by Tad Williams
30
Slipping on Blood "The moment he made his way inside the castle, the Orphan was discovered by the goddess Zuriyal, the sister of Zmeos the Horned Serpent. She felt pity for the child because of his youth and innocent kindness…"
-from "A Child's Book of the Orphan, and His Life and Death and Reward in Heaven"
"The last hours are truly upon us now,"said Malachite Copper. The high-ranking Funderling was looking less handsome every hour, his armor dented and dusty, his hair wild and scorched short on one side where a flare of Xixian war fire had burned him. "When the southerners dig through all that rock we dropped in the middle of the Maze, we'll have to make a stand. We've slowed them badly these last days, but once they push through here, there'll be nowhere else we can hope to stop them."
Vansen took a tiny sip from his waterskin. The blasting powder the Funderlings had used to block the autarch's march as they slowly gave ground through the Maze had also cracked the stone of the ancient building's aqueduct; they no longer had fresh water or any notion of when they would get some again. "How much longer do we need to hold them?"
"Not long" Copper said. "I looked in on the monks carrying the hour-candle a short while ago to learn the time. Midsummer's Eve is over now, Captain. Upground, Midsummer's Day has already dawned. Today, we will live or die, succeed or fail."
"I wish it were such an even thing-a toss of the coin, live or die." Vansen frowned; it made his jaw hurt where one of the Xixians had knocked his helmet off his head with a spear thrust, but he had been fortunate not to lose his eye. "But I think the chances we live to see the day after today are much smaller than that, friend Copper."
A short distance away Cinnabar Quicksilver was tossing and murmuring in shallow sleep. He had been felled by one of the Xixians' powder blasts in the Initiation Hall at the center of the Maze. A dozen other Funderlings had died but Vansen and Sledge Jasper had reached the wounded magister in time to drag him and a handful of other survivors out alive. The fever that had come with Cinnabar's wounds had been the greatest danger but it seemed finally to have broken. Now he lay on a makeshift litter here in Revelation Hall, the last roofed section of the Maze. Only the open Balcony lay behind them, then below it and beyond stretched the great open spaces of the cavern that contained the Sea in the Depths and the island of the Shining Man.
Wardthane Sledge Jasper limped over and lowered himself to the floor beside them. His face was a mask of dried blood and dirt, his hairless head crisscrossed with cuts and dappled with bruises: Vansen thought that he looked like he had been trying to knock down walls using nothing but his own hard skull.
"It's a short walk to the end of the road," Jasper said matter-of-factly. "I just came back."
"The Balcony?" Vansen asked. "I know, I've seen it…"
"We'll be able to hold them less than an hour or two after they break through into this hall… and our spies say they're coming soon. Hundreds and hundreds." Jasper looked to where a group of weary Funderlings was piling stones for the last of the defensive barriers they were building across Revelation Hall. "At least we won't have to go far when we do retreat again."
"Vansen…?" Cinnabar was awake on his litter and stretching out his hand. "Captain Vansen…?"
"I'm here." He crouched down beside the Funderling magister. One of Cinnabar's legs was badly broken. Vansen thought that even if some miracle saved him from death at the hands of the Xixies, there was little chance the Funderling would keep the damaged limb.
"Where is… my boy?" Cinnabar asked.
"Calomel is well." Vansen leaned forward and took his small, rough hand. "We just made him get some rest and something to eat. He's been at your side all day."
"Truly? Truly he is well?" Cinnabar's eyes swam with tears. "You are not telling me this only to keep a dying man happy?"
Vansen shook his head. "You're not dying, Magister. The fever has broken and the worst is behind you. And I swear on my soldier's honor that Calomel is in good health-well, as good as any of us on short rations and short rest. He's a fine, brave little lad and he will be angry we sent him away just before you woke up again."
Cinnabar at last let himself be convinced. He lay back; soon he was sleeping again.
"And what will happen at the end?" asked Malachite Copper suddenly. "I have never thought much of such things before. Will we lie in darkness for a thousand years, as some say, or will we immediately be raised up again to stand before the throne of the Lord himself?"
