Page 45 of The Dungeon Book

*

Perik was given the dubious honour of dining with Sir Rudyard; the content of their conversation was never reported to me, so I can only guess that it went something like this:

Sir Rudyard, cheerily: What ho, welcome back, how do you like your eggs?

Perik, feverishly moaning: Dead! All dead! The horror . . . the horror . . .

Sir Rudyard, awkwardly: Of course they’re dead. They’re cooked.

Perik, reliving untold horrors below: HE stirred in his sleep . . . the awful presence of him . . . like standing before a furnace . . . ah, all wrong, all wrong.

Sir Rudyard, demonstrating his utter inadequacy to the moment: I always find a good cup of tea quite revivifying.

Perik, in the throes of delirium: Death! Death comes for us all!

Sir Rudyard, his patience exhausted: Yes, but . . . after breakfast.

The sacks of relics and other treasures were emptied across Nala’s table. The scrapings of the Dungeon – the heads of statues (and one misidentified gargoyle head), runic tablets, glass jars brimming with slime, fragments of ancient scrolls and broken holy talismans from the haunted temples, assorted teeth, a wet sack of monster bits that dripped ichor across the floor. Nala shrieked like an enthusiastic crow and swooped upon these shiny prizes.

Bait hung back. The monster remnants troubled her. This was not due to squeamishness – this was a child who categorised insects by chewy, crunchy, or wriggly. She knew, too, the Rules of the Dungeon did not forbid murder – but because she feared she might see a familiar face among the giblets.

Neb peered about the interior of the South Tower. The castle kitchens – always warm, always crowded, always a brimming cornucopia of things to eat – had seemed a wonder beyond comprehension to him. Indeed, up until the recent feast-day, he’d assumed that the kitchen was the great hall of the keep that others had mentioned, and that Sir Rudyard and the other dignitaries would gather around the same table as Mistress Clove and the serving girls. His sense of scale was still based on the little village in the hills. When Bait spoke of living in a palace as a princess, he imagined something like Dunshelm Keep, perhaps a little more colour, a lick of paint or a stained-glass window; when she talked of the Dungeon, I suspect he envisaged something like a badger sett.

In years to come, he would storm both these places with fire and sword.

For now, he regarded a rather tatty curtain with a degree of awe reserved for the shroud of a dead saint.

“That’s that,” he whispered to Bait. “Nearly midsummer.”

“I’m leaving at midsummer.”

“That’s what I meant.”

“Oh.”

“Off to be a princess in a castle,” said Neb.

Nala was distracted by her work, and only half listening to their talk. She misinterpreted Neb’s statement as a question. “The White Palace.”

“What?”

Nala glanced up. “Princess Aldebara lives in the White Palace. Not a castle. It’s next to the Institute.”

Bait froze. “Who . . . who is Princess Aldebara?”

“King Arus’ daughter,” replied Nala absently, her attention returning to her work.

“Wasn’t she . . . wasn’t she lost?” asked Neb.

Nala waved a hand without looking at the two children. “That’s an old tale. She was only lost for a few weeks. The king sent out all his knights to look for her, but none of them could find her. It was the Chancellor himself who saved her and brought her home.”

“The princess was found?” Bait’s voice was very small in that moment.

I remember my own first expedition into the Dungeon, back when it was Orphir and me and a few hirelings. It was, of course, a disaster. We delved unprepared into the labyrinth, and suffered for it. But I chiefly recall that moment of revelation and hope when, after a long period of – how did that poor fellow put it? – of wandering in the long dark hell, we caught an unexpected glimpse of sunlight.

It was like that for Bait, only in reverse.

“The princess was found,” she said again, laying the words like stone blocks. “The princess isn’t lost. She’s with King Arus.”