Hero of Dreams (10 page)

“But there might be?”

Hero shrugged.

“Right, let’s go!” said Eldin, rubbing his hands together, eager now to be up and at it.

“Ropes first,” reminded Aminza, “and food in case you have trouble finding your way out. Oh, and plenty of chalk …”

“Chalk?” Eldin looked puzzled.

‘To mark a trail,” Hero sighed. “Has love robbed you of all your wits, ‘old man’? “

“Now see here-“

But Hero ignored him. He rubbed his hands in anticipation, turned to Aminza and said: “Well, then? Come on, let’s get busy, busy! The day wears on and we can’t stay here forever. And Eldin-“

“Uh?”

“Wear some warm clothes. It’s damned cold in there!”

Down below on the vast, boulder-strewn plateau, Aminza stood out from the shadow of the keep and looked up at the men where they toiled upward. They had used the ropes for a quick, safe climb, rather than spend exhausting hours on the job, which had been Hero’s lot that very morning. Now it was mid-afternoon, and high on the face of the keep the men looked like spiders to Aminza Anz and their ropes like strands of web.

To them she, too, looked insectlike, and catching sight of her where she stood far below, David Hero glanced speculatively at his burly companion. They had just hauled themselves up onto a narrow ledge and now sat dangling their legs in thin air.

“How old are you, anyway?” queried the younger dreamer, brushing dust and fine debris from his brown trousers.

“Eh? I’m forty-seven. Why do you ask?”

“You still climb very well,” Hero answered, after a moment of thought. “Especially for one who couldn’t draw breath without choking only a handful of weeks ago.”

“I always was good on a face,” Eldin preened. “Perhaps I was a mountaineer in the waking world.” Then he looked shrewdly at his friend. “But you can’t fool me, lad. That’s not really why you asked my age, is it? Still, I’ll play your game. And how old are you; thirty-two, aren’t you?”

Hero nodded. “Aye, fifteen years your junior. But I was only twenty-six when first we met.”

“And you’re wondering how an old lad like Eldin the Wanderer managed to catch a pretty little butterfly like Aminza, eh? And right under your nose, at that!”

Hero shook his head. “No, not at all; though I’ll grant you she’s a pretty enough creature for any man. But we’ve been together now for six years, and-“

“Ah! Now I understand,” cried Eldin. “You think that this will split us up, right?”

“Oh, it’ll do that eventually, no doubt about it-but,” he shrugged. “All for the best, really, I suppose …” And Hero picked at his square nails and gazed off into space.

“What?” Eldin scowled. “What? Are you trying to tell me something? How do you mean, ‘all for the best?’ “

“Well, they have a saying in some of the villages where I’ve lodged,” Hero answered. “More a poem, really.” He paused. “But I don’t suppose it applies to such as us. I mean, after all, we’re from the waking world. You know- foreigners.”

“Foreigners? We’re damned dreamers, that’s all. And if one of us is a foreigner, why, it’s you! You haven’t even earned yourself a dream-name yet!”

“Ah, well,” Hero shrugged. “Forget it.” He pointed at a deep shaded crack in the rock face. “That’s it,” he said. “The entrance.”

Before Eldin could comment, the younger man stood up on the precarious ledge, found easy hand- and footholds overhead and pulled himself leisurely up and into the fault. They were roped together. Eldin watched Hero disappear, felt the rope tighten about his waist and followed. A moment later they stood together in the cool shade, peering into gloom where the fissure’s flat floor receded into the heart of the keep.

“Go on, then,” said Eldin. “Say it.”

“Eh? Say what?” asked Hero innocently, peering at the stone floor beneath his feet. “See here,” he pointed. “These tracks in the dust here. They’re mine. But these others, they can only be Thinistor’s. Come on, let’s not hang about.” And as their eyes became more accustomed to the dim interior of the keep, so they moved forward.

“Hold!” commanded Eldin before they’d gone more

than a dozen paces. Hero looked at him and could see that he was rapidly losing his temper. “Say your damned saying, or your ‘poem,’ or whatever. Say it now, or damn your eyes I’ll go no farther!”

Hero sighed. “You won’t like it,” he warned. “You’ll only want to fight.”

“What, me? Fight? Over a silly poem? No, no,” the other vigorously shook his great head. “Not over a fool’s rhyme!”

