Shadow Blizzard (25 page)

I walked on cautiously, gazing in amazement at the destruction caused by the earthquake. In one hall twenty columns had collapsed and I could easily have broken a leg as I scrambled across the rubble of shattered coffins, overturned gravestones, and collapsed bridges over canals. I had three more halls to get through before I reached the stairway.

Well, of course, in the last hall but one, there was a nice surprise waiting for me in the form of sixty or more corpses! How had they all managed to squeeze in there?

They were lined up like soldiers, as if they were waiting for orders. I quickly dodged back into the darkness of the corridor before these hostilely inclined individuals could notice me. We-ell now … It would be hard for a mosquito to slip past a gathering like that, let alone a man. I put a second light bolt into the empty slot of the crossbow and walked out into the hall.

Surprisingly enough, they took absolutely no notice of me. Every last one of the walking dead was gazing in the opposite direction. What could be holding their attention?

Overcome by a sudden insane urge to play the hero, I blurted out loud enough for the entire hall to hear, “Can I please have your attention just for a moment?”

The sound of my own voice was frightening. The frozen sea of the dead stirred into movement, wheezing in excitement. One of them turned round, then another, then another ten, another twenty, until the entire hall was looking at me. Faces eaten away by the leprosy of decay, skin that was tinged yellow, black, gray, or green … ulcers and holes. Some had no nose, some had no eyes. Some had lost a jaw or an entire arm. White bones gleamed through the decomposing flesh and gray scraps of what had once been burial clothes. Skulls grinned at me and hissed, they reached their hands out.… Then, as if a command had been given, the sea of corpses started moving toward me. I shot the first bolt straight into the crowd. Light, groans, stench …

The second time I fired at the ceiling, and the light poured down on the zombies like genuine sunshine. Then I flung two vials of cat’s saliva and beat a hasty retreat to get as far away as possible from the hall, speedily loading the crossbow with two new bolts as I went.

I came back. The smell was so bad, I almost died. The floor was a seething gurgling mess of melting flesh and disintegrating bones. Of all the corpses who had been in the hall only five were showing any feeble signs of life (blasphemous as that might sound). The creatures were still twitching and wheezing. Without wasting any time, I shot another light bolt at the ceiling and withdrew into the corridor again.

I loitered out there for a good twenty minutes, waiting for the stench in the hall to ease off a bit. To be quite honest, I felt too disgusted to walk through the thin soup that had recently been human flesh. But there was nothing to be done; I had to walk through it. I asked Sagot to give me strength, tore off a piece of the lining of my jacket, wrapped it round my face, and walked through the hall.

A winding, crooked corridor, eight steps down, a corridor, a turn, a corridor. A hall.

“May you all rot in the darkness!” I yelled.

There was no more stairway to the seventh level.

*   *   *

If I’d walked faster, I could have got here before that fateful earthquake. But now it was too late. The jolt that hit the Sector of Heroes had collapsed the columns holding up the ceiling, and now my way was blocked by a massive heap of stone blocks and small debris. The dust hadn’t settled yet, but the stairway had been blocked off securely by the rock pile, and it would take years to shift it.

What could I do? As Kli-Kli liked to say in situations like this—drop your pants and run. The dust swirling in the hall made it hard to breathe, and I had to go back out. I sat down under a torch and studied the maps and papers for the hundred thousand millionth time.

The results of my research were not encouraging. This stairway was the only one in the Sector of Heroes, and in order to get down now, I’d have to go back to the spot where I first entered the sixth level. And from there … From there I’d have to tramp such a huge distance that it was easier just to lay down and die. The Sector of Heroes is a pretty large place, and I was sure to meet plenty of the walking dead before I could reach a stairway. And I didn’t have unlimited supplies of crystals and magic bolts—they were already running out.

