by Darius Hinks
Isten gripped Brast’s arm as one of the brothers looked back their way. Like all of them, his hair was a mass of thin black braids, oiled and plastered to his head in coils and loops, as though black tar had been poured down the back of his pallid head. Unlike the others though, he was wearing a thick band of silver around his head, studded with gems, marking him out as the leader.
“That’s him,” she whispered.
Sayal stared at the toppled statue for a few long seconds and Isten thought he must have somehow heard her whisper, even over the roaring of the crowd, but then he waved his crossbow at the archway and lumbered off in that direction with the others swaggering after him.
Quickly, the Aroc Brothers vanished from sight and Brast turned to face Isten. “What do we do now?” he whispered. “There are no fireworks. There’s still another hour of drivel before that happens.”
“They might just be waiting inside the arch. Keeping out of sight. Getting ready.”
“What if they’re not? What if they’re heading down into the catacombs?”
“I have a map of the route. It’s fine. As long as we don’t see them come out, we know they’ve gone down. Then all we need to do is go in, lock a few doors and come back out again.”
As the minutes rolled on, however, Isten began to grow restless. It worried her not to follow the brothers. She wanted to be sure they were taking the route Alzen had drawn.
After another ten minutes of anxious waiting, she looked at Brast. “They might recognize me, even with the mask, but they wouldn’t know you.”
“What?” he hissed. “What are you asking?”
“Just wander over there, looking like you’re drunk. You wouldn’t have to get too close to see if they’re all still hiding in the archway. And if you can’t see them we’ll know they’ve gone down and we’re safe to follow.”
“Wander over there? Did you see those crossbows?”
“They’re not going to start shooting random passers-by. They’re trying to be discreet. Just don’t walk too close.”
He muttered a curse but, as she guessed, he could not refuse her. He climbed out of the rubble, staggering off in the direction of the arches.
Isten could see him weaving in and out of view for a while, then she lost sight of him.
She began to worry, and after a few minutes she wondered if she should head out and look for him.
“They’re gone,” said a voice in her ear.
She whirled around with her knife in her hand and only just managed to stop herself gutting Brast.
He backed away, hands raised.
“Don’t do that,” she muttered, pacing off towards the arch and waving for him to follow.
Athanor was hot in the day and cool at night, whatever the date and wherever the latest conjunction had left it. Some artifice of the Curious Men maintained the ideal weather for whatever it was they claimed to do all day but, even at night, Isten had rarely experienced the damp chill that met her as she approached the door to the catacombs. The entrance was clearly ancient, its shape deformed by time and the strangeness of Athanor. The frame had been engulfed, long ago, by a slow-growing explosion of metal latticework that knifed through the porous rock in spirals and curls, glinting in the moonlight like a metal waterfall. The arch looked more like a huge, natural grotto than a manmade structure.
Isten crept into the darkness, knife in one hand, wine bottle in the other, glancing back to check Brast was with her.
He nodded in his ridiculous mask, gripping his falcata.
The archway led into a long portico and Isten hesitated at the sight of the columns. They were deformed by the same torrents of filigree that had consumed the entrance and they reminded her of the Ignorant Man that killed Amoria.
Brast reached her side. “What is it?”
She stared at the nearest column, imagining faces and hands, but finally shook her head and waved him on.
The entrance to the catacombs was a smaller affair. An oval-shaped door, usually barred and locked, but left open tonight so that the dead could “partake” of the festivities. No one in Athanor believed that revenants actually lumbered from the crypts, but it was a long-held tradition. Two small mandrel-fires had been placed either side of the doorway, glass, liquid-filled orbs on slender pedestals, their pale light washing over the rubbish gathered at the foot of the door. The air was ripe with the smell of piss and fox shit and the place had a generally unloved air. Only the most confused drunks ever came near the catacombs. The graves had been robbed countless centuries ago and this whole area of Athanor was unsafe after dark.
Isten carefully picked up one of the mandrel-fires, keeping it in its metal cradle and being careful not to spill any of the liquid from the glass. No one knew how the Curious Men produced the viscous, metallic slop that illuminated the city, but everyone knew what happened if it got into your bloodstream – tremors, madness and then death.
She stepped carefully through the doorway and the light revealed a long, straight passageway that descended at a steep incline, plunging down under the square. It was collapsed in some places and enveloped by metal strands in others, but still passable. There was no sign of the Aroc Brothers, but Isten fancied that she could hear noises, echoing back down the chamber.
She hurried through the gloom with the light held before her, glancing repeatedly back at the portico to make sure none of the columns had moved.
The passageway led through another doorway into a broad, circular hall, with four doors dotted around the circumference. The ceiling must once have been a dome, but it was so crumbled now that the original shape was hard to make out. Monstrous talons of stone reached down, like bloated stalactites, dripping dust and water onto Isten as she strode out into the centre of the floor, raising her light to take in the scale of the place.
“Look,” whispered Brast, nodding to a pale shape at the foot of one of the columns reaching down from the square above.
She tensed, thinking he might have seen one of the Aroc Brothers, but it was a corpse, seated in a regal pose in an alcove at the base of the column.
