3

“Everyone okay?” were the first words Guin spoke. His deep growling voice curiously resonated in the darkness.

“I… I’m okay. Rinda?”

“Here… I’m okay too.”

The twins found each other with their hands and embraced.

“Why, it’s so dark I feel as if I’ve gone blind! Whatever happened to us? One moment we were in that tower room, and then—”

“Quiet!” rasped Guin in a loud whisper. His eyes burned emerald, visible even in the dark, scanning for any enemy in the pit.

“We fell through the wall in that tower room. It must have been a secret door of some kind leading to this hole… not uncommon in an old castle such as this. Yet whether we are safer now than before, I cannot say.”

“I don’t like this place,” said Rinda, her voice shaking. “There’s something unpleasant in this gloom. And the decay I’ve sensed in this keep from the start—it’s here, too. I feel like we’re closer to it now than ever before.”

“You are the only seer among us, Rinda, and you’re right as always,” said Guin. “But I didn’t need you to warn me of decay. I can feel it myself. It’s the stench of flesh that rots even as it lives—worse than the smell of death, it is, and it’s been filling my nostrils since we fell down here.”

“The Black Count Vanon,” whispered Rinda. Then she clapped her hands together. “That’s it! Suni and I saw an apparition when we were up in that room—the Black Count. He must have come up through this secret passage and the door behind the tapestry. That’s how he disappeared so quickly!”

Speaking hurriedly, Rinda related to Guin and Remus how the monster had come at them, decaying flesh dripping from between its bandages, only disappearing at the last moment before it touched them. She stopped and shivered. “That means he used this passageway. What if his disease is still here, in the air?”

Guin gave a thoughtful growl. His nose wrinkled and his body tightened, and all his instincts screamed flee!—but he held himself back.

“There’s one thing that doesn’t make sense,” he said. “How did the count reach the room from this hole? A ladder of some sort? Or perhaps there are steps carved into the wall? Vanon had enough trouble walking; it’s hard to imagine him climbing all the way up to that tower. Does this not seem strange?”

“Hmmm…” said Rinda. “There’s something else I don’t understand. When that thing was attacking Suni and me, it came so close to us, yet when it disappeared, we were unharmed. No skin melting off our bones, no disease.” She shivered, remembering the horror in the tower room. “The rotting plague didn’t seem to touch us at all—but the Black Count said that if his skin were to so much as touch the air, the plague would infect everyone around him as quick as could be.”

“Interesting.”

“There is something here in Stafolos Keep,” whispered Rinda quietly, as though she were afraid of being overheard by some enemy lurking in the darkness. “It’s a mystery, but I am certain that even if the Sem had not attacked tonight, the keep would have fallen before long.”

“Well, Rinda Farseer,” said Guin, “your prediction matches that of the man that escaped from the room next to ours in the tower: Spellsword, so known for his awareness, much like yours, of danger to come. A mercenary named Istayan, he—what’s wrong, child?”

Guin had been chuckling as he talked, but he stopped when he felt a jolt where Rinda’s body touched his own; it was as if a bolt of lightning had shot through her as he spoke the mercenary’s name.

“You know this Istavan… of Valachia, was it? The ‘Crimson Mercenary’?”

Rinda stuttered. “I… no, I don’t, but…” She reached out and wrapped her hands around Guin’s powerful arm. A shiver ran through her, as if she had heard the little fate-wheel of Jarn’s loom turn, and she remembered having a similar feeling the moment she had first called the leopard-headed warrior by his name. The sound of the mercenary’s name, “Istavan”— although she was sure she had never heard it before—caused her stomach to tighten and her hands to shake. She, who was blessed by the gods with a power to see things that could not be seen, grabbed on tighter to Guin’s arm. Just touching his powerful body she could feel his strength lapping over her like the tide, and she felt braver and more at ease.

