The three paused a moment at the sight. Half of a mail-clad skeleton was there. What had become of its lower parts was moot. Both parts of a broken, rusted sword blade lay near a gauntlet of steel that sheathed the skeleton’s right hand. The left gauntlet and accompanying hand had apparently been wedged beneath the slab when the portal was forced shut; all that remained of them now were bits of rusted, twisted metal and splintered bone. It was likewise obvious that the entombed brigand had sundered his sword blade against the inner surface of the portal in a futile attempt to force it open.
As he gazed somberly upon this tragic spectacle, Gord wondered what pleadings and beggings his comrades had ignored as they trapped this man. Then he was emboldened by the knowledge that he had better companions than those responsible for this sight, and these thoughts strengthened his resolve to go into the cairn.
“Now we must be victorious, or die in the trying,” Green-leaf whispered, continuing his previous line of thinking. “If the thing within is loosed, it will ravage and devour countless hapless souls before it can be found again and sent back to its stinking home below-if indeed this could ever be done!”
“If axe can cleave it,” Chert rumbled, “then it is a dead demon indeed, for I will confront it now!” With that pronouncement, the tall barbarian strode into the barrow, not waiting to see what his associates would do. The others followed on his heels, and the three humans and one cave bear faced the unknown together.
The antechamber they entered was illuminated by light that streamed in through the doorway exposed by the fallen slab. It was a chamber about six paces in width and five in depth. The low ceiling of stone made Chert, Curley, and the bear crouch out of necessity; Gord stood stooped over for another reason, feeling oppressed at the thought of the tons of stone over his head. Many of the slabs were old and cracked, and he tried not to think about what would happen if the whole affair came tumbling down.
Yurgh, seeming agitated, pushed his way to the front of the group and swung his barrel-like head from side to side, sniffing the musty, foul air. Then he issued forth a horrible growl that seemed to make the stones ring with its ferocity. The three adventurers saw that the monstrous ursine was glaring at the narrow opening in the rear wall of the antechamber’s rightmost portion, its lintel joining the outer blocks of the wall there. Then they heard a shuffling sound.
A grinning apparition suddenly leaped around the corner of the opening and into their view. It was a dead, gray-colored thing, a rotted corpse with tattered lips falling away to reveal yellow teeth bared in the grin of death. Somehow it still lived; a half-life of awful sort existed within the body and animated it with fell force that gave its decaying flesh and leathery, mummylike skin the power to move with speed and purpose. The unnatural condition that imbued this thing exuded from its putrescent eyes. All but the bear recoiled at the sight of the horrible thing.
The creature before them was clad in the moldering remains of what had once been garments of some priestly sort. Although it seemed to be able to move with agility, the arms and legs of the corpse belied this. These members appeared to have been wrenched and disjointed, so that they now protruded at unnatural angles. Yet the thing did move, and its withered right hand had the strength to hold the corroded iron of a mace.
All of this was perceived in an instant, for the pause of the undead corpse was only momentary. The thing gave another leap, arms and legs going out at crazy angles, and moved to attack the bear, which was still in the forefront. As the zombie advanced it raised its flanged metal club, intending to bring the weapon down upon Yurgh’s head. The monster’s skeletal face looked even more fiendish as its jaws opened in a soundless effort to shriek its hatred and fury.
Yurgh was not simply waiting for the stinking thing’s blow. The bear also lunged forward, and this move carried the animal close to the creature so that the mace impacted on the matted bristles of Yurgh’s humped shoulders, at the same time that the maw of the animal stretched wide and clamped shut on the thing’s crooked left arm. The weapon blow certainly hurt the bear, but Yurgh seemed to pay it no heed. With a savage shake of his massive head, the bear sent the zombie flying sideways-all of the thing, that is, but its left arm, which had come loose at the shoulder and was still in the bear’s mouth. The creature smacked into the wall of the antechamber with a meaty sound, but without hesitation was up on its twisted legs again, mace rising for another attack.
Gord, finding himself on the zombie’s flank as it again advanced toward the bear, took matters into his own hands. He lunged forward, ducking under the zombie’s upraised mace, and thrust his swordpoint into the creature’s right leg as the thing was turning to meet this new threat. Gord withdrew his weapon quickly, but not fast enough to avoid a grazing blow from the mace. He saw stars as an iron flange glanced off his forehead, and he reeled back. Although blood now blinded his left eye, Gord had seen enough to know that his stab had apparently done little harm to his opponent. He took a second to shake his head, trying to clear his senses, and when he looked up again he saw the foul creature was aiming another blow at him.
“To your grave, damned thing!” Chert cried as he came up behind the creature and brought his great battle-axe down. Because of the low ceiling and the closeness of the melee, the blow could not be delivered with full force, but it was still strong enough to send the blade through the steel plate and chain mesh protecting the undead thing’s shoulder.
