by Mark Smylie
Erim shuddered, and almost sobbed, and she shook herself out of her fear and wonderment. Do something, she thought. Set yourself a task. She was about to go collect some loot—it was why she was there, after all—but then a glint of light off the altar top caught her eye. She stepped forward and inspected the altar before the huge idol; the surface of the altar was smeared and splattered with black ichors and dark dried liquid, but some of it looked fresh. She reached out with a finger to test some smears of liquid on the stone surface, and she experimentally tasted a drop off her finger. She spat to the side.
“Black-Heart. This altar’s been used recently. Blood. Probably human. This temple’s still active,” she called out huskily. Old Jon and Smitt perked up their ears at that and walked over, nervously standing beside their captain as they looked over the altar.
“I thought you said this temple was desanctified and purified by the priests during their raid,” said old Jon. “And that they’d left all the temple offerings behind, refusing to take the blood money.”
Stjepan had managed to work himself up on top of the idol’s head, and he was leaning over its brow, trying to get the gemstone out of its right eye with a small curved metal pry bar. He didn’t look away from his work as he responded. “Aye, so it said in the archives. But that was two hundred years ago. Plenty of time for the Nameless Cults to rededicate it. And to add to the offerings in the meantime.”
“Fuck me,” said Smitt angrily. “Boys, hurry it up!” he called out, and the men ransacking the temple offerings started to move faster.
“Shit, Harvald,” said Guilford. “I told you someone was watching us come in here.” He looked around in disdain. “Fucking hill people. All sorts of forbidden shit hidden up here in their caves and chasms, where the sunlight of our Divine King does not shine so brightly. An active temple? Getting in here was too easy. Where are the fucking guards? Where are the priests? Why no new guardian spirits?”
Harvald grinned casually down at them, perched on the shoulder of the great idol. “Come now, Guilford,” he called down. “The Nameless Cults might be forbidden but they can be found anywhere, even in the bright, prettily decayed streets of our beloved capital.”
“Aye,” agreed Stjepan, though he didn’t bother looking up from his work. “Even amongst the priests of the Sun Court of your Divine King.”
“You’re a heathen fucking Athairi bastard, Black-Heart,” Guilford replied, though there was no heat in his words and he grinned amiably. “You keep your Old Religion shit to yourself.”
“Stjepan may be Athairi and a heathen, but he’s our heathen,” said Harvald. He was the only one amongst them to always call Stjepan by his real name, Erim had noted.
Guilford gave a short bow. “Aye, one of the High King’s own fucking cartographers, at our service.”
“Aye, as long as all this remains our little secret,” Stjepan said. And with another grunt he succeeded in prying out the gemstone eye with a loud pop.
They moved in the dark with her now, her Nameless. Sharpened bone spears dipped in shit and poison, curved swords and wicked implements of pain and war, fierce masks of horn and brass, short horn bows pulled with fire-sharpened arrows; pride and despair filled her again. The roll of the bones had been bad, very bad, and so she whispered still, promising fresh blood and meat and spirits bound in chains, promising herself to her Liege for Him to do with as He pleased. She hoped that He heard her, hoped so very much that He did.
Harvald hefted the gem in his hand while Stjepan stuck his hand into the empty eye socket of the idol, searching.
“Look at the size of that gem,” Guilford said quietly.
Harvald smiled down at him. “Here, catch,” he said. He tossed the gemstone down to Guilford, and Erim’s eyes went wide and her heart leapt into her throat as it caught the torchlight in its blood-red facets tumbling through the air. In a flash she pictured it shattering against the stone floor, but it landed smoothly (albeit heavily) in Guilford’s hands. He grunted in surprise but didn’t drop it. Guilford weighed it for a second with a grin, then wrapped it in a soft cloth and slipped it into his shoulder bag, already crammed with cooper, silver, and gold coins. “As per our agreement,” Harvald called down.
“What, you’re just giving it to him?” Erim said, her mind boggled.
