The Curse of Sangrook Manor (3 page)

Darvik sucked in a deep breath of steamy, rancid air.  There was no choice.  Deaf and blind, he’d have to comb every inch of this chamber in search of something that might help him escape.  He picked a direction at random and crept forward.  His feet crunched over dried bones, first only occasionally, but more and more often until the floor was carpeted in desiccated corpses.

He walked slowly and aimlessly, hands held forward, never sure if he was even going straight, never sure what he hoped to find.  With each step, he lowered his foot gingerly, trying not to trip on any bones.  He zig-zagged his way through the cavern, cursing each time he heard a snap underfoot.  Time passed.  He knew not how long, but eventually he was climbing over a mound of the dead.  Their bodies had long ago crumbled, and they packed tightly together under his step.  When he reached the top, he stretched upward, testing for the ceiling again, and again he felt nothing.  He bent down and dug through the mass of bodies until he found two femurs.  He then ripped apart the left leg of his shredded pants into strips and, feeling his way, lashed the bones together into a pole to extend his reach.  This he slowly raised, hoping to find resistance.

The plan worked.  He found the ceiling just out of reach.  Encouraged, Darvik probed the top of the cavern, hoping to find another chute, one that could have created the mound he stood upon.   He jabbed and scraped, and finally felt the pole slip upward.  Or had the bindings failed?  He pulled the pole down and checked the joint.  The tool was intact, and he used it to verify the location of the chute again.  It was there.  It was real.  It was wide enough to fit him.  Letting hope fill him, Darvik jumped, hoping to grab hold of the sides of the chute.

His fingers tapped the walls of the shaft and slipped away.

When he landed, the mountain of corpses crumbled beneath him.  He felt the bones snap and spray underfoot.  One leg sunk into the dead while his torso still fell.  He landed on his back and hoped that the bones he heard cracking were not his own.  He tumbled down the hill, chased by limbs and ribs and skulls until his shoulder finally struck hard ground.  He continued rolling, still assaulted by tumbling body parts, and as he rolled, he felt a sudden drop.

It was only his reflexes that saved him, for his fingers managed to find a grip on the harsh edge of the cliff.  He jerked to a stop, dangling, and skulls toppled past him, pelting his face and shoulders as they fell, blood dribbling from his mouth and his newly-sliced fingers.   He flailed with his feet and found nothing but a rock wall.  He was perhaps hanging above an empty mass grave, a mountain of the dead that had not yet formed.  Darvik scrambled to solid ground and screamed his frustration.  His one chance of escape, exposed as a lie.

He flopped onto his back and waited for starvation to take him.  There was no escape.

***

Candle-light glimmered on the edge of his sanity like a single star in an empty sky.  Darvik stood.  There was no choice.  Whatever the source of the light, he needed to see what fate had brought for him.  Be it a way out or a swift death, he welcomed it.  He stepped carefully, terrified of another pit, but he pressed forward.

The light led him to the highest point of the cavern where bodies were stacked against the wall.  But the candle was behind the bodies.  This was no mere wall.  Manic, he tore through the mound of the dead, tossing the bones and bodies aside until his fingers touched a metal grating, a gate.  Darvik kicked yet more corpses out of his way and rattled the iron bars.  For a moment, it seemed as though he had found only another false exit.  He clenched a pair of bars, his hands slick with sweat, grime, and blood, and shoved.

Suddenly, the rusty latches and hinges glowed red and offered no resistance at all.  The heavy metal gate swung open like a tent flap. 

Darvik followed the light.

He found the candle floating above a sarcophagus, suspended by some unseen force.  Darvik reached for it, hoping to take this gift and use it to find a way to safety, but the candle flitted away from his hand like he was trying to swat a fly.  He reached again, and his hand passed through the object of his hope.

Weary, drained, defeated, Darvik leaned heavily upon upon the sarcophagus. His blurry eyes saw the stone lid adorned with words carved in a language he could not comprehend, some thorny, sprawling script.  He coughed, and the candle-light revealed a blood-red tint in his spittle.

