by Dave Duncan
Sunlight blazed like a furnace door. The morning was still young, yet the air was unbreathably hot and the peaks had already vanished in purple haze. Five ponies followed their shadows over the dusty hills—three with riders, two spares. They could travel no faster than a caravan, so five days’ ride to Koburtin, maybe. No one spoke a word until they crested the long rise and Samarinda disappeared from view, then Durendal said, “What went wrong? Obviously Wolf was right and they have secret doors, but how did they catch us so quickly?”
After a moment, it was Kromman who answered. “An efficient spy system. The brethren must be very interested in strangers—who they are, where they stay. We asked strange questions…. Or perhaps conjuration—who knows? They must have some sort of sniffers to make sure the challengers are all secular.”
“Very few good swordsmen are purely secular, Inquisitor, any more than you are. Wolf and I are not, certainly. Herat can’t be. I think even Gartok had some spiritual enhancement.”
“Or we were betrayed,” Wolfbiter suggested. “How did Everman know we had an inquisitor with us?” As always, his face was expressionless. Was he contemplating murder again?
“You mean me?” Kromman sneered. “What do I have to gain by treachery, Sir Blade? If you want to search my pack for gold bars, then go ahead.”
“You wouldn’t have told them you were an inquisitor,” Durendal said. “That’s out of character. How much of Everman’s story was true, if any?”
Kromman twisted his straggly mustache over a pout. “I don’t know. You let him talk in a busy street. We normally question people alone. If others are present, they must at least keep still. A crowded alley with people going and coming is absolutely the worst possible situation for smelling falsehood.”
Was he lying? Why should Kromman lie? Durendal did not know, and yet he knew he trusted his inquisitor ally no farther than he now trusted Everman. Killing might be inevitable for a Blade or man-at-arms on duty, but killing for no purpose was unforgivable.
“Give me some opinions.”
“He was lying about Polydin’s death. That I am almost certain of.”
“And later, when he said he was a willing member of the gang?”
“No—at least, he wasn’t saying that just because the three bullyboys were watching him. He may have been holding something back.”
Durendal looked at his Blade, riding on his left to cover his vulnerable side.
“No arguments, sir. I thought much the same.”
“Yes. Me too. Who needs inquisitors? But if he was lying about his ward, then he needs rescuing. On the other hand, the brethren now look absolutely invincible, and any further efforts on our part will be rank suicide. But that’s what we came for. But, but, but! Do we go home or ignore the threats and double back to try again? Look—shade! Let’s see if we can get down there.”
He turned his mount to the right and rode over to a rocky wadi that cut the landscape like an open wound. The surefooted pony seemed to approve, for it picked its way eagerly down the stony slope and in a few minutes brought him to a patch of shadow against a beetling cliff. The rising sun would soon wipe out even that small shelter, but at the moment it was a heavenly refuge. Without dismounting, he turned to face his companions as they closed in beside him.
“We can’t fight conjuration without using conjuration. You have not been open with us, Kromman. We all know that inquisitors have resources they prefer not to discuss, but now we need your help. What tricks have you got with you that you haven’t told us about?”
Kromman scowled through his lank beard. “It is true that I was provided with certain devices that may prove useful—you have already benefitted from the enchanted bandages, Sir Durendal—but the Office of General Inquiry does not proclaim all its resources hugger-mugger. I am forbidden to reveal them unless and until they are needed. If you tell me what you are planning to do, I shall be happy to advise you how I may be able to assist. But don’t expect very much.”
“How about a golden key?”
Wolfbiter groaned in dismay. “You can’t be serious!”
The inquisitor smiled thinly. “Of course he is serious.”
“Break into the monastery?”
“You should cultivate your powers of observation, Sir Wolfbiter. When that trapdoor in the courtyard opened yesterday, your ward walked along the terrace until he was opposite it and then looked behind him. This morning he stayed at the east side until it opened again—at which point he started to walk, glancing at the houses he was passing. He now has two bearings on the opening, so he can find it again. A unusual display of thinking from a sword jockey, I admit, but obviously he had burglary in mind, even then.”
