"He became cruel and bloodthirsty," Jhar added, when Jorem's voice failed him. "He had put to death some of his own generals whom he believed plotted against him. Loyal men who had endured many hardships for his glory and who would have followed him anywhere. He tortured confessions out of them. When he left here, all were happy to see him go."
"It is no coward who fears what is in there, sire," Jorem concluded, having collected himself.
"Or what comes out," Jhar said. "Death or madness awaits those who enter, Hurrus."
"Or great power," Hurrus said, unmoved.
"Or great power," Jhar agreed reluctantly. "No man can tell you which."
"But men can tell you that I am a true Son of Kunuum. Can't they, Jhar? Your Faceless Man saw it - and your Mejadym knew it too, didn't they, Jorem?"
Jorem bowed his head. "The Mejadym feared your strength, Hurrus. We saw Xarhux in you. We love and fear him to this day. Power coupled with madness…"
Jhar laid a palm against the bricks. "Beyond this wall is what the ancients called 'The Blood Gate,' so named after the condition of the first men who dared enter. The bodies of those it spit out were truly bathed in blood. It is a portal to the land of the gods…or so it is said. The first ancients to enter were spit out, bloody corpses, the last - an initiate into the order of Kunuum - never came back at all. His body remained as if in sleep, but his spirit was gone. He woke only long enough to scream as though in great pain. The ancient priests kept him alive. Finally, counting his spirit irrevocably lost, they allowed him to pass from starvation. After that, they sealed it and the seal held for a thousand years."
"The weak enter and die," Hurrus said.
They heard footsteps approaching in the darkness. "I could find only one hammer," Xandros said as he stepped into the light of Jhar's torch.
Xandros passed the long-handled sledgehammer to Hurrus. He grasped it with one hand and the hammer immediately plunged headfirst to the floor with a dry clank. It would take a strong man to wield such a tool. Hurrus hefted it with two hands and gave it back to Xandros.
"Xandros," he said, "you are my Arrhus. Bring this wall down."
"Hurrus, I beg you..."
"Do it!"
Xandros angrily spit in his palms and lifted the sledge, gripping it near the head and towards the end of the thick wooden handle. He reared back and swung. A cloud of mortar dust erupted from the wall and chips of broken bricks fell to the floor.
He reared again, his muscles straining, but before he could bring the hammer down, Jorem seized the handle and tried to wrench it from his grasp.
"I cannot allow this." Jorem's voice was a deep rumble. Hurrus saw the white of his clenched teeth flash inside the nest of his black whiskers. Xandros' arms were too strong for him and the larger, younger man wrestled the hammer free, throwing Jorem to the floor.
"You have no say here," Xandros snarled. He had been distrustful of Jorem from the first moment he had ridden into their lines. Xandros was no Tygetian and Hurrus knew he resented Jorem's constant presence among them. "This is no Mejadym matter. I'll let you know if we need a hired blade to slide a shiv between someone's ribs."
"You'll regret that remark," Jorem said. He rolled onto his elbow to lift himself from the floor, but Xandros kicked him down again.
"The wall is best left intact, but if the prince wills it, I will tear it down. And you will shut your mouth and watch me do it."
"I would be little more than a criminal if I let you kill this boy…"
Xandros' face turned red. In a single powerful motion, he brought the hammer down. Jorem rolled out from under the massively heavy blow. The hammer cracked the stone where just an instant before Jorem's head had rested. He sprang to his feet, and stood before Xandros, wary and unarmed. Xandros let go of the hammer and drew his sword. The hammer stood erect on its head, its handle quivering. He took a step towards the Mejadym man. Jorem turned and ran into the darkness, stopping just before he was lost to sight.
"I'll not die to stop you, but neither will I be party to this madness. If you want to kill yourselves, go ahead."
He turned away and they saw him no more.
Without a word, Xandros sheathed his sword, took up the hammer and swung at the wall, his anger fueling the might of his blows. He clenched his teeth and swung once, and then twice more, hardly pausing. Dust swirled and chips of broken bricks littered the floor at his feet.
