The Vanishing Castle_An Epik Fantasy Short Read online

  Finally, it was Coe’s turn to walk down into the main cavern. It wasn’t much like a city at all. Sure, there were golden roads and golden buildings, immovable things. But there were no people. This wasn’t a township. It wasn’t very large. But perhaps "the golden village" didn’t have the ring or flare the Great Ranger liked.

  In each building, the treasure wasn’t stacked as neatly as it was in the Great Ranger’s castle but instead piled high to each golden ceiling, making it hard to choose anything. There were small things like coins and rings, earrings even. And then there were more substantial objects, grander than the dagger Wellspoken had found: candelabras, statues of all variety—dog, cat, horse—it was all there.

  Coe found a necklace he fancied, thinking of his wife and daughter. It was thick with a golden meshing and round beads of solid gold. He brought it back for the Great Ranger.

  “Now for yourself,” the Great Ranger said.

  “Not today,” Coe said without looking back. “We’ve fulfilled the bargain.”

  The Great Ranger smiled a crooked smile. “That’s not how this works,” he said.

  “Then I’ll change how it works. Study your words. You never said that we had to take a token—only that we could.”

  The Great Ranger sighed, silently searching through years of thoughts. There was a look in his eyes, unfamiliar. This man had always exuded confidence. But it was gone in this moment.

  “Fine,” the Great Ranger said. “There was always going to be a double-cross… probably two. But you brought this on yourself.”

  “Are you sure…” Wellspoken began to say, but Coe gave him a look that would frighten the dead.

  And speaking of dead, there was a sound like gold falling to a golden floor, large objects clanking and golden coins slithering to the ground. Turning back, the party saw what had caused this. Buried under the gold were bodies, dead men walking. Some were mere skeletons while others were more recent additions. The zombies wielded golden swords, daggers similar to Wellspoken’s, and one carried a flashy looking crossbow.

  This is a city, Coe thought. And Bill was lining up to be its next resident.

  Coe unsheathed his sword. First, he directed his gaze to the Great Ranger who wagged a finger at him.

  “Na, ah, ah,” he said. “Remember what I told you. If you attack me, it will mean our third and final bout. You don’t want that here, do you?”

  Coe grimaced. He didn’t. He turned to face the dead, watching as the Great Ranger walked through them, parting them like a sea. He didn’t return to the cave’s mouth but instead took some hidden way out. It gave Coe an idea.

  “I need you two to go the cave entrance,” Coe said. Wellspoken and Two-finger had already brought up arms. Two-finger had charged down the slope and chopped one particularly weathered skeleton into fine pieces of bone and dust.

  “What?” he said.

  “I need you at the cave mouth,” Coe said.

  “Why?”

  “We should trap them inside. We need trap everything inside, the gold, all of it.”

  “The gold?”

  “Yes, the gold.” Coe swiped at a zombie. It wavered. He swiped again, catching it across the neck and severing its head from the body. It wasn’t always so easy with zombies, so Coe was happy to see this one fall.

  He stepped back, counting them. More than a few hundred, some still escaping their golden tombs, staggered toward them. “Run along and get started,” Coe barked.

  The dwarves did.

  It was a tedious task of never being swarmed by the dead men, of arching his sword perpendicular and driving back four or five, then taking a single one out, head on, or head off as it were.

  Still, the zombies drove Coe back. The ones with weapons were harder to face. A crossbow bolt whizzed past his ear. The ranger put a stop to that one shortly after, but a leather-faced zombie with a scraggly beard dangling from its leathery face was giving him trouble. The zombie wielded a golden sword in its bony hands.

  This dead man was deadly with his weapon, some last vestige of what he once was—a ranger, like Coe and Rotrick. Oddly, the zombie never went for the killing strike, only parrying the blows Coe inflicted. Sensing something, Coe stopped mid-strike. The dead ranger continued past him, not striking.

  The puzzle pieces snapped together in Coe’s mind. The gold! He had known it was tainted in some way, but never would he have thought it was the keystone to the spell. The trinkets, the tokens the Great Ranger allowed, it drew the zombies out just like it drew men who touched his gold inside.

  Coe couldn’t let this dead ranger go on. Even dead, he was possibly too good a match for Two-finger or Wellspoken. Coe buried his sword into the leathery skull, feeling a pang of shame briefly at his dishonorable move.

  Coe kicked at another, forcing several zombies down like dominoes, but the sea of the dead rose like a wave, reminding Coe of his last battle with the Great Ranger. They were almost to the cave’s mouth now, to the exit.

  “Are you two ready?” Coe yelled.

  “Aye,” he heard Two-finger's voice faintly and the ping of Wellspoken’s pickaxe against hard rock.

  There were dozens of zombies escaping out into the sun and ready to surround or attack the dwarves with their gold. Coe could just duck out of the cave now with them and help finish these last few off.

  “Do it!” he yelled up at the dwarves.

  But what the ranger hadn’t prepared for was Bill, somehow aroused by all the commotion, had come free of his bonds. Bill knocked Coe back inside just as the boulders began to fly, falling from atop the cave and crushing them both, burying Coe and Bill inside.

  9

  The sound of the rocks falling and of the earth shaking stirred something inside him. Rotrick knew his part. He knew that Coe meant for the Great Ranger to slip away, asking Rotrick to prevent the man from getting away completely, and for Rotrick to follow the Great Ranger to his next trap—his last trap.

