The Sword Of Erren-dar (Book 2) (35 page)

 Gradually the warmth penetrated his cold bones, bringing
with it a sense of comfort that had become sadly foreign to him recently. The
icy wind could be heard moaning around the outer walls of the castle, but this
only increased Bethro’s sense of shelter. He shifted closer to the fire and
watched as the initial blaze subsided into soft flickers of flame that played along
the edges of the wood. His chin sank in his hand. Still, those mesmerising
little tongues of flame writhed and danced along the wood, and as he watched,
very softly inside his head, he began to hear a low, hypnotic drumbeat. His
eyes drooped a little and the soft rhythm was joined by the gentle strumming of
a harp. Into this enchanting mixture dropped the  haunting notes of a mountain
flute. Still he watched the flames, but now it seemed to him that although the
music was still inside his head, the tiny flames were beginning to dance in
time to the rhythm. Up and down, twisting and swirling, round and round. Before
his hypnotised gaze, the tongues of flame began to assume the shapes of tiny
figures clothed in flickering light. A female form, not as big as his little
finger, entirely formed of fire, danced and gyrated  along the wood. Her long,
flying hair scattered sparks like red stardust around her, and her swirling
skirts glowed with gold. Bethro blinked, and rubbing his eyes, leaned closer,
mistrusting what his senses were telling him. The music in his head did not
cease but instead increased in tempo. The figure was now joined by many others
and faster and faster they danced, weaving in and out of one another, almost
reckless in their abandonment to the music. Then Bethro suddenly realised that
not only were they dancing along the edge of the wooden box, now engulfed in flame,
but that the lid had opened.

 “That is where they came from,” he said aloud. “They were
in the box all the time and by putting it on the fire, I have released them.
But why was the box locked? Why were they imprisoned when they are so pretty?”

 As if his word had disturbed them, the music suddenly
stopped and a shocking silence fell. The fire sprites ceased their gyrations
and all turned as of one accord to look at him, and although they were tiny,
Bethro felt that they did not look upon him kindly.

  Abruptly, with a crackle of sparks, one leaped into the
air and flung itself at him. It shot forward  like a fiery dart and struck him
on the back of the hand, delivering a coin-sized burn.

 “Aah!” cried Bethro in pain.

 As if this was a signal, all the fire sprites began to dart
at him, singeing his clothes and hair, inflicting burns where his skin was
unprotected. They circled him like incandescent hornets waiting for the chance
to strike, leaving trails of sparks behind them that glittered in the dark air.

 “Help me!” bellowed Bethro, trying to pull a blanket over
his head to protect himself.

 But his companions did not respond. They slept on as  if under
a spell and could not be roused. He violently shook Eimer’s shoulder, even
Gorm’s, but they slept on oblivious.

 By now some of the fire sprites had found their way under
the blanket and were inflicting burns that caused him to cast it aside with a
roar of pain and take to his heels. Like a swarm of light, they followed him
across the hall, just a pace or two behind him.

 Howling with fright, he tugged open a side door at random
and shot off down the dark corridor, pursued by his tormentors. He could scarcely
see where he was going, but the occasional glassless window allowed enough
moonlight to spill onto the dusty floor to allow him to keep up his headlong
flight. The orange swarm brought their own light but this was behind him and he
knew that he dare not falter or they would be upon him, stinging and scorching
him until they burned him to death.

 Coming to the head of a spiral staircase that descended
into the bowels of the fortress, Bethro knew he had no choice. He plunged down
it, almost tripping headlong in his haste.

 Down and down went Bethro into the dark unknown depths of
the castle, more terrified of what was behind him, than anything that lay
ahead.

 When he reached the bottom, the light that his pursuers created
illuminated what had clearly once been a dungeon. It was divided into many
individual cells with heavy barred doors, but Bethro had no time to take it all
in. He pounded along the narrow stone passageway between the cells, gasping and
sobbing for breath, until he was faced with a solid oak door looming up at the
end. Fervently praying that it was not locked, he put both hands out in front
of him and charged at it, running straight into it with a thump. To his relief,
the door gave way easily and flew back against the wall. Coming to a skidding
halt, Bethro swung round and slammed the door shut behind him, leaving the
swarm of flames on the wrong side of it.

 Chest heaving and sobbing with relief, he turned to inspect
his surroundings. He expected to be able to see little in the darkness but for
some unascertainable reason, he could see quite clearly. The windowless room
was lit by a pale, grey light, a little like diluted moonlight, from some
obscure source. It revealed that the small, stone chamber was empty and bare.
It had none of the usual piles of debris – nor, to Bethro’s horror, did it
possess any other door, other than the one he had just used.