Durendal tried not to show his annoyance. Wolfbiter was naturally impassive, the inquisitor had training or enchantment to help him conceal his emotions, but he always felt he was an open book to both of them.
“Before we left, there were rumors going around of a handy little gadget called an invisibility cloak.”
The inquisitor laughed harshly. “Most of the legends about the so-called Dark Chamber are absolute swamp gas, and that definitely includes invisibility cloaks. Pure myth. But if you are intent on suicide, I shall do everything I can to help, of course.”
He was about as likable as something dug out of an outhouse pit.
Wolfbiter glared at him and then equally at Durendal, who reached for his water bottle to give himself a moment to think. It was ironic that the man he disliked and distrusted was supporting him, while the one he called friend must be opposed. Wolfbiter was smarter than Durendal when it came to logic, even if he did not have the same gift of intuition. Was intuition much different from what Everman called daredeviltry?
“Sir, this is crazy talk! We’ll be caught for certain. Why throw our lives away like this? What can you possibly hope to achieve?”
“There’s no secular way to open the trapdoor from the outside—I’m sure of that—and I’m gambling that it won’t be guarded. It must lead into the cellars.”
“Dungeons? Polydin?”
“That’s what I’m hoping. If we can rescue him, then their hold over Everman disappears. At worst, we may gain useful information.”
“At worst we get skinned alive, like Gartok.” Wolfbiter wiped an arm across his forehead, searching for arguments. “I do, I mean. One of us has to go home to Chivial, to report to the King. That’s your mission, sir. You do that—start now—and I’ll go into the monastery for you tonight. Wait for me at Koburtin.”
“You know me better than that, Wolf.”
“You have a duty to report to the King!”
“The inquisitor will. He can let us in, but then he heads down to the city gate and at dawn he leaves, with us or without us.”
“Sir! There’s no point both of us walking into the lions’ den, and you know I can’t let you go.”
“Everman was my friend.” Was that Durendal’s motive? Or was it just stupid pride, a pigheaded refusal to crawl home to his ward, the King, and admit defeat? He did not know. He did not care. He just knew he was going back to Samarinda to try again.
Kromman had been listening to the argument with his customary disdain. Now he said, “I certainly won’t go in there myself, but I can open the trapdoor for you, unless it is itself a conjurement. I can provide you with lights….” He screamed, “Call off your dog, Durendal!”
Wolfbiter’s left hand had caught hold of the inquisitor’s reins and his right was drawing Fang—slowly, though, so he was not quite certain. Kromman’s hand fluttered over his own hilt, but he knew that he would die before he could draw.
“Wait!” Durendal said. “That won’t stop me.”
Wolfbiter stared at him with eyes that seemed strangely empty. “It needs three of us to find the way in, doesn’t it?”
“It would help, but two could do it, perhaps even one. And I’m going back there if I have to do it over your dead body, Wolf.”
For a moment Kromman’s life balanced on a
sword edge.
Then Wolfbiter let go the reins with a sigh. “Why did I have to be bound to a raving lunatic?”
8
The day was long, and the night even longer.
“Plan for both success and failure” was an Ironhall maxim. Failure in this case was death at best or enslavement at worst, so no contingencies need be considered. Success would consist of rescuing Master Polydin—and possibly Everman himself, although that was even more unlikely—and escape from the city when the gates opened at dawn. Two hours would be ample. More time could only help the enemy track them down, so most of the night had to be wasted. The best place for swordsmen to waste time without attracting suspicion was a brothel.
Both Kromman and Wolfbiter expressed much enthusiasm for that part of the plan, but a Blade could not be parted from his ward in such surroundings. Thus Durendal spent many hours playing a complicated board game against a series of amused young ladies, losing large amounts of money to them while trying to ignore the continuing sounds of pleasure from the bed behind him. Kate, Kate, Kate! Would he ever see her again?
