle in one of the deep caverns.

The cave was so large that someone had even built a little fortress in it.

Yes, yes! An absolutely genuine fortress!

Walls about twelve yards high, gates torn off their posts and shattered. Four ethereally elegant towers with spires as sharp as spears. (Correction—three with spires; the fourth seemed to have been flattened by a magical fist: all that was left of it was a stump.)

Another tower set right at the very center, with the same architecture as the other four, but incomparably larger. If someone suddenly got the urge to move in there and set up defenses, even professional soldiers would have a hard time trying to storm the fortifications (in my ignorant view as a thief).

The reason I hadn’t noticed the citadel straightaway was that its walls were almost the same color as the walls of the cave. I had to walk a long way before I reached this bastion that was sited so mysteriously, tramping along the reddish path that wound its way between the tall outcrops of stone sprouting up all over the floor like fingers. The path was littered with fine fragments of stone and every now and then one of them crunched under the soles of my boots.

When I got closer, I realized there was no way to go round the fortress. Its walls ran into the walls of the cave, and without the lost cobweb-rope, there was no way I could storm a barrier that was twelve yards high.

The only way to get to the other side was to walk through that yawning gap and hope there were gates on the other side of the fortifications, too.

I wasn’t exactly happy with the idea of going inside. There were far too many bones outside the entrance.

They were fearfully old … many of the dead had arrows stuck between their ribs. The archers defending the place had reaped a rich harvest. There were plenty of weapons, but they were so old and rusty that the touch of a boot was enough to make them crumble into dust.

Shields, helmets, bows with their strings rotted away, armor with barely visible engravings of a Black Rose, a Black Flame, a Black Stone, a White Leaf, or White Water. Elves from the dark and light houses, who had fought shoulder to shoulder, attacking the fortress.

And I knew the only enemy the elfin houses could reunite against. It had to be their eternal and most important enemy, their closest relatives—the orcs. There was a battering ram lying beside the smashed gates.

I stood there weighing up my chances, then sighed and took out the crossbow. I removed one of the ordinary bolts and replaced it with an ice bolt. There was nothing else for it; I had to go back or go on into the fortress.

Surprisingly enough, nothing grabbed me, either in the gateway or the narrow corridor with loopholes for firing arrows at uninvited guests. Now there were old bones crunching under my feet instead of small stones. The elves had been given a warm reception in here, too. The corridor smelled of mold and damp from the old wooden ceilings and of bitter almonds. A strange aroma for a place like this, to say the least.

I walked out into the courtyard and the red column of the central tower was directly opposite me. The entire space was littered with bones, like the area in front of the gates.

A serious battle. The skeletons of orcs and elves were sometimes intertwined in the most incredible poses. The rusty crescents of s’kashes and yataghans were scattered around under my feet. In many places the ground, the walls, and the bones were covered with soot, or even fused and melted. In the western part of the yard there were heaps of red blocks and fragments of stone from the ruined tower. Magic had been used, as well as arrows and swords.

Many elves had laid down their lives, very many, but I had no doubt about who had been victorious. The bodies of eight orcs were embedded in the wall of the central tower at a height of about ten yards above the ground. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the orcs had suffered for a very, very long time, even after the elfin shamans and magicians had finished the execution. It was surprising that time didn’t seem to have touched the dead orcs; for some reason it had spared them. I had the impression that they could have died only a minute earlier.

Their flesh hadn’t melted away like the wax of a candle or rotten meat, and it hadn’t dried up like a salty plum from over the sea. After traveling round the Border Kingdom, mixing with Algert Dalli’s men, and fighting that battle at Crossroads, I knew a little bit about the badges of the most famous clans of orcs. The defenders of the fortress had badges that were white and black, almost completely faded. I’d never come across clan insignia like that before. If I ever got out of Hrad Spein, I’d have to ask Egrassa what clan of orcs wore black and white.

There was a large old tree growing right in front of the tower. It looked a bit like a dwarf warrior resting after a long journey: short, stocky, and sturdy. And as old as the red fortress that now enshrined the bones of the fallen warriors. But unlike the dead fortress that had been abandoned for so very long, the absurd old plant was still alive. All the branches of this long-lived tree were covered with small white flowers and it seemed to be nestling under a fluffy blanket of snow.

