by Paul Kearney
Rowen, also, had braved the streets. “The nobles have withdrawn what militia has stayed with the colors, and have barricaded themselves in the hill districts. The lower city has been left to its own devices.”
“Civilization hangs by a more slender thread than we ever suspect,” Canker said. He seemed almost gratified that news of his death had produced such chaos.
“They are tearing the feathers down from over all the doors,” Rowen told him. “Your followers are too preoccupied with slitting one another’s throats to care.”
“What of those mercenaries?” Rol asked.
“A few days away. Or so they say, and they have been saying that for a week now.”
“Gascar always wore its government lightly,” said Canker. “Things will calm down in time.”
“When the city is looted to the bone maybe,” Gibble protested. “Begging your pardon, but your lordship had better do something. We may be all snug and safe in this here fortress, but the common folk is suffering something cruel. They’re leaving the city in hordes by the North Road. Another few weeks of this and Ascari will be nothing more than a bunch of footpads squatting in a ruin.”
“Then it will have returned to its origins,” Canker said sharply, and Gibble shut his mouth.
The next morning Canker took his leave. “I go to steal back a city,” he said with a grin, and he bowed to kiss Rowen’s hand. “Will you really leave this tower and all in it for the scavengers?”
“We have a little scavenging of our own to do first,” Rowen told him.
“Good luck, then.” He hesitated a second—rare for him—and then spoke with odd formality. “Since it is just possible I owe you my hide, or some portion thereof, I promise that this tower shall remain inviolate, in case you should ever return.”
“We will never return,” Rol said quickly.
“Never is a long time, lad, even to your kind. I will give this place my protection nonetheless.” And he left them without looking back.
“It is easy to give what one does not possess,” Rowen said, closing the postern gate behind him. “Still, he may survive.”
They packed bedrolls, tinderboxes, spare clothing, and weapons, anything light that might be of use on a journey. Braving the putrefactive charnel house of Psellos’s study once more, they discovered a cache of gold ryals and silver minims, enough to allow a king to travel in style. The Tower echoed darkly about them as they labored up and down within its entrails by the flicker of torchlight. Already it seemed a forsaken place, save down in the kitchens, where at night they ate and drank by a cheering fire and savored the best vintages of the Seven Isles and beyond, Gibble producing them from the depths of a cellar with the pride of a midwife who has delivered twins.
“It is all very well to have a key,” said Rol, “but what about the door it opens?”
“It must be on this level somewhere,” Rowen insisted. “Either that, or there is yet another level below us.”
“How many levels can a place have?”
She did not answer him, but raised the lantern and scanned the stone wall of the passageway yet again.
The stonework this far below the surface was different from that farther up. The usual conglomeration of construction styles, accumulated over the repairs and additions of centuries, had given way to stark oblong blocks set in perfect lines without mortar, not a chisel-mark to be seen upon them. The stones looked as though they had been laid down the week before, and their edges were sharp and clear as if they had been cut from clay, not hewn out of Gascarese basalt.
“These foundations are ancient,” Rowen said with something like awe in her voice.
“The Weren built Psellos’s Tower, or so it’s said,” Rol reminded her.
“Yes, but I thought that was all market gossip, old wives’ tales. I thought—Wait. I have something here. Hold the lantern closer.”
She drew out a poniard and scraped lightly at the join between two of the Cyclopean stones.
“There’s a gap, but it’s squared off. I can feel something against the tip of the blade.”
There was an audible click, and the stones before them seemed to vibrate for a second. They both stepped back quickly, but nothing more happened. Rowen inserted the dagger-point again, to no avail. It was just an odd hole between two courses of stone.
“Give me the key.”
It looked to be made of age-blackened white metal, weightier than silver. She slipped it into the tiny hole, and the click came again, louder now. She turned the key and there was a rapid succession of them, like a stick being dragged along palings. The huge weight of stone before them began to move, a shower of grit falling onto their heads, the floor trembling under their boots.
