by Kate Elliott
The ceiling sloped up, and the thick stone walls rose higher and higher until he walked, unexpectedly, into a great chamber. A stone slab lay on the ground in the center of this chamber. Sorrow sniffed impatiently around it, as though he smelled a rat.
Alain held up the torch as Beor cautiously stepped into the chamber behind him, spear held ready for battle. Rage padded in his wake. There was no sign of Kel.
The high corbeled ceiling arched up into a darkness the hazy torchlight could not reach. Opposite Alain, and to either side, lay niches, each alcove carved with the representation of an ancient queen.
Here, deep in the womb of stone and earth, not even the wind could be heard. But someone was watching them.
“Where is she?” Alain demanded of that unseen presence.
The torch whuffed out as though a gust of wind had extinguished it. One moment, it hissed and threw smoky light all around them. The next, it was too black to see, and he smelled the scent of burning pitch curl and die away until all he smelled was earth and damp and cold, and the comforting aroma of dog. Beor swore under his breath, more prayer than oath.
Then even those sensations were gone, and Alain could no longer feel or hear anything, not the breathing of the hounds, not the stone itself beneath his feet. He was alone except for a shuddering, wheezing sigh that breathed in and out around him, as though the hill itself was a living creature, half asleep and half aware.
“Where is she?” he called again.
The vision hit like a blast of light, searing his eyes.
Three queens stand before him, one to the north, one to the south, one to the west.
“Who are you, to make demands of us?” cries the youngest. She holds in her hand a bow whose length runs writhing with gold salamanders, burning like fire. Her tomb is carved with two sphinxes. Their clever faces, as much feline as woman, gleam as though touched by phosphorus.
“Who are you, holy one?” She is no saint known to the blessed Daisan, but he can respect her nevertheless, for she is a woman of power even if she is dead.
Her voice rings through him with the fierce clamor of a thunderstorm. “I am the one called Arrow Bright. Have you not heard of me? Was I not fostered by the lion women of the desert, who taught me the secret ways known only to the Pale Hunter?”
“There is much I do not know,” he admits.
“What do you want?” asks the second queen, standing to the south. Her tomb glows with gold beaten into the shape of a sow, and she has herself the ample outlines of a prosperous woman, sleek and radiant.
“What do you want?” Only a rash man states his true purpose before he knows what he is facing.
She laughs. “I am Golden Sow. It was my magic that made all the women of my tribe fertile, and all their children healthy. Is this not what all people want?”
“How is it that death has marked you, and yet you stand living ?” asks the third queen. Her voice has a rasp that makes his skin crawl. Her cairn stands to the west, opposite the passageway. More primitive than the others, it consists of a simple mound of discolored stones like so many worn teeth that once belonged to a creature so vast that each tooth was as big as an adult’s head. She is ancient, and toothless, but her eyes are as brilliant as stars.
“How do you know I am living?” he retorts.
“Only living things suffer desire,” retorts Toothless in kind. “What can you give us in return for an answer?”
He laughs. “I have nothing to give you, for I came naked to this place.”
“Do not say you have nothing,” scolds Golden Sow. “You have youth and vitality. You have life.”
“You are untouched, still whole,” says Arrow Bright. “You are a virgin, as are all those sworn to the Pale Hunter’s service.”
“It is not the Pale Hunter I serve,” he says, as respectfully as he can, for it would not do to insult queens of such power, especially since they are dead.
“You serve the Lady, as do we all.” Toothless moves a step closer. The scent of the grave wafts from her as her cape, woven of grass, stirs in an unfelt wind. “The Lady commands both life and death.”
“Then I am in Her hands.” He bows his head under the weight of a greater presence looming beyond, an effortless stillness that pervades the chamber and, swelling, expands to fill the entire universe.
Toothless laughs. “Let it be witnessed.”
“I know where she went,” says Arrow Bright suddenly, “but it is the way of this place that no thing can be given without an offering pledged in return.”
He will give them anything, if only it brings Adica back to her village. He has lost so many; he will not lose her, too. “What do I have that you want? 1 came naked—”
He knows at once what they want from him, and he blushes furiously, heat spreading along his body.
