He had been at this for perhaps an hour when the fading of the light became unmistakable. He made himself a torch out of tapestry fragments and an old table leg, spent fifteen minutes getting it lit, the fabric might be dry, but igniting it with flint and steel was still no easy task, and then returned to the wizard’s study.
He found Tobas squinting in the thickening gloom, trying to make out the contents of yet another book.
“Tobas,” he said, “it’s getting dark.”
“I know,” the young wizard replied. “Could you make me a torch like that?”
“Have you found anything?”
“Histories, love poems, and even cookbooks, but no books of magic. I thought this was one, but it’s not; it’s a text on the curative properties of herbs, useful, I suppose, but not wizardry.”
“Have you noticed that there isn’t a single fireplace or chimney in this entire castle?”
“Hm? No, I hadn’t; I suppose it was heated by magic originally. Could you get me something for more light?”
“Can’t the rest of these books wait until morning?”
“What?” Tobas looked about himself absentmindedly; in his hopeful fascination with the books he had become somewhat distracted. “Oh, I guess they can, really. I found something else, though, look here, behind these boards.” He rose and crossed to the lower end of the sloping floor, where he pushed aside a pile of fallen shelving and pointed to empty darkness beyond.
The study was not the final room in the wizard’s apartment; Tobas had found a door leading on still farther into the depths of the suite.
“What’s in there?” Peren asked.
“I haven’t looked,” Tobas replied. “There’s no light. I don’t think there are any windows, just solid stone walls. I was waiting for you to come back before I decided what to do about it.”
Peren held up his torch and peered in. “It’s a passageway, I think, not a room.”
“It would have to be; we’ve come the full length of the castle already. This must run across the front, directly above the gate, inside the thickness of the downstairs wall.”
Peren nodded agreement and held the torch out before him. The flame did not flicker; the air in the passageway was dead and still. “I’ll go first,” he said.
“All right,” Tobas agreed. “I’ll be right behind you.”
CHAPTER 17
The passageway sloped up across the full width of the front of the castle, Tobas judged, and was unbroken by any windows or ornamentation at all. It consisted of bare stone walls and floor, a simple barrel-vaulted ceiling, and nothing more. It had originally been level, of course, and the angle was not particularly steep even now. The pitch from side to side was greater than along its length, so that Peren and Tobas hung close to the right-hand side, walking along the bottom edge.
Despite the absolute simplicity of the corridor, or perhaps because of it, Tobas was certain that the entrance from the wizard’s study had once been concealed, though whether by shelves, draperies, or some other device he could not be sure amid the general ruin. Perhaps there had once been an illusion spell that had been dispersed when the castle’s magic ceased to function.
The corridor was narrow; Tobas had to keep his elbows close to his sides to avoid bumping the walls. Peren, who was thinner, had an easier time of it.
They were about two-thirds of the way along, Tobas judged from his memory of the Great Hall’s width, when Peren stopped so abruptly that Tobas ran into him; both staggered on the sloping floor, and Peren had to fall to one knee to keep from losing his torch.
“What is it?” Tobas whispered, speaking aloud in such a place was unthinkable.
“Look for yourself!” Peren said, pointing.
With the albino down on one knee, Tobas was able to see over his shoulder; he took a good look at the end of the corridor.
The right-hand wall continued unbroken for another forty or fifty feet, while the left-hand wall ended after thirty or so; from where they stood, Tobas could not see any details of the wider area, or room, or whatever it was they were approaching.
He could, however, see what Peren had seen, lying on the floor. He had never actually encountered one before, but there could be no mistaking it.
It was a human skeleton, the bones of the legs and feet protruding out into the corridor, the rest still invisible around the corner, or at any rate, Tobas assumed that the rest was there, just around the corner. The tattered remnants of velvet slippers were tangled with the bones of the feet.
A moment of unreasoning dread came and went, and he quickly recovered his calm. “What of it?” he said, doing his best to sound as if he had come across skeletons dozens of times before. “He’s dead. I want to see what’s up there. Let’s go on.”
“What killed him?” Peren whispered, horror-stricken.
“How should I know?” Tobas was quite uneasy enough without Peren adding to it; he was determined to move on before he lost his nerve, and was annoyed at the albino’s reluctance. “Probably he fell and hit his head when the castle crashed,” he guessed wildly.
Peren glanced back at Tobas, then ahead again, gathered his nerve, and nodded. “You’re probably right. Or maybe he was a burglar, and the wizard caught him there, and the castle crashed before the body could be removed.” He rose to his feet and started forward again.
Tobas followed, certain that something was wrong with Peren’s suggestion and trying to figure out what it was; as they reached the corner, he realized that the crash would not have prevented the survivors from removing bodies. There had undoubtedly been survivors, or else the castle would have been littered with corpses, or rather, by now, skeletons. If anyone had known this body was here, it would have been removed despite the castle’s fall.
He liked his own theory better, that the man, or woman, had died here in the crash, and none of the survivors had known this passage existed. Or if they had known about it, no one had thought to check it in the confusion and panic that must have ensued.
When he passed the end of the left-hand wall into the room, he paused and looked down at the skeleton first, while Peren held the torch close.
It had been a man, plainly. He had worn leather breeches and a dark tunic with gold embroidery; the golden threads still gleamed in the dessicated and decayed remnants. An assortment of rings mingled with the outstretched finger bones, ranging from a simple gold band to an ornate tangle of gems and metals that must have covered an entire joint from knuckle to knuckle. A wide leather belt was now reduced to a few blackened strands and a tarnished silver buckle, and the purse that had hung from it had rotted and spilled forth an assortment of blackened silver and corroded green bronze. No gold coins, though; the two youths were disappointed in that.
Beside the purse was a dagger, its sheath rotted; Tobas picked it up cautiously while Peren collected the coins.
Hilt and blade were black, black as chimney soot; there was no trace of the brown of rust. Fine detail work was still sharp in places where iron or steel would have lost its shape as it corroded.
Tobas rubbed at the pommel with his tunic, and although he could not work down to a clean shine, he wiped off enough of the black to convince himself, by both look and feel, that the dagger was silver.
Who would carry a silver dagger? Only a wizard. Steel held a better edge, barring enchantment, and was far cheaper.
Forgetting for a moment that he was in a place where wizardry could not work, he drew his own athame and touched the points of the two blades together. Peren watched with interest.