Qriezell sat beside the chamber door, hissing impatiently. The creature was right; this was only part of the journey, not a fitting end. As if to confirm her conclusion, a cold, wet breeze slunk in through the open window. She shivered, then strode to the door and yanked. It gave way noisily, and the toad and the woman went out together.
[n the hall outside, Marguerite paused to listen, afraid she might have alerted someone to her escape. But no footsteps came. The castle was quiet. She heard onfy a few distant creaks, the moaning of old wood.
A wave of excitement washed over her. Moments ago she had been a prisoner, powerless and small. The rest of the castle had loomed all around, taunting her with its forbidden mass. Now she had mastered one of its secret arteries-a passage that Donskoy would never show her, even if he fulfilled his promise of a castle tour. And Yetena or Zosia-would they too have kept her ignorant of this escape? It didn't matter. Soon, she mused, she would discover more of the castle on her own. In this way, she might eventually come to possess it-not by right, of course, but in spirit. While her husband and the others slept, she could stroll the keep as its haughty mistress instead of its simpering captive.
Marguerite took a moment to orient herself. Her own room, she thought, was somewhere to the left. Griezell hissed again and hobbled off to the right, then disappeared around a turn in the passage.
Marguerite hesitated, wary of following a creature most likely Zosia's familiar, and her confidence ebbed. Still, in the wake of her bravado there remained a bit of courage. And, even stronger, her curiosity. Marguerite hurried after her bumpy black guide, one hand lifting her skirt to keep from tripping, the other firmly clutching the candle.
The toad traveled remarkably fast. It moved at the edge of her sight or just beyond, a teasing shape along the wall. They came to a tower stair and descended its winding path. Cold gusts poured through a series of arrow slits in the exterior wall. Marguerite turned her back to them and held the candle low, wishing she had thought to bring a shawl. The red gown left her shoulders and the top of her spine exposed. Further, its layered skirt was awkward and noisy, swishing as she walked. But there had been no time to don anything else.
Marguerite followed Griezell turn after turn down the stairs, descending until she grew dizzy. She stopped suddenly, as a torch, blazing somewhere below, hurled Griezell's silhouette against the wall. The shadow looked immense and looming, a horrible hunchbacked monster. Just as quickly, it shrank and disappeared. Marguerite walked after it. When she passed the torch, she saw that the flame was actually quite weak; soon it would burn out. It stood guard before a door. She wondered where the door led and pressed her ear against it, discerning nothing. Then she hurried after Griezell.
In time they came to a second door, small and arched. With the toad's yellow eyes upon her, Marguerite lifted the stiff tatch and put her shoulder against the wood. Reluctantly, it gave way, opening into another passage. This soon led to yet another door, which opened onto another stair in the labyrinth, leading down still farther. Before she descended, Marguerite mentally counted the landmarks they had passed. She hoped no one had heard her progress. It dawned on her that a danger lay in wandering too far, where no one could hear her cries if she were injured and in need of help. Still, she went down. .
She felt as if she were descending into the depths of the Abyss itself. From the distance came the sound of water, churning and lapping: the Styx, perhaps, she wondered. The air grew more stale. It seemed to push and pull at her body in long, pestilent drafts, as if the castle were slowly breathing.
At last the stair ended, intersecting a passage with rough-hewn walls that extended both left and right. Marguerite lifted her candle in each direction. The passage was short, ending with an ironbound door at either end. GriezeHbub was nowhere in sight. She paused, listening for the toad's familiar hiss, the gruesome rasp. Nothing. Griezell had vanished.
Marguerite considered turning back, then laughed at herself. It was not as if the toad were a comforting companion or a capable bodyguard. What difference did it make if Griezell had gone? No doubt the creature was seeking a meal. And here in the depths, Marguerite could seek something else-something that would offer clues to Donskoy's history, or to that of his dead wife: the castle crypts.
She turned right and ventured through the first door. The chamber beyond smelled of copper and mildew.
She lifted her candle, startling a rat, which squealed and fled to the shelter of a dark corner. The trappings of a torture chamber sprang into being around her. To Marguerite's relief, they seemed in disuse. She recalled her vision of Donskoy's associates after the banquet. If torture had been their final bout of "entertainment," it had not occurred here. A large, broken cage dangled from the ceiling in one corner. Immediately below it lay a blackened fire pit, bare of coals. An empty rack stretched nearby. Rusty chains and broken shackles hung from the walls; below them, the floor was dark. In the far corner she spied a stout wooden table. An assortment of implements rested upon it-pocked blades, rusty pliers, bent picks. Among them were two metal collars, each with screws for tightening. Sharp spikes lined the inner surface of the bands. Without thinking, Marguerite put a hand to her throat to protect it.
Beyond the table lay another door. Marguerite approached it cautiously, then pulled hard. It refused to open. Something cold seeped into the bottom of her slipper, and she looked down, discovering a dark ooze bleeding across the threshold. Hastily she piucked up her skirt and stepped away. The muck could be anything-and she had no desire to see it more clearly. She left the torture chamber and went down the hall, past the stairs and through the age-darkened door at the opposite end.
In this room, the walls presented an orderly patchwork of marble panels stacked one atop the other. In the center rose a series of rectangular biers, upon which knights and ladies, carved from stone, lay sleeping. Marguerite had found the crypt.
She held out her candle and let its flickering light illuminate the panels of the tombs. Names slid past in the darkness: Serboinu, Petelengro, Lafuente …. with dates from centuries long past. In the corner was the tiny stone tomb of an infant. The cover lay on the floor, smashed into a hundred pieces, the small cavity that it had once covered now empty of anything save spiders and dust.
Marguerite moved slowly down the wall, shining her candle upon the name of each occupant. There were many similar surnames, though her husband's was not among them. This did not surprise her greatly; Lord Donskoy had acquired the keep, and his ancestors rested elsewhere. Still, she hoped to come across at least one that bore his surname, one that would list the given name of his first wife-no one in the castle spoke it in Marguerite's hearing, as though merely saying it were enough to earn the lord's wrath. Perhaps, if she were fortunate, the crypt might even have an epitaph that suggested the nature of the woman's tragic death.
Marguerite was nearing the end of the wall when the crypt of "Lord Vtadimir Vatrashki" caught her eye.
Cold is this Bed which I Do yet Looe, For 'tis not as Cold as the Ones Above.
She furrowed her brow and moved on.
The next crypt read, "Valeska Donskoy. Home Forever." Marguerite's flesh went chill. In such a dank and dark place, the epitaph read more like a pronouncement of punishment than a lament of grief or love, and she found herself wondering how carefully Donskoy had considered the words before having them struck onto his wife's tomb. There was nothing else, not even the customary dates of birth and death, as though anyone laying eyes on the crypt was expected to know the particulars of Valeska's life.
Marguerite stood before the sepulcher for many moments, holding her candle close to the cover, as though she might learn more of her predecessor by simply staring at the name. After a time, the darkness of the tomb began to close in around her, a crushing presence-and she realized that the vault was not as silent as it should have been.