by Glen Cook
Bel-Sidek and the Dartar passed through and walked parallel to a file of bedraggled Herodians being escorted from the Shu. Fa’tad was accepting the surrender of those he had entombed in the labyrinth. Maybe the Eagle was not interested in a total blood baptism.
Bel-Sidek spied General Cado among the captives. Ha. Now the man would know how it had felt for the vanquished after Dak-es-Souetta.
Cado met his eye, recognized him, smiled wanly, winked as though they were fellow conspirators. Bel-Sidek snorted. Co-conspirators in defeat. Pawns who had let themselves be manipulated by the old genius of the Khadatqa Mountains. The gulled and downcast.
Whatever else, he thought, you had to admire the Eagle’s daring.
Yoseh was scared again. They had looked everywhere, over and over, and had found no sign of the Witch or child-taker or Arif, no hint of a hidden exit. Every minute fled meant a greater danger.
Nogah observed, “The sorceress probably could find it but she’s too busy making like udders on a bull.” She could not be diverted from the corpses she was cooking. The stench was enough to gag a vulture.
Yoseh said, “Maybe she knows what she’s doing.”
“Like hell. She’s riding with her eyes shut same as the rest of us. What’s keeping the damned veydeen?” The Qushmarrahans had not yet tried to get in.
Mo’atabar made periodic sallies toward the bonfire, to remind the sorceress that she had said the Witch could recall Nakar without his body. She showed no real interest. Yoseh hoped she knew what she was doing.
“They’re here,” said the man posted where they had broken in.
Mo’atabar hustled over, listened, said, “They’re not in any hurry.”
Once they got the carpenter calmed down Nogah decided to stop waiting on the woman. “Aaron. What would you do if you were going to put in a secret exit?”
“Eh?”
“You’re a carpenter. Think like a carpenter. A carpenter probably did the building. Wouldn’t you think?”
The man thought. “I’d use a cabinetmaker. I’d put it where it wasn’t obvious and I’d demand the finest possible joins so nothing would show.”
Yoseh said, “Tamisa told me that’s the kind of stuff you do.”
The carpenter nodded.
Impatient, Nogah snapped, “So prowl around. Think like a cabinetmaker. Show us where some other carpenter might have put a hidden door. The fix we’re in it won’t matter if we tear things up.”
It took only minutes. “Got to be this wardrobe,” the carpenter said. “Best place for it.”
Medjhah ripped the wardrobe apart. Nogah went after Mo’atabar. Mo’atabar came and crawled through the wreckage. “There’s a room back here, all right. But there isn’t anybody in it.”
“There would be a way out,” the carpenter said. “The room is just to buy time.”
The sorceress appeared. She exchanged words with Mo’atabar. Mo’atabar said, “She tells me there are three ways out. One is in the floor, here.” He stomped. “One is in the wall, here.” Thump went a fist. “The other one is in this wall, here. Open them up.”
Medjhah tried brute force again, without luck this time.
“Let me,” the carpenter said. He had pulled himself together. Other than thunder nothing had happened for so long he was starting to hope again. Maybe the sorceress’s lack of haste encouraged him.
It took him just a minute to open the secret doors.
“Good.” Mo’atabar studied the openings. “Kosuth, down you go. Medjhah, you take this one. Yoseh, you take that one. Be careful but don’t waste time. The Living have started in on that wall.”
The sorceress said something, went away. Yoseh hoped she was going to delay the veydeen. He could not worry about them, though. He stared at that little doorway, scared stiff. It barely seemed big enough... Mo’atabar kept talking, did such a good job making it sound routine that he felt shamed by his reluctance. He swallowed, crawled into the hole.
It became an upward shaft immediately, that had to go all the way to the sky, up and up and up, into silence, into darkness like Nakar’s own heart.
It got scarier. After he climbed so far he lost count of rungs, thunder shook the citadel. He felt the vibrations. For a moment he was afraid the place would fall down around him.
He climbed more slowly, conserving his strength. The ringing cleared from his ears-and what at first seemed imagination proved to be a genuine whisper that frightened him more till he realized it had to be rain falling on a surface overhead.
