by Laurence Yep
The footing was rougher here than in the chapel. Water had created small nodules underfoot, and grooves, so that the going was more uncertain and it was hard to shake off the illusion that they were traveling down a damp, fleshy throat.
Bibil had led the way downward for some hundred steps before he turned around, motioning the prince past him. When Urmi would have gone by, he thrust the candle at Urmi so that she stepped backward into Sulu’s arms, almost knocking the two of them down. “Hold her,” Bibil growled. And the startled Sulu obeyed.
Handing the candle to the prince, Bibil relieved her of her sword and then gave her a quick yet thorough search. But there were only the two daggers in her sash.
His nostrils widened as he drew in a long, slow breath. “Now suppose you tell us what you were doing in the palace?”
“Trying to survive.” She squirmed to break free from Sulu’s grasp, but he held on.
Bibil slipped her sword through his sash and then held the daggers out on his palm. “With this arsenal?”
[83] She grew still. “One ... one needs protection.”
“Daggers are like emperors. One is fine, but having two of them at the same time leads only to trouble.” He closed his hands around the hilts of the daggers. “Whom did you mean to kill?”
“No one,” Urmi insisted.
“I don’t think—” the prince began, but Bibil merely sliced at the air for silence.
“There are some children who are born to be servants and others who are not,” he explained, never taking his eyes off Urmi. “And if ever there was a more difficult, headstrong, rebellious child, it was Urmi. She would never take orders from anyone—no matter how often she was switched.”
Urmi lifted her head defiantly. “You’ve been off gallivanting among all those elegant worlds. You don’t know how bad things have gotten here.”
“What do you mean?” the prince demanded. “Before I left, my father showed me all his plans for modernization. He was going to create all sorts of new factory complexes.”
She twisted her head around to stare contemptuously at the prince. “And did he tell you what the lives of the factory workers were going to be like? You work from sunrise to sunset and then creep back to a little wooden box surrounded by families in other little boxes. And whether you’re inside the factories or out, you have to breathe the fumes. And the water’s so polluted now that the few surviving fish don’t swim; they crawl.”
The prince stiffened indignantly. “Then why don’t you people leave?”
“How?” Urmi’s voice broke with anger. “They owe money to the companies for rent, for food, for clothing—for everything. They’ve just exchanged one form of [84] slavery for another. Only instead of being owned by the landlord, they’re owned by the company. The ones who can afford it send their children back to the villages like mine did. But most of them need the money, so their children work right beside them—and die. The factories just chew up people and spit out coffins.”
“What about your parents?” Bibil asked sharply.
“I only know what I was told when their funeral urns were brought back to our village. Father was killed in a factory accident; mother died spitting out blood.” She jerked her head resentfully at the prince. “The people say now that it’s better to sit in your grave and wait to die than to go into one of those cities.”
Bibil tucked the daggers away in the sash end of his soropa. “Your parents deserved better deaths than that.” His voice ached with grief.
The prince looked at them both in genuine distress. “You must believe me when I tell you that such conditions were not my father’s intentions for the workers. Someone must have been lying to him about their standard of living.”
Urmi’s forehead wrinkled skeptically. “I’d like to believe you.”
Bibil squared his shoulders as a new thought occurred to him. “At the moment, you have to explain your actions, not the late emperor’s. Were you thinking of taking your revenge, child?”
With a sudden elbow to Sulu’s stomach, Urmi twisted free of his grasp. “The daggers were only for self-defense.”
Bibil raised his sword. “Give me a proper answer, girl.”
The prince placed his hand on Bibil’s wrist and forced him to lower the weapon. “Never mind, Bibil.”
[85] “But—” Bibil began to protest.
“We’ll sort things out later—if we ever get out of here.” He handed the candle to Bibil. “If Urmi had wanted to kill me, she had plenty of opportunities back in the corridors.”
“I’m just trying to protect you,” Bibil grumbled.
