“You will?”
“I will.”
“It might be a demonological thing, you said.”
“It might be, but it probably isn’t, and maybe demonology doesn’t work here, either. Besides, if it’s wartime demonology, it might not work anymore anywhere, since the gods closed the old openings into Hell. The rules are different now.”
“But...”
“If it were dangerous, wouldn’t it already have done something? Come on and help me.”
“All right,” Peren said after another few seconds of hesitation. Reluctantly, he propped his torch up against a wall and crossed to the far end of the tapestry.
The brackets were above their heads, but by standing on tiptoe and stretching Tobas was able to push his end of the bar up and away from the wall. Peren, being taller and at least as strong, had an easier time of it.
Nothing terrible happened; it collapsed like any ordinary hanging. Once it was down, Tobas insisted that Peren help him roll it up around the bar, and together they reduced it to a compact bundle. It was surprisingly thin and light for its size; the rod was roughly an inch in diameter, the tapestry a good seven feet high, but the entire roll was only four inches thick.
It was so light, in fact, that Tobas had second thoughts, about his conclusion that thread-of-gold had been used. The bundle was eight or ten feet long, but weighed no more than a hundred and fifty pounds, at most. With effort, Tobas could carry it single-handed.
He hoisted it on his shoulder, staggering slightly on the sloping floor, while Peren recovered the torch and headed for the passageway.
“Wait a minute,” Tobas called. “What about the wizard’s rings? And that dagger of his is good silver.”
Peren stopped and looked down at the skeleton, then back at Tobas. “Are they enchanted?” “Who knows? The rings might be. The dagger, well, I think I know that spell, and with the wizard dead it would be broken, permanently. But I can’t be sure; after all, there’s so much here I don’t know. For all I can say, this no-magic area may have a permanent effect, I’m not sure my own magic will come back, even when we’re out of it and back in someplace normal. I’m just guessing.”
This was true, but he did somehow feel that his athame, at least, would still be enchanted when he left the area. After all, the dagger held a part of his soul, and he couldn’t imagine that it could have died permanently without his feeling something.
On that basis, he thought that any sort of magical imprinting, such as a major enchantment, would be effective again when removed from this eerie dead area. He certainly hoped so; he was counting on the tapestry to be powerful magic. He thought of the deadening effect as if spells were paintings, and magic the light that made them visible; the paintings could be taken into a dark room, and there they would be invisible, no more wonderful than blank board; but when returned to the light, the colors would be as bright as ever.
At least, he hoped that that was how it worked and that wizardry was more like color than fire, which, once extinguished, had to be rekindled.
Peren still hesitated over the skeleton, but at last, with a sudden grab, picked up the dagger and tucked it into his own belt. The rings he decided to leave, which Tobas had to admit was probably a wise decision.
Together, the two youths made their way back down the sloping corridor; Tobas needed Peren’s assistance to maneuver the long, heavy, awkward roll of tapestry around the corner and through the door into the study. Once it was safely through, he lowered it with a gasp of relief, letting it rest atop a pile of crumbling books.
“Are you really planning to haul that all the way back to Ethshar?” Peren asked, working the muscles of his back to relax them after the strain of helping Tobas with the ponderous roll of fabric.
Tobas, who had never been fond of strenuous lifting, was still trying to catch his breath; he nodded. He gulped air and, when he felt he could spare a little breath, said, “Yes, I am. I’ll carry it as far as Dwomor, then see about hiring a wagon or something. I think it’s worth it, I really do. But right now all I plan to do is eat dinner and then sleep in a wizard’s bed. What about you?”
Peren grinned in agreement.
CHAPTER 18
They spent all the following day exploring the castle more thoroughly. Tobas needed the entire morning ta maneuver his prize tapestry step by step out through the wizard-lord’s apartment, down the two flights of stairs, and back across the Great Hall to the gate, while Peren gathered a good-sized pile of booty from throughout the castle. In the afternoon it was Tobas’ turn to explore, while Peren settled down in the Great Hall to pick through his booty and decide what was worth carrying away and what could be left. By the time the sun set again the wizard had gone through every nook and cranny, while the albino had put together in one pile his final selections, roughly thirty pounds of gold, silver, and jewelry in various forms.
“You know,” Peren remarked to Tobas as they ate dinner at a table they had righted in one of the lower rooms, “we’ll both be rich when we get home. Even if that tapestry isn’t good for anything but melting down, that rod it’s on must have ten pounds of gold on it, maybe more. Figure ten percent for the smith’s fee, and that’s ninety pieces of gold. They say a man can live on one copper a day if he’s not picky; ninety of gold are nine thousand of copper. Say four hundred and fifty a year, that’s twenty years you can live just on that.”
Tobas nodded. “And with it all in that tapestry I don’t need to worry about sneak thieves picking my pocket or burgling my room at the inn, the way you do!”
Peren laughed. “Ah, but I have far more than ten pounds here!”
“Counting the jewels and silver, maybe, and they’re probably half fake, too.”
Peren laughed again. “What if they are? Pounds of gold, and silver, and handfuls of gems! If nine out of ten are just cut glass, I’ll still be able to call myself a rich man! How could this one wizard have had so much wealth! It astounds me, it truly does. And Tobas, I think half the castle had already been looted, too. I didn’t find anything worth taking anywhere but the two main apartments. The butler’s vault had been broken open and all the plate cleared out; the armory had all of three swords left, two of them bent and the other one broken. The towers were empty — at least, the five I climbed. I didn’t care to see what was left in the fallen one.”
Tobas nodded. “I think the castle servants probably carried off everything in sight when they fled after the crash, but most of them wouldn’t have had the nerve to go into the private apartments. The wizard died; we saw that. As far as the servants were concerned, he had probably just vanished into thin air, they didn’t know about the secret passage. They probably didn’t dare steal from his suite, lest he reappear suddenly. What puzzles me is what happened to the lady; her jewels were still there, at least some of them, and I would have thought that she and her maids would have taken them all. There’s no sign that she, too, died, and it would have been quite an odd coincidence if she had, don’t you think?”
Peren shrugged. “Maybe she wasn’t home.”
“Maybe.” They ate in silence for a moment.
“Tobas,” Peren said at last, “are you sure you want to go back to Ethshar?”
Surprised, Tobas replied, “Well, I thought so; why?”
“I don’t think I do. I grew up there and I’ve seen all of it I care to. It’s true that I have my own money now, but my hair’s still white and my eyes still red, and the children in the street will probably still call me a ghost or a demon, even if I’m wearing velvet instead of homespun. This sword I carry didn’t make any difference; I don’t think the gold will, either.”