The Night of the Solstice (9 page)

“What were you doing in that cage?” said Janie again. “I just thought if Morgana did it we'd better know about it,” she added, with a quelling look at Alys.

“The Lady Morgana … ah, no. It was that devil, Cadal Forge.”

“Him!” said Alys. They strained to hear the papery voice.

“That cage was meant for a firebird, a phoenix … but he caught me and put me there lest I fly away.”

“Fly?” said Janie.

“Like a butterfly,” said Alys, pleased with her deductive powers. “You're a caterpillar, aren't you?”

When the creature spoke again its voice was a little stronger. “Gentle lady, you mock me.” Then, with a laugh like a whispered sigh, it said, “Although only an infant of my kind, I am a Feathered Serpent.”

“You mean you have wings?” Alys bent over the serpent, reaching a tentative finger toward one of the
bumps. Now that she looked at them more closely, they didn't look decorative at all. They looked … like wounds… .

“Cadal Forge tore them off,” whispered the serpent.

The stairway to the cellar was just off the kitchen, and it plunged narrow and straight into the darkness below. Moments after Charles and Claudia stepped onto it, the darkness engulfed them. Charles took a flashlight out of his windbreaker pocket and switched it on, but the light seemed pitifully weak, and illuminated only a small area of the steep, uneven stone steps. He put his free hand on the wall to steady himself and quickly snatched it back. The wall was
furry
—with slime, cobwebs, fungus, who knew what. He didn't turn the flashlight aside to see.

Behind him, Claudia had a firm grip on his wind-breaker. Charles wanted to say something to reassure her, but the darkness and the silence closed his throat. It felt as if no one had spoken in this place for centuries.

They reached the bottom, cut off completely from the world of light and sound. The room was so large that it had the open-air feeling of a subterranean cavern walled with hewn stone and floored with hard-packed earth. With Claudia still clutching him desperately, Charles made the circuit of the room, keeping close to the bulk of the wall. If, he thought, something were to leap suddenly out of the blackness into the small bright spot the flashlight made …

When they got to the far end with its mirror of stained and battered steel, Charles began to feel a little better. Nothing had jumped out at them. But there was no sign of Morgana. Just to be sure, they would hug the other wall on the way back and look into the counterpart of Morgana's secret workroom, but he was already certain they would find nothing. This place was empty, deserted as a forgotten tomb. No one had disturbed its stillness for centuries.

It was then, of course, that a voice spoke out of the darkness behind them.

The voice was slow and cold and thick, like frozen mud. It brought to mind all the long, cruel, inexorable processes of the earth, the erosion of mountains, the creeping of glaciers, the lazy drift of colliding continents. “Who … dares … trespass?” it said.

Charles and Claudia jerked around like marionettes on strings. The flashlight wavered hysterically around the room.

“What is it? Oh, what is it?” gasped Claudia.

“Who … dares … trespass?”

The light caught something moving. Charles focused on it, and promptly wished he hadn't. There was a
thing
out there in the darkness, a thing which seemed to be carved of moldering rock, and which was
swimming
through the ground as if the hard-packed earth were water. The thing had massive shoulders, knotted arms that scooped effortlessly through the soil, and a very large mouth. Claudia made a small noise and subsided.

“Who—what are you?” croaked Charles.

“Did you not come seeking the Groundsler?”

“The … Groundsler?” Charles swallowed. The thing was between them and the stairway.

“What manner of Weerul sprite are you?” the creature continued, moving closer yet.

“I'm not a sprite. I'm a human. Are you—”

“Ha!” The single word exploded around them. “Once again I have won the game. Still, you were such poor opponents, my dears, that there is little glory in it.”

“What are you talking about? What game?” Charles broke off with an exclamation. For an instant he'd had the feeling he was sinking—he
was
sinking. Turning the flashlight on his own feet he saw, to his horror, that the earth and rock were flowing around them like molasses. Before he could cry out, his feet were embedded in it up to the ankles.

“Charles?” Claudia's voice came to him quietly. “Charles, I'm stuck.”

