APPRENTICE LUCK
by Sean Flynn
 
 
Karl Spielbrunner had been apprenticed to Otto von Stumpf for six months now, more than long enough for him to realize how much he hated the antiquarian book trade. Karl had a fatal combination of vanity, ambition and intelligence, and he knew well enough that unless his luck changed all he had to look forward to was ending up with his own poky little shop, as bent and crabbily reclusive as von Stumpf. Of course, there were far worse fates in Middenheim, the great and terrible City of the White Wolf. If Karl’s dead father—the only family Karl had, apart from some country cousins he had never seen—had not been a drinking companion of von Stumpf s, no doubt Karl would be just another orphan trying to scratch a living on the streets now, a likely victim for drug pushers, racketeers, pimps or cultists.
Far worse fates, yes, but not by much, Karl thought, as he stood at the dusty window and watched the shabby, narrow street and the occasional passer-by. It was summer, and stiflingly hot in the shop. A fat bluebottle buzzed in one corner of the window; the husks of others were scattered on the leather-bound tomes which leaned against each other in the window.
There was so much going on in the world, yet Karl was stuck here in charge of a lot of tattered dusty books. A wizard had moved into some rooms down the street, for instance, a tall mysterious foreigner. Some said he was a necromancer; everyone said he was up to no good. And something was rumoured to be stirring in the myriad tunnels that undercut the rock on which the city was founded. The Watch was on maximum alert, and only last night the body of a goat-headed man had been found near one of the main sewer inlets.
For a moment, Karl saw himself at the head of one of the elite patrols, a grim-faced Watch captain armed with a glittering sword, maybe a decorative scar on one cheek. Then the bluebottle buzzed loudly at the dusty window and Karl’s daydream collapsed stillborn. Musty smell of crumbling paper, shadowy ranks of outdated books looming into shadow: this was his fate. His only consolation was that as usual his master was away at the Wolf’s Grip, the grim little tavern which drained most of the shop’s profits. Otherwise Karl would certainly have been put to some useless task or other, recataloguing stock or sweeping away the sticky cobwebs which festooned the crumbling plaster of the low ceiling—and no doubt von Stumpf would be giving him a lecture in that nagging, whiny voice of his, telling Karl how lucky he was, to be apprentice to the venerable firm of von Stumpf and Son (Karl didn’t know what had happened to the Son, but he guessed that he had run away as soon as he could). And if von Stumpf had been there, Karl wouldn’t have been able to take his chance when his luck suddenly changed.
It arrived in the unlikely form of Scabby Elsa, a bent, hook-nosed old crone who specialized in reselling rags stripped from the corpses thrown from the Cliff of Sighs. Just as Karl was settling to a forbidden snack of black bread and cheese, she pushed open the door and hobbled laboriously over the uneven floor with something clutched to her shapeless bosom. The bluebottle left off bumbling at the window and spiralled around the greasy shawl wrapped over her head, attracted by the sour, rank stench of her layers of rotting rags.
“A little something for you, young master,” Scabby Elsa said, and set what she had been carrying on the scarred rubbish-strewn table which served as a counter.
It was an old, old book, text handwritten in an upright clerkly style on octavo parchment, bound in fine-grained leather with gilt stamping on the spine, the front somewhat buckled and stained. Karl took only a moment to realize it had to be valuable; much as he hated the book trade, he had taken care to pick up the necessary knowledge and tricks. Now it looked as if that care might actually be about to pay off.
“I’ll take a gold crown for this fellow,” Scabby Elsa said. Her smile revealed blackened gums, and the stench of her breath almost knocked Karl down. “No less, now, but no more either. That’s what I needs, and that’s what I takes.”
“Ten shillings,” Karl said quickly. “The cover is damaged; no one would offer more.”
“It fell a long way, like its owner. Lucky it fell on someone else, or it would look a lot worse. Fifteen, then.”
“Twelve, and that’s my final offer.”
“Done,” Scabby Elsa said.
Karl kept what little money he had managed to save tied in a corner of his shirt. He undid the knot and counted out the price. Scabby Elsa scooped up the coins with a surprising deftness and hobbled out of the shop, pursued by the bluebottle, which had fallen in love with her—or at least, with her smell.
His heart beating quickly and lightly, Karl pulled down the window shades and locked the door.
