Hey, friends. If you’re new to the website, every Monday I’ve been posting a chapter of my work-in-progress, a fantasy adventure called Lost in Silver. If this is your first time here, why not start with Chapter One: The Visitor? For those of you who’ve been following along, here’s Chapter Seventeen!
Chapter Seventeen
The Moat
Baliwick’s keep was much like Linda had expected it to be. Large. Stone. Lots of pointy bits. Right down to the moat, it was a standard fairy-tale castle in every respect. It loomed up over them long before they got close to it, towers and turrets and flags standing sentinel. Linda noticed that the paint on the road was more worn here – chipped away in many places. Some of the cobblestones had been wasted down to bare rock from a combination of footsteps and weather. The workmanship looked quite shoddy, but somehow Linda doubted Baliwick cared.
To Gail, the castle made her think of what she’d wanted to be when she was little. She had imagined herself in towers quite similar to the ones she stared at now, dressed in velvet and fleece, her fingers and neck and ears adorned with glittering jewels, a tiara upon her head. She’d imagined herself trapped at the very apex of the spire, looking out across the plains. There was a field of bluebells to the east, roses to the south, violets to the west, sunflowers to the north, and she imagined a knight riding up to the tower upon a white horse to save her. The face beneath the helm of the armor changed, but that never really mattered so much. That part could be filled in later.
To Gene, there was only one thing the castle made him think of, and he was fighting it at every step. It reminded him of the Alamo.
“We’re getting close, lad and lasses,” Emily said. “It’s your last chance to come to your senses.”
“My brother’s in there, Emily,” Linda said. “I don’t go home without him.”
“I admire ye, Linda. I think ye’ve lost your mind, but I admire ye. Come on, I’ll show ye how to get in.”
“How to get in?” Gene said. “We’re still half a mile away.”
“Did ye think we were going to walk right up to the front door and knock?” Emily smiled and stepped off the road into the woods. Linda shrugged and the others followed her.
For the first several yards it appeared as though they were wandering aimlessly through trees and undergrowth, but it soon became evident that Emily was leading them through a carefully carved pathway between the foliage. It was somewhat disguised – if you didn’t know better, it would appear that they were just stepping through naturally-appearing gaps between the trunks and bushes, but as they stepped through, it became obvious the cleared track was deliberate.
“Emily, what is all this?” Gene asked. “Who cut this trail?”
“Lots of people,” Emily said. “Ye’re out of your minds, dears, but ye’re not the first to make this trek. Baliwick doesn’t guard the outside of the keep too heavily, because his spell keeps most sane people away from this place. Not that there isn’t occasional resistance, but Baliwick has the interior of the keep well-fortified and isn’t particularly worried about attack.”
“Oh good,” Gene said. “I’m looking forward to surprising him.”
“Anyway, we’ve got a way in to the fortress they don’t know about. There’s a barred drainage pipe on the western side of the moat. We’ve sawed the bars off beneath the waterline.”
“They’ve never noticed?” Linda asked.
“Nay. They never go underwater. Doesn’t agree with ‘em, ye know.”
“Oh good. Maybe if Baliwick’s goons try to kill us we can melt them like the Wicked Witch of the West.”
“The who?”
“Never mind.”
Emily’s path was taking them on a curve, which Linda recognized as being wide enough to get them around the back of the fortress. As they started to creep up on the wall, the foliage around them began to grow sparse.
“They keep the land around the castle free of trees,” Emily explained. “Since Baliwick moved in, they haven’t spent quite as much time on landscaping, but that means we’ll just have to wade through a sea of wildflowers.”
The flowers, a long stretch of red petals and blue fruit in the center, stretched out around them. Save for a few baumer trees scattered around – small ones, probably the results of pits discarded by young couples on a walk behind the fortress – the forest had fallen away and they were face to face with a massive gray wall.
“Well, here we are, young bucks,” Emily said. “Do y’see the pipe against the wall?”
“Yeah, I see it,” Linda said. It was a big pipe – probably three feet in diameter, although only the top foot was above the water. There was a set of old, rusty bars stretching down into the green muck of the moat, and after that, darkness. The only way it could have looked less inviting was if there had been a Macana warrior straddling the pipe with a lightning-gun aimed down at the water.
“Ye’ll want to take off your shoes to cross, but the packs Elmer gave ye are proof against the water. Your provisions will stay dry through anything short of a typhoon.”
