“We should secure the foyer,” said Will. “Block the doors, at least. Honestly, this place is indefensible.”
“There’s nothing alive outside,” said Sam. “If we block the doors to the rest of the castle, we’ll be safe from any remaining spiders.”
Charlotte pulled spikes out of her pack* and handed them to Will.
“Jam these under each door.”†
After they set up camp, Will and Sam sparred, Sam using her new sword. Gralen and Charlotte read through the scrolls and journals from the Gemini room. When they extinguished their lantern to sleep‡, and their eyes adjusted to the darkness, stars appeared overhead. Cut into the dome, each of the constellations of the zodiac glowed in the dark.
They heard a faint whirring from the great clock above.
The floor was hard and cold beneath their blankets; they drifted fitfully to sleep. In the still-dark morning Charlotte awoke from a dream of being locked in a room. Someone was trying to get into the room. Or was something trying to get out?
In the twilight between sleeping and waking, she slowly realized that the dream was real. The half-bar across the main doors was rattling.
She heard the wood cracking.
“Wake up!” She pushed Sam, stood, kicked Will, then Gralen. “Wake up!”*
They heard thuds against the door to the ballroom. The iron spike scraped against the floor with each pounding.
They rushed to arm themselves. Will and Sam donned their armor, armed their crossbows.†
“Let’s go upstairs,” said Will, “and see what’s out there. Take everything. We might not return.”
…
A waning moon lit the battlement. In the courtyard shapes moved on the outer walls.
“Goblins,” said Charlotte.‡ “Dozens of them. Gaunt. Everywhere.”
“The back tower,” Will replied. “The secret tunnel.”
They ran through the charred skeletons of the southwest tower, across the south battlement into the back tower, and down the stairs to that tower’s first floor.
“Spike the door that leads outside,” said Will. “I’ll spike the door to the main part of the castle.”
“We should take the tunnel,” said Sam.
“I agree. But we need to slow them down. We don’t know where the tunnel goes, or even if it goes anywhere.”
“Gralen!” cried Charlotte. “The sword! Look at your sword!”
“I don’t have a—”
The broken rune sword he’d tied to his belt now had a glowing blade. Gralen pulled the sword out; the blade threw an emerald glow over the bones and tower walls.
The door to the outside opened. A creature walked in*, a creature not of flesh but bone, half their height, a skeletal body draped in wet leaves, moss, and the tattered remains of ancient armor.
Will swung his sword, shattered the fanged skull. Headless, the skeleton swung its own rusty sword, but Will parried and shattered the creature’s ribs and backbone. It collapsed.† A stench burst upon their senses as two more bony creatures, all scraggly hair and dripping with watery weeds, walked jerkily in. They heard more outside.
Gralen tossed Will the glowing rune sword. Will caught it by the hilt and sheathed his own.‡ Charlotte and Sam had already pushed the trap door open and rushed into the tunnel. Gralen and Will followed. Will tried to push the trap door shut, but a skeletal arm reached through. He pushed harder. The bony hand fell grasping to the dirt stairs, bouncing step to step before it stopped twitching.
The door was shut, but it shook with a heavy, powerful pounding.
“I have an idea,” said Sam.
“Run like hell?” asked Gralen.
“The trap. The deadfall. We can trigger it on top of these things.”
“Then run like hell,” she added.
The pounding continued. The trap door began to crack.
“I love this idea,” said Gralen. “Do you love this idea, Will?”
“It’s a beautiful idea, Gralen.”
“Right, let’s set us up the trap!”
Sam led Gralen and Charlotte down the thin corridor, measuring out a coil of rope as she went.
Will shoved a spike through the trap door’s ring to help hold it shut. He continued pushing it up whenever the creatures on the other side resumed battering it.
Sam leapt across the trap’s trigger, ducking the ceiling. Gralen followed, and then Charlotte.* Sam broke her ten-foot pole into three pieces. She and Charlotte constructed a makeshift tripod, and placed the heaviest rock they could find on top.† She tied a fifty-foot length of rope to the leg facing the trap.
“Will, get the hell over here!”
Will let go. He leapt across the deadfall’s triggering plate. The spike rattled against the ceiling, but held the trap door shut—for now.
