The Book of Silence

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  The walls and ceiling were gray, and the floor a maze of dull colors half-hidden by dust. The sound of the monstrous heartbeat, if heartbeat it actually was, was louder than ever.

  There was a door in the far end; Garth flashed his lamp around, but could see no other entrance or exit, save for the staircase and the single door.

  He strode the length of the chamber and pushed at the door, halfway expecting it to crumble to dust as the one in the upper temple had done. It did not; with a high-pitched creak and a flurry of disturbed dust, it swung open, revealing another chamber.

  Garth stepped through, lamp held high. This second chamber was identical with the first, save that the walls and ceiling were a dull red instead of gray.

  He had now descended at least thirty feet below street level and moved more or less due west, with only the single jog to the left at the top of the stair, since entering the temple. A rough estimate told him that he had come at least a hundred feet from the front pillars—which meant that he was now in or under the great stone outcroppings, since the temple itself had been no more than sixty feet from front to back.

  That was very interesting indeed, he thought. He wondered if he might find his way under the lake, to the ruins on the far side.

  He proceeded through the second chamber and into a third, this one walled and ceiled in dead black, the floor again a dust-covered polychrome. The door at the end of this chamber opened onto another staircase leading down; he followed it without hesitation.

  It seemed to run on forever. He had been in crypts before, in the Orûnian city of Mormoreth, but this stair appeared far longer than any he had previously encountered anywhere.

  It was also straight, which might have added to its apparent length; the crypt stairs in Mormoreth had wound slightly back and forth, so that he had never been able to see their full length at one time. Here, though, he found it disconcerting to hold up the lamp and see step after step after step, stretching away into the distance both above and below him, both ends lost in the darkness beyond the reach of his feeble lamplight.

  Finally, as the lamp swung forward, he glimpsed the lower end; he increased his speed as much as he dared, for the steps were as treacherous as the lower portion of the first set.

  The stair ended in a short corridor, and that in turn led to another stair, this one ascending. Garth wondered whether he would find himself in the midst of the ruins beyond the lake.

  He did not; the upward-bound steps ran only a tiny fraction of the distance he had just descended. Almost as soon as he reached the first step, he glimpsed the upper end.

  A moment later he emerged into another room, away from the confining stone walls of the stairway, and paused to catch his breath again.

  Again, he thought he heard noise behind him, but now it was almost drowned out by the slow beating ahead of him, a sound that had acquired a sinister, menacing note as he drew nearer its source. Something about it made him nervous.

  He had not yet given much thought to what the beating might be; he had decided that it was a heartbeat without considering what that might mean. Now, as he stood in a passage that he judged to be several hundred feet below the level of Ur-Dormulk’s streets, he wondered what he might find if he went on. Could there be a monster with a heart so great? If so, he would stand no more chance against it than a beetle. A mere mechanical dragon had been capable of killing him; how could he think to face a creature whose heartbeat could be heard half a mile away?

  On the other hand, why would such a monster even notice him? He need not worry about being devoured; an overman could scarcely begin to feed the appetite of such a thing, and he could easily retreat into places where a behemoth could not reach him.

  The idea of such a creature went against all his instincts, and he decided that it was far more likely that the sound was being artificially produced by some lost remnant of the outlawed cult, for reasons of its own. In any case, he was not about to turn back at this point. He held up the lamp.

  He was in another long, narrow, low-ceilinged room, longer than the three on the upper level and walled in gray stone. Again there was a single door at the far end, yet this one was not a simple portal in a post-and-lintel frame, but an elaborate carved construction of several different woods, hung in a red stone arch embellished with golden tracery.

  Garth approached cautiously; the ornate door, so different from the others, seemed almost threatening. He paused when he had reached it and put a hand to one of the wooden panels. It vibrated beneath his fingers with the slow, slow beating.

  For a third time he thought he heard something behind him, the sound only detectable in the interval between beats, and lost thereafter in the throbbing he had followed for so far. He turned and looked back at the stairs, but saw nothing.

  This new portal did not yield to a simple push, but the latch handle still moved freely; he lifted it and shoved the door wide.

  Beyond lay a chamber unlike the others; although the walls curved into the ceiling in the same fashion, this room was circular rather than oblong. The walls were black, and the floor here was also black, made up of stones arranged in a spiral leading in toward the room’s center.

  It was what stood in the center, however, that was most different. A column of horn or ivory projected upward from the floor, yellowed with age but still almost white, tapering from a diameter of eighteen inches or so at the base to about a foot where it was cut off, three feet above the floor, to form a slanting surface. In the center of this tilted top, a single drop of some reddish-black substance was very slowly oozing forth.

  A circular trough surrounded this strange column, and Garth saw that there was a trickle of the red-black goo down the side of the column and a shallow pool of it in the trough.

  He saw no way in or out of the chamber save for the single arched door. Garth entered cautiously, lamp and sword both held high.

  There was nothing to look at but the column and its curious issue, so he studied that. As he watched, a fat black drop rolled sluggishly from the center of the column’s top to the edge, joining the slow trickle. Its separation from the central spot coincided exactly with the end of one of the vast heartbeats, Garth noted idly.