“We’re supposed to jump in that?” Gail said.
“Aye. I told ye the pipe was under the water. How did ye expect to get through?”
“I guess I knew, but… I didn’t think it’d be so… so…”
“Yucky?” Gene offered, looking down into the gunk.
“Yeah. Are there any fish in there?” Gail asked. There were hazy images of blood-encrusted piranha swimming behind her eyes.
“No, no fish anymore. There used to be, of course. Remember Baliwick’s spell that cleared the forests? Well, there was nowhere for the fish to swim off to, so most of them went insane and tore each other to shreds.”
Gail looked down into the stagnant moat. “Oh,” she said. “Fun.”
“Gail, you don’t have to do this,” Linda said. “You’ve come so far – if you want to go back with Emily and wait for us to rescue Benny, we’ll understand.”
“What?”
“It’s fine by me, Gail,” Emily said. “Wait until ye try the meat-pies Elmer makes for dinner. Of course, it’s been harder to come by meat lately…”
Gail was obviously thinking it over. She gazed into the still waters, knowing if she jumped into this, the water wouldn’t roll off when she climbed out. She’d stay wet. She’d reek. And all of this was just assuming she didn’t get killed on her way to wherever it was that pipe led.
But she had already been weak once.
“Thanks, Linda, but I’ll manage,” she said. “Come on, let’s go in.”
* * *
Linda felt like she spent half of her life jumping into or pulling herself out of water at this point, and she probably could have been happy never doing it again. The second she immersed herself in the moat-water, though, she would have given anything to be dropping back into Evertime. She’d hated the cold, but this water was hot and thick with weeds, like she was swimming in cabbage soup. She didn’t know how deep the water was, but she couldn’t feel the bottom. She was paddling with one arm and both feet. With her free arm, she was trying to hold her shoes up above the water. The bars in the pipe looked wide enough to slip the shoes through. It would be miserable enough to be in wet, smelly clothes without their feet suffering the same fate.
The one-armed swim went very slowly. The moat was wide here, maybe fifteen feet across, and Linda wasn’t a very strong swimmer to begin with. As she drifted through the muck, pulling herself with just her right arm and pushing with her feet, she uttered a quick prayer with each stroke, hoping her own strength and a little help would be enough to get her to the other side.
None of them made any sound if they could help it, swimming as silently as they could. Emily was perched on the bank, watching as they went across, and Linda got the impression that she was almost waiting to see if she’d need to jump in and pull out any of them that may get into trouble. Fortunately, they all made it across without incident, Linda first, and she waited for the others to arrive. She placed her own shoes on the top of the pipe, then held on to Gene’s as he took an enormous breath and dropped under the water.
Linda didn’t count the seconds he was down there, but she was certain it was less than it seemed, because if he was down there as long as she felt he was, he’d have suffered permanent brain damage from oxygen deprivation. She couldn’t really see down into the thick, translucent stew, so she looked straight ahead into the pipe until finally Gene’s dark head came up out of the water and he let out his breath. He wiped the water from his eyes and motioned for Linda to hand him his shoes through the bars.
“How was it?” she whispered.
“Not too bad,” he said, clearly lying. “I just had to keep feeling down the bars until I got to the place where they were cut off. But I can touch bottom in here, so at least we won’t have to swim the whole way in.”
“Ready, Gail?” Linda asked.
“No, but I’ll do it anyway.” She handed her shoes over to Linda, inhaled, and dove. A few seconds later – less than the interminable time Gene took, she came up.
“Piece of cake,” she said, spitting. “As long as that cake has been sitting in the hot sun for a week and has mold all over it.”
Linda passed Gail’s shoes through the bars, then gave Gene her own. “Okay guys,” she said. “Ready or not, here I come.”
She took her breath and went under. As she sank, she realized how hard it must have been for the others. There was a call, a compulsion in her head to just turn around and run away. It had echoed through her ever since they had come to Nogard, and it had gotten stronger – Baliwick’s spell. It made her want to leave.
She knew it, though, she knew it was only Baliwick’s magic making her want to run off, and so she fought it. She kept her eyes clenched tight, feeling down the bars until she found where they were cut off. The edge was sharp, and she pulled her finger away before she sliced it on the metal. She pushed down, deeper into the water, and ducked her head low enough to slip in under the bars.