“Yes, and I’m grateful.” The prince signed for Bibil to go on. “But let’s not get carried away. I won’t have you killing your own kin just on a hunch.”
Urmi eyed him like a sharp trader inspecting a gem for flaws. “When you visited our village, I remember thinking how eager you were to be liked—just like a young puppy. I felt sorry for you then. Uncle Bibil used to tell us how vicious the court was so I didn’t see how someone as soft as you was ever going to survive.”
“I often wondered that myself.” The prince gave her a grudging smile.
“There’s more to you than you think, lad.” The wick flame flickered as Bibil motioned them on with the candle. “You just have to believe in yourself.”
The passageways led downward for several hours, twisting sometimes to the left, sometimes to the right. The moisture seemed to increase, giving the stones a bloodlike color. And every now and then they would pause, studying the passageways. At one of the forks, Bibil shrugged apologetically. “I’ve never been down here, Your Highness.”
“It’s all right, Bibil. I’d rather starve to death here than be left to Rahu’s tender mercies.” The prince chuckled sourly. “With a little luck, he may have a stroke out of sheer frustration at losing me.”
After about an hour of wandering, Bibil shook his head. “This can’t be the way. We should have been going up by now. We’ll have to retrace our steps.”
[86] With no choice, the party headed back the way they had come until they were once again at a fork in the tunnels. “Here, let’s try the right one.”
But after thirty meters, the passageway began to lead downward again. “Maybe it was some other fork in the tunnels,” Bibil said doubtfully.
“I’m beginning to think my ancestors are descended from moles.” The prince touched the walls. “I had no idea the tunnels were this extensive.”
“I’m beginning to wish they hadn’t been quite so industrious.” Sulu tried to laugh.
Bibil suddenly gave’ a satisfied grunt. “Good, it’s starting to go up again.”
They went through more than half the candles before the ceiling suddenly lifted overhead. They found themselves at the entrance to a large room. There was an iron gate barring their way, but it swung open at a push of Bibil’s hand. It creaked on rusty hinges and stopped about a meter away from the stone wall. The ceiling itself disappeared into the darkness above them, leaving only mysterious, rusty chains dangling down.
Sulu craned his neck back so that he could just make out a pulley. “What’s this room, Your Highness?”
The prince shook his head. “I have no idea. Do you, Bibil?”
“Only rumors, Your Highness.” Bibil stepped out into the room and something crunched under his foot. He took a step backward so that they could see it was the bones of a hand, and the hand was joined to a skeletal arm.
Mr. Spock squatted down. “Fascinating. This arm has been hacked off.”
Bibil swung the candle toward the left. Running [87] along the room were small alcoves, about a meter in height. Heavy iron bars stood in front of the alcoves. “What are those for?”
“Prisoners,” Bibil said distantly.
“Some of them are still occupied.” Sulu pointed toward one alcove where a skull lay amid a heap of bones.
“Bibil, I think it’s time you told us about those rumors.” The prince gripped an overhead chain.
>
Bibil stepped over the arm and walked forward several paces. He paused beside a table. The wood was obviously very old and there were dark, ominous stains on its surface. Chains led from rings on the floor, ending in manacles. And, in a neat array on a smaller table, lay a series of knives, lancets and needles. A small furnace with large pipes led somewhere up into the ceiling. “Vischa the Mad was said to have built a torture chamber.”
“He lived over a thousand years ago. And this equipment doesn’t look this old.” The prince angrily let the chain swing back and forth.
Bibil gave an embarrassed little cough. “It’s been used occasionally since then.”
The prince suddenly shoved the table over in sheer disgust. Knives and other metal objects clashed on the ground. “How recently?”
“Your grandfather’s time, I would say. But no one’s been sent here since then,” Bibil was quick to add.
“But it could be utilized again.” The prince frowned in distaste.
“By Rahu,” Bibil insisted stubbornly.
