The water flowed sluggishly away to the right. Gord balanced on the slippery, sloping stone beneath his feet, the black liquid covering his boots to a point midway up his shins. Still clasping the rope, the lad tried a few small, sideways steps, first away, then back to where the line depended from above. The footing wasn’t terrible, and he gained confidence. Still grasping the line, he walked cat-foot, one step just ahead of the last. If he went cautiously and leaned slightly to the left, toward the curving wall of the tunnel, he could move along fairly well. Leaving the lantern where it was hanging at his chest, Gord decided the time had come. With his sword drawn and held toward the inky surface of the channel, and casting sideways glances suspiciously there, Gord loosed his hold on the cord and headed off to his left. Somewhere up that way, certainly no more than a few hundred yards distant, lay the bones of Theobald and a rusty iron strongbox!
The effort required to keep from slipping toward the center of the canal and falling into the lurid water, combined with the necessity of constantly checking ahead, behind, and above, was exhausting, and Gord’s progress was agonizingly slow. He refused to panic and rush ahead, though. He deliberately went over and over his routine in his mind as he performed the steps. Look back and to the right… and watch for ripples approaching or the gleam of feral eyes. Now look ahead, search carefully for the same danger. Now flash the light’s beam above. No openings. Check ahead before you move on, go slowly when you move, and stop before you repeat your scan for potential danger.
At about sixty paces Gord chalked a mark on the wall. After three such marks the boy went through his search procedure carefully again, took time for a sip of brandy, and pressed ahead. The squishy feeling inside his boots told him that they were beginning to allow the water of the subterranean canal to penetrate their oil-soaked and greased exterior. Well, that was bound to occur, and the discomfort wouldn’t stop him.
After making a seventh chalk mark on the wall, Gord was starting to become disheartened. Perhaps he had misjudged the eastern orientation of his location when he entered from above. Could Theobald’s former headquarters lie off in the other direction? It seemed unlikely, but the cold and dark and silence were beginning to tell on him. His nerves were frayed, and his mouth opened and closed with each breath. Why had he ever done anything so stupid and crazed as this anyway? No treasure was so great as to risk all this for.
“It Isn’t the treasure, dolt, it’s the need to prove yourself that drives you on!” That thought made him pause and regroup. “Do I need to prove myself to myself?” That answer was clear, but he verbalized it to himself anyway.
“Who else is benefiting from this exhibition? We are alone in our head, you and I, and if we are not brave now, only a coward will remain hereafter…” Stop! He was mumbling to himself, just as old Leena used to talk to herself. The thoughts were true, nonetheless, and they served to urge Gord onward.
Where he would have made his ninth mark there was no wall. Gord had come to a basin, a widening in the canal. As in the sewer above, the canal was enlarged to form a chamber where two smaller ducts met on either hand to empty into the main conduit. His light was strong, but it barely enabled him to see the distant walls of the chamber. The near wall was only about twenty feet away. The eastern one, where the water of the canal flowed from, was not less than sixty feet away, and the far wall seemed to be the same distance as well. The domed ceiling above was smooth save for a small hole. From that aperture hung the remains of what apparently had been a ladder. This had to be the place-the cistern into which he had precipitated the beggarmaster and his strongbox three years ago.
By racking his brain Gord could recall seeing basins such as the one before him drawn in the ancient engineering diagrams. They were spotted along the course of each canal to serve as waterholes, more or less, for those not able to tap the central pool, the reservoir far beneath the old citadel. Gord berated himself mentally for not considering the possibility that the cistern might plunge into such a basin. What had the drawings indicated? The basins were dish-shaped and had a central depth of twenty feet… which meant that bones and box were twenty feet below the black water!
“Godsdamn you, Theobald!” Gord screamed this out, and the echoes gave it back to him in a broken taunt: “…damn… damn… damn… you… you… you… Theobald… eobald… bald… aid… aid.” As if in answer to the cry, the dark surface of the circular basin rolled and heaved-and something rose above the inky waters.
Gord turned at the sound of it breaking the surface, and the full beam of the lantern fell upon the thing that was there. What the monstrosity was he couldn’t tell. If ropes and rotting seaweed were intertwined and covered with the black ooze found at the bottom of a stagnant pond, a correct picture of the thing would begin to take shape. Add to that the trailing tendrils of a monstrous jellyfish and the thick tentacles of a great octopus. Finish it off with encrustations of things, vast bumps like rotting anemones, broader patches that resembled nothing other than masses of exposed intestines, and excrescencies that might have been putrescent mollusks without their protective shells.
That is what reared up from the black waters of the basin, and Gord wanted to flee at the sight of it. But there was no place to run.
Gord stood, more paralyzed with fear than steadfast because of bravery, and the light of his lantern brought the creature into stark relief as it heaved its way through the water, making the inky liquid dance under the illumination, drawing closer by a yard with each heave of its rotten, slinking body. The horror made him cringe, and his feet moved instinctively, taking him back along the conduit, but only one foot for each yard the creature was covering. There could only be one end to this encounter.
As the monster thrashed toward him, beating the ebon waters into a dark froth with its furious passage, Gord kept his eyes fixed upon the thing, backing still, sword now pointed at the ghastly abomination. As if hypnotized he watched the scene before him, and was quietly amazed to see that parts of the horror were breaking off as it advanced.
A massive tentacle broke into writhing pieces as it came. Bits of stuff, the rotted growths and adhering pieces, flew away or slid off the mass with audible, sucking pops. The thing was disintegrating before his eyes! At the same time, its rush was slowing, but it still gained on him. Now it was within the canal, and its bulk was evident. Its congealed mass of a body was vaguely seal-shaped, as large as a great walrus, and had a necklike protrusion that thrust toward the boy, snaking ahead with each convulsion of the monster’s body.
Gagging in terror as much as from the fetid stench that arose from the mass, Gord kept backing. Soon the monstrous thing would be upon him!
Smack! The form heaved up and came down closer still. Splash… plop…plop, plop-plop. The waves of displaced water struck the walls and his own legs, nearly knocking Gord off his feet, as pieces of rotten stuff continued to drop off.
Schlooop! It was drawing its body up again, this time with the long neck rearing as if it were a serpent coiling to strike. As if in slow motion Gord saw it all, and he finally realized what was happening. Under the bright light from his magical stone, the foul substances that composed the body of the thing were melting away, but the horror seemed totally unaware that it was dwindling, unaffected by its parts sloughing away in hunks and bits.
The reptilian forepart was high above Gord’s head now, its end bulbous, its neck melting away to show white beneath the blackness of rot and muck. But the thing was still coming on, and there could be no further retreat. The creature was upon him.