by Robert Ryan
“It is ever thus,” she answered. “This is a dead land. But even so, I know what you mean. It seems even stiller than normal.”
“You’ve been here before?”
“Once. Long ago, it seems now.”
“Have you been inside?”
She laughed at that, but it was a grim laugh. “No. None go in there. It is death.”
“Then why do you think of doing so now? You don’t have to, you know. In fact, I would prefer it if you didn’t. This is my quest, and my responsibility. You’ve helped me greatly, and whatever debt you owe to Aranloth is paid.”
She ran a hand through her long hair. “No, it is not paid. It can never be paid.”
“Why not? You’ve save my life, even as Aranloth saved yours.”
“Because of many things…” Her voice trailed away.
It was no answer. But he knew he would get nothing more.
He looked around him, thinking. The recess they stood on was a large half-moon shape, perhaps forty feet long and just as deep at its furthest point. In the center sat a squat and ugly stone, the thing he had taken for a statue. It was as tall as he, but somewhat wider. Each of its four faces was carved with unusual writing.
He peered at it closely. The marks were a series of slashes, dots, and half circles, evidently some kind of writing, but it differed greatly from anything he had seen before.
“What does it say?” he asked.
Kareste rested her hand against the stone. “As you guess, it’s the writing of the Letharn. It’s an ancient thing. But as for what it says, it’s better that you don’t know.”
“Words can’t hurt me,’ he said. “Tell me what they say.”
Kareste shrugged. “So you say, but do you know all the secrets of the world, all the powers that battle to and fro, of which men hear only distant rumor? No, you don’t. And it’s better that way. But see the cave, there is writing there if you would have me translate it, though that too is a dangerous thing.”
21. I am Death
Brand looked into the shadows around the mouth of the cave. It was buttressed by slabs of stone, and the high lintel was inlaid with the same curious writing. He looked back at her, and though he did not ask it, she read his will.
“Very well,” Kareste said. She walked close. He followed, and when they stood near the entrance she spoke again. Her words were slow and halting, for he saw that she must translate the ancient script with care. But her voice, unhurried as it was, seemed more like a chant than anything else:
Attend! … We who mastered the world … are become dust. We possessed the wealth of nations. Gold adorned our hands; priceless jewels our brows; bright were our swords. The world shuddered … when we marched! Now, our glory lies unheeded in the dark of the tomb. Servants … mutter secret words as they walk the hidden ways … Death and despair take all others!
She fell silent. A long time Brand considered the words. It was a warning, but warning or no he must go inside. He looked around. There was no sign of the hunt, which was just as well, for they could not take the horses in.
Kareste followed his lead when he finally moved and tied her reins to some jutting rocks after him. They did not look particularly secure, but it was the best place available.
“We won’t be that long,” he said.
Kareste grinned at him. “Or we’ll stay in there for eternity – one or the other.”
“You’re a real laugh, you are,” he said, but there was a smile, albeit nervous, on his own face.
“Neither of us will be laughing by the end,” she warned.
Brand looked one last time up the rocky trail that they had come down. He saw nothing, and he heard nothing, but that only made him mistrust the unnatural quiet all the more.
He led the way into the cave. It was not long before he saw the first bones. They were ancient things, crumbling near to dust, and swords rested near them. He did not look closely.
The road led inward, but then swiftly dropped at a steep angle. This was the route that Aranloth had chosen, and Brand remembered the lòhren’s description. He also ran the charm through his mind, but he saw as yet no reason to use it.
The mouth of the cave behind them was nothing more than a pale glow, but Kareste muttered some strange words and a mist rose from the floor near her feet. But it was no ordinary mist. It eddied and swirled and followed the two of them, going wherever they went and giving off a faint pulsing light.
The road was straight. Brand heard the faint slap of their boots, quiet as they tried to be. It took him some time to realize that there were other noises as well. There was a whispering presence somewhere in the dark with them.
He spoke Aranloth’s charm, stumbling over it a little, used rather to hearing it in his mind than saying it out aloud.
Shapes reared up behind them, and he turned, but by the time he did so they had dispersed again, either unwilling to be seen as yet or mollified by the charm, though he spoke it so softly that even Kareste would not have heard the words properly.
As they went ahead, slowly, cautiously, peering both before them and behind them, they saw that the tombs themselves had started. No longer was it a cave that they walked through, but a tunnel shaped by men, and in it, and the many smaller side passages that ran from it, the Letharn had laid men, women and children to their long rest.
Alcoves lined the sides of every passage, filled with bones and pottery and the implements of everyday life. All were ancient, seeming so fragile that they might break into dust at a careless breath, and yet Brand could not help wonder about them. Here were people who had once lived and breathed. They had once cooked meals and eaten. They had raised families, suffered sorrow and joy. They were the same as him no matter the vast gulf of time that separated them. And one day, regardless of whether or not he fulfilled this quest, or reached his other goals in life, he too would be bones and dust, memories on a forgotten breeze long ago blown across the world.