Vansen could only shake his head, angry again. If the stinking Qar had held to their bargain, it might never have come to this. He felt a scalding surge of hatred toward the fairies-that creature Aesi'uah, for all her seeming kindness, had looked him straight in the eye and told him that the Qar would not desert their allies!
But I suppose in a way she told the truth, Ferras Vansen decided. After all, how can you desert what you never truly joined?
"I'm going to put my head down now," he said heavily. "Grab a few moments' sleep. One of you be good enough to wake me if some of the autarch's men happen by, will you?"
Olin Eddon groaned. His pale face was dappled with sweat.
Pinimmon Vash bowed respectfully to the walking dead man. "If there is anything else you need, Majesty, you have only to ask."
"Other than having my arms untied, you mean." Olin had lost weight rapidly in the last days and his cheeks were hollow, blue-shadowed above the tangle of his unkempt beard. His eyes, though, were still so bright that Vash found it discomforting to meet the man's gaze.
"There is no one to blame for that but yourself, King Olin." Vash realized even as he said it that he must sound like some old Favored of the Seclusion scolding one of the lesser princes. "Surely you cannot expect to walk free after trying to kill the Golden One."
Olin laughed bitterly. "If you had any wit, you and the rest of these Xixian sheep would have helped me. The monster might be dead now."
Vash could not help feeling a thrill of relief at the mere notion but could not show anything of it, of course. "You are a fool, King Olin. He is the sun of our sky. Every Xixian thanks heaven for the health of our autarch every day."
"While making plans for what will happen when someone finally achieves what I failed to do. Speaking of that, how is the scotarch?"
For a moment, Vash thought his old heart would crack like an egg. His gaze darted wildly, but none of the soldiers or royal functionaries except Olin's guards were close enough to have heard. Still, who was to say that in his anger the northern king might not spew such fatal nonsense again in front of the Golden One? In his terror, Paramount Minister Vash began to give serious thought to how he could kill the autarch's prisoner without anyone knowing.
"Did you speak to him as I suggested?" Olin pressed.
All gods curse this man! His persistence was insane! "Do not even talk to me, Majesty. Do you seek to make my master distrust me? It will not work. He knows my loyalty is complete."
"It can't be." Olin was smiling now. He was proud of his smile: the guards had knocked out one of his teeth. "You are too clever a man for that, Vash. Why would someone who has lived as long as you yoke his fortune to a madman like Sulepis? I am certain you have done what I said, and I am certain that your mind is full of new ideas…"
Vash looked around frantically. Would this horror never end? Of course he had spoken with Prusus, the crippled scotarch, a man nobody had even suspected had the power of speech. Olin was right in one thing, of course: Pinimmon Vash had not lived so long by being a fool, and if there were things he did not know about the man who might replace Sulepis Am-Bishakh then Vash needed to know them. And he had learned much that surprised him… but he was not so stupid as to discuss any of it with this walking corpse.
"I know nothing of what you say," he told Olin. "And I do not wish to know anything of it, either. Ah!" He had finally seen someone of high enough status to be recognized. "There is High Priest Panhyssir-someone whose conversation makes sense."
"
As you say," said Olin. "Dig your hole, then, Minister Vash. I hope you dig it deep, because there will be much killing when the end comes and few enough places to hide."
Vash was tired of holes and he was tired of Olin Eddon. He turned his back on the northerner. "Panhyssir! A moment of your time…"
"I'm sorry, good Lord Vash," said the priest as he marched by with a small entourage of robed followers. He waved a thick hand. "I cannot stop to talk. Very important work for the autarch is before me, and the time grows short."
The ass. At that moment, Vash nearly broke his staff across the high priest's ugly, self-satisfied head. He stood for a moment composing himself, then hurried after Panhyssir, saying: "I will walk with you, old friend, and leave Olin to the pleasant company of his guards."