Only then did he comprehend the full extent of his injuries.  He had swallowed too much salt water.  That was the least of it.  Between his trip down the waterfall and his tumble down the bony hill, his clothing was in tatters.  His arms, legs and face were webs of lacerations, his knee throbbed, half his ribs were bruised or worse, and a few fingers were cut near to the bone.  What good was escape?  Erenkirk was no healer, and there was no horse to carry him to a village.

He was doomed.  The candle wasn’t showing him the way out.  It was showing him where his journey ended.

If he were doomed to die here, he would do it with some dignity.  This sarcophagus was meant for him.  The sudden urge to take this coffin for himself overwhelmed his sense of decency, any lingering respect for the dead.  There was no choice.  The Sangrooks, or whoever had held this land before them, were forgotten and disgraced.  Darvik was merely forgotten.  He wouldn’t languish for all eternity as scattered pile of bones in a gods-forsaken crypt.  No, he would be an honored guest.

With a surge of strength, he shoved the coffin’s lid aside.  He felt joints grind and sinews snap inside him, but fresh injuries could do nothing to stave off the madness that had overtaken him.  The stone lid cracked when it slammed onto the floor.

He ignored the fresh miasma of rotten flesh and peered into the coffin to see a leathery face with fine white hair.  What remained of its features were soft and womanly.  Darvik tugged at the mummy’s shirt, praying that he could lift the body out in one piece.  He had no such luck.  The mummy’s clothing held together no better than the mummy herself.  Her shirt shredded in his grip and she came crashing down on her back, crumbling every fragile joint and bone.

But there was one thing in this sarcophagus that remained whole and undecayed.  Around her neck, the mummy wore a smooth round amethyst on a silver chain.  Darvik took it without a second thought, and the chain slipped easily through a gap in the dead woman’s neck.  Whatever this jewel was, it was his forever.

Darvik coughed again, and this time his blood splattered the pendant in his grip.  He could not lay himself to rest with this treasure so defiled, so desecrated.  He was no monster.  He pulled his left hand into his ragged sleeve and rubbed at the gemstone to wipe it clean. 

But the blood only sunk deeper into the stone, trapped inside by a greedy hunger. He watched as the pale purple amethyst became marbled with dark red.  The wavy streaks of blood first congealed, then diffused, mixing with the purple into a bright red.

What had he done?  He had gone searching for a human essence extractor and found something far more horrible instead.  This was dark magic.  This was blood magic.  This was Sangrook magic.  This was why the manor was abandoned, why the name of Sangrook was spoken only in hushed tones.  This was all their sin and blasphemy in microcosm.  This belonged in a crypt in a cave below the mansion, safely locked away where no one could stumble upon it.

And Darvik had unwittingly activated it.  Even as an artificer, he could not guess what evil spell he had unleashed.  Gods, what had he done?

The ethereal candle flickered away into blackness.

Darvik was blind again.  Blind and cold and pale and bleeding, so exhausted he could almost feel his body turning to stone.

But he was not alone.  First he felt the dread of malevolent eyes upon him.  Next, he felt the air shifting, small ripples of wind that betrayed motion.  Next came ragged breathing, swishing fabric, and heavy footfalls.  As quickly as the sensations had come, they stopped.

A thousand candles appeared in the air around him like a thousand planets orbiting a sun.  The light was sudden and fierce, overpowering him after hours of darkness.  In the moment before his eyes snapped themselves shut, he saw the face.

The image was forever burned into Darvik’s mind, and it was all he saw until he gathered the will to open his eyes again.  A woman, emaciated and rotting, skin hanging loose like the ratty rags she wore, both a once-beautiful covering for her bones.  Blue-gray hair, tangled and matted, framed a face of rotten skin, empty eye sockets, and a dangling jaw.

Darvik ran.

The wraith followed.

The candles illuminated a path forward, unwinding into a line that led into a passageway.  Darvik followed.  The alternative was to dive into the darkness.  There was no choice.  His foot snagged on a wayward bone, and he lurched forward, but did not fall.  Still the wraith chased after him.  A heavy fall of his foot smashed into a ribcage.  The bones held tight onto his ankle and Darvik stumbled.  He landed hard on his knee and let his momentum carry him into a roll.  As he rolled, he caught a glance of the wraith reaching for him.  Heart and head thumping in time, he shook the ribcage free and scrabbled forward on his hands and knees until he was clear of the bone-yard.

