Shadow Blizzard (11 page)

The grass rustled under my feet. Egrassa made a movement too fast for me to follow, and there was an arrow pointing straight at me, already poised on his bowstring. I froze to let the elf take a good look at me.

“What are you doing here?” Egrassa asked in a surly voice, but he put the bow away.

“Deler said you were here.”

“So what?”

I hesitated. Yes, so what? What in the name of darkness had brought me this way? Those yellow eyes were watching me closely.

“I’m very sorry about what happened to Miralissa, too.”

Silence.

“She has a daughter, doesn’t she?”

“How do you know that?”

“She told me.”

“She told you.… She trusted you people so much … she respected you, she didn’t think you were really that bad. She should never have left the House of the Black Moon. None of us should have.”

“I…”

“Just get that Horn, Harold. Just get it. Prove to me and my kinsmen that Miralissa was not mistaken. Now go, you’re bothering me.”

That was it. Who can ever tell what’s going inside these elves?

“Harold!” he called to me.

“Yes?”

“Will you get it?”

“Yes, I’ll get it.”

“No doubt or hesitation?”

“No doubt or hesitation,” I answered, after a pause.

He seemed satisfied with my answer; at least, he didn’t say another word about it.

*   *   *

“We don’t have to worry about the Firstborn any longer,” said the elf, leaning on his new weapon.

“But we do have to worry about Balistan Pargaid and his men; there are more than twenty of them,” said Milord Alistan, checking to make sure that his sword left the scabbard smoothly.

“And Lafresa,” Kli-Kli reminded him. “She’s worth twenty warriors.”

The fool was right: Lafresa was dangerous, especially now, when we didn’t have Miralissa with us.

“Let’s go, but quietly, it’s not very far to the gates now,” the dark elf warned us, and set off along the track.

We walked through a grove that consisted of nothing but golden-leafs, trees beyond compare with anything we’d seen before. The huge, ancient trunks were more than fifteen yards around, the crowns of the trees soared so high that they seemed to prop up the very sky. Here and there orange roots protruded from the ground, each of them four times as thick as a grown man’s thigh. The sun’s rays pierced the golden crowns like arrows, flying down through the morning mist that had still not dispersed and striking the ground. This was how I had pictured Zagraba in my imagination—majestically beautiful.

D-r-r-r-r … d-r-r-r-r-r …

“That woodpecker’s working hard,” Deler croaked admiringly.

“Quiet!” Egrassa hissed, listening to the sounds of the forest.

The wind quietly rustled the murmuring crowns of the golden-leafs, and the woodpecker continued with his tireless search for food, setting the forest ringing with his
dr-r-r-rr-r.
Little birds chirped and insects buzzed in the grass; the forest was as alive and busy as if it was midsummer, not early autumn.

“There are men … nearby.”

The elf leaned the krasta against a tree, set a new string on his bow, and took an arrow out of his quiver.

“I’ll go to check … if you hear any noise, be ready.…”

“Eel, go with him,” Alistan Markauz ordered.

“Yes, milord. Harold, will you lend me your crossbow?”

“It’s loaded,” I said, handing the Garrakian the weapon and two extra bolts.

“If everything’s all right, I’ll whistle,” said Egrassa.

The elf and the man disappeared into the dense undergrowth of gorse. For a long time we heard nothing apart from the sounds of the forest, and everyone listened to the trilling of the birds and the rustling of the branches. Eventually we heard a faint whistle in the distance.

“Forward!” ordered Alistan Markauz. “Kli-Kli, don’t get under our feet.”

“When do I ever get in the way?” Kli-Kli grumbled. “That’s what Harold does.”

I laughed, but didn’t say anything and picked up the elf’s spear.

Egrassa and Eel were waiting for us in a shady meadow surrounded by a neat circle of golden-leafs … with three men lying at their feet. Two of them were dead. The elf’s arrow had easily pierced the chain mail of one of Balistan Pargaid’s soldiers and stuck in his heart. The other, who was still clutching a small ax, had taken an arrow in the eye. The third man was alive—squirming on the ground with a crossbow bolt in his leg.

“Who have we got here?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out, milord,” Eel said, clearing his throat and handing me the crossbow. “Egrassa killed the first one straightaway, the second one grabbed an ax and got shot in the eye. The third one tried to run; I had to shoot him in the leg.”

