Chapter 79

Crawl

How long has it been a ruin? It is hard to tell, but these are not ancient stones like Dunbarra Keep, if I am any judge. My research tells me this castle was occupied until recently. Like the people of Merrow, I can only assume Janvier’s family did not survive his transition to lichhood.

I walk to the base of the impressive towers. My spies flutter after me, the crows circling above. The tentacle beastie drifts along, silently curious, its tendrils leaving little trails in the snow. Mist is thickening on the lake, mimicking the more violent oscillation of storm tossed sea. It makes me twitch. I keep thinking something is in there, hidden in the fog, hidden below the ice.

Stepping off the shore onto the slippery surface I look down. The crust is thick, but far below I can see fish moving in sluggish currents.

“Search for a point of entry,” I whisper to my birds. “Check to see if it's sealed tight.”

I’m not even sure why I continue to talk softly but I cannot shake the feeling that this place is not as it seems. This glacial range is not my place. What am I even doing here? I could be at home, with my drowsing forest, happy and comfortable. But that would be an illusion. If I want to secure my future I will have to sometimes do things in the present that make me decidedly uncomfortable. The castle broods down at me, and I scowl up at the lofty turrets. I suppose smashing Janvier’s phylactery is the lich equivalent of storing nuts for the winter.

Stalking around the rotting hoar-frosted timbers and snow piled stones brings me no insights. Everything appeared iced up, just like the rest of Merrow, moss and slick rock caked in crystal. I can see a staircase leading up, and the remains of a drawbridge. The chains seem to have dropped into the lake below. Some catastrophic event must have occurred, leading the water to breach the stones and flood into the dwelling.

“Here, my lady,” twitters one of the robins.

“What is it?”

“An opening.”

“A cave,” say Elding and Tora, together.

Followed by a cape of fluttering undead birds, I pace to the location they point out. Hidden by various rocks there are the remains of a blackened door. Behind the door, a tunnel. It bores into the side of the castle, leading down.

Pushing it open with a creak, I lean in.

The hollowed out passage is dark and claustrophobic. Wind whistles, scraping along ice shard walls, creating a frigid vacuum that sucks in the air, the mist, everything, pulling me in. Long and gloomy, I can't see to the end, although it appears to curve to the left. On one diamond wall, there is a solitary iron sconce, with a single, flickering torch.

How inviting.

“Oh, I see how it is,” I murmur to myself with a grin. Janvier thinks he is subtle.

What I really want to know is who is tending the torches?

I instruct a couple of the little birds to keep watch outside, and then stride confidently into what I assume is his frosty highness’ trap. Is the trap for me, Maud Greenleaf specifically? Glorious lich and crafting goddess that I am? Or is it for any wandering souls that happen upon his lands? For idiot adventurers and nosy paladins?

Ignoring the torch, I make my way into the heart of the castle underbelly. After some minutes of wary boredom, I step on a discoloured stone, and something clicks. A yawning pit opens in front of me, filling the passage from wall to wall. I almost fall in, but catch myself, teetering on my toes. Peering in, I can see the bottom is lined with vicious spikes. They are occupied by the forms of three impaled and decomposing bodies who wear a motley assortment of leather armour. One is dressed in the tatters of a mages’ robe.

They are soulless. More evidence that this place is tended. An exhibition? Or a warning? This is a sentiment I can relate to, although the place seems strangely set up. A challenge rather than a deterrent. It all seems rather tacky, but then who am I to judge the placing of his hignesses’ decorations?

Not everyone can have my good taste.

I swing across the pit, landing barefoot on the other side.

I continue on my way. Before I am much further down, there is a clicking, mechanical sound in the walls. Looking back, the pit has vanished, the floor smooth again. It seems the traps reset. Interesting.

“Keep a look out,” I say softly, “for any oddity. Anything marring the surface, anything out of place.”