As the waxing moon was setting, the expedition prepared to set out.
“Wear these rings on your left hands,” Kromman explained, “with the stone out. When you need light, turn the stone inward. You can control the amount by opening or closing your fingers. They should last several hours.”
The square was deserted. No lighted windows showed in either the monastery or the houses. Durendal found the door he had noted the previous day and left Wolfbiter there. With Kromman, he went around the corner and along to the one he had marked on the first morning. The inquisitor continued alone, heading for the gate.
Durendal leaned on the wall for what seemed like a very long time, quite long enough to convince him that something had gone wrong already. Then a star twinkled in the courtyard. He turned his ring over and briefly opened his hand. The resulting flash half blinded him, and a moment later another flash showed that Wolfbiter had made the same mistake—too much!
Kromman was very close to the right line, though. Another twinkle, farther to the left. This time Durendal flicked one finger and achieved the required effect. So did Wolfbiter.
Then again. This time he flashed twice to tell the inquisitor that he was correctly aligned. And two from Wolfbiter.
A long, nerve-racking wait…Three from Kromman to say he had located the trap.
Wolfbiter loomed out of the dark, breathing faster than usual. Without a word, the two of them headed for the steps and the gate, which the inquisitor had left ajar. They found Kromman easily enough and knelt beside him.
“It looks good,” came his whisper. “Seems to be just a slab on a pivot. If there’s no secular way to open it from this side, they may not have too many defenses on it. Ready?”
Whatever the “golden key” conjurement looked like, it was small enough for him to conceal inside his hand. Metal clinked on stone. The slab shivered and slowly rose, making grating noises that sounded like trumpet fanfares in the stillness. When it reached vertical, the iron ring set in its underside clanked once. An acrid stench of monkey wafted into the night.
Kromman thrust his hand down and released a faint glow, revealing a square shaft with a floor eight or nine feet down. There was no ladder, only a few iron staples set in the wall—an entrance made for oversized monkeys with prehensile feet, not for men. Durendal rolled on his belly and dropped his legs over the edge. A minute later, three burglars stood at the bottom of the shaft and the trap had been closed.
It had indeed.
A low, rectangular tunnel led off in the direction of the monastery, and the stench of monkey was eye watering.
“I’ll wait here,” the inquisitor said. “You may be suicidal, Sir Durendal, but I’m not.”
“You’re a brave and resourceful companion, and I shall tell the King so if I ever see him again. How long?”
“There are gaps at the side of the slab, so I should be able to detect dawn. I shall go as soon as I see light coming through. You want me to leave it open or closed?”
“Open. If we’re that late, we shall probably be in a hurry.” Durendal was removing his boots.
“As you please. If there’s no pursuit, I’ll wait outside the city for a couple of hours. Then I’ll go on to Koburtin and take the first caravan west.”
“I approve those arrangements, so you can quote me if you ever have to testify at an inquiry. Ready, Wolf?”
“I go first. Come.”
They set off barefoot along the passage.
Thirty-two, thirty-three…He had paced it out in the road and they ought to be under the monastery by now. Thirty-five. This was truly crazy, one of those insane impulses of his. One day he would jump and find spikes. Everman was the danger. The rest of the brethren would not expect such madness, but Everman knew him and had practically warned him not to try exactly what he was trying now. Thirty-seven…
Wolfbiter stopped, killing his light. Durendal bumped into him and smelled his sweat.
“What?”
“Light ahead. No? I thought…” He flashed a gleam. “Ha! It’s a reflection.”
It was gold. It was a small room almost full of gold bricks—piled ten feet high at the back, in lower rectangular stacks in front—while the narrow corridor on the far side was walled with them. Durendal eyed the stone pillars in the room, lining them up with the passageway beyond. Then he climbed up the lower heaps until his head was against the roof and he could peer through the narrow gap on top. His light showed no end, but it did reveal the heads of more pillars, rows of them. He climbed down.