“A door,” Rol breathed, and inexplicably he laughed.
“Weren engineering,” said Rowen. “I wonder what lost artisans of the Elder Race made this, and for what purpose? All this time, Psellos has been sitting in a Weren tower, ferreting out its secrets. No wonder he was unwilling to leave.” She seemed to collect herself, and touched Rol’s shoulder. “Shall we?”
He nodded. The stone door had moved back ninety degrees, scraping against the dust of the floor. Rowen tried to retrieve the key, but when she took it out of the slot the stones began to close again, so she left it there. They both stared at it, thinking the same thing: if the key came out of the slot while they were inside they would be entombed.
The passageway before them was twice the height of a tall man, and wide enough for a wagon to be drawn without bumping its axles. The stonework was of the same perfect workmanship. The whole slanted downward perhaps a foot every two fathoms.
“Another level, after all,” Rowen said.
They walked steadily, all the time descending. There was not so much as a drip of water or patch of mold to break the monotony of the chiseled stone. The air was dry and wholesome.
“There must be ventilation shafts somewhere, leading to the surface,” Rol said. “The air here is as fresh as in the wine cellar, and it must be eighty or a hundred feet above us.”
“The Ancients needed to breathe, even as we do. I’ve heard they could create bubbles of air about themselves and walk along the bottom of the sea,” Rowen said.
The passageway came to an abrupt end in an arch of buttressed stone. Within the arch a decrepit wooden door stood ajar. It was hinged and reinforced with bronze, but the wood itself was crumbling. Rol touched it, and the grain blurred into dust under his fingertips.
“I could poke a finger through it,” he marveled.
“Try not to. This door is later than the stonework. See here? The hinges have been bored into the rock—a cruder job.”
The lantern-light swung around them, a cocoon of comfort in the echoing spaces. Beyond the door the passageway opened out into a wide chamber with a high, vaulted roof. Corbels upheld rafters of solid granite. In the opposite wall another door stood closed, also of wood, but of recent construction. Rol began to step out into the looming massiveness of the chamber but Rowen set a hand on his arm.
“Look,” she whispered.
She angled the face of the lantern upward, and Rol saw something perched on a corbel high above. The lantern-light cast a fearsome shadow of it upon the curved roof.
“What is it?”
At first glance, a crouching shape with the body of a man and a bat’s wings folded upon its back. The head was that of a crested lizard and a long tail curled about the corbel it sat upon. But it was all carved in dead, gray stone.
“A gargoyle?”
Rowen shook her head and swept the lantern about the chamber. Another of the statues perched at the opposite end of the room.
“Haunhim,” she hissed. “Watch-demons summoned and enslaved by Psellos, set to guard his sanctum. If we try to approach the far door they’ll tear us in pieces.”
Rol studied the grotesque shapes, fascinated. “Are they actually made of stone?”
“That is what Psellos has given them to animate. If the ston
e can be shattered, then they will be sent back whence they came—but one does not break stone with sword blades.”
Rol began unslinging the coil of rope at his belt. “They guard the approach to the far door, you say?”
“I think so.”
“You’d better be right.”
He stepped into the chamber gingerly, keeping close to the wall. Hefting the coils of his rope, he tied a loop at one end. Feeding the far end of the rope into it, he created a running loop and began swinging it open around his head.
“What are you doing?”
“I made Gannet fast to a rock like this once, after we had lost the anchor and the tide had taken her.” He tossed the spinning loop lightly into the air and it came down over the neck and wing of the haunhim. Both Rol and Rowen dropped instinctively into a crouch, but the thing remained as motionless as the statue it seemed to be.
Rol took the other end of the rope and fashioned a second noose. This time the loop landed clear round the second haunhim and he drew it tight about the thing’s back legs and tail. Then he took up the slack between the pair of them and rejoined Rowen at the door.
“Punch out that rotten wood and loop it about the hinges—they seem solid enough.”