The barbarian’s blow did not fell the zombie, but it threw the thing off balance, so that the mace it wielded swished through empty air. As it exposed itself thus, Curley Greenleaf jabbed his spear forward, scoring a hit on the zombie’s rotting body. “This thing is tough,” he shouted to his companions, ducking another swing of the undead cleric’s rusty mace.
The bear growled hideously, but the crowded conditions did not permit it enough space to attack fully. Yurgh had spit out the moldering member from his mouth, shaking it free and then trying to clear the foul taste from his mouth. Gord had moved back and was also out of the fight for the moment, trying to clear his vision and staunch the flow of blood that was running down from the wound on his head and blinding him. Chert and the druid continued to press the zombie so that it could do naught but face them in return.
If the damage done to its undead body caused it pain, there was no evidence of it. Gaping jaws still sounding its silent scream, lambent hatred burning in its eyes, the zombie sought to crush its foes with the weapon it had used in life.
“When I stab it, you strike from the side!” Greenleaf shouted as he dodged another swing of the iron mace. Then he thrust his spear forward into the thing’s body again.
The barbarian gave a cry that sounded like “Brrrr!” as he swung his weapon in an arc perpendicular to the zombie’s body. With both of his hands clasped on the haft of the great axe, his teeth clenched, his muscles working to their fullest, Chert drove the blade hard and true, hitting the thing at the waist just as the druid yanked his spear out of its torso. The curving blade cut the rotting thing nearly in half, and the zombie fell back and down.
The thing twitched and jerked, but did not stand upright again. Its lolling head showed only empty eye sockets where the evil light had burned a moment earlier. Then the air was filled with the sound of a deep, dry chuckle coming from the interior of the cairn, so pervasive that it seemed to flow right through the stone itself. It was the most evil sound Gord had ever heard.
“Yurgh! Guard the doorway there,” the druid said, following the words with a gesture and a few guttural sounds. The bear complied, moving next to the opening on the back wall that the zombie had come through. Curley turned and surveyed his friends, a thin smile on his lips. “Well, that’s that,” he said. “Now, Gord, let’s take care of that gash on your head.”
Gord had overcome the dizziness that beset him when he was hit, had managed to clear the blood from his left eye with a piece of linen torn from his undershirt, and was dabbing at the wound. The druid moved him near the entrance and peered at the cut in the light there.
“It’s not a serious wound,” he said, “but who knows what foulness was on that mace? I’ll have it taken care of in a moment!” The young thief watched as Greenleaf took a small jar from his belt pouch, opened it, and with a bit of clean cloth took out a small portion of the amber-colored ointment therein. The stuff made his skin tingle when the druid applied it to the wound, the cut stung briefly, and then all pain was gone. A small moan of satisfaction escaped Gord’s lips as the magical medicine finished its work.
“The wound is closed, my friend,” said Curley, “and your forehead is as good as new-except for a small scar you’ll have there. Clean off the rest of the blood, and we’ll be ready to get on with this business.” The druid turned back inside the chamber then and saw the barbarian examining the remains of their foul and unnatural foe.
“Hey, Curley, what kept this thing going?” asked Chert as he wiped the blade of his weapon on the creature’s tattered garments. “It looks as if it has been dead for years!”
“The zombie?” Greenleaf asked rhetorically. “No doubt some malign power desired to keep the corpse animated with wicked force to serve as a slave. That was no ordinary zombie, though. I’ve encountered a few of these undead in my travels, and this one was far worse than any of the others.”
“Whatever… the thing went down easily enough when kissed by Brool here!” the barbarian giant said as he hefted his huge axe.
“Brool, you say? An interesting name for an axe,” said Curley. “I detected a low hum coming from it as you felled the zombie with that last stroke. Why have I never heard you call it by name it before now?”
Chert grinned at the druid. “This has been handed from father to son in my family for generations. I named it to you without thinking, and now you know its secret too. When called by name the weapon strikes true and sinks deep, as if it were alive. Perhaps it is, or perhaps it carries a dweomer…. I neither know nor care. It is a true friend, tried and trusted!”
“Indeed, a friend of us all,” Gord chimed in. He had finished cleaning himself up and rejoined the group.
Curley Greenleaf nodded knowingly and spoke no more about the matter. He turned his attention to the bear just as Yurgh let out a low rumble.
“Our friend senses the presence of something else awaiting us inside,” said the druid. “Now it is time to go down and see what that is. May our weapons prove potent and our enemy be confounded!”
The three men went to the doorway and peered inside. They could see a small landing that gave onto a flight of worn steps heading to the right and descending into total darkness.
“Here, Chert,” said the druid as he fumbled in his belt and withdrew a small bag of black felt. From the bag he took a small, glowing object that made the antechamber almost as bright as day. He reached up and touched it to the front of the barbarian’s helmet, and there it stuck. “You have not the vision of elvenkind as I do, and neither Gord nor Yurgh can see in darkness either. This lodestone will stay fast to the steel of your helmet, shedding its light, a magical illumination neither hot nor flickering, for us all to see by. Agreed?”