“Pledge to us that which you have held to yourself for so long. If you find her, bring her here, and here, fulfill your pledge.”
“So be it,” he murmurs.
Sorrow barked. Alain staggered as though the ground had dropped out from under him. Beor caught the torch before it fell. He seemed about to speak, but they heard a ghostly whimper and both turned, weapons raised, just as Kel stumbled into the chamber, sweating with fear but with a grimace of determination on his young face.
Rage began digging furiously by the stone altar. Dirt flew, stinging the walls, and a moment later the deepening hole revealed a small plank door laid flat against the ground. Straining, Beor tugged it up. An ancient stairway cut down into the rock. At once, Sorrow descended cautiously. Kel muttered imprecations under his breath, but when Alain started down after the hound, he felt Kel head down behind him. Light flared; Beor had lit a second torch to bring up the rear.
The stairs were as smooth as if they’d been polished, and they descended in a curving sweep for long enough that they might have sung Nocturns and seen the sun rise at Prime. Instead of counting the steps, Alain focused his attention past Sorrow so they wouldn’t be ambushed out of the dark. Once he stopped so abruptly, hearing a noise, that Kel bumped into his back. The entire party came to a halt.
The noise came again. And again. It was only water, dripping into an unseen pool.
Beor handed round the waterskin and a corner of wayfarer’s bread, enough to slake thirst and hunger.
Torchlight flickered on featureless walls. The ceiling lay so low that he could easily touch it with the flat of his palm. By lifting his arms, he could tap the walls with his elbows. Truly, the rock had them closed in. Better not to think about it. Better not to dwell on a force of armed warriors skulking ahead of him, with spears leveled to pierce his gut. Better to be grateful that the rock remained dry instead of dripping clammy water all over them. It was always wise to thank God for small mercies. He smiled grimly as Sorrow headed down into darkness again. What need had he to fear, when he had already suffered the worst that could happen to any mortal?
They kept going until the stairs gave out abruptly in a landing just large enough to contain the two hounds and the three men. Beor lifted his spear to tap the rock ceiling, now out of arm’s reach. Two tunnels opened before them. A breath of air teased Alain’s face as though the rock itself had exhaled. Then all was still.
They each took a sip of water to wet their dry throats. The air had changed, stung with a sharp scent. The rock had changed as well; it didn’t precisely look like rock any more but had a smooth, polished gleam to it, shuddering under torchlight.
Kel spoke in a frightened whisper, something about a hill, or something under the hill. Nay, a people who lived under the hill, or so it seemed, for he used the word skrolin-sisi several times, enough that Alain was able to pick it out from the others. Was there a tribe who lived deep in the earth? Someone had carved these tunnels.
Beor answered in his big man’s rumble. If he, too, were afraid, it was impossible for Alain to tell.
Rage snuffled around the two black openings and chose the one to the right. They went on, but soon the
tunnel split into two again and two more. If not for the hounds, they would have lost themselves, for they had stumbled into a labyrinth that went on and on for what seemed forever. Yet the stone walls remained dry and unmarked, oddly warm to the touch, unnaturally smooth. Whatever hand had built this place had not chosen to adorn it with any form of ornamentation. That made it easy for Alain to paint a sooty mark on the right-hand side of each new turning they took, so that they could, he devoutly hoped, find their way back.
The torch, burning low, began to sputter. They paused to take water with a bite of dried fish. The pitchy smoke steamed past Alain’s head, making him cough. His eyes streamed. Fighting for air, he inhaled but took in a lungful of the noxious smoke instead. Head spinning, he caught himself on the wall, leaning with his head pressed against the cool stone, trying to get steady. From deep in the rock noise shuddered up to drown out the pounding of his heart: a grinding rumble kicked at rhythmic intervals with a decisive clang, like the stroke of a gigantic blacksmith’s hammer.
He shut his eyes to stop the dizziness. For an instant he hallucinated: his cheek, pressed against the wall, lay against iron, as though he had fallen asleep on his sword.
