David Dalglish - A Dance of Ghosts

“Gods damn it,” Haern said as he stood, holding Boris’s head in his hands. “Let go of my sword already.”

Sheathing one blade, he pulled the other from the head’s mouth, the blade sliding out through the hole it’d punched in the back of the head. Inspecting the weapon in the blue light, he saw no gore, no blood or goop or anything. Just dust. Shaking his head, he rolled the head toward the other side of the room, where it came to a thumping halt.

“Enjoy your rest,” he said, eyes scanning the darkness above him. “But it’s time for me to get out of here.”

Boris had said no one ever escaped, but with him there to attack and kill presumably unarmed and perhaps even bound men and women, he doubted anyone had been given sufficient time to try. Scooping up another handful of bones, he returned toward the middle and began tossing. On the fifth try, he heard a different sound, one that gave him pause.

Metal?

He threw a few more, some ringing of metal, yet a few falling silently back down.

A grate, he realized. He didn’t remember one upon falling down into the chamber. Perhaps it had been already open, or loose enough he hadn’t noticed during his fall? For all he knew, it shut by magic. What did matter, though, was that he had found his exit. Clearing a spot beneath so he could easily relocate it if need be, he stood there, arms crossed, mind racing. He needed some way to reach it, preferably a rope. It was only a few feet above his head, and he didn’t need much to try to grab ahold and test its resilience.

Glancing over at Boris’s body, he had a thought, one so absurd he laughed aloud.

“Surely you won’t mind,” he said as he knelt down beside the headless body. He lifted the man’s left arm, analyzing it. The fingers had curled in upon death, and testing them, he found them rigid. Flipping it over, he found the buckles to the banded armor and quickly removed them. The shirt beneath had long ago faded into nothing, and Boris’s skin beneath was sickeningly pale and cold to the touch. Tugging on the arm, he found the joints even stiffer than they should have been so recently after death.

No blood , he told himself. The body was far from normal, so just maybe …

He removed the chest piece as well as the shoulder pads, wanting a clear view of the dead man’s shoulder. With that done, he began hacking into it with a sword. Each cut made a sickening cracking noise, and after several swings, he grabbed the arm and began to wrench it violently side to side until at last he heard a pop. A few more swings and he cut the thing loose, not surprised to find that the connection between the arm and shoulder was much stronger than a normal corpse.

“I’m counting on you,” Haern said, carrying the arm back to the grate. “Just … hold together, all right?”

There was no swivel at the elbow, no movement whatsoever. Wielding it as he would a club, he held it by the far end of the arm, a bizarre extension with curled fingers reaching up into the black void unlit by the blue torchlight. Praying for a miracle, he swung the club, ramming the fingers into the grate. He heard a scraping sound coupled with a crack he could only assume was one of the bones in the fingers breaking. Trying not to get his hopes up, he closed his eyes and pulled.

The fingers held, and the grate swung down with ease. The torchlight just barely shone upon it, and Haern could tell it was thoroughly rusted over.

“No escape?” muttered Haern. “I think you’re about to help me prove you wrong, Boris.”

Using the arm as a rope, he pulled himself up off the ground, not bothering to test the weight. The last thing he wanted to do was add any extra strain, even if for a moment. Up the arm he went, and when he reached the grate, he stretched to his limits, fingers searching for a hold. When he found one, a jut of stone the grate’s hinge was connected to, he wanted to cry. Now with something firm to hold onto, he pulled himself up and into the tunnel. The sides were cramped, the rock uneven, so when he pushed against one side with his feet, he was able to successfully wedge himself into the entrance.

Before he could ascend higher, he heard a rattling, a rolling, and then the most sickening popping sound.

“ Haern … ”

Just his imagination, he told himself. Haern reached down, grabbing Boris’s arm and wrenching it free. He might need it again on his climb, he decided. Still, he didn’t like the way it flopped over his back, suddenly not so rigid.

“ Haern, don’t leave me. ”

Not his imagination, then. He heard the scattering of bones, the groaning of leather straps and the rattle of armor.

“ Don’t leave me down here! ”

The arm vibrated across his back. Haern pulled it off him, and then it suddenly tugged hard down toward the chamber. He just barely released it in time before it could pull him back inside. The arm hit the ground, then rolled out of sight. Another sickening pop followed.

“Just climb,” Haern whispered, pushing away all thoughts of Boris reassembling himself, condemned to remain inside the blue-fire chamber, fed the scraps of Karak’s unfaithful. “Nothing else, just climb.”

Keeping his legs braced, his back pressed against the stone, he pushed himself upward with his arms, nice and slow. Once high enough, he took a step, one foot above the other. It was tedious work and put tremendous strain on his legs and back, but it was something he knew he could endure for hours if need be. He just had to be careful. One slip, one slacking of the pressure, and he’d be tumbling back down the tunnel.

He doubted Boris would be so polite and talkative the second time around.

“ Haern … ”

Boris’s voice followed him, a ragged, fading whisper. It took many steps, and at least ten minutes by his guess, but eventually, he was high enough in the darkness to be free of the man’s haunting cry. He prayed he never heard the cursed man’s voice ever again.

Inch by tedious inch he climbed. Occasionally, he found handholds in the stone, and he used them to rest his back. He tried not to think about how long he was down there, nor his escape. All he thought of was his father telling him “sorry” before sending him tumbling down into the pit. Whenever Haern felt his legs starting to wobble, or his back locking up from the strain, he thought of that “sorry” and used it to push on higher. The tunnel gradually shifted, the slight variations required to prevent someone from plummeting straight down to their death. Sometimes, they were just soft enough that he could sit for a moment and catch his breath before continuing. Sometimes, they forced him to twist and shift the way he climbed, lest he slide right back down.

At one point, he felt his foot slip into the air, and at first, he thought he’d missed, but then he realized it was a secondary tunnel connected to the first. It was somewhat perpendicular to the one he climbed, and he grabbed ahold of its sides with his fingers and pulled himself into it. Letting out a gasp, he lay on his back and willed his muscles to relax.

“Almost there,” he told himself, though he had no idea if it were true or not. “Almost there.”

The question now was where to go: up, or follow the other chute? In the end, he decided to continue his climb. His gut said the other direction led to wherever the dark paladins tended to dump their victims. The higher tunnel with the ladder? That one he had a feeling they knew nothing about. Well, no one but Luther, if the priest, or his father, were to be trusted.

As much as he hated the thought of doing so, he returned to a crouch, then extended so that he was leaning against the far side. Spinning about so his back was against it, he stepped one step to the left, a firm foot pushing against stone, and began his climb. More time. More inches by painful inches. When the pain in his back didn’t seem able to get any worse, he felt it strike something sharp. Despite the pain, despite the darkness, a laugh escaped his lips that took almost a minute to cease.