by David Drake
A teardrop of green volcanic glass hung from a silver tripod. Silyon wailed to it, “Great Beast, master of this world and all worlds, accept the offering we made you. Strike the queen your enemy—”
Laughter, three-voiced and so loud it seemed to fill the sky, rocked the clearing. The obsidian bead danced to the hellish merriment.
“—and her bestial minions!” Silyon shrieked. He didn't notice the horsemen's arrival.
Garric slipped from his saddle. The small buckler strapped to his back bounced against his kidneys; he should have cinched it tighter. He let his nervous mount scamper off because there was no time to tether it.
Garric grasped Silyon by the shoulder and pulled him to his feet. The tripod fell over on the grass.
“Where's Liane?” Garric shouted, though he already knew. A rope attached to a fallen cornice led to the well curb, where it had been freshly severed.
“Accept our offering!” Silyon cried. Cackling, he toppled backward on the ground. “Accept—”
Besimon ran his sword through Silyon's upper chest, then slashed the wizard's throat to the spine for good measure. “I should have done that a year ago,” he muttered as he wiped his blade on Silyon's tunic.
Garric looked over the well curb. He didn't know what he expected to see: rough stonework and darkness, he supposed.
Liane was fifty feet below. At her side was the sash Ilna had woven her, now a tangle of threads. Marks on the well curb showed where ropes had rubbed in the past, but there was no sign below of the burdens they had lowered.
Liane and the stone floor on which she stood were illuminated by pulsing orange-red light. She turned her head as though trying to catch the source of a sound or to focus on motion caught in the corner of her eyes.
“Liane!” Garric called. She didn't look up. Liane's fingers were tented together before her so that she at least appeared composed.
The carriage swung to a crashing stop behind Garric. The iron tire of its right front wheel had powdered a weathered marble transom. Garric turned, Ilna jumped off the vehicle as quickly as the two Blood Eagles. The younger wizard was helping his crippled fellow out of the box while the driver fought the reins of his four horses.
The team was trained for roads rather than overgrown tracks through the forest, but more than that made them nervous. A lowering evil hung over this place.
“Bring the line,” Garric said to Besimon. He checked the laces attaching his scabbard to the sword belt, then pulled the end of the shield strap so that the round of iron-bound birch wouldn't flop no matter how he twisted in his descent. “Liane's there, and I'm going down.”
A soldier tossed his officer the coil of rope from the carriage. Besimon belayed the free end to a column barrel, then carried the coil to the well. “I'll lead, Your Majesty,” he said.
“No,” Garric said, “you won't. I'll go down alone while you and your men guard the rope and my friends here while they chant their spell.”
“He took the line from Besimon and dropped it over the curb. It writhed as though alive, trailing its way down.
“The three of us have to be inside the chamber if we're to open it for you to get out,” Cerix said. “Alos, Mistress Ilna, and I.”
Halphemos supported Cerix's right arm, a soldier the other. They'd walked Cerix forward with his stumps dangling in the air. The chair's small wheels would have been useless on this overgrown terrain.
“All of you?” Garric said, looking at the assortment doubtfully. “I thought you could—”
He shrugged. “Work out here, the way Silyon did.”
Cerix smiled grimly as the men carrying him set him down. “I wonder precisely what we would open if we spoke the Yellow King's Key here?” he said musingly. “Not the vault of the Beast, I'm sure; though very likely the result for the world would be equally bad.”
A spasm of pain racked Cerix's visage. Garric's eyes narrowed as he considered the cripple's state.
“There's nothing wrong with my arms!” Cerix said sharply.
Ilna toed the dead wizard's face so that she could look at him squarely. She sniffed. “I wonder how many women made this trip before me?” she asked. “Well, perhaps I'll be the last.”
“Right,” Garric said. He raised the line and looped it around his left boot, holding it in place with the toe of the other foot. The leather of his instep would take most of the friction of the descent.
He swung his legs over the well curb and started down. It didn't surprise him that Ilna insisted on coming next.
