"This looks like the section of the tunnels I was in before," Wiz said as they moved away from their resting place. "At least it’s built the same way."
"Can you say what lies before us?" Malkin asked.
Wiz shook his head. "I can’t even be sure it’s the same section. It just looks like it"
"Hmmpf," Malkin said in a tone that indicated how much help that was. Then she turned again and led off.
The tunnel was much as Wiz remembered it. Same musty smell, same dirt floor and walls, same occasional wooden beams for bracing and the same twisting, turning meandering that would confuse a homing pigeon. Wiz was a long way from a homing pigeon and he didn’t have the faintest idea where they were.
Malkin rounded a corner and stopped short, rapier half out of its scabbard. Glandurg hissed and stepped out beside her, whipping Blind Fury free. Wiz took a firmer grip on his staff and peered around Malkin and over Glandurg. Nothing moved. It had been a guardroom, Wiz realized. The same big fireplace and benches and tables he had seen when he had stumbled into such a room full of goblin guards on his first trip here. But the fireplace was cold and dead, the tables and benches were smashed and littered across the floor out beyond the range of the glow globe’s light, and there were other things mixed into toe litter on the stone-flagged floor.
Nearly at his feet was a halberd, its thick oak shaft neatly sheared off a foot behind the head. Beyond that lay a conical metal helmet and further out in the room was a scattering of other pieces of armor and bones.
Halfway out in the room was a set of leg armor, from shin guards to tassets. Because it was all together Wiz thought for an instant there might be a leg still in it Then he looked more closely and saw it was empty. The armor had been split open, as if someone-no, something had been at it with a giant can opener.
"What the: ?" Danny breathed in Wiz’s ear.
Sword and dagger at the ready, Malkin eased catlike into the room. Wiz shifted his grip on his staff to provide covering fire if needed. But mere was no movement, no sound but their own breathing.
Malkin knelt beside the leg armor and carefully turned it with the point of her dagger, wincing slightly at the noise. Then she turned and examined an unrecognizable bit of bone nearby.
"This is old," she announced. "Several years I would say."
Wiz turned up the glow globe and flooded the chamber with blue light. Then he and the others eased into the room in a tight knot.
"How many?" he asked the kneeling thief.
Malkin glanced around and shrugged. "More than half a dozen, perhaps as many as twenty. It would be a pretty puzzle to reassemble enough pieces for an accurate count" She looked more carefully. "But I would say they were all killed at the same time."
"It probably goes back to when the Dark League ruled the city, or a little after," Wiz said. "Even then these tunnels were full of nasties."
"Perhaps it departed with its masters," Malkin suggested.
Wiz looked skeptical. "The Dark League didn’t exactly have time to clean up after themselves. And I know there were some pretty unpleasant things left when I was kidnapped back here. A couple of them almost got me."
"Then best assume our foe lurks here yet," Glandurg said, shifting his grip on Blind Fury.
"Best assume whatever it is is pretty potent," Wiz added. "These guards were not pushovers."
"There is another thing we can assume," Malkin said as she stood up and brushed the dirt from her knees without letting go her grip on either her rapier or her dagger. "These bones show cut marks. After they were killed their flesh was stripped from their bones and probably consumed on the spot."
The group left the guardroom walking softly and peering into the shadows and silence with every sense alert.
"Nice thing to find," Danny muttered to Wiz as they continued down the tunnel.
"In a way it’s good we found it. People will take this place more seriously now."
"I already took this place plenty seriously." "Well, take it even more seriously."
At the Wizards’ Keep, the day dawned on a castle under siege. There was no sun, only dark fog full of darker shapes that swirled about the castle and poked and pried at every nook and cranny. Nor were the fog’s powers growing any less.
"Three wing beats out and you’re lost," Dragon Leader told Bal-Simba in the latter’s workroom. Dragon Leader was a compact man with blond hair and ice-gray eyes, still muffled in his flying leathers. His teeth did not chatter but that seemed more from an effort of will than warmth. The cold sucks the life out of you, heat spell or no."
Bal-Simba looked at his wing commander over the remains of his breakfast. He had worked the night through and eaten at his desk, much good it had done! He stood up and walked to the window, scowling out into the swirling fog with its half-revealed shapes. Arianne, who had been listening from the corner, moved beside him.
"Lord, say the word and we will go again. But I am not sure how many will return."
"No." The wizard shook his head and turned from the window. "You have done well and I thank you, but best that we husband our resources until we know more." As unobtrusively as possible a castle page slipped into the room and began to collect the breakfast things.
"I’m sorry, My Lord."
"There is nothing to be sorry for. You have done all you could while this magic fog hangs over the whole land."
"But it doesn’t," the page piped up.
All of them turned to face him and the boy colored to the roots of his ash-blond hair. "Well, it doesn’t," he added half-defiantly. "It starts thinning almost as soon as you get outside the castle walls and by the time you’re across the river it’s almost gone."
"How do you know?" Bal-Simba asked.
The boy studied his toes. "I’ve been there," he admitted finally. "I know I wasn’t supposed to but Henry bet me and:" He ran down, reserves of courage exhausted.
Bal-Simba and the others studied the page. Look at him once and you’d think he was fifteen or sixteen. Look closer and you’d see he was a couple of years younger, just tall for his age.
"Who are you?"
"Brian, My Lord. The cook’s son."
"Do those things in the fog hinder you?"
The page shook his head. "They sort of talk to you, but mostly they ignore you. You can walk right through them. It’s cold and you can’t see anything, but if you stay on the path you can follow it right down to the river and take one of the boats across."
"It appears," Dragon Leader said, "that this cub is a better scout than any of my riders."
"Or the thing is attracted by ridden dragons," Arianne said, "and perhaps the magic you carry." She looked back at the page. "Did you have any magic upon you?" The boy shook his head.