by J F Rivkin
Nyctasia nodded. “We must open it, I suppose. But I thought you should be warned-there’s no telling what the Cymvelans regarded as treasure.”
She took up her lamp and knelt before the tunnel-mouth. The urge she’d felt to plunge into it before was gone, but there was no other way back to the great cavern. With Corson’s help she managed to climb the slope, gripping the knobby crystals and inching upward till she could pull herself over the edge again.
Garast was already out of sight, but she rested and waited for Corson, nursing her scraped and bleeding hands. They were so painful she could hardly flex her fingers. She would have given half her fortune at that moment for a pair of thick leather gloves.
Corson followed, steadying her legs against the walls of the tunnel, and clambering up without much difficulty. Even the passage itself seemed easier to bear, now that she knew how far there was to go. Nyctasia was slower this time, but they made their way steadily back to the bone-strewn chamber and had no serious trouble until they reached the foot of the spiral staircase, hidden by the waterfall. The door had been pulled tight, even with the sheer stone wall.
Garast had bolted it shut behind him.
25
“corson, i’m sorry,” said Nyctasia. “This is my fault. You knew enough to keep him in sight, but I-”
“Quiet, there he is,” Corson whispered tensely. On the stone terrace high above them, near the tunnel leading to the well, Garast stood leaning over the balustrade, as if waiting for them to catch up with him. They walked slowly across the great hall, and Nyctasia waved up at him. “The door’s stuck fast,” she called quite calmly. “You’ll have to come back down and push it open.”
Garast did not move.
“Hurry up, man! We have to fetch that key.”
“I’m sure I can find it for myself,” he said. “I’ll not be needing your help anymore.”
“If you make me climb up there myself, I’ll tear you into dogmeat!” Corson shouted, but the echoes threw her words back at her mockingly. She could no more scale that steep stone cliff than she could fly over it, and Garast knew it. She looked desperately around the vast, shadowy cavern, outraged at her helplessness. “There’s sure to be another way out of here!”
Garast leaned farther over toward them, as if to confide a secret. “I think there is,” he said, “and do you know where? I think the only way out is through the door of the last hiding-place… And that door will never be opened by an outsider, nor reveal its secrets to the unworthy, while I can prevent it. You’ve seen more than is fitting already, but you’ll pay with your lives for profaning the sacred places! And when you’ve starved for your meddling, I’ll return to claim what is mine. No one but I has the right to use that key.”
Nyctasia had a sickening feeling that he was right about the way out of the cavern. It suited altogether too well with the ways of the Cymvelans. But it would be a long while before she and Corson starved to death, she reflected.
There was plenty of water. She herself was accustomed to fasting, and Corson was exceptionally strong. Could they eat bats? “It is only a few days to Yu Valeicu,” she said to Garast. “Have you forgotten?”
“Let the Edonaris guard my inheritance for me. When I tell them you’ve gone astray in the tunnels, they’ll comb the ruins for you, won’t they, my lady?
They’ll keep watch day and night-but I don’t think they’ll seek you at the bottom of an old well. I’ll help them search, though, just to be sure.” He laughed, obviously pleased with himself. “I’ll show them just where I lost you, and I’ll direct the searchers tirelessly, I promise you-”
But his laughter suddenly swelled to a shrill cry, and then he was plummeting toward them, down the long fall from the ledge, to strike the stone floor at their feet with a hard, hideous sound.
“Watch out!” called a familiar voice from overhead. “He’s the crazed bastard we stole the pouch from-that one’s dangerous!”
Nyctasia had knelt beside the still form of Garast, but now she rose and turned away. “Not anymore,” she said heavily. “His chase is done. In truth, he found the way without our help.”
“Dead?” said Newt uneasily. “Hlann, do you mean I’ve killed someone? I thought he’d break a few bones.”
“Never mind him-what are you doing here?” Corson demanded.
“What do you think? I knew you’d come after the treasure with my page of clues.
