“My heart and lungs,” said Exandu. He gasped. “This will do my rheumatics no good at all."
“When we rest, master,” said Shanli, “I will poultice your joints with Mother Rashi's Herbal Attachments,"
“Oh, yes, Shanli. They always ease the stiffness."
Seg and Kalu exchanged a smile, and we all descended the winding stairs into the depths.
Three-quarters of the way down, with the darkness at the foot of the stairs lightening to the glow of the torches, Skort the Clawsang waited on the steps. He stood bravely enough on the outside as the people walked down against the wall. When we came up with him, with Seg and Kalu still talking together, Skort's hideous decomposing corpse face leered on us.
“The strom bids silence from this point down."
Kalu started to bristle up, but Seg, amicably, said, “That makes sense, good Skort."
From the way my blade companion spoke, I knew he was not plucking feathers, as they say on Kregen. Of course, silence made sense down here. We went on, quietly, and the oppressive stillness of the place began its insidious work on our nerves.
The spiral stairway gave onto a flat expanse of rock, with an opening ahead of us and another to our right. The left-hand side of the expanse was walled off solidly. There were no doors in the two openings. A warrior moved forward with a pole and prodding the floor, prodded past the central opening.
He was a Chulik, with tusks unadorned, and a blue-dyed pigtail. He turned and motioned us. All was well.
Chuliks, trained from birth to be mercenary warriors, may have nothing much of warm humanity in their makeup; they are superb fighters and they are brave, you have to say that of them. This Chulik served Strom Ornol.
We all followed on through the opening and found we had to turn sharply to the left along a fifteen-foot-wide corridor. The walls were solid rock. The ceiling and floor were rock. Our torches flung shards of light along, and the procession of heads cast grotesque shadows ahead of us.
No rooms opened off the corridor. At the far end the pasages turned ninety degrees to the right. Halfway along another opening showed merely blackness to the questing torches. Strom Ornol marched straight past this opening and went with his people around the far corner.
When Kalu reached the corner he used his sword to mark a sign upon the rocky wall.
In one sense he needn't have bothered. Every corner was lavishly inscribed with marks. Numbers, letters, names, exhortations, they crowded the rock as the light from the torches fell across them. Seg nodded at this display of ancient instant cartography.
The Pachak leaned close, whispering, “I have a system."
All I did was to make note of the sign which, by reason of its semi-obliteration of others beneath it, indicated it to be among the most recent additions. This mark was in the form of a heart, lobed, and as we passed various corners I noted that the slashed line through the heart pointed the way we had come.
On we went. Because Ornol insisted on leading us, and Skort stuck with him, and Fregeff shuffled along after, Exandu and Kalu and Seg and me tended to be always bringing up the rear. This seemed a sensible idea. Danger, when it came, could strike from our back as easily—possibly more easily—than from our front.
The onward progression of our party, which, despite the losses we had suffered battling through the jungle and at the Pool of the Slaptras, was still of some size, created enough noise for the prohibition upon conversation to be relaxed. Although I accepted this, I did so with reservations. Kalu, who knew about these things, was cheerful enough as he told us, “Oh, yes. The guardians of the tombs usually know if folk come adventuring down. We will know when we have found them well enough. Yes, by Papachak the All-Powerful!"
“But we're not delving down tombs!” protested Seg.
Kalu waved his upper left arm, shield slung over his back. “What's the difference? Down here?"
We went on following the leaders until we reached an echoing chamber, vaulted of rocky ceiling, lit by ghostly fires that sent streamers of light disturbingly across the floor. The whole system of rooms and corridors was free of dust. This made me suspicious. In this chamber there were twelve doors, set around the circumference. I noticed the mark of the heart upon the door we entered. Halfway around the chamber lay the corpses of two werstings and two strigicaws, savage hunting beasts, long of fang and claw. The bodies appeared to be mummified. All four throats had been slit.
On the other side, propped against a wall, sat the corpse of a man. He, too, was mummified. He was a Chulik. He had been powerful, and wore scraps of armor. His weapons had been taken from him. Farther along lay a scattering of bones, and the skulls of two Rapas and a Fristle.
