The Black Robe (The Sword and the Spell) (44 page)

Behind him Rothers shifted impatiently. He could almost hear the man’s thoughts, wondering why he hesitated now that the decision had been made to visit the chambers under the tower. If he told his friend of his fears, that he might not be able to resist the call of such powerful magic, he wouldn’t understand, so it would be better to tell him that it was the memories of what he’d found the last time he’d walked through that door. Then Perguine had been with him and what they had found had horrified them both so perhaps, on second thoughts, it was better if he said nothing to Rothers at all and just got on with it.

Jonderill stepped forward and the door opened to let him pass. The spiral stone stairs led downwards to an iron-bound door at the bottom. This door had no handle or lock and he remembered how surprised he’d been when Plantagenet’s old iron blade had opened it. He had been naive then thinking that it was the blades’ magic which had opened the door. Now he knew better; it was his magic which had gained them entry, but he hadn’t had the belief in himself to know it. He had learnt what it was to believe in himself and what he could do, but it had been a costly lesson.

As he reached the bottom of the stairs the door opened for him, and he stepped through onto the landing of the main cavern, lighting the long dead torches with elemental fire. The cavern was just as he remembered it; icy cold and smelling of decay. Cell doors lined either side of the walls with most of the doors locked and barred. For a moment, he wondered if there had been prisoners within who had died in the dark when Maladran abandoned the tower.

If so their bodies could still be there tuned to bone and dust. Two of the doors were open where Pellum and Jarrul had been held. He walked down the dozen or so stone steps to the cell where they had found Jarrul. The chains still hung from the ceiling and lay crumpled on the floor where he had been stretched between the two before they had rescued him. In his mind he could almost hear Jarrul’s agonised groans and Pellum’s shouted warning that the stone beasts at the top of the stairs were moving.

He turned away and continued to the end of the cavern and the solid metal door which barred the way to the final chamber. Behind him he could hear Rothers shallow breathing and the nervous shuffling of his feet as he waited for him to deal with the final door. “Are you all right?” His voice sounded hollow and small in the cold atmosphere of the cavern.

“Yeh. Damn creepy place though.”

Jonderill smiled to himself and felt better for having heard Rothers’ earthy description of the place. “You haven’t seen the half of it yet.”

He turned his attention back to the metal door and concentrated until it reluctantly opened. The moment they stepped passed it the door slammed shut behind them and the metal bar dropped into place with a loud clang which made Rothers jump. Jonderill lit the torches at either end of the room and walked to the stone slab which took up the central space. The room was hot and airless and the smell of rotting flesh hung in the air.

There was another smell too, like brimstone and burnt sand, and an animal smell which made his skin crawl. Of all the rooms in and below the tower, this was the one that had changed the most and he wasn’t sorry for it. On his last visit there had been bodies chained to the wall, dead but still twitching like puppets on a string. They were gone now, the only evidence of them having ever been there, were a scattering of bones, mainly hands and feet.

The stone slab had changed too. Last time it had been stained dark with the blood of those who had died on its rough surface, victims of Maladran’s search for demon magic. Now the blood stains were confined to the edges and in the centre the stone had been fused together into a pale glassy surface. Beneath the melded stone there was a darker circle, about the size of the torc and for a moment, he thought that something moved around its edge. He stepped back and his foot caught on the grid in the floor where Maladran had disposed of his victims bodies and where he, Jarrul and Pellum had escaped through the putrefying remains. Just the thought of it made his stomach heave.

Rothers didn’t like the place much either. The heat and the smell reminded him of his captivity in Tallison’s pavilion and Jonderill’s rotting body confined in its cage. The memories made his heart race and the smell made him retch. “Can we hurry up and get out of here please?”

Jonderill turned to look at him. He hadn’t considered how the place might affect his friend. “Yes, but first I must do what I came for.”

He turned back to the stone slab and concentrated his mind on opening the secret compartments which he knew were there. Maladran’s journal had told him there were hidden drawers within the stone, but nothing happened apart from an uncomfortable feeling that his power was draining away from him. It was almost as if the stone was soaking up his magic.

