The Goblin Corps (52 page)

Unlike the outer gate, the inner doors hung open, and the squad simply marched into the castle proper. Their feet once more trampled the lush carpeting; again, their hackles rose beneath the gaze of the poor inhabitants of the gleaming armor. They strode past the various murals and tapestries, each and every one of them steadfastly refusing to look up.

And then, the door to the throne room. Unguarded. Cræosh threw the portal open before him without slowing his pace.

The throne room was empty.

The queen’s absence was one thing; she could hardly spend
all
her time in public audience. But the lack of guards, of servants, petitioners, sycophants, all pointed to something substantially more sinister than a slow day at court.

“I don’t like this,” Gork said.

“You’ve said that before,” Cræosh reminded him. “In fact, last I checked, you didn’t especially like much of anything.”

“True,” Gork admitted. “But I don’t like this a lot more than I don’t like a lot of other things.”

Cræosh briefly reviewed that, trying to determine if it actually made any sense, and then decided not to bother. “Okay. I don’t know if this means she’s on to us or not, but there’s obviously
something
strange going on.”

“You have such a tight…grip on the obvious,” Katim said dryly, “that I’m astounded…you haven’t broken it so far.”

“Shut up, troll. I’m not in the mood.”

She grinned at him.

“So where do you suppose Queen Anne’s laboratory is?” Fezeill asked. Every face turned toward Gimmol.

The gremlin frowned. “Well, I can’t say for sure, of course…” he hedged.

“Say it anyway,” Cræosh told him. “You’ve got a better shot at it than we do.”

“If you say so. All right, let’s see.” The gremlin paused thoughtfully. “Magnificent as it is, Eldritch isn’t really that big of a castle. We know that the second level consists entirely of sleeping chambers and the like, so that’s out. We’ve already seen the main hall and the throne room. It
could
be elsewhere on the ground level, but that wouldn’t offer much room. Or privacy. Privacy is a big deal with wizards; having an experiment interrupted is bad.”

“I can imagine,” Cræosh muttered. “One of the towers, then?”

“Yeah. Or else underground.”

Katim shook her head. “No. She will not…be underground.”

“And what makes you so sure?” Fezeill asked acidly.

“Queen Anne is a…woman of great power. And great…ego. She would have to…be to seek the kind of immortality…she covets. She will surely keep…her workspace somewhere that…allows her to look out over her…domain. Her pride will allow her…nothing less.” She leered evilly. “It is a common failing…among those who rule.”

“I’m not sure I buy that logic,” Gork said.

Cræosh shrugged. “Look, we’ve got to pick one to start with, right? I say go with it. If anyone here knows about haughtiness and ego, it’s Katim.”

The troll snarled, and Cræosh permitted himself a brief grin.
Score one for the orc.

“Up it is, then,” Gork agreed, though he didn’t sound one hundred percent convinced.

“Good!” the bugbear said from the back. “Jhurpess hates being underground.”

“This is all well and good,” Gimmol said, “but we still don’t know how to get into the tower. If it
is
her laboratory, I doubt the door’s going to be easily accessible.”

“Then,” Katim said, “I suggest that we…start looking.”

“Just like that?” Gork asked incredulously. “Do you have any idea how long it’ll take to search this entire castle?”

“And how long will it…take us to find the entrance if…we do
not
look for it?”

Gork shut his mouth, and the squad began their search with the throne room.

The throne room ultimately revealed not one, but
three
concealed doors strewn throughout the chamber. One led to the queen’s garden, opening up far too near the evil-looking vines for the squad’s comfort. The second led into a small observation chamber, apparently designed to allow the queen to unobtrusively monitor her soldiers as they practiced in the castle’s training arena. And the third provided ingress to a small barracks, perhaps the sleeping quarters of Queen Anne’s personal guard. It was as devoid of life as the rest of Eldritch.

So the goblins’ explorations had continued, as had their discoveries. They discovered a hidden panel in the ballroom, leading to a dusty, cobweb-filled enclosure with murder holes drilled in the walls, providing a clear field of fire at the celebrants. They discovered that Queen Anne’s library, while not remotely the equal of Ymmech Thewl, could nevertheless have kept Gimmol occupied for the next three years (not counting chamber pot breaks), had they permitted him to stay. As it was, they’d had to drag him out whimpering. And they’d found numerous supply closets stocked with tools, rope, ladders, lamps, torches, oil, extra dishes and silverware, and basically anything else required to maintain the smooth operations of a castle and its inhabitants. Not a one of them could figure out why
those
doors had been concealed.