“They make you welcome,” observed Kalu. He sounded quite cheerful, perfectly at home. But he gazed about alertly, and his group of Pachaks closed up, watchfully.
Just as we were about to follow Strom Ornol through one of the doorways without knowing why he had chosen this particular one, we all stopped, poised. The sound of screaming reached us. The black-paneled door to our left crashed open. A man staggered through. He was a Pachak. His lower left arm was a mere stump, bandage-swathed. He was clad in tatters. He carried a sword, rusty with blood. His Pachak face showed such terror as made the heart leap in shocked sympathy.
He sprang out onto the rocky floor, and swung about, flinging the sword up before his face.
Out from the door after him leaped the forms of fanged nightmares, feral eyes ablaze, razored talons reaching to rip past his feeble defense and tear his head from his shoulders.
Amid the instant pandemonium that shattered about us I saw the bristle hairs of the hellhounds spiking in ungovernable anger. They yowled in frenzy, foam-spitting, their red tongues lolling between those razor teeth.
In the next second the hellhounds leaped, lethal engines of destruction, charged demoniacally full upon us.
* * *
Chapter fifteen
In the Maze
Seg loosed and in the same motion he dragged his sword clear of the scabbard. Kalu's shield slapped across in his two left hands, and his right brought the sword up, his tail hand whistling over his head, curved blade glittering. My own sword joined in and we fronted that first crazed charge.
Exandu moaned and drew his single-edged sword and stood with us. Slaves screamed and ran. The warriors of the party stood, back to back, in clumps, or with their backs against the wall. The noise echoed in a racket of snarls and shrieks, of muffled chomping of sharp fangs and the juicy thwunk of blows. Keen steel drew bright red blood.
We fought the hellhounds.
We strewed their bristly lean bodies over the rocky floor, trailing blood. We slashed and hacked at them, and they yowled and snarled, and kept coming, a tide of hairy wolf-like bodies pouring through the black-paneled doorway.
They took their toll of our people.
Striking like a maniac, I tried to keep Exandu and Shanli covered, and Seg ranged up on the other side. We had no shields; but we skipped and pumped and ducked. Our brands stained gory, and the blood splashed up to our shoulders.
At last, at last it was done, and no more hairy hellhounds, teeth ravenous, eyes crazed, leaped for our throats. The black-paneled doorway gaped—empty.
“Now may Beng Sbodine, the Mender of Men, have us in his mercy.” Exandu spoke deliberately. He shook blood drops from his sword. Seg glanced at me. We marked Exandu's mode of speech. Nothing here, then, of Opaz the Nine Times Exalted.
Strom Ornol, blood-splashed, kicked the hairy and bloodied corpse of a hellhound. He bent, picked the thing up, and threw it viciously from him.
“Creatures from hell!” His pallor was intense.
“They are mortal, not supernatural,” said Fregeff.
At his feet lay four hellhounds, unmarked, but dead, stone dead.
Shanli started to minister to Exandu. Skort bent to one of his retainers. The decomposed appearance of the man was a gruesome reminder that soon he would no longer belie his loo
ks.
“Poor Sangl,” said Skort. “How am I to tell his mother of this?"
Others of our party were down; a shaven-headed Gon, an uncouth Brokelsh, a Fristle who served Fregeff. No Pachaks had been lost. Kalu knew his own men well.
“We must push on.” Ornol waved his sword commandingly, and blood drops splattered. “Ilsa—you must march."
The girl stood up, trembling, from where she had crouched in the angle of floor and wall. She bore dark smudges beneath her eyes, and the tears coursed down her cheeks.
“Yes, Ornol, yes. Those poor men—those terrible beasts—"
“They can be slain with steel.” Ornol waved his sword and strode off, commandingly. We all followed.
Seg shouted. “We can't just leave our own people like this!"
Ornol half-turned.
“Can you bury them in this rock? Do you wish to carry them with you?"