With luck von Stumpf wouldn’t be back until at least the end of the afternoon. He had plenty of time to examine his prize.
The book was a grimoirium, a handbook of magic, and written in old-fashioned but plain language, too, not some kind of code. From the style of binding and the yellowing of the edges of the parchment pages, it had to be at least three hundred years old, from the time of the Wizards’ War perhaps, or even before.
Karl leafed through crackling pages. A spell of bafflement. A spell of binding. Hmmm. He would take it to the shop of Hieronymus Neugierde, the largest antiquarian shop in the city. He was bound to get the best price there… maybe enough to escape his apprenticeship.
Karl began to examine the book more closely. He would need to know as much as he could to get the right price. He realized with a start that the leather cover was not made of tanned animal hide, but human skin; he could make out the pores, even little hairs. It felt clammy to his fingertips, as if somehow still alive.
He opened the book again and laid it face down, peered down the spine; there were often clues about a book’s origin and age to be found in the binding sheets. Sure enough, there was a scrap of paper inserted there. When Karl fished it out, an insect, a shiny-backed beetle, came with it, scurrying across the table and falling to the floor before Karl could crush it.
Some kind of map had been drawn on the scrap of paper, the ink fresh and no use in dating the book. All the same it was interesting, a carefully marked route snaked through intricately labyrinthine passages, avoiding all sorts of traps and deadfalls and pits, to a sealed chamber marked with a single word written in red. A treasure map, maybe, although there was no indication of what the treasure was.
Karl studied it for a long time before he realized that it must be a map of part of the system of tunnels which the dwarfs had long ago cut through the rock on which the city stood. When he had riddled all he could, he put it in his pocket, then went into the back room where he slept and hid the book under his pillow. He would examine it further tonight, and tomorrow sell it for the best price he could, then thumb his nose at von Stumpf and live the way he wanted, not at the old fool’s beck and call. He might even be able to sell the treasure map to some gullible adventurer—and there was no shortage of such people in the city—foolish enough to venture into the dangerous tunnels beneath the city.
Karl was thinking of all he could do with a pocketful of gold crowns as he let up the blinds. And then he jumped back in shock. The foreign wizard was peering through the dusty glass, his face only inches away from Karl’s own. When he saw Karl he straightened up and pushed at the door, and although Karl hadn’t unlocked it, the door opened at once.
“I am looking for a book,” the wizard said.
“Well, we have all sorts of books, sire.” Karl’s mouth was dry. The wizard was very tall, and despite the summer heat wore a sweeping black cloak its red lining embroidered with all manner of weird signs of power. His face was long and white, framed by untidy black hair and a black beard. A pair of small round spectacles perched on the end of his long nose; they magnified the wizard’s fierce blue eyes as he peered down at Karl.
“A very particular book. A book that may have been brought to you, or may be about to be brought to you. A large handwritten volume, with an unusual binding. I will pay very well for such a book.”
“You would have to speak to my master,” Karl managed to say. He was thinking furiously. If the wizard wanted the book then it was even more valuable than it looked, and he would certainly get a better price at Neugierde’s than from this itinerant hedge-wizard.
“Your master, eh?” The wizard drew himself up. He was so tall that his head almost brushed the cobwebby rafters of the ceiling. “Very well. You give no choice but that I come back. I hope your master will be more helpful. I will call again tomorrow. And remember this, young man.”
The cloak flew up and Karl jumped back, but the wizard was too quick. His cold hand fastened around Karl’s wrist, pulled. Then Karl was leaning half across the table, his face only inches away from the wizard’s.
“Remember this,” the wizard said, softly.
“I don’t forget anything,” Karl managed to say. He met the wizard’s gaze, trying not to be intimidated. But there was an odd tingling between his eyes, as if he was about to cry, and after a moment he had to look away.
“Things may be more than they seem, or less.” The wizard let go of Karl’s wrist, drew his cloak around himself. “Good day to you, young man, and good luck.”
Somehow, Karl managed to behave as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened when Otto von Stumpf came back in the evening, although the old man had drunk so much of the Wolfs Grip’s vinegary ale that he probably wouldn’t have noticed if Karl had grown another head. After a meagre supper of boiled barley flavoured with fatty scraps of mutton, von Stumpf had Karl help him up the winding stairs to the filthy garret where he slept. Then Karl curled up on the mattress in the stockroom behind the shop and gloated over the book and the map by the light of a tallow candle. But it had been a long day, and soon enough he fell asleep.