“So … am I, Claude.” He looked up, fear now mingling with anger. “What do you think you're doing? Let us go!”

“Go? Foolish child, you've lost.”

“Lost
what
?”

“The Question Game, of course. I am the Groundsler, the One Who Questions. You gave me an answer, and so you lost. Now I will give you my answer, which is to say I will eat you.” It chuckled at its little joke, with a sound like a tar pit bubbling.

“We answered a question—so you
eat
us?”

“That is the game. And a very good game, too. It's been a long time since I've had company. Though a minor sorcerer did stumble down here the other day, looking for a shovel. He was delicious,” the Groundsler added reminiscently.

“I want Alys,” said Claudia. “Alys! Alys!”

“Not like that, Claude, they won't hear you. Let's do it together. One, two, three: Alys! Alys! Janie!”

“Oh, by all means,” said the Groundsler, settling
deeper into the rock. “I'm anxious to meet all your little friends.”

Alys and Janie were far above in the castle where no human ears could hear the disturbance below. Alys was at that moment staring at the serpent
with a sick feeling in her stomach and a metallic taste in her mouth.

“We're going to get him,” she said, hardly knowing her own voice. “We're going to get Cadal Forge. I promise.”

“Lady, you must not distress yourself so… . I am of no great value… .” The serpent's voice was fading.

“We were going to do it anyway.” She sounded abrupt and ungracious, but Alys knew Janie meant well. “Is he here in the castle now?”

“I think … not… . I have not seen him for days. . . .”

“What can we do to help you?” said Alys gently.

“There is … a grotto in the conservatory … where I might lie until I heal. My wings will not grow back … but I will live without them.” The serpent dropped its head to the floor, then lifted it weakly. “Pardon, good ladies, my saviors, but is either of you the Lady Alys? Or the Lady Janie?”

“We're both,” said Alys, confused. “I mean, I'm Alys. How did you know?”

“Two voices below call your names.”

“Charles and Claudia—oh, no!” Alys sprang up.

“Wait, good my ladies, wait—”

But Alys was already out the door, with Janie at her heels. The serpent lay still a moment gathering its vanished strength. Then, painfully, as slowly as a flower turning toward the sun, it began to drag itself after them.

Alys nearly broke her neck on the first step in her mad rush to get down to the cellar.

“Charles? Claudia? Where are you?”

“Alys!” Charles's voice came from far below her, echoing. “Alys,
don't say anything! Don't talk!
”

“What? What do you mean? Are you all right?”

“Yes! I mean, no! Listen, Alys, just shut up! Don't either of you say anything until I finish explaining! All
right? All right.” Charles's voice became businesslike. “There's a—a thing down here called a Groundsler. It's got Claudia and me.
But it can't get you unless you answer a question.
Get it? It's going to ask you questions, and if you answer it, it wins. If it answers you, you win. You can say anything you want, but it has to be a question. Understand?”

Alys had reached the bottom of the steps and now she stood still, dumbfounded. Had to be a question?

Behind her Janie's voice was clear and icily calm.

“What happens when it loses?”

“It has to do whatever you tell it. If you win it'll let us go. I—I can't see any other way to get out.”

“Where is it now?”

“Where else would I be, my dear?” The head surfaced a few feet in front of them, breaking through the solid earth. Pale eyes gleamed like minerals in the single shaft of light. Alys started to scream, choked, and stumbled back, wondering dizzily if a scream was a question or not.

Janie stepped to her side, and spoke carefully. On her face was the dispassionate, preoccupied look she
wore when playing a difficult game of chess. “Alys, do you understand the rules?”

“I … er … I … can sort of … uh, I do—don't I?” Alys threw her hands up helplessly and pressed her lips together. She was out of her depth.

Janie nodded, and turned to the creature. “Are you the Groundsler?” she asked.

“My dear, upon whose domain do you intrude?” The slow, terrible voice sounded amused.

“What are you doing with Charles and Claudia?”

There was a muddy chuckle. “Isn't it obvious?”

