The Scarab Path sota-5

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  She was impressed by that. 'The echo's changed because one of the doors is open.' It had been a long haul for her to get that far, a seemingly timeless eternity down here beneath the earth. Those carvings were not intended to be read by some Beetle-kinden freak who just happened to be Inapt. Achaeos would have been able to make easy sense of them, but when she most needed his ghostly presence he was gone, lost somewhere far away from her, or hiding deep in her mind. The carvings had been a test, she was sure, and one that she did not deserve to have passed. The task had called on something inside her that she had not even realized she possessed — something that she surely had not possessed before Achaeos's death, and the catastrophic backlash that had maimed her mind. Or perhaps he was guiding me after all, in ways too subtle for me to tell. It had been like practising Art-enhancing meditation, which she had never been able to manage. Her concentration had not been up to that, but then it had never meant life or death before.

  She had sat there in the dark, sealed room and pressed her mind into the places that the builders had left, like picking a lock with a crude, improvised tool. Whilst Thalric slept, she had laboured at it for hours, constantly slipping and faltering, losing her train of thought, succumbing to distraction, until she had taken hold of her mind with a grip of iron and just done it.

  Thalric had stood and was now walking forward, hands extended. 'What's out there? What do you see?' he asked. 'Can we get out?'

  'It doesn't seem to link up with anywhere we've already been, or not within sight at least,' she told him. 'It … goes on for a long way. There's a great hall, high-ceilinged and vaulted, with alcoves all along it. I haven't left this room yet, to investigate, so maybe some of them are actually other passages. The carvings are everywhere but I haven't gone to look at them.' In case the door closed again and I could not reopen it. She did not say that, but she saw him understand her.

  'I suppose we start walking then,' he suggested. 'I shall put a hand on your shoulder, like a blind man, shall I?'

  He managed it only after a little clutching at thin air, then touching her injured shoulder first and making her wince. She set out slowly, trying to open her mind to whatever other signs it could apparently now register. There might be more traps, after all.

  Their soft footfalls echoed cavernously in the open space, even muffled by the slime: it all seemed vastly too large for them. Che's vision could just reach to the far end of the hall, where there was a dais with something on it. A throne? Down here?

  'What is this place anyway?'Thalric murmured. 'It seems too grand for sewers. Cool enough to be a storeroom, but … the air's damp. I can smell mould, a little.'

  'I think …' Her courage failed her for a moment and then she pressed on. 'I think it's a tomb.'

  A pause while he digested that, and then said, 'Well, that's a cheery thought.'

  'They never spoke of this place, or of the pyramid,' Che remarked. 'It was always right there, in front of the Scriptora, at the very heart of the city, and they just overlooked mentioning it as though it was invisible. Which means that it's important. I think the word the Khanaphir would use is "sacred". They avoid the subject out of respect.'

  'Respect for what?' Even hushed, their voices resonated down the length of the hall.

  'For the only thing that they reserve such a degree of respect for,' Che said. 'The Masters. Their lost Masters who still dominate everything they ever do. The Masters, who haven't been seen since before the revolution. Not that the revolution ever reached here.' And when I myself dreamt of the city's past, when I took the Fir, I saw the square before the Scriptora and the pyramid was not there. That was the city of the Masters, when they still lived. 'The Masters of Khanaphes are dead,' she said. 'They've been dead a very long time indeed, for all that the Ministers have kept their name alive. And this is the last testimony to their rule. This is their tomb.'

  'Guarded with traps,' Thalric reflected. 'I have heard of such things. There are people who make a living out of cracking open tombs like this. The yolk inside is often golden, I understand. Do you think we'll find a king's treasury?'

  'Would you like that?'

  'I wouldn't object to filling my pockets, now it seems I'm freelancing again.'

  A shiver went through Che, an innate reaction of innate revulsion. 'That's disrespectful,' she chided, unsure precisely where this thought came from.

  'What have these Masters done to earn my respect?' he argued. 'Aside from cripple their own people until a rabble of Scorpions with a few siege engines can barge in and level their city.' Che had halted suddenly, so that he nearly ran into her. 'What is it? Don't tell me now you've become a convert?'

  'I …' She had wanted to say 'look', but that would have been meaningless. Instead she said, 'I see …' For a moment she could find no further words for it. 'Garmoth Atennar,' she said. 'Lord of the Fourth House, whose Bounty Exceeds all Expectations, Greatest of Warriors.'