 
He woke with a start to moonlight falling through the room’s only window, thinking someone had touched him on the hand. But it was only a beetle clambering over the hollow of his palm, its antennae waving furiously. Karl flicked the insect away, and then realized with alarm that the book was gone.
He managed to get the candle lit, and saw that the book was lying in the curtained doorway between the shop and the stockroom. Shadows seemed to scatter from it as he went over and bent to pick it up. Nervous, and fully awake, Karl went into the shop and listened at the crooked stairs that led up to von Stumpf’s garret, and grinned when he heard the old man’s rasping snore. Still befuddled by sleep, Karl was about to go back to bed when he happened to glance out of the window and saw a black-cloaked figure moving past, towards the door. It was the wizard.
In an instant, Karl was through the back room, fumbling at the bolts of the door to the yard. He managed to get it open just as the lock of the shop’s door sprang with a heart-stopping click. And then he was over the wall of the yard, almost falling on top of the figure that stood in the alley below.
For an instant, Karl thought that the wizard, who obviously had found out about the book, had somehow magicked himself from one side of the building to the other. But then the man pushed back his hood and said, “Come with me—be quick now.”
Karl was about to ask who the stranger was and why he should follow him when an eerie blue light flared on the other side of the wall. Without a further thought he took to his heels, clutching the book to his chest.
The stranger ran as though his feet were skimming an inch above the cobbles, his cloak streaming behind him. After dodging through the alleys, they came out on the bustling Burgen Bahn, where bands of students roved noisily among crowds of ordinary citizens. By this time Karl was panting hard, but the stranger hardly seemed to be breathing at all. His eyes glittered as he looked about alertly, one hand on the hilt of a long sword; he was a young, smooth-skinned and handsome man wearing baggy corduroy trews and an embroidered leather vest under the cloak—curious, old-fashioned clothes. Seemingly satisfied that they weren’t being pursued, he turned and looked down at Karl, who shrank a little under that glittering unforgiving gaze.
“You have what we came to take back,” the swordsman said. He had an odd, harshly buzzing accent, probably from some country district or other. That would explain the old-fashioned cut of his clothes, too.
“If you mean the book I came by it fairly. I’m a bookseller, and I bought it,” Karl said, more defiantly than he felt. After all, he was telling the truth. More or less the truth.
“We pay,” the swordsman said, “even though it was stolen from us.” He effortlessly plucked the book from Karl’s grasp, then dropped a heavy drawstring purse to the ground. Karl pulled the purse open as the swordsman paged through the book, and gasped when he saw that it was crammed full of gold. Then his gasp turned to a frightened squeak as the swordsman grabbed the front of his shirt and lifted him clear off the ground. “The map,” the swordsman said, his face inches from Karl’s own. His breath was sharply acid, and his eyes glittered crazily in the light of a nearby streetlamp. “We want the map.”
“Put me down and I’ll tell you where it is,” Karl managed to gasp, and then his heels struck the pavement hard as the swordsman let go. Karl tugged at his dishevelled shirt, hotly aware of the group of students who had turned to snigger at this contretemps.
“Where?” the swordsman said.
“Back at the shop,” Karl lied, knowing it was in his pocket. He had seen an opportunity to make even more money, enough to set him up for life, maybe. A purse full of gold could be spent in a night, if you were foolish enough. But if the map led to buried treasure, and there were legends of all sorts of dwarfish hoards hidden in the catacombs and corridors of the city beneath the city, then anything was possible. And although Karl was clever, he was also inexperienced enough to harbour the belief that no matter what, he wasn’t anywhere near to dying.
So he added quickly, “But we don’t have to go back there, and face that wizard. He was the one who stole the book from you, wasn’t he?”
“His apprentice,” the swordsman admitted. “We nearly caught him, but he jumped over the edge of the Cliff of Sighs, and when we got down amongst the trees and found his body, the book was gone.”
“But now you have the book, and fortunately for you, I am at your service. I found the map and looked at it long enough to memorize it.” This was the truth; Karl had an exceptional memory for things that might be useful to him. He said, with more confidence than he felt, “I can take you past the traps, lead you to the treasure, once we are close enough.”
“Treasure,” the swordsman said. “You wish to share this treasure.”
