Page 94 of The Dungeon Book

The poetic magic, that is. The actual sorcery was very much still there. Orphir was awed by his own accidental creation. “It’s a conduit, Cornelius,” he enthused. “That’s why it grew so powerful. The spell kept working. It soaked up the magic of the Dungeon, all these years. A fatted calf, so to speak. Force-fed sorcery.” He rubbed his hands at the thought of the minotaur’s spell-swollen liver. His enthusiasm lent animation to his haggard face; I’d spent the night wracked by indecision and fear, but I looked fresh as a toothshroom next to him.

Ah, you don’t have toothshrooms up above. Fresh as a daisy, then. A toothshroom is what it sounds like.

“A testament to my own talent, wouldn’t you say?”

Certainly, the minotaur had grown even since the dragon’s death, piling muscle on muscle, horn on horn. His hide was marked with a thousand scars, testament to the dangers of the Dungeon – but he was alive, and whatever foes had tested the beast were not. Savage might matched by the innocence of Peledon’s mind; the beast showed no sign of recognising its surroundings. I wondered if the minotaur had even been aware of its foes in the Dungeon, or if he’d reacted purely on instinct, swatting them away with a twitch of those massive arms.

“You meant to ruin Sir Peledon,” I pointed out. “Not turn him into an invincible monster.”

He did not appreciate this observation.

“Don’t presume to divine my intentions. And whatever the beast’s origin, its present form is what matters for my purposes.” He waved his hand in dismissal. “I shall be occupied with research for the day, and I am not to be disturbed. Great works are afoot, and soon we shall be back where we belong, not in this sty of a castle.”

“Which great works, exactly?”

“Mine. My works. Yours are of lesser import. Tell me, have you finished familiarising yourself with the records of the minister of coin?”

I was. The coffers were mostly empty due to Orphir’s fruitless wars, although the treasures taken from the Dungeon had not yet been accounted for.

“Nearly, nearly.”

“The present minister of coin will not be in office for long. You must be able to replace him.” Once, in the more civilised phase of Orphir’s rise to power, that veiled threat would have meant that the minister was about to suffer a cirrhosis of the liver, or a sudden bout of madness, or some other coincidental magic-induced misfortune. These days, with the whole court trapped in a small castle full of Orphir’s RAS minions, the minister faced a wholly uncoincidental stabbing or some such. Subtlety goes out of the window in times of crisis.

So might the minister.

I went up to the royal ministry of coin, which was now crammed into a small chamber next to the garderobe in the keep. I tried to work through the minister’s ledgers, but the figures danced before my eyes and meant nothing to me.

I remember looking out of the window. From my vantage I could see all the Denizens in the courtyard. The trolls huddling under their umbrella, hiding from the creeping sun. Squinter, wrapped in a full-body blindfold and chained to a post like a monstrous balloon. Listless hagworms, their old-woman faces ever more wrinkled and withered. The minotaur, slumped against a wall. Indeed, the captured Denizens were so thoroughly defeated that Orphir had moved guards from the courtyard to the castle walls, in anticipation of a rebel assault.

Only Only-Sister seemed animated; she paced back and forth, as if she’d caught a scent. The stump of her maimed tail struck me as heraldic.

Beyond the walls, the little town carried on, the early morning excitement of the minotaur already subsiding into the business of the day. What would once have been a seven-year or even seventy-seven-year wonder was now barely remarkable. Things marvellous and strange fade into irrelevance when you’re inside the walls of your home. And beyond the village fields, the green canopy of the forest. I watched birds take flight like dragons against the grey sky.

I remembered sitting in my tomb in the Dungeon, listening to the RAS adventurers smashing their way closer and closer. I could tell where they were by the echoes, by the sound of splintering doors.

Down in the Dungeon, down in the dark, I knew the warning signs.

I’d forgotten how to read the surface world.

Fear rose up in me. What if I was already too late? What if the rebels hadn’t listened to Neb, and at any moment a host of foes might burst from the cover of the trees? I didn’t want to be trapped in this keep. Equally, what if Orphir knew of my conversation with Neb? What if he suspected me of being in league with the rebels? Since my resurrection, I’d heard endless stories about Orphir’s spies and sinister methods. He said he’d brought me back because he could trust me, but I suspect I was brought back mainly as an experiment. If he could restore a talking skull to life, then repairing a failing changeling should have been even easier.

What were the “great works” Orphir spoke of? What was he about to do?

I must admit I panicked.

In my panic, I emptied the last coins from the royal coffer into a sack. I wrote a neat zero in the ledger, just to close it out. And then I went downstairs on a heroic mission of mercy.

If only I’d had a cloak to billow.

Bait was kept in the depths of the keep, in a dungeon cell below the deepest cellar. I descended the stairs from my room, then another stair down to the kitchens, then yet another narrow spiral staircase, pushing past servants and scullions. In the dim light, their faces seemed as monstrous as any Denizen’s, and I felt my courage draining away with every step.

The cellars were pitch-dark, and I’d neglected to bring a candle. I felt my way along, blindly fumbling through unfamiliar passageways, barking my new knees and unspoiled shins against unseen obstacles – until, at last, I saw torchlight.

Two guards, standing outside the door of a prison cell.

I pressed myself against the wall, my heart pounding with fear. It was very distracting. What was I doing there? What could I possibly accomplish? I’d entertained wild fantasies of rescuing Bait – the impetuous influence of young Neb – without considering the practicalities. How would I get her out of the cell? Once out of the cell, how would we leave the cellar? The castle? And then what? Back to an empty Dungeon, only ghosts and ghasts for company? Maybe we’d take the roads, a travelling mountebank again, just me and Bait and a wagonful of fake medicines and faded magic – and a vengeful Orphir at our heels? Or should we throw our lot in with the rebels, and whatever uncertain hope they offered?

And then another question rose, eclipsing all the rest: even if I rescued her, would Bait forgive me?