When he rested, sweat was already glistening on his bulging arms. "You say I am your Arrhus," Xandros growled, his chest heaving. "Well, you can believe it. For, like him, I will not be following you inside, either."
He reared back again and brought the hammer crashing down, taking another bite out of Jhar's wall.
Chapter 34
Xandros' hammer crashed through the wall into empty space. When he tried to yank it back, the head stuck. He turned it this way and that as he pulled and each time the head caught on the bricks that framed the opening. Finally, he leaned forward and heaved back with all of his strength. The hammer broke free, bringing a trio of cracked bricks crashing from the wall with it.
Hurrus felt a sudden blast of cold air. He pushed Xandros aside and tried to peer through the opening. He could feel the air, but he could not see a thing through the swirling motes of dust. Spitting the dust from his mouth, he stepped back to give Xandros more room. The opening was too small.
Three or four more swings of the hammer was all it took. Hurrus grabbed the extra torch Jhar had fetched for him and rushed to the hole. Inside, he saw a corridor no different than the one in which he stood, leading off into darkness.
His heart sank. What had he expected to see? Treasure? Or perhaps Kunuum himself? Whatever marvelous things Xarhux had gazed upon were nowhere in sight now.
"Give me a hand. I'm going in."
He gave Jhar his torch and Xandros braced himself and bent his knee, giving Hurrus a platform to step up. Hurrus climbed onto his knee and then pulled himself into the hole to the waist. He paused to balance his weight, and then heaved himself through. Inside, he fell gently to the floor.
Jhar's torches cast an orange glow through the hole into the corridor where Hurrus stood. Certainly, he had sensed something within, a presence of man or beast. He moves… Jhar had said. But it was as disappointing from this side of the wall as it had been from the other. Hurrus considered that there was a chance that whatever had been entombed here for a thousand years Xarhux had set free.
Or unleashed.
If anything remained of the Blood Gate, it was in there, he thought, peering into the darkness.
"Jhar, my torch," he called, reaching back through the opening. "And not a word," he added quickly in warning. Silently, Jhar handed him the torch, perhaps remembering that the last man to protest had had a hammer crack stones that, but for good fortune alone, might have been his skull.
Hurrus turned to Xandros. "Wait here for me," he said. "I'll be right back."
"Hurrus…" Xandros began.
Hurrus turned and walked quickly into the darkness, the torch lighting his way.
"Hurrus, I beg you to reconsider." Xandros' words chased him through the dark tunnel. Hurrus did not look back. He was following the path of Xarhux now, step for step. For a thousand years, no man but he had walked this ground. No man but Xarhux - and now Hurrus, both to lead armies out of Tygetia. "What you are doing is foolish…" The words were small and weakening, growing as dim in his ears as the pinpoint of light that shone through Jhar's wall. "Hurrus!" By the time he turned the corner, the sound had faded away completely.
He was alone in the dark tunnel, its rough hewn walls splashed with the orange light of his torch. He heard no sound and he saw no hint of movement nor felt any presence. The corridor was wide enough that even with his torch burning he could not see both walls at once. Thus, he walked close to one side, letting his palm feel the contours of the cold, rough stones as he passed. Touching them, he felt tethered to a safe mooring as though the darkness beyond was an unknow
n black sea. The floor was by turns bare earth and crumbling pavement. Undisturbed dust coated the dressed stones wherever they had not crumbled away. For a moment, he entertained the idea of scouring the floor for footprints, to find the very steps of Xarhux himself. His own feet left long skid marks in the dust, so surely Xarhux's steps could still be seen…
But he dared not venture away from the security of his wall. Who knew what he might find out there in the black void - Xarhux's steps veiled in a thin coating of dust or giant cloven hoof prints, clean and bright? He cursed his cowardice. If anything had wandered these halls after Jhar's wall had gone up, he did not want to know of it. Best to leave the night to unknown terrors.
And to the voices...
