The Skeleton Key Read online

  There was a loud boom. Ramtut turned to see dust and bone fragments puff out from the chamber. Cup’s skull hit the wall and fell, spinning, to the corridor floor.

  ‘Down two,’ Ramtut muttered. The Crusaders had lost two players also, but they were still covering more ground, and faster. Tomolandry had said this was to be expected. That this was when the strategy would begin to kick in. Ramtut hoped it would soon.

  Ramtut led the team north again. The corridor branched, and he turned left. There were two more chambers opening off this tunnel. Ramtut checked the first, and there was another chest there, as crudely built as the first. He frowned. ‘Wait here,’ he told the skeletons, and ran ten yards down to the next chamber.

  There was a chest there too.

  ‘This can’t be right,’ Ramtut muttered.

  Greezing knelt and pulled another assembly of painted pig’s bladders from his sack. He blew into a tube at one end, inflating the sewn-together bladders into a decoy chest. He tied the tube off, then removed a clay glyph from the sack and placed it on the chest. He rubbed away the charcoal counter-glyph from the tablet’s surface, and the trap was activated. The pig’s bladders would explode when they were next touched. The decoy barely resembled the official Dungeonbowl chests scattered around the rest of the temple, but for players in a frenzied rush, a chest was a chest.

  Greezing nodded to himself. He ducked out of the chamber and ran down the tunnel towards the next open doorway. He had three more decoys in his sack, then he would be done. With a bit of luck, the rest of his team would also be wrapping up this stage of the operation. This plethora of false exploding chests should slow the Bright Crusaders down nicely. The plan was to get them so hurt and desperate that they wouldn’t notice the real trap being laid for them. They had to hurry, though. The goblins were in a rush to stay ahead of the Bright Crusaders, and those detestable prigs were nothing if not fast. The eyes of CabalVision would be on the players, so as long as Greezing and his gang stayed out of sight of the Crusaders and the Champions, he counted on their activities remaining secret.

  He was in the next chamber and placing his trap when he heard the muffled whump of a chest going off at some distance. He frowned, but didn’t think more of it until, only a minute later as he was catching up with Gilspat down the tunnel, he heard another blast. It too sounded far away, he didn’t like that, and he didn’t like that it came so soon after the previous one. And both of them right at the start of the match. He had been placing his chests some distance away from centre field. They needed to look genuine. The traps couldn’t be too obvious or they would backfire.

  The explosions he was hearing also seemed to be going off in the north sector of the dungeon, in the direction the Champions of Death had gone to start the match. None of this was right.

  ‘Why am I hearing chests going off?’ he asked Gilspat.

  ‘Probably Yugwitz and Veelber’s traps.’

  ‘Why do they sound like they’re coming from the north?’

  ‘Because I sent them there.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You said we should have them spread out as much as possib–’

  Greezing grabbed him by the throat. ‘Everywhere except the north, you idiot! We don’t want to nobble the Champions!’ With a sinking heart, he could picture what was happening. The lazy fools had planted their chests in the first chambers they’d found, and now they were blowing up one skeleton after another. The Champions of Death were being ground down before the Crusaders even knew there was a contest.

  Greezing pushed Gilspat away and sighed. There was still a way to salvage this.

  ‘You have the ball, right?’ Finding out where that was had been the single greatest expense so far. Da Deff Skwad’s operating budget for the next season had taken a serious hit to acquire that piece of information. Greezing couldn’t guess how Hallic happened to know which chest had held the ball, and he didn’t care. He was grateful that corruption went as high as he needed.

  ‘Yes,’ Gilspat said. ‘I have it.’ He lifted his sack.

  ‘And the fake one?’

  ‘In the western side. Right in Sternguard’s path.’

  ‘Good.’ There was still a good chance the Bright Crusaders wouldn’t notice they had a fake until it was too late. ‘Put the real one in a chest near the Champions.’

  That would put more pressure on the Crusaders. Greezing wasn’t sure it would be enough to make them crack before the temptation he would place before them, but he was running out of moves. Things were getting messy.