I was desperately tired, but sleeping there would have been suicidal. So I had to walk on a bit farther while I still had the strength, and then we’d see whether I could get some sleep or not.…

*   *   *

I lost my way in the tangled network of winding corridors and halls in the Sector of Heroes. I walked on and on and on, and after three hours of walking and a brief doze on a tomb up on the “second story,” I still hadn’t come across a single rotten zombie. It was as if they’d never existed. But the shattered tombs suggested that wasn’t really true, so I stayed on the alert until I reached the “quiet” area (that is, where the coffins were still intact and there was no stink of corpses). But that was a big mistake—I mean letting my guard down like that. And my punishment came swiftly, with a perverse sense of humor.

Something leapt out of the darkness at me. It was so agile that I barely managed to dodge to one side, but the taloned hand missed me and caught the bag with the magical bits and pieces hanging on my right side … the strap holding it on my belt snapped.

All my magical supplies, crossbow bolts, and everything else that was important and useful fell to the floor. There was no time to pick them up—thank Sagot, at least I was still alive! While the corpse (and it was a corpse, only a very agile one) mauled my things, I leaped back and fired an ice bolt into him.

There was a tinkling sound, an icy-cold blast knocked me off my feet, and heavenly bells started chiming in my ears. When I got up, the sight presented to my eyes was an entire brigade of corpses jostling together on the spot where my broken bag was lying. The vile creatures came straight for me.

They moved much faster than ordinary zombies—in fact, they moved every bit as fast as living men. But I had no time to think about that. There was no way I was going to get the bag back, so I fired the second bolt into the crowd, slung the crossbow behind my back, and ran. Right now I had to save my own life—I could cry over the lost bag later.

*   *   *

I’d never have believed that desiccated and mummified bodies could have so much pep in them. I dived into side corridors and hurtled across halls, trying to lose my pursuers, but none of it did any good. They stuck with me all the way, and that lent me wings, but, I must admit, I was starting to feel tired. Eventually I found myself in a dark vestibule, shrank back against the wall, took my knife out, and prepared for the inevitable.

They didn’t notice me. A dozen dead men went rushing past and, without thinking twice about it, I ran back in the opposite direction. I turned into the tangle of narrow corridors, trying to confuse the pursuit and at the same time get back to the hall where I’d left my bag. With no weapons, maps, food, or other supplies, I was a dead man for sure. It didn’t work, though—the sound of wheezing breath told me the lads were on my trail again.

I cursed and ran. What else could I do? I wasn’t ready to take on the corpses with nothing but a knife.

The corridor started turning smoothly to the right. I ran on, past the opening of a passage even narrower than this one. I ran. Turned. Ran. Turned. Ran … and came face-to-face with a crowd of creatures just like the ones running after me. There was a moment’s confusion—they were as surprised as I was by this unexpected encounter.

Recovering my wits an instant before they did, I swung round and went dashing back toward the first posse. The second group also set off in pursuit, and I could hear them wheezing and croaking behind me. I stepped up the pace until I was running as fast as I could possibly go—I had to reach the intersection before the hunt ahead of me. Dark angular figures, barely visible in the light of the solitary torch, appeared right in my path.

But I made it in time. I reached the opening of the other corridor a split second before they did. The bony grappling-hook hands grabbed at the empty air as I ducked into the passage, and then the second brigade of zombies went crashing into the first. In the scramble that followed, I managed to beat it with my skin still intact.

More wheezing behind my back. Those lads were sticking to me like leeches! Forward. Left. Forward. Left. Right. Right. Right. Forward. Jump over a canal. Forward. Forward. Right. Forward. Left. Round a coffin lying in the way. Forward. Left. Dead end. Back. Right. Forward. Right. Left.

I flew out into a corridor and gazed in bewilderment at the backs of a crowd of zombies. The same ones who had been galloping after me less than fifteen minutes ago. They were standing, sniffing at the air. Then one of the corpses turned round and “looked” at me with the black hollows of his eye sockets.…

I was running. Again. I went flying into a hall with just a few of the ordinary walking dead shambling about. One shuffled toward me and blocked my path. I smashed straight into him at top speed. A foul stench in my nostrils. We both fell. I did a forward roll and jumped back up, cursing the ugly brute for getting in my way.