He slid a hand up the wall as understanding struck him. The walls were not stone at all. Iron had been forged and shaped to form a cloak for the walls in the same way that soft leather was formed into a glove to fit a person’s fingers.
The torch died in his hand. He groped for the spare one tucked in his belt, but a big hand closed over his, to stop him. Beor’s hostile presence hulked beside him. Nothing could stop Beor from killing him right here and right now. The hounds did not growl.
In the silence, he heard what Beor and Kel were straining to hear: the distant clash of a melee echoing weirdly down the labyrinth of iron halls. Beor pushed past Alain to take the lead, but he had gone no farther than ten steps, past two branching tunnels, before he faltered. Some trick of the labyrinth made the sound fade. For a moment, the hiss of Beor’s torch drowned out the battle. The big man turned back to try one of the other tunnels, but the hounds surged past him, Alain in their wake, and continued on in the same direction. As the passage twisted, the clamor of arms would sound close, then far, and although they went quickly, still Alain was careful to mark each turning so that they could return.
His sight had adjusted to the dimness. With Beor’s torch flaring fitfully behind him, painting shadows and streaks of light over the uncannily regular curve of the tunnel’s ceiling, he had no trouble marking his footing. The hounds did not falter. Kel brought up the rear.
He had no trouble marking his footing until he stumbled, slipped where the ground banked sharply down, and half slid into a chamber lit by sorcery, a flaring yellow-white light that blinded him because it was so bright.
One of the hounds barreled into him. He staggered back into the shadowed archway of the tunnel, fell to his knees, and flung up his staff, thinking he would be struck down while he was helpless. No blow came.
Not four steps in front lay an abyss, into which he had almost stumbled. From this angle, he couldn’t see its bottom.
The clash of arms echoed all around the chamber, making it hard to tell where it was coming from. Strangest of all, he heard no voices, as if the melee were being conducted in silence. The hounds did not bark or cry out a warning. Kel whispered a word: skrolin! Beor gave a sharp hiss to keep Kel quiet.
Bright light flared again and immediately dimmed to a mellow glow as suddenly as if a giant’s breath had blown out a rack of ten torches, leaving only one burning. By this light, Alain saw a melee strung out on the other side of the chasm. About a dozen of the masked warriors struggled against slender, small creatures, who looked like half-grown children whose skin had been polished until it had the muted gleam of pewter. The feathers ornamenting the warriors’ helmets and armor convulsed with their movements. Many had pushed their masks down for better sight in the dimness. Their bronze spears rang on the round shields held by the little people, shields incised with strange geometric patterns too peculiar to recognize. In their left hands these small fighters held slender clubs with knobby heads that seemed inadequate to the task of war.
All at once, Alain saw Adica, caught in the mob, her hands bound. A man with a helmet crested entirely with snow-white feathers shoved her forward into the hands of his foremost soldiers, trying to move her toward a far archway that gave into a larger passage: their escape route.
Beor nudged Alain, pointing.
A bridge spanned the chasm.
“Ashioi,” Beor continued in a low voice. “Fe skrolin d’Ashioiket.”
Alain set two fingers to his lips for silence and crept forward.
The narrow bridge was cunningly spun out of massive iron rope. He crossed swiftly, crouched low, with the hounds at his heels and the two men following. The bridge swayed beneath his tread. No one on the other side had seen them; they were too intent on keeping alive as the battle swayed back and forth, voices grunting, coughing, and once a shriek of pain, quickly cut off.
The light changed again, brightening with a flash. The skrolin leaped forward in unison to grapple with their enemies. Now Alain could see that the skrolin weapon was more vicious than it appeared: protruding from the club were two moist spikes, serpent fangs with drops of venom that sparkled in the sorcerous light. They used it to strike at the legs of their taller opponents, bringing them down. One masked warrior, forced to her knees, came eye-to-eye with the small warrior whose club was now pinned under her weight. The skrolin punched its shield into her beautiful hawk’s mask, splintering wood, but as the skrolin drew back for another strike, the kneeling warrior wrapped the haft of her spear behind the neck of the skrolin to force it against its own shield, choking it until its eyes bulged and its head began to loll as it fought for air. Its helmet fell free, rolling along the edge with a rhythmic tinkling sound before plummeting into the black pit.
