"The souls of the damned," Tarlson replied. "They pursue the rich lands eternally, their captain's eyes fiery with greed, but the shores of the earth retreat as fast as they approach, no matter how hard they row, or how much sail they put on."
Ragnarson started. This was another side of Eanred. He had begun to fear the man was a small-minded, undereducated boor.
"Varvares Codice," said Mocker, "same being attributed to Shurnas Brankel, legend collector of pre-Imperial Ilkazar. Hai! They send fire arrows."
A half-dozen meteors streaked down the night.
"Ho! What's this?"asked Ragnarson. They had topped a rise. Something huge and dark lay in the vale below.
"Castle," said Mocker.
"Odd," said Tarlson. "The guide didn't mention any strongholds around here."
"Maybe ruin left over from Imperial times," Mocker suggested. There was hardly a place in the west not within a few hours' ride of some Imperial remnant.
They drew close enough to make out generalities. "I don't think so," said Ragnarson. "The Empire built low, blockish walls with regularly spaced square towers for enfilading fire. This's got high walls with rounded towers. And the crenallated battlement didn't become common till the last century."
Tarlson reacted much as Ragnarson had minutes before. Mocker laughed.
The road ran right into the fortress, which made no sense. There were no lights, no watchfires, no sounds or smells of life.
"Must be a ruin," Ragnarson opined.
Curiosity had always been a weakness of Mocker's. "We see what's what, eh? Hai! Maybe find chest of jewels forgotten by fleeing tenants. Pot of gold buried during siege, waiting to jump into hands of portly investigator. Secret passage with skeletons of discarded paramours of castle lord, rings still on finger bones. Maybe dungeon mausoleum full of ancestors buried with riches ripe for plucking by intrepid grave robbers..."
"Ghoul!" Tarlson snapped.
"Pay him no mind," said Ragnarson. "Weird sense of humor. Just wants to poke around."
"We should get back."
He was right, but Ragnarson, too, was intrigued. "Like the old days, eh, Lard Bottom?"
Mocker exploded gleefully, "Hai! Truth told. Getting old, we. Calcification of brainpan setting in. We go, pretending twentieth birthday coming still, and no sense, not care if dawn comes. Immortals, we. Nothing can harm."
That was the way they had been, Ragnarson reflected.
"We explore, hey, Hulk?" Mocker stopped his mount beneath the teeth of a rusty portcullis.
"Go ahead," said Tarlson. "I'm going to get some sleep."
"Right. See you in the morning, then." Ragnarson followed Mocker into a small courtyard.
He got the feeling he had made a mistake. There was something wrong with the place. It seemed to be waiting... And a little surreal, as if he could turn suddenly and find nothing behind him.
Overactive imagination, he told himself. Came of remembering what they had gotten into in the old days.
Mocker dismounted and entered a door. Ragnarson hurried to catch him.
It was dark as a crypt inside. He pursued Mocker's shuffling footsteps, cursing himself for not having brought a light. He bumped into something large and yielding. Mocker squawked like a kicked hen.
"Do something," Bragi growled, "but don't block the road."
"Self, am listening. And trying not to be trampled by lead-footed stumbler about without sense to bring light. Am wondering about sound heard over stampede rumble of feet of same."
"Let's go back, then. We can come by tomorrow."
Logic had no weight with Mocker. He moved ahead.
So gradually that they did not immediately realize it, light entered their ken. Before they had advanced a hundred feet, they could see dimly, as through heavy fog at false dawn.
"Something's wrong here," said Ragnarson. "I smell sorcery. We'd better get out before we stir something up."
"Pusillanimous dullard," Mocker retorted. "In old days friend Hulk would have led charge."
"In the old days I didn't have any sense. Thought you'd grown up some, too."
Mocker shrugged. He no longer was anxious to go on. "Just to end of passage," he said. "Then we follow example of Tarlson."
The corridor ended in a blank wall. What was the sense of a passage that went nowhere, that had no doors opening off it?
"We'd better go," said Ragnarson. The sourceless light was bright now. He turned. "Huh?" His sword jumped into his hand.
Blocking their withdrawal was a curtain of darkness, as if someone had taken a pane of starless night and stretched it from wall to wall.
Mocker slid round him and probed the darkness with his blade. A deep thrust got results. Laughter like the cackling of a mad god.
"Woe!" Mocker cried. "Such petty end for great mind of age, caught like stupidest mouse in trap..." He charged the darkness, sword preceeding him.
"You idiot!" Ragnarson bellowed. He muttered, "What the hell?" when his companion seemed to slide out of existence as he hit the blackness.
"Might as well." He hit the darkness seconds behind the fat man.
He felt like he was tumbling down the entire well of eternity, rolling aimlessly through a storm of color and sound underlaid by the whispering of wicked things. It went on and on and on and... Without breaking stride he entered a vast, poorly lighted chamber.
That room, or hall, was an assault on rationality. The air was overpoweringly foul. From all-surrounding, shadowed mists came rustlings, and for a moment he thought he saw a manlike, winged thing with the head of a dog, then a small, apelike dwarf with prodigious fangs. Everything seemed unstable, shifting, except the floor, which was of jet, and a huge black throne carved with exceptionally hideous designs. They reminded him of reliefs he had seen in the temples of Arundeputh and Merthregul at Gundgatchcatil. Yet these were worse, as if carved by hands washed more deeply in evil.
Mocker, sword in hand, prowled round that throne. "What is it?" Ragnarson asked, seldom having seen the fat man so upset.
"Shinsan."
They were trapped fools indeed.
The mists stirred. An old man stepped forth. "Good evening," he said. "I trust you speak Necremnen? Good."
The old man turned to the throne, knelt, touched forehead to floor, muttered something Ragnarson couldn't understand. For an instant new mists gathered there. An incredibly beautiful woman wavered in their depths. She nodded and disappeared. The old man rose and turned.
"My Lady honors me. But to business. You're going where My Lady wishes you wouldn't. Kavelin is already too complex. Go home."
Ragnarson retorted, "Simple as that, eh? Might interfere with your plans, so we should turn back?"
"Yes."
"I can't do that." His fingers, in deaf-mute signs, flashed a message to Mocker. "I've given my word."
"I've tried to be reasonable. My Lady won't tolerate disobedience."
"Terrible. Hate to disappoint her."
Mocker suddenly lunged, sword reaching.
A silvery filament lightninged from the old man's hand, brushed Mocker's cheek. The fat man collapsed. By then Ragnarson was moving in. The thread darted out again. Bragi tangled it on his blade, ripped it from the old man's grasp, continued to bore in. \
The sorcerer sprang straight up and disappeared in the mists overhead. Bragi, mystified, tried a few desultory sword swipes that got no result, then knelt to check Mocker's pulse.
A shimmering, sparkling dust drifted down upon him. When the first scintillating flakelet touched his skin, he tumbled across his friend.