“Let’s call it a finder’s fee.”
The swordsman closed his eyes and began to mutter to himself—or more precisely, buzz and chatter in his odd dialect. Obviously he was thinking hard, and obviously thinking hard did not come easily. At last he said, “We are agreed, then. You help, for a fee.”
“On your word that you will give me ten per cent of what we find, and not harm me in any way?” Karl said, as steadily as he could.
“We give our word,” the swordsman said, with an alacrity that made Karl wish he had asked for fifteen, or even twenty per cent. He added, “Now you will lead us to the nearest entrance to the sewers, where we will begin our journey.”
Karl smiled. “It’s easy to see you’re a stranger to the city. The main sewer entrances are guarded by the City Watch. Even a swordsman like yourself will not be able to outfight the Watch. Er, what is your name, anyhow?”
“You may call us Argo.”
“Well, I’m Karl. But don’t worry, I know another way, although you may have to pay a kind of admission fee. There’s a tavern down in the Ostwald district, the Drowned Rat, which has a way into the sewers in its cellar. You just have to pay the landlord, that’s all.”
“You have all the money, now.”
“Do I? Oh, I see. Well, I suppose it is a kind of investment. Come on then, Argo. The place I’m thinking of is on the other side of the city.”
 
Karl wasn’t as confident as he had sounded. He knew about the Drowned Rat and its secret passages into the sewer network only by rumour, and he had made up the story about the entrance fee on the spot. As he and the swordsman made their way deeper into the narrow streets of Ostwald, what little confidence Karl had soon evaporated.
There were no streetlights in the Ostwald district, and the mean, crowded streets were illuminated only by what light fell through heavily curtained windows, or the red flames of torches a few people carried. Karl kept as close to the swordsman as he could—not an easy task, because the man strode along at a rapid pace, the darkness and the ill-favoured crowds slowing him down not at all.
There were probably no more drunks here than along the Burgen Bahn, but while on that prosperous street drunkenness was merely the end result of too much high spirits, here it was due to a kind of savage desperation. Men far gone in their cups staggered along shouting curses at the world in general, and from more than one alley came the noises of fighting. Beggars with every kind of disfigurement and disease bawled out for alms, ignored by the poorly-dressed labourers and better-dressed thieves alike, their cries scarcely louder than the shrill cries of the whores who shouted down at potential clients from upper-storey windows of the close-packed timber-framed buildings.
Karl looked for the sign of the Drowned Rat with increasing desperation. For all his pretended knowledge of the city, he had rarely been in the Ostwald district, and didn’t like it. He wanted nothing more than to find the tavern and get into the sewers beneath these dangerous streets, forgetting for the moment how much more dangerous the sewers could be. But when at last he did spy the sign, the last of his confidence seemed to ooze from the soles of his boots.
It was a tall, narrow, ramshackle building, set a little apart from its neighbours, its filthy windows glowing sullenly, its door in deep shadow.
Even as Karl and Argo approached it, a man staggered out, clutching the top of his head. Blood streamed down his face, suddenly bright as he staggered through the light of a nearby lamp set in the window of a whorehouse. He turned and bawled out, “Cutthroats! Lousy thieves! Sons of diseased mutant whores!” Then he groaned and clutched his head again and staggered on.
Argo, hardly seeming to notice the man, strode through the shadows and ducked beneath the tilted lintel of the tavern. Karl had to hurry to catch him up, slipping through the door just as a couple of heavyset thugs pushed it closed.
The main room of the tavern was almost as dark as the street outside, and hazed with yellow-grey smoke which gathered in thick reefs just beneath the sagging ceiling. Wolfish looking men sat at half a dozen rough tables scattered along the walls, and all were staring at the swordsman in unnerving and hostile silence.
Argo crossed to the counter, his boots rattling the loose floorboards, and said softly to the large, bearded man behind it, “We wish to enter the sewer system. We will pay whatever is necessary.”
One of the ruffians behind Karl chuckled and dropped a huge, scarred hand on Karl’s shoulder. “Your friend is a bold enough fellow, laddie. I always do like ’em bold.”
The landlord spat into a glass and smeared the spit around with a grey rag. “We don’t like strangers coming in here, friend. On your way now. I can’t help you.”
“We’ll just have a word with ’em,” the man holding Karl said. “Straighten ’em out, like.”