  'Che?' Thalric demanded, but she pulled forward out of his grip and knelt down, smoothing slime away from the inscription.

  'That's what it says here,' she whispered, 'on his tomb.'

  'Che, tell me what you see.'

  'There is a great stone slab here, a giant block cut into … a coffin, it must be. And on the side they have written those words. And on the top …'

  It was an effigy of a man, carved as if sleeping: ten feet from head to toe and heavy-framed, cut in white stone with a skill and delicacy that Che marvelled at — and had seen before. Those statues atop the pyramid, the giants who fronted the Estuarine Gate, they were all of a kind with this man. His stone features were proud, handsome and heartless, and Che was glad they had been cut with closed eyes. Even a semblance of waking life might have seemed too much in that perfect, imperious face.

  'Garmoth Atennar,' she repeated softly.

  Thalric felt his way forward, touched the statue and recoiled, his fingers trailing strings of slime.

  'You were right enough, then,' he said. 'So much for the Masters of Khanaphes. I suppose all those people above are probably now waiting for the dead bastards to come back and save them.'

  'Yes. Yes, they are,' Che replied, standing up and stepping back. There was a feeling of loss, of tragedy, about this place, much more than could be lent to it by the simple word 'tomb'. It signified the death, unrealized and unacknowledged, of an entire era of history, leaving only an unnaturally extended shadow of itself, a mummer's show enacted by increasingly uncomprehending slaves. There was a chasm of time and place between herself and those aristocratic stone features, one that she could never bridge.

  'Of no kinden I have ever known,' Che stated. 'If his body was laid here within the stone then the carving must be greater than life-size, but even so … Thalric, if this is a tomb … people don't usually build tombs with exits. We might still be in trouble.'

  'The air moves,' he observed, and she was surprised she herself had not noticed it. His blindness had obviously made him aware of things that she overlooked. 'The air moves, and is cool and moist. There is a way out of here, and it is to the river — though why build a tomb with river access I do not know. Can you swim?'

  'I don't know.'

  She saw him smile at that reply. 'I can swim. I can swim with you, if I have to. Lead us to the river, and I will get us both out.'

  She turned towards the far end of the hall, towards the throne that she had dimly noticed before.

  Her heart froze.

  The throne was occupied.

  Sulvec landed on the roof beside the BeetleVastern, dropping immediately into a crouch. Around them the other Wasps — Marger and the handful of soldiers he still had left — were also setting down. Three of them were guiding a foundering Osgan through the air, twisting his injured arm whenever he faltered.

  'It is a joy to be in a city where nobody ever looks up,' Marger remarked, and Sulvec shot him a venomous look.

  'Well, if you feel that way, then perhaps I can arrange for you to be posted here permanently.' Sin
ce Sulvec had taken over the operation, he had felt a certain sense of friction with Marger. The Beetle, ranking Rekef among the agents who had accompanied Thalric here, was cooperative enough, but Marger had plainly grown too used to his fake authority. Also, Sulvec suspected that he was finding the business of turning on his former companion slightly straining. He was Rekef Outlander, after all: he had not been properly hardened in the Inlander fires.

  Marger just shrugged, in that irritating way of his, and went off to secure the gasping Osgan. The prisoner was a liability to them, Sulvec knew, but there was a chance that his suffering would cause Thalric sufficient concern to draw him in. The Rekef never disposed of a potential tool until it was well and truly broken. Indeed, sometimes the breaking of it was the point.

  'Report,' Sulvec instructed.

  'All quiet until maybe fifteen minutes ago,' Corolly Vastern told him. 'Then someone comes pelting up the steps from the direction of the embassies, and just drops straight inside, quick as you like. I marked him as Ant-kinden, which suggests one of the Vekken, although he went so fast that I couldn't be absolutely sure.'

  'There's always the chance that he broke both his legs and is still lying at the bottom,' the Beetle suggested. 'Not known for their airborne, the Ant-kinden.'

  'That shaft is easily scalable, if you have the Art,' Sulvec said, dismissing him. 'So the Vekken are allied with the Collegiates?'

  'That's the way it looked, from the job on the embassy,' Corolly confirmed with a grimace. There had been few enough survivors to tell the tale.