  It was, in fact,  a trap.

 The room contained only one thing, so unexpected, that it instantly
claimed his attention. The stone wall opposite the door was deeply incised with
an enormous motif, as tall as a man, of the coiled serpent of Parth. Its head
was set at right angles to its body, projecting outwards into the room. Its
stone eyes were eternally blind and its long fangs were bared in permanent
menace. Frantically, he began to examine the snake, running his hands over it,
wondering if it possessed any secrets. But if it did,  it refused to divulge
them and Bethro’s fruitless search was interrupted when his sense of smell
suddenly detected something burning. He swung round to face the door in time to
see black charred marks begin to bloom through the centre of the wood.

 “They are burning their way through the door,” he whispered
in terror. “If I cannot find some other way out of here, I’m finished.”

 He returned to the snake again. “You must be here for a
reason,” he addressed it desperately. “You must be. You are too big for a room
this size.”

 Once again, his hasty fingers probed and pushed every coil
and scale. He even stuck his fingers in its empty eye sockets. Finally in
despair, he shoved his hand roughly against its snout. With a low grinding
noise, the enormous circular carving began to shift slightly, pivoting on a
concealed axis. At the same moment, the charred portion in the centre of the
wooden door, fell smouldering to the floor and the swarm shot in. The room was
suddenly filled with a burst of golden light. One, a little in advance of the
others, darted forward and burned him on the cheek. The others followed, surrounding
him, attacking from all sides, burning and tormenting.

 Bethro screamed and awoke with a start.

 He was lying on his side in the Great Hall perilously close
to the fire, his companions still fast asleep under their blankets. The fire
had spat out a charred flake of wood and it had landed on his hand, slightly singeing
him. He flicked it off and sat up, wiping his forehead, still trembling with
fright and not quite able to grasp that the terrifying experience had all been
unreal.

  One aspect of his dream had at least been true. There,
engulfed in flame, was the wooden box and just as in his dream, the lid had
opened. Before it became totally blackened, Bethro saw that the underside of
the lid was emblazoned with the coiled snake of Parth. As he watched, a tongue
of flame flared up and engulfed it, and in an instant it was gone.

 “If that much is true,” he asked himself, “what else might
be true? Maybe this was more than a dream. Maybe it was a vision.”

 Bethro the Hero, though still shaken, rather liked that
idea.

 Dawn was a grey, muted event that the company remained
largely unaware of because the Great Hall did not boast any windows. Vesarion
instinctively awoke at the usual hour, to find that he was lying with his back
to the fire, facing towards the great doors. A chink of cold light was spilling
through a narrow gap underneath the doors onto the stone flags.

 Stiffly, he sat up, rubbing his neck, to find Gorm on
watch, sitting alertly by the fire, indulging in his favourite pastime of
sharpening his sword with a whetstone. The others were just beginning to stir
and instantly his eyes sought Sareth, who was beside him. He found that she was
awake, her head pillowed on the blanket, her unclouded eyes dreamily regarding
him.

 “The fever has gone,” she said.

 “I know. It broke last night.”

 “I’m absolutely starving.”

 He rose to his feet, smiling in satisfaction. “An excellent
sign. Let’s see what Bethro can produce.”

 After breakfast, just as they were packing up, Vesarion
knew that the issue that had been nagging at him for sometime now, could no
longer be avoided.

 “We have a problem,” he began, not mincing matters. “I
cannot discover a pass through the mountains and from this point onwards there
is no obvious trail to follow. I was on top of one of those tall towers last
night when the whole countryside was lit by moonlight so bright it was as clear
as day, and I could see no way forward. The valley we have been following
appears to end at this fortress. Behind the castle, the mountains rise sheer
again and I could see no path.”

 “But the Keeper said there was a way,” objected Iska. “He
would not mislead us.”

 “Perhaps we should look again from the top of one of the
towers,” Sareth suggested. “I mean, moonlight can sometimes be deceptive. It
casts very dark shadows that just might be hiding something, so perhaps, if the
mist has gone, we should have another look to see what daylight can reveal.”

 “Very well,” Vesarion agreed. “You have sharp eyesight,
Sareth. Come with me to the tower and see if you can spot something that I have
missed.”

 Leaving the others in the great hall, Vesarion guided
Sareth along the labyrinthine corridors that he and Eimer had inspected the
night before, until they reached the foot of the tower. She was unusually
silent, her customary humorous comments entirely absent. He guessed that the
brooding atmosphere of the place was finally affecting her, dragging down her spirits
as it had done to them all. As they ascended the fan-shaped steps of the spiral
staircase, she remarked in a flattened voice: “This place is like a tomb. I
take it, on your search last night, you didn’t come across any corpses? It
would somehow be appropriate.”