“Or myself—if I had the throne.” The prince wiped his hands on the front of his soropa as if they suddenly [88] felt unclean from touching the table. “This is something the history books don’t mention about my grandfather.”
“It was perfectly acceptable by the standards of that time,” Bibil argued.
“And who determines what’s acceptable? Whoever’s in power?” The prince waved a hand over their heads. “Did those poor, brave fools know they were dying for ... for this?” He flung his hand out toward the cells.
“There is a darker side to ruling,” Bibil said. “And sometimes some of this is necessary.”
“Not with me, it isn’t.”
“All right, then, change it,” Bibil said angrily, “but don’t just sit back and whine. It’s all very easy to criticize. It’s harder to do something about it. Don’t use this as an excuse to run offworld the first chance you get.”
There was a sharp clicking sound, and Bibil immediately swung around, holding the candle over his head. But there was only a pile of bones in one of the alcoves.
“What was that?” the prince asked.
“I don’t know.” Bibil turned slowly. They could see more tables and torture devices looming like so many misshapen monsters. And then, faintly in the distance, they could make put a green gleam—as if made by two slitted eyes.
“Curious.” Mr. Spock was still examining the amputated arm. He held up the ulna. “I was wondering what this was doing out here when everything else seems to be in neat order. But I believe now that this was dragged away from some other area.” He turned it over in his hands. “And it looks as if it’s been nibbled—and [89] by something large. But the markings puzzle me a bit. They don’t look as if they’re made by the teeth of a large rat or rodent.”
Bibil and the prince glanced at one another. “That’s because we don’t have rats on Angira,” the prince said. “We have kik-kiks.”
“What’s that?” Sulu stood beside Spock, examining the arm curiously.
“It’s a kind of beetle with large mandibles. It’s almost as common as the cockroaches are on Earth. But ours are larger and they fill the same ecological niche that a rat would occupy on Earth.”
Bibil swung around. The pair of eyes had been joined by a second. “The beetle has the luminescent markings on its back so that they look like eyes.”
“Rather like those,” the prince finished for Bibil. “But usually they’re only found singly or in pairs.”
“There’s another rumor, Your Highness,” Bibil said.
“I don’t think I want to hear it, Bibil.”
“I think you should, Your Highness. It’s said that they travel in hordes down in the dungeons. That’s one of the reasons why people stopped using this place.”
Mr. Spock rose. “Legend or not, I suggest we find the exit.”
“I don’t think any of us would disagree.” The prince pointed. “Isn’t that a doorway over there?”
Bibil started forward, the others bunching in close behind the light. Sulu couldn’t help noticing that the two creatures kept pace with them cautiously. But the large black opening only proved to open on a room full of old wooden frames.
“They look like beds,” Sulu said.
“They were—at one time. Probably for the guards [90] and the jailers. But something’s gnawed away the bedding and the leather thongs that would support the mattress.”
“Maybe they were stripped.” Sulu suggested.
“Those markings on the wood are similar to the markings on the bone I examined.” Mr. Spock pointed to the small triangular holes marring the wood.
“I rather dislike the habit that rumor has of becoming fact down here.” The prince shooed them out of the room. “Shall we find that exit, people?”
They circled round the room, finding another chamber of cells—these with even lower ceilings so that the prisoners could only have squatted, bent over. And they were forced to pass by larger, more hellish machines constructed with, as Mr. Spock observed, an almost scientific fervor for protracted torture.
The prince glanced, rather embarrassed, at a large cage inset with needles placed at strategic points so that a prisoner would have to stand rigid or be stabbed. And yet the needles were short so that the prisoner could not throw himself or herself on a point and end it all. “I rather wish my ancestors had used half their imagination on astronomy. Or even gambling.”
Eventually they found another metal gate, but unlike the other, this one was locked. Bibil pulled at it. “It’s no use. It’s locked.”
“Perhaps the keys are around.” The prince turned.
“I don’t know if we have the time to search.” Sulu pointed. There were now nearly two dozen green “eyes” surrounding them. And more arriving with every second.
