He turned back to take a final look at the world outside. Above the eastern walls, a waxing moon sailed high in a sky of clear, cloudless blue, but the westering sun, turned dim and milky behind a sheer veil of falling snow, made it appear there were two moons in the heavens tonight: one silvery white, one palest gold.
Ought I, he wondered, take this for an omen? Little serpents of fear ran down his spine. In all the old tales that ever he heard, the moon was far from friendly to men, being envious, changeable, and above all mischievous—then what could a double moon mean but a doubly unlucky influence?
A damp wind circling the courtyard caused the guards’ torches to flare and throw off sparks. Nali cleared his throat; Berin made a nervous gesture, rattling his sword inside its sheath. Realizing that his own hesitation was making them anxious, Kivik advanced on the doors.
He felt a momentary disorientation crossing the threshold, a head-spinning impression of sound and color, a blaze of light and heat, but it all passed so quickly into shadows and silence he thought he had imagined it. Then he was in a dim, confined space, breathing dust and darkness, until his men came in with their lights, the shadows fled, and a chamber he had believed no larger than a cupboard changed into a guardroom of more than ordinary size. Ancient weapons clad in rags of cobweb hung in ordered ranks along one wall. Across the room, a barred metal gate like an iron jaw had rusted in place halfway between floor and ceiling.
Motioning the two boys to follow after him, he headed toward the gate, his progress across the room stirring up wraiths of dust that lingered on the air a moment or two longer than seemed quite natural.
Something crunched underfoot; when he looked down to see what it was, his stomach twisted into a hard knot. One boot rested on a disarticulated hand still clutching a weapon gone green with corrosion. When he lifted his foot, the tiny finger bones crumbled away to a fine, ashy powder.
He gritted his teeth and continued on. A few more determined strides took him under the gate and into a hall so vast its farther limits disappeared into darkness. By torchlight, it was just possible to make out the nearer walls to right and left, where soaring arches led on to other spaces—large or small he could not tell, though his mind conjured up further immensities.
After a brief hesitation, he chose an opening at random and led the way across the hall, through the arch, and into a chamber less lofty and imposing but still of considerable size. Three long tables spanned the length of the room, covered in a filmy lacework of cobwebs. A dull glint of tarnished metal under the spiders’ weavings, a reflection off a clouded gemstone, these bore witness the tables had been richly laid with silver chargers and jeweled cups, but either the guests had never arrived or had fled the revels early: at the head of each table sat a mummified figure in filthy, decaying silks; the other chairs and benches were empty.
A flicker of movement drew Kivik’s attention up to the ceiling, where a swarm of busy spiders translucent as glass went scurrying away from the light as fast as their brittle-looking legs could carry them. They had spread their woven nets from beam to beam, and hundreds of tiny lizards, no bigger than his smallest finger, were trapped in the meshes.
He realized that his palms were sweating, despite the dry chill. “This room is by far too large and drafty.
Let us look for more intimate quarters.”
From the banquet hall, they passed into a maze of corridors and interconnected chambers. In one, vines and thorny roses had crept in through a window, filling up most of the space, creating an impenetrable barrier. In another, a white fox started up from a bed of rotting tapestries, where it had been napping nose to tail. Those who had lived in these rooms obviously had a taste for the grotesque: statues half man and half beast stared out at them from deep niches, watching their progress from chamber to chamber; door handles mimicked the heads of imps, apes, gargoyles, and hobgoblins.
Other rooms dazzled the eye with treasure, spilling out of open coffers, scattered across the floors, heaped up in glittering piles: a fortune in gemstones and fine enamels; watery pearls the size of hen’s eggs; jars and phials and pitchers of marvelous design spilling a dust of jewels and precious metals—all of them tumbled together, broken, or otherwise spoiled. Gold, silver, and platinum had been mingled and fused with baser materials. Chalices, brooches, diadems, shields of beaten metal were pitted, stained, and corroded, eaten away by rust and verdigris, discolored by salts. Banners and hangings of unparalled richness had grown shabby and faded with age.
Yet along with the treasure there was a charnel house of bones. A skull on a bedpost glared at them with eyeholes sealed by cobwebs; mice squeaked from a nest inside a hollow rib cage. A skeleton like old ivory sprawled on the floor, one arm reaching for a diamond necklace; another, suspended by the neck from a silver chain, swung back and forth in a faint draft.
But these were not—they could not be—the bones of the witch-lords, who had lived and died here a thousand years ago. There were abundant stories of ill-fated attempts to take and hold the fortress in practically every century since the witches met their mysterious end. Kivik’s own uncles-and-cousins-many-times-removed had not been immune to the lure of riches here, and they had—in their greed, or their desire for adventure—led many a simpler man to his death in the process.
In whose dust are we leaving our footprints? he wondered. And he felt a little prickle of guilt for choosing such young boys to accompany him when older, more seasoned men had offered to come instead. In his stubborn refusal to bring any man who might speak his own mind—who might ask inconvenient questions and undermine his resolve—had he not, perhaps, done these boys an injustice?
Nali could not be much more than sixteen; redheaded Berin looked even younger. Farmers’ or tradesmen’s sons he reckoned them, not bred up as he had been for battle and the slaughter of men. In less perilous times no one would have expected them to take up arms. As it was, they had already seen and done things no sixteen-year-old boy should ever have to face. He had been thoughtless to include them in the exploration of what was little better than a tomb.
“Do not touch anything,” he said out loud. “Take nothing away with you. The treasure here is cursed.”
The boys nodded wordlessly.
A barrel-vaulted passage like a long gullet brought them abruptly into an enormous kitchen. After so much ruined grandeur elsewhere, the homely squalor of the place came as a shock. Marble had given way to damp stone flags. An unwholesome moisture dripped from walls of unfinished stone. Fireplaces capable of consuming whole trees were black with soot, and spits the size of wagon axles red with rust.
The room looked as though it had been subjected to a whirlwind: shards of broken crockery lay on the floor, mixed in with the bones of men and animals.
“It’s the ogre’s kitchen—the old hag’s larder,” Berin said in a hoarse whisper. Nali’s face had turned a sickly white, as though all the blood had drained away.
Kivik wanted to say something reassuring, but the words stuck in his throat. His eyes moved uneasily from a rack of monstrous forks, ladles, and choppers to the immense iron ovens, gaping open like hungry mouths, then on to a stew pot large enough to cook an entire ox, hooves, horns, and all. And he had to admit to himself, if not to the boys, that it was precisely the setting for the more gruesome sort of nursery tale: the place where evil crones cooked up ghastly messes and four-and-twenty children were baked in a pie.
“The cooks here must have been drunkards or slatterns,” he said sternly. It was a feeble effort, but the best that he could do.