“My friend, you are going to have to do this for me.” Rothers reluctantly joined him at the edge of the stone slab trying to ignore the dark stains and what they meant. “Put your hands under the lip of the stone and move them along until you find something which feels different, I believe there is a lever of some sort under there.”

Despite his reluctance to touch the stone he did as Jonderill asked but it took two passes before he finally felt the small indentation and slipped two fingers inside. He nodded to Jonderill that he was ready and then pressed on the inside of the stone at the same time as Jonderill thought about opening. There was a small click and a grinding of noise as a number of small compartments were revealed.

They both stood back and looked at the results in satisfaction. Each compartment contained something different, a casket of powder or a dish of crystals or viscous liquids in small, stoppered jars. Maladran’s journal had identified each substance, its use and the incantation which was needed to release its power. He’d been afraid that some or all the compounds would have been used up by Maladran in his final spell, but there was a little of everything left. He just hoped it was enough for him to complete his task.

“Do you have the sacrifice?”

Rothers nodded, took the pack from his back and carefully pulled out a long-eared hopper with its legs bound tightly together. It was a female, heavy with kits and with wild, terrified eyes. He laid it across Jonderill’s arms and Jonderill placed it on the centre of the stone slab on top of the dark, circular mark. The sacrifice should have been human, but he didn’t want to raise a demon, just touch on the demon’s power. He showed Rothers which bottles he needed him to open and which caskets of powders needed their lids removed, and waited until the task was complete. That was all the service he’d asked of his friend, but whilst he’d been waiting he’d thought of something else, although Rothers would not be happy with his request.

“Before you leave I have one further service to ask of you if you would. I need to strengthen the focus of the spell.” He looked across at the scattered bones which lay beneath the manacles fixed to the wall. “Would you gather enough for two complete hands?”

For a moment Rothers looked sick but nodded anyway and went to sort through the bones until he had what he hoped was the right amount. He held them out and Jonderill told him how to arrange them around the outside of the hopper.

“Now go and whatever you hear don’t come back to this room. When it’s over I will come to you.”

Rothers nodded in understanding thinking whether he should say good luck or not, but the words stuck in his throat. When he reached the door the bar lifted for him and the door opened of its own accord. Once he’d stepped through, the bar dropped back into place and Jonderill was alone.

He’d spent four moon cycles studying Maladran’s journal trying to understand the principles that the magician had discovered, learning the elements and their effects and practicing the words which sounded like nothing he had ever spoken before. In the right combination he would be able to touch the demon magic and make it work for him until his robe and his hands were restored. His difficulty had been discovering the right combinations and even now he wasn’t sure if, what he had decided upon, would produce the results he sought. The journal had been difficult to read. In some passages the words slipped from his mind as he read them and in others the pages had been blank although he was certain that words had been written there. He could have missed something without even knowing it.

As he stood by the stone, doubts started to fill his mind, and the spell he’d carefully learned began to slip away from him. It was like being a boy again, knowing there was magic, but expecting it to come from someone else or through some other object. Without realising it he stepped back from the stone altar, unconsciously retreating from a task that his mind was telling him was beyond him. As he did so his heel caught on the raised grid in the floor and he staggered backward and would have fallen if he hadn’t moved the air around him to support him whilst he regained his balance. It was a neat trick, something which he’d learned from Maladran’s journal which required instant thought and self belief. It was all he needed to remind himself that he was not a boy and to restore his confidence. Now he stepped forward knowing he could succeed.

He began a low chant, slow and rhythmic, one that would call on new life to bring forth its power to change what the past had broken. On the stone slab the long eared hopper struggled and writhed and its distended stomach bulged as if the unborn kits inside struggled to be free. One by one he took the compounds Maladran had prepared and sprinkled them across the creature’s body, his voice changing from a chant to sibilant incantations, each one different as he applied a new arcane compound.