Harvald laughed. “Ah, young impressionable Erim. Things are never what they seem. Never get distracted by the obvious bright bauble.” Stjepan, having not found anything in the hollow space behind the right eye gem, scrambled across the top of the idol’s head to its left gemstone eye and he began working to pry it out; Harvald followed across the idol’s face as he spoke, using its nose and teeth and brow as hand and foot holds. “There’s treasure, and then there’s treasure. The real treasure here isn’t these gems, but what we hope to find behind them.”
Guilford leaned closer to Erim. “Don’t listen to the University boys, kid,” he said conspiratorially. “They’ll just get you deep in the shit. Better to stick to the simple things in life. Gold, wine, women . . . and gems the size of your fucking head.” He winked at her and she felt a little warm inside.
“Maybe the gems are fake?” she asked him. “You know, made of paste or something?” She’d heard of clever men who could do that back in Therapoli.
“No, I’m pretty sure they’re real,” Guilford said. “Red topakh crystals out of the mountains on the other side of the Red Wastes. They’re not as valuable as you might think, but these two specimens will fetch a high enough price for me to be able to buy myself a house back in Vesslos’ Free Quarter.”
Stjepan pried out the second gemstone with another loud pop.
She could hear them now, in the great temple, defiling it. Rage built inside her, displacing the fear, the hopelessness, and she whispered fiercely, summoning Him up from the dark depths of Hell. Something was coming, she could feel it now, but would it be too late? Did He come himself, or send a blessed servant?
Stjepan handed the second gemstone to Harvald, who tossed it down to Guilford. Stjepan didn’t mind giving up the crystals as part of the pay for Guilford and his crew, who were worth every penny amongst the dangers of the Manon Mole, but he still felt a pang of regret as the gem sailed through the air, and he silently wished that Harvald were not so cavalier about it. “Here, a matched set,” Harvald called down as Guilford caught it. Harvald, coming from the landed Orwain family, holding the Barony of Araswell, could shrug off a thousand shillings or two with nonchalant ease, but that was several years’ wages for Stjepan and most of the men.
“You two are fucking crazy,” Guilford said, shaking his head as he wrapped the second gem in cloth and slid it into his satchel. He hefted the satchel over his shoulder, tying a spare strap across his chest to secure it. It was very heavy now, and he gave himself a small shake to try and settle all the weight he was carrying properly.
Harvald grinned down at them. “Maybe, but you’re right here under the ground with us, yeah?”
“Too true, too true,” Guilford laughed. “A baseborn fool am I, am I, sings the bard.”
Stjepan tried to ignore them as he fished around in the second eye socket, biting his lower lip. This hollow was a little deeper than the first, and his fingertips brushed against something hidden far back within it. “Definitely something . . . ah, got it!” he said, and he slowly pulled out a long slender copper tube faintly inscribed in runes. Holding it carefully, he inspected it with narrow eyes.
He could see three different runes etched repeatedly in the copper surface, all from the Labira Grammata, sometimes called the Witch Runes of ancient Ürüne Düré, sometimes the Riven Runes. One was a ward rune useful against magic and divination; the second was a rune of structure, to give strength to the scroll tube; and the third a hex rune. The second and third runes were inscribed in touching pairs, so that in some way their magic was combined. The hex rune gave him pause; often they triggered at the mere sight of them. But he was protected by his own charms and amulets, and had
not felt or heard any of the usual signs that his own wards had been challenged by an active and dangerous spell. So something else, then, tied to the structure of the tube.
“Runes of warding against detection,” he said quietly to Harvald. “And against it being opened, I think. A hex of some kind on whoever does the deed.”
Stjepan moved back from the edge of the idol’s head so that Harvald could clamber up and look. The top of the idol’s head wasn’t perfectly flat, instead being slightly curved, but there was plenty of room for the two of them to settle in and spread out a bit. Harvald slipped a carefully wrapped torch from one of his satchels along with a small packet of powdered and enchanted ajuga flowers. He crushed the packet open in his palm and blew the contents onto the torch, and suddenly it bloomed with a heatless blue flame, lighting the top of the idol’s head so they could see what they were doing. Stjepan pulled a soft cloth from one of his satchels and set the scroll tube on it so it wouldn’t roll. The two of them looked at each other as they knelt and crouched over the scroll tube, Harvald with an irrepressible grin, Stjepan with a small smile finally tugging at the corner of his mouth.