His thoughts were sobering and depressing – even immobilizing. Yet determination and stubbornness coursed through him in reaction. He might not know what had happened before he was born. He might not know what would happen after he died, as surely he would, but the time in between was his. And a long life or a short, it was his to make of it what he would.
He walked ahead more briskly, and he did not look to the sides.
“Touch nothing,” he whispered to Kareste. “Touch nothing at all, for Aranloth warned me there is poison on everything. Deadly poison – enough to kill you within moments.”
“I haven’t seen anything worth taking. But don’t worry, I won’t touch a thing.”
“Remember that, and hold to it, for later there is wealth that you will never have seen. At least so Aranloth told me.”
“Do you believe everything he says, always?”
It was a strange question, and he wondered why she asked it.
“I like many, but I trust few. Aranloth is one. The king of Cardoroth another. I would trust my life to either of them.”
There was a pause. “Indeed you have, and I did not say it was a bad thing. But it may turn out differently than you expect.”
“Doesn’t it always?”
She did not answer, but he saw in the dim light the white flash of her grin.
The tombs changed as they went ahead. Brand’s gaze was drawn against his will to look. And what he saw began to stun him.
Here were no ordinary tombs of laborers and peasants, as before. He saw piled gold and gems and artifacts of everyday life for the privileged, carved, decorated and inlaid with jewels. They were things of great craft: the harness of horses, combs of ivory, harps of polished timber, still strung; and there were lutes and drums and dresses and candleholders. He saw many things that the living used, but the dead needed not. And he saw the dead also. The preserved dead, dried and withered by time, but still with faces and arms and legs, uncorrupted because of some art of the Letharn.
He looked ahead again, for the dead fascinated
him, but in that fascination was a trap. Something else was in the tombs with them, and he could afford no distraction.
If the thing, or things, with them was not dead, then neither were they alive. The figures that he had seen before began to press unseen at his mind, and he knew that the trial had not yet even begun.
He looked behind, but they were not there. He looked ahead, but he saw no sign of them. Yet he heard their whisperings in his mind and felt the cold touch of their unfathomable thoughts.
Eventually, he slowed, and then stopped. He had come to a place that Aranloth had told him about, but no description could prepare him.
There was a great crack in the rock. Through the fissure that ripped across the floor ahead of them there bubbled up the sound of rushing water. But it was faint as though coming from a great distance. Yet the way was not blocked, for over the gulf a slim bridge leaped, decorated and carved with strange figures at each end and graciously arched in the middle.
Strange lights shone upon it. Not from above, but from below, and they shifted and turned amid the dark, throwing up a shimmer onto the bridge. And a pillar stood before it, writing of gold-inlay glimmering from its black stone.
“What does it say?” he whispered.
Kareste peered at it for a moment. “It says, in the language of the Letharn, dead as they are themselves: Harak kur likkil, harak ben luluck. This I know, for Aranloth favored me with lore that not all lòhrens learn. Few know what those words mean now, and few spoke them even in the elder days when the iron-gripped rule of the Letharn rested heavily across wide realms. But once those words meant something, frightening even the mighty ancients that often knew war but seldom fear. When they were uttered, so Aranloth told me, the strongest warrior would cringe, kings would bow their heads and queens would wail.”
Brand looked at her, solemn and unflinching in the strange lights, and he did not look away.
She gazed back at him, perceiving that he was not afraid of words alone, and gave him the translation.
I am death. I will devour you.
Brand looked at her a moment longer. “Fitting words for such a place.”
He turned back to the bridge and stepped upon it. It felt hollow beneath his feet, for the stone was not thick, and he pictured the yawning gap below. But he did not look.
They began to cross. The roaring of water in the deeps of the earth grew louder. A faint breeze played across his face, and the lights glimmered up into his eyes.
After a while he could resist no longer and looked over the edge. It was black down there, blacker than the midnight sky, and yet like the sky there were lights that sparked and shimmered. But unlike stars they moved and spun, wheeling and arcing amid the blackness.
“What are they?” he asked.
Kareste stared at them for a moment. “I don’t know. Not even the lòhrens know all things. And if Aranloth knew, he never told me.”
They went ahead. Reaching the other end of the bridge, they stepped out again onto the solid stone of the earth once more. Ahead, they saw now a crossroads.
The main path ran true and straight before them, disappearing swiftly into the dark. Two other ways, smaller and narrower, shot left and right.
Brand did not hesitate. “This way,” he said, and he turned left as Aranloth had told him to do. But they did not get far. Almost immediately he looked back, his eyes drawn by some instinct that he did not understand, for he had heard no noise.
Upon the crest of the arched bridge he saw three figures. The strange lights from the fissure below them flared, shining now many times brighter. Brand looked, and he saw, but he did not believe what he beheld.
Three women stood there. Three beautiful women. They were naked. Long hair streamed from proudly held heads. They gazed at him with sharp eyes, eyes that could bore through greater dark than that gathered even here in the tombs. They wore no ornament, not even the least of rings. But in their long-fingered hands they each held wicked knives: curved, serrated, designed to rend with pain and then draw forth intestines when pulled out of a victim’s body.