Garric's sword swung. The shield, though it was now firm against his rib cage, changed Garric's center of balance so that he hung in an almost horizontal posture. Garric's helmet was a simple cup with a camail of iron rings to cover the back of his neck. Halfway down it fell off.
Garric's first thought was a surge of relief that he was rid of the uncomfortable burden; and after he thought about it, he couldn't see much to quarrel with his first reaction. He grinned. King Carus, bare-headed in Garric's mind save for the golden diadem, laughed. “Sometimes things work out better than common sense'd let them, lad,” the king from long ago said.
Though Garric didn't hear a clang, the helmet must have hit near Liane. She was staring upward when the sway of Garric's body next let him look toward her. She'd shaded her eyes with a hand but she didn't appear to see him, even though he was no more than twenty feet above her by that time.
The rope didn't reach quite to the floor of the cavern. Garric dangled at arm's length. If escape were merely a matter of climbing a rope, he could toss Liane high enough to grab the dangling end.
He smiled. Yes, and then perhaps the queen would appear and beg forgiveness of her husband King Valence. That would certainly simplify matters, wouldn't it?
Garric let himself drop the last few feet. His boots hit the stone floor. Liane turned with a gasp, seeing Garric for the first time.
And Garric saw their prison.
They were in a domed cavern vaster than anything that could exist so near to Valles. The walls were of dense igneous rock, not the limestone of surface outcrops in the grounds of the ruined palace. A fiery glow blasted up from a sunken moat here only a few paces from Garric and Liane. In the opposite direction the band of light followed the curve of the walls into the unguessable distance.
Liane threw herself into Garric's arms. “You shouldn't have come!” she said as she hugged him fiercely. Before he could respond, she'd stepped back. “But how...?” she asked, looking beyond Garric.
He raised his eyes, expecting to see the dangling rope. There was nothing but the smooth stone vault, colored by the sullen light from the moat. The air was dry and very hot.
Ilna dropped from nowhere to the floor beside them. In her hands was the noose, her weapon of choice. She gasped from the impact, then stepped aside. “You'll have to catch Cerix,” she said. “He's next.”
“Right,” said Garric. He positioned himself where Ilna had just landed, leaning backward with his arms cupped before him. He couldn't see Cerix or the rope, but presumably the wizard could—
Cerix dropped into his arms. Garric's knees flexed; he stepped back and set Cerix on the ground. Because the legless man was as short as a small child, Garric had subconsciously expected the weight of a small child. Cerix was a solidly muscular fellow, fully as heavy as most men even now.
Halphemos appeared from nowhere. He put a hand down to catch himself safely, but the impact slid the athame from his belt to rattle on the stone. He picked it up, held it to the light, and nodded with satisfaction.
Ilna looped her noose around her waist and took the unraveling sash from her sleeve. She walked toward the moat, stopping a pace from the edge and looking down. Garric uncinched his buckler and, holding it in his left hand, went to Ilna’s side.
Orange lava flowed a man's height below the rim of a channel thirty feet broad. Even at this distance the glowing rock shriveled the fine hairs on Garric's cheeks and right forearm. He touched Ilna’s arm and dre
w her back.
“Let's get on with it,” Cerix said in a hoarse voice. He spoke with the resignation of a man who either believes he's already dead or who wishes he were. He'd taken a leaden rod as thick as his little finger from the pouch on his belt.
“Don't we need a circle?” Halphemos said in surprise.
“The Key opens barriers, boy!” the cripple said harshly. He drew the lead across the floor. The metal made a silvery smear, visible as a sheen rather than a color against the black stone. Cerix looked at Ilna and said, “Get on with it!”
Ilna glanced down at him; Garric wouldn't have believed Ilna had the capacity for pity if he hadn't been watching her face at that moment. “Yes, of course,” she said mildly and threw the sash on the ground.
The fabric crawled into syllables expressed in the Old Script. Cerix eyed them, then with his lead stylus drew the words in square modern characters. “Rouche,” Halphemos said. “Dropide tarta iao.”