Harvald reached into one of his satchels with his free hand and pulled out a small vial of clear elixir. Stjepan knew it would be a potent of the wormwood plant, prepared as a bane against enchantments. They started whispering the words of the cleansing rite together over the scroll tube, as Harvald poured a bit of the liquid in the vial onto it. “Demes matta, illume matta, porte a matta. Grammata illuso resistrata libri. Grammata libri. Porti ouset matta. Grammata illuso resistrata libri. Grammata libri!”
Stjepan could feel a bit of pressure building up behind his ears, as though he had climbed to a great height, and they both started repeating the words of the spell faster and faster as the pressure built. Stjepan started to feel dizzy, and fear gripped him that whoever had made the inscriptions had done so too well. But then the runes on the tube began to glow, faintly at first, then more strongly as though they were etched in liquid fire. The runes grew very bright, and for a moment Stjepan thought his head might burst, and then all of a sudden the runes fizzled and popped with smoke. They both froze in mid-syllable for a moment, and then relaxed as the runes dimmed.
Stjepan waved away the smoke as Harvald grinned and laughed.
“What’s in the tube, then?” called up Erim.
“If we’re lucky, a map,” Stjepan said with a slight cough.
Erim peered up at them. “What? A map? A map is worth more than these gems?” she asked. Guilford chuckled.
“Well, that depends on what the map is to,” Stjepan said. “How’d we get here, to this treasure, young Erim?”
Erim paused, thinking for a moment. “Well . . . a map, yeah?” she finally called up to him.
“Yes, copied from the cartographer’s archives at the High King’s Court,” Stjepan said as he inspected the ends of the tube until he found the seam of the cap on one end. “And how do we get to the next treasure?” Stjepan slowly uncapped the tube, and paused, holding his breath. When nothing happened, he relaxed and let out a long sigh. He tilted the tube and carefully slid out a rolled piece of parchment.
Slowly, slowly, her Nameless slid forward, filtering through the outer chambers, bristling with death and vengeance. Firelight flickered ahead from the great temple, and glistened off barbed points and horns and chains. Her fevered whispering dropped low. If only the roll of bones had not been so bad, she would have been filled with joyful gladness at the slaughter that was about to commence.
Erim smiled brightly. “Another map,” she said. “That map.”
Stjepan unfurled the parchment paper on top of the bronze idol’s head as gingerly as he could. He had spent a long time handling maps and papers that were centuries old and practically disintegrated in his hands, and he had no desire for their prize to be snatched away from them now that they were so close. But he was happily surprised that the parchment appeared to be soft and supple. As it opened, his tone became almost reverent. “For the likes of us, the map is always the thing,” he said quietly. “It leads us to the next prize, the next journey, full of possibilities and promise.” Stjepan spread the parchment out, slowly revealing a set of symbols, drawings, letters, and diagrams.
What a thing of beauty, he thought. His face relaxed into a smile for the first time in days, and he lost his train of thought staring at the map.
“Every map is a chance to remake ourselves and our fortunes, find a way out of the lives that imprison us,” Harvald said, picking up where Stjepan had left off, his tone almost as reverent. Almost. “And this map . . . if it’s what we think it is . . . this one could be a map to end all maps.”
“They’re fucking dreamers, kid, always looking for the treasure that will let them write their names in the history books,” said Guilford. He clapped a hand onto Erim’s shoulder. “Trust me, keep your eyes on the prize in your hands, the one you can actually touch, not the one in your mind’s eye that you can only get in your dreams.” She swallowed hard, looking up at his handsome face, feeling the warmth of his hand on her shoulder. Part of her wanted to melt inside. He didn’t seem to notice, and he turned and looked up the idol. “What’s this map supposed to be to, then, Black-Heart?”