By the time they’d fully scoured the entire ground level, they’d determined Castle Eldritch had as many secret doors as normal ones—but that none of them offered so much as a trace of any possible entrance to the central tower. They had also failed to find one single sign of human life; even the smaller guard towers were empty.

“Is anyone besides me starting to get just a tad nervous about all this?” Gimmol asked when Gork dropped back down from his check of the fourth guard tower.

The kobold dusted his hands off on the sides of his pants. “I take exception to your use of the word ‘tad.’ And the word ‘starting,’ for that matter. Anyone who’s not already as nervous as a halfling virgin at a dwarven orgy is an idiot.”

Cræosh, who had been staring intently down a nearby corridor, glanced sharply at Gork. “’Halfling virgin?’” He grinned widely. “You’ve been traveling with me too long, Shorty.”

“Well shit, Cræosh,
I
could’ve told you
that.
”

“I don’t suppose,” Katim rasped sourly, “that…I might impose on you to…take just a moment of your…time and focus on the reason we’re…here?”

“Sure you can impose,” Cræosh said. “Just as soon as you have the slightest fucking clue what we should do next, you can impose to your heart’s content.”

“Is there anyplace we haven’t looked?” Fezeill asked.

“Are we in the…tower?”

“Umm…No, not really.”

“Then I’d say there’s at least…one place we haven’t looked.”

Fezeill glowered at her. “Wise-ass troll…”

“What was that?”

“Um, I said you’re a wise troll.”

“Yes, I know. It was…decent of you to point it out…however.”

The doppelganger continued to mumble.

“Queen Anne is wizard?” Belrotha asked suddenly.

“Yes, Belrotha,” Gimmol said patiently. “Queen Anne is a wizard.”

“Then why we look for door to tower? Maybe Queen Anne not build door to tower. Wizard not need door. Wizard can just go wigglety-poof with fingers and be in tower already.”

“‘Wigglety-poof?’” Cræosh asked mildly.

“She’s got a valid point, though,” Gimmol acknowledged, trying not to sound
too
surprised. “Queen Anne
could
make do without a door, at that.”

“It don’t wash, Gimmol,” Cræosh disagreed. “Even if she’s too out of her skull to care, it was King Sabryen who designed this castle, remember? And kings have to think strategically.”

“Doesn’t that make it
more
likely, then?” Gork asked, stepping up to join the discussion. “I mean, a tower with no doors is pretty safe from siege, wouldn’t you say?”

The orc shook his head. “Yeah, but it also means that he can’t move large numbers of supplies or assistants in and out. Plus, there’s those wards King Morthûl mentioned. He’d have to lower them every time he wanted to move in and out of the tower, and that’d expose him to outside sorceries. Not a wise idea. There’s
got
to be an entrance, even if only for emergencies.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Gimmol admitted.

“But that puts us back where we started,” Fezeill said. “Knowing it’s here doesn’t help if we can’t find the damn thing.”

“We haven’t checked upstairs…yet,” Katim reminded them.

“There’s nothing but sleeping chambers and guest rooms upstairs, remember?” Fezeill said.

“So far as we…know. Perhaps one of those rooms is…more than it seems.”

Gork wilted. “You mean we’ve got to search every one of the upstairs rooms?”

The piercing gaze of his companions was answer enough.

The kobold was still sulking as he stomped along the first of the seemingly endless upstairs corridors. It felt as though he’d spent the last ten years of his life doing nothing but searching through this and digging through that, and it was starting to wear thin.

Normally, Gork
liked
the opportunity to explore other people’s homes and possessions, but the “risk versus reward” equation here seemed unduly weighted toward risk. He’d rather have been home, or in a nicely crowded city with lots of loose purses, or hell,
anywhere
else. Gork had never wanted to be a soldier, let alone assigned to a Demon Squad. The direction that his life had taken recently was starting to eat at him, a parasite in his gut that he couldn’t quite ignore.

