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“I wasn’t. I just guessed that he gave you comfort,” said Ivy.
Daemona blushed. “Goddess knows why, but yes he does.”
“We all have that,” said Ivy, taking hold of Ghul Lykos’s hand. “Let’s get searching and get out.” She led Ghul Lykos down the stairs into the pitch black, while Miniver and Esmerelda would watch their backs on the ground floor rooms as Daemona looked up the stairs.
***
Ghul Lykos held his weapons at the ready. “Careful now,” he whispered.
Ivy nodded, her frying pan held up, ready to strike. Ghul Lykos tread carefully with his short sword and dagger, since a longsword was too unwieldy, even inside the wide halls of the mansion. The stairs creaked as they went down to a landing, the stairs curving in a new direction. Above their heads hung portraits of the Ghul Tark family from days long past. Their faces were somber and glaring, as if even the long dead were insulted at this trespass.
Sconces along the wall held candelabras, but these were covered in cobwebs and dust.
“It doesn’t look like anyone has been down here in a very long time,” said Ivy.
Ghul Lykos shook his head. “That doesn’t mean anything to the undead. This could be a glamorous illusion for all we know.”
“I wouldn’t call it glamourous,” remarked Ivy, running a finger along the rail and wiping away a long trail of dust. Then she started with a gasp.
“What is it?”
“The eyes on that portrait were looking at me.”
“I don’t see anything.”
“I swear they moved,” she insisted.
He watched carefully for a moment, then led her the rest of the way down the stairs. At the bottom, the cold flagstones had beetles scurrying for cover from the light of their lantern. A single skull lay on the floor in front of them. Beyond all of this, a long hallway offered many doors on either side of them.
The hairs on Ghul Lykos’s neck rose, and a new sensation rippled up his spine. He stopped Ivy just before she set foot on the flagstones. “Me first,” he whispered.
He tapped the nearest flagstone with the tip of his sword and huge sections of the wall smashed into each other, turning the skull that had lain there to dust.
Then, as the walls slowly moved back into position, they revealed a throng of skeletal warriors standing in what had been an empty hallway. Their teeth clacked maniacally, and the hollow cries of the doomed echoed from their empty eye sockets. They rushed at Ivy and Ghul Lykos with rusted swords and baleful, hungry glares of evil.
***
Miniver and Esmerelda remained at the bottom of the stairs that Daemona had ascended. Miniver took some small comfort that they could see outside the mansion through the windows on their left-hand side, thinking that if some terrible danger came, they could still escape to the outside.
A soft cry for help came from somewhere in the distance.
“Was that Daemona?” asked Miniver.
“I don’t think so. It wasn’t upstairs; it sounded like it was that way,” she said, pointing down the hallway.
The soft cry of help came again, soft and weak.
“Suppose we should stay here and tell the others when they get back? That’s the sensible thing I think.”
“No, we should help. Come on.”
They gingerly went down the hallway, Miniver with his crossbow loaded and Esmerelda shining the candlestick like it was a wand.
They passed by a kitchen, but it was empty of everything but spiders and broken dishes.
“Help.”
The next room was the dining hall. It was equally empty, but the third they came to looked like a library with even more books than had been in the entry parlor. A billiard table and a few lounge chairs were spread around the central fireplace and the huge head of a moose was mounted on the wall above it. Everything was covered in webbing and dust.