Chapter Four
The prince shook the gate in exasperation and then, after a pause, rattled it again. A pebble fell to the ground. “Something’s giving.”
“It’s the hinges.” Mr. Spock went up to the massive hinges. They seemed half-dissolved in rust already. “I believe the stone has become damp around the hinges so that it’s starting to crumble.” Slipping his sword from his belt, Mr. Spock began to use the point to pry at the stone; it gave, falling in bits and pieces.
But the beetles were gathering behind them. There seemed to be nearly a hundred pairs of eyes in the room and more were scurrying into the room every moment. Sulu and the prince began attacking the other two hinges.
Urmi caught at Bibil’s arm. “Uncle, let me have my daggers back. I’ll go crazy if I just stand here doing nothing.”
Bibil shook his head slowly. “We needed a fighter up above or I would have taken your weapons away then. I [92] don’t want to take the risk now,” he explained in a soft, patient voice. “Try to understand, Urmi. The lad’s always deserved better than he’s gotten. Now that he has a chance, I intend to see him sitting upon the throne.”
Urmi cocked her head to one side as she studied her uncle. “You really mean that, don’t you?”
“I’m not just being ambitious for him. I know the prince better than anyone else. He’ll make a far better emperor than any of his brothers and stepbrothers”—Bibil paused and then raised his voice so that the prince could hear him over the clinking of steel on old, crumbling stone—“whenever he finally faces what he is.” But though the prince stiffened, he pretended to ignore his servant.
“If you don’t give me my weapons back, he may never get that opportunity,” she tried to reason.
“You always were able to wheedle things out of me.” Bibil adjusted his grip on the melting candle. “Well, you can have your weapons—but on one condition.”
“What’s that?” Urmi asked cautiously.
Bibil fixed her with a hard, demanding stare. “You have to promise to help me put the prince on the throne.”
Urmi reared her head back. “He’s a tool of these offworlders.”
“I t
hought you were involved in some kind of mischief,” Bibil grunted triumphantly. He placed a hand on his niece’s shoulder and spoke in a low, urgent voice. “Now listen to me, child. I’ve raised that boy. I’ve coddled him. I’ve even cuffed him when I had to. He’s been like my own son. I don’t intend to see him come to any harm.”
“And I don’t intend to let our world come to any [93] harm either,” Urmi warned him. “Oh, your prince is likable enough, but I’ve listened to him talk. He’s a puppet for these offworlders. They’ll use him to exploit our poor world.”
The prince wiped at the mixture of sweat and dust that now caked his face. “Urmi, at this point, I would be happy if we survive. I don’t care about the throne.”
“If you survive, you will be the emperor,” Bibil promised, and pointed the candle at his niece. “But I’ll compromise with your conscience, girl. Give me your oath that you’ll help the prince reach Kotah.”
Urmi frowned. “He’s too tainted by offworld ways. His clan will never accept him.”
Bibil smiled grimly. “Then you don’t have anything to worry about if you help him reach Kotah.”
She gave an exasperated sigh. “All right. I give my word to you that I’ll help him.” She held out her hand, wriggling her fingers at him. “So give me my weapons.”
“Remember your promise now. As a little girl, you were guilty of many things, but never of lying.” Bibil pulled the daggers and sword from his sash-end and handed them to her.
As soon as she had the daggers stowed away in her own sash-end, she joined Sulu, jabbing her sword point behind the middle hinge.
Bibil hung his candle closer to them so they could see better. “I suppose the beetles have been eating one another up till now.”
“When we provided a four-course banquet,” the prince grunted. “How thoughtful of us.”
Mr. Spock began to use his sword as a kind of crowbar. The rusty hinge began to inch away from the wall with a massive groan. Parts of its surface fell away in flakes of rust.
[94] “This time, we’ll try it in unison.” The prince stood with his sword braced by the middle hinge while Sulu squatted down by the bottom hinge.