He paused, rested, marshaled his courage, resumed his climb. Three rungs higher his hand closed on slick moisture. It remained sticky when he pulled it away.
The crown of his head bumped something hard and cold. He felt around. Rusty iron? The rain drummed away. It would be thick and heavy.
This was the final test. He could retreat and report and suffer no questions but he would always wonder, was he a Dartar warrior or some cringing veydeen mouse?
He pushed with his head, increased the pressure till the metal gave. Nothing happened. He pushed again, slowly, steadily, till his eyes rose above the edge-and he was face-to-face with someone just a foot away.
He nearly let go. He did squeak. That was the child-taker, lying dead or sleeping in the rain. Nobody could sleep in the rain, could they?
He pushed till his shoulders reached roof level. He saw Arif and the Witch, sprawled in the rain, dead or sleeping, too.
What now?
He reached for his knife, to make sure of the child-taker, then changed his mind and reached for Arifs ankle. If he could drag the boy over and carry him down...
Something hit him so fast he never saw it coming. He slammed back against the side of the shaft, then fell.
Squeak. Azel remained motionless only because of the watery state of his flesh. Weak as a newborn, he couldn’t betray himself when he wakened.
He cracked an eyelid, saw the Dartar kid from the Shu. That little bastard was everywhere. Haunting him. How the hell had he gotten up here? Azel realized he had rolled off the trapdoor after he’d fallen asleep.
Gorloch or luck gave him the moment he needed and the energy to capitalize. The Dartar turned, reached for the Arif brat, got him by the foot. Azel put everything he had into his punch. The Dartar flew backward, fell, the brat’s shoe flipping after him. “Hope you land on your head, asshole.”
He didn’t have energy enough to stand. The rainwater where he’d lain was red. Clots of blood floated there. Damn! He was bleeding to death. Wouldn’t that be ironic? He rolled into a sitting position atop the trapdoor. Thank Gorloch it had fallen shut. He would not have had the strength to close it had it fallen the other way.
He fiddled with his bandages till he got the bleeding stopped. One more small effort, then he would put down roots.
He eased over to the Witch. “Wake up, woman.” No response. Whap! He cracked her cheek with his palm, rocked her head halfway around. “Come on, damn it! This is it. You get on the stick and call up Nakar or kiss your ass good-bye. They know where we’re at and we got nowhere else to hide.” He popped her again. This time he glimpsed a flash of eyeball.
That was it. That was all he had, except an ounce of iron will that let him guide himself as he collapsed, so his torso sprawled across a corner of the trapdoor.
The first blow reached her but the drug held her. The second sent alarums of pain coursing through her. She opened one eye far enough to see her tormentor.
Azel? But how...? She was soaked. She lay in a pool of water. Rain fell upon her still. Thunder stalked overhead. The chill followed the pain inside her, opening channels through which thought and sense began to flow. She gained control as Azel fell as if he had melted.
She shoved her upper body up to the length of her arms, turned her head slowly. Her thoughts did not run crisply but she could reason. And she could remember some of what had been happening around her while the drug ruled her. She understood where she was and why and how she had come to be the
re and for one moment she actually appreciated Azel and his stubbornness.
She had yielded to weakness, perhaps to defeatism, and had permitted herself too much of the drug. Fool. Maybe she was as crazy as Azel claimed. Maybe she didn’t deserve Nakar back. Maybe she was too weak.
Her body would not support itself. She collapsed. But she resisted the allure of sleep, of escape. The hour had come. Time had run out. Azel had said they knew where she was... Her gaze fell on the boy.
He was asleep. More than asleep. Unconscious. She felt Nakar in there, quiescent, in a twilight of near-awareness, reluctant to come nearer the light.
Ala-eh-din Beyh.
Of course! That was it, as Azel had insisted. Nakar dared not come forward. To do so meant facing the consequences of total defeat. He had lost that struggle... Her fault. Her fault completely.