Chert accepted readily, and the group proceeded ahead, delving below the grim cairn. Gord, sword in hand, thought about the strange sort of sight his weapon bestowed upon him but did not mention it to his companions.
Chapter 30
The ancient steps were hewn from the rock of the mountain itself, their chiseled edges worn smooth over the ages by persons or things that these adventurers could not guess at. Chert led the way, followed by Curley Greenleaf, Gord, and then the huge bear, who had some difficulty squeezing his bulk through the narrow confines of the place. The quartet descended slowly, each member keeping within two or three steps of the others at all times. Gord kept count of the steps as he negotiated them, and reached the bottom and the number ninety at the same time. The three men fanned out at the end of the stairway, slowly turning to survey the place they had found beneath the stone barrow.
They were in a natural cave, a domed grotto of circular shape. The roof of the cave was hung with long stalactites, and the floor was dotted with mounds that looked like rounded-off stalagmites, as if something had passed over them frequently. Leaning against the wall nearby were several pitch-covered pieces of wood, obviously a store of torches left there long ago. Three passages led away from this large chamber, the entrance to each showing evidence of having been shaped by tools in some distant age. One was directly across from the stair, while the other two offered egress to the left and the right. None of these dark passages seemed more or less promising than the others. Which led to the demon’s lair? Which to the hidden relic? Perhaps none… or all.
“Let’s go straight ahead,” suggested Gord. “If we come to any branchings, we always turn right. That way we can never lose our way.”
His two companions agreed, and the great bear simply followed the druid. The four went to the arched entry to the chosen passage and looked cautiously down its length. The magical light shed by the lodestone affixed to Chert’s steel cap allowed them to see sixty feet into the tunnel, formed of a combination of natural and worked stone.
A faint stirring of the air brought to their noses a putrid odor, a nauseating mixture of decay and foulness. Yurgh snorted as the scent struck his nostrils. Then the bear pushed past the humans, heading down the broad passageway at a fast shuffle. Gord, Chert, and Greenleaf followed quickly, passing through the entrance one by one, and then moving into a line abreast once past that stricture. The corridor was about six paces wide, more than sufficient space for the three men to travel and fight side by side. With Gord on the left, Greenleaf in the center, and Chert on the right, they followed the bear, keeping within two or three paces of Yurgh’s flanks.
Once they were thirty or forty feet inside the passage, the light revealed a wall in the distance. They were coming to an intersection where the way was no longer straight; paths curved to the left and the right, which gave the men their first opportunity to put Gord’s procedure into action. But Yurgh knew nothing of such intentions, nor would he have cared if he had. The bear lumbered ahead and into the left corridor without hesitation.
“His nose tells him which way to go,” said the druid quietly to his companions as they trotted to keep up with the animal. “So that’s the way we go, too.”
The passage curved gently and seemed to be heading back in the general direction of the grotto they had just left. The clicking of the bear’s claws and the pounding of the men’s leather heels on the stone floor raised faint echoes around them. The vaulted ceiling of the passageway sent these sounds bouncing back and forth in a confusing manner. The noise did not seem to distract Yurgh in the least, for he went on without pause, veering to the right into another straight tunnel when the corridor they were trodding branched in a Y-shape. Gord began to feel himself losing all sense of distance and direction as their ursine bloodhound took them right yet again into another curving branch of the passage, then along one more straight course, before suddenly coming to a halt in front of another intersection.
“He pauses to sniff which way the demon lies,” the druid said.
“Phew!” Chert replied and spat as he did so. “This reeking stench is so foul that the thing must be everywhere.”
Yurgh swung his barrel-like head back and forth several times, making snorting and snuffling sounds with his nose, then held his snout pointed to the left for a long second. With a grunt, the monstrous cave bear moved forward again, slowly this time, holding his nose close to the chiseled stone beneath them as he took the left-hand branch.
Suddenly the sound of a high-pitched giggle enveloped the group, making the humans start. At this, Yurgh growled loudly, and the bear’s mane of fur bristled. Gord felt horripilations on his head as well. Walking stiffly, baring his teeth and growling, the bear went on, closely followed by the three men. They would all soon face the demonic cataboligne in what the men presumed would be a fight to the death.
After what seemed hundreds of yards, but was certainly not that far, the curved walls of the passage once more offered a choice of direction. The correct one was evident to all at this point, however, for a dull, blue-violet luminosity pervaded the air in the tunnel to the right. Then the light faded and again laughter sounded-neither chuckle nor malign giggle this time, but a sweet peal of melodious laughter, seductively feminine and appealing, gently echoing down the passage. The bear snarled but continued to move slowly. After exchanging glances of uncertainty, the men followed.
After only a few dozen more paces, the passage turned sharply and opened into a large and beautiful cavern. The four of them arrived at the entranceway at virtually the same time, and at that instant a woman’s voice boomed out.
“Welcome, strangers!” The speaker was standing in the center of the oval place, arms spread wide in greeting. “Since my little tricks failed to dissuade you, I have no choice but to surrender myself to your mercies, trusting that you will not slay or abuse me!”