The Dew of Flesh

by Gregory Ashe

  Chapter 37

  Arms burning, Siniq-elb came to a stop at the intersection and peeked around it. Khylar continued down the hall, green robe swirling. The halls were empty, the floor dusty. Siniq-elb kept to the path cleared by Khylar’s long robe so that the tell-tale marks of his crutches would not show. Instead of returning to his chambers for a bath, as Siniq-elb had expected, Khylar had come down here, to a basement that Siniq-elb had not known existed. To judge by the disturbed layers of dust, Khylar, or another person wearing a robe, had come down here more than once, but such visits had been rare.

  Siniq-elb hurried down the corridor after Khylar had disappeared. Descending the stairs had been torturous, and his arms and back ached from the strain. Now, hurrying to keep up with the su-esis, every muscle in Siniq-elb’s body protested, and sweat dampened his brow. He forced himself to hurry, though; if he lost Khylar—and more importantly, Khylar’s light—down here, Siniq-elb would be trapped in the dark. So he moved as quickly as he could, the shadows gathering behind him in folds.

  They passed through storerooms stacked high with boxes and shrouded furniture, down door-lined hallways, past recessed archways that led nowhere. The smell of rooms long-closed up, of moldering cloth and wood, hung in the air; the basement must have been reopened recently, for it had not yet had time to clear out the foul air. The door to the basement from the temple itself had not been locked, but it was tucked away in a remote part of the servants’ quarters that had been almost as abandoned as the basement itself, and Siniq-elb doubted anyone else even knew of the basement, let alone came down there.

  With a start, Siniq-elb realized he had outpaced the gathering shadows, and he stood well-within the lamplight. Khylar had stopped walking. Siniq-elb was too close to Khylar, should the man decide to retrace his steps, but he edged closer to the next hallway in spite of the danger. If Khylar were meeting with someone, or if he had reached his destination, Siniq-elb did not want to miss his opportunity to discover the su-esis’s plans. Slowly, his heart beating with painful intensity, Siniq-elb looked around the corner.

  Khylar stood at one of the recessed archways, fiddling with something. The lamp on the ground cast long shadows, and it took Siniq-elb a long moment to notice that the archway was opening. With a single, fluid movement, Khylar picked up the lamp and stepped through the hidden door, plunging the hall into darkness.

  In his haste, Siniq-elb stumbled, one of his crutches hitting the wall. The clack of wood on wood was not loud, but in the unbreathing darkness of the basement, it sounded like thunder. Siniq-elb froze, trembling both from fear and from the awkward position in which he held himself, one crutch askew. The light did not change direction, though, and continued to move further down the hidden passageway. After a moment, Siniq-elb hurried after it, thanking the tair for his luck.

  The passageway came to an abrupt end after about fifteen paces, opening through a normal door into a dark room. Siniq-elb could not tell its shape or dimensions; the lamp was far ahead of him, a circle of light scarcely larger than his thumb and moving steadily away. The enormity of the chamber swallowed up the yellow beams. He could feel the empty space around him, the air moving lazily through the blackness, cool and dry as a cellar. The space felt vast and, hidden as it was, terrifying. Underneath his bandaged stumps, Siniq-elb no longer felt the smooth floorboards of the temple, but loose stone and earth.

  He picked his way forward. A fall here would be the end of him; Siniq-elb could see almost nothing, and so each step was agony. The lamp had stopped moving, though, and Siniq-elb realized that other lights were shining now; Khylar must have lit them, for they followed a straight line, albeit one that moved down. For the first time, Siniq-elb was able to gauge a little more the shape of the room, even though its ceiling and walls were still lost in shadow.

  Ahead of him, a great pit cut into the floor of the chamber, where the new lights ran down a flight of stairs. The pit was built out of a series of terraces; it was difficult to make out their edges in the shifting darkness, but Siniq-elb did not think they lined up correctly. There was something strange about the layout, but he could not identify what. As he drew closer to the pit, Siniq-elb wrinkled his nose. The dusty, dry, cellar-smell vanished, buried under the stench of something sharp and acidic, like an apothecary’s urine—somehow it was wrong. He pressed his mouth shut; smelling it was bad enough.

  Slowly, Siniq-elb reached the edge of the stairs, where the first lamppost stood. Siniq-elb kept clear of the pool of light and studied the pit. Layer after layer of terraced earth flowed down to a landing far below; it was hard to judge in the darkness, but the pit seemed vast. Its far edge was not visible to Siniq-elb.

  Perhaps a dozen terraces down, a man in a green robe knelt, worrying the ground. Siniq-elb stared, trying to make out what the man was doing, but the darkness and the distance made it impossible. Siniq-elb lowered himself from the crutches and crawled forward, to the top-most terrace. What was Khylar doing here? What was this hidden place under the temple? Sweat, hot as popping grease, broke out across his forehead, across muscled shoulders, as he dragged himself forward. Loose rocks scraped his knees and legs.

  At the edge of the terrace, the stone slick under sweaty palms, Siniq-elb leaned forward. The smell was stronger here; it cut at his nose, a rusted blade in the darkness. The yellow lantern light, a steady pool that faded just a few feet beyond Siniq-elb, revealed long mounds of earth regularly spaced along the terrace. One after another, like sleeping soldiers still in formation.

  Sliding forward, slipping his stomach over the edge of the pit, Siniq-elb balanced himself with one hand. With the other, he dug at the piled dirt, scraping away the soil in shallow palmfuls. Then his nails caught something that was not soil; firm, but yielding. Bile rose in the back of Siniq-elb’s throat. His pulse pounded in his ears as blood pooled in his head. Sweat rolled down his arms. Dirt flew, motion against darkness.

  Then he saw it. A face, wrinkled and sagging, the flesh stained the color of summer mud. Its eyes were closed, as though the man slept beneath the piled up earth. Siniq-elb flinched and jerked back, scraping his arms on the wall of the pit as he pulled himself back onto the floor of the main chamber. Blood beat in his ears so that all he could hear was a faint roar, but Siniq-elb thought he might be whimpering, or sobbing; his throat was so tight that he could not tell.

  He snatched up his crutches and tried to stand, but fear made him tremble, and Siniq-elb fell twice before he managed to stay up. A single deep breath, blinking his eyes clear. A seiri. It was a seiri; it looked almost identical to the thing that Siniq-elb had killed while on patrol. The thing that had slaughtered almost an entire squad. For a moment, Siniq-elb remembered the row of mounds, disappearing into the shadows of the weak lamplight, and the scope of the pit—terrace after terrace. Tair help them all, how many seiri could there be?

  Even more importantly: who could stop them?

  The thought was like cold water under the ever-summer sun. Siniq-elb felt his fear subside as his training took over. There was an enemy force—an unstoppable enemy force—under the temple itself. And Khylar was somehow involved.

  A glance confirmed that the su-esis was still working on the terrace far below, his back to Siniq-elb. A moment’s thought decided the matter; Siniq-elb could not afford to wait for Khylar to return to the temple. Dakel needed to know about this; another su-esis was the only hope for dealing with Khylar.

  Eyes fixed on Khylar, Siniq-elb lifted the closest lantern from its post. The su-esis continued his work; at that distance, it was unlikely he would notice the shifting light. Juggling lamp and crutches, Siniq-elb made his way through the hidden passage and up to the temple. A solitary breeze, more a gust of chilled air, touched him once as made his way through the basement. It was nothing to match the cold inside him.