“Whatever you want, lads,” the landlord said indifferently, turning away as the second ruffian, his head brushing the ceiling, stalked towards Argo, a weighted cosh dangling from one paw. Karl started to shout a warning, but a foul-smelling hand clamped over his mouth and nose. Argo turned, his cloak flaring, as the cosh swept towards his head… and then suddenly he was to one side of the man, his sword flashing through the smoke. Something hit the floor with a thump, blood pattering after: it was the ruffian’s hand, still holding the cosh. The wounded ruffian shrieked, and then Argo’s sword flashed again, and the ruffian fell to the floor, his throat spraying blood.
The thug holding Karl started to back towards the door, ignoring the apprentice’s struggles. There was a tingling pressure between Karl’s eyes, at the bridge of his nose. For some reason he remembered the wizard’s humiliating stare, and when the ruffian let go of Karl’s mouth to pull at the latch, Karl managed to shout out the spell of bafflement he’d seen in the book. It was the only thing he could think of, but to his amazement it worked.
The man let go of him and scratched at his head, his piglike features twisted in confusion. He didn’t seem to notice his companion, fallen on the floor in the centre of a widening pool of blood, or Karl, or Argo, who pushed Karl aside and ran the ruffian through with his already bloody blade, its steel scraping against ribs as he drew it out. For a moment, the man didn’t seem to notice his mortal wound either, but then he gave a bubbling groan and toppled full-length, his fall rattling every flagon in the room.
Now the silence in the room had a different edge to it. Karl discovered that his nose was bleeding, and dabbed at it with his sleeve. He pulled the dead man’s knife from his belt while everyone was watching Argo. The latter stepped around the body of the ruffian who had first attacked him, kicking aside the severed hand, and up to the counter. He pulled at the landlord’s beard, lifting the big man half over the counter and repeating his request to be allowed into the sewers, as if nothing at all had happened.
The landlord’s eyes crossed in disbelief. For a moment, the sound of his beard coming away at the roots was the only sound in the room. “The cellar,” he managed to say at last. “Of course. You just follow me.”
The cellar was reached by a steep winding stair, its stone steps slippery with water that dribbled down the walls. Things moved in the darkness beyond the light of the landlord’s upheld lantern. Rats, the landlord said, but the thing Karl glimpsed was twice as big as any rat he’d ever seen, and seemed to scurry away on more than four legs. Argo, indifferent to any danger as usual, followed the landlord into the darkest recess of the vaulted cellar without hesitation, past rotting casks and heaps of rubbish and broken furniture.
There was a low door set deep in the wet stones of the wall, barred with iron and held shut by massive bolts, which the landlord threw back with some effort. A rush of hot malodorous air gushed out as the landlord pulled the door open. Argo started through, and Karl said loudly, “We’ll need light.” He didn’t want to go down there, but he could hardly expect to be allowed out of the tavern alive any other way. If he was going, he wanted to be able to see.
Argo turned and plucked the lantern from the landlord, then ducked under the lintel. As Karl followed, the landlord swore and slammed the door shut on their backs, yelling through the wood that they’d never get out, he’d see that they didn’t. There was a rattle as he threw the bolts home. And then there was only the drip-drip-drip of water from overhead, and the faint rush of more water somewhere below.
A winding stair led down to one of the sewer tributaries, a smelly brick-lined tunnel scarcely tall enough for Karl to stand up in, through which a stinking stream of brown liquid gurgled. In turn, this gave out onto one of the main channels, where high stone walks ran either side of a fast-running, filthy stream.
Argo raised the lantern, peered at Karl. He brushed a cold finger over the drying blood on the apprentice’s upper lip, and put it in his mouth. “The price of magic,” he said, after a moment.
“It was only a little spell, something I read in that book. I didn’t even think it would work, but there was nothing else I could do.”
“You are modest. But do not try and use your Art against us, I warn you. We are not bound by it.”
Karl looked up at him, a shadow behind the lamplight, eyes glittering. “I didn’t even know the spell would work,” he said again. “Really. Now, where do we go?”
“We will take you to the beginning of the maze,” Argo said. “Then you must lead the way.”
Karl thought hard. “The map showed that there was a kind of big round room from which the maze started. There were drawings of statues all around its walls.”
“I know it. That is where we must begin.”