“I think it's going to—eat us,” called Charles. “That is, if you don't win. But you will,” he added hastily.

Janie thought a moment, then addressed the creature. “Do you know Morgana, the sorceress who built this castle?”

The Groundsler moved lazily. “Who does not know the Mirror Mistress?”

“Are you in league with Cadal Forge?”

“Do you seek to insult me?”

“Do you know where Morgana is now?”

“What makes you ask?”

Janie hesitated, unable to think of a way to respond to this without making a statement. The Groundsler, which had so far been content to let her take the lead, suddenly switched to the offensive.

“Did you not know the risk you took, coming to this place?”

“Er—which place: the cellar or the castle?”

“Or the world?” Alys put in suddenly. She then retreated in confusion. The Groundsler moved forward, and now the questions came quickly.

“What part of the human world do you come from, my dear?”

“Why should I tell you?”

“And how did you get here?”

“What do you think the mirrors are for?”

“And what is your business with Cadal Forge?”

“That's none of
your
business—uh, is it?”

It had her on the run now.

“What is your name, little one?”

“Didn't you hear the others shouting it?”

“I wonder, shall I be eating Janie or Alys first?”

“Don't you … ah, think it may be unwise, eating
any
friends of Morgana's?”

“Will the sorceress, then, come to your aid?”

“What do you think?”

“What do
you
think?”

Janie was stung. “Hey—is repeating fair?”

“Yes,” said the Groundsler.

There was a moment of utter silence. Then Alys gave a wild triumphant yell and grabbed Janie around the neck.

“We won! We won! I mean—we won, didn't we?” Just in case, she tried to turn it into a question.

The Groundsler was standing—or wading, or whatever—as still as the rock it appeared to be made of.

“Impossible,” it said at last. It sounded shaken.

“Let us go!” bellowed Claudia. “You promised!”

“Promised what?” said the Groundsler sullenly.

“Oh, no you don't,” said Janie. “I won, and I'm telling you to let them go.”

The Groundsler made a noise like a volcano and a noise like a glacier and a noise like a gravel pit
collapsing. Around Charles's and Claudia's ankles the rock liquefied and melted away. They were free.

No one ever moved faster than they did getting back up the stairs. Safe in the kitchen at last, they were all talking at once as they moved toward the hallway mirror.

“What's that?” Charles pulled up short, staring at what looked like a length of blue cord on the hallway floor.

“Oh, the serpent! Don't stomp it, Charles!”

Charles, who had had no idea of stomping it, withdrew indignantly. Alys dropped to her knees.

“You shouldn't have tried to move,” she said.

“Gentle mistress … I came to …” The voice faded.

“It said ‘to warn us,'” said Janie.

Alys was touched. “Oh … oh, thank you. But what can we do for you, now?”

Out of the faint hiss that followed only two words were distinguishable:
conservatory
and
grotto
. Weakly, the serpent guided them back into the great hall and
through a little doorway in the wall opposite the hearth.

The conservatory was a tangle of weeds and briars, with narrow paths half-buried under twining vegetation. Behind this, like a small natural cave, was the grotto.

Alys and the others stopped in their tracks.

One wall was ruined, and moonlight and chill outdoor air flooded in. But the other walls! They were encrusted with minerals of every hue. Rose quartz crystals like pink diamonds, spiky red cinnabar, forest green malachite, translucent gypsum, and, yes, red wulfenite, hornblende, and peacock coal were clustered side by side with topaz, tourmaline, amethyst, garnet, and opal.

But if the walls were a rainbow, the floor was like a dream. Ankle-deep, and in some places knee-deep, it was piled with treasure. There were pitchers and drinking bowls and goblets, all gleaming with the soft heavy yellow light of solid gold. There were ropes of pearls and heaps of necklaces, armlets, brooches, and diadems. There were gem-encrusted
chalices, and golden candlesticks and scepters.

“People bring them to me,” explained the serpent simply, as they stood agape. “They have, ever since I hatched here. It is … traditional, when the Council sends a serpent's egg … to bring gifts… .”