I’ve been here for a good while waiting for you to find it, and it’s taken you long enough! I watched the slavers, I watched you, I watched the slavers watching you, and the lot of you led me round in circles,” he complained. “And the rutting watchdogs nearly had me a score of times, too.”
“We really seem to give you no end of inconvenience,” said Nyctasia, leaning wearily against the wall. “But might we just trouble you a little further, to come down here and open the door to the stairway? I want to get back to the house and have a bath.”
Newt straddled the balustrade and grinned down at them. “Why should I? I could steal that key from your room and wait for you both to starve, like he said.
Then I’d have the treasure for myself.”
With a motion almost too fast to follow, Corson snatched the knife from her boot-sheath and straightened up again, arm poised to throw. “Try it, you sneaking flea,” she yelled. “Make a move anywhere but toward those stairs, and I’ll have a knife through your scrawny neck before you know it!”
Newt froze. “You daren’t. No one else knows you’re here. If you kill me, you’ll never be found.”
Nyctasia sighed, as if irritated at the quarreling of children. “Oh, she’s mad enough to do it, I’m sure. Corson, do try, please, not to be so hasty.” She pushed herself away from the wall, with an effort, and wheeled to face Newt, throwing out one arm to point at him threateningly. “As for you, thiefling, if you dare go off and leave us here, I’ll cast a curse on you with my dying breath that will shrivel the flesh from your bones! Now come open that door before I lose my patience.”
“All right, I’m coming!” He climbed off the balustrade and slid down to shelter behind it, glaring down at them between the stone palings. “But I don’t believe you can cast a spell like that, lady. Why’d you run away from Rhostshyl if you can do such things?”
Nyctasia laughed. “You’re no fool. Now why couldn’t my accusers in the city take such a sensible view of the matter? The truth is that I don’t know whether I can do it or not, because I’ve never tried. Perhaps I can’t, but-”
“But we’ll all find out soon enough, if you don’t make haste,” Corson told Newt grimly.
“Yes,” Nyctasia agreed, “I don’t like to be kept waiting. Stop pretending that you’ll abandon us here, Newt. You’re a thief, not a murderer.”
“Well, I want a share of the treasure in return.”
“Any treasure on this land belongs to the Edonaris of Vale,” Nyctasia pointed out. “But I believe that I can answer for them. That seems fair enough to me.”
She disregarded Corson’s muttered promise to see to it that Newt got everything he deserved.
“And there’s another thing,” he said suspiciously. “That one”-he pointed to Corson-“is quits with me for good and all if I help you. Your word on it!”
“Ho, I said you were no fool. But I’m afraid I can’t answer for her. What say you, Corson?”
Corson spat, disgusted at the perverse, everlasting injustice of her lot. “Oh, very well. Agreed,” she said.
Corson lifted Nyctasia over the lip of the well and then turned to look down at Newt as he struggled his way up the knotted rope. She chuckled. “After all, it consoles me to know that Raphistain ar’n Edonaris will have your head when I tell him it was you stealing from his harvesters.”
A hollow-sounding exclamation of protest rose from the shaft, followed before long by Newt’s head and arms as he climbed into view, “Thankless bitch!” he sputtered. “If not for me you’d have rotted down there forever!”
“Now, Corson,” Nyctasia interceded, “Raphe’s so enamored of you, I’m sure he’ll forgive Newt when he hears that he saved your life.”
Corson shook her head. “He loves those grapes of his better than me and the whole world beside,” she said confidently, delighted with the effect of her words on the dismayed Newt. Then, with a laugh, she grabbed his arm and hauled him up over the rim of the well-not very gently, perhaps, but she did it without breaking his arm.
26
corson hesitated before the bronze door, key in hand. Now that nothing prevented her from unearthing the hoard of the Cymvelans, she felt, despite herself, that it would be unwise to go further. Though Nyctasia stood by, waiting quite calmly, seemingly untroubled, Corson could sense her apprehension and could not help sharing it. But she knew that it was too late to turn back now, no matter what lay beyond. Ever before her mind’s eye was the vision of a chamber heaped with gold and precious gems, hundreds of years in the hoarding, enough and more for a lifetime’s spending…
“What are you waiting for? Get on with it, woman, can’t you?” said Newt, who harbored much the same hopes, and was impatient to commence his new life of opulence and luxury.