  Another drop began to grow as Garth studied the walls, looking for concealed openings. He turned back as a beat ended and saw the new drop follow its predecessor.

  That the first drop had happened to fall in time with the sound had struck him as nothing but coincidence, but the second one made it seem more than that. He listened, watched, and soon reached an inescapable conclusion: the sound he had followed came from the base of the mysterious shaft. Furthermore, it was somehow connected with the oozing fluid.

  It occurred to him that it might be the vibration that caused the drops to fall in synchronization with the beating, rather than any more direct connection. It did not seem reasonable that so great and ponderous a throbbing should do nothing but pump out a stream of blackish goo. He looked for some secret opening or lever on the column or in the trough surrounding it, being careful to touch nothing, lest he trigger a trap.

  His investigation of the small metal pipe that allowed the excess fluid to drain off when the trough was full ceased abruptly, however, when for the fourth time he heard sounds other than the beating, coming from somewhere outside the arched doorway.

  Once, perhaps twice, he could dismiss this as illusion, or the action of overwrought nerves, but now there was no chance at all that noise might be reaching him from outside the crypts. No vermin would be audible over the great throbbing, yet the sound was there once more. It was closer than before, and he did not lose it again after the first hearing. Now that he was no longer moving deeper into the catacomb, whatever made the noise was gaining on him quickly. After listening carefully for a few seconds, he thought that it was the rattle of armor.

  He dropped the lamp where he was; it flickered, but stayed lit, as
it bounced once and came to rest on the stone floor at a sharp angle, tilted up on the curve of its metal oil reservoir and prevented from rolling by the thick dust.

  The circular chamber offered few places of concealment, with no corners, alcoves, or hangings that might hide him. The looming shadow of the central column, stretching up the wall opposite the spot where the lamp had fallen, would provide some cover, but Garth decided against it, preferring the more obvious place behind the only door. Whoever was approaching would probably not realize immediately that he had reached a dead end in the little room. The person would wonder why the lamp was there, certainly, but would probably not think to check behind the door before entering. Putting out the lamp would leave Garth in total darkness, and he did not care for that idea; let his pursuer wonder, then.

  Besides, he had no time to think of a better plan.

  The sounds were drawing nearer; in the pauses between beats, he could make out footsteps and the rasping breath of human exertion. He pressed up against the wall behind the carven door, sword ready in his right hand, axe swung around within reach, awaiting whoever might come.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Sedrik’s pursuit of the overman was delayed slightly by the darkness of the temple; he had assumed that he would find his quarry on the streets or in some well-lighted shop and had not bothered to equip his men with lanterns. When it became clear that Garth was not to be found anywhere in the dim precincts of the temple proper, and giving due consideration to the fact that the overman was a newcomer to Ur-Dormulk who could scarcely have known of secret exits, Sedrik had no choice but to conclude that Garth had taken the stair to the crypts. Sedrik had his orders, and his own hatred as well, and was eager to follow—but no glimmer of light indicated the overman’s presence; surely he would not have ventured into the depths without a light of some kind! Sedrik had to assume that Garth had either built up a considerable lead, or turned corners, or passed through doorways. To pursue him in total darkness would be reckless to the point of abject stupidity. Therefore, lights were needed, and Sedrik had to wait with half his company at the head of the crypt stairs while the other half returned to the street to fetch torches or lamps from the surrounding shops.

  As he waited, the faint, fetid warmth that drifted up from below made his skin crawl.

  Finally all his men were together again, torches in hand. No lamps or lanterns had been secured, but a plentiful supply of torches intended for lighting temples and storefronts had been available; the rightful owners had been willing to give them up without payment beyond a promise of government recompense later. The possessors of other means of illumination had not been so obliging, and the soldiers had not cared to argue.

  With one man in four carrying a lighted brand, Sedrik and his party descended the steps, following in Garth’s wake. Sedrik, in his impatience at the delay and in his eagerness for battle, tried to hurry the soldiers along, but with limited success. The worn steps, the evil reputation of both the temple and the crypts, and the unsteady torchlight all served to keep the pace down.

  At the foot of the first flight, some of the men sighed audibly with relief; Sedrik paid them no mind but moved forward more briskly, now that the floor was solid underfoot.

  They passed through the gray room, the red, and into the black; here one of the men whispered, “Shh! I think I hear something!”

  Sedrik gave the command to halt and held up a hand for silence. His men obeyed, and all listened.

  Uncertain, they looked at one another.

  “Do you hear it, commander?” one murmured.

  Sedrik nodded, reluctantly.

  “What is it?” another asked.

  Sedrik shrugged.

  “’Tis the heartbeat of the god!” someone said.

  “Dhazh?”

  “That’s only a myth!”

  Sedrik spoke at last. “This sound is no myth; we all hear it. Perhaps it is what first gave rise to the tales of Dhazh’s existence. I suspect it to be an underground waterfall; after all, we must be near Demhe here, and no one knows where its bottom may be, or where its waters come and go.”

  “I don’t hear anything,” a soldier at the back confessed.

