Deathstalker 07 - Deathstalker Return

clearing, surrounded by the huge looming trees, overgrown with a thick purple grass that rose here and there in rounded hillocks. No sign that anything had ever crashed there, let alone something the size of a castle. But there was… something, about the clearing. The temperature dropped noticeably as they stepped out into the open space, and Lewis could feel all the hairs on his arms standing up. There was a tension in the air, like the calm before a storm. Nothing else moved in the clearing. No bird flew over it, and not one of the insects followed the party out of the jungle. Guide turned round to regard them, doing his best to speak clearly despite the mandibles distorting his mouth.
    "This is where the Deathstalker Standing crashed to earth. The terrible force of the impact drove most of the castle underground, though its energy shields absorbed most of the damage. The interior should be mostly intact. What little of the castle remains aboveground has been overgrown, of course. The jungle is always quick to recover its territory."
    Lewis and the others looked back and forth across the clearing, and still couldn't see anything.
    "I still can't see anything," said Lewis.
    Guide slammed one of his legs against an overgrown hillock that looked no different from any of the others. His clawed foot tore away a long curve of earth, revealing a stone wall. Guide swung his body around to fix Lewis with his six eyes. "Train your disrupter on this, Sir Deathstalker. Lowest setting."
    Lewis ran an energy beam across the hillock, searing away the vegetation, and uncovered a wide stretch of stone wall, some forty feet long and ten deep. He put his gun away, and they all crowded forwards.
    Steam rose slowly from the ancient, pockmarked stone, along with the not unpleasant scent of burnt grass. The wall was made up of huge cyclopean blocks, and clearly only part of a much larger structure.
    Brett whistled respectfully, impressed.
    "If that's just one block, how big is the wall? How big is the damned castle? Hell, they actually had a flying stone castle! I always thought they made that up!"
    "Makes you wonder what other legends about the old Standing might also be true," said Jesamine.
    "There are stories…"
    "Yes," said Lewis. "There are." He remembered the stories told of the old Deathstalker castle, told only
    in the privacy of his own Clan's Standing. Some of those stories had been… disturbing. He turned to Guide, careful to keep his voice calm and steady. "Can you show us a way in?"
    "Of course, Sir Deathstalker." Guide led the way round the hillock, and thrust aside thick swatches of vegetation with his long legs to reveal a wide and jagged crack in the ground. Lewis bent over and peered into it, but there was only an impenetrable darkness. Jesamine pressed in close beside him, clutching at his arm.
    "There could be anything in there," she murmured into his ear. "Including all kinds of traps and ambushes."
    "The thought had occurred to me," said Lewis. "But I didn't come all this way to back down now. And I won't be kept out of my ancestral home by my own… hesitations. What's beyond this opening, Sir Guide?"
    "No one knows," Guide said softly. "None of us have ever gone inside. For us, this is a holy place. We were promised our deliverance would begin in there. And even those of us who have no love for Shub still respect the castle that triumphed over both Shub and the Recreated. You go in; I'll stay here, on guard."
    "No," Lewis said immediately. "You have as much right to know what's in there as we do. Besides, there's no telling what might have got in there, or survived in there, down the years. We can use you, Sir Guide."
    The spider creature nodded his misshapen human head, overcome and unable to speak. Brett looked dubiously at the great dark crack in the earth.
    "Still," he said, trying for casual and almost making it. "Someone should stay out here, on guard. Just in case."
    "You mean you're willing to stay out here on your own?" said Jesamine, just a little maliciously. "Ready to fight off whatever might come along?"
    "I didn't necessarily mean me," Brett said immediately.
    Lewis produced a small torch, and shone its narrow beam of light into the darkness. He could just make out a drop of some ten feet, to what seemed to be a flat surface tilted at a one in three angle. He supposed they could make a crude rope out of the surrounding vegetation, but frankly he just couldn't wait any longer. He sat down on the