  Even with the stumpy feet and boots of a dwarf, Rotrick was still a ranger—still trained to tread quietly in a wood. He had to force himself to make a bit of noise, knowing they’d be heard. There were no squirrels or birds in the oasis. As he had shadowed the company, none of them had even looked his way, not until he had wanted them to.

  The Great Ranger hadn’t come out of the cave entrance. Rotrick was sure of that. So, where was he? And why was Rotrick getting the prickling sensation that he was being watched?

  Coe had been clear on what to do if there was trouble—and it looked like there was trouble.

  “Do nothing,” Coe had said. “Stay the course.”

  Rotrick would stay the course, his course.

  The Great Ranger was no ordinary man. They had met before, Rotrick seeing first hand back in Seascape what the Great Ranger was capable of. Despite coming into this as prepared as Coe had been, things had gone wrong. Rotrick knew from the sounds of Two-finger and Wellspoken screaming Coe’s name.

  He wondered what happened there? Did they find what they had been looking for? Did Coe trap the Great Ranger inside? Did he kill him? Rotrick knew that wasn’t so because he felt a prickling on his neck. His senses were that of a ranger's after all. The chill climbed to his ears. They weren’t even his ears, not really. For a second, he wondered when his true form would return, if ever.

  The end was so close now.

  Rotrick found a large rock and planted himself atop it. From the rock, he could just make out the volcano—but not the cave which was hidden amongst the upper reaches and the trees. He pulled a knife from the belt at his side and tested its tip with his blunt fingers. It was sharp enough. He had spent most of the previous night with a whetstone after all.

  The sun crept higher, heating the air and his skin. Rotrick sighed deeply. This was life, the life of a ranger. All those days spent in the city felt like time wasted when in the great outdoors. He filled his lungs with the falsely fresh air. Another chill ran along his spine.

  He turned sharply but not in
time.

  The Great Ranger had crept up on him unheard.

  “You were never worthy enough to come away with your life in our last meeting,” the Great Ranger said. He pulled his blade from Rotrick’s back.

  Rotrick choked as the blood gurgled up from his pierced lungs to his mouth, dribbling down the sides of his chin.

  The night before Rotrick had sat freezing between the dunes. And in those moments, with his choice already made, he didn’t feel anything. No fear. No panic. Just calm.

  Rotrick smiled a blood-smeared smile, his vision narrowing slightly as he watched the Great Ranger who had just now found the knife that Rotrick had buried in the old man’s chest.

  The Great Ranger fell next to him.

  Rotrick smiled, remembering the hushed sounds of his friends’ voices the previous night, heard for the last time. There between the dunes, Rotrick had planned, had plotted, knowing it wasn’t always the most worthy who sacrificed for the greater good, believing that those who sacrifice are often the most easily forgotten.

  As Rotrick stared up at the bright midday sky as white as the light that was beckoning to him, he knew they would find two rangers dead on this ground. One great and the other…

  Epilogue

  Coe opened his eyes, but there was no clear distinction between the two visions. What he saw was inky blackness, the same as when he closed them. That wasn’t the most concerning thing—far from it. No, there was an immense pressure on his chest. It felt, well, oddly it felt like when all three of his boys ganged up wrestling him. He would laugh at the thought of it if he could breathe.

  Coe’s right arm was pinned beneath him awkwardly, in such a way that he didn’t want to think about it—not yet. No, first things first, the rock or rocks on his chest. They had to go. He managed to twist and pull his left arm out to get his hand level with his chest. Then he took as deep a breath as the boulder crushing him would offer, it wasn’t much, but he tested the rock. It was heavy but moveable. Even with this slight movement, he heard and then felt a shower of smaller stones and sand raining down from above him. He tested it again, finding the rock’s most susceptible edge, a place he could maneuver it like a lever against the other fallen debris. He would only have one chance at this.

  Another deep breath, one giant heave, and Coe was able to scurry out from under the rocks. His right arm had come away willingly but hung limply at his side. He tried but failed to move it. He thought better of running his hand across the limp arm, afraid of what he might find—a bone piercing the skin. Even if it wasn’t, the confirmation of the break might send his mind reeling in shock.

  Concentrate on the task at hand, Coe thought. How do I get out of this cave?

  How do I survive?

  Around him, Coe heard the scuffing of feet. The zombies were deliberately walking back to their graves. Outside the cave-in, the voices of Wellspoken and Two-finger were calling out Coe and Bill’s name. He didn’t answer but instead reached down in the debris. He found the limp body of what he knew to be his fallen friend completely reversed back to his original form. His heart sunk deep into his chest. This was his fault.

  Coe put one foot in front of the other, and his legs did what they always did. They found a way, a path back to the hidden City of Gold where one lone torch was still lit. Careful not to touch any of the treasure with his bare skin, he took the torch.

  Finally, Coe looked at his arm. There was no bone puncturing the skin, but it was broken in several places: just below the shoulder and at least two breaks between the elbow and wrist.

  A problem for another time.

  Coe swung the torch out in front of him. And like before, the dead didn’t pay him any notice. He searched the cavern walls around the city. If the Great Ranger could find another way out, so, could he. And the ranger would have to close this one in, as well. He somehow knew that to break the curse, to free the minds of the men, either living or dead, he would have to bury this place for good.

  This isn’t over, Coe thought. He hoped Rotrick was successful in his task. There would be one last meeting with the Great Ranger, one last trap. Coe remembered the man’s face when he had refused the gold. There was more to this story. It was clear to him now. With each piece of gold, the Great Ranger had fallen more under the witch’s spell. For this to all be over, for it to be done, Coe would need to contend with her. For it was she who had started it all.

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  Also by William Tyler Davis

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