The flowers had a scent of almonds, and I could even taste the bitter aroma in my mouth. The smell was beginning to give me a headache, so I moved on in a hurry. I couldn’t afford to stay any longer than necessary.

I took long, careful strides, trying not to step on any bones. Stupid really, but I couldn’t help myself—something told me it was best not to disturb the remains of the elves and orcs without good reason. But I wasn’t always able to avoid the yellowish bones encased in rusty armor. There were too many skeletons and sometimes my foot had no choice but to press the bones down into the crumbly sand of the fortress’s courtyard. Then I misjudged the distance and stepped on a skull.

CRUNCH!

It burst with a deafening sound, as if it was an overripe Garrakian melon under my foot, not a skull. I winced squeamishly and looked up from the bones for a moment at the tree.

My heart performed a crazy somersault in my chest, soared up into the sky, then fell back and got tangled up in my guts.

The flowers on the tree weren’t white anymore—they were red! Bloodred! The blood built up into huge drops on the petals and then fell down, sprinkling onto the bones and the sand. Like rain in some madman’s nightmare, the heavy drops fell from the branches and oozed out of every pore of the tree’s trunk. In a few seconds a small pool had already formed under the tree. The pool grew wider and wider, consuming the bones lying on the sand like some eerie predator.

A tormented, endless, spine-chilling howl of pain rang out from somewhere above me, making me stoop down and pull my head into my shoulders. I raised my eyes to look up, expecting to see a gryphon-dragon-manticore-harpy-Messenger-of-the-Master-or-the-Nameless-One swooping down on me, but … there wasn’t anyone.

It was one of the orcs fused into the wall of the tower, screaming continuously in agony. His face was contorted in incredible pain. That was more than I could take.

I ran for it, without even looking to see where I was going, scattering bones. The orc screeched like a pig under the knife of a clumsy butcher. I dashed to the other side of the courtyard and jumped over the stones from the ruined tower that littered the ground, lost my footing and fell, almost tumbling into the blood flowing across the courtyard, rolled away, jumped up, pressed my hands to my ears, and set off again at a run.

I realized I’d dropped the crossbow, went back, flung aside somebody’s ribs, grabbed the weapon, and ran for it.… The howling of that creature in torment was driving me insane, stirring up icy rafts of terror from the bottom of my mind.

My memory of the courtyard as I ran through it is a blur of the red column of the tower, the bitter smell of almonds, the bleeding tree, and the scream of an orc doomed to eternal agony.

Fear made me whimper as I ran. It took over almost all my mind; it was a miracle that I managed to leap out through a hole broken in the wall on the opposite side from the gates. The orc’s screams pushed me along from behind, forcing me to run faster and faster along the red path. I fell twice, skinning and bruising my knees, but I jumped up again and ran on.

I only stopped after the howling of that eternally living and eternally dying creature had faded away into the distance.

I leaned my hands on my knees and tried to get my breath back. Ah, darkness, all I ever seemed to do was run. Where would I ever get the strength to survive the Palaces of Bone like this?

I looked back at the derelict fortress. From that distance it looked just like one of those little caskets that some dull-witted individuals use to keep their brain-rotting weed in.

The sunlight that had been shining down on the orange cave throughout this part of my journey was gradually fading, losing its brightness and vitality. Looking up all the time at the darkening ceiling, I set off along the red path toward the distant wall of the cave. The small slivers of stone squeaked under my feet like a crust of frozen snow or fragments of ancient bones.

When I reached the wall of the cave, the sparse rays of sunlight were too weak to light up the entire space. But just when I was about to use another little magical lamp, a miracle happened. All the stone-finger columns that the path had wound through suddenly flashed, then flared up and started glowing with a cold, pale blue light.

There were exactly the same kind of stone fingers, only smaller, growing straight out of the wall, and in their bright glow I spotted a path that I hadn’t noticed before, which led upward in a whimsical, winding spiral.