Seg looked furious. I walked over to the Gon and, bending down, gently removed the shield that he had failed to employ properly and so save his life. “At least,” I said, “we can say the proper words over them and commend them to their gods, and then take from them what in brotherly comradeship they no longer need and we do."
This, with due solemnity, we did.
These small rites meant that Seg and I were last to leave the chamber, with Kalu and Exandu just ahead.
When in the town of Selsmot mistress Tlima had sent a slave over to The Dragon's Roost with our belongings, we had resumed possession of our equipment and weapons. Our own clothes, being mere rags, we did not bother with, and continued to wear the brown tunics. I own I felt the usual irrational but understandable longing to be wearing the brave old scarlet.
“Good men are dead,” I said. “I fancy there will be more before we find Pancresta."
“Aye,” said Seg. “And before we get out of this devilish place."
“Well, by Zair!” I said with some force. “Just make sure, Horkandur, that you are not one of them!"
“And you—Bogandur!"
With a suspicious look back, we went on. “And that poor devil of a Pachak. Who was he? Where did he come from?"
We assumed that, as he was a Pachak, he would not be a bandit.
Fresh shouts up ahead hastened our steps, and we arrived in the next chamber to find Strom Ornol and Exandu locked in mulish argument. This room, lit by the pervasive glow of fire-crystal walls, gave off a pungent reek of rotting flesh. A small pool of water at the center, rock-coped, held a miniature slaptra. The thing was slashing about with hard-edged flower heads at the end of stalks some two meters long.
Exandu and Ornol might argue over which door to take next; a goodly number of the folk were standing laughing at the slaptra. They taunted it as though it could understand. A Gon stepped forward, and slashed with his sword. The flower head flew off. They all laughed again.
As though that was the signal, the warriors leaped on the slaptra and hewed it to pieces.
No doubt they felt better after that.
“Very well, master Exandu! Very well. You may come with me, as you wish. I go through the door marked in green."
“But, strom—"
“I shall go with you, Strom Ornol,” cut in Skort.
“And I,” said the wizard.
When the whole mob advanced on the green door, busily poking the ground ahead of them with their poles, and casting searching glances over their heads, Seg and I, with Kalu, saw no reason why we should not follow along.
Green doors, blue doors, black doors, they were all one.
Three long corridors later, and two rooms containing, one: skeletons piled up in yellow-brown heaps, and, two: rotting wooden chests spilling dust and moths, we came to a blue-paneled door. This the leaders pushed open. At once shouts of dismay echoed down to us in the rearguard.
We pushed along and entered the next chamber, weapons ready for what might leap upon us.
We saw a large circular room, halfway around which lay the corpses of two strigicaws and two werstings. Opposite them sat the corpse of a Chulik. Bones lay scattered near. And by the black-paneled door a heap of still blood-reeking hellhound corpses, and those of men, lay in a shambles.
The variety of oaths that rose was marvelous in its diversity.
“Twelve doors!” shouted Ornol above the din, pressing them down by the pallid force of his face and authority. “We have nine left. Let us take the yellow door."
Yellow seemed a sound enough choice to me. I glanced at the red door. It would not be as easy as that...
By the time we had traced a weary way through rooms and corridors, and reentered the circular room through the orange door, we had rested once, and were still tired and more than dispirited. Exandu was one long moan. Ilsa plumped down, and put her hands to her face, and wept openly.
“The turquoise door!” cried Ornol. “Follow me."
His warriors dragged themselves up from whence they had flopped down, and kicked the slave porters into motion, and obediently started after Ornol. Skort the Clawsang and his people followed. Ornol swung back, his pale face wrathful.
“Ilsa! Where are you?"
I went up to Ornol. My face was perfectly blank.
“Strom. It is needful that we rest."
He sneered at me. “Strom, is it? Is that the way to address me? You call me pantor—"
“Pantor, we rest now. You may go on; but you will go on alone."
He glared about. Exandu tried to rescue the situation, for it was obvious and petty enough, Zair knows.
“A rest, good Ornol, for longer than the ten murs you allowed us in the room of the hanging virgins. I beg you."
