Some little way ahead of Dumitru the great wolf growled low in its throat, urging him on. He paused however, uncertain where the shadows of fallen blocks obscured his vision. The front edge of the ruin seemed to have been tossed (tossed, yes, as by some enormous explosion in the guts of the place) out to and beyond the rim of the gorge, where still a jumble of massive stones and slates were spread in dark confusion, so that Dumitru supposed a large part of the castle had gone down into the gorge.
As to what could have caused such destruction, he had no -
But you hesitate, my son, came that monstrous mental voice, oozing like a slug in his mind, overriding and obliterating all matters of question and conjecture and will. That voice which had completely overwhelmed and taken control of him during the course of the last four or five weeks, making him its zombie. And 1 see that it is as I suspected, Dumiitruuu… you are strong-willed! Good! Very good! The strength of the will is that of the body, and the strength of the body is the blood. Your blood is strong, my son, as it is in all your race.
The great wolf growled again and Dumitru stumbled after. The youth knew he should flee this place, run headlong, break his bones in the dark and crawl if he must — anything but carry on. And yet he was powerless against the lure of that ancient, evil voice. It was as if he had made some promise he could not break, or as if he kept the promise of some long-dead and honoured ancestor, which was inviolable.
Now, guided by the voice in his head, he stumbled among leaning menhir blocks in search of a certain spot; now he went on all fours, clearing away fresh-fallen leaves, damp grey lichens and shards of black rock; now he discovered (or merely uncovered, for the voice had told him it would be here) a narrow slab with an iron ring, which he lifted easily. A blast of foul air struck his face, filled his lungs, made him more dizzy yet where he crouched over the black and reeking abyss; and when at last his head cleared — of the fumes, at least — he was already descending into nightmare depths.
Now the voice told him: Here, here my son … a niche in the wall… torches, a bundle, and matches all wrapped in a skin… aye, better than the flints of my youth… light one torch and take two more with you… for be sure you'll need them, Dumiitruuu…
The stone stairwell spiralled; Dumitru descended nitrous steps, obliged to clamber in places where the stair had collapsed. He reached a buckled floor littered with blocks of fire-blackened masonry; another trapdoor; the descent continued through dankly echoing bowels of earth. Down, ever down, to sinister and sentient nether-pits…
Until at last:
Well done, Dumiitruuu, the dark voice complimented him — a voice that smiled monstrously, invisibly, whose owner was well pleased with himself — his pleasure grating like a file on the nerve-endings of the young man's brain. And suddenly… Dumitru might have bolted. For a split second he was his own man again — he knew he stood on the very threshold of hell!
But then that alien intelligence closed like a vice on his mind; the inexorable process started five weeks ago guided him towards its logical conclusion; the strength of free will flickered like a guttering candle in him, almost extinguished. And:
Look about you, Dumiitruuu. Look and learn what are the works and mysteries of your master, my son.
Behind Dumitru on the stone staircase, the great flame-eyed wolf. And before him -
The lair of a necromancer!
Such things were legends amongst the Szgany, tales to be told about the campfires in certain seasons, but neither Dumitru nor any other who might view this scene would require any special knowledge or explanation save that of his own imagination, his own instinct. And wide-eyed and gape-mouthed, with his torch held high, the youth wandered unsteadily through the ordered remnants and relics of chaos and madness.
Not the chaos of the upper regions, which was purely physical, for these secret nether-vaults had suffered little of the destruction of the higher levels; they were preserved, pristine under the dust and cobwebs of half a century. No, this was a mental chaos: the knowledge that these were the works of a man or men — or, again taking into account all manner of Szgany myth and legend, the works of things disguised as such.
Of the vaults themselves:
The stonework was ancient, indeed hoary. Nitre-streaked and yet not noticeably damp, in places the masonry even showed signs of dripstone concretion. Wispy stalactite strings depended from the high-vaulted ceilings; and around the edges of the rooms, where the floor had been not so frequently trodden, smooth-domed stalagmite deposits formed small nodes or blisters on the roughly fitted flags. Dumitru was no archaeologist, but from the primitive roughness of the dressed stone and the poor condition of the ancient mortar alone, even he would have dated the castle — or at least these secret regions of the castle — as being some eight or nine hundred years old. It would need to be at least that for the formation of these calcium deposits — or else the solutions seeping from above must be unusually heavily laced with crystalline salts.
There were numerous archways, uniformly eight feet wide and eleven high, all wedged at their tops with massive keystones, some of which had settled a little from the unimaginable tonnage of the higher levels. The ceilings — none of them less than fourteen or fifteen feet tall at apex — were vaulted in an interlocking design similar to the archways; in several places massive blocks had fallen, doubtless shaken loose by whatever blast had doomed the place, shattering the heavy flags of the floor like schoolroom slates.
Beyond the archways were rooms all of a large size, all with archways of their own; Dumitru had descended to a maze of ancient rooms, where the tenant of this broken pile had practised his secret arts. As to the nature of those arts:
So far, with the single exception of his first terrified guess, Dumitru had avoided conjecture. But this was no longer possible. The walls were covered in frescoes which, however faded, told the entire tale; and many of the rooms contained undeniable evidence of a much more solid, much more frightening nature. Also, the voice in his head, now cruel and full of glee, would not permit of his ignorance: it desired that he know the way of these old matters.
Necromancy, you thought, Dumitru, when first your torch cast back the shadows down here, the voice reiterated. The resurrection of defunct salts and ashes back into life for the purpose of interrogation. The history of the world, as it were, from the horse's mouth, from the reanimated, imperfect wraiths of them that lived it. The unravelling of ancient secrets, and perhaps even the foretelling of the dimly distant future. Aye, divination by use of the dead!… That is what you thought.
Well (and after a small pause the voice gave a mental shrug), and you were right — as far as you went. But you did not go far enough. You have avoided looking… you avoid it even now! What, and are you my son, Dumitru, or some puling babe in arms? I thought I had called strong wine in unto myself, only to discover that the Szgaaany have been brewing water all these years! Ha-haa-haaa! But no… I make jokes… don't be so angry, my son…