And then, beyond his understanding, beyond anything he could have anticipated, they began to sing. It was a sound so strange, so unexpected, and yet all the more beautiful because of that.
He listened, entranced. And as he did so the figures seemed to grow. Tall they stood, their long hair shimmering in the strange lights, and their keen eyes bent upon him as though fascinated. He gazed back, caught in their spell, but it was not one of magic. His will was free, and he could act as he chose, do what he wished. Nor did he forget Aranloth’s warning about the power they possessed and their charge to protect the tombs.
And yet they were beautiful, and in that was a spell of its own; one that was stronger, deeper and more dangerous than any magic brought forth into the world of men since time began.
Kareste slapped him. It was a heavy blow, fueled by some desperate emotion.
“The words!” she yelled at him. “The charm!”
Brand reeled from the force of her fury, and he remembered his purpose here, for beauty or not, harakgar or not, still he must leave this place with Shurilgar’s staff.
He straightened and spoke: Har nere ferork. Skigg gar see!
Many things happened as Aranloth’s charm filled the tombs. The lights in the fissure spun and whirled in a frenzy. The three figures of the harakgar stiffened. The singing ceased, but not all sound, for now they hissed at him. Their long tongues writhed in their mouths like snakes, and their hair stood on end. The lights of the fissure suddenly winked out, and shadow took the bridge.
Silence fell, dismal after the singing, reminding him that he was far beneath the earth, and he felt the great dark closing in and also the weight of earth and rock and stone, and the very river that flowed high above it all out in the sunlight, the golden sunlight that he might never see again.
“Sorry,” he said, turning to Kareste.
“Lead on!” she answered.
They went forward. Whether the harakgar were still there, or the charm had banished them, Brand did not know. But on they went and they were not followed. At least, not by anything that he saw or sensed, but having felt the presence of the harakgar once, he thought he would know if they were close, and they were not, but they were not far away either. Somewhere in the uneasy tombs they waited.
Ahead of them a vast chamber opened up. The mist beneath their feet that Kareste had called swelled and flowed and gave off a greater light to fill the space.
It was a grand place. Marble flagging lined the floor, and benches of the same stone were set in rows. Here was a place where people rested, and looking up at the walls Brand saw carvings that confirmed his thought. For he saw there a great procession of men and women.
They followed an ox-drawn cart, and their heads were low and tears streamed down their cheeks. It was a funerary procession, of that he had no doubt, and the mourners on the wall sat in such a place as he stood in now while robe-clad figures at the head of the cart performed some rite. That they spoke was clear, and he realized that in their mouths was the very same charm that he had uttered himself.
He said it again, for though there was no sense of danger, he had not felt one last time either. Immediately, the light seemed brighter, and the great chamber not so old and remote as the dimmer light had made it seem.
They walked to the center. The noise of their steps was loud, echoing from the vaulted roof high above, no matter how softly they paced. Here was another crossroads.
Brand thought, reaching back to what Aranloth had told him about this place. Kareste remained silent by his side.
If she was surprised that he did not take any of the paths, but instead headed for a carving on the left wall, she did not show it.
They came to a halt before the wall. Here were many carvings in bas-relief. Brand studied them, seeing even the grooves here and there of a chisel. It was a strange thing to see. The art looked as though it was made yesterday, yet it was crafted in a
time older even than legend. The Letharn were myth, and yet it seemed that even the myths of Alithoras were real. It was a sobering thought, because it made him question all that he knew and caused him to wonder what other powers existed in the land that might yet have survived, and of which he knew nothing.
But the carvings held his attention. They stood out from the wall, giving things a look of reality as though the people there might step out of the stone and talk to him.
But he soon found the particular carving Aranloth had told him of. It was a man, tall and athletic, a spear raised in his right hand, ready to throw.
Brand reached out. His hand touched the cold surface, and then he applied force. Not a great deal, but not a light amount either. He pushed the spear, as though to propel it along the path chosen by the hurler. And the spear moved.
There was no grinding sound. Nor a click or any other noise. The spear just moved, and when it did a thin split appeared in the very wall that they looked at.
The split grew, and then there was a sound of movement, of stone rolling on stone, but it was a faint thing, barely a whisper.
Ahead of them was now a door. It was not large, and they had to duck to go through, but it was wide enough for them to pass ahead with ease.
Brand went first. Kareste’s misty light followed him, and then she came herself.
Almost immediately there was a set of stairs. Of what stone they were made, Brand did not know. But it was black as the darkness around them, and there was no ornamentation.
They descended slowly. The stairs went on and on, and his legs began to ache from the repeated stepping.
At length, the stairs brought them to a narrow corridor. And though it was narrow it was decorated as the stairs were not. The flagstones and walls were of white marble, milky smooth with yellowish swirls. There were no tombs, but there was gold. There was gold everywhere, inlaid on the walls and floor, even in the ceiling above.
Brand wondered if it was poisoned like the other treasures. He thought not, for otherwise people could not walk here, but he had no intention of trying to take anything. The staff was his only concern.