They coughed and sneezed as the ancient wood splintered into a cloud of fragments under their fists. Then they wrapped the rope about the stone-bound bronze of the hinges until it was taut, and tied it off in a bulky knot. Rol drew Fleam and kissed Rowen on her tight lips. “Shall we?”
They padded across the stone of the chamber floor warily, staring upward. When they were halfway to the door they heard a grating sound, like someone moving heavy furniture across a flagged floor. In the eye sockets of the haunhim bright green lights began to burn. Despite himself, Rol halted, and Rowen tugged him on. “Too late now. Move.”
They sprinted the last ten yards, and behind them they heard a rushing noise like the hiss of sliding scree, and then the beat of wings filling the tall chamber.
The door had neither keyhole nor handle, but was blank. Rol threw himself at it and felt the heavy wood move minutely. A gale of wind blew his hair about his face and the lantern cast a mad gyre of flapping shadows.
“Rol!”
He turned from the door in time to see one of the haunhim swooping down upon him, stone jaws wide. Fleam leaped up in his hand and met it point first. The metal of the blade jarred against the back of the thing’s throat and the shock ran all the way up Rol’s arm. He cursed as his hand went numb, and dropped the scimitar. The haunhim was beating and snapping in his face, the wings propelling great gusts of dry air up at him. His rope was tangled about its feet and whipping tail, holding it less than a yard from Rol’s eyes.
The other creature was a hobbling, flapping shadow on the floor of the chamber. One of its wings had been encircled by the rope and was crushed to its side whilst the other beat madly, crashing off the floor with deep clunking booms.
“Get the door before the rope gives way,” cried Rowen. She had set down the lantern, and now both of them heaved at the stubborn wood with all their strength. The door groaned open six inches, ten, a foot. It was enough.
Rowen went through first. Rol retrieved Fleam from the floor but as he was reaching for the lantern the nearest haunhim broke free of its restraining rope and crashed full tilt into the door. It was jarred open another foot and the lantern was smashed to shards of glass and metal wire and blazed up a yard into the air. The flames caught Rol’s arm and set it alight. He threw himself backwards, held up Fleam, and the haunhim’s snout clashed against the steel, slid down it, and ripped the flesh from his knuckles. He beat down on the thing’s head but the blade clicked off it harmlessly. Then he was hauled through the doorway by the scruff of his neck.
“You’re on fire,” Rowen said calmly as she stepped over him and beat out at the enraged haunhim with the pommels of her stilettos. Her hands moved in a fusillade of blurs that cracked the iron bases of the knives about the snapping head of the thing in the doorway. It seemed unhurt but confused, snapping out left and right and missing her fists by inches. It slipped in the burning oil at its feet and Rowen’s foot flew up and caught it on the shoulder, toppling it backwards.
She retreated quickly and in one easy move slammed the door shut. They were left in total blackness, their heads filled with the smell of Rol’s burnt clothing.
Thirteen
A PARTING GIFT
ALL SOUND CUT OFF BUT FOR THEIR HARSH BREATHING. A sense of space about them, a dark echo.
“As well it closed more easily than it opened,” Rol said.
“I’d guess it was made that way, so Psellos could slam it in the face of a pursuer and leave him to the haunhim.”
“How in the world are we going to get back past them?”
“That’s a worry for later. Where are you? Stick out your hand.”
He did so, and felt her cold fingers entwine with his. “We need light,” she said.
She helped Rol to his feet. His right arm stung and had begun to stiffen, but seemed serviceable.
“Rowen,” he said, wondering, “I can see.”
They were in a vast chamber, as large as the vaulted space within a cathedral. Buttresses of solid rock upheld the ceiling and splayed out into hundreds of tendrils of stone overhead, like the branches of trees. And that was what they had been modeled on, Rol realized. The cavern had been carved out of the solid gutrock in such a way as to mimic the floor of a forest. Every soaring pillared bole of stone had been chiseled with the distinct bark of a woodland tree, and far above, the roof was a filigree, a tracery of twigs and leaves, all hewn out of hard rock.