What else could I do—the path ought to lead me to the way out, and it looked like the only one, unless I wanted to walk along the wall, hoping to find another way out of there. But why waste time on that kind of nonsense, if the cave wasn’t even marked on the maps? And what if there was no other way out?

Even though I was walking uphill, it was quite easy, and after nine tight twists and turns I reached quite a height. The path was narrow and I had to lean back against the wall in order to feel reasonably secure. If I lost concentration or stepped awkwardly on a stone, I would have gone tumbling down over the edge.

Of course, the drop beside my feet wasn’t an abyss of a hundred yards, but if I had fallen, I would have smashed every bone in my body. I tried not to look down until the winding path that was carved straight into the sheer cliff face finally led to the way out.

It was time for a rest. I made myself comfortable, took out a biscuit, shook my flask to check how much water I had left, and clicked my tongue in disappointment when I realized there was no more than three or four mouthfuls. I had to find a spring or a pond quickly to replenish my scant resources.

As always, the biscuit was as tough and tasteless as the sole of an old army boot (but—thanks be to Sagot—it didn’t smell the same way). As I chewed on my ration, I admired the vista before my eyes. From where I was it was only about six yards to the ceiling, and about fifty to the floor. I could see the whole cave laid out in front of me. The entire expanse was lit up by the bright points of hundreds of columns blazing with a steady magical light like cold, bright glowworms. The floor and the walls were covered in circles of bright blue light radiating from the columns, and the light columns farthest away fused into a single bright line. These islets of blue light transformed the cave into a fairy-tale dream. Not even the lights in Zagraba at night could come anywhere close to this beautiful sight.

I could have sat there enjoying the view forever, but if I did, I’d never get the Rainbow Horn. I got to my feet regretfully, shook the crumbs off my hands, put away the flask, and walked into a spacious corridor with its walls marked by soot from torches.

I scraped it with a fingernail, and it was fresh. I was sure it was Lafresa. She must have conjured up wings for herself and now she was increasing her lead on me all the time.

Warm, sunny amber walls and a few magical torches, just barely keeping the shadows of the halls at bay.

Endless patterns on the walls, weaving together into carelessly drawn pictures—something like a chronicle. The story of every more or less significant event in the history of Siala, for the Nameless One only knew how many thousands of years, unfolded before me. But I had no time and no desire to examine all these artistic efforts by the orcs and the elves. I didn’t have a million years to spare.

The floor, made of the same red mineral as the walls, was polished as bright as a mirror, and so now two Harolds walked through the halls together, only one of them was up here and the other was down there, in the reflecting floor. For some reason or other the flagstones were slippery. Giving way to a childish impulse, I took a run up and then slid along, as if it was genuine ice under my feet.

After about an hour’s travel through the Amber Sector (the name I had decided to give this place), I realized where I was when I came out at two four-yard-high statues standing beside the entrance to the next hall. On the right an orc, and on the left, an elf. Both dressed in equally loose robes belted with chains, both with untypical double-handed swords with wavy-edged blades. The elf and the orc had their hands over their ears. There was some kind of inscription on the floor in orcish, but I ignored the incomprehensible squiggles, just as I had done before.

A warning? A wish for a safe journey? Sagot only knew what it was! Why in the name of darkness should I rack my brains and worry about it, if I couldn’t understand anything anyway?

So without thinking too much, I walked past the frozen sculptures into the next hall. Although I must admit that since those gargoyles had come to life, I naturally regarded statues with a certain suspicion.

… bang! Boom! BOOM! BangBOOM! BaBANG-ng-ng!

Now that really was a surprise! I was almost deafened by the thundering echo of my own footsteps. It got louder and louder, until it turned into the roar of a deluging torrent, a waterfall, resounding like the thunder of the gods and then disappearing without a trace, leaving nothing but a ringing in my ears.

“Quiet,” I whispered, and the echo immediately took up the word and seemed to spread it to every corner of Hrad Spein.

Quiet! quiET! QuiET! QUIET! QuiET! QUIET! ET-et!

I winced as if I had a toothache. The best way of informing the entire world of your existence is to yell in the Halls of the Slumbering Echo. The slightest sound roused an echo that should have made the dead leap out of their graves a league away from the place.