Sam trailed the rope behind as they ran down the thin corridor. Before the rope played out, they turned a curve and came smack up against a door.
“It’s locked,” said Gralen.
Sam loaded her crossbow. Will grabbed it away from her.
“We can’t fight our way back,” he said. “There are too many. Unlock the door and yell when you’re done.”
Will ran back. He was outside the lantern’s light, but the glow from the rune sword’s hilt cast an eerie illumination. The skeletons had opened the door. He shot at the first skeleton, coming down the stair. The bolt bounced through its bare ribs.‡ He hung the crossbow on his back, and then fired Sam’s. The bolt went wild.§ He leapt across the deadfall’s trigger to meet the skeletons at the bottom of the dirt stairs.
His ethereal blade sliced through a skeleton’s ribs.* Its own rusty sword nearly poked through Will’s armor.† It tried again, and as it swung Will ran the green blade through its skeletal spine.‡ It fell. Another skeleton stepped into its place.§ A red beam of light burst past Will, and the new skeleton collapsed.
Will sliced the next skeleton into three pieces.**
And still they kept coming, falling through the trap door and knocking knees down the stairs.
“Hurry!” he yelled.
…
Sam had fitted her tools to the door’s lock about the time Will fired his first crossbow. Gralen watched Will fighting. When Will killed the first skeleton, Gralen loosed a magical ray that burst the second skeleton asunder.*†
Sam cursed and banged at the door.*‡
“Charlotte,” she said, “I need some help here.”*
…
Will dodged a sword-thrust from a tatter-armored skeleton, and it ducked Will’s ethereal blade.† Then as he dodged its next attack and it was raising its sword to try again, another burst of light exploded against the creature’s skull. It collapsed in a pile of bones.‡
Three skeletons lay broken on the ground. Another swung its sword; it cut Will’s armor. Will destroyed it with the magic blade.§
Two skeletons thrust spears at him. It was as if the sword itself guided him in dodging the attacks. He destroyed one.**
Will danced his dance with death.*† The remaining skeleton’s spear thrust up into Will’s armor and drew blood.*‡ The glowing sword sliced across the skeleton. It fell to the ground.*§ Still there were more.†*
…
Sam and Charlotte carefully examined the lock. They slowly worked Sam’s lockpicks into it, prodded at its workings, adjusted the picks. They twisted Sam’s tools in the lock.
It clicked.*
“Will!” she cried. “It’s open!”
Will retreated and leapt again over the trap.† When he was well away from the trap’s trigger, Gralen pulled on the rope. The rock thudded to the ground. The goblin skeletons swarmed toward it. The four friends held their breath, watching, until Sam yelled, “move, goddammit!” They turned and ran through the door just as the roof caved in above the bony goblins giving chase.‡ There was a great noise, and dirt and dust billowed through the doorway and around them until Will slammed the door shut and spiked it.
…
They continued down the long tunnel for an hour, as well as they could determine. Will’s sword slowly dimmed, then was, again, nothing more than a broken hilt. The tunnel sloped up slightly at first, and then circled up quickly toward the end.
At the end of the tunnel there was another trap door in the ceiling.
“It’s stuck,” said Sam. “Something’s on it.”
Will put his shoulder against it, slowly tilting it up until something metal slid off. They climbed into the fresh air. A full moon on the horizon shone through wooden slats. The stars were bright beyond a dilapidated roof. There was a fluttering, and an acrid odor, as dozens of bats took flight.
They left the building. It was a small, one-room shack, heavily tilted to the side, built on a terrace on the side of the mountain. Below, they saw another terrace with more dilapidated buildings. Charlotte thought she could see the castle far down the mountainside.*
Wheat and rye grew wild. When they clambered down an overgrown path to the next terrace they found grapes on fallen fences, hyssop growing between the posts. The odor of mint wafted up. Further below, nasturtium hung from apple trees.
They walked down the mountain, west and north, using what paths they could. When the steep hills turned to low hills, Gralen’s raven flew down and landed on his shoulder, screeching.
“I missed you too,” said Gralen.
“If we had our horse to carry our packs,” said Charlotte, “I could kiss it.”
They heard neighing a few yards away.†
“Pucker up,” said Sam.