“Gods, it’s beautiful,” he said.
“I cannot see it,” Rowen told him. “It’s night-black in here.”
“What? Surely you can. It’s quite bright. I don’t know where the light is coming from, but—”
Can you see in the dark? Psellos had asked him.
He stared at Rowen’s face. She was turning it this way and that, like a dog hunting for a scent. He waved his free hand before her eyes and she made no sign. This gift was his alone, it seemed.
“Stay here,” he said. “I’ll see if I can hunt up a candle or something.”
For an instant her fingers tightened on his, and then she released them. “Very well.”
He kissed her. It was hard to walk away.
The floor of the cavern, or chamber, or hall was perfectly smooth in some places, rough in others. It had been worked in the same manner as the roof. There was a paved road beside a rough-cut channel that looked as though it was meant to hold flowing water. Outcrops of boulders lay tumbled about the roots of the stone pillar-trees. There was grit underfoot. When Rol bent to cup some in his hand he found it to be bone-dry dirt, soil that had not seen a drop of water in countless centuries. He wondered if things had somehow grown here once, back in the heyday of the Elder Race. No notion seemed too fanciful for a place such as this.
He came at last to the far wall of the cavern. The place was huge, perhaps three hundred yards wide on the narrow side, and lengthwise it disappeared into a darkness even his eyes could not penetrate. There were windows and doorways carved into the wall, three and four storeys high. Windowsills and doorsteps, but no doors, no glass.
He followed the tracks in the age-old dirt at his feet and entered a doorway that was reached by a series of shallow steps. A short empty hallway, and then he was in a long room with a stone gallery two-thirds of the way up the walls. The room was crowded.
Tables, chairs, bookcases, chests, jars, shelves, cupboards—an orderless jumble of furniture and artifacts. The smell of rotting cheese drew Rol to a pantry set off to one side, or at least Psellos had used it as such. Apart from some pickles and salted fish, everything was spoiling and rancid; evidently the Master had not been down here for some time prior to his death.
Books, scrolls, and unbound manuscripts heaped in careless profusion, the paper of some crumbling at a touch of Rol’s fi
ngers. Others were crafted out of more durable vellum. Writing paper, quills, ink of a dozen colors, sealing wax. Vials of what looked like blood, specimens preserved in jars, half-constructed skeletons of unknown animals. And at last, a lamp with some oil in the well. Rol lit it with a few strikes of flint and steel into his tinderbox, the fragile flame held trembling against the wick as it caught. And as the light grew and he replaced the glass cover of the lamp, his preternatural night-sight left him, and the limits of his vision were circumscribed even as Rowen’s were.
“So this is the font of secrets,” Rowen said. She sounded disappointed. “It’s like an old man’s attic.”
They had lit half a dozen lamps and candles and the galleried room was bright along its length. They had shared a half decanter of decent port, taking it in turns to drink from the single crystal glass that Psellos had kept down here. As she drained the last of it Rowen smashed the glass on the floor and ground the fragments under her heel. Then she had insisted upon pouring olive oil over Rol’s burnt arm and wrapping it in linen torn from her own shirt. Thus refreshed, the pair had begun rooting through the contents of the room.
“I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be looking for,” Rol complained. “Gods! What a pig he was when he had no maids to clean up after him.”
“Old Waric,” Rowen told him. “I can’t read it, but I’ll know it when I see it. Look for characters that resemble runes, but read north-south instead of west-east. You could mistake them for an engraving, or a geometric design.”
“Psellos knew the language of the Elder Race?” Rol asked.
“Some—he said so, at any rate. He was from the Goliad, don’t forget, and it is said that there are rocks in the wastes there that still bear traces of it. In here it will be on vellum, or slate. If they wrote on paper, it all perished long ago.”
“Why look for inscriptions in a language we have no hope of understanding?”
