Court of Fives

by Kate Elliott

  “Where did the shaft go?” Kalliarkos prods the stone. “It must have closed after we came up.”

  The two men thump at the blocked depression as I walk a tour of the chamber, shining lamplight into every corner. For the life of me I cannot see another opening. It was too easy after all. Or the masons betrayed us. I sink down next to Mother. What do we do now?

  “We’re going to die down here,” Amaya whimpers.

  “Just shut up, Amiable. Let me think.” There has to be a way.

  “Jessamy, let me look on him,” Mother whispers.

  I push the linen folds away from his little face. The light gilds his perfect features. He has his father’s eyes and his mother’s coloring.

  “He will not be cursed to lie alone in a tomb until he is dust.” Tears slide down her cheeks. “Poor child. His father would not have loved that face.”

  “How could anyone not love such a beautiful face?” I retort, for I do not like to think that Father did not love me when he first saw me.

  “Shhh. Let go of your anger, Jessamy. It will weaken you if you allow it to rule your heart.”

  My lips press closed over the things I would like to say but will not trouble her with. I love Father but I know Maraya is right: he could have turned his back on ambition, and he didn’t.

  Maraya walks over to the two men. “Could someone have shut the opening behind you to trap you here?”

  Ro-emnu scratches at his shaved head and looks surprised when his fingers find no hair. “I don’t think so. The masons who know about this place never enter it. It is forbidden to disturb what lies beneath. They say angry spirits eat intruders but I think fear makes a man see spirits where there are none. People are just afraid of the past.”

  “Maybe angry spirits shoved the stone into place to trap us so they can eat us like a fine meal,” murmurs Amaya, “leaving the delicacies for last. Which means you will be eaten first, Jes.”

  “Then I’ll be spared your whines and shrieks, which will sour your flavor!”

  She laughs, as I guessed she would, but I cannot join her. The exhaustion of all our hopes weighs too heavily. What if our only choice is to climb back into the tomb?

  Merry probes around the rim for a latch. She hasn’t given up. “There is no need to fear malignant spirits when a better explanation would be that springs or ropes made a stone move to close the opening.”

  Kalliarkos turns a slow circle, studying the blank walls. “Certainly the chambers we worked our way through to get here had pitfalls and barriers.”

  “The way you climbed that one shaft blind with no assistance was cursed amazing,” says Ro-emnu.

  He nods. “There was a lot of climbing to get here, wasn’t there? Many collapsed rooms too. We had to retrace our path several times. That’s why the chalk was so valuable. But if there are spirits lurking we never saw them. That this place was buried long ago is enough to make it unsafe.”

  Cook clears her throat, and we all look at her stoic face. “My lord, can we get out?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Maraya stands. “Ro-emnu, do you think the masons might have tricked you?”

  Coriander laughs bitterly. “They would never have. Don’t you know who he is?”

  “No, I don’t. Is he a magician to spell us free?”

  Ro-emnu shakes his head with a patience he has never shown me. “The masons do not lie, Doma. My uncle is one. This is a dangerous place and we walk here at our own risk.”

  Maraya nods. “How did you identify Lord Ottonor’s tomb from underneath?”

  “When the tombs were erected in the reign of Kliatemnos the First, they were built over old air shafts from the buried complex. The biers hide the shafts. The priests don’t even know about them because the Efean workers never told them. I’ve heard stories about how women were rescued from the tombs but I don’t know if they’re true. Each tomb has a mark that gives its location to the north, south, west, and east. Here, do you see it?” He goes to the cleft and shows us simple lines depicting Clan Tonor’s three-horned bull, the same mark carved into the tomb’s lintel.

  “Do that again!” says Amaya.

  “Do what?” he asks, surprised by her command.

  “Honored Lord, walk from the cleft to the grate, more slowly this time.”

  Ro-emnu lifts an eyebrow, not sure whether she is mocking him or showing respect by using the Efean honorific. Yet instead of throwing a nasty retort into her face he paces out the gap.

  When he is halfway across she yelps. “Stop! The pattern of the bricks is broken there. You can see it when the light and shadow fall just right.”

