Now that the corridors and caves lying behind the southern door of the well-chamber have been all explored, we set forth to discover all chambers in the western parts of the maze. Soon we met with opposition, but just like on the upper level, the goblins were disorganised. They had days of warning, they even had to clear up the signs of one of our massacres, and still, they went about their gardening carefreely, as if no danger threatened them. I struggled to believe that any creature capable of speech could be this stupid. So I came up with the idea that this mysterious Outcast, whom the kobolds were talking about, was putting his minions deliberately in harm's way.

“That would make sense”, Beldrak said. “I suspect this Outcast has to be a user of magic like myself. It stands to reason that he has some influence over the goblins, and orders them around, or manipulates them with more subtle methods.”

“Whoever it is, he wants to get rid of the goblins”, mused Jim. “And wants to recruit us, instead of them?”

“A possibility”, I allowed. “But he has to be insane if he believes we will join him after the ordeal he put us through.”

We cleared out room after room. In a big hexagonal chamber, another fire snake made its lair. Despite my previous promise of never going near one again, I cut it down and was burned again in turn. As thanks, I got yelled at again by Beldrak for ruining yet another cloak of fire protection. I swore to let him deal with the next fire snake alone, but we never found a third one.

One by one, we followed the corridors and routes of the maze to their end. Less and less doors remained, which opened into chambers we haven't discovered yet, and we met less and less goblins. It was already well into the evening when we found the room with the dragon sculpture. 

“Here will be a trap”, announced Beldrak.

“Let me guess. A time-honoured custom of building mazes is putting traps into rooms with creepy sculptures?”

“Something like that. Now, I will perform my ritual to detect magic. Look around for mundane traps till then, will you?”

Beldrak started chanting, I began to examine the tiles and walls, and then a black cloud came shrieking from behind the sculpture. It was levitating a good foot above the ground, a whirling, swirling black mass of a creature. It stopped for only a moment as if unable to decide which of us would make the juiciest prey, then rushed towards Jim.

This trap didn't take much springing; I thought as I unsheathed my sword, and went running to take the creature in the back. My slash, however, went harmlessly through the air. The black cloud gracefully danced away, as if it had seen me coming, even though its attention should have been focused on Jim.

Beldrak started to react now, his tone changing, his chanting deeper and faster, and Erky started the familiar motions to summon that purple fire of his. But the first to strike the enemy was Jim. He was bleeding from a wound on his face, and his eyes were glowing, their usual pitch black turning into a deep crimson. He shouted only one deep word, his finger pointing towards the black cloud, and suddenly a host of black flames erupted from the ground, and the shriek of the creature turned from victorious to painful. Or maybe I just imagined that.

I swung my sword again hard and cut the cloud in half. I felt some resistance, but it was very different to cutting into living flesh, and instead of getting stuck, my blade went through the whole of the creature. Anything with a real body would have been dead after a slash like that. But the cloud was only wounded, its swirling mass closing behind my sword.

Even so, it did not have long to live. It turned towards me and clawed at me, but I jumped backwards, and I felt my mail stopping the attack. Then Erky and Beldrak finished their spells, while Jim brought down the axeblade of his halberd. The cloud shrieked once more, than it fell limp on the floor, spreading on the stones like an ugly, black puddle.

“What was that?” I asked panting.

“Damned if I know”, answered Beldrak. “Even I can't know everything. But let us pull back a little. There might be other traps, and I will have to start my ritual from the beginning again.”

The dragon sculpture proved to be a bearer of powerful magic according to Beldrak: it made a person more persuasive and attractive for a day, in exchange for a small sacrifice of coins or something other of value. There were no other traps left, neither magical nor mundane.

There was only one door other than what we came through, and it opened to a small, somewhat tidier than usual room. There was a shelf in there, which held books, so many beautiful books!

Books in this world were much different from the books I was used to: they were made of a different kind of papyrus, and they bound together a whole lot of them by one side. It was a really practical and nice solution, and most of these books even had a hard leathery cover.