“Who are you and what are you doing here?” Alistan Markauz asked sharply, turning to the prisoner.

The man just wailed and clutched at his wounded leg.

“Why do you ask, milord, as if you didn’t know?” Kli-Kli asked in surprise. “These are Balistan Pargaid’s dogs, you can tell from their faces!”

“He’ll tell me everything he knows,” said the elf. He stepped on the man’s injured leg and the man howled and lost consciousness.

Hallas took out a flask of water and splashed some in the man’s face. No response. He had to slap the man hard on the cheek. The man shuddered and opened his eyes.

“And now we’ll have a talk,” said Egrassa, holding his crooked dagger to the man’s chest. “How many of you are there?”

“What?” said the man, licking his lips.

“How many of you are there?” Egrassa repeated, pricking the man with his dagger.

That worked.

“Three, there were only three of us! Don’t kill me, milord! I’ll tell you everything!” the man babbled, staring wide-eyed at the dark elf and obviously taking him for an orc.

“Where are the others?”

“They all … went away.”

“You’re lying,” said Egrassa, pressing in the dagger.

The man squealed and yelled.

“I’m telling the truth, they all went and left us here on guard! I haven’t done anything, honestly! Don’t kill me!”

“Perhaps this goon really doesn’t know anything?” Deler boomed.

“Of course he does! Egrassa, you leave him to me and I’ll soon shake him out of his trance!” Hallas suggested, rolling his eyes furiously.

“Where did they go?” asked Egrassa, ignoring the gnome.

“Into the burial chambers, they all went into those burial chambers cursed by the darkness, milord orc!”

“When?”

“Two days ago.”

“How many men went down there?”

“Ten.”

“He’s lying,” said Kli-Kli, performing simple calculations in his head.

“That’s not important.… Did the count go with them?”

“Yes, milord.”

“And the woman?” I blurted out.

“The witch? She’s with them, too. It was all her idea! She was the one who decided to go down there!”

“Why did they go?”

“They didn’t tell us. Me and the others were just supposed to stay here and wait for the rest of them to come back. That’s all. I don’t know anything else.”

“That’s a shame,” said the elf, plunging the dagger into the man’s chest up to the hilt.

The prisoner shuddered and went limp. Without showing any sign of emotion, Egrassa pulled the dagger out and wiped it on the dead man’s clothes.

“Deler! Hallas!” Alistan Markauz called to the dwarf and the gnome. “Bury these three. There’s no point in us hanging about any longer.”

And that was the end of the matter, except for the dwarf and the gnome muttering discontentedly that they were soldiers, not gravediggers.

“Well, how do you like it, Harold?” Eel asked me when I walked away to one side.

“Elves,” I said with a shrug, thinking he was asking how I felt about the recent killing.

“That’s not what I meant,” Eel said with a frown. “I meant the entrance to Hrad Spein.”

“Why, where is it?” I gasped.

Kli-Kli heaved a tragic sigh. “Harold, you’re hopeless! What do you think that is, if not the entrance?”

“A hill?” I asked in amazement.

“A hill!” Kli-Kli teased me, pulling a silly face. “Open your eyes, will you! What kind of hill, may you choke on a bone, is that? Go on, walk round it!”

“All right! All right! Just stop yammering,” I said, trying to calm the goblin down. “I’ve got a splitting headache from that squeal of yours.”

It really was the entrance to Hrad Spein, or at least, on closer examination the hill turned out to be artificial. It was hardly surprising that I hadn’t realized—the structure was so old (from the start of the Dark Era, after all!) that the back of it was all overgrown with grass and bushes. When I walked round it to the other side, though, I realized I’d got the era wrong.

Of course the gates weren’t from the Dark Era at all (although that was when unknown beings had founded the first and deepest levels of Hrad Spein). The gates had appeared much, much later, during the period when the orcs and the elves were in their heyday. It was just that after the ancient evil awoke in the Palaces of Bone and elves and orcs (and, after them, men) left the burial chambers to be demolished by the centuries, the gates fell into decay and were overgrown by the forest.

After all, Zagraba, and especially the Golden Forest, hadn’t always been here. The trees had been advancing for thousands of years. And they advanced until they swallowed up the gates and concealed them from prying eyes.