But... Vaguely, as though recalling a fading dream, she recaptured tenuous memories from below. Azel hitting the other child. Azel had broken his neck. Ala-eh-din Beyh would not be there now. That vicious soul had traveled on.
It was here for the taking. All she had lived and suffered for. If she kept her wits and conquered her flesh and found the strength to draw forth her beloved’s soul.
She wept a single tear, though. Never again would her man be the man she had known. The body was still down below. That Herodian sorceress, that bitch from the same kennel as Ala-eh-din Beyh, would have wasted no time destroying it.
She looked at the boy and laughed madly, picturing herself mothering the new young Nakar. Then she turned to the things Azel had brought up. What she needed would be there. Azel always did whatever had to be done.
She was slow, so slow, but soon she was ready, soon she was reaching into the darkness, calling her love.
Arif was lost in a nightmare. He could not wake up. He was terrified but not as much now as he had been. This was so unreal he could not believe it completely. He seemed to hear his mother reassuring him, “It’s only a dream, Arif. It’s only a dream.”
Something alien was there in the darkness with him, frightened and wary, too, but big and dangerous and patient, like a giant, poisonous toad waiting in the dark for prey. That thing moved seldom. So far he had fought it off each time it had. He had begun to gain confidence there.
Then the voice came, remote at first, a woman calling. “Mother?” The voice called, compelling and reassuring. He seemed to turn toward it and move that way. The voice grew louder. He moved eagerly-till he recognized it as the voice of the beautiful, evil woman who stole children.
He tried to stop moving toward the light, could not.
The thing in the darkness shifted, turned its invisible eye upon him. He felt its amusement, its iron, wicked intent.
He tried to scream.
That thing swam up toward the light, gaining fast.
***
Instinct made Yoseh flail out. He was not conscious enough to think. One hand dragged over several rungs. He felt fingernails rip and break. He got a solid hold. His arm wrenched violently. He screamed.
He grabbed with his other hand before the first gave way. He stopped his plunge. He clung there shaking and whimpering with pain, afraid to move.
The child-taker had not been dead. Had not been sleeping. Now the man would take steps.
He had to get word to Nogah and Mo’atabar and the Herodian sorceress now. But he could not move. His muscles had locked, refused to let him. His fear of falling would not respond to his will.
He could not yell again, either. His tight, dry throat would let him do nothing but croak.
Tears flowed. A coward. He had feared he was, always. And now, when all depended upon him acting, he could not. He burned, thinking of the shame upon his father.
23
Aaron had himself under control now. Outwardly he portrayed quiet calmness. But could it last? His mind was a hornet’s nest of terrible thoughts and fears.
The hidden room was crowded beyond enduring. They were packed in there belly-to-back, shoulder-to-shoulder, breathing into one another’s faces, smelling one another’s fear. The sorceress had not been able to prevent the Living from breaching the temple wall. She had had to spend too much attention on Zouki. Aaron could hear the Qushmarrahan rebels cursing outside the wardrobe. The wardrobe that would hide nothing if opened because Medjhah had demolished the concealed opening.
There was no sound in the little room. Most of them were holding their breaths. Only the sorceress was doing anything. Something to shield them, to hide them, to baffle the Living, he prayed.
He called upon Aram’s love and mercy repeatedly, silently, in his heart.
In time Kosuth and Medjhah returned from their quests. In whispers they delivered negative reports. The bolt-hole in the floor just led down and down to water. The other ran to a hidden exit inside the guardroom behind the postern-inside the brick wall Fa’tad had installed.
“Even so,” Mo’atabar murmured. “Even so.” He began indicating men. “Crawl in there. Hide. It’s too crowded in here.”
Despite the maddening crowding no one wanted to go into the crawlway. Aaron thought only a second and knew he would fight if they tried to send him. He could not endure the closeness.
How much worse for these men, reared in the wide expanses of the mountains and Takes, beneath sprawling desert skies?
Something landed at the bottom of the third bolt-hole, plop! Aaron was right beside that, pressed up against Nogah and Medjhah, more pressured now that the latter had returned. He recognized the object immediately. He retained barely enough caution to confine himself to a whisper. “That’s Arifs shoe.” It was so wet it had splattered water.