She was about halfway through before her stomach began to churn.
Whatever energy boost she’d gotten from Elmer’s drink was entirely gone, and suddenly her guts were in agony. She felt like she’d eaten glass covered in hot sauce, and the combined cramps and bile rising up in her throat nearly paralyzed her.
As her stomach burned, her muscles seized and she felt her arms and legs begin to thrash. Something hard hit the small of her back – the bottom of the cut-off bars, she realized – and a seizing in her lungs made her expel the breath she’d been holding in. She wanted to scream, but there was no air and the water that rushed into her mouth when she let out the breath was making it much harder not to throw up. Regurgitation was rapidly becoming a lesser concern, though, as she couldn’t move or breathe.
If she wasn’t in such agony, she would have been relieved when she felt a pair of strong hands push down on her waist so her body was free of the bars and then pull her through into the pipe. The same hands pulled her straight up and out of the water as soon as her body was clear of the bars and completely in the pipe, and even before she took in her first breath of stale air she heard Gene’s panicked voice saying, “Linda? Are you all right?”
Linda tried to open her mouth to speak, but the foul-smelling air was too much for her. She lurched out of Gene’s arms and threw up into the water. He grabbed her by the hand and pulled her deeper into the pipe, away from the remains of the small lunch she’d gotten at Elmer’s, deeper into the dark.
“What happened, Linda?” Gene asked.
“Was it the smell?” said Gail, whose own voice was wobbling.
“Nuh-no,” Linda managed to say. “I think it… it was something… I ate.”
“Something you ate?” Gene said. “I feel okay.”
“Me too,” said Gail.
Yeah, well… Elmer didn’t have a special goblet prepared for you two, she thought, but she was still convulsing and trying to say anything like that would have taken a very long time.
“Are you going to be all right?” Gene asked. “Do you want to go back?”
“No, no. We’ve got… this far. Come on.”
“But if you’re sick–”
“I feel fine now,” she lied. Her stomach hurt more than ever, and though the muscle convulsions seemed to be over, she now felt this odd burning sensation that appeared to be centered in her heart and spreading out through her entire body. She could actually locate any of her individual blood vessels at that point, because every artery was burning, and as the sensation continued, it was spreading to the capillaries and veins as well. Oddly enough, now that she was inside, she no longer felt Baliwick’s spell compelling her to turn around. It only seemed to work outside the castle walls. Small comfort, with her body in open revolt.
“You’re sure?” Gene said.
“I’m sure!” She surprised them all with the volume of her insistence, but it was enough to make Gene stop asking about her condition. Before they began to creep along the pipe, he sheepishly handed over a pair of soggy tennis shoes.
“Sorry,” he said. “I dropped them when I went down after you.” He didn’t mention his own shoes, which were also dangling, dripping wet, from his hand.
“You’re sorry?” Linda said. He’d just saved her life, and he was apologizing for getting her shoes wet in the process? It was so sweet and so silly, that even in her considerable pain, Linda couldn’t help but laugh.
“What? What’d I say?” he protested.
“Nothing,” she said, the laugh subsiding into a smile that lasted until her kidneys began to sizzle. She grit her teeth, but made no other outward indication of the pain. “Come on,” she said, and she started to creep along the pipe.
* * *
Linda did not know how long the pipe was, but it felt like a hundred miles, and with each breath her stomach turned over again, wanting to empty itself even though there was nothing left in it. They could barely stand, even in the water, because the bottom and sides of the pipe were covered with a thick slime that cut the friction on their bare feet to almost nothing. They slipped around, more than once grabbing onto the walls or each other to keep from plunging headfirst into the water again. Even worse, the deeper they waded, the farther away the light grew, and they were almost in total darkness when they reached the spot where the pipe angled up. There was a shaft of light coming down and they could see their exit maybe ten feet above them. The high water level stopped and only a slow trickle came down the pipe, but in a heavy rainstorm Linda imagined this dark tube gushed like the waterslides in Baton Rouge her parents brought the family to on Jamie’s birthday this past July.
“The walls are pretty dry, except for the trickle in the middle,” Gene said. “I think we can sort of creep up. You going to be okay for that, Linda?”
Linda nodded. Concern was sweet, but even with the horrible sensation in her belly, she was starting to get irritated. “Let’s just go,” she said. “I’ll be fine.”