Ilna scooped up the sash and threw it again. Her face was expressionless. The wool fell in a different pattern, equally legible. Cerix wrote quickly, sliding his body back with his left hand so that he had bare stone to write on.
Garric tried to read the Old Script aloud as Halphemos poised to speak his mentor's transliteration. The act was unconscious on Garric's part, though on reflection he knew part of it was juvenile bragging: “I'm better schooled than you are!”
And so he was, for Reise had given his children an education that compared favorably to the best available in the academies of Valles and Erdin. But there was more to wizardry than the ability to read the Old Script: Garric's tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth before he could finish pronouncing the initial syllable.
Garric had been involved in wizardry before, aiding Tenoctris with incantations which required more than one speaker. This was something at another level, as far beyond Garric's strength as it would have been to smash the vault's dense walls with his hand.
Garric felt new respect for Halphemos, and for the first time he had some understanding of the plight in which Cerix found himself. It wasn't just a matter of the cripple needing to get a grip on himself, the way Garric had thought in the arrogance of his own good health. Cerix had lost his legs, and the ability to speak these words was as surely a matter of strength as running nonstop from Barca's Hamlet to Carcosa.
“Abouas sioun serou...”Halphemos chanted. Ilna picked up the fabric and cast it; Cerix drew the words out, and Halphemos poised to speak them.
Liane stood close to Garric, looking into the distance. Garric checked that his sword was free in its scabbard—again. He was tense, and there was nothing useful to occupy either his mind or his muscles for the moment. It was entirely up to the wizards, the wizards and Ilna.
“Katebrimo piste agaleision...”Halphemos said. His face looked fine-etched; sweat beaded his forehead despite the arid atmosphere. His voice didn't falter.
Ilna threw the sash with a sweeping motion of her hand as though she were spreading a cleaned garment on bushes to dry. What did this cost her”? To look at Ilna’s face, the only effort she expended was the slight one of lifting a rag... and perhaps that's all it was.
But neither of the wizards could do the thing Ilna os-Kenset was doing; and with Ilna you were never going to learn the real cost. Perhaps the only virtues Ilna had were the virtues of strength; but no one ever could doubt her strength.
Garric took his right hand from the pommel of his sword and rested it lightly on Liane's shoulder.
“Aelgoso bitto aikisos!”Halphemos said, his white face painted by the glow of lava.
Garric stiffened. Liane glanced at him. He pointed his index finger. The chasm nearest the party had narrowed. The solid floor on either side was beginning to arch over the glowing rock.
Liane clutched Garric's wrist. For the first time since she'd been lowered into this vault, she could allow herself to believe in the possibility of escape.
Ilna threw the sash, still-faced. Did she know? Did she even care, so long as her task was completed correctly?
“Opelion ophelime uriskos...,”the young wizard said.
Garric felt the laughter before he heard, it, and even what he heard was in his mind rather than through his ears. He'd been watching stone extending like tendrils of waves combing toward one another on a beach. He turned. From the other direction, a thing walked toward them.
Garric shook Liane away without thinking about what he was doing. He drew his sword without haste, just getting ready. The chine of the blade whispered against the scabbard's iron lip, but the keen edges swept clear without rubbing.
King Carus was with Garric, shivering in and out as though the flesh were a garment and the king's spirit a debutante, uncertain of her choice of garb. This was Garric's fight; he no longer became the slave of his ancient ancestor when his hand touched a sword hilt or anger rose in him like a hot, crushing tide.
The thing walked on all fours, though occasionally it lifted onto its hind legs like a bear. Not like a man. Not anything like a man.
It had three heads on snaky necks. The heads to either side were reptilian, wedge-shaped like a viper's instead of the narrow, high-combed skulls of the seawolves which occasionally came from the surf to prey on the flocks of Barca’s Hamlet. Forked tongues flickered in and out of forests of cone-shaped, finger-long teeth.
The central head might have been a dog's or a baboon's, if ever those beasts had reached the size of this Beast. It was thirty feet high at the shoulder, and its heads laughed as it came toward the humans.
