Trapped lop-6

by James Alan Gardner

  Impervia made a scoffing noise. "It's got to be part of the same business, Phil. When was the last time we had mysterious deaths or strange things appearing from the sky? Never! And now they're all happening the same night. Everything's connected, and we have to find out how."

  Without waiting for an answer, she turned her horse and kicked it into a trot back toward the mausoleum. Her mount, a gray gelding, showed no reluctance to head in that direction; perhaps the stupid beast had already forgotten the bang that made him panic.

  The Caryatid gave me a look. "We can't let Impervia go alone, Phil." She tugged lightly on her horse's reins, and started up the road herself.

  Sighing, I checked how Annah was doing. She'd got her mare under control and was coming back toward me. "Are you all right?" I asked.

  "Fine," she said softly. "You?"

  "Fine, fine, fine."

  Pelinor and Myoko were fine too — they'd joined Impervia and were riding toward Death Hotel together. Annah's eyes met mine: a look that probably meant something, but in the darkness, I couldn't tell what. "We'd better keep them out of trouble," she murmured.

  I nodded. Together we rode forward.

  8: OPENING THE VAULTS

  The air near the mausoleum reeked with a chemical stink, something acrid that made the back of my throat feel raspy.

  Our horses wouldn't go near it — we tied them to nearby trees and proceeded forward on foot. Needless to say, Pelinor went with cutlass drawn; Impervia kept her fists ready in a guard position, the Caryatid cradled a flame in her hands; Myoko's hair splayed out from her head like a huge black halo.

  I would have pulled out my change-purse, but Annah might get the wrong idea.

  Thinking of Annah, I turned toward her, intending to deliver some manly speech of reassurance like, "Stay close, I'll protect you." But when I looked around, she was nowhere in sight. Her horse was tethered with the others; I'd helped her dismount. But now…

  Something touched my elbow. I consider it a triumph that I didn't squeal like a castrated piglet. Annah stood beside me in the darkness; but she'd put on a hooded black cloak that faded uncannily into the shadows. For a brief moment, I saw the white of her teeth under the hood as she smiled — a smile far more impish than one might expect from a quiet woman. Proud of herself for taking me by surprise. Then the smile vanished and Annah did too. Though I was staring straight at her, I could barely make her out in the silent blackness.

  Surprise, surprise: our pretty musicmaster wasn't just a shy wallflower, she could literally fade into the background. I had to stop underestimating the woman — she was far far from helpless.

  Our group moved wordlessly forward. The ground was muddy, but clear of snow; with the mausoleum and surrounding trees acting as windbreaks, the front lawn had been shielded all winter from the brunt of most blizzards. Whatever shallow snowdrifts may have built up over the past few months, they'd already melted in the spring thaw.

  As we drew nearer the building, I could see rubble strewn on the far side. Impervia saw it too; she waved us in that direction and hurried her pace. The chemical smell grew stronger — not enough to choke us, but it made our eyes water. The stink reminded me of explosives my friends had made in Collegium Ismaili's chem lab… but I'd never paid enough attention to tell one incendiary chemical from another just by the after-blast odor.

  Poor planning on my part.

  When we rounded the building's front corner, we saw what the bang had done. Most of the mausoleum's side wall had blown out in a huge detonation, scattering stone and concrete like grapeshot. The spruce trees ten paces away had great ragged holes ripped through them; needles and branches had been pulverized by flying debris.

  Much of that debris came from the cinder blocks bricking up the side entrance… but the blast had been powerful enough to loosen the building's granite as well. The entire edge of the roof was gone, exposing steel I-beams that had trussed up the weight of the dome. Here and there, the steel looked partly melted — the bottom lip of the I-beam sagged in places like softened candle wax.

  Amidst the rubble, nothing moved. The mausoleum waited, filled with pitch-black shadow.

  Pelinor stared at the hole. "Looks like something smashed its way out," he said in his usual hearty voice. I winced at the sound, piercingly loud in the silent night… but nothing attacked Pelinor or anyone else. If our luck was good, whatever had caused this wreckage was gone: stomped off to parts unknown while we were getting our horses under control.