…to the voices that began whispering in the darkness beyond the light of his torch. The sound was so faint, the voices so numerous and intermingled that he could not make out a single word so that he believed it was a stray wind finding its way through cracks in the ceiling or walls and not voices at all. But there seemed to be intelligence behind them. When he stopped and squinted into the darkness, the sounds abruptly ceased, as if he had caught them discussing him. When he resumed walking, the whispering led him deeper into the blackness.
His hand followed the wall until he found his fingers grasping a corner. An opening had been carved out of the solid rock and he saw that it led into a bleak chamber. He stepped up onto a platform and stood beneath a stone grating that emitted faint light and a hint of fresh air from above. He knelt, passing his torch over the floor. He saw that it was stained with a black spattering like spilled paint. Then it dawned on him. He was standing where acolytes had been bathed in the blood of the slaughtered bull. It was what Jhar had described as a corruption of the ritual. He held his torch high above his head and could see calcified drippings hanging from the slats of stone, like little black stalactites. The chamber was rough and unadorned. He could easily imagine blood spilling down upon him from above, and for a moment he thought he could smell death, too.
He left the chamber and continued along the corridor. After a time, he no longer felt the rough grittiness of bare rock beneath his fingers, but smooth stone and neatly chiseled lines. When he looked he saw a wall of polished blocks filled from floor to ceiling with ancient picture writing, colorfully painted. Only skilled priests could ever hope to decipher it. Hurrus felt uneasy in its presence as if such arcane devices could only convey sinister magical spells and only a lunatic would carve them with such exuberance and precision. The floor was now solid and he found sconces set in the wall holding cold torches. He tried to light them with his own, but they fell away to ash at the slightest touch.
The end of the corridor lay just ahead. The picture writing spilled from the walls onto the floor here. Patterns of geometric shapes covered the stone tiles, triangles and circles, symbols which Hurrus thought must be meant to represent the earth as the stars on the ceiling depicted the heavens. He was studying them when he suddenly became aware that he was not alone. A shape stood in the gloom at the end wall.
A shape that resolved itself into the form of a man.
A bull-man.
He lifted his torch with a start and the light illuminated Kunuum in stone, standing in inscrutable silence, painted in the colors of life. Hurrus chuckled at the jolt the thing had given him. Yet, it was so lifelike, he wanted to press a finger into its stone-flesh to see if there was any give to it. This one left him with the same impression as the giant bull-men at the front of the temple - that he could step away from his wall and move freely as he willed it.
If so, it had been a while since he had willed it, for the fingers of one hand were frozen in a circle around some missing object that had either rotted away to dust or had been stolen by ancient robbers. Either way, Kunuum had not bothered to procure himself a replacement, and Hurrus found it oddly comforting that he had not been able to prevent the loss of the original, whatever it had been.
The giant temple Kunuums watched the countryside for miles around, but this one watched a simple opening in the wall, an ancient archway that led into a chamber to Hurrus' left. When he investigated it with his torch, he was overcome with a feeling of dread. The archway itself had been bricked over at one time. Broken bricks still clung to the frame of the opening like bad teeth. The rest had been smashed in and cleared away long ago. Hurrus suspected the ancients of sealing more and more of the tunnel and chambers as the years went by. It might have been that the wall Xarhux had broken open was only the latest of many.
He felt he was close to the Blood Gate now. The whisperings were behind him, no longer enticing him on, but pushing him forward. He thrust his torch under the arch and the small chamber inside burst into view.
Kunuum knelt on the wall, ten feet high, sowing stars from his fist. They seemed to spring from his fingers, a fountain of stars filling the wall and spilling onto the ceiling. Releasing souls to the heavens, it was the same depiction of the bull-man that he had seen in Nadia's tomb. On the wall opposite stood Kunuum, the Deathbringer, holding a golden staff against the black field of a starless night. His sightless eyes had a somehow satisfied look, his belly full and his jaws smeared with the blood of the damned.
Now was the time for second thoughts.