Vash generally found getting around difficult, especially in the first stiff, aching hour after he rose in the morning, but fortunately the high priest Panhyssir was fat and no faster than a Mihanni tortoise. Vash caught up to him only a short distance away, then immediately had to duck his head under the low lintel of a doorway leading into one of the side passages. These were ceremonial precincts, that much was clear, so the doors and ceilings of this maze were not as low as they might have been-Vash could only shudder when he thought about what it must be like to live among these terrible little creatures in their horrid, dark, cramped little city. A man his size would be forever on his knees…
But soon enough it will be over and we will go back to Xis and I will never have to see these miserable, dank places and ugly creatures again, he reassured himself.
Panhyssir had slowed a little. The tone of his voice suggested this was a great sacrifice. "What did you want, Vash, my friend?"
"Simply to ask you a question, good Panhyssir, but I would rather…" Vash paused to duck under a low place in the passage which the quartermaster corps had marked with a splash of paint,"… talk to you in private somewhere, instead of gasping for breath here among the common herd."
"Ah, so you do not find it as invigorating as the rest of us do, being on the front lines of battle with our Golden One?"
Vash scowled at Panhyssir's wide back. The fat, self-righteous fool! Vash had heard the priest complaining many times during this ill-omened voyage, fulminating about the absence of his regular cook or the danger to his health from damp and chilly northern airs. Once, Vash had even heard the high priest claim that the weeping of the captive children in the hold disturbed his afternoon nap. Invigorating, indeed! "I do not have your wonderful constitution and boundless joy in adventure, old friend, that's true," he told the priest. "But my reluctance is more to do with matters I would not air among our inferiors."
"Oh, well then, follow me. I shall have a few moments to speak when we reach the Sanctuary."
Pinimmon Vash almost groaned out loud. The chamber the priests had chosen for a Sanctuary was two floors up, a walk of several minutes. "You are too kind," he said. The new Sanctuary had been one of the larger chambers of the maze complex, this one near the top of the front end of the rabbit warren the northern Yisti had built for themselves and which the autarch's troops had only liberated a few days earlier. He gritted his teeth and hobbled along behind the priests.
Vash was interested to discover that the Golden One's latest prisoner had a position of honor in the Sanctuary second only to that of Nushash himself: her cage was in the center of the room, not far from the draped cabinet that held the ancient gilded wooden effigy of the god. The girl-Kinten, Kwinten, her name did not matter, she was only the daughter of a minor priest-was kneeling in the straw in the middle of the cage with her wrists tied behind her and her black hair hanging over her face-sulking, no doubt. Still, Vash knew it was her because of the streak of violent, unruly red in her hair.
"You will pardon me for a moment, Minister Vash," said Panhyssir, all formality now. "This must be punctual. Every day, at dawn, midday, and again at evening." He laughed. "Although, of course, sunrise and sunset are purely intellectual experiences here in these caves."
Caves, thought Vash with a shiver. As if anyone could call something as vast and ancient and strange as this underground world by the mere name of caves! Had Panhyssir seen nothing of these bedeviling depths, with their huge, echoing spaces, their monstrous painted shapes and carved spells? Caves were shallow niches in the ocean rocks near the Vash family summer home. This was an entire world.
The girl's cage was unlocked, but she did not move. One of the young priests brought a steaming bowl to Panhyssir. The high priest passed it beneath his nose for a moment, taking the merest sniff of the rising vapors, then nodded with his usual grandiosity and handed it back. The younger man carried it to the cage and held it out for the girl, then went through a little dumbshow pantomime when she would not take it, as if he could not be bothered to speak to such a creature.
Panhyssir moved over beside Vash. "As usual, we will have to threaten to kill one of the other captives if she doesn't cooperate. She wishes to protect the children the Golden One has gathered, so she will give in after a short while. It is the same every time." He laughed. "Ah, but no service is too aggravating when it is a service for the Great Tent himself, am I right, Minister?"
"Of course, of course," said Vash, watching the girl. She did not look like the whole thing was merely a daily ritual: she looked desperate and badly frightened. In truth, Vash did not like having to harm children, at least not any more than was absolutely needed for proper correction. This whole business of the Golden One's mysterious plan was becoming more distasteful by the day.