  Impervia moved toward the rupture in the wall, obviously intending to clamber inside. "Wait," said the Caryatid; she raised her arm and tossed her ball of flame through the breach with an overhand lob. Half a second too late, I wondered if there might be combustible gases inside… but the original explosion must have burned off anything capable of igniting. The Caryatid's flame ball landed tamely on the mausoleum's floor, merely lighting what there was to see.

  To be precise: absolutely nothing.

  One might expect the people who'd slept in the hotel to leave evidence of their stay — the usual litter and trash. If so, either it had been cleaned out before the place was sealed, or it had completely decomposed over the ensuing centuries. The floor showed dirt, nothing more. The walls bore splotches in shades of gray, as if they'd been covered with graffiti that had faded over time… but it might just as easily have been mold or lichen. The Simka region was perpetually damp, especially in comparison to the dryness of my birthplace; if there was anywhere on the planet that mold could survive four hundred years of complete darkness, it was here in Feliss province.

  Impervia scrambled over broken stone and into the building. She stopped for a moment, looking ahead into the shadows; then she moved forward, with the little flame ball gliding half a step behind her like a curious dog. I watched as she walked the entire length of the crypt… but there was nothing to see, just the bare stone floor and tiers of shadowy casket-niches in the wall. Impervia checked each niche as she passed, but reported nothing: no caskets, no bones, no lurking horrors. From time to time, she even checked the ceiling; I don't know if she truly expected some monster to be clinging to the roof, but if she did, she was disappointed. Nothing above, below, anywhere.

  When Impervia had searched her way to the far end of the tomb, she came back quickly with a sour expression on her face. "Whatever it was, it's gone."

  From behind my back, Myoko called, "I think it was a woman."

  We turned. Myoko stood a stone's throw away, near the edge of the forest. She pointed down at the mud. "Footprints. A woman's boots. They look fresh."

  I started forward, but she held up her hand. "Wait. You might trample the trail." Keeping her eyes on the ground, Myoko walked toward us, obviously following the tracks. She got halfway back when she stopped and peered about; she'd reached a spot where the rubble was fairly thick all the way to the mausoleum. At last, she shrugged and gestured toward the building. "Whoever it was must have stayed on top of the wreckage till she got to this point. Then she stepped into the mud. Her tracks are quite clear."

  The rest of us hurried to see. When we looked where Myoko pointed, the footprints were easy to discern in the damp soil… and they definitely came from a woman's boots. Fancy, fashionable boots: the heel was a smallish triangle that dug deep into the earth, quite separate from the rest of the sole. It was the closest you could get to a high heel while staying within the bounds of practicality. Even so, such shoes would be better suited for walking down nice clean sidewalks than slogging through country mud. I glanced at the boots of my female companions; they all had much larger heels, choosing functionality over style.

  One reason why I liked them.

  The footsteps led away from the mausoleum. Impervia followed the trail a short distance, then turned to the rest of us. "You can see it's a straight line," she said, pointing back toward the building, then moving her finger to trace the path to the trees. "After the explosion, our mystery woman must have climbed out through the hole and heade
d directly for the forest"

  "But how did she get inside the tomb?" Pelinor asked. "Hadn't it been closed for centuries?"

  "Sealed solid as long as anyone can remember," I said. "Either the woman was inside all along and that thing in the sky woke her up… or else the thing we saw was a conduit bringing her here from somewhere up above the clouds. It funneled her into the interior, straight through solid granite. Then she used a bomb to blow her way out."

  "Phil," the Caryatid murmured, "I don't like either of your possibilities."

  "If you can think of another, I'm all ears."

  She frowned but said, "You're right. Either the woman was already inside the mausoleum, or she got put there by that tube of smoke. Or was it ectoplasm? Milky, see-through… it could have been ectoplasm." The Caryatid shuddered. "Stupid. Why am I deliberately trying to scare myself?"

  Impervia laid her hand on the Caryatid's shoulder. "Fear isn't stupid. Fear keeps you alert. But you can't let it stop you from doing what's right." Impervia looked once more at the bootprints and followed them with her eye to the edge of the woods. "The woman's got only a short headstart. And she's heading for Dover-on-Sea. If we follow her tracks, we might catch her before she gets there."