Alain leaped from the bridge to the firm rock below. Swinging his staff in a full arc, he caught the warrior on the side of the head to knock her flat. The skrolin struggled, squirmed, and rolled away. The fallen woman’s eyelids fluttered. Her mouth, visible through the shattered mask, sighed open as in death. Had he killed her? But she moaned again and tried to rise before falling back, still stunned.
The nearest masked warrior slammed his shield against the skrolin facing him, before thrusting hard at Alain’s head. Alain gave a sharp parry and stepped inside his range to bring the butt end of his staff hard up into the gut of the warrior, then whipped the staff back down onto the man’s shoulder, forcing him to the ground.
Beor and the two hounds charged past Alain. The white-crested captain stepped forward to counter this new threat. Rage and Sorrow leaped to the attack but were met by a mist of gnats. Sorrow yelped and collapsed to the ground, scratching violently at his head, as Rage bit the haft of a spear. With jaws clenched tight over the wood, she shook the spear back and forth, worrying it free of the captain’s grasp. Beor quickly took advantage of White Feather’s helplessness with a thrust at the man’s unprotected back, but the white-crested warrior let go of the spear, dropped, and rolled to evade the thrust. In an eye blink, he leaped to his feet and drew his bronze sword. Beor had no shield to counter its thrusting tip. With a berserker’s fury or perhaps only an experienced warrior’s quick calculation of the odds, Beor dropped his spear, dodged the thrust, and grappled hand to hand with the captain.
Kel had joined Alain and together they parried blows from the other warriors, trying to sow confusion. Trying to stay alive. Rage leaped into the fray and Alain quickly lost sight of her. Sorrow had rolled out of harm’s way, still frantically clawing at his muzzle.
Kel had courage but little experience. His hesitations were costly, and only the presence of the skrolin kept the enemy from overwhelming them. But many of the skrolin had already fallen. Alain could mark each one—who was wounded, who was dead. That awareness swelled to encompass the entire field marked by the skirmish a
s he fought to keep alive, to keep his companions alive, and to drive a path through their ranks to Adica. The Lady of Battles did not attend him here. He had no desire to kill; the thought of killing revolted him. But as he parried and struck, spared Kel a glancing blow and shoved a fallen skrolin out of harm’s way, the melee gained sharpness and clarity, an uncanny predictability, a slowing down of time and motion as though all the other participants had been caught in a spell.
The openings became obvious, the blows struck at him easy to counter. As a child he had so loved and dreamed about the frescoes that adorned the church walls:
The fall of the ancient city of Dariya to savage horsemen. The fateful battle of Auxelles, where Taillefer’s nephew and his men lost their lives but saved the empire. The glorious victory of the first King Henry against Quman invaders along the River Eldar, where his bastard grandson Conrad the Dragon charged his troop of cavalry straight into the midst of the terrible host of Quman riders, breaking their line and sending them scattering back to their own lands.
The field of battle became itself like one of those tapestries, not an undecipherable chaos but a painting in which each fighter was as transparent to him as if he had opened a window into that mind. He knew who was scared and who was hesitant, who new to war, who dangerous through experience or because she was coldblooded. He knew who was ready to run and who was prepared to die.
The warrior before him did not wish to fight; she wanted nothing to do with humans and had all along thought it unwise to trespass below ground. The other warrior, facing Kel, was young, ready to prove himself valiant, and fearful enough of humans that he had the advantage over Kel. Alain stepped in to knock away a spear thrust that Kel, attention caught by Beor’s tumbling on the ground, wasn’t prepared to meet. At the same time the experienced warrior swung her haft toward his head, but he caught the blow on his staff. He pushed the lower tip of his staff behind the leg of the younger one, and with a twist tripped the young one while striking the elder in the forehead. Both fell.