Marguerite returned the poker to its place, then — ;cked up the toad with arms stiffly outstretched. The spaniel-sized creature hissed and paddled, and if it had wanted to, it could have wriggled from her arms or drawn blood with its claws. But the toad had bowed; to her authority, at least for now. She carried Griezell-bub toward the door. Then she remembered the click of the key-Donskoy had locked her in.
Griezell made another goiter and rasped, this time breaking the hoarse sound into short, staccato rattles. Like laughter. Marguerite gasped and dropped the toad at once. Griezell hissed, then shambled toward one of the tapestries flanking the fireplace. With twenty hounds and a frightened fox looking on, the toad disappeared into the wall. Marguerite wondered whether the little black beast had the fabled ability to teleport-moving from one place to another without actually traversing the space between. Either that, or it had become insubstantial, a specter. Unless. .
Marguerite heard the faint sound of stone scraping against stone. She cautiously stepped toward the tapestry, half-expecting some kind of trap to be sprung. The cloth wavered softly, teasing her, then settled.
She stared at the wall. Every sinew in her suddenly reawakened, tense with excitement. If her guess was correct, the wall had opened to permit Griezell's passage. There was a secret door, just like the one in Zosia's garden. Then she recalled how the old woman had spoken a word to shift that portal, a magical command. If such a thing were required here, Marguerite was tost. But it couldn't be; Griezeltbub did not speak, did he? And the toad had gone through.
"Griezell." She shook her head. Did she really think it would answer?
Marguerite picked up a piece of kindling from the stack beside the hearth, then put the end of the stick to the tapestry, poking the belly of a hound. Nothing happened. She poked again, then walked to the side of the heavy fabric, lifting the edge. Behind it lay the wall, firm and stony, seemingly impenetrable. Seemingly, she repeated to herself.
A faint scrabbling and hissing drifted out from the cover of the tapestry.
"Griezellbub," she repeated. "Show me how."
Her answer came-the scrabbling again, so soft she might have imagined it.
Marguerite went to the edge of the tapestry and slipped into the black sliver of space behind it, sliding flat along the wall until she came to the place where she thought Qriezell had disappeared. The heavy cloth pressed against her back. It smelled musty and blocked the light completely, making her nose burn, her eyes blind. She ran her hands over the wallT searching for some kind of tatch. There was none. She continued to probe, stretching high, then low, covering every spot she could reach. After several minutes, the weight and the sour stench of the tapestry became unbearable; she imagined herself pressed flat like a flower in an old book, slowly dying between its mildewed pages. Gasping, she slipped out from beneath the shroud and returned to the room. Mold and clotted strands of cobwebs clung to her head like a newborn's caul. She went to the basin and rinsed her face, pulling the worst of the dregs from her hair. Then she returned to the wall and stared at it. The creatures in the scene stared back.
She heard another muffled hiss, impatient and sharp.
To follow a toad, must I be one? she thought. She crouched at the base of the tapestry, which hovered just above the floor. Here, the sound of Griezell's hissing became acute. She lifted the bottom of the rank silk. Blocks of gray stone confronted her.
Something glistened in the candlelight-a tiny pool at the base of a stone. It was as if the rock were weeping, or perhaps drooling. She pressed hard on the surface of this block. It gave way, and an opening appeared, barely an arm's length high, equally narrow. Beyond lay the black, snakelike throat of a tunnel. Griezell's insistent little hiss echoed in the darkness. Marguerite stared in, hesitating. The door slid shut, narrowly missing her head.
Heart drumming, half with fear and half with anticipation, she rose and swiftly retrieved a candle from the table, fitting it with a guard against drafts. Then she retrieved a second candle, unlit, and slipped it into her garter. She looked around the room. Will I need a third? she wondered. After all, she mustn't be caught in the dark. But if either candle blew out in a gust, she would have no way to relight it. No time to hesitate, she told herself. No time. Griezell might not wait.
Armed with the small fire, she opened the passage again and crawled inside, pushing the candle ahead of her as she went. Her progress was slow and discomforting. She yanked the skirt of her gown up toward the neck and tucked it into the bodice so her knees were free. Her woolen hose tore on the stones. After the third bend in the tunnel, she saw a wall looming ahead. Griezell huddled at the base. The creature turned to face her, flashing a row of sharp tittle teeth, dripping with drool. Then it pushed at a stone, triggering another door, and went on.
The door closed before Marguerite could reach it. At the base of the wati lay a little puddle of Griezelt's saliva to mark the spot. She pressed upon the stone's cool surface, and a door opened in the same fashion as the last. Marguerite emerged in the space beyond. She stood slowly, ignoring the complaint of her cramped limbs. Her skirts escaped from her bodice and dropped to the floor.