I tried taking a couple of steps, making as little noise as possible. Useless. Even walking carefully produced the same magically amplified echo.

I had to take off my boots and walk barefoot. Surprisingly enough, this actually helped, and the echo was hardly awoken at all, so I was able to carry on without worrying about being heard on the next level of Hrad Spein. But that damned mirror-polished floor was very cold on the feet.

After a while, when my toes had simply stopped feeling anything at all, the path brought me to an underground river imprisoned in banks of marble. The black ribbon of placid water flowed out of a hole in an amber wall, divided the hall into two halves, and disappeared into an identical hole in the opposite wall.

As it ran across the hall, the underground river cut off my path. There had been a bridge over it once, but now all that was left was a stone stump about a quarter of a yard long. The water was only half a yard below the marble bank, so I could reach it with my hand, and I took advantage of the opportunity to fill my flask.

The canal was about three or three and a half yards wide, so it was quite possible to take a run up and jump across it, and that’s what I did, after putting my shoes on first. The floor was still as slippery as ever, and the jump turned out rather awkward. My heart skipped a beat when I thought I was going to fall short and land in the water, but a second later my feet touched the opposite bank. The floor promptly slid away from under me and I collapsed and slid at least ten yards on my side. Just like I said—it was exactly like ice in January! But least I didn’t break anything.

“Ah, darkness!” I swore, and suddenly realized that the echo hadn’t repeated my words.

I was past the Halls of the Slumbering Echo.

I walked on and found myself just two paces away from the edge of a precipice. There was a final torch burning beside the door, and that was what stopped me from stepping into the abyss. I was on a small platform about six paces across. The wall was smooth and it ran straight up into the darkness and the platform merged into a narrow track, carved straight into the wall. A step to the left, and my shoulder struck the cold basalt of the wall, a step to the right and … nothing.

Empty space. An abyss.

The path looked as if someone had gnawed it into the cliff with his teeth. It was crude, careless, slapdash work. The surface was uneven and there were protruding rocks, so I had to press myself tight against the wall and creep along like a tortoise. Every now and then I came across dark openings leading into the cliff and I tried to get past as quickly as possible. Darkness only knew what might come leaping out of them.

The path narrowed to a quarter of a pace. Now I could just barely set my foot on it, and the danger of tumbling off the cliff was much greater. I had to cling on to the basalt with my nails in order to stay up there.

Ahead of me and a little to the right a string of six lights appeared. The path ended right beside them, at a small platform in front of an opening. There was no point in clambering into the hole—I needed to go in the other direction. I turned toward the lights and something that the map showed as a thin line barely visible on the yellowed paper. It was called Nirena’s Thread.

It was just a bridge, but it was no wider than the last few yards of the path. And what’s more, it was rounded! A genuine hair, with barely even enough space to set my foot on it, and it stretched for thirty yards and more.

I’m not afraid of heights, but this miracle of architectural design was more than I could manage. I wouldn’t have been able to take more than ten teeny-weeny steps before the inevitable moment came and I fell. There were six large magical lamps, trembling and winking, suspended in the air above the bridge.

Well, gazing at the bridge wasn’t going to make it any wider or get me any closer to the other side. I decided not to try anything too fancy and to cross the bridge in the simplest way possible—I simply lay down on Nirena’s Thread, wound my legs round it, and started pulling with my hands.

I crawled along about as fast as a caterpillar. But I moved! And it was better to move slowly but surely, without any fear of falling. Well … almost without any fear. I tried not to look down; below me there was nothing but blackness.

When I’d covered a quarter of the distance, I decided I deserved a little break and I stopped, hugging the bridge with my arms and legs as if it was the most precious thing in my life. Faint currents of warm air rose up from somewhere below me, bringing the aroma of a cesspit, and the stench made my eyes water.

I crawled forward, holding my breath until finally, I reached the opposite bank.

I gave another wide yawn and splashed water on my face from the flask in an attempt to drive away sleep. It didn’t help. But that was hardly surprising. More than twenty hours on my feet, virtually without any rest at all. My fatigue was making itself felt, remorselessly demanding rest and refusing to back down.

I closed my eyes, but told myself I wouldn’t sleep … not for anything.…