  The even pattern of the bricks is broken to make a faint outline in the shape of a door. I press a hand along the outline but nothing moves. A pattern at the center resembles the nested pyramid, a small one inverted inside a large one; this symbol marks the entrance to Traps on any Fives court. Resting my palm flat on the center brick, I lean into it. The wall gives way.

  A door opens as by magic or by the secret workings of ancient wires and pulleys.

  Startled exclamations ring out. I raise a hand to stop the others from crowding forward.

  “There is a trick here. Let me go through first.”

  Lantern in hand, I ease through the opening. No light penetrates the space beyond, except the glow of the lantern. When I lift it I cannot see ceiling or floor, for I stand on a ledge on the brink of a cliff. Water slops below like waves shushing among rocks. The air smells salty. Does the ocean reach under the City of the Dead? Or is this all an illusion?

  Two bridges attach to the ledge. It is far too dark for me to see where they lead. They simply vanish as into nothingness. The stone bridge seems to be anchored with arches and pillars beneath; it looks sturdy but has no railing, so it would be easy to step off. The wider bridge is built of wood and has railings, but when I test its first plank the wood feels spongy. If this chamber has lain here for five generations, this bridge is surely rotting.

  I call back. “Everyone come through at once in case there’s a trap to close you in there.”

  They arrive in hasty procession: Maraya has the baby. Cook assists Amaya. Ro-emnu carries Mother like a sack of rice, while Coriander has slung the oracle over her shoulders. Kalliarkos brings up the rear with the other three lanterns and our gear. We crowd the ledge, clinging together in the aura of lantern-light. Who knows what might be lurking in the dark beyond?

  “I’m going first,” I say, tightening the cloth that binds my dead brother against my chest. “You all follow when I give the order.”

  “Yes, Captain,” says Ro-emnu in his sardonic voice.

  With a rumbling scrape the open door suddenly slides shut.

  “It looks like we have no choice but to go forward,” Maraya remarks.

  “Follow me single file,” I say.

  The bridge rises in a slow arch. We all tread cautiously on the span, step by step. I can no longer see the ledge where we started, just Kalliarkos’s lamp at the end of our group. My light shines only a few paces ahead of me. Horribly, the roadway starts to narrow. From being as wide as the width of my outstretched arms it shrinks until the bridge is no wider than the distance from the tip of my fingers to my elbow. It’s not so hard to walk, unless you look down into the stygian depths. Watery sighs breathe out of the abyss like a monster sleeping. There might be a sea-swallowing serpent waiting to rise and snap us up one by one as the rest plunge screaming off the bridge to their deaths.

  I can’t allow fear to master me.

  “How much farther?” Maraya asks, her breath coming in short bursts. She has crouched to brace herself on hands and knees. Behind her Cook and Amaya are crawling. Kalliarkos has given the lit lamp to Coriander so he can coax the oracle forward. Like me, Ro-emnu remains standing. How he balances with Mother on his back I cannot fathom but it’s impressive that he does.

  I creep forward, holding out the lamp to see what comes next. The span narrows until it is no wider than my hand, a
single course of bricks.

  Maraya begins to wheeze. Amaya sobs once and is silent.

  “How are we to cross without falling, Doma?” asks Cook in her phlegmatic voice.

  Ro-emnu says, “I confess I do not think I could balance that even if I weren’t carrying the honored lady. We will have to turn back.”

  “We can’t turn back. The door closed behind us, just as the shaft did. It’s as if we’re being driven in one direction. But who would build a bridge to get narrower? There’s something I’m missing.” I snap a finger. “Wait. Don’t anyone move.”

  Kneeling, I feel my way forward, pushing the lantern ahead of me. My fingers brush along the edge but it feels wrong. Air should move up into my face from the depths but it doesn’t. Carefully I straddle the span so as to test its sides. A calf-length below, my legs hit stone. The span remains the same width as at the beginning. It’s just this little ridge bricked atop and cunningly painted to make it look like the bridge is narrowing.

  “It’s a trap! An illusion. Our eyes deceive us, and our fear makes us quail.”

  I press forward and they creep after. In a mere twenty strides, the false painting ends and we reach the far shore and enter a vaulted chamber with four ramps leading into further passageways.