She found herself in a chamber shaped like her own, but it was smaller and ruined, her room's stillborn twin. The crumbling hearth pitted the opposite wail like a black, empty wound. Tattered, filthy sheets clung to the modest furnishings. The bed stood completely naked, stripped of the mattress, curtains gone from the spires. The rope supports had been gnawed or rotted and now hung limply to the floor. In the outer wail rose a tall, thin window, bare of giass, The broken shutter hung crazily askew. A sliver of moonlight pushed past it, cutting a white path across the floor. In its glow lay a heap of leaves and dirty rags. Something wiggled inside it. Marguerite thrust her candle forth like a weapon. A mouse squealed on the mound, then scurried away, abandoning a nest of writhing pink babies, hairless and blind.
Qriezell sat beside the chamber door, hissing impatiently. The creature was right; this was only part of the journey, not a fitting end. As if to confirm her conclusion, a cold, wet breeze slunk in through the open window. She shivered, then strode to the door and yanked. It gave way noisily, and the toad and the woman went out together.
[n the hall outside, Marguerite paused to listen, afraid she might have alerted someone to her escape. But no footsteps came. The castle was quiet. She heard onfy a few distant creaks, the moaning of old wood.
A wave of excitement washed over her. Moments ago she had been a prisoner, powerless and small. The rest of the castle had loomed all around, taunting her with its forbidden mass. Now she had mastered one of its secret arteries-a passage that Donskoy would never show her, even if he fulfilled his promise of a castle tour. And Yetena or Zosia-would they too have kept her ignorant of this escape? It didn't matter. Soon, she mused, she would discover more of the castle on her own. In this way, she might eventually come to possess it-not by right, of course, but in spirit. While her husband and the others slept, she could stroll the keep as its haughty mistress instead of its simpering captive.
Marguerite took a moment to orient herself. Her own room, she thought, was somewhere to the left. Griezell hissed again and hobbled off to the right, then disappeared around a turn in the passage.
Marguerite hesitated, wary of following a creature most likely Zosia's familiar, and her confidence ebbed. Still, in the wake of her bravado there remained a bit of courage. And, even stronger, her curiosity. Marguerite hurried after her bumpy black guide, one hand lifting her skirt to keep from tripping, the other firmly clutching the candle.
The toad traveled remarkably fast. It moved at the edge of her sight or just beyond, a teasing shape along the wall. They came to a tower stair and descended its winding path. Cold gusts poured through a series of arrow slits in the exterior wall. Marguerite turned her back to them and held the candle low, wishing she had thought to bring a shawl. The red gown left her shoulders and the top of her spine exposed. Further, its layered skirt was awkward and noisy, swishing as she walked. But there had been no time to don anything else.
Marguerite followed Griezell turn after turn down the stairs, descending until she grew dizzy. She stopped suddenly, as a torch, blazing somewhere below, hurled Griezell's silhouette against the wall. The shadow looked immense and looming, a horrible hunchbacked monster. Just as quickly, it shrank and disappeared. Marguerite walked after it. When she passed the torch, she saw that the flame was actually quite weak; soon it would burn out. It stood guard before a door. She wondered where the door led and pressed her ear against it, discerning nothing. Then she hurried after Griezell.
In time they came to a second door, small and arched. With the toad's yellow eyes upon her, Marguerite lifted the stiff tatch and put her shoulder against the wood. Reluctantly, it gave way, opening into another passage. This soon led to yet another door, which opened onto another stair in the labyrinth, leading down still farther. Before she descended, Marguerite mentally counted the landmarks they had passed. She hoped no one had heard her progress. It dawned on her that a danger lay in wandering too far, where no one could hear her cries if she were injured and in need of help. Still, she went down. .
She felt as if she were descending into the depths of the Abyss itself. From the distance came the sound of water, churning and lapping: the Styx, perhaps, she wondered. The air grew more stale. It seemed to push and pull at her body in long, pestilent drafts, as if the castle were slowly breathing.
At last the stair ended, intersecting a passage with rough-hewn walls that extended both left and right. Marguerite lifted her candle in each direction. The passage was short, ending with an ironbound door at either end. GriezeHbub was nowhere in sight. She paused, listening for the toad's familiar hiss, the gruesome rasp. Nothing. Griezell had vanished.
Marguerite considered turning back, then laughed at herself. It was not as if the toad were a comforting companion or a capable bodyguard. What difference did it make if Griezell had gone? No doubt the creature was seeking a meal. And here in the depths, Marguerite could seek something else-something that would offer clues to Donskoy's history, or to that of his dead wife: the castle crypts.
She turned right and ventured through the first door. The chamber beyond smelled of copper and mildew.
She lifted her candle, startling a rat, which squealed and fled to the shelter of a dark corner. The trappings of a torture chamber sprang into being around her. To Marguerite's relief, they seemed in disuse. She recalled her vision of Donskoy's associates after the banquet. If torture had been their final bout of "entertainment," it had not occurred here. A large, broken cage dangled from the ceiling in one corner. Immediately below it lay a blackened fire pit, bare of coals. An empty rack stretched nearby. Rusty chains and broken shackles hung from the walls; below them, the floor was dark. In the far corner she spied a stout wooden table. An assortment of implements rested upon it-pocked blades, rusty pliers, bent picks. Among them were two metal collars, each with screws for tightening. Sharp spikes lined the inner surface of the bands. Without thinking, Marguerite put a hand to her throat to protect it.