Vash shook his head, annoyed by his own woolgathering. "The thing is, High Priest Panhyssir, I was wondering whether you had been experiencing any of the same… communication problems that I have?"
The other man looked back at him, eyes flat, expression carefully smoothed. "What exactly do you mean, Paramount Minister Vash?"
"Every day I send my letters back to the main military camp on the surface, giving orders to my subordinates, answering questions of protocol from those wishing to communicate with the Great Tent himself in some way. I am sure you do much the same."
Panhyssir shrugged. "Most of my priests are here," he said, sweeping his broad hand around the Sanctuary, which had been so filled with candles and ornaments and religious statuary now that it did look little different from one of the great Nushash temples back home. "There are priests of the Great God ministering to the troops of course, but they only rarely need guidance from me."
"Perhaps it has not been as apparent to you, then, as it has to me."
"What hasn't been?"
"That my letters are not being answered. It's almost two days now since I've had a reply from the main camp. I inquired of the courier corps and they said their men have set out for the surface the last two days but haven't yet returned, and that no one else has come down from above, either."
Panhyssir's face was still carefully neutral, but Vash thought he saw a flicker of apprehension. "Ah. Still, I am sure it is nothing. A confusion of duties, perhaps, or even a mere physical impediment like a rockslide…"
"Then why haven't our messengers come back to say the way was blocked?"
"I couldn't say. And it is something to be aware of, Brother Pinimmon. But not, I would say, something to fret about overmuch."
The girl was weeping now, and Vash was distracted. The young priest was bent over her, whispering angrily. Now that his eyes were used to the light in the Sanctuary, Vash could see that not all the methods of persuasion used on her had been mere threats. She had bruises on her face and upper arms as well, and doubtless others hidden by her shapeless robes.
"I… I'm not certain I agree, High Priest Panhyssir. It could just as equally be…" Vash was still staring at the unhappy girl. "Why does she make such a fuss?"
"What? Oh, because the Sun's Blood potion tastes foul, I suspect. We do not have the leisure of giving it to her in smaller amounts because time is short."
Vash shook his head. "I do not understand
. Sun's Blood…?"
"In case she must be used in the ritual in place of the northern king. He is of the direct bloodline of the gods, only a few generations displaced." Panhyssir nodded his head gravely. "She is of mongrel stock and the blood of Habbili in her is much thinned, so we must bring it back to a point of concentration, and quickly." The girl groaned, a noise of true distress. Panhyssir smiled a little. "Good. She has drunk the potion. You do not want to be here when the visions take her. It can be a little upsetting for a layman. Screaming, thrashing, you can imagine."
Vash, who had presided over dozens of tortures and executions (not particularly by choice but by the requirements of his position) raised an eyebrow. "Oh, yes, it sounds dreadful. Thank you for sparing me. But I still would like to finish speaking of that other matter…"
"Other…? Oh, yes. And this problem with communication between the camp aboveground and our forces here worries you? Perhaps you should talk to the antipolemarch. Surely he would be aware of any difficulty."
Vash nodded. "Yes, that is a good idea. Because I can think of more sinister reasons the messengers might not be getting through…"
Now it was the high priest who raised an eyebrow. "Sinister? Truly? Such as what?"
"There might be hard fighting on the surface. Or a force might have come down from the castle through the Yisti city, and has now cut our supply lines."
Panhyssir stared at him for a moment. When he laughed, it was as sudden and loud as a cannon shot, and everyone in the room except the gagging, weeping girl turned to look at him. "Cut our supply lines! What, that force of tiny soldiers? With what, toy swords and broomstick horses to ride?" He grabbed at his stomach as if it hurt. "Oh, Vash, my distinguished friend, I hope you will forgive me when I say that it is clear you have very little knowledge of war. We have crushed the resistance here so thoroughly that they will be trying to surrender to every stranger who passes for years after we are gone!"