  Sulvec took a long breath, staring up at the pyramid in the gathering dusk. 'We will have to make our entrance, and ensure that Thalric is dead. Or make him dead, if he has the poor grace to be still alive.' He became aware that his hands were flexing nervously, so he clenched them into easy fists, trying to appear calm to his men. He still recalled the way he had felt the previous night, however he might try to explain it away. 'We have to go in,' he repeated, looking at them each in turn. The other Wasps shuffled unhappily. Only Vastern, who had not been there the night before, nodded readily.

  'We've all seen the orders,' the Beetle agreed. 'Thalric must be dead at all costs. So let's kill him and get out of here while there's still a city to get out of.'

  Sulvec fought down his feelings of dread. 'Follow me over to the top of the pyramid.' Before he could have second thoughts, he had called up his wings and coasted over to the jumble of statues that ringed the pit. The irregularity of their placing bothered him, random enough that he could not have sworn that there were the same number and arrangement as before. They must have given up before they finished constructing this monument, whatever it is. But there was no real sense of absence, only an instinct that whatever pattern the statues had been laid out in was one that his own mind could not grasp.

  They had all followed him, the other Wasps, even Osgan and his forcible escorts. The prisoner dropped to his knees as soon as he was released, almost toppling forward into the narrow abyss. He was whimpering, but not from pain. He knows something about this place, Sulvec thought.

  'What's down there?' he growled, crouching by their wretched prisoner. Osgan ignored him, trembling and sobbing quietly to himself, till Sulvec clutched his collar, hauling the man up to face him. 'You tell me what you know,' he warned. 'What's down there?'

  Osgan stared at him wildly, eyes red in a grey face. 'The death that comes for Emperors,' he replied, quite clearly, and something stabbed deep inside Sulvec, an echo of last night's fear. He dropped Osgan, turning the gesture into an angry one, his eyes challenging any of his men to make an issue of it.

  Corolly Vastern had caught them up, slogging his way on foot up the steps. 'There's not a light on in the Scriptora again,' he remarked. 'It's like they know we're here, and they're trying to ignore us.'

  'You think it's a trap?' Sulvec asked him.

  'I don't know what to think, but a trap could be the least of it,' the Beetle replied. 'Something got Gram and Dreker last night. If I could make a suggestion, sir?'

  'Make it.'

  'I'll go first.'

  'Why?' Sulvec was instantly suspicious. He felt absolutely on edge here, amongst the statues overlooking the coolly breathing pit. Everything seemed like a threat, a challenge. He tried to calm himself.

  'I can see in the dark, with my Art, and I can climb down the walls,' Vastern explained. 'If there's an ambush below, from Thalric and the Vekken, say, then either I'll see their lights, or they won't be able to see me. When I get down, I'll signal if it's safe.'

  It was absurd that a man in Sulvec's position should be putting more faith and trust in an inferior kinden than in his own kind, but the other Wasps were clearly not at their best. Marger's expression was openly rebellious, and the rest weren't far off.

  I didn't join the Rekef Inlander to make friends, Sulvec reminded himself harshly. 'Do it,' he snapped, and Corolly approached the pit, feeling round the edge and examining the glistening slime left on his gloved fingers.

  'Lovely,' the Beetle muttered. He had strung his crossbow in a moment, and now slung it over his shoulder. Then he perched on the pit's edge for a second, hunched forward and, hands clamping to the side, descended head-first down the shaft.

  They waited for a long time, hearing barely a scuffle or a clink from him, all crouching in the statues' shadows. The sheer scale of the stone figures was beginning to oppress Sulvec. Standing straight, his head would barely come past their waists, and their faces above him were obscurely intimidating. They made him feel small.

  'There, sir!' one of his men called out, and he peered over the edge into the darkness. A tiny spark was dancing there, as the flame of Vastern's steel lighter flickered on and off at intervals. He counted the pattern.

  'That's it. We go down.' Sulvec expected to feel once more the clutching grasp of fear, but his decision passed unmarked. His men were all staring at him expectantly, and he knew that, if he did not go next, neither would they.

  He stood at the edge and stepped off, letting his wings catch him as he fell down the stone-walled shaft until he felt the sides widen out. The darkness below was almost total, save for what waning light still came from above. One by one the others joined him. Osgan and Marger descended together, landing awkwardly in a tangle of limbs.