Black rats scampered away from the light of the lantern Argo carried. Looking back, Karl could see a hundred pairs of little red eyes watching from the safety of the darkness. Sometimes, tantalizingly, he could hear the noises of the streets above, the cries of beggars or food sellers, or the rattle of wagon wheels over cobbles. But soon Argo led him away from the main channel, down a rubble-strewn slope that dropped steeply through the living rock, down into the necropolis beneath the living city.
Karl soon lost all track of time. He knew only that he was tired and hungry and frightened… and thirsty too, for the tunnels that wound ever deeper into the rock were surprisingly dry, their floors coated with dust as fine as flour. With every moment he was growing more and more afraid, and he was beginning to wish that he had never seen the book or tried to cheat von Stumpf of its price.
Worst of all, he kept thinking that he heard footsteps in the darkness at his back, a steady even pace that always stopped a moment or two after he stopped to listen. Although dwarfs still lived in certain parts of the underground tunnels, most were rumoured to be inhabited by mutants and worse. Anything could be out there in the darkness, anything at all, and the knife he had taken from the dead thug in the tavern seemed little enough protection. But Argo ignored Karl’s fears, and, rather than growing tired, the swordsman seemed to gain strength as they descended through the tunnels.
As if he were at home in them, as if the darkness and the weight of rock above—the weight of the whole city—were comfortably familiar. Certainly, he knew the way to go, although that was strange, too, now Karl thought about it. Hadn’t Argo said that he was a stranger in the city? There was much more to the handsome young swordsman than met the eye.
Most of the tunnels were narrow and low-ceilinged, and once or twice they had to stop and backtrack when they came upon a cave-in that had blocked the way forward. On one occasion they disturbed a colony of bats which exploded around them in a fury of leather wings. Argo stood his ground, unperturbed, but Karl huddled on the floor until the creatures were gone. On another, they passed through a high ruined chamber, fungi of every description growing over the wreckage of a wooden floor. Some toadstools were taller even than Argo, and bracket fungi stepped up the rock walls, glowing with a virulent green light. On the way across, Karl stepped on a round growth which exploded in a cloud of spores that burned his nostrils like a dose of boiling hot pepper, making him sneeze uncontrollably. Argo, who didn’t seem to be affected, had to wait until Karl could go on.
As they ducked through the narrow crack that led out of the chamber, Karl heard stealthy padding footsteps, many of them, all around in the darkness and coming closer and closer. Argo raised the lantern, and Karl saw a hundred or more small shadowy figures creeping along high ledges, stepping down slopes of rock scree. None was taller than three feet, and all were naked but for loincloths, their warty green skin smeared with dirt, their wide fanged mouths grinning, their pointed ears rising above bald pates. They were armed with pointed staves and crude hammers or axes. A tribe of goblins.
In the time it took Karl to realize what the creatures were, and to draw out the knife he had taken from the dead ruffian, the first of the goblins scuttled towards Argo, who drew out his sword while still holding up the lantern. The creatures hissed with fear and started back—even as Argo cut off their heads with a level sweep of his weapon. Others higher up began to pelt him with crude bombs stuffed with fungus spores. The poisonous dust fumed thickly around him, crackling in the flame of the lantern, but seemed not to affect him at all. He split one goblin almost in half, lopped off the arm of another. Two jumped on his back, and he ran backwards and crushed them against the rock wall.
Meanwhile, others were advancing on Karl. He managed to stick one with his knife, but it fell backwards, squealing in dismay, and pulled the haft of the knife from Karl’s hand. Its companions grinned widely and raised their crude weapons higher, their slitted yellow eyes burning upon him. Karl backed away until stone hit his back, watching with dismay as the lead goblin, no bigger than a child but with the face of a psychotic toad, raised its notched axe. Karl felt the tickling pressure between his eyes again, and before he knew what he was doing he had thrown up his hands and gabbled out the spell of binding he had read in the book.
Instantly, every goblin in the chamber froze. One or two toppled off-balance and fell stiffly to the floor. The pressure between Karl’s eyes became a knife blade prying at his brain. He fell to his knees and felt blood gush from his nostrils, as rich and hot as fresh gravy.