“Hold your tongue,” Raphe said sharply. He was resigned to tolerating Newt’s presence, but he did not pretend to be pleased about it. Certainly he would not allow him to speak disrespectfully to Corson. In truth, he too would have liked to tell Corson to hurry, but he was restrained by good manners, as well as a certain well-bred reluctance to reveal his own eagerness for the treasure. But he thought hungrily of the new land that could be bought and cultivated with such a fortune…
“Yes, hush,” Nyctasia said quietly. “Whatever we shall find has waited a very long time, I think. It can wait a little longer. We have time enough.”
She had insisted that only the matriarch be told of their discoveries, and of Garast’s death. Corson had willingly deferred to her judgment in such a matter, and Newt, indeed, had no desire to tell anybody. He refused even to accompany them to the house, arranging instead to meet them at the well next morning.
Lady Nocharis had summoned Diastor and Mesthelde to hear their tale, and they in turn had consulted with a few of the others. None of them was much inclined to join the search, when they heard how arduous it was to negotiate the passages to the locked door. Yet it was clearly impractical to entrust the affair to one of the youngsters, since all of them would insist on going along and getting in the way. In the end, only Raphe had been sent to look after the interests of the Edonaris in the matter, though he’d urged ’Deisha to go in his place. “You’re smaller than I am,” he teased. “You’d fit through all those ghoul-haunted holes, and dark tombs and such, better than I.”
“But you’re stronger, brother mine. You’ll be more use for carrying out the heavy bags of gold and chests of jewels you’ll find down there.” She changed her mind when she realized that Nyctasia planned to return to the underground chamber with Corson, but Nyctasia discouraged her from coming along..
“There’s really very little room for us all in those passages,” she’d explained, more or less truthfully. “And you’re right-the stronger the better for climbing about in there, and possibly for digging too.” And ’Deisha had reluctantly agreed to wait for them at the well.
Nyctasia could not honestly have explained why she felt that the practical, realistic Raphe would be less at risk among these shadows than his fanciful, romantic sister, but as she watched Corson raise the key that would unlock the Cymvelans’ secret, she was relieved to think of ’Deisha safe in the sunshine above.
The door swung out easily, as soon as Corson turned the key, and the others pressed forward anxiously to follow her into the dark room beyond. They stood in a knot in the middle of the floor, their lamps raised, and stared around them at the full-laden shelves that lined the walls of the inner chamber.
They had found the library of the Cymvelan Circle.
“Books!” shouted Corson. “Nothing but a lot of moldy, old, rotting, rutting books! I might have known it would be something not worth a heap of dried dog dung-” Words failed her. Even curses failed her. Nothing could express her bitter disappointment and rancor. Had she been alone, she’d have burst into tears.
Newt had taken a quick look around, then hastened to open a pair of stout chests that stood on either side of the door. But finding both filled with rolled vellum scrolls, he slammed shut the second one, kicked it viciously and sat down on top of it, head in hands, the picture of dejection.
“I don’t suppose any of these are worth anything?” Raphe asked Nyctasia, who was eagerly examining one volume after another, exclaiming over them with delight.
“Worth anything? This collection is priceless,” she cried. “This is wealth beyond a lifetime’s spending, because one could spend many lifetimes studying it.” Clearly, she intended to spend her lifetime doing so.
“Oh, you could rot down here for all eternity, I’ve no doubt,” Corson said. “You were right about that inscription-this is nothing but a tomb for old, dead words. If they’re so priceless, why would the Cymvelans let children get at them?”
“The library wouldn’t have been unattended in those days, I’m sure. There would always have been people here studying or writing. I imagine that once the children were clever enough to find their way here, they were deemed ready to begin their studies-”
“Poor little mites,” Corson put in sympathetically.