  'Report, Vastern,' Sulvec said.

  'Three passageways running parallel, the centre one blocked off by a stone block the size of a house. There's … a boot sticking out from under the block. Army issue.'

  Sulvec heard the uneasy shuffling of his men. 'Any sign of Thalric or the others?'

  'No sign of anyone, but the clear passages head off as far as I can see. This place is big.'

  'Light a lantern. Keep it low and shuttered.'

  He did not have to ask twice. One of his men carried a little gas lamp, and even the faintest glow from it was welcome.

  'If Thalric's under that stone, he's gone,' Vastern observed.

  'If,' Sulvec replied. Trust the bastard to go and die in a way that we can't check. 'We'll move deeper in. If he survived at all, we should find some trace of him.' None of them liked the suggestion but that wasn't the point. 'Vastern, walk ahead of the lamp, quiet as you can. We'll take the left-hand way first.'

  'Right, sir.' Moving surprisingly softly for a bulky Beetle, Corolly Vastern padded off into the darkness with his crossbow levelled. Dark-sight, Sulvec understood. A useful Art, but rare. Perhaps we should try to breed Beetle-kinden for it. The Wasps were creatures of the day, and night attacks had caused havoc among them several times during their war with the Lowlanders.

  He gave Vastern a long enough count to get well ahead, then gestured for his men to follow him, using the faint gleam of the lantern to navigate by. It was tempting to turn the flame up, but Thalric and the others could be waiting there in the pitch dark, watching for the faintest glimmer. In which caseVastern will see them before they see him. In the back of his mind ran the litany: Be dead, Thalric. Be dead and let us find your
corpse.

  Then he spotted the Beetle ahead, waiting for them. 'What is it?' he hissed. 'You've noticed movement?'

  'Not movement, but signs.' Vastern gestured at the floor, which showed Sulvec precisely nothing. 'It's hard to see but there's been a disturbance here. That slime, that's everywhere here, it's been disturbed. Looked odd to my sight, and now the lamp really shows it up. Tracks, more than one.'

  'Thalric and the Beetle girl?'

  'Best guess,' Vastern confirmed.

  'Then follow him and find him and kill him,' Sulvec managed to get out. The dark and the weight of stone above were oppressive. 'Or perhaps we'll start cutting his friend up, until he comes to investigate. Either way I want him dead before dawn, and then I want us out of this city.'

  'No argument there, sir,' concurred Vastern wholeheartedly.

  Che had recoiled with a strangled cry, tumbling into Thalric and nearly knocking him backwards onto the effigy-crowned tomb.

  'What, what is it?' he demanded, hand outstretched and directed futilely at nothing he could see.

  'I …' Che took a deep breath, a better look. Her heart was still hammering from the shock. For just a moment … 'It's nothing. It's — I just got a bit of a fright, that's all. The throne …'

  'The what?'

  'At the far end of this hall there's a throne. Only — it's not empty.'

  Thalric said nothing, waiting for more. Che took his sleeve and they both took a few steps closer until she was absolutely sure. 'Armour,' she explained. 'There's a suit of armour sitting there. Hammer and tongs, but it gave me a start.'

  She edged closer, then closer still, because the scale and the repeating ribs of the hall's buttresses played tricks. 'Look at that,' she breathed.

  'I can't,' Thalric pointed out. Che continued to stare, trying to take it in.

  'It must be the oldest suit of sentinel plate in the world,' she decided. It was true plate armour, an intricate suit of interlocking pieces that had been posed as if its missing occupant was deep in thought, elbow on knee, with the raised gauntlet supporting the edge of the open-faced helm. It must be wired together, she thought, staring into the cavernous emptiness of the helmet, and then realized: The slime is holding it together, like glue. 'It's absolutely huge,' she said, shaken. 'It would fit a Mole Cricket-kinden, I'd guess.' It was made to fit one of those statues, came the next irresistible thought, but she shook it off. Perhaps that stone coffin held only ashes, or perhaps they had folded up Garmoth Atennar before putting him inside. Perhaps the box was actually the mouth of a pit and they had buried him standing up, or even standing on his head. She didn't know, so there was no reason to get jumpy about it. Garmoth Atennar, Greatest of Warriors, sitting silently upright on his plinth, those dead stone eyes opening at last.