Argo calmly sheathed his sword and helped the apprentice to his feet. He ordered Karl to follow, and set off amongst the frozen goblins as if nothing had happened. Karl staggered after him, so weak that he could hardly stand, but frightened of being left in the dark with the goblins, who surely wouldn’t remain bound by magic for long. The front of his jerkin was soaked in his blood, and he couldn’t seem to stop the flow completely, although he pinched the wings of his nostrils shut. The price of magic. It was lucky there hadn’t been any more goblins, and that they had been small, too. Otherwise the magic needed to bind them might have burst his body like an overripe tomato.
At last, they reached a huge round chamber, tall statues standing around its walls. In the centre was a kind of altar, a stone table ringed with skulls, its surface cut with channels and bearing the torn remnants of some obscene sacrifice. An animal, Karl hoped, and didn’t look too closely in case his worst fears were realized. On the far side of the chamber a statue taller than all the rest was carved out of the living rock wall, half man, half beast, so tall that it was beheaded by darkness. Its right hand clutched a dozen snakes; its left held a staring human head by the hair. Between its hoofed feet was the narrow entrance to the maze.
“Now you will lead us,” Argo said, and handed Karl the lantern, his eyes glittering in the light.
Through the red veils of his exhaustion, Karl called up his memory of the map. It was still in his pocket, but he didn’t dare draw it out. Argo could take it from him and leave him there, alone in the dark, prey to whatever was following them.
The passageways of the maze were high and narrow, carved roughly out of granite as dark as obsidian. The rock absorbed the light of the lantern rather than reflecting it, so that Karl had to find the way by only the feeblest of glows. Still, considering the circumstances, he thought that he was doing well enough, turning right and left and right again, avoiding passages that turned into steep slippery slopes dropping to waterfilled shafts, slabs set in the floor that would tip the unwary into deep pits, a dozen sorts of mechanical trap that couldn’t be revealed by magic.
Perhaps he was overconfident; or perhaps he was simply tired. In any event, he didn’t realize his mistake until one of the paving stones gave slightly with a fatal click under his foot, like a bone breaking. There was an ominous rumbling above, and then a steel grip snatched him back as the massive weight slammed down, fitting the passage precisely. The wind of its falling blew Karl’s hair back; the noise of its impact half-deafened him. When Argo let go of his shoulder, he fell to his knees. “You are a fool,” Argo hissed in his ear.
“You can bet I’ll try and do better,” Karl said. The smooth stone of the deadweight was only inches from his tender, bloody nose. He was so shaken that he almost took out the map to make sure of the way, but he remembered that if he did Argo would take it and leave him here in the dark—with his head cut off too, as like as not.
Right and left, deeper into the bowels of Middenheim Rock. The crushing weight of it seemed to press all life out of the stale black air. Karl had no room in his head for his fears or what he would do when they reached the treasure, no room for anything but remembering the route. Right and left, deeper and deeper until they reached the heart of the maze.
It was a square chamber, with no way out but the passage which led into it. But dimly outlined by the glow of the lantern which Karl held, sketched in faded paint, was an ornate doorframe, the way to the treasure.
Argo threw back his head and opened his mouth amazingly wide, and let out a chattering, inhuman cry Karl’s heart froze. Striding out of one of the dark passageways behind them came three skeletons, yellow bones gleaming in the lantern-light, feet clicking on the stone floor, eye sockets holding fell red glows. Each carried a notched, rusty sword, and one wore a golden helmet that an age ago had been cleft by a fearsome blow.
“Our brothers,” Argo said, and whirled on Karl, his smooth, handsome face without expression. “Now you will tell us the password.”
“P-p-password?”
“You know it. Either you speak it now, or we will kill you and have your corpse speak it for us, when it has rotted enough for the magic to take hold.” Argo’s breath smelt like crushed ants; his eyes glittered more fiercely than ever. “Now, boy?”
There was a flare of blue light. Argo collapsed and the three skeletons burst apart, bones crumbling to powder even before they hit the floor. Blinking, Karl saw the wizard step out of the shadows of the passageway, his white face grim.
“A strange place to find a bookseller’s apprentice, and strange companions for him, too,” the wizard said. “Do you have any idea of how deeply you have meddled, my boy?”
Karl could only shake his head. Blue spots still floated in his vision.