  ‘How do I put it in a trapped chest?’ Gilspat asked.

  ‘I don’t care!’ Greezing shouted. ‘Use one of ours! Put it on top! Just go!’

  Boom. Boom! Two more trapped chests, and fairly close together. Ramtut distrusted good luck, but this much bad luck was suspicious too. Spurs and Dropjaw were the only skeletons still with him. Tomolandry could get more skeletons into the field quickly, but only to teleport pad locations. Ramtut had seen one since the centre field, and he, Spurs and Dropjaw had left it behind several branches back. The team was getting scattered and there still wasn’t a ball in play. At least the Crusaders didn’t have it yet. The horn signalling possession had not sounded.

  The corridors branched three more times. The next chest was in a much larger chamber than the others, which was ferociously hot. The chamber was divided into two by a canal of molten lava running down the centre, emerging from one wall and then plunging down under the other. Huge, snarling idols stood on opposite sides of the lava, reaching out to each other with massive pincers. The pincers held a platform over the canal. The chest was on the platform, veiled in the shimmering heat rising from the lava. It was weirdly rounded, like the others. A ball rested on its lid.

  ‘What?’ said Ramtut.

  ‘Jim, we’re looking at a highly irregular incident here.’

  ‘We are, Bob. Someone has completely fallen down on the job, or else the irregularity is even more serious. The league is still recovering from the Scrygate scandal. Let’s hope this is just a case of extreme carelessness.’

  As Ramtut stared at the ball, Honourschine and Knightstandt barrelled into him from behind. The three players rolled in a struggling tangle over the floor. Ramtut cursed himself. He had been too focused on the rushing from one chest to another, he hadn’t realised the Crusaders had recovered and were on his team’s trail.

  ‘Get the ball!’ Ramtut yelled at the skeletons. Dropjaw ran for the nearest idol.

  With Ramtut down, Honourschine tried to disengage. Ramtut wrapped his mouldering fingers around the Bright Crusader’s facemask and hauled him back into the scrum.

  ‘Your unholy hands shall not touch the ball!’ Knightstandt shouted, wrapping an arm around Ramtut’s throat.

  ‘And you’re a sad excuse for an opponent,’ Ramtut said. ‘Back in my day… Oh, never mind.’ He jerked his head forward. He broke Knightstandt’s hold, but now Honourschine’s mass kept him trapped. The three players fought and clawed, and rolled further across the floor.

  Until there was no floor.

  Ramtut saw Honourschine’s eyes widen as he realized, too late, he and Knightstandt had made a mistake. The scrum tilted off the temple floor and into the lava.

  The Crusaders lost their grip on Ramtut as they sank, howling, into the molten rock. Ramtut heaved himself back out of the flow with a grunt and smacked the flames off his wrappings. He looked up in time to see Dropjaw touch the ball.

  A great horn sounded. The ball was in play.

  Ramtut saw his luck finally change for the better.

  Then the chest exploded. The singed, deflating ball whistled through the air, rising and falling in erratic flight before it came down with slap on the lava. The pig’s bladder caught fire, and sank beneath the surface just as the horn sounded to announce the ball was in play.

  A rain of bones clattered t
o the ground.

  Ramtut eyed the spot where the ruined ball had vanished.

  Do we dive in? Spurs rapped out against his cheekbone.

  ‘No, it’s gone.’

  What do we do now?

  Ramtut sighed. Ancient dust puffed out from between his withered lips. He suddenly felt very tired.

  In a crevice of the ceiling hidden above the platform between the idols, Greezing stared in disbelief. Gilspat had forgotten not to set the booby-trap on the chest. Greezing mentally tallied what was left of the plan. He had to hope Gilspat hadn’t bungled the placement of the counterfeit ball as well.

  The plan could still work. Victory for the Champions was unimportant. What mattered was that the Crusaders be caught cheating.

  In the dugout, the sound of the horn was Tomolandry’s cue. The ball was found. Now the hunt for the end zone would begin. Time to put his strategy into action. Almost all the skeleton players had been taken out of action. That was more than he had expected so soon, but no matter. The key now was coverage. Get as many players into the field as possible to find the end zone.