  "Then what?" Myoko asked. "Start a punching match with someone who can blast her way through granite?"

  "Only if necessary. We'll start by politely inquiring if this woman knows what's going on." Impervia gave Myoko a stern look. "I'm not completely deranged, you know."

  "Sorry, Impervia," Myoko said. "I didn't mean—"

  "Yes, you did," Impervia interrupted. "You all think I'm too…" She paused, then smiled thinly. "Impulsive. Which may be true. This time, though, I know we mustn't act rashly." Her smile grew more fierce. "But we must act. We've been called." She took a deep breath. "It's so desperately rare that one receives a call, one must seize the moment with both hands."

  She spoke with quiet intensity, low but fervent — far from the steely self-control she usually displayed. It was as if she'd finally pulled off her nun's mask, the discipline, the role… and none of us could meet her burning gaze.

  "Look," Impervia said, "haven't we all been waiting for this? Something to do. Something that matters. A dozen times a day, I pray, 'God, God, call on me.' I don't care how often my Mother Superior says I have been called, that teaching is an honorable profession, that educating children is vital work… it's not enough. My confessor tells me I lack humility — who am I, a lowly handmaid, to think I deserve something more important? But still I've prayed, 'Choose me, God, use me. Just once in my life, let me do a great thing.'

  "And can any of you say," she went on, "you haven't wished the same? Deep in your hearts, don't you long for a calling? A vocation so strong you can't doubt it? The voice of God crying from the whirlwind, 'Your destiny is at hand!' Not just passing the time and keeping yourself busy, but finally, finally, your true purpose. Isn't that what you want? An end to numb mediocrity?"

  She glared, challenging any of us to deny it. No one did. How could we? After nights of drowning in bad ale, complaining, bemoaning the pettiness of our existence, how could we pretend we were happy with who we were? Even Annah, standing dark and silent beside me: I didn't know her nearly as well as I'd thought, but one thing I didn't question — she too had spent her life waiting, composing wistful music in empty rooms, waiting, waiting for pure sweet lightning to strike.

  Passion. Meaning. Justification.

  "All right," Impervia said, "let's not waste time. Get the horses; follow the trail; stay alert." Pause. "If any of you believes in God, this would be an excellent time to pray."

  The good sister could obviously pray while walking; without a second's hesitation, she strode back toward our mounts. As for the rest of us…

  The Caryatid said nothing; but she had a crazy joy in her eyes, a look I'd only seen once before, when she was cuddling a flame after two beers more than usual. Suddenly she'd started hugging the fire to her breast while her clothes smoldered. Rubbing it against her cheek, kissing it over and over: tears dribbling from her eyes and instantly turning to steam in the fire's heat, a heat so intense her cheeks were red and raw the next day. The only time I'd ever seen fire come close to burning the Caryatid. Now the same expression blazed across her face… and she followed after Impervia, walking, then running, then leaping — over rubble, over puddles, over nothing at all, just jumping for the sake of the thrill.

  Pelinor watched the Caryatid leaping, jumping, skipping. For a moment his face was grim; then it softened into a grizzled smile. "Why not?" he said under his breath. "Why the hell not?" His eyes continued to follow the Caryatid as she caught up with Impervia and the two matched step. "There are worse things," he said. Then he smiled apologetically to the rest of us. "There are worse things," he said again. Then, not jumping or skipping, but walking with a quick firm pace, he followed the Caryatid's lead.

  Myoko seemed to have been holding her breath; now she let it out and turned to me. "What do you think?"

  I shrugged. Just a shrug but it felt strange, as if I were telling some kind of a lie. Feigning cool detachment.

  "Yeah, well," Myoko said, turning away. "I always knew it would come." She was talking to herself now. "Sooner or later, it had to. Yeah." She drew in a sharp breath. "Only question was, who would start it: me or someone else? Might as well be me." She glanced back in my direction once more and gave a mirthless smile. "Here we go. Here we go." Then she headed for the horses, walking with her arms squeezed tight in front of her.