“I appreciate your efforts on my behalf, Garric or-Reise,” the dog-head said. Flaming rock surged in the moat to the rhythm of the words. “You brought me the one who could open my prison.”
Over the hissing, barking laughter, Garric heard the timbre of his companions' speech change. He couldn't spare the attention to learn why.
“For your help...” the central head said. The snakes continued to laugh like fire in dry leaves. “I will eat you and your friends last of all. Am I not kind, Garric or-Reise?”
“If you come closer,” Garric said, “I'll kill you.”
“When the Yellow King trapped me here, I was the size of this whole enclosure,” the Beast said. Its voice shook the stone, but no real sound came from the dog-fanged maw. “I starved here and shrank... but I do not think you will stop me, Garric or-Reise.”
“Garric!” Liane called behind him. “The bridge is open! Come back so that Halphemos can close it behind us!”
The Beast laughed thunderously as it came on. Its steps seemed mincing, but each pace covered as much ground as the legs of a cantering horse.
Garric shuffled a half step back, then another. The Beast was close enough that its serpent heads could strike. He felt the lava's heat on the calves of his legs. A hand, Liane's hand, pressed his shoulder lightly to guide him.
“Rouche,”said the Beast's central head. “Dropide tarta iao!”
Cerix wailed as he understood the Beast's plan. “Write the words!” Ilna shouted. “Your job is to write the words!”
Garric stepped forward, swinging his sword.
* * *
“I see the end!” Zahag said. “We're free now. Come on, chief!”
The ape reached for Cashel's wrist to tug him along faster, then changed his mind and scampered ahead by himself. Cashel kept going at his own pace, as he would have done in any event.
“Slow down and we'll get there,” Cashel said, loudly enough to be heard over the throb of the air around them. “If there's any there to begin with.”
Zahag had saved himself the swat he'd likely have gotten if he'd grabbed the youth. Cashel knew his temper was frayed, and he didn't know what was going to happen next. He didn't like uncertainty.
Zahag crouched, then hopped back to Cashel's side. “Don't you see it?” he said. “Just up ahead there?”
He put a long hand on Cashel's waist. The contact was the ape reassuring himself that he wasn't alone rather than him tr
ying to drag Cashel into something Cashel didn't want to do. Cashel didn't object. He had a lot of experience with soothing frightened animals. Zahag had more reason for fear right now than ever a ewe had in a thunderstorm.
“I see something,” Cashel said. “When we get there, we'll know better what it is.”
The texture of the light farther up the passage had changed, though its dull garnet color had not. Was it brighter?
Cashel shook his head in frustration. He didn't like puzzles. What he wanted was somebody to tell him what to do.
If that involved a fight, so much the better. Cashel didn't fight often, but it was something he understood just fine.
Cashel already knew that he couldn't judge distances within the passage Tenoctris had opened for him. Even so it was a surprise when he and Zahag stepped out onto a vast, bowl-shaped plain before he was aware of it.
Cashel stopped. Zahag, turning his head in nervous amazement, said, “But where's this? This is as bad as the other!”
“Well, it's different,” Cashel said. The first thing he'd checked was that the passage remained open behind them. It did. He examined their new surroundings, shifting the quarterstaff crosswise now that there was room for it.
“It's not very different,” Zahag muttered in a subdued voice, and Cashel had to admit the ape wasn't far wrong.
The ground, the crater walls, and the spike in the center that was the plain's only feature were all of the same red light as the passage that brought them here. The surface was solid and as smooth as ice, but it wasn't real the way rock is, or a tree.
“It's pretty enough in its way,” Cashel said. He shrugged. “I'd like it better if there was a mud wallow or something natural on it. What do you think, Zahag?”
“I think I'd like to be back on Sirimat with the band I was captured from,” Zahag said. “None of them were crazy. They were a lot smarter than present company too.”
Cashel laughed. “I guess we're in one of those knots we saw in the cellars, where the lines come together,” he said. “Let's go see what the thing in the center is.”