  Tomolandry chanted the spell of raising. One by one, skeletons rose from the floor of the dugout and headed for the end zone teleport pad that would project them, at random, to another pad in the dungeon. One after another, rattling as they ran. He sent three off in short order.

  Tomolandry kept going.

  West of centre field, in a vault filled with shattered, empty sarcophagi, Dirk Gallant said, ‘I’ve been hearing a lot of explosions.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Arik Sternguard. ‘The fates are with us today. Victory through virtue, brother!’

  ‘Victory through virtue!’ Gallant replied. He clutched the ball tightly to his chest. It was an honour to have it in his possession. Sternguard was the star player, and had every right to launch into the quest for the end zone with the ball in his arms, but Gallant had been the one to open the correct chest. The Crusaders had split up to search more quickly, and the ball had been in the first chest Gallant had tried. He had crossed paths with Sternguard just after his discovery, and Sternguard insisted he keep the ball.

  ‘Sigmar has blessed you and us,’ Sternguard told him. ‘Our piety is its own reward, but it brings wondrous gifts too.’

  They gave thanks as they ran.

  They reached another intersection. ‘Which way, brother?’ Gallant asked.

  ‘The paths both go north, and as our end zone was in the south, either could be the correct route. I’ll take the left.’

  ‘And I the right. We’ll meet again in triumph!’

  Sternguard raised a fist in solidarity, and took off at a sprint.

  ‘So that was a bit confusing, Jim.’

  ‘It was Bob, but if we look at the replays, I think you’ll see that Champions lose the ball in the lava just before Guy Gallant of the Crusaders finds the replacement.’

  ‘Unusual for the replacement ball to go back in a chest.’

  ‘That’s right, Bob. Just as it is unprecedented for the correct chest to explode. I think there have been some technical difficulties on the field today.’

  ‘Looks even more like there will be some hard questions asked after this match, Jim.’

  ‘There will be, Bob. There certainly will be.’

  Tomolandry raised three more skeletons and sent them into the temple.

  Then three more.

  The rules specified six players to start. No upper limit was mentioned. A useful oversight, Tomolandry thought.

  Yugwitz crouched in a fissure that was tall but so narrow he had some doubts about being able to get out again. He could barely move, but at least he was hidden from CabalVision’s gaze. And there was just enough room for his equipment. He saw the Bright Crusader charge forward with the ball. The player was tall, fair-haired, his face miraculously unblemished by scars. Yugwitz remembered that pretty face from Da Deff Skwad’s defeat. Time to rearrange it a little. As Gallant drew near, Yugwitz pulled a potion out of his sack and downed it.

  Then he grabbed the stilts.

  ‘Help!’

  Gallant screeched to a halt beside the chamber entrance. The woman’s voice called again.

  ‘I’m coming!’ he called and ran inside. Game or no game, he could not ignore a cry for aid.

  In the centre of the chamber was a deep pit, crossed by a thin, rickety wooden bridge. The span was so narrow, it barely seemed possible to cross it at all. On the other side of the bridge, the most beautiful woman Gallant had ever seen was gazing across at him. ‘My saviour!’ she cried, as if she’d always known it would be him. She clasped her hands. She wobbled a bit on her heels. She batted her thick eyelashes. Gallant’s pulse trembled in rhythm with their fluttering. ‘You’ve come at last!’ the woman breathed.

  ‘I have!’ Of course he had. ‘How can I be of–’

  ‘The pit,’ the woman said, her voice like honey and the caress of roses. ‘It frightens me so. And I’ve hurt my ankle. Won’t you help me cross?’

  Gallant moved to the edge. The darkness below seethed with hissing, whirring and grinding. As his eyes adjusted, and he saw the bottom of the pit was deep with writhing serpents. They were huge, the smallest several yards long. They raised their heads to look at Gallant, spreading their hoods and baring fangs. They coiled around a forest of spikes fifteen feet high. Reaching higher than the spikes, but still a long drop below the chamber’s surface, was a score of poles with scythe blades spinning around the top of them.