I said, “We camp here. Set the guards and let us brew some tea and cook ourselves a meal. Our rations will stand that—"
“Our rations and water are almost gone,” said Kalu.
“Aye. We must keep up our strength if we are to escape,” said Exandu.
“Escape? We have not yet started!” burst out Skort.
We all stared at him in astonishment. As though alarmed at the vehemence of his outburst, he went off, his corpse face seeming to deliquesce and melt away to teeth and bone, and started bellowing at his people to make camp.
We made camp and set watches and tried to sleep. This place of tunnels and rooms was beginning to become a trial. It reminded me uncomfortably of the Moder I'd been down in Moderdrin, the Humped Land, although—as yet—in nowise as horrifying. And this puzzled me, for I, along with the others, had been set for a trial of strength with the bandits, if they were not all dead. This maze came as a shock.
“Seems to me, my old dom, as though we shall all starve to death."
“I could eat hellhound, if I had to. So could you."
“Aye, and so could the others, if it came to it. They'd drink hellhound blood, too..."
“If Zair wills it."
When we started up again after a camp of some eight burs or so, we rose with much groaning and clicking of joints, and the slaves had to be kicked into motion by equally sore warrior guards. We all straggled off, poking the floor and watching the ceiling, and followed Ornol through the doorway paneled in turquoise.
We had not eaten to break our fast, determining to press on for a few burs before consuming any more of our fast vanishing rations. We entered the next chamber, one of three, at the branch of the corridor. Everyone exclaimed in surprise.
Down two sides of the room, which was clothed in bright tapestries depicting scenes of the hunt, stood two long tables. White damask shone. The service was of silver and the viands smelled so aromatic that the saliva started up in our mouths. Amphorae of wine stood in their tripods racked against the far wall. The place was set for a feast.
Kalu swung to us. “Let no one eat or drink!"
The rush for the tables halted, suddenly. We stared longingly on the viands. Our mouths were parched and our tongues hung out. Ornol clamped his lips. He pointed at a slave, a Brukaj with a stubborn bulldog face. “You! Sit at the table and ea
t, drink!"
“Master!” quavered the Brukaj, shaking.
Ornol lifted his sword. He placed the point against the slave's neck, under his ear. He twitched. A thread of blood shone. “Eat, drink! Or die!"
Ilsa hurried forward; but Shanli was there, to hold her. Exandu sat down on one of the chairs. Everyone else watched. I watched, for I felt, suddenly, that this place was not as the Moder had been.
The slave ate and drank, quivering with fear. But the food was marvelous, delicious, and the wines superb. Soon he was sweating with enjoyment, and drinking—and singing. He sang merrily, throwing-his arms about, his lowering bulldog face transformed.
“If he dies, he'll die happy,” said Exandu, with a sigh. “If the poison does not torture him too much,” said Seg, a savage note in his voice. Fierce and fiery is my comrade Seg, with a heart as soft as a girl's lips—at times. “We will sit and wait,” said Ornol.
I fancied he had not liked the hint of mutiny. This hiatus gave him the chance to allow us a proper rest. If the slave died—but the Brukaj did not die. We fell on the food and drink, and, by Krun it was good, all of it, superb!
At last, stuffing our packs with food and carrying bottles of wine, we set off again.
After a long march in the lambent glow of the fire-crystal walls, a march wherein we met and bested fearsome Bearded Phantoms, whining Mind Leeches and a covey of stinking Dragworms, we returned to the chamber, one of three, where we had feasted.
Our exclamations of surprise and anger, of dejection and fear, were partially mollified when we saw that the tables were again laid as we had first found them. Incontinently, we sat down and feasted once more.
“This will not do,” said Kalu, stripping a chicken bone expertly and flinging the naked bone over his shoulder. “We are like to eat ourselves to death."
“There has to be a way,” said Seg, drinking heartily. “Aye. But which? To go left is to return to the circular room of the twelve doors. To go right is, mayhap, to return here."
“We had best try to the right. If we do return here we can go to the circular room of the twelve doors and choose again."
Mazes of Scorpio [Dray Prescot #27] Page 13