“The Barrow of Azharad,” said Stjepan in a whisper, staring at the map. Harvald opened his mouth as if to stop him, and then just winced when he realized it was too late, and hoped that no one had heard what Stjepan had said.
But if a pin had dropped in that chamber then, it would have been as loud as a clarion bell.
She froze, hearing the words spoken in the great temple, and her Nameless froze with her. She had heard the words in the tongue of the lowlanders, the Middle Tongue: the Barrow of Azharad, one of them had said. She’d heard him as clear as day. And she was filled with rage and wonder and disbelief. Could it be true? Could such a Secret have been hidden inside her own temple all this time? She suddenly understood why the Servant of the Bright King was there. But in an instant she also knew she would have no part of the great endeavor, and she felt a hollow pit opening inside her, the rage and wonder turning to despair and giddy hope; she stifled a sob, and cursed the uncaring bones.
“What’d he fucking say?” hissed the Stick, standing tall and straight and with a frown on his face. They were all standing and looking up at the top of the idol now, the urns and offering pots forgotten.
“The Barrow of Azharad,” said Guilford quietly. His grip on Erim’s shoulder had suddenly gone hard, his fingertips digging into her flesh even through the doublet, but he didn’t realize what he was doing. She bit her lip against the pain, and against something else. Erim was a bit confused; she could sense the others in his crew coming closer, the sudden tension in the chamber.
“The Barrow of Azharad,” Guilford said again, and laughed suddenly. He’d heard any number of men, in any number of taverns and street corners, claim they were going after that barrow. Hell, he’d had any number of peddlers offer to sell him a map to it. Or to the tomb of Palé Meffiré and her enchanted horn, to the Barrow of Githwaine the Last Worm King, to the secret hiding place of the Throne Thief, to any of dozens of legendary hoards and treasures. And he’d known better each time, had laughed and moved on. But Harvald and Stjepan were different. Stjepan was different.
Stjepan didn’t bullshit.
Particularly there, in that place. Deep under the ground, standing before a great bronze idol of one of the Bharab Dzerek, with the blood of who knew how many victims smeared on its altar and its great phallic sacrificial spear, Guilford could feel it in his bones. There was no way Stjepan would bullshit him. Not about this. And he knew that map was real. He could feel it in his bones, and he laughed the laughter of a man who suddenly realized he was going to be rich beyond his wildest dreams. “You’re . . . you’re going after Gladringer. You’re going after fucking Gladringer,” Guilford said, having to repeat it to himself in order to get his head around the idea.
“Well,�
�� said Harvald faintly, smiling and trying to make the best of a bad situation. “If the map is real.”
“You fucking cheap bastards!” Guilford roared, suddenly very angry. Erim thought he was about to rip her arm right off. She hadn’t felt him draw it but his broadsword was in his free hand, the tip pointed up toward Harvald and Stjepan up above them. She wasn’t sure what to do. “You think to foist us off on these fucking coins and a pair of gems while you go after the sword of the fucking High Kings?”
Stjepan snapped out of his reverie and in an instant realized the mistake he had made. Cursing inwardly, he stood up on top of the idol, his head almost touching the ceiling, and looked down on Guilford and the others gathering on the other side of the great brazier below them. “Don’t worry, Guilford,” he said calmly. “You and your crew can be in on that job too. My word on it.”
“Black-Heart, you better fucking believe—”
She could hear the dissension in the great temple before them, and she took a deep breath and a step forward. This was their moment. As she did, so did her Nameless, and one of them accidentally let the barbed metal tip of his spear catch on a low-hanging arch. She whirled on the Nameless responsible, fixing him with the Evil Eye, but the damage was done.
She cursed the bones. They were always right.
Guilford cut himself off before finishing his sentence; almost everyone on the temple floor turned to the left as one and raised their shields and weapons.
The sound they’d all heard from the dark of the outer chambers, despite their fixed attention on the sudden prospect of fame and fortune, had been unmistakable.