Part 6: Oh Brothers, Where Art Thou
The Battleguard peered in at the disarrayed furniture and scowled.
"Malak, me thinks we best go back ta tha fore o' tha sanctuary now," Karak told his brother and the cleric nodded.
The pair crept uneventfully back to what Malak had called the shrine. There the Battleguard fished into his belt pouch and pulled out a silver karn-a. He tossed the square coin into the wooden bowl at Shaharizod's feet. Before it had stopped clattering there, the dwarf was kneeling in prayer.
"Tha Queen wou' understand if'n ye' made one pass by her without stoppin' ta say 'ello," Karak jabbed as he rolled his eyes.
The Battleguard gave no sign that he'd heard and Karak turned his back on him, staring deeply into the darkened doorway to the main hall. His breath was still pumping from his mouth in great clouds of silver steam and he could see thin eddies of snow moving along the tiled floor borne by wind from the open front door.
"Methinks we best be gettin' tha goat and shuttin' tha door," he mumbled to himself. "I dinna want tha Snow Creature ta shamble in. And tha poor goat must be a might cold about now."
Truth be told, HE was a might cold about now. As he stared at the darkness, his fingers worked at his beard, breaking up the ice that had collected in it. The cold was easy for the dwarves to ignore, but the shroud of darkness that veiled the outer room was not. He started just a bit when he heard Malak's voice from behind him.
"Karak, we best find a way o' shuttin' that outer door 'fore whatever took Arngrim decide to be amblin' in here lookin' for more food" suggested Malak. "It be lookin' like tha brothers already had some uninvited visitors for dinner," he added, pointing back toward the ominously scattered dining room.
"Nae. Ye dinna really think so do ye, me chalak?" Karak snipped sarcastically. "But I tells ye, that darkness nae be liftin' a bit, so I say we heads ta tha door together. But move quick and keep yer hands above ye as we pass through that dark."
Malak looked at his brother strangely.
"That way, if'n one o' them creatures drops we can throw it ta tha ground 'fore it plunks on our heads," Karak explained and pantomimed the action for the cleric.
Malak thought for a moment, he was usually hesitant to disagree with his brother when it came to such issues, but he remembered finding his way through the darkness just after it fell.
"I found me way along tha walls easy enough while ye were playin' with yer slug friend," Malak smiled wryly. "Tha corners be light enough to see where ye be. I'll head over to tha door, ye just follow me and keep yer axes at tha ready."
Karak harrumphed and was ready to balk at the idea when his brother stepped into the darkness and disappeared.
They followed the right-hand wall, passing into a sliver of light in the corner, back into darkness and finally out through the front door and onto the portico. The storm had gotten worse while they'd been inside and now even the monastery's courtyard was becoming choked with snow. The heavy black-gray clouds seemed to be resting on the roof of the place, threatening to bury anyone who didn't seek shelter.
The black goat was still tethered to the front gate. Its fur was covered with snow and a drift was forming around its feet. It let out a sad bleat as the two dwarves approached. But despite the fact that the animal was trembling from the cold, it took all the pair's strength and effort to force the goat inside the monastery. In the end, it was only the facts that much of the way was slicked with ice and that Karak was strong enough to fully lift the beast off the ground if he needed to that allowed them to get the goat inside at all.
Even so, it continued to bleat with fearful regularity.
Malak tied its lead to the banister that ran along the spiraling staircase. The handrail, he saw, was intricately carved with scenes that depicted Orin's theft of the sun from the demon-ogre Fir Flinderkin.
Karak pushed the door closed and drew a bar across it to lock it from the inside. He was turning back to his brother when he let out a startled, "Oy!"
He'd been too preoccupied to notice that the entry hall was free of the magical darkness. Although now, with the front door closed, the room was almost completely black anyway. Their darkvision could just reveal the same details they had glimpsed upon first entering: an archway to the left which led to the shrine; another straight ahead that bisected the hallway and faced an archway into the disarrayed dining room; a wide staircase that climbed up to a second floor landing; and a small door set under the stairs. In the center of the room was a flat, leathery thing that looked from where they stood like a discarded backpack.
"Have ye any torches, me chalak?" Karak asked, not taking his eyes off the thing on the floor.
"Nae," the cleric admitted. "But I did see something e'en better in Arngrim's supplies."
The dwarf fussed around in the goat's packs and produced a hooded lantern of the sort used by dwarves deep in the mines. It took a few moments with flint and steel to get it lit, but once it got going, it filled the room with a warm orange glow.