“How can that still be here?” asked Brast, heading over for a better look and waving for Isten to follow. “After all these centuries.”
They needed to keep moving, but Isten was as fascinated as Brast and crossed the chamber, pointing the light at the corpse.
“Did you never listen to Gombus when you were a child?” she said. “These catacombs were built for the first Curious Men. He said they preserved their flesh somehow.” She tapped the glass containing the mandrel-fire. “With the same chemicals that light the streets, I think he said.”
As they neared the corpse, they saw that much of it had gone – the whole lower half in fact, but the chest, arms and head remained in the same position, seeming to levitate above the seat. The corpse looked more like a rusted, metal sculpture than a body. It was holding an ornate, serpent-entwined rod in one hand, and a small crucible in the other. Its eyes were closed and its expression blissful.
“Is it a statue?” asked Brast, staring at it in wonder, raising his sword to tap the thing’s face.
Isten shook her head. “I think it’s one of them. The Elect.” She looked up into the darkness. “These columns must be the foundations for those massive statues up in the square.” She looked back at the corpse. “Gombus said this is what Curious Men become when they finally die of old age – consumed and preserved by their magic. That’s probably why no one’s dared take it, even after all these years. From what Gombus said, they’re toxic. Besides, I imagine the Curious Men have specific forms of execution for people who tamper with their ancestors’ corpses.”
Brast lowered his sword and took a step back.
Isten stared at the body for a moment longer. It had been sitting here for thousands of years, watched over by the statue up in the square, but its beatific smile was identical to the one she saw on Alzen’s face – the smile of a smug, satisfied tyrant,
equally unafraid of life and death. She shook her head. The sooner this was over with, the sooner she could forget she ever met Alzen.
“Let’s go,” she said, nodding to one of the doorways. “My map says they’ll be headed that way.” As they rushed into another passageway, she said: “All we need to do is check they’re down here, then we can look for a door and lock them in.”
The passageway was another steep incline, taking them even lower, and the air was now almost icy. The sickly light of the mandrel-fire gave no warmth and Isten wished she’d thought to bring a cloak. They passed through one of the doors Alzen had described, then two more, before Isten heard voices ahead.
She opened the valve on her lamp and killed the light. She and Brast both stumbled to a halt as they found themselves in absolute darkness.
“Follow the walls,” said Isten, reaching out and placing her palm on damp, shattered tiles. The dark reminded her of her childhood voyage to Athanor, hearing her friends dying all around her, but she kept walking, trying to sound more confident than she felt. “The ground’s pretty even.”
They stumbled along like that for a while, until the passageway bent round to the right and they saw a light. Not mandrel-fire, but the flickering, smoky warmth of a real torch. It plucked silhouettes from the darkness. The hulking shapes of the Aroc Brothers were unmistakable, and Isten grinned.
“They’re down here,” she whispered. “We just need to head back and lock those doors we passed.”
“Which one?” replied Brast.
Isten felt like hitting him. The idiot had spoken loudly enough for the brothers to hear. Then her stomach tightened as she realized it wasn’t Brast who had spoken.
She stood and whirled around, raising her knife just in time to parry the blade that flashed through the dark towards her.
The force of the blow sent her flying back through the air and she cracked her head against the stone, dazed and bleeding as her attacker lunged into the light.
Sayal had removed his mask and his face bubbled into a grin as he drew back his falcata for another thrust.
His blade collided with Brast’s and the two men began exchanging furious blows, filling the darkness with sparks.
Sayal was massive but Brast was quicker. They circled each other, lunging and slashing as the other brothers began pounding back up the slope towards them.
“Isten!” laughed Sayal as he fought. “What the fuck are you doing here?” He launched a savage flurry of sword strikes at Brast’s head, causing him to stagger back towards the approaching brothers. “We won. You lost. Just fucking die.”
Isten wiped the blood from her eyes and launched herself from the wall, slamming into Sayal’s side. His body was strangely elastic, and his bulk enveloped her. They tumbled through the air and slammed into the opposite wall.
“I heard you creeping around up there,” he said, crushing her in a suffocating bear hug. “I thought it would be a stupid drunk.” He laughed. “Looks like I was right.”
Sayal gasped and loosed his grip as Isten smashed the wine bottle on the wall and jammed it up beneath his rib cage.
He fell back against the wall, cursing and picking out the broken glass, trying to stem the blood.
Isten grabbed Brast and hauled him back up the passageway.
“Get to the door,” she gasped.
As they sprinted through the half-light, the air came alive with movement. Crossbow bolts whistled past them, pinging off the walls and clattering across the floor.
They had almost reached the next door when Sayal barrelled into Isten and sent her sprawling across the floor.
She rolled clear and leapt to her feet, knife in hand, ready for his attack.
He lashed out with his falcata, but she sidestepped and dived, plunging her knife into his chest.
His flesh swallowed not just the knife but her hand too, and she found herself trapped, wrist-deep in his chest.
Sayal laughed and pulled her closer, his bulbous, inhuman eyes rolling.