“What is it, Rinda? …You see something, don’t you?” Remus asked, peeved at being left out of the conversation. He loved his sister well, but he couldn’t help feeling pangs of jealousy whenever she showed signs of that power he did not have. He felt that he had been singled out, left behind holding the short straw.

“I don’t know… it’s just my nerves, I’m sure,” she replied, squirming in closer between Guin and her brother. “Isn’t it about time we stopped sitting around in the dark, anyway?”

“If indeed there is a way out of here,” Guin muttered glumly, slowly lifting himself off the ground to begin searching in the total blackness. He couldn’t even see his hand lifted before his face.

Suddenly, the little Sem girl Suni, quiet up until now, began chattering in her high-pitched tongue. When Guin replied in kind, it gave the twins quite a start.

“Guin! You—you know her language, I mean, you can speak it!”

“Just who are you, Guin?”

“Quiet, this is important,” he snapped, then explained: “She can see in the dark, she says; all her kind can; and because she knows we are her friends, she will help us find a way out.” He began speaking as she chattered, providing a running translation. “The pit we are in isn’t that big, and there’s something set into the wall, a lift of some sort. And… there’s a wall, a dead end only fifty paces from where we re sitting. She’s going to check to see if it’s another secret door.”

“But we don’t know what might be on the other side! Don’t go, Suni!”

“We cannot remain sitting here for all eternity. It is a risk we have to take,” Guin declared with finality. “Do not worry. Whatever may lie beyond that wall, I luckily did not lose my sword in the fall, and I am not afraid to take another life.”

“What if what’s behind that wall is already dead, Guin?” said Rinda, a hint of anger in her voice. “What if that walking corpse is out—” she stopped, hearing a chirp from a short distance away in the dark.

“Suni! Suni?!”

Remus had to hold onto his sister to keep her from running out blindly into the dark.

“She says there’s a door there,” explained Guin, grabbing the twins by the shoulders. “We go!”

“But the Black Count—” began Remus, stopping short when he heard Suni shriek and then, just as abruptly, go silent.

A narrow light sliced through the darkness, and Guin charged towards it, dragging the twins along behind him.

“The door spun… and Suni’s on the other side!” he growled.

“Suni! Suni!” Rinda ran up and began pounding on the wall with her small fists, forgetting entirely her fear that the very halls where the Black Count lurked might lie on the other side.

As it happened, she chanced to hit just the spot that Suni had found, triggering the mechanism that sent the whole wall spinning. The secret portal whipped the three companions around and spit them out on the other side, immediately closing tight behind them.

The three tumbled out onto the stone floor, their senses reeling at the sudden change in their surroundings. Compared to the blind darkness in which they had been, the place where they found themselves now was brilliant, and it took a while for their eyes to adjust—whereupon they perceived an underground chamber with a low ceiling, much like many others they had seen in the keep, that wasn’t very brightly lit after all. In fact, it was positively gloomy.

On closer inspection, the damp, narrow room seemed to be part of a longer hall with pillars that ran along each side. There was no one about, no Sem—not even the little girl Suni who surely had come through the door before them. The only sound was the sound of water dripping down the stone walls.

“I know this place,” said Guin, looking around. “We are underneath the black tower, where I was brought before.” He raised his longsword and warily stepped out into the hall, waving for the twins to follow after confirming that no danger was near.

“Yes, they took me through here. This hall leads to the count’s torture room.”

“So there is a secret passage connecting the white tower to the black,” said Rinda softly. “That’s how the count was able to pay his visits to the captives—the sacrifices—that his underlings put in the white.”

“So it seems.”

Guin continued scanning back and forth, checking for lurking dangers in the shadows behind the pillars before he advanced with the children close beside him.

“I wonder what happened to Suni?”

“Who knows? Gone on ahead, perhaps; hopefully she escaped whatever frightened her.”

“She wouldn’t just leave us here like that—she’s so small and fearful.”