Beyond the table lay another door. Marguerite approached it cautiously, then pulled hard. It refused to open. Something cold seeped into the bottom of her slipper, and she looked down, discovering a dark ooze bleeding across the threshold. Hastily she piucked up her skirt and stepped away. The muck could be anything-and she had no desire to see it more clearly. She left the torture chamber and went down the hall, past the stairs and through the age-darkened door at the opposite end.
In this room, the walls presented an orderly patchwork of marble panels stacked one atop the other. In the center rose a series of rectangular biers, upon which knights and ladies, carved from stone, lay sleeping. Marguerite had found the crypt.
She held out her candle and let its flickering light illuminate the panels of the tombs. Names slid past in the darkness: Serboinu, Petelengro, Lafuente …. with dates from centuries long past. In the corner was the tiny stone tomb of an infant. The cover lay on the floor, smashed into a hundred pieces, the small cavity that it had once covered now empty of anything save spiders and dust.
Marguerite moved slowly down the wall, shining her candle upon the name of each occupant. There were many similar surnames, though her husband's was not among them. This did not surprise her greatly; Lord Donskoy had acquired the keep, and his ancestors rested elsewhere. Still, she hoped to come across at least one that bore his surname, one that would list the given name of his first wife-no one in the castle spoke it in Marguerite's hearing, as though merely saying it were enough to earn the lord's wrath. Perhaps, if she were fortunate, the crypt might even have an epitaph that suggested the nature of the woman's tragic death.
Marguerite was nearing the end of the wall when the crypt of "Lord Vtadimir Vatrashki" caught her eye.
Cold is this Bed which I Do yet Looe, For 'tis not as Cold as the Ones Above.
She furrowed her brow and moved on.
The next crypt read, "Valeska Donskoy. Home Forever." Marguerite's flesh went chill. In such a dank and dark place, the epitaph read more like a pronouncement of punishment than a lament of grief or love, and she found herself wondering how carefully Donskoy had considered the words before having them struck onto his wife's tomb. There was nothing else, not even the customary dates of birth and death, as though anyone laying eyes on the crypt was expected to know the particulars of Valeska's life.
Marguerite stood before the sepulcher for many moments, holding her candle close to the cover, as though she might learn more of her predecessor by simply staring at the name. After a time, the darkness of the tomb began to close in around her, a crushing presence-and she realized that the vault was not as silent as it should have been.
As in the torture chamber she had visited earlier, this room had another door in the back wall. From behind this barrier, so muffled and soft that Marguerite could not even hear it if she breathed too loudly, came a gentle purl of water. Curious as to the cause of the sound, she went to the door and pulled it open.
The space beyond seemed a part of the land itself, a cavern with rough walls of basalt. Only the smooth stone steps leading down from the door had been carved by man. Below, a small black stream snaked lazily across the floor, its surface slowly churning at each broad turn. Marguerite descended. From somewhere Far above came a soft wind, moaning down from a deep recess in the jagged ceiling. She remembered the pit that Ekhart had warned her about inside the castle's main entrance, and his warning about the demise of «impatient» invaders. Perhaps this was the bottom.
Marguerite reached the foot of the stairs and followed a path of sloping stone along the edge of the dark water. The stream seemed to end at the wall ahead, though she could tell by the swirling currents that it simply sank beneath the rock and continued to flow. She turned to retrace her steps, and saw a shape floating toward her, bobbing in the water. A log, perhaps. She held forth the light.
Then she screamed.
It was a woman's body, lying face down in the water. Marguerite regained her composure, letting a faint hiss escape her lips. She stepped closer to observe the corpse. Stop quivering, she admonished herself. The dead can cause no harm. Unbidden, her vampiric suitor from Azalin's kargat came to mind, and she added aloud, "Those who are truly dead, at any rate."
The corpse's long black hair swirled around her head like a nest of shining eels, The dark strands contrasted starkly with the woman's thin white blouse, which clung to her swarthy flesh in shreds, held in place by a tight purple corset. The cadaver's arms, cloaked in billowing sleeves, were spread wide like the wings of an angel. A delicate web of chains and coins defined her narrow waist, from which red and green silks swirled about her like scarves. The livid feet were bare, the ankles circled in gold.
A Vistana, thought Marguerite. But how did her body get here?
She looked again at the stream's slow currents. Of course. This was an underground river, or at least its branch. The gypsy must have begun her journey upstream. Perhaps she had even come from another land, eventually drifting to this natural tomb. How ironic that the nomad's final journey had occurred after death.
Marguerite thought briefly about what she could do. Alert someone, and let them know of her own wanderings? Certainly not. Attend to the body alone? Equally distasteful. And even if she had the fortitude to drag a corpse out of the water and bury it herself, the Vistani had their own customs. A «proper» funeral meant something else to them entirely.
The water gurgled, and the body slowly began to roll over. Marguerite watched with lurid fascination. It must be the release of internal gases, she thought. She had read of that once. Still, she took a few steps back.