“This is all the space they have left,” he whispered. “I think this cellar underlies the whole monastery or a large part of it. It’s all full of gold. Tons and tons of gold.” He tried lifting one of the bricks and decided that Everman had done very well to carry two of them across the courtyard. “Thousands of tons, maybe millions.”
“Gold is no use to the dead.” Wolfbiter, that practical soul, started forward again, but inconspicuous skulking had suddenly become very difficult. The smallest ray of light he could produce reflected dazzlingly from the walls. In a moment he reached another gold corridor branching off to the right. He hesitated and then went straight. Then one to the left—he stopped.
“We’re going to get lost.”
“Keep left. It ought to put us under the corner tower, I’d think.”
It led, eventually, to a stone doorway slightly narrower than the corridor itself, and beyond that was a dark place, with no reflections. The air did not smell good. Wolfbiter paused at the entrance and directed a narrow beam through his fingers, moving a spot of brightness over rocky walls and then a cubical structure with an obvious chimney, metal tongs, a stone crucible….
“A forge?”
“No. That’s a furnace, though.” Durendal activated his own ring and advanced into the room. “A foundry. This is where they cast the gold.” He pointed to the molds. “Where do they get their ore?” And why did the place stink so badly?
He turned his hand to light up the other end of the chamber and almost cried out at the resulting blaze. The conical mountain of raw gold heaped there filled the room from side to side and reached almost to the roof. It was not what he supposed ore would look like, being a collection of odd-shaped fragments and nuggets, from lumps the size of a man’s head all the way down to gravel. He picked up a log that had rolled free, marveling at its weight. Its surface was rough, and here and there black stone still adhered…except it wasn’t a log, it was a human tibia. Blood and fire! Ribs, vertebrae, jawbones, skulls, and the gravel was toe and finger bones. The black adhesions were lumps of dried flesh. Hence the stench.
“They don’t feed the livestock, do they?” Wolfbiter said aloud.
“Sh!”
“But this is what they do with the bodies. They turn the bones to gold.”
The surface of the tibia sparkled as if whatever had scraped away the flesh had scored the metal h
eavily all over. Durendal recoiled from trying to understand that and laid his trophy down again. On impulse he helped himself to a few finger bones and slipped them in his pocket as souvenirs. There was only the one door. The bones had been tipped in through a trapdoor in the roof, like trash.
As he followed his Blade back along the gold-paneled corridor, he marveled at the obscene hoard. A great nation could not spend this much wealth in a thousand years, and yet a mere dozen or so maniacal monks waged daily slaughter to increase it. So infinite a fortune must surely be guarded by infinite defenses. When they came to the junction, he was very tempted to tell Wolfbiter to go to the right, back to the trapdoor, but Wolfbiter went left again and he followed.
Would the trapdoor even be there? He could easily call up a nightmare of wandering in this golden maze forever, imprisoned by some potent conjuration. If Herat had anything to do with it, the reality might be worse than anything he could envision.
The corridor went on and on. As he was deciding that they must soon reach the far side of the monastery, they came to a door of stout timbers, banded with iron. In darkness, Wolfbiter tried the latch.
Whisper. “It’s not locked.”
“Go ahead then. Slowly! And sniff.”
The worst thing they could stumble into would be a stable full of sleeping monkeys. Even Herat might not be as bad as one of those brutes.
Slowly Wolfbiter pulled, easing hinges that would be longing to creak but not giving them the chance. The room beyond was pitch-black. A momentary flash…A pleased breath. “Ah!”…More light.
They had found the jail, a double line of barred doors. It did not smell of monkey. It did smell of men, but not recent men. Stale and foul. A few of the little cells still had rotting straw in them; some had old buckets and water jugs covered with dust. The jail had not been used for many, many years.
“If Polydin is anywhere, he should be here, sir.”
“Probably. Not necessarily.” Durendal went to the door at the far end.