Rinda looked carefully down both sides of the corridor. Nothing was stirring in the dim light that pooled behind the long rows of pillars along the rough-hewn stone walls. So complete was the stillness, it was hard to believe that the keep above was swarming with the victorious Sem invaders. Down here, there was only an oppressive silence and solitude that tempted Rinda to think nothing that had happened in the last few hours was real at all. Only the faint, cloying stench of decay seeping from an unknown source served to remind her whose halls these were, and to keep her wits on edge.

“Suni! Suni!” Rinda’s call echoed down the stone corridor.

“Quiet. We don’t know what’s listening.” Guin’s reprimand silenced her. “I walked this very hall but several hours ago—to the right, here, it goes upward to the keep-lord’s torture chamber. I remember seeing prisoners there.” Guin thought, then spoke again: “If we free them, and they are willing to fight, we might just have a chance against the Sem.”

“But, Suni!”

“Suni is a Sem. She will not need our help to evade her own kind.”

Guin kept the children safe behind him as they approached the entrance to the large hall where the black knights had brought him on the way to fight the grey ape.

“Stay here.”

Guin held his sword ready, and moved soundlessly up into the area where he had seen the count’s torturing platforms lying side by side.

“What?!” the leopard-man nearly shouted in his surprise. Remus and Rinda quickly stepped out into the hall behind him.

“No one! No slaves, no prisoners, not even that accursed count!”

“Maybe the Sem got them?”

“No…” Guin scanned the chamber, baffled. “Wildlings leave corpses, blood, traces of battle. The only thing left of the prisoners here is their chains.”

It was a strangely chilling sight. In the middle of the large, dim chamber, an assortment of torturing devices made a gloomy procession, arranged in a crooked line as twisted as the mind of the keep-lord who used them. The horrible machines had been disturbing enough when slaves with the eyes of corpses stood by to work them; but seeing them now, unmoving, their chains and empty shackles hanging crookedly from the stone platforms and wicked iron mechanisms, was somehow far more ghastly.

“What could have happened here?” Guin said in a sunken voice. “Nothing makes sense. How can it be that there is no living person, slave or otherwise, in the black tower? Where did they all go?”

“Guin, I’m scared.” Remus hugged himself tightly and moved nearer to the others.

“Me too,” Rinda admitted. A mob of attacking Sem, or the Black Count himself in all his pestilence, might mean certain death, but at least such threats would have given the companions something to fight. In this kind of absolute silence, devoid of life, where not even the air moved, the only thing left to resist was dark, oppressive fear…

“Guin! We must leave this place!” Rinda’s voice was high and wavering. “Nothing good is here. I’d rather have death by the hands of the Sem than this. Let’s go back.”

“No,” Guin replied, firmly shaking his head. His leopard eyes shone. “Going back is certain death. Be this place accursed and vile, at least this way there is hope. Do not fear, children. Should the count’s rotting disease fall upon your flesh and infect you, I will be swift to give you rest with my sword.”

“Promise me! Do you swear?”

“By this damned leopard head, I swear it.” Guin lifted his sword. “Through that corridor is the arena where I fought the grey ape—and I saw another, darker passage leading from its far side. If my instincts serve me well, beyond that are stairs into the black tower… or at least a passage leading somewhere.”

The three friends kept close together, their hearts racing every time they heard the sound of water dripping from the walls. Slowly they made their way across the lifeless chamber.

“Look there,” Guin told them as they entered another empty chamber. “There, where the floor is lower, is where I killed the grey ape. You can see the iron cage in which they kept the beast further back. It still smells of ape, and as my muscles ache I know it was no dream… but where is the body?”

“They must have cleaned it up,” Remus ventured.

“Or maybe they had another way to get rid of the body.” Guin chuckled darkly.

The twins clung tightly to either side of the warrior, like two tiny white rock-lilies clinging to the sides of a massive boulder. The only sound in the room was their echoing footsteps; they made their way to the exit at the far side without meeting any resistance, living or otherwise.

