“Hey, Curley, what kept this thing going?” asked Chert as he wiped the blade of his weapon on the creature’s tattered garments. “It looks as if it has been dead for years!”
“The zombie?” Greenleaf asked rhetorically. “No doubt some malign power desired to keep the corpse animated with wicked force to serve as a slave. That was no ordinary zombie, though. I’ve encountered a few of these undead in my travels, and this one was far worse than any of the others.”
“Whatever… the thing went down easily enough when kissed by Brool here!” the barbarian giant said as he hefted his huge axe.
“Brool, you say? An interesting name for an axe,” said Curley. “I detected a low hum coming from it as you felled the zombie with that last stroke. Why have I never heard you call it by name it before now?”
Chert grinned at the druid. “This has been handed from father to son in my family for generations. I named it to you without thinking, and now you know its secret too. When called by name the weapon strikes true and sinks deep, as if it were alive. Perhaps it is, or perhaps it carries a dweomer…. I neither know nor care. It is a true friend, tried and trusted!”
“Indeed, a friend of us all,” Gord chimed in. He had finished cleaning himself up and rejoined the group.
Curley Greenleaf nodded knowingly and spoke no more about the matter. He turned his attention to the bear just as Yurgh let out a low rumble.
“Our friend senses the presence of something else awaiting us inside,” said the druid. “Now it is time to go down and see what that is. May our weapons prove potent and our enemy be confounded!”
The three men went to the doorway and peered inside. They could see a small landing that gave onto a flight of worn steps heading to the right and descending into total darkness.
“Here, Chert,” said the druid as he fumbled in his belt and withdrew a small bag of black felt. From the bag he took a small, glowing object that made the antechamber almost as bright as day. He reached up and touched it to the front of the barbarian’s helmet, and there it stuck. “You have not the vision of elvenkind as I do, and neither Gord nor Yurgh can see in darkness either. This lodestone will stay fast to the steel of your helmet, shedding its light, a magical illumination neither hot nor flickering, for us all to see by. Agreed?”
Chert accepted readily, and the group proceeded ahead, delving below the grim cairn. Gord, sword in hand, thought about the strange sort of sight his weapon bestowed upon him but did not mention it to his companions.
Chapter 30
The ancient steps were hewn from the rock of the mountain itself, their chiseled edges worn smooth over the ages by persons or things that these adventurers could not guess at. Chert led the way, followed by Curley Greenleaf, Gord, and then the huge bear, who had some difficulty squeezing his bulk through the narrow confines of the place. The quartet descended slowly, each member keeping within two or three steps of the others at all times. Gord kept count of the steps as he negotiated them, and reached the bottom and the number ninety at the same time. The three men fanned out at the end of the stairway, slowly turning to survey the place they had found beneath the stone barrow.
They were in a natural cave, a domed grotto of circular shape. The roof of the cave was hung with long stalactites, and the floor was dotted with mounds that looked like rounded-off stalagmites, as if something had passed over them frequently. Leaning against the wall nearby were several pitch-covered pieces of wood, obviously a store of torches left there long ago. Three passages led away from this large chamber, the entrance to each showing evidence of having been shaped by tools in some distant age. One was directly across from the stair, while the other two offered egress to the left and the right. None of these dark passages seemed more or less promising than the others. Which led to the demon’s lair? Which to the hidden relic? Perhaps none… or all.
“Let’s go straight ahead,” suggested Gord. “If we come to any branchings, we always turn right. That way we can never lose our way.”
His two companions agreed, and the great bear simply followed the druid. The four went to the arched entry to the chosen passage and looked cautiously down its length. The magical light shed by the lodestone affixed to Chert’s steel cap allowed them to see sixty feet into the tunnel, formed of a combination of natural and worked stone.
A faint stirring of the air brought to their noses a putrid odor, a nauseating mixture of decay and foulness. Yurgh snorted as the scent struck his nostrils. Then the bear pushed past the humans, heading down the broad passageway at a fast shuffle. Gord, Chert, and Greenleaf followed quickly, passing through the entrance one by one, and then moving into a line abreast once past that stricture. The corridor was about six paces wide, more than sufficient space for the three men to travel and fight side by side. With Gord on the left, Greenleaf in the center, and Chert on the right, they followed the bear, keeping within two or three paces of Yurgh’s flanks.
Once they were thirty or forty feet inside the passage, the light revealed a wall in the distance. They were coming to an intersection where the way was no longer straight; paths curved to the left and the right, which gave the men their first opportunity to put Gord’s procedure into action. But Yurgh knew nothing of such intentions, nor would he have cared if he had. The bear lumbered ahead and into the left corridor without hesitation.
“His nose tells him which way to go,” said the druid quietly to his companions as they trotted to keep up with the animal. “So that’s the way we go, too.”
The passage curved gently and seemed to be heading back in the general direction of the grotto they had just left. The clicking of the bear’s claws and the pounding of the men’s leather heels on the stone floor raised faint echoes around them. The vaulted ceiling of the passageway sent these sounds bouncing back and forth in a confusing manner. The noise did not seem to distract Yurgh in the least, for he went on without pause, veering to the right into another straight tunnel when the corridor they were trodding branched in a Y-shape. Gord began to feel himself losing all sense of distance and direction as their ursine bloodhound took them right yet again into another curving branch of the passage, then along one more straight course, before suddenly coming to a halt in front of another intersection.
“He pauses to sniff which way the demon lies,” the druid said.
“Phew!” Chert replied and spat as he did so. “This reeking stench is so foul that the thing must be everywhere.”
Yurgh swung his barrel-like head back and forth several times, making snorting and snuffling sounds with his nose, then held his snout pointed to the left for a long second. With a grunt, the monstrous cave bear moved forward again, slowly this time, holding his nose close to the chiseled stone beneath them as he took the left-hand branch.
Suddenly the sound of a high-pitched giggle enveloped the group, making the humans start. At this, Yurgh growled loudly, and the bear’s mane of fur bristled. Gord felt horripilations on his head as well. Walking stiffly, baring his teeth and growling, the bear went on, closely followed by the three men. They would all soon face the demonic cataboligne in what the men presumed would be a fight to the death.
After what seemed hundreds of yards, but was certainly not that far, the curved walls of the passage once more offered a choice of direction. The correct one was evident to all at this point, however, for a dull, blue-violet luminosity pervaded the air in the tunnel to the right. Then the light faded and again laughter sounded-neither chuckle nor malign giggle this time, but a sweet peal of melodious laughter, seductively feminine and appealing, gently echoing down the passage. The bear snarled but continued to move slowly. After exchanging glances of uncertainty, the men followed.