I heard wheezing behind me. All I could do was run.

So I ran.

9

THE DEAL

I went flying into another hall. It was quite small, with a pool of water splashing against one of the walls. There were two ways out. And eight torches. Urged on by the sound of wheezing, I started running across the hall, when suddenly corpses started pouring in through both exits. And the ones chasing me came flying in behind. I only had a few seconds. I leapt across the three yards of water in the pool in a single bound, found myself standing on someone’s tomb, scrambled up the wall using lumps and projections that were almost invisible, and clambered onto the second-story coffin.

I caught my breath. Looked around. The view from up here was remarkable. Five yards of empty space below me, and straight ahead of me—a hall crammed full of corpses. The dead had gathered together from almost the entire Sector of Heroes. They stood staring in silence.

If I went down, I’d be eaten. I could never break through and escape. But if I sat up here, I’d die of hunger—somehow I didn’t think anyone was planning to feed me. All I could do was hope for rescue and play “stare” with the walking dead. But I soon got fed up with that—my guards’ faces were absolutely repulsive, and they didn’t exactly make me feel like playing games.

The first thing I did, of course, was try to get my breath back and recover a bit. Running huge distances takes all your strength. When my breathing was back to normal and my heart had stopped trying to jump out of my chest, I took a look around. A stone box three yards long and a yard wide—plenty of space to accommodate an uninvited guest. A massive lid with an inscription on it:
The favorite cupbearer of the Sixth Count of Patia
. For some strange reason, they’d forgotten to inscribe the cupbearer’s name on the stone. And the date of his death, too. But someone very creative had left a moss-covered bottle on his coffin.

I inspected this surprise with a skeptical eye. The name and numbers molded into the glass told me it was wine and it was at least four hundred years old. I had nothing else to do, so I took out my knife and cut the seal off the cork. Since I didn’t have a corkscrew, I pushed the cork into the bottle. I took a sniff. Tried it. And gasped in approval. This wine was worth real money.

I was still hoping to get out of there alive, but an hour later I realized the repulsive creatures had absolutely no intention of going away, and I abandoned all hope of a happy ending. Either I went down and they ate me, or I died of hunger. But then, even if the zombies did back off, I’d wandered too far astray while I was running and now I could never find the way back to my bag with the maps of Hrad Spein. And without the maps … Without the maps, I’d never get to the eighth level, let alone find my way out of this place. In other words, I was as good as dead. All I had left was the canvas bag on my back with the sweater and the emeralds and the one vial I’d put in there, but there were no maps or food in it.…

The outcome of all this was that I polished off the wine, and I felt just fine, without a care in the world. Until I awoke with a hangover.…

*   *   *

By the end of the second day my stomach had stopped rumbling in fury, but the hunger pains hadn’t gone away. Nothing had changed. The corpses hadn’t gone away, either.

“Well, what are looking at, you brutes?”

Naturally, I didn’t get any answer. Nobody even hissed. I was simply ignored in the most insolent manner you could possibly imagine. I would have fired my crossbow at the vile creatures, but I didn’t have any more bolts. The only thing I could do was fling the empty bottle at the crowd. It somersaulted in the air a few times and smashed into one of the dead men, demolishing half of his rotten head. The dead man wasn’t bothered in the least by this strange circumstance and he just stood there.

“Having fun?”

The voice that rang out in the hall came as such a shock that I jumped.

He was standing in the shadow of a column and I could only see the vague outline of the dark silhouette with massive wings. The golden eyes were watching me with veiled mockery. The Messenger wasn’t paying any attention to the walking dead, and they were ignoring him.

“Something of the kind.”

I tried hard to sound calm, but the treacherous squeak in my voice gave me away.

The servant of the Master! The Messenger! Here! In the hall! Right in front of me!

My mouth went dry, my palms started to sweat, and my spine dissolved. Now I knew beyond any doubt who had herded the corpses in here and why.

“I have a proposition for you,” said the Messenger.

“What is it?” I asked, finding enough courage not to faint.