  “Why would anyone want to frighten and confuse people like this?” Amaya whimpers as she huddles on the floor, clutching Cook’s leg for comfort.

  Maraya turns to look back the way we came. A wall of wide arches gives us a view onto the lightless gulf we just traversed, a maw of darkness.

  “That is a very good question, Amiable,” she says in a brisk voice. “Who built this place originally? When it was buried, why was it not totally filled in with rubble? Think how strong the roof must be to have not collapsed under the weight of a hill.”

  “What are those lights?” asks Mother, twisting out of Ro-emnu’s supporting arm. She shades her eyes as against the sun. “What haunts us?”

  Out on the gulf of night, sparks of blazing light dance like a swarm of fireflies. They spin through hypnotic circles and spirals and all in a silence that wraps us like swaddling clothes. Their uncanny glamour paralyzes when we should be running away.

  As with an inhaled breath the lights collect into a pulsing mass. They spill toward us in a flood. Too stunned to move or speak, we stare helplessly. Like fiery locusts the sparks pour through the arches in such numbers that their brilliance blinds us. Sparks tumble hotly through my flesh like a thousand million falling stars. Their radiance dissolves me; my being becomes mist. Unmoored, my heart comes unanchored and slides toward the ocean of eternity.

  My shadow frays and tears where it attaches to my heels. I forget my name. My breath ceases.

  In the shadow-ridden flesh of my dead brother, a fierce spark lodges with a hiss of steam.

  In an eyeblink the lights vanish. Silence crashes down over us like the fist of voiceless thunder, a force that jolts the whole world. My knees buckle, and I pitch forward, barely catching myself on a hand. The sling flops sideways, cloth flapping open to uncover his face. My little finger brushes the bow of his tiny lips. His mouth parts under its pressure, and an answering force clamps down.

  I suck in a harsh breath, heart thudding madly, as I realize what I am feeling.

  My dead brother is suckling on my finger. He is alive.

  30

  My fingertip offers no milk. A mewl of infant indignation frets him. When I look down, the baby’s eyes are open. An expression no innocent baby could ever have mars the unblemished features: he is aware and he is afraid. When I met my baby sister’s gaze, the threads of our hearts tangled. This stranger stares at me as if he is trying to figure out who I am and if I mean to hurt him. His eyes squish up, his chin trembles, and he wails.

  A hand presses on my shoulder as the awful sound swirls around us.

  “Give him to me,” Mother says in the strongest voice I have heard from her since I first entered the tomb. “He’s hungry.”

  I can’t bear to touch him. I just want to fling him away. So I am relieved when she takes him.

  My body aches like it has been torn apart and stitched back together. Limping to the arches I lean against the smooth stone and rub my forehead as I stare out at the stone bridge. All the lit sparks have come to rest like butterflies on the supporting arches beneath the roadway. Their light illuminates a sandy floor, not a fathomless sea. The vast cavern we crossed is nothing more than a large chamber with vaulted ceilings, not nearly as big as I imagined it. In the murky shadows concealing the far end of the span I see the mouth of a passageway but not the door we came through. There is no wooden bridge. Everything I thought I saw has vanished.

  “Jes? Are you all right? I saw you stumble.” Kalliarkos hurries up, and I open my arms so he can walk right into them.

  “Will we ever find Bettany?” I whisper as I put my head on his shoulder.

  “We’ll find her,” he promises. “We’ll do it together, Jes.”

  I rest there, feeling his heart beat against mine.

  After a short silence he speaks again. “I’ve never seen oil flare so brightly as when the reservoir shattered. The flames blinded me. Unfortunately most of our reserve oil burned up so we have to move on soon.”

  “The flames?” I look over at the others clustered together around the lit lamp. The ceramic jug with its reservoir of oil is indeed broken, and leaked oil has spread across the floor. “It was the sparks that blinded us.”

  “Sparks? What sparks?”

  “Don’t you see them?” The sparks gleaming along the bridge start to fall. One by one they plummet onto the sandy floor and wink out of existence to become just another grain of sand.

  He eases me back. We are face-to-face with nothing between us. “Listen to me, Jes. You’re exhausted. But it’s all right. We can do this.”