Malak stood beside him with the lantern while Karak knelt over the strange little corpse and prodded it with one of his hand axes.
It was a dull gray in color, vaguely conical, with a series of thick tentacles around the wide end. Just above that ring of arms was a ring of what looked like small round eyes. The two ragged gashes he had cut into its hide revealed messy black organs inside its body. It didn't seem to have any bones, being all guts and muscle.
"Have ye e'er seen its like before?" Malak asked and Karak shook his head.
"But mayhap there be a gem inside," the warrior said and began to dissect the creature with his handaxe. It was messy, vile-smelling work, and in the end yielded no glittering bauble. As he wiped his hands clean on a scrap of cloth from their packs, Karak scowled.
"Best be finishin' up with this floor, then move up tha stairs ta scout around up there a bit as well," he said. He angled his head toward the small door set beneath the stair. "An' there be only one door left ta try down 'ere."
They checked the small door as usual and found no traps. It was obvious from the whistling howl they could hear beyond it that the door opened to the outside. Like the front door, it was choked closed with ice, but yielded to Malak's shoulder after a few moments. As soon as it was unlatched, the wind from outside nearly ripped the door from his hands. Snow blew into their faces as they peered out onto a patio that ran the width of the monastery.
Six statues depicting bald monks in various fighting stances were lined up along the opposite edge of the patio. To their right a sharp drop lead to the courtyard in front of the monastery. To the left were the remains of a large garden. Orderly rows of last year's harvest poked up through the snow.
It took both of them pressing against the door to force it closed against the wind.
"Upstairs?" Malak asked, leaning against the closed door.
"Upstairs," Karak agreed.
A narrow walkway ran around the edge of the area, open to the entryhall below with only a wooden banister to keep anyone from falling over. Directly at the top of the stairs was a hallway with four doorways leading off of it - two on the left and two on the right. The first door on the left had been battered down so that it hung on one twisted hinge. To the far right of the stairs was another closed door.
The landing itself was littered with splinters of wood. A door to the immediate right of the stairs had been ripped off its hinges and lay broken against the far wall. It was clear that some effort had been made to board up the door from this side, but that it had failed miserably. They could see that a steep, narrow staircase climbed still higher in the passage beyond the shattered doorway.
"I be likin' tha looks o' this less an' less as we go," Karak muttered.
"Hmmm..," Karak intoned as he eyed the damage and the closed doors. "Twou' seem that th' other doors be tha monks cells."
"A fair guess," Malak agreed.
"Let's use tha same procedure we've been usin'," the warrior suggested. "But now I want ye ta turn 'n' face backward 'n' look up. I will look forward, right, left, and down. Agreed?"
"Sounds like a plan," the cleric replied.
They crept back-to-back across the debris-littered landing toward the hallway that led away into the darkness outside their lantern light. Splintered fragments of the door at the foot of the narrow staircase to their right crunched beneath their heavy boots. A glance up the staircase as they passed told them nothing; it climbed up to some darkened third floor.
Before they'd even stepped fully into the hallway, the devastation in the room on the left was apparent. The door, as they'd noted earlier, had been smashed open, its latch and hinges reduced to bits of twisted metal. Some furniture - probably a low table and two narrow benches, judging by the fragments that remained intact - had been piled against the door as a kind of barricade. Shredded straw mats covered the floor of the room. Two corpses lay in the middle of the carnage, their bodies broken almost beyond recognition. One corpse's head had been twisted entirely around so that it stared at them even as they stared at its back.
"Gaw!" Malak groaned, hastily making the sign of the crescent moon.
At first, Karak said nothing. He had once seen the remains of a dwarven tunnel warden who'd been surprised by a rock troll while on duty. The huge creature had mangled the dwarf so badly that his clanbrothers needed to identify him by the etchings on his arms and armor.
This was worse.
The two victims had obviously been dead for some time. They were both male and both human and covered with a layer of frost. It looked as though they had been in excellent physical condition before their deaths, but it was impossible to say for certain. The swollen, purple joints and the unnatural position of the limbs made it difficult - and unpleasant - to ascertain details. The skin had split in many places as if something immensely powerful had grabbed each arm and leg and wrung it like a dishrag. Judging by the expressions of fear and pain on their frozen features, most of their injuries had been inflicted while they were still alive and struggling.
"This be nae way for someone ta die," the warrior grumbled. "Nae e'en a beardless human."
As if in agreement, the two corpses began to stir. Their mangled limbs jerked and twitched as the frozen muscles worked to push them upright. Impossibly, they rose, their eyes vacant of any thought, but filled with undead malice