I always liked reading, but we didn't have many books at home, and most of those few were written in Greek, which my parents spoke, but I was only starting to learn. Like then, most of the books we found now were written in languages I did not understand yet.

Beldrak, on the other hand, spoke many languages used by the learned of this world, and he was going through the library, taking the books one by one, examining their cover, then reading a few pages here and there. He told us to secure the room, so we raised a makeshift barricade before the door we entered through, and before the other one that led further north.

“Shouldn't we press on?” I asked after an hour or so.

“No, I was finished for today anyways. Also, this is a treasure trove. We might find here the answer to all of our questions. Where does the apple come from? How is it made? Why this fortress was sunk into a ravine?”

“We will leave you to your investigation then”, said Jim. “It was time for me to get some sleep anyway.”

We didn't have to clean up this room, it was already clean enough, an unusual sight in this maze of underground gardens and goblin quarters. Whoever was in charge of the place did not let the little nubbins soil this chamber.

Hours later, as I finished polishing my armour and started to whet my swords for the second time that day, Beldrak closed the book he was reading with a loud thump. His face was radiating satisfaction and victory.

“I did not find out about the apple yet, but I know why the fortress sunk.”

“Do tell me then”, I answered excitedly. Curiosity after hearing Beldrak's story was at least half the reason why I joined him in this expedition, and the days since then only convinced me more that there were secrets here that were worth unearthing.

“This place was built by a dragon-cult. It was a group of wizards and sorcerers who were leading them, a powerful bunch, but with a little crooked mind. They professed that dragons should rule the world, which I guess would be an understandable position if they were thinking about silver or golden dragons. But they didn't care about the colours, only that they should be dead.”

“You are not making any sense.”

“They were revering undead dragons, namely dracoliches. They had a few prophecies regarding the coming of an age where these undead dragons would form a nation encompassing the whole of Tegilpén, or even the whole world, and running it wisely and efficiently.”

“I see what you meant when you said their minds were a little crooked.”

“Anyways, they were a powerful and wealthy movement and built some fortresses, this amongst them. For obvious reasons they did not advertise their beliefs very loudly, but eventually, their secrets came out in the open, and one of the saner churches decided to put an end to this dracolich-loving nonsense. One by one the leaders of the cult were assassinated. Others perished in battle. The commander of this fort, a powerful elvish dragon-priest reckoned his enemies would come around to deal with him eventually, so he tried to make himself immortal.”

“He did succeed in some measure, but he also turned into some abomination. He lost most of his power it seems, and he pissed off his fellow priests as much as his enemies. So they made a temporary peace it seems, sieged the fortress down, imprisoned the poor devil for eternity somehow, then sunk the fortress, and tried to forget about the whole debacle. They left a few guards here, just in case. The commander of the guard, eventually came around to write a few passages about the history of the fortress. He was a wizard, like myself. He is taciturn and skips many details, but I was able to put together as much as I told you.”

“And the apples?”

“Nothing of the apples yet. I am also interested in how this whole thing ties to the healing fruits, but none of the books here mentions them. At least not the ones I have come around to read. But I only looked in a dozen or so. Given time, I will find out how the apples fit into the picture.”

“What happened to the commander who wrote this book?”

“He left eventually or died here. Probably died, I doubt he would have left these books here otherwise.”

“Do you think this immortal priest is the Outcast we are looking for?”

“Might well be. There would be no secure prison for an immortal if he did achieve that. If you can just wait it out... I guess there is a chance your prison will crumble around you, and you become free again. I should spend a few days here. If I could read all these books...”

“You know we have no time to do that. Even if the Hucreles are dead, we have to act as if they were alive until we find proof of their demise.”

“And we also shouldn't leave our enemies time to recover”, Beldrak sighed. “I know. The goblins act disorganised and stupid so we should press on before they come to their senses. We are winning; we uncovered most of the maze by now, so we should go all the way tomorrow.”

I didn't need to answer. I judged that my smaller sword had enough of an edge now, so I put it away, and took the bigger one into my hand.

“Go to sleep, Beldrak. I will have the first watch.”

***

Author's note