Thus it was that when the light went out—
all
the light, from the still-burning torches in their sconces to the dull sunlight penetrating the narrow windows—Gork reacted not as a soldier, but as a thief. With a stifled cry, the kobold hurled himself toward the nearest wall. He knew, from before the darkness had fallen, that he was only a few steps from one of the bedroom doors. His hands scrabbled across the stone, frantically seeking the knob, and escape from whatever was coming.

Gimmol dropped into a crouch, mouth and hands moving in the beginnings of an incantation. Belrotha and Jhurpess both put their backs to the nearest wall, arms stretched out in the hopes of intercepting anything that drew near. Fezeill shifted through a multitude of forms, hoping that the heightened senses of the elves or the catlike vision of the troglodytes might penetrate the unnatural shadow; the sporadic but vehement cursing suggested that they failed. Cræosh and Katim stood back-to-back. The orc’s heavy sword methodically sliced through empty space, and Katim’s
chirrusk
whistled menacingly in the dark.

It was a dark not merely of sight, but of soul. Thoughts came sluggishly, through a haze of forgetfulness. The hum of the troll’s chain, the heavy breathing of the unnerved ogre, the distant thump of what sounded like a slamming door—all took on a low, muffled feel, as if the entire squad had been submerged in something cold and clammy. Cræosh’s skin crawled, and he felt the hair standing up on the troll behind him.

The voice, when it came, was
not
distorted by the ebon blanket that covered the hallway, but rang out instead like a clarion.

“And a pleasant day to you all, my dear friends. I trust you find the accommodations satisfactory?”

“Rupert,” Cræosh greeted him, eyes flickering madly in search of any sign of light, of life. “You might want to have a word with the servants. They seem to have let the torches burn out.”

The dark-robed seneschal chuckled softly. “And to think, dear Cræosh, there are those who accuse you of being humorless.”

“I’m not humorless. I’ve got lots of humor. I’m so full of humor that my bladder’s about to burst. Why don’t you do something about this darkness and I can actually show you?”

“I’m afraid that wouldn’t be convenient,” Rupert said with a sigh so melodramatic it really needed its own cloak to swirl about its ankles. “The dark should make it
so
much easier to slaughter the lot of you.”

“Slaughter us?” Cræosh played up the shock, stalling for time. “Wouldn’t that upset Queen Anne?”

“Queen Anne is aware of your betrayal, you miserable little orc!” Rupert’s voice was suddenly ice. “If she weren’t otherwise engaged, I’m sure she’d have loved to attend to you herself.

“But I’m glad she can’t. I’m rather looking forward to doing this myself. And you can stop waving your sword about like a ninny, Cræosh. I can see quite well enough to avoid it, thank you much.”

Cræosh’s mind transformed every sound to tickle his ears, every touch of breeze on his face, into the precursor to an attack. He stabbed or parried desperately, striking only empty air. And all the while, he knew that Rupert lurked, laughing silently as he drifted nearer, nearer….

And then Gimmol, hunched beside the ogre’s calf, released his spell.

Everyone in the hallway froze, including the queen’s startled seneschal. The gremlin hadn’t the magic to
completely
counter the unnatural darkness. The torches shone as little more than beacons in the gloom-swaddled hall, and the windows glowed only faintly. As though standing outside on a cloud-dimmed night, the goblins could see only a few feet beyond their noses, stood in a world of abstract shapes and shadows.

But it was enough.

Cræosh slashed murderously at the brown-robed figure that had appeared only a few feet away. Rupert hurled himself aside, barely avoiding the whistling steel.

“Now ain’t that interesting,” Cræosh remarked. “I don’t know what you are under all the wrappings, but you’re as scared of a sword as the next man, aren’t you?”

Rupert snorted and rose to hover several feet above the carpet. “You cannot possibly comprehend what I am, little pig. And your sword is harmless if it cannot land a blow.” Sparks arced between the seneschal’s outstretched fingers, then crackled across the hall. A loud sizzling, the pungent aroma of roasting meat, and Cræosh screamed in pain, flinging his sword away as though it had bitten him. Smoke rose from the palm of his hand, and several strips of well-cooked flesh clung to the weapon’s hilt. A few sparks popped from the tip of the sword, and several tongues of flame flared on the carpet, only to die again just as quickly.

“Katim?” Cræosh asked, his left hand clenched around his right and his voice made hoarse with pain.