“Okay,” Gene said. “Gail, you first.”
“Me?” she said, then she thought about it for a moment and said, “Me.” It was the most logical order – Linda couldn’t go up first because if there was something… unexpected… up there, she’d be in no shape to deal with it. She couldn’t go last because if she had another attack and slid down, she needed someone behind her who’d be able to catch her, and Gail wasn’t strong enough for that. She pretty much had to go up first.
Gail pulled herself up out of the water high enough to hang her shoes around her neck, the laces tied together, without having them dip in the water. Linda and Gene had both given up on keeping their shoes dry and had been carrying them that way for some time. Using her arms to brace herself against the sides of the pipe, she slowly began to pull herself forward. Eventually, she got high enough that she could use her feet to push against the dry stone as well. The slime beneath the water made it impossible before.
Linda waited behind Gail until her friend had moved up about a foot and a half, then she braced her stomach and started pulling herself up. The thin trickle down the middle had grown a little from the water draining away from Gail, but it wasn’t enough to concern herself with. She was more concerned with the fact that her limbs were nearly absent of strength. The heat in her blood was turning into an ache in her arms and legs, and her lungs hurt more than they had since that first trip into Evertime, when she hadn’t had a chance to grab a breath and didn’t know when she’d be back in the air.
Gene watched Linda creep up the shaft, then started up behind her. He wasn’t worried about holding on – the worst that could happen to him is he would slip and take another dunk at the bottom before trying again. If Linda spasmed right now, though, it could be disastrous for both of them. He couldn’t pull her up by himself, and they didn’t have any—
Wait a minute…
“Guys, I’m at the top,” Gail said. “There’s sort of a grate up here, we’re going to have to find a way to get it open.”
Linda was only about halfway up at that point, and she was breathing very heavily.
“You can make it, Linda,” Gene said.
“I know that!” she shouted, “I’m just – yikes!” She put her hand down on the trickle of water down the middle of the pipe, where there was still slime that could slow their progress, and the limb slid right out from under her. She smashed her chin on the slime and slid back into Gene, who was pushed almost down into the water before he was able to stop their descent. Linda shouted, furious at herself, and if she had any energy left she would have hit Gene holding onto her.
“I can’t do it,” she said, her voice quivering. “My arms, my legs…”
“It’s okay, Linda,” he said. “We’ll get you up there. Gail?”
“What?”
“Look in the pack Elmer gave you – he said we each had a length of rope.”
“We do?” Gail’s voice echoed down the tube. “Hey, we do.”
“Can you slip the rope through the grate?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s it made of?”
“Stone or concrete or something.”
“Okay, loop the rope through there and then throw both ends down to me.”
“Both ends?”
“Yeah. Trust me.”
There was a shuffling sound at the top of the pipe, then two strands of rope came rolling down to greet them – well, two ends of one strand. Gene took one strand and tied it around Linda’s waist. She was mad, but withdrawn. She didn’t fight him.
“Okay, Linda,” he said, grabbing the other end of the rope. “Hold on, I’m going to hoist you up. Get ready Gail! Here she comes!”
Gene held himself against the stone walls of the pipe and pulled hard on the rope. As he did that, Linda slid a few inches up the pipe. Gene had positioned her right on the slick of water and slime, where the lubrication could work to their advantage.
It took several minutes of pulling, and he twice was afraid he’d lost his footing and slip back into the water, but finally Gail called down, “I’ve got her, Gene!”
“Great,” he said. “Untie the rope from Linda and tie it around the grate. I’ll use it to climb up myself.”
After a few minutes he made it to the top with the girls. He could see an empty yard through the grate, but not a big yard. Judging by the posts and troughs he saw, he guessed he was looking out at a yard where horses had exercised before Baliwick’s spell drove off all the animals. With no more horses, there was no more need for the stable. There was nobody out there, and for the moment at least, they had privacy, huddled here at the top of the drainage chute. Linda was looking even worse – she’d either gone to sleep or just closed her eyes and was refusing to move. Gene didn’t know what affliction had suddenly struck her, but he had to fight off the thought that one of them getting sick could result in all of them getting killed.
He slumped down next to the grate, taking in what sunlight he could.
“Okay,” he said, “we’re in the castle. So much for the easy part.”
Next: Chapter Eighteen-The Captive
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