 “No, but we’ve barely scratched the surface of this place.
It is utterly immense. Ravenshold is like a child’s toy compared with it.”

 They emerged onto the flat roof of the tower, ringed by crenellated
defences. The place was littered with old sticks and crows’ droppings but the
untidy residents had departed with the dawn and were now seen only as tiny back
dots against the leaden sky.

 “At least the wind has dropped,” Sareth observed, peering
gingerly over the wall to look at the snowfield far below.

 Vesarion, too, leaned on the wall. “It stopped snowing far
too soon last night,” he informed her. “Look down there. I can even see our
tracks from here! The snow has softened them a little but it would take no
skill to follow them.”  He shrugged. “There’s not much we can do about it,
except move on swiftly.”

 They turned their backs to the snowfield and instead
examined the mountains towering behind the fortress.

 “Luckily, the clouds have lifted,” murmured Sareth in
satisfaction, her eyes scanning the heights that were, for once, innocent of
mist. Carefully and methodically, they both examined every ridge and fold of
the mountains, searching for some sort of gap or indentation that might look
even remotely traversable. But they were finally forced to admit that they
could find nothing.

 “Spoke too soon,” she said. “What do we do now?”

 Vesarion turned from his survey of the mountain and was on
the point of replying, when he suddenly stiffened. Following the direction of
his gaze, Sareth saw a band of dark figures struggling across the snowfield in
the wake of their trail.

 “They’ve found us!” she exclaimed.

 Her companion caught her arm and pulled her down. “Don’t stand
against the skyline,” he hissed, but it was too late.

 A collective, triumphant snarl from twenty Red Turog
throats travelled across the snowfield. A quick peep between the crenellations
revealed that their pace had quickened. They were now ploughing through the
snow with the determination of  hunters who know that their prey is near.

 Sareth and Vesarion tumbled down the staircase, desperate
in their haste to warn the others. As they ran, Sareth called: “We can’t go out
the great doors or we’ll walk straight into them. Did you find any other way
out of this rat’s nest?”

 “No. Nothing.”

 They flew along the passageways until they fairly burst
through the side door into the Great Hall with such speed that the others, who
had been peacefully sitting on their packs by the dying fire, leaped to their
feet in alarm.

 “Red Turog!” shouted Vesarion. “They’ll be in the courtyard
by now!
Quickly!
”

  The response was an eruption of activity, with everyone
grabbing belongings and weapons, colliding with one another in their haste. But
all the frenetic activity came to a sudden halt when there was a dull but
powerful thud against the great doors. For the space of a heartbeat everyone
froze.

 Another, heavier thump fell against the doors, and they
visibly quivered with the impact. Then something struck them with an almighty
crash. The wooden bar that Vesarion had thrust between the handles, issued a
sharp cracking noise, and began to splinter.

 “They’re using some sort of battering ram,” Eimer shouted,
pushing Iska before him towards a side door. “They’ll be through on the next
blow!”

Vesarion was the last to leave the hall by the side door and
just as he was passing through it, he heard a ferocious crash and the sound of
shattering wood that could only mean that the great doors had given up the
struggle.

 He quietly closed the door behind him, hoping his exit had
been unobserved. His eyes searched the back of the door for a bolt or some other
means of securing it, but there was nothing. All he could do was snatch up a
piece of broken beam lying nearby and wedge it against the handle.

 The others were fleeing along the corridor by now and were
out of sight. Drawing his sword, he sped after them.

 “Where are we going?” panted Iska, as they stumbled
pell-mell down the dim passage.

 Bethro, who for once was in the lead, kept calling
excitedly over his shoulder: “This way! Follow me!”

 “How does he know where he’s going?” Eimer asked, keeping
pace with Iska. “He never left the Great Hall the whole time we were there?”

 “I don’t know, but as I don’t have a better idea, I’m
sticking with him.”

 Just as Vesarion caught up with them, another crash,
echoing along the passageway, informed him that his temporary obstruction had
given way.

 “This way! This way!” shouted Bethro.

 “Where’s he taking us?” Vesarion demanded of Eimer.

 “I have no idea but wherever he’s going, we’d better get
there quickly because I can hear them in the passageway now.”

An ominous snarling, hissing noise was reverberating off the
stone walls, magnifying the sound until it sounded as if thousands of demons
were pursuing them.

 “Hurry!” cried Iska. “It sounds like there is an army of
them.”

 “How many did you see?” Eimer asked Vesarion.

 “About twenty. Too many to fight.”

 Bethro, with astonishing agility, had shot down the dark
entrance to one of the descending spiral staircases with all the alacrity of a
rather stout weasel after a rabbit.