  Gallant took a step back, his mouth suddenly dry. At least there isn’t any lava, he thought. He cleared his throat. ‘Of course I’ll help you,’ he said. ‘It will be my honour!’

  ‘Oh, thank you,’ she said. She took unsteady steps back, until she was close to a crack splitting the far wall. Her dress swayed, its slit revealing a long and shapely leg.

  ‘Be careful!’ Gallant called. ‘Don’t back up any further!’ He started across the bridge.

  The woman smiled. She extended her arms in welcome.

  Gallant was at the peak of the bridge’s arc when the woman seemed to collapse in on herself. Her back hunched. Her glowing hair dissolved into mist, revealing a green scalp. Her clothes fell in a heap. Her legs were stilts. The goblin grinned, crooked a rude farewell at Gallant, leapt from the stilts and vanished into the crack in the wall.

  Gallant blinked.

  Something changed in the surface he was standing on. He looked down.

  The woman had never been there. Neither had the bridge, or the spikes, or the snakes. He was standing in mid-air.

  He dropped with a cry of horror into the lava.

  Concealed once more, Yugwitz giggled at the Bright Crusader’s fate. That was a fine success. He couldn’t wait to tell Greezing.

  He was in mid-caper when a thought struck him.

  Wait. He had the ball. Was I supposed to do that if he had the ball?

  Then he remembered the fake, and was much less eager to share the news with Greezing.

  ‘That’s two balls lost to lava, Jim.’

  ‘And one Bright Crusader.’

  ‘Did I see a spectator in the field?’

  ‘I’m not sure. She definitely wasn’t from either team. But there’s the whistle, and I see the ball is back in play, bouncing out of the centre field teleport pad. This is still anyone’s game, Bob.’

  At the sound of the whistle, Ramtut put on a burst of speed, heading back south. No more nonsense with chests now. No more nonsense at all. He had run out of patience for that thousands of years ago. Right now, he was going to turn this game around. He pounded through the dungeon tunnels, wrapped feet thumping dully against stone, Spurs at his heels. Other skeletons joined them from connecting tunnels. Still more ran off in other directions. He didn’t know where they were going, and he was quickly losing track of how many there were. He didn’t care.
He cared only about restoring some measure of his dignity and ending this farce.

  There was a flash as he ran past the last teleport pad before centre field. Another skeleton appeared. A moment later, the pad flashed again. The replacements were showing up, but he didn’t recognise any of them. They all looked the same.

  No matter. He had better numbers now. Ramtut led the run out of the last tunnel and into the vast centre field chamber. In the bleachers that surrounded the space, the crowd was on its feet, howling with excitement. There was the ball, and on the other side of the field was Sternright. Two other Crusaders, Harald Goodstar and Jorn Puresoul reached the chamber and pounded across the stone floor to join their Star Player.

  Ramtut roared, exhaling a cloud of dust, and charged the foe.

  ‘The Champions of Death are all over the pitch, aren’t they, Jim?’

  ‘That they are, Bob. I’m guessing that Tomolandry’s strategy is to have part of the team search for the Crusaders’ end zone while the rest take the ball, but I don’t mind admitting I’m having trouble keeping track of who is going where.’

  ‘Another one just teleported in, Jim. I’m losing count.’

  ‘Yes. We’re looking at multiple feeds here, and it… uh…’

  ‘Another!’

  ‘This seems…’

  ‘And again!’

  ‘That’s definitely more than six players…’

  Better stop, Tomolandry thought. He’d just realized he had lost track of how many skeletons he had sent into the game. He might have overplayed his hand. Time to bring closure to the spell.

  ‘Niffle fumr ari-bal-car,’ he intoned, then froze. That was wrong. Should he have said ari-bal-den…?

  The broken ground of the dugout should have ceased to churn. It did not. Eldritch light still circled around it, and skeletons continued to force their way into the light. Tomolandry moved to block the exit from the dugout. ‘Stop!’ he said. ‘That’s enough!’