He made it into the passage, still spurred forward by the ghostly candles.  He hazarded a glance behind to see the wraith still drifting forward, passing through each candle one after another, always inching forward.

The way was narrow; he passed through cracks in the rock wall.  Shoulder first, he sidled onward as the stone scratched and bit at him.  Darvik didn’t look back.  He didn’t need to.

The narrow cavern gave way to a chamber with a rotting plank door.  He shouldered through the door, completing his set of bruised bones and sore joints.  But what was a damaged shoulder compared to his tormented mind?

Now he stood at the base of a stairwell.  He climbed.  Darvik ignored his burning legs and his aching bones, forcing from his thoughts the memory of his descent and how many stairs awaited him.  He climbed, gasping for breath, stumbling over stairs when his feet refused to rise.  His heart beat ever faster and yet it drove his body forward like a ship’s drummer.  He raced to the top of the spiraling stairs, pushed through another door, and collapsed.

All his energy spent, he lay on his stomach.  All around him were racks and barrels of wine.  He was back inside Sangrook Manor proper, in the wine cellar.  If he could only rise once more to his feet, he could return to the servants’ quarters, wake his master, and escape this foul place.  But his body refused him.

Only then did Darvik realize he was still holding the mummy’s pendant. He clasped it tightly in his left hand, where it dug into his palm.  Blood dripped from between his fingers and into the gem.  The amethyst was still feeding.

He wanted nothing more than to toss the pendant down the stairwell and slam the door shut, leaving that wraith in the pits where it belonged. But even in this, his body refused him.  It was a struggle even to hold his eyes open.

The wraith emerged from the door.  Darvik felt her chilly presence long before he could gather the strength to roll over and face her.  He was powerless to stand, incapable of running another step.  He lay on his side, facing the stairwell, gasping for air and stretching his cramped limbs.  The wraith approached, gliding through the air like a falling leaf, sliding inexorably closer.

Once more, Darvik tried to loosen his grip on the pendant.  This time, his fingers obeyed and unfurled, and the silver chain slipped from his grasp.

The amethyst did not.  The blood-red pendant was embedded in his palm now.  With every beat of his heart, blood swirled within the stone.  It was part of him.  If only he could escape this place, evade the wraith, and seclude himself in his workshop, then he might discover a way to extract the gem.  He knew those all to be false hopes.  The wraith was bound to him now, for whatever time he had left.

The wraith hovered over him, her face so close to his own that her spectral hair billowed with Darvik’s every breath.  She closed her leathery eyelids, and when she opened them, two glowing orbs of pure white light had filled the empty sockets.  These cracked and opened like another set of eyelids, revealing a pair of eyes, eyes that looked fresh and lively, eyes that seemed to ask, What troubles you?  What aid can I give?

She reached out and touched Darvik’s forehead with a tip of her bony finger.  Dark thoughts pushed themselves to the surface of Darvik’s mind.  He set aside the fear and madness of the night and thought only of the man who had brought him here.  Erenkirk.  Erenkirk, who was always ready with a harsh word punctuated by a blow.  Erenkirk, who assigned him to slaughtering pigs and crafting the simplest of artifacts.  Erenkirk, who had forced him into a deal with a cruel and corrupt duke, forcing him into the trade of torturer by proxy.  Erenkirk, who had dragged him into Sangrook Manor.

The wraith’s rotten visage contorted into a crooked grin.  She released a heavy, rattling hiss of a breath, then slipped backward through a wall.

Darvik was yet again alone in the darkness of the mansion.  He tried once to lift himself to his feet, then crashed to the floor.  His eyes closed of their own accord.

***

A wan beam of sunlight warmed his face.  Darvik awoke in a bed.  This was not the cramped and dusty servant’s bed with it’s rough-spun blanket and a lumpy pallet.  No, he lie beneath a blanket of  furs atop a mattress the likes of which he had never imagined.  He must have managed his way to this chamber in some fugue state.  Darvik groaned and rolled out of bed.