Medjhah said, “It must have come from outside. Up there. In the rain. Yoseh must have... They must be on top of the tower. We must be right under it here.”
Mo’atabar forced his way through the press. Aaron watched his passage spark unreasoning rage in the eyes of the Dartars he brushed. Those men barely controlled themselves.
As Mo’atabar arrived a second object fell down the shaft, hit, ping! metallically. Nogah squeaked, “That’s Yoseh’s ring. The one Father gave him.”
Medjhah whispered, “He can’t come down. That has to mean he can’t come down. He wants us to come up.”
Nogah had a counter remark. Mo’atabar scowled. He was suspicious. He wanted to think and talk about it before he did anything.
Aaron could not control himself. His muscles seemed to act of their own accord, compelling him to enter the shaft and start climbing.
Nogah and Medjhah followed immediately. Before Aaron climbed fifty feet he heard Mo’atabar and the sorceress arguing over which should go first.
Soon he ached in every muscle. He was no ape or sailor accustomed to climbing. His body had suffered already. But fear for Arif drove him.
He bumped into someone. Someone! A soft whimper came from above. “Yoseh?”
A grunt. An inarticulate sound filled with pain and fear and humiliation.
“It’s Aaron, Yoseh. Are you all right?”
Another whimpering sound. Not a positive sign.
Nogah forced his way up beside Aaron, so that they clung to the unseen rungs side by side, so crowded in the shaft that they might not have fallen had they let go. Nogah whispered to his brother. He could get no sense from the boy. He began making soothing, comforting sounds. Aaron clung to the rungs and wondered how long he could keep that up before his body betrayed him.
After a while Medjhah asked, “What’s the story?”
Nogah replied, “He fell. He caught himself. He got hurt doing it. He’ll be all right. I’m tying him to the rungs till we can lift him out.”
“Going to be a bitch getting past him.”
“Uhm. Where’s Mo’atabar?”
Aaron intuited the import of the question. Mo’atabar was a sizable man. He would not be able to force his way past Yoseh. Whatever waited above, there would be no help from Mo’atabar or anyone below him.
Medjhah s
aid, “Mahdah is behind me, then the sorceress. Then Mo’atabar.”
Mo’atabar growled a question. No one responded to his impatience.
Nogah said, “Yoseh says there’s an iron trapdoor lying flat up there. It’s heavy. It opens on the floor of the parapet. The Witch and the child-taker are up there with Arif. He thought they were out cold or dead but the child-taker surprised him and knocked him back down when he was trying to sneak Arif into the shaft.”
Oh, Aaron thought. Maybe that explained the shoe.
“How about now?”
“Who knows? The child-taker will be waiting, I guess.”
Medjhah grumbled something about Yoseh should have made sure of them up there while he had had the chance. In a strained voice, Nogah said, “There’s no choice now. We have to do it. Let’s go.”
Never in his wildest boyhood fantasies had Aaron pictured himself in anything like this. He never had had the stuff of heroes. Charging up a ladder into the teeth of death, in defiance of doom and the dark old gods... Aram! Send down the flame of love and mercy. He squirmed past Yoseh, who continued to make sounds of pain.
Above, Nogah stopped. “I’m there,” he whispered. “The trap.” Yoseh had not fallen too far, after all. Not more than fifteen feet.
“Now what?”
“Medjhah? You past Yoseh?”
“Almost. As far as I can get.”
“Aaron?” Nogah’s voice broke. The warrior was as frightened as anyone, Aaron realized. He knew just how poor his chances were.
Aaron looked inside himself. He was terrified but he had it under control. Arif was up there, maybe no more than ten feet away. “I can do it.” Despite muscles of water. Despite being unarmed. He could not recall what had become of any of the weapons they had given him during the course of the day.
“Medjhah?”
“Ready.”
“Tell them to get their tails moving down there, as soon as we go. Tell Mo’atabar to carry Yoseh up if he has to.”