She let go of the knife, wrenching her hand free in a shower of blood.
Brast attacked, forcing Sayal to defend himself as Isten rushed to the door and checked the mechanism. It matched Alzen’s description.
“Brast!” she cried, her hand hovering over the lock. “Back here.”
He was still fighting furiously, circling and lunging at Sayal.
The other brothers had stopped firing for fear of hitting Sayal, but they had almost reached the door.
In a few seconds the brothers would reach them and it would all be over.
Isten cursed, looking from the lock to Brast and Sayal. If she locked it now, the Exiles would be victorious, but Brast would be left down here to die.
She shook her head, wishing she had enough steel to leave Brast behind, then rushed back through the doorway and leapt at Sayal, landing a solid punch on the side of his head.
He fell away from Brast, staggered, then ran up the slope, through the doorway. “This way!” he cried, waving his men on. “The bitch is trying to trap us down here.”
Isten and Brast ran towards him, but he backed away, laughing.
Isten was about to race after him, when she had a better idea. She checked Brast had also made it through the doorway, then turned the door’s lock, following the complex pattern Alzen had described, and backed away.
For a horrible moment, nothing happened. Then, just as the brothers were about to reach the door, a wall of bars rattled down from the ceiling and slammed into the floor.
The full weight of five Aroc Brothers smashed into the door, but the metal bars were thicker than a man’s arm. They barely juddered.
The brothers fell back, shock and outrage visible through the eyeholes of their happy yellow masks.
Isten turned away from them and looked back up the corridor.
The smile dropped from Sayal’s face.
“You’re going to open that door!” he bellowed, charging back down towards her.
Brast stepped from the shadows, swinging his sword at Sayal’s face in a fast, backhanded slash.
Sayal parried, but he had no time to stop Isten slamming her fist into his face again and he fell back, hitting his head on the wall and falling to the floor. His falcata slipped from his hand and clanged across the tiles.
As Isten grabbed the discarded sword, Brast leapt forwards, swinging his sword at Sayal’s face.
Sayal rolled aside and sent Brast flying with a kick to the stomach.
By the time Isten had got the sword and turned to attack, Sayal was backing away from them again, heading up the passageway and vanishing into the darkness.
He reached the next doorway and struggled with the lock for a moment, cursing and spitting as Isten and Brast watched in amused silence. Then he turned and glared back at them. The humour was gone from his face, replaced by a fury so savage his features had become unhinged, rippling and flowing into each other, spiralling around a hard, blood-filled snarl. He was unarmed and bleeding heavily from his chest. Sayal’s anatomy was not like a normal man’s but Isten guessed that even he must be close to death, or at least unconsciousness.
The other Aroc Brothers were looking up at them through the lower door, dazed and unable to fire their crossbows safely, and unable to get through the door.
“I was happy to let you die in the gutter,” growled Sayal, his words muddied by the blood in his mouth. “But now I’ll have to find a way to make you suffer.”
She strode towards him, drawing back the falcata, with Brast at her side, doing the same.
“You won’t be finding ways to do anything,” she grinned as they rushed at him.
He turned and sprinted up the slope.
He ran with surprising speed and, as they left his brothers behind, the light faded until Isten was running through absolute darkness, following him only by the sound of his grunting, laboured breathing.
Isten could hear Brast at her side, swearing and
hissing as he tripped and lurched through the darkness.
“Are you hurt?” she asked.
“You thought about leaving me, didn’t you?” he said, ignoring her question.
“No!” she said, but she knew he was right and it gave her an oddly cold feeling.
They reached another doorway and Isten grabbed Brast by the arm. “Wait!”
She fiddled around in the dark, struggling to find the mechanism, then finally triggered it and brought another wall of bars slamming down into the ground. “Just in case they ever got past the other door,” she said.
“It was Sayal we were trying to kill,” he muttered. “Those poor bastards were just grunts.”
“Grunts who killed our kin,” she snapped, but the strange chill grew in her chest as she realized she hadn’t considered letting them out. They would die a slow death down there.
They carried on climbing back up through the darkness and the sound of their footfalls started to change, echoing round a larger space.
“We’re almost back at the antechamber,” she said. “Slow down. I can’t hear Sayal’s breathing anymore.”
Faint light stretched down the slope towards them as they entered the domed hall, coming from the entrance to the catacombs.
“Where is he?” muttered Isten, turning on her heel, knife held out before her, staring into the shadows.
After the utter dark of the lower levels, she found she could see reasonably well in this gloom. She looked at each of the four doorways in turn, and then peered at the alcoves and their rusted, crooked cadavers.
“Did he sneak back down?” Brast looked back at the doorway they had just come through. “Perhaps he’s going to try and reach his men?”
Isten shook her head. “He must be in here somewhere. And we’ll never get a chance like this again – him, on his own, wounded and unarmed.” She strode into the centre of the chamber and howled. “Sayal! Face me, you coward!”
The only answer was the echo of her words.
Isten cursed and rushed across the chamber, heading back towards the entrance to the catacombs, still gripping the sword she had taken from Sayal.