With each incantation his voice rose and fell like waves and a cold mist, laden with ice, twisted around him, enveloping him and the stone slab in its folds and isolating them from the rest of the room. Within its shroud Jonderill could feel the energy from the life he was consuming filling him with power so that his empty wrists burnt like molten steel and his robe scoured every part of his flesh that it touched.

Through his agony he could see the dark circle entombed into the stone burn through the body of the sacrifice, its surface twisting as if it had taken on a life of its own. Calling on the names of nightmare creatures, Jonderill summoned demon magic. When he could stand the inferno which wracked his body no longer, he thrust his wrists into the centre of the circle and screamed one last incantation. The edge of the circle twisted again and two ruby eyes glowed from the darkness as an elongated head turned in his direction and bestial howls erupted from an open maw.

Immediately the remains of the sacrifice were consumed by flames and in that instant he could feel the demon taking control of his being. It was what must have happened to Maladran and he knew that it could not be allowed, whatever the consequences. Desperately he screamed out more words and a brimstone cloud billowed into the air smothering everything with its yellow fog. A deathly silence fell across the room broken only by Jonderill’s ragged breathing. Nothing moved as the cloud slowly dispersed leaving just a circle of ash on the glassy surface of the stone slab.

Breathing hard Jonderill staggered away from the altar, his steps uncertain, blinded by the light and his mind a turmoil of images and shattered thoughts. The door opened for him and he stumbled through with his power running from him like water from a tap, faster than he could call it back. His knees buckled and Rothers caught him before he could fall. He’d heard the bestial howling from beyond the barred door and Jonderill’s screams but he’d done what had been asked of him and stayed where he was. Now, with his friend unconscious in his arms he wished that he’d intervened. At least he could have saved him from the agony of what he had done and the pain of his disappointment to come.

Rothers put his arms around Jonderill’s chest and eased him away from the metal door which had closed the moment he’d stumbled through. The cavern hadn’t seemed that big when he’d followed Jonderill into it but now, supporting his friend’s dead weight, the distance to the stone stairs seemed endless and the steps impossibly high. He propped Jonderill’s supine body up against a wall and went to test the metal-bound door which was firmly locked, as he guessed it would be.

The only doors which stood open were the cell with the chains, and he had seen the look on Jonderill’s face when he had looked into there, and the other cell. He looked into the dark room expecting to find something unpleasant but instead found a clean space with a bed, table and chair, a supply of blankets and a half full flagon of wine. Someone had torn strips off the bed linen, but apart from that, the room was cleaner and better appointed than those offered by most inns.

It would have to do. Whilst Jonderill was unconscious they couldn’t escape, and even if this was a cell it was far better than leaving his friend on the stone floor of the cavern. As carefully as he could he put his arms beneath Jonderill’s shoulders and pulled him across the floor and into the small room. From there he heaved him onto the bed, settled his limbs and his robe around him and covered him with three of the four blankets. All he could do now was wait until Jonderill came back to himself.

Rothers wrapped the spare blanket around his shoulders, sat in the chair by the table and sampled some of the wine. For a moment, he wondered who had put the wine there, as Jonderill had told him that no one had lived in the tower for over a year. However, as it was a good Vinmore red with the earthy taste that age gives to some wines, he carried on drinking it. It did little to ease his worries though; if Jonderill didn’t recover or if he did and his magic was spent, then they were trapped down here until they both died of thirst and hunger.

He must have fallen asleep as the sound of movement in the corner of the cell startled him. One of the torches had gone out and the other was spluttering, coming to the end of its existence and casting deep shadows across the cell. Rothers stood slowly and walked towards the bed uncertain of what he was going to find but it was only Jonderill sitting in the corner of the bed where the two walls joined, his knees up to his chest and his handless arms resting upon them. He could see the reflection of wetness in his friend’s eyes and didn’t know what to say, what words to use to give him some comfort. Instead he returned to the table, poured the rest of the wine into a pot and sat next to his friend so that Jonderill could sip the contents.