“Well, anyway, I won’t say it,” said Hero, his voice echoing hollowly in the gloomy rock passage. “We’ve no time now for fighting.”

“Say it!” roared the other, and they both winced at the echoes that came thundering back.

“Are you trying to bring the whole keep down on our heads?” Hero whispered. “All right, all rightl I’ll say it:

‘A man’s a man till forty, But past that, as a rule, He’s old and rude and naughty, And any female’s-‘ “

“Hold!” Eldin snarled. “Don’t you dare say it! You just this minute made the damn thing up anyway. Here, let me lead the way.”

“Careful as you go!” cried Hero as the other brushed brusquely by him. “Easy, I say. Just around that comer there’s a-” And he threw himself flat on the dusty floor, wedging his body tight with arms, elbows, head and feet in the narrow corridor.

“-Pitfall! ” came the cry of the other as his weight fell on the rope, nearly jerking Hero loose. It took Eldin only a moment or two to haul himself back to safety, and when Hero felt the rope slacken he crept round the corner of rock to He flat beside his friend and peer down into the black depths.

Without a word the younger dreamer took a prepared brand from the pack on his back. He struck flint and flames instantly burst from the torch. The two stared down into die black reaches of an apparently bottomless pit. Hero looked sideways at the older man. The sight of his companion’s throat undulating so rapidly as he nervously gulped and swallowed was something one might only witness once or twice in a lifetime. To emphasize a point, Hero plucked a piece of burning rag from die torch and let it fall. For well over a minute the flaring speck of light could be seen receding into unguessed depths before it was swallowed up in darkness.

“A good thing we were tied together,” said Hero.

“Aye,” Eldin readily agreed. “David-“

“I accept your apology,” the other preempted him.

“Good! And no more needling?”

“And no more bull-headed arguing?”

“And an end to bloody ‘poetry?’ “

“And no dream name-calling!”

They grinned at each other in me flickering torchlight.

“Which way do we go?” Eldin finally asked.

“See there, the ledge along the wall? It’s narrow but safe enough.” Hero held his torch high and the shadows were pushed back. The chasm was about twenty-five feet wide and indeed a narrow rim of rock crossed it along one wall.

“I was along there once already, remember? Keep your face to the wall and you’ll find handholds galore. Follow me, but quietly. And listen, old Thinistor did us a favor. From here on in he left warnings-probably reminders for himself-smudges of dye in hazardous places. White is safe, red means danger!”

“Fine, but-don’t you think that now would be a good time to get rid of this rope? It just saved my life, granted, but next time it might mean the end of both of us.”

“Agreed,” said Hero. “Only be careful. Remember, I know the way-or at least some of it-and it’s a pretty tricky way, you may believe me!”

The Keep’s Core

CHAPTER II

Half an hour later they had reached Hero’s previous point of penetration. To do so they had to bypass a further half-dozen fearsome falls, where the floor would have slid away beneath their feet; they had to avoid pivoting slabs of stone which would slam down from the walls if a foot should fall in the wrong place; and they had to tightrope across a great chasm on a bridge of stone which in places was less than six inches in width.

They had received adequate warning of each of these hazards in the shape of Thinistor’s smudges of red dye strategically daubed on the walls; but the latest obstacle was one which spoke eloquently if mutely for itself, explaining why Hero had chosen to go no farther on his own.

For now they had come to a place where the floor of the tunnel suddenly fell away vertically to a depth of some eighty feet, but this pit of its own was not what had stopped the younger dreamer. Casting one of his torches into the depths after first lighting a second from its flame, David Hero lighted up the floor of the pit. The torch had fallen speedily, landing with a strangely heavy thump and going out almost immediately, but not before the adventurers had seen the many white bones that littered the pit’s bottom-the bones, and the coils of rope on which they lay and with which they were intermingled.

“You can see why I went no farther,” Hero said, holding his torch high to light up the ceiling. “See there? That thick bar of metal that crosses the ceiling from wall to wall? And do you see the frayed ropes that hang from it? What do you suppose happened here?”

“Hmph!” Eldin grunted. “Isn’t it obvious? Over the years a good many adventurers have found their way in here. They’ve thrown their ropes up over the bar and attempted to swing across-but their ropes snapped and they fell to their deaths.”

“All of them?”