“It was probably part of their initiation, the approach to wisdom. We were a sad lot of fools to think that the riddles might lead to anything else. What treasure but knowledge does one put into the hands of children? What other power can be shared with all, but never lost? Who can measure the worth of such riches?” She gazed at the precious books as if they might turn to dust and smoke if she turned her eyes from them. “Look, this is Threnn’s translation of Jostyn Vahr’s Treatise on the Manifold Ills of the Flesh, all seven volumes! The man knew more about diseases of the inner organs than anyone who’s ever lived. For years I’ve been seeking just for scraps of the Fourth Book-I didn’t think the last three still existed! There are books here that I’ve only read of in ancient commentaries. And there are recent works too-here’s Raine of Tierelon’s Account of His Sojourn Among the Wolf-Folk, and the First Precepts of Isper the Mad…!
The Cymvelans must have been devoted to learning absolutely, both in body and spirit, to create such a complete collection of scholarship.”
Newt, grieving over his lost treasure, listened to her transports of rapture with heartfelt loathing-“How can you stand her?” he asked Corson, between clenched teeth.
“I can’t,” said Corson promptly, feeling some goodwill toward Newt for the first time. “It’s enough to wear away the patience of a stone. One day I’ll tie her neck in a knot, I promise you.”
Nyctasia paid no heed to either of them. “These must be taken out of here as soon as possible, to a dry, aired room-at least until I’ve had copies made.
Vahn, it will take me years just to record what’s been assembled here. I can’t think where to begin.”
Raphe shrugged. “We’ll have to begin by opening out the passageway, if you want to move all these aboveground. That will take some time.”
“But there must be an easier way in and out of here. They’d not have taken all that trouble every time they wanted to consult a book.”
Once they’d lit the torches along the walls, and the great lamp that hung from the center of the domed ceiling, they soon found the door they were seeking. It was half-hidden by the shadows, but had not been deliberately concealed. It was locked, however, and built of stout, unyielding oak.
“We’ll have to come back with axes,” said Raphe, when they’d tried Corson’s key without success.
Newt looked at him scornfully. “Any fledgling picklock could open this door,” he said, and turned to Corson. “Let me have the use of that clasp you’ve got in your hair.” He took it from her and knell
before the lock, peering into it and muttering. “The trick,” he said, turning to the others, “is to get all the tumblers lined up at once. This lock’s more for show than protection. I don’t think they expected thieves down here.” He inserted the long pin of the clasp and gave it a practiced twist. There was a distinct click, and the door opened a bit. Newt rose, dusted his knees elaborately, and returned the clasp to Corson, with a bow.
But instead of a way to the outside, they found another, larger chamber, surrounding a strange round enclosure with windowless stone walls that reached to the ceiling. The entrance to the inner enclosure was a gate, wrought of iron and embellished with the mark of the Cymvelan Circle. Nyctasia thrust her lamp between the bars and saw a series of walled pathways that twisted and intertwined. “It’s the maze,” she said, “I wondered why we’d never found it.”
She tried the gate, but it was locked fast, “Newt, come here and-”
“No need for that,” Raphe called from the other side of the enclosure. “There’s an opening on this side, and more doors.”
They circled the maze to the point opposite the gate, and found an open archway to the enclosure, and two closed wooden doors equidistant from it, in the facing wall.
Newt had gone into the maze a little way, but quickly returned, fearful of losing the way, “This must be the way in, but then why-”
“The way out, more likely,” Nyctasia said. “I think the initiates were brought in at the other side and locked in. They were meant to find their way through the maze to this opening, and then to one of those doors, I suppose. What’s in there?” She thought she knew the answer, but she was reluctant to look.
Much to Newt’s disappointment, the first door they tried was unlocked. It opened into a long, bare room, hewn by hand from solid stone. No attempt had been made to smooth the walls or ceiling, but the floor had been worn level in places from the tread of many feet over the years. One such path led to a large altar, made of one rough, tall stone balanced on four short stone columns. The whole was set on a natural shelf of rock, so that it was elevated above the ground. There was none of the elaborate decoration or painting that adorned the building above, but no one doubted that this too was a temple of sorts.