  Just Annah and me left. When I looked at her, she'd thrown back the hood of her cloak; her eyes met mine.

  How can eyes sometimes be so alive?

  "Are you ready?" she asked.

  "Sure," I answered, "someone has to keep them all out of trouble, so—"

  She put her hand on my mouth. "Shhh." Her fingers stayed against my lips. "They're ready. I'm ready. Are you ready?" Her hand didn't move. "Don't make jokes or speeches. Are you ready?"

  I was too proud to nod obediently; nor could I shake my head no. After a moment, I took her hand from my lips, then leaned in and kissed her on the mouth.

  It felt like a good answer. Apparently, we were all ready.

  9: WE MUST GO DOWN TO THE SEA AGAIN

  The stand of spruce beyond Death Hotel wasn't big enough to be called a forest — it was just a thick windbreak separating the mausoleum from the farm fields beyond. Even so, the woman we pursued must have had trouble pushing through, thanks to snarls of undergrowth and drifts of un-melted snow. We couldn't take the horses into those woods; we had to go back to the road and trot to the far side while Impervia followed the tracks under the trees. She came out damp and disheveled, spruce needles clinging to her long black coat… but one look at the taut expression on her face, and none of us said a word.

  "The tracks went straight through," she reported, pointing downward. The mystery woman's bootprints were visible in the mud at Impervia's feet. "And look at this."

  She lifted the lamp she'd been using to follow the tracks. With the other hand, she held out a few scraggly threads of crimson, frayed on the ends. "I found these snagged on bushes."

  The Caryatid shucked off one sleeve of her overcoat and laid her arm close to the fibers. The red of the threads matched perfectly with the Caryatid's crimson body sheath. When she looked up, we nodded in understanding. Centuries ago, the first Sorcery-Lord of Spark designated that particular shade of red as the "Heraldic Hue of the Burdensome Path" (i.e., the proprietary color of sorcery). There was no explicit law against others wearing that color, but nonsorcerers still avoided it. You shouldn't pretend to be something you're not; it's even worse when your presumption annoys people who can cast powerful spells.

  "So our quarry is a sorcerer," said Pelinor. "Or rather a sorceress. And a powerful one, if she could blow out the side of that mausoleum." He glanced my direction. "You're the history buff, Phil; was there ever a major sorceress entombed hereabouts? You know the type
— wickedly strong, diabolically evil, locked up for all time because not even the Sparks could kill her."

  I made a face. "I haven't heard such stories, and wouldn't believe them if I did. The Sparks can kill anyone… and if by some miracle there was somebody they couldn't rip into constituent atoms, they wouldn't just leave her in an unguarded crypt. They'd bury her ten klicks underground, and surround her with the most god-awful traps they could devise, not to mention alarm systems, sentries, and heaven knows what else."

  "Enough chat." This came from Impervia, who'd hopped back onto her horse while Pelinor and I were talking. "The trail goes this way. Let's move."

  We moved: into the dark muddy field, the horses' hooves making soft sucking sounds through the wet.

  The bootprints led in a straight line for fifty paces, then turned toward the road. Those fifty paces must have been how long it took the sorceress to admit that slogging through muck was a waste of strength — the winding road might not be as direct as trekking cross-country, but its OldTech asphalt made travel much faster. Once the sorceress reached the pavement, her footprints left a dirty trail for another twenty paces. After that, the mud had worn off her boots and there was nothing for us to follow.

  At least we knew which direction she'd gone: toward the lake and Dover-on-Sea, the same way we'd been riding before we got sidetracked. We headed forward with all due haste… which wasn't too quick, given that the horses had to move carefully to avoid potholes in the road. It didn't help that we were traveling with minimal light to prevent the sorceress from seeing us; all we had were candle-sized flames tight to the ground, guided by the Caryatid at the speed of a shuffling walk.

  In this manner we proceeded — silently peering into the darkness. Each time we rounded a bend my nerves would tighten, expecting to spy the sorceress ahead… but nary a sign did we see of her, ever. She too must be traveling in near darkness: walking fast, perhaps even jogging, and always keeping at least one bend farther in front.