My little spies and I advance. The passage is gloomy and cold, but the further I progress, the less ice there is. Now the ground is only partially frosted over. I assume we are insulated from the frigid temperatures outside. Perhaps the ice is just a barrier protecting the castle interior?

The way ahead forks. Both passages twist away into dark stone. I pick the left.

“Mistress!” trills a robin.

Another trip stone, this one slate and hidden amongst the other slippery uneven stones. Being able to see in the dark is a great boon.

Levering a large rock out of the wall with the haft of my axe, I throw it onto the stone with a mighty thump. A flight of gleaming, frost tipped arrows bursts from opposing walls. I lean back, as they whizz past my nose.

The trap is childish, obvious even. Perhaps to human eyes they would be less visible but no, that is too charitable. Anyone with half a brain could evade these. This is a place to trap paladins then.

I continue on, deeper underground. The way twists and turns, forks, and forks again. I find myself back in the passage with the arrow trap. A maze, then. This time I take the right hand fork, walking along with alert eyes. Some of the traps are easily spotted — trip wires, more discoloured patches, grooves in the ceiling or walls. Some are more devious.

In the next few minutes I encounter walls squeezing together, boulders falling from the lofty heights, and iron stakes shooting through the floor. It is invigorating, I suppose. Once I rip my dress on an errant spike, and I start to get a little annoyed.

Here and there skeletons are playfully arranged, presumably to lend ambience. I am most interested in the way the traps reset. There seems to be some machinery hidden in the walls. Or perhaps there are unseen minions? If there are, I will find them.

Just as I am contemplating punching my fist through a slab of rock, and digging my way directly through the bedrock, I come across a doorway.

Stout and made of heavy iron, it creaks open without much effort.

Surprisingly, the entrance way is untrapped which makes me immediately suspicious of the room within. Janvier wants whoever makes it this far to enter, that much is clear.

It is his trophy room, and I can see he is proud to show off his achievements.

Helmets line the walls in neat rows. Some of them are empty but most are occupied in varying states of decomposition. Blank faced skulls, and rotting eyes hanging on strings dangle at me. The blank, dead faces of a hundred men and women, too many to count. The foolish mortals willing to test themselves against the lord of this castle.

Their remains are artfully displayed, I begrudgingly admit. A few full suits of armour are placed at strategic intervals. Masses of weapons are piled in various open chests. I can see they belonged to men-at-arms, adventurers, knights, paladins and are arranged with respect to their prowess in battle. In pride of place is the helm of a sun paladin, and a great sword inscribed with runes of the Bright One. I am mildly impressed. It makes quite the statement.

A less prideful man might hide his phylactery here, amongst the remains of those whose lives he ended. I do not think this is Janvier’s way.

I can sense his disdain for the clerics in the way the trophies are arranged. It is much like a human lord might display his hunting trophies. While this room is made for Lord Lich to admire, I suspect, by its location, that it is also intended to enrage. If only hardened warriors survive his labyrinth thus far, this room must be a trap set up to end paladin’s lives. They will die and join their brothers and sisters, the last feast of their eyes this ordered carnage. There is a devilish poetry to it, I suppose.

If I was lich with an ice block for innards, and a proclivity for mechanical wheels and chains how would I do it? Ah yes, looking closely I can see strange grooves in the floor and ceiling. Taking great care, I hop onto a pedestal next to the wall and tuck my skirts beneath me. Reaching out I am just able to grab a heavy suit of armour. I lob it at the floor, with all my strength.

It falls with a solid clang.

The floor drops away with a whoosh of displaced air.

That's more like it. I peer into the brand new pit that exists where recently there was floor. Janvier is fond of holes. Although I will own they are effective. It is quite a drop to the bottom.

At the base lie a few hunched up skeletons, some in armour, some mere ragged bones. Things move and slither in the darkness. The rotting remains are covered in serpents. The pit is crawling with them. The snakes slither over the dead, peering up at me, their tongues flickering as they taste the air.

