David Wise - Tales of Ravenloft

The sun shone directly overhead when George discovered the mine shaft plunging into the mountain's side. Aliza had said the Sad One lived in a cavern within the mountain, and the mine shaft was the only entrance he could see. He collapsed beside it and pulled out his water flask. He was torn and bleeding from the thorns and thistles and bruised and sore from sliding on the rubble. He was also having trouble catching his breath; the air was thin this high up, and it stank from some invisible vapors.

Peering down the steeply inclined shaft, the ranger realized that the Sad One could only have traveled so quickly had she levitated up the mountain slope and then down this shaft. He'd never heard of a priestess with the power to levitate before, and he recalled uneasily Aliza's warning of powers great and dark, powers beyond his ken.

He tossed a few pebbles into the shaft and counted as he listened for them to hit the bottom. Over five hundred feet down, he estimated, unless the pebbles had hit the side of the shaft; then it might be deeper. There was a tunnel opening in the side of the shaft less than fifty feet down. He would start his search for the Sad One and the baby there.

Hand-and toeholds were chipped into the beams that braced the shaft walls, and some old rusty ladder rungs still remained in some stretches along the northern side of the shaft, but George took the time to anchor a safety rope. The sun was still high as he began his descent, and light bathed the mouth of the tunnel when he reached it. He didn't need to light his lamp until he stepped several feet down the tunnel. The lamplight glistened on silvery cobwebs that hung in thick curtains, blocking several side passages. Tattered strands of web drifted in the air along the main passage, so someone must have used the passage recently.

As George crept forward, he heard a woman singing. The melody was dissonant and eerie, and the lyrics were in some tongue the ranger did not recognize. He followed the voice until the tunnel opened into a small cavern. Just inside the cavern he halted. The Sad One sat cross-legged on the floor, rocking and singing to the baby. Presumably her song was a lullaby, but hardly one a baby could sleep to. Yet the child was still and made no sound.

George waited until a pause in the song before he spoke. "Excuse me, ma'am. I've come about the baby," he said.

The Sad One set the baby down on the floor and levitated to her feet. Her long white hair covered her like a veil, but when she raised her head, it fell back and revealed her face. George gasped, momentarily horrified. It was not her skin, as black as the darkness all around her, but her features that frightened the ranger. Her deep purple lips curled like a snarling dog's, and her bloodshot eyes bulged out and glared at him with mad rage.

Despite his fear, George's hand went instinctively for his scabbard, but the Sad One blew into him like a gust of wind. She wrenched his hand away from the sword's hilt and clenched it in her icy fingers.

A searing pain shot up George's arm as the Sad One crushed his hand with inhuman strength. He tried to yank his arm away, but the drow's grip was unyielding, and he succeeded only in pulling the awful woman closer to him. With her face near his own, he could hear her murmur some unrecognizable phrase over and over. Her tongue was as purple as her lips, and her breath was chill. His hand cramped in agony as the Sad One twisted his flesh as though it were clay. His fingers seemed to melt away, and his wrist bent backward, unable to straighten.

Finally the drow released him and whispered," Now that you are imperfect, Jozell, how dare you come to take my baby?"

Then darkness enveloped him. George could feel the heat coming from the lantern he still held in his left hand, but he could see no flicker of light, no glimmer of a dying wick. It was a magical darkness that left him blind to the draw's movements.

Icy fingertips stroked his cheek, and where he had been touched, his skin felt as if it were sizzling beneath a hot poker. The ranger dropped his lantern and clutched at his face with his good left hand. He reeled backward, and with the stump of his right hand felt for the cavern wall until he discovered the tunnel leading to the mine shaft. Then he fled, running and stumbling in the pitchdark underground.

Finally, gasping from the thin, poisonous air, George slowed and tried to orient himself. He didn't need to see to know he was covered with cobwebs; he could feel them fluttering about his face and shoulders in the warm breeze coming from his left. He followed the current of air until he could see a glow of light up ahead.

The tunnel opened into the mine shaft. He stood blinking in the sunlight, grateful for its warmth and light. His face throbbed with pain, and he stared with sickening distaste at his maimed hand. He'd never heard of a power that could twist flesh as his had been. One of those powers great and dark, a power beyond his ken, he thought. The drow, he realized, could probably have killed him, but she had let him live. She wanted only the baby, and she did seem to cherish it.

She was mad, though. Of that, the ranger had no doubt. He'd seen it in her eyes. Then there was the name she'd called him — Jozell — it might mean stranger or warrior, but George's instincts told him it was the name of one of the drow who'd killed her own baby. The Sad One was reliving her past, as the mad so often did. She would protect the baby from outsiders, he realized, but caring well for it might not be in her power. He had to go back.

It took him several minutes of searching for the rope he'd left hanging before George realized the tunnel he'd used to enter the drow's realm was across the shaft and several feet above him. He'd taken a wrong turn in the dark. Now he'd either have to wind his way back through the maze of passages or climb his way over and up to the first tunnel. Better, the ranger thought, to take the route I took before and stay in the light as much as possible.

He began his climb up. There weren't as many handholds on this side of the shaft, and he was unable to grip with his maimed hand, so the climb was awkward and slow. He'd made it halfway around the shaft when a rotted timber gave way beneath his weight. He began sliding down, grabbing at the dirt and timber walls with his left hand, but unable to get a purchase. He spread out his arms and legs against the wall, trying to slow his descent. It took him longer to reach the bottom of the shaft than the pebbles he had thrown in to judge its depth, but ultimately that was where he ended up.

He circled the wall until he'd reached the north side of the shaft, where there were more handholds. Before he began his ascent, though, he sat down, as much to regain his composure as to rest his aching muscles and to catch his breath.

A small pool of water sparkled in the center of the shaft, and all about the pool thistles grew thick and green. George was just beginning to think of the shaft floor as an oasis in the desert of the mountain when he spotted the gleam of a skull. He might have ignored it as he had the second skeleton on the mountainside, but this skull was different. It was so small.

George bent down to retrieve the ivory ball shape. It fit in the palm of his hand. Once it had belonged to an infant. The ranger scanned the shaft floor again. Having spotted one skull, he could now see that the floor was littered with skeletons. Some were large enough that they might have belonged to children old enough to walk, but mostly the bones were very, very small. Aliza had not been the first to abandon a baby for the Sad One to claim.

He'd observed thousands of animal skeletons during his years in the wilderness, so he was quick to realize all the skeletons were missing their leg bones. With a sickening dread, the ranger remembered Aliza's tale. The draw's baby had been born without legs of its own. With her power to twist flesh and bone, the Sad One had found a way to relive that part of her life, too, over and over. Had the Sad One then relived her grief each time one of these babies had died?