“Our real trial lies beyond,” said Guin in a low voice, putting the twins behind him again.

As he had guessed, a thin stair rose beyond the arched entrance. It went twisting up through the gloom until it disappeared around a corner. The place seemed oddly familiar; after a moment they realized that this stair was nearly identical to the one in the white tower.

Guin hesitated before stepping through the archway—a show of caution unusual for the bold leopard warrior. He felt a curious shiver running through his body. All his senses were screaming that there was something waiting up there in the clammy darkness.

“Do you feel something in there, Rinda?” he asked, partly to conceal his unease, gesturing through the gloom at the stairs that led up between narrow walls ahead of them. And Rinda, holding on to her brother, closed her eyes and saw. She whispered back to the leopard-man as though she were afraid of the darkness itself hearing her.

“The most evil thing is in there, Guin. Yet so, too, is our path to freedom.”

“Then it seems we must confront whatever thing it is that makes its nest in this keep. There is no avoiding it,” he said, fearlessly stepping forward. A grim light flamed in his yellowish eyes. It occurred to Remus that the burning light was like a signal: Guin, the man inside the mask, had gone to sleep, and the soul of the leopard whose face he wore now possessed him entirely.

“Follow close, children,” Guin told them, walking warily but without hesitation towards the stair. Once again, the tepid darkness drew near and enveloped him, as though it had a living will of its own, an insatiable hunger. The twins followed him into it.

They climbed a length of stair, turned a corner, and climbed again. Rinda bit her lip to keep from crying aloud; she could feel her brother’s warm fingers holding her arm, lending her strength, but it was not enough. To him, this place might be scary or unnerving, but to her, as sensitive to the spirit world as she was, it shrieked of danger—in the feel of the viscous darkness on her skin, in the wafting stench of rot that filled her nostrils, she felt the presence that watched over the whole tower, everywhere and yet nowhere. This was Doal’s domain, and she wanted no part of it.

The stairs turned and twisted, until Rinda wasn’t sure whether they were actually climbing, or whether they were just endlessly going around the same corner, treading the same steps over and over.

Then they heard it: a faint, muffled sob, as if someone was crying through a cloth gag. It was high-pitched, like that of a little girl, but the timbre had a distinct quality that suggested its owner was not quite human.

“Suni!” shouted Rinda.

Guin dashed forward, following his keen sense of hearing toward the faint voice—one more floor up, and then to the right. He took the last few steps in a single stride, stopping at the head of a dark corridor that seemed to branch off into many rooms. The smell of decay was nearly unbearable.

The warrior lifted his sword and abruptly kicked in the nearest door—and gasped. There, in a stone-walled room much like those in the white tower, was a mountain of bones, gleaming an eerie white in the dim light.

“Oh!” the twins gasped in unison.

“Wrong door,” shouted Guin, running to the next door, and the next.

There, he wavered, and stepped back. His foot had swung to kick the door and met with nothing but empty space—the door had opened by itself, becoming a fissure that looked in at… nothing—a dark emptiness like the void of space itself, except that it stank of death.

From somewhere within that darkness they could hear Suni, bound and crying; but then—

The three involuntarily stepped back.

Framed by the stone doorway, an armored figure emerged from the reeking void.

Its faceplate was lowered, a black mask drawn over face and nose, the metal of its armor clanging and creaking as it waver-ingly advanced: an ancient apparition compounded of every nightmare that ever had been. Its movements were unnatural, slow and stiff; it was like a massive caricature, a martial marionette, powered by terror and black magic.

Rinda screamed, a weak scream that caught halfway along her throat, coming out in choked bits and pieces.

“The… Black… Count…!”

There was something about the wavering armored warrior surrounded by endless darkness that profaned all providence— a denial of the very spark of life, a horror that spread from its form and covered everything in filth. The figure threw its head back, and laughed.

Then the keep-lord of Stafolos spoke.