“Scout for me,” I murmur to my crows. “See if there is anything interesting down there. Search up here, the rest of you.”

I myself examine the ceiling, and the nearby shelves.

Elding and Tora flutter down, taking care to keep out of reach of the snakes. Deprived of something to attack, the nasty things slither and hiss. I lose sight of the two birds, and continue my own search.

“A passage! Ka!”

“A passage, mistress,” echoes the second crow, although I cannot tell which is which.

“Does it go somewhere?” I call.

“A door.”

“A door.”

“Alright, then.”

I hesitate on the edge, and then jump, my skirts fluttering. Landing on bended knee, the snakes back away hissing, black tongues dart in and out. As I straighten, one of them lunges, fastening its jaws around the undead flesh of my arm. I chop it in two with an irritable swipe of my axe. Alas, they are all wight snakes. Mindless, soulless and uninteresting.

I freeze the rest with a muttered “Glacies tempestas.”

“This way, Mistress.”

The bodies are likewise exactly as they seem.

The passage the crows have found is hidden behind a jutting rock in the deepest shadows of the pit. It would be easy to miss, I suppose. If you somehow survived the fall and the vicious snakes. Short as I am I still have to duck my head and I walk along, shuffling, bent almost double. The door at the end is round, with a peculiar lock on it. It has a small window, gaped with iron bars. Through it I can see a multitude of metal piping and gears. Some of them are steaming, reminding me of the alchemists’ pots back in the castle kitchens. Curious.

I tug on the handle but it does not budge. It is locked fast. Crouching down to examine it, I can see there is a space to fit something fist sized and vaguely oval. Hmm, there must be a key somewhere. A puzzle, then, that is meant to be solved.

My little birds fan out, searching.

“Shiny!” caws Elding, lightning rippling across his feathers in his excitement.

“Where?” I stride over.

Between the flesh ragged ribcages of one of the fallen is an emerald gem. To get to it I have to clear away the ice I made, and then a great pile of dead snakes. It is a carved emerald, fist size. Clearly it is meant to be found but I am growing bored so I pick it up anyway.

There is a mechanical whirring.

Boom!

An enormous slab crashes into the floor, blocking the roof of the pit.

We are trapped, but not crushed, as I momentarily feared when the ceiling came roaring towards us. The little birds chirp in distress. The beastie is still outside.

“I assume this will open the door,” I say, holding up the emerald.

“Water,” says Elding.

“Water comes,” says Tora.

They are right. I can hear the rushing. The mechanical noise grates once more upon my ears, like rusty wheels turning, desperately in need of an oil. Holes open up in each of the four walls, iron grates, each as big as a wagon wheel. Water pours out in a torrent, splashing over my feet and swilling in tempestuous swirls over the frozen serpents.

Violent and fast-flowing, it is rapidly filling the pit, turning it into a massive tank. A cunning trap indeed. Anyone who survives the fall, and the snakes, would then meet their end breathless and cold, drowned in the water. Assuming they could not get the door open in time, of course. Luckily for me, and my feathered friends, none of us need to breathe.

I remind my panicking robins, and one hyperventilating bat that they are all dead and have no need of air before returning my attention to the lock. I press the sparkling skull into the lock. It clicks into place but does not open.

How cruel! I can only imagine the panic of the soon to be drowned.

I on the other hand kick the drain covers open, eyeing the narrow space behind with a jaundiced eye. I do not like the look of those pipes and wheels.

“Come on,” I say. My words are garbled and slow beneath the weight of the water.

I half swim, half crawl through the narrow space, up and around the water filled pipes until I arrive at another iron grate. It gives me a little trouble, mostly because of the cramped conditions, but I soon manage to lever it off the walls. It is not that sturdy.

The pipe vomits me out into a glittering pool.

I look up at a crystal chandelier that illuminates a vast treasure room piled high with gold and jewels.