SEVEN: Into Kavelin
i) High sorcery
Ragnarson woke with a headache like that memorializing a week-long drunk. The demoniac whispering of his dream-haunts resolved themselves into the mutterings of Mocker.
Their cell was a classic, even to slimy stone walls. Beyond the rusty-barred door stood the winged thing, dog-teeth bared, a glowing dagger in hand. Other creatures stirred behind it, squat things heavily clothed, with faces like owls. The winged man opened the door.
Six owl-faces pounced on Mocker, bound him before Bragi reacted. Bellowing like a thwarted bull in rut, ignoring the agony in his head, he grabbed two, smashed them together, then used his fists on their faces. A neck went snap! He lifted the second overhead, hurled it skull-first against the floor.
A tide of weird creatures washed in. He went down. In moments he was trussed and being carried away. He tried counting turns and steps, but it was hopeless. Not only did his head hurt too much, his captors kept jabbing him in retribution for his attack.
They reached a vast room. It might have been the one where he and Mocker had been received, with the mists removed. It was huge. Every fixture was black. The monsters dumped him onto a stone table. He heard voices. Forcing his head around, he saw the old man arguing with the woman in the mists. .The old man suddenly slumped in defeat.
The mist-woman faded. The man turned, selected a bronze dagger from a collection on a table, faced Ragnarson, raised his arms, began to chant.
Ragnarson noticed a pentagram chalked on the floor. A conjuration! He and Mocker were to be delivered to some Thing from Outside. He struggled against his bonds. The porters ignored him, nervously concentrated on their master.
A darkness animate became pregnant and gave birth to itself in the pentagram. The sorcerer stopped singing. Sighs escaped the creatures around Ragnarson.
Bragi snouted, hoping to disturb the wizard. It did no good. Furious with frustration, because his bonds would not yield, he performed the only act of defiance left him. He spit in the eye of one of the owl-faces.
It jumped as if hornet-stung, staggered, flailed its arms.
One crossed the barrier of the pentagram.
It withered swiftly, blackened. The creature screamed in soul-deep terror. The sorcerer tried to pull it out, then to chant the demon down. 'Too late. The owl-face was lost. The darkness in the pentagram gradually sucked it in.
The remainder of the old man's servants fled, shrieking. Their rush washed against and overturned the table where Bragi lay. He hit the floor hard, groaned, found one hand had been wrenched free. And not five feet away lay the sorcerer's dagger, that he had dropped when he had tried to save his servant. Bragi slithered to the blade, cut his bonds, then did likewise for a Mocker whose eyes were wide with terror.
A finger of blackness began to leak from the pentagram where the owl-face had broken its barrier.
The old man had disappeared again.
Staggering weak, Bragi and Mocker prepared to pursue his example. Mocker's gaze fell on a table where their weapons lay. He moved to get them. His fat man's run would have been amusing in other circumstances. He passed perilously near the pentagram, but the darkness within remained preoccupied with its victim.
It finished with the owl-face as Bragi and Mocker considered how best to escape, began slithering from the pentagram, writhing like a cat getting through a small hole.
"Self," said Mocker, "am of opinion any place elsewhere is better than here."
"Where's here?" Ragnarson asked. "Maybe I could figure where I'm going if I knew where I'm starting."
"Friend Bear doesn't want to know," Mocker replied.
"Bullfeathers. If you know, tell me."
Mocker shrugged. "Are in small quill of Shinsan poked through cloth of universe into Ruderin. Are in two places at same time, Ruderin valley and small frontier castle in Pillars of Ivory on Shinsan border with Sendelin Steppe. Could be long walk home if luck turns bad."
"Turns bad?" Ragnarson snorted. "Can't be worse than it is." The darkness still confined had grown visibly smaller. "I vote we walk while we talk."
The darkness chose that moment to strike. They managed to evade it and flee.
The flight was an eon of fear, of oxygen-starved lungs and already punished muscles refusing to be tortured more but going on all the same. Always close behind was a snakelike black tendril.
Something came hurtling at them. Ragnarson grabbed it, Mocker stabbed it, and together they sacrificed it to the tendril. Only after the darkness began surrounding it did they see that it was another of the old sorcerer's servants.
Chance eventually brought them back to the point where their flight had begun. The demon had evacuated the chamber completely. The uproar it had caused echoed from corridors opening on the room.
Feeling momentarily secure, Ragnarson prowled round the throne. "Hey," he said suddenly. "I think I've found a way out." He had noticed that, from a certain angle, he could vaguely discern a rectangle of darkness that obscured the black pillars and walls behind it. It seemed the same size as the curtain they had plunged into getting here.
"Self, would be grateful for same," said Mocker. "Magic binding two localities together is unraveling."
For some time there had been a gentle trembling in the floor. Ragnarson hadn't paid it any heed, thinking it the demon rumbling around. "What if?..."
"If fool-headed venturers don't find exit, then long walk home from Shinsan for same," Mocker replied.
"Here, then. Looks like the way we came in." He ran at the rectangle. The whirling, kaleidoscopic sensations returned. After a stench-filled eternity he stepped into the corridor where they had originally been entrapped. Mocker appeared an instant behind him.
They were still trapped.
"Make yourself comfortable," said Ragnarson, sitting with his back to a wall and his sword across his lap. "I'm not going back through that."
"Self, would prefer dying in west, too," said Mocker. "Though in Ruderin back country of own stupidity? Not even battle to end heroic life with heroic death, lots of witnesses to final bravery? Woe!"
Stone grumbled around them. Dust fell from the ceiling.
"Sounds bad," said Ragnarson.
"Crushed to death. Ignominious end for great mind. Am fool. Friend should have pointed out same, dragged fat idiot to camp kicking and screaming if needful."
"Is the light getting weaker?"
"Verity. Magicks devolving. Portal to Shinsan weakening also."
Indeed it was, getting fluttery around the edges and occasionally showing a swift-running shot of color.
"Maybe we can get out. If the place don't fall down first."
"Maybe so."
The curtain winked out of existence. They found themselves staring into the startled faces of several mercenaries. "Ghosts!" one cried.
"Boo!" said Mocker, then cackled madly. "Out of way. Everybody's out of way before very important head, head of self, gets mashed by falling castle."
Fifteen minutes later they were astride their mounts, atop a hill, watching the castle collapse. Fogs of darkness engulfed its base, darkness untouched by the morning sun. A plume of that blackness, like smoke, rose against the dawn and bent its head eastward. The destruction proceeded in unnatural silence.
"Going home," said Mocker.
"We'll hear from them again," Ragnarson replied.
Tarlson and Blackfang, who had been working round the rim of the valley, arrived. "You're lucky I mentioned the castle to the guide," said Eanred. "He said there wasn't any such place, so I scared up a rescue party."
"I'm grateful," said Ragnarson.