  He can’t see the sparks. As they fall, flash, and vanish, the bridge fades until I can no longer see the chamber, only breathe in its ancient salt-dust odor. Did I hallucinate it all? Yet when I touch my chest the sling hangs limp because they took the baby. My brother is alive.

  The pressure of Kalliarkos’s hand on the small of my back makes me so aware of how close he stands. His breathing quickens.

  “Jes,” he whispers as softly as a promise I never knew was made. I have been yearning for such a promise all my life.

  “I don’t have to hide behind a mask when I’m with you,” I say.

  “Jes! Where are you?” Maraya’s frantic tone cuts between us, and I pull back from him.

  She stands at the edge of the lamplight. The boy nurses industriously in Mother’s arms as Cook supports her. Amaya clutches our sister as if she means to shield her from malevolent spirits. Ro-emnu has an arm thrown protectively around Coriander but it is he who looks stricken and she who seems to be whispering reassurances as they look nervously around the chamber. The oracle lies facedown on the floor.

  “I’m here,” I say as Kalliarkos and I walk over.

  Amaya grabs my arm, shaking it like she means to yank it off. “What were those sparks, Jes?”

  “You saw them?”

  “Of course I saw them! They passed right through my flesh. I thought I was turning to smoke. What were they?”

  “What sparks?” asks Cook, looking up.

  When Ro-emnu and Coriander nod at each other I know they saw them too.

  “Do you have some boring Archivist’s explanation, Merry?” Amaya demands.

  Maraya shakes her head slowly. “No. I can’t explain that with ropes and pulleys and wires. It was like the hearts of a thousand stars pierced my body and flew right through me.”

  Mother whispers, “The land is the Mother of All. She gave birth to the five souls that bind us. The souls arise from the land. If we forget Her then She will forget Her children.”

  To hear such a superstitious utterance pour out of my mother’s lips shocks me. By the sweating shine of her face I see that she is feverish.

  “Why is it s
o cold?” she adds.

  We three girls look at one another, for while it is cool here beneath the earth, it is not so cold as to make a person shiver as she is doing.

  Ro-emnu kneels, offering her a flask. “Honored Lady, will you drink in honor of the five?”

  “I’m so cold,” she says. “I’m not thirsty.”

  “Amaya, get Mother to drink.” I stand. “Kal, help me look for a way out.”

  He frowns as Cook and my sisters fuss over Mother and the babies. “We can only use one lamp at a time. We risk running out of oil now that we’ve lost the reservoir.”

  So he and I and Ro-emnu leave them in the dark and with a single lamp we discover five passages leading out of this chamber: two lead down, one up, one is level, and the fifth is the bridge. I enter the closest ramp, one of the two leading down. A few steps into the featureless passageway, I take in a deep breath of the musty air to see if I can smell sky or sea, but it is all dust and silence.

  Light throws wavering shadows on the wall. They stretch with monstrous limbs reaching out for me, and I jump back.

  “Careful,” says Kalliarkos, coming up behind me with the lamp. I know he has my back.

  Now that he’s brought up light we can see that both ceiling and floor drop away in a jumble of collapsed masonry: the passage is blocked. As we retreat the light glimmers over four lines like pointed caps gouged halfway up the passageway’s opening.

  “Doesn’t that look like the mark for Rivers?” I say.

  “Kal, let’s try the one that leads up,” says Ro-emnu. I follow them, and as they enter I can’t help but glance at that same spot halfway up the right-hand wall where, at the entrance to each Fives obstacle, its identifying mark is carved. There it is! As they go in I pause to trace five interlocked circles incised into the stone: Rings.

  Inside the passage, their voices crow in triumph. “Stairs!”

  Light chases shadows as they hurry back, congratulating each other, but when they reach me I grab the lamp out of Kalliarkos’s hand.

  “Come with me!” The other passageway leading down is marked with four parallel lines of uneven length: Trees. The arches overlooking the cavern are marked with the doubled inverted pyramid of Traps. The last passageway, the one that is level, spans a ditch and then cuts straight into what seems to be solid rock, not part of a building at all.