“My apprentice was killed by this creature of Undeath,” the wizard said, nudging Argo’s body with the steel-shod toe of his boot. “He was bringing to me a map which led to a certain ancient treasure, treasure that in the wrong hands could do untold harm. He had hidden the map in a book of simple spells, the kind of thing a wizard’s apprentice would carry. But still, somehow, he was found out. He managed to gain entrance to the city, but before I could come to his rescue, he was cornered, at the Cliff of Sighs. He was a brave boy, and knew what would happen if the map were taken.
“So he threw himself from the cliff, and was torn to pieces by the trees far below. Before I could rescue the book, and before this creature could lay his hands upon it, one of the scavengers found it, and brought it to you.”
“You knew I had the book,” Karl said.
“Oh yes. Never lie to a wizard, boy. Let that be your first lesson in your new life. I lent a little of my power to you, and waited until the creature found you. When you used the spells in the book, I was able to follow you by the traces of magic you left. Luckily enough for you, I arrived here just in time to use a spell of my own to unbind the magic which held the skeletons together.”
“And Argo? Why was he—” And then Karl understood. “He was a deathless one too! That’s why the spell of binding that I used on the goblins didn’t affect him. And why their spore bombs didn’t affect him either.”
“Indeed. Some poor man whose corpse was revived through necromancy.” The wizard pulled at his long black beard. “And now, you will want to see this treasure, no doubt. You may speak the password.”
“I’ve had enough nosebleeds, thank you.”
“The magic was laid down by the efforts of someone else, long ago. The word merely releases it.” The wizard held up the scrap of paper he’d somehow taken from Karl’s pocket. “If you won’t say the word, then I will.”
So Karl said the word of unlocking, and a wooden door suddenly appeared in the sketched doorframe, and flew open with a thud that brought a cloud of dust from the ceiling.
“The first thing you’ve done right,” the wizard said, and stepped forward.
Karl followed—and then was struck from behind and thrown across the chamber. As he got to his hands and knees, he saw that Argo had thrown his cloak over the wizard’s head, pinioning his arms and cutting off his breath at the same time. Without thinking, Karl picked up one of the rusty swords and swung at Argo’s legs.
Blunt though the blade was, it cut through to the bone. But instead of blood, hundreds of small insects gushed out of the wound. Argo howled and let go of the wizard, tried to staunch the flow. Beetles were everywhere; some had even taken to the air and were battering at the lantern, maddened by its light. Their wings glittered just like Argo’s eyes. Argo fell to his knees; he seemed to be shrinking inside his skin. And then the wizard managed to gasp a spell, and the swordsman’s clothes and skin flew apart, revealing a seething mass of beetles still clinging to the skeleton within. The wizard said another spell, and there was a sudden acrid smell in the chamber, and the beetles all stopped moving. A thousand brittle little corpses rained from the air.
“My fumigation spell,” the wizard said, picking up his spectacles and examining them. “Who would have thought I needed it against one of the undead? Those insects must have been acting as one organism, using the skeleton and a false skin to give them human form.”
“He always said ‘we’,” Karl ventured, “never ‘I’.”
“Indeed. When I used the spell of unbinding, they must have been only temporarily discommoded, and soon knit the bones back together again. Undeath spawns more kinds of evil than we can ever imagine.” He set the spectacles on the end of his long nose. “Now, let’s get to the treasure. Bring the lantern.”
Together, they stepped into the room beyond the door. Karl held up the lantern eagerly… and then groaned aloud. All around, on shelves carved into the rock, covered in dust yet still giving off that familiar sweet musty smell, were hundreds, thousands, of leather-bound books.
“Not all treasure glitters,” the wizard said. “This is the library of Fistoria Spratz, among the greatest scholars of the magical arts this city ever produced, preserved and hidden here by the last of his magic. You understand why the forces of evil should not gain hold of it. And now, my boy, I must prepare a teleportation spell that will take us and these marvellous books back to my rooms in the city above. It will take a little while, time for you to consider if you would become my apprentice.” He held up a beringed hand. “Think carefully. I will say that you have what it takes. The door would not have opened if you did not have some trace of the power, nor would you have been able to channel the power I lent you so easily. You are a trifle vain and arrogant, it is true, but you are also brave, and more than a little lucky. Be quiet and think.”
But Karl did not have to think. He was ready with his answer long before the dark rock faded around him, and he found himself together with the wizard and stacks of dusty books in a bedroom overlooking the familiar dingy street where Otto von Stumpf’s bookshop stood. Karl took a deep breath, and said the one word that would unlock a long life of adventure.