From this side the hill looked as if it had been sliced vertically with a knife. And instead of grass and bushes there was a gaping square entrance four times the height of a man. The rays of sunlight slanted into it and fell on a stone floor.

I shuddered.

“Well, how do you like it, Harold?” the Garrakian asked again.

“Are we really here, then?” I still didn’t believe it.

“The corridor stretches for a thousand yards, gradually sloping down. It’s a long tramp from here to the first level,” said Kli-Kli, waving his hand jauntily.

“You’re a real expert on the subject, jester. So can you tell me what’s written over the entrance and what those statues are at the sides?”

“I don’t know orcic, Harold, ask Egrassa what that scribble says. And as for the statues, they were carved out of the solid rock, see? And they’re so badly decayed, there’s no way to tell who they once depicted.”

“Hey, you historians!” shouted Hallas. “Let’s go and get the camp laid out, you’ll have time enough to feast your eyes on that!”

*   *   *

“And so,” Alistan Markauz began when everyone was gathered together (apart from Lamplighter and Eel, who had been sent to stand guard at the entrance to Hrad Spein), “Balistan Pargaid and his men are already down below.”

“May something down there gobble them up!” was the kind-hearted goblin’s sincere wish for our enemies.

“They’re two days ahead of us, thief. You have maps of the Palaces of Bone. Where do you think they could be now?”

“Anywhere at all, milord,” I answered the count, after a moment’s thought. “It’s a genuine maze starting from the very first level, if they don’t have maps.…”

Everyone understood what I had in mind. In Hrad Spein without maps you were a dead man for sure. Fortunately, I did have maps; I’d made a special excursion into the Forbidden Territory in Avendoom to get them. So I would find the way to the eighth level, where the Rainbow Horn was. That is, I’d be able to find the way, but would I actually get there?

“I think we should start out straightaway,” said Alistan Markauz, tugging on his mustache.

“It will be night soon, milord. Let’s wait until morning,” Hallas began cautiously. “I don’t like the idea of climbing down that hole in the dark.”

“Night, day … what’s the difference? Down below it’s always night anyway. Pargaid and that woman want to steal a march on us and take the Horn, in order to take it to the Master.”

“They won’t be able to steal a march on us, milord,” I said, chuckling sardonically. “They don’t have the Key, and the Doors on the third level can’t be opened without it. If they don’t have a map, and Lafresa decides to make a detour … Well, that will take them a couple of months.”

“A couple of months?” the dwarf asked incredulously.

“This is Hrad Spein below us,” said Egrassa, stamping on the ground. “I hate to shatter your rosy illusions, Deler, but the Palaces of Bone are a lot bigger than all your underground cities in the Mountains of the Dwarves. Hrad Spein is like a gigantic layer cake, it’s dozens of leagues deep and wide. It was worked on by ogres, orcs, men, and others we don’t even know about. So Harold is right. If you don’t go through the Doors, you can lose a great deal of time searching for ways round them.”

“And run into some very big problems,” Kli-Kli bleated.

“So do you suggest we should wait until morning, too,” the captain of the guard asked the elf, ignoring the goblin.

“Best go down well rested.”

Milord Rat pursed his lips and nodded reluctantly.

“All right. That’s what we’ll do. Then let’s decide who’s going with Harold, and who’s staying up here.”

“I think that’s for Harold to decide,” said Egrassa, and looked at me.

“The thief should decide?” Alistan Markauz said in amazement.

“Certainly. He knows best who should go with him and who should stay.”

“All right,” the count hissed. “What do you say, thief ?”

I took a deep breath and said, “No one’s going with me.”

“What? Have you gone completely insane?”

I was afraid Alistan Markauz was about to have a stroke.

“No, milord.” I decided to say exactly what I thought about our crazy excursion to Hrad Spein. “When you led us out of Avendoom, I didn’t interfere and I did what you said. And when we were walking through Zagraba, you did what Egrassa told you. I don’t need anyone else to go into the Palaces of Bone with me. You’d only be a burden to me.”

“We’re soldiers, Harold, not a burden,” Deler said resentfully. “Who’s going to save you from those zombies?”

“That’s just the point,” I sighed. “On my own, I’ll slip past a corpse unnoticed or simply run away, but with you I’ll get into a fight every time. I won’t be able to look out for you in there, too.”