  “Then it’s your hearing that’s at fault, for the sound is there,” one of his comrades retorted.

  “Whatever it is, men,” Sedrik said, “it is no concern of ours, wherever it comes from. It may well be beyond the walls of the crypts entirely. I doubt that anything could fit into these rooms that we would not be able to handle; certainly the monster-god of the old legends could not squeeze beneath this roof!” He gestured at the low ceiling; someone chuckled, which pleased Sedrik. He saw about an even mix of smiles and worried looks; that was worse than he had hoped, but better than he had expected. Even the best fighters could be discouraged by empty darkness and narrow passages.

  “We go on,” he said. “We have an overman to catch.”

  They moved on down the length of the black chamber in formation, six ranks of two, with Sedrik to one side of the second rank. At the door at the inner end, the first rank balked. The foremost torchbearer, in the second rank at Sedrik’s elbow, held his light high and forward, its flame spattering on the ceiling, its smoke lost against the black stone, its light spilling down the second stair.

  “I cannot see the bottom, commander,” the torchbearer reported.

  Sedrik stepped forward and peered over the shoulder of one of the first pair. “And I cannot see the overman, nor have we seen anywhere he might have turned. We go on.” He noticed, but did not mention, that the faint roaring—the god’s heartbeat—seemed to be coming up the stairway from somewhere below.

  “We don’t know what’s down there!” another soldier protested.

  “The overman is down there!” Sedrik said, repressing the urge to bellow as if on a parade ground; there was no knowing how far an echo might carry, and he had no desire to alert Garth to his presence. “I see no sign of any danger, save that one of you clumsy fools might stumble and crack his skull on the steps.” Despite his anger, Sedrik immediately regretted those words; they would only serve to make his men more nervous, which would in turn make their descent still slower and more cautious. “We have orders, from the overlord himself, to hunt down and kill this inhuman foreigner. He’s somewhere below, and I intend to find him. Now, come on!” He pushed past the leaders and started down, thinking to himself that he should have taken the lead position right from the first.

  Reluctantly, his men followed.

  The length of the stair eventually became daunting even to Sedrik; he heard his men muttering unhappily when the rearmost torchbearer had lost all sight of the top, but he forced himself onward, determined to show no fear in front of his subordinates, and resolved that he could face any dangers that an overman could face. The distant rhythmic rumble became more distinct as they went on; Sedrik had hoped that they would pass its source and lose it, but so far there had been no sign of that happening.

  It was fortunate, he thought, that the stair remained barely wide enough to march two abreast; had they been forced into single file, he knew that his men would have been even more anxious.

  At last the company reached the short corridor and, with visible relief, continued on, up the ascending steps beyond. They emerged into the long gray room at the top of the final stair, and the beating sound was clearly audible even over the rattle of armor and their heavy footsteps. Sedrik stopped and raised his hand for silence; the men stopped, the first rank just inside the chamber, the rest still arrayed upon the stairs.

  He was not absolutely certain, but Sedrik thought he had at last glimpsed a dim light somewhere in the darkness ahead. He pointed to the torch nearest him and made a passing motion; its bearer understood and obeyed, passing it back to the men farthest down the steps, who held it and the two other torches down low so as to disturb the darkness at the far end of the chamber as litt
le as possible.

  Sedrik stared into the gloom, shading his eyes against the glare from behind, and made out that there was indeed a light ahead, just beyond a wide doorway.

  The light was not moving; whatever the overman had come for, he had presumably found it. Sedrik did not think he had merely paused to rest; the natural place to do that would have been at the foot of the long stair, or the top of the last.

  Unless, the commander thought, yet another stair lay beyond the door, and the overman had paused before tackling it.

  Still a third possibility occurred to Sedrik. The overman might have brought more than one light and abandoned this one when it burned low. Staring at it, Sedrik observed that it was low, far dimmer than any of his own three torches, which had burned almost to stubs.

  “Change torches,” he whispered, reminded of their state.

  Word was passed down the steps, and three new torches were lighted, flaring up brightly; the old were stamped out and cast aside.

  The presence of the doorway was not helpful; Sedrik had no way of knowing what lay beyond it. Marching his men in without further investigation would be stupid and reckless. He was tempted to go forward himself and scout it out, but that was not a commander’s job, and he knew it. If he were to stick his head through the door and be slain, his men would flee; if another were to do the same, Sedrik knew he could fire up the survivors with a lust for vengeance and lead them to the attack.

  Reluctantly, he signaled for one man to step forward.

  “Nalba,” Sedrik whispered, “I want you to go and see what’s beyond the door there.” He pointed. “Be careful about it; I don’t want you killed. If the overman’s in there and you have a chance, jump him and call for help; we’ll come. If you don’t think you can get him, or if he sees you coming, you come back here and tell me. If he’s not there, come back and report; don’t do anything foolish.” Sedrik pointed to the mace on the soldier’s back. “Use that if you can; it’s harder to parry than a sword, and overmen are strong. You’re more likely to keep him busy with that than with your sword, even if you can’t kill him. Have you got all that?”