 “Sareth?” Vesarion called to the figure running a few paces
ahead of him. “Find out where Bethro is taking us. And quickly. He could be
leading us into a trap!”

 She nodded and putting on extra speed, plunged down the
staircase in pursuit of him.

 Vesarion braked to a halt at the top of the steps almost
causing Eimer to collide with him.

  “We could use this staircase to slow them down,” he
suggested.

 “Agreed. Do we make a stand here or at the bottom?”

 Vesarion glanced down the narrow, wedge-like steps. “At the
bottom,” he decided. “They’ll have no choice but to descend in single-file.”

 With another throaty roar, their pursuers came into view, streaming
along the flags like hounds on a scent. They all wore armour and steel-spiked
helmets and carried either curved swords or heavy, nail-studded maces in their
hands. Their yellow eyes appeared almost to glow against their dull red skins
and every one of them was tall and powerful.

 Hastily, the two men tumbled down the staircase to find
Sareth awaiting them at the bottom. The other three were nowhere in sight.

 Without preamble, she said abruptly: “Bethro says he had a
vision that showed him another, secret way out of the castle.”

 The two men gaped at her. “
What!
” thundered Vesarion
disbelievingly. “He’s leading us into the depths of this fortress on the
strength of one of his stupid daydreams!”

 He had no time to vent his anger any further, because
several pairs of nailed boots could be heard clattering down the stairs.

 He shed his pack and gave it to Sareth.

 “Find out where this leads to. We’ll try and hold them here
for a while.”

 She took her brother’s pack as well, and set off in pursuit
of Bethro.

 When the leading Turog descended the last turn of the staircase,
it got more than it bargained for. Eimer, wound up like a spring with tension,
leaped at it and striking aside its curved sword, avoided its armoured torso
and instead managed to thrust his sword deep into its thigh. Caught totally by
surprise by the fact that its fleeing prey had turned, it shot backwards with a
roar of pain, cannoning into those descending behind it. To Eimer’s great
satisfaction, there were sounds of weapons and armour colliding all up the
staircase. He gave Vesarion a boyish grin of delight before plunging up the
stairs to follow up his advantage.

 As there wasn’t room for both of them in the narrow
aperture, Vesarion was forced to curb his young friend’s enthusiasm by reaching
up, grabbing a handful of his leather jerkin and pulling him back down again.

 Eimer fell the last four steps in an ungainly heap.

 “What are you doing, Vesarion? I was winning!” he
complained.

 “Sometimes, Eimer,” said Vesarion with a wry grin, “you
make me feel very old. Now, let’s get out of here before they regroup.”

 “The wounded one in front is refusing to come down again,
and he’s blocking the way for the others. It’s now or never to find out if
Bethro knows what he’s doing.”

 Swords still drawn, they sprinted along the dark passage,
past barred doors leading to tiny, cramped cells that they had no time to
investigate. The dozens of doors merely flashed past them as they ran, until
they reached a heavy oak door at the end.

 Two paces into the room and they realised that all their
worst fears had come true  – it was a dead end.

 Vesarion rounded in fury on the white-faced librarian.
“What have you done, you fool?”

 But a snarl from the passage made him spin round and slam
the heavy oak door shut. This time he was in luck, for two hefty bolts were
attached to the top and bottom of the door and in an instant were shot home.

 A weak light filtered into the bare stone chamber from
above. High in the ceiling, far out of reach, a metal grille permitted a meagre
amount of daylight to seep through.

 A heavy, jarring thud rattled the door, informing the
occupants of the room that the Red Turog had arrived.

 Even Eimer, normally the most easy-going of men, was
consumed with wrath at Bethro.

 “This room is a
snare
!” he stormed at the quaking librarian.
“What possessed you to lead us all in here on the basis of some stupid dream?
What’s the matter with you? Do you
want
to die? It’s only a matter of
time before the Turog break down this door!”

 As if to emphasise his point, another heavy thump hit the
door.

 Iska, who had not been taking part in berating Bethro, but
had been prowling around the room, examining it minutely, now spoke up: “I
think it’s possible that Bethro may be right. I mean, why are the bolts on the
inside of the door? All the other cells we passed had the bolts on the outside
to keep the occupants confined. So why is this one different? Also, the coiled
serpent is the symbol of Parth and my people have always had a predilection for
secret passages and tunnels. Do you remember how I told you that as a child I
ran wild in the city, going where I was not supposed to go? Well that was only
made possible because the city is riddled with passages and a network of storm
drains that allowed me to go unseen wherever I wished. Perhaps this,” said she,
indicating the snake, “is more of the same.”