A man-sized marble slab stood hopefully beneath the star-sowing Kunuum, deceptively silent and plain. What rituals had been performed here? Hurrus ran his hand over the smooth cold stone. Should he lay upon it, as seemed to be its purpose? Had Xarhux lain here? Had the soulless acolyte who had screamed in pain? He decided against it. He needed no priest to tell him that when the acolyte laid upon the stone, the time for second thoughts had passed. He preferred to keep his options open.
On the third wall was another black archway leading to…nothing. Hurrus passed his torch across the opening, but no light penetrated its blackness. It was not a solid wall, but neither was it a passage to another chamber or corridor beyond. Carefully, he poked the torch into the opening. It vanished as thoroughly as if it had been lopped off by a razor and the chamber became dark as night. He pulled it back with a start. The torch reappeared as out of thin air, burning as brightly as before. The wall itself was of living rock, the carefully laid bricks of the archway a mere façade decorating a natural fissure. He knew what he had found. Not the passage to another chamber, but a portal to another world. The doorway to the land of the gods.
The Blood Gate.
His torch had gone in and come back out. Would it be any different for him? He stuck his hand in this time. It disappeared to his wrist, lopped off as neatly as had been his torch. He pulled it back, wriggling his fingers, none the worse for wear.
Did he dare enter?
Xarhux had dared.
And when he had re-emerged, he was...
(Mad!)
...more than a man.
Hurrus stepped forward. Of course, he would go in. He must be not only as ten men, but ten thousand. Where but the Blood Gate could this be made to happen? His leg was sliced off at the thigh and then he was engulfed in blackness.
He could not see his feet. The ground beneath his sandals was spongy and mist coiled around his calves like clinging vines. As he continued to walk, he could not tell what time of day it was, nor from what direction the sun shone. Shadows lurked behind the moist haze, murky masses of trees, black heaps of rock, a ruined temple. Where was he?
Hurrus whirled.
He expected to see the backside of the archway, but he saw only a gray sheet of fog. Panic gripped him and he ran to where the opening should have been. Perhaps the fog was thick enough to hide the passage. He made it only a few steps before his foot caught on a root or stone and he fell splashing to the sodden ground. By his reckoning, he should have fallen right into Kunuum's chamber. He looked up but detected no trace of an archway or temple wall. Rising to his feet, he waved his hands into the mist and felt nothing but damp air swirling through his fingers. Apparently, getting back was not to be as simple a matter as leaving had been. Th
e time for second thoughts had passed.
He turned back around, thinking it must be the way forward, though, in truth no direction appeared different than any other. There was no path to follow and no landmarks, except perhaps the shadow of the ruined temple. He walked toward it.
He could make out little more of it than a skeletal line of columns atop a shallow platform. Weeds had sprouted up in the cracks of its paved courtyard and one of the fluted columns had toppled over and had rolled to the base of the steps, where it lay covered in moss.
A shadow darted between two of the columns.
Another shadow detached itself from the gloom of the temple floor and seemed to peek at him before flitting away.
A murky heap he had taken for an outcropping of natural rock opposite the temple turned out to be a jumbled pile of masonry stones. He felt a presence there, but when he snapped his head around to look, he saw nothing but the hazy outline of a tree that had grown among the blocks. That was when a shadow flitted again between columns.
His eyes darted from the stones to the temple in consternation. Wraiths moved behind the veil of fog all around him but only when he looked away. When he looked directly at a thing, he detected no movement at all. He could not look everywhere at once.
"I see you there," he called in no particular direction. "You're not frightening me." But saying it aloud only made him feel afraid. He reached for his sword and found that it was gone. His sword belt was missing. Could it have been wrenched from his waist when he had fallen? Was it possible?
He took a step and immediately plunged to his chest in a hidden bog. His legs were mired in muck halfway to his knees. A pair of snakes slithered out of the reeds at the edge of the pool, gliding soundlessly through the water. He tried to lift his foot out of the sucking mud, but it was loathe to release him.
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