“Eh? What do you mean?”

“Can you honestly see any adventurer worth his salt trying to swing across there on a weak rope?” Hero shook his head. “Oh, no. There’s something very fishy here. And see, there’s old Thinistor’s warning on the wall.”

Eldin looked as directed, and sure enough there was the wizard’s smudge of warning red. The burly dreamer scowled. “It’s simply his warning of a hazard,” he grunted. “Just like all the others we’ve seen.”

“But that’s just it,” Hero insisted. “All of those other hazards were hidden, more or less, but this one is clearly visible. Or is Thinistor warning us of something we can’t seer

“There’s a way to find out,” grunted Eldin. “Here, give me one of those grappling-hooks of yours.”

Hero took an iron hook from his belt and passed it over. Eldin tied the end of a slender but extremely strong rope to the hook, whirled it round his head and expertly released it. The iron soared up and over the bar, was pulled back by Eldin until its tines caught fast. “There you go,” he said with some satisfaction. “All ready to swing.”

“As were all the others,” Hero frowned. “Here, I’ve an idea. Let’s see what happens if-” and he searched the floor around his feet until he found a large, jagged rock, fallen from the ceiling in unknown ages past. Carefully, he cut the rope and tied the rock to its end with a firm knot. Then, with a great push he sent the weighted rope swinging out over the chasm. Like a pendulum, the stone should have swung away and returned to Hero’s hands-but it did not!

At the halfway point, as if caught and pulled from below by the hand of some invisible giant, the rock plummetted downward trailing strands of snapped rope.

“What in the name of-?” the dreamers whispered in unison.

Hero found a smaller stone, whipped his hand back, then forward, shot the projectile out across the chasm. Instead of shooting straight across to the other side, the pebble curved sharply downward, accelerated, slammed into the scattering of bones below. It failed to bounce.

Eldin’s eyebrows beetled as he lowered them in a frown. “As the stones approach the center, so they-“

“-get heavier!” Hero finished it for him. “And so did our friends down there.” He pointed at the dark depths below, where bones lay scattered in white and shattered disarray. “When they tried to swing across, they grew too heavy for their ropes!”

“Magic!” Eldin snarled, his fear of the supernatural visible in his wide eyes and bared teeth.

“I don’t think so,” said Hero. “At least, not the sort of magic you mean. This is something the First Ones left behind them.”

“How do you mean?” Eldin asked.

“Well, you know how a northstone always points to the north? I think there’s something down there, buried in the heart of the keep, that pulls things into it in much the same way. Except that it pulls harder.”

“Hmph!” Eldin grunted. “A damned sight harder, I’d say! So how did old Thinistor get across?”

Now it was Hero’s turn to frown. “Let’s not forget he was a wizard,” he said.

“Aye, but if this is something the First Ones left behind, surely its power would supersede his?” At times Eldin could display alarming powers of logic.

Hero scratched his head for a moment, then snapped his fingers. “He walked across!”

“Eh? Walked? Are you feeling well, lad?”

“Across the bottom!” the other sighed. “He climbed down on a rope, walked across, climbed the other side!”

“And he didn’t get heavier on the way down?”

“We can soon find out.” Hero hammered a spike into a crack in the floor, tied a rope to it, tossed the thin coil over the lip. Lying down, he held his torch out over the rim and gazed into the depths. In the flickering torchlight he could just see that the rope had reached bottom.

“What does that prove?” Eldin asked.

“Well,” Hero answered, hauling on the rope which came up easily enough, “the rope itself hasn’t got any heavier, has it? So neither will we when we climb down. I think the pull increases toward the center. That’s where all the bones are.”

“But you can’t be sure …”

“No, but I’m willing to go first. Here, hold the torch. When I get to the bottom I’ll light another.” And passing Eldin the torch, he grasped the rope and swung himself over the rim and out of sight.

After a while, when the rope went slack, Eldin called out: “Are you all right, David?”

“Fine!” came the answer. “Come on down.” And a sudden flaring light from below confirmed Hero’s safe arrival at the bottom of the pit.

Eldin immediately threw down his torch and lowered himself over the edge. A minute later he stood beside his younger friend and stared along the length of the pit across the scattered bones at its center to the sheer wall at the other end. “Here we go,” said Hero, stepping out gingerly toward that far wall.