The Empire Stone

by Chris Bunch

  … On what, he didn’t know. He swung his free leg about, felt something solid, and cautiously let his weight down. He knelt, very carefully slid out of his pack straps, opened it, and took out a short wand of petrified wood. There was a dimple in one end that had been rubbed with oil and touched with steel and stone.

  Koosh Begee said the spell would work every time, for anyone. Which means, Peirol thought, every time except this one, for everyone except me. He began muttering:

  “Remember, wood

  Once you lived

  Grew strong

  Grew old

  Died

  And still are dying.

  Remember life/not life

  Sparks

  Strike fire

  Sparks

  Strike fire

  Burn now

  Burn always

  Remember fire, wood.”

  Nothing. He started to growl, calmed, repeated the incantation again and a third time, then thought of just how he’d go back up that rope and push through the narrow crack to report failure.

  Peirol blinked. His eyes were tricking him. But there was a glow from the end of the tiny wand, a glow and then a strong, flickering light, as if he held a tarred torch, and the wand writhed and grew in his grasp.

  He looked about, gasped, and almost fell. He stood on a ledge not a foot wide, jutting from a wall carved with figures, inscriptions. On the three other sides was nothing but night. He pried at a bit of stone, dropped it, listened, counting. Peirol reached thirty before he heard the tick of it landing, far, far below.

  Peirol wished he’d just looped his rope around that stone above, so he could pull it down to him and use it to descend farther. Then his mind mocked him — that would make getting back out interesting, wouldn’t it? Do you really enjoy making your life more difficult?

  He put his belt back on, slung his sword and pack across one shoulder. Peirol picked a direction and moved carefully along the ledge, holding the torch high with one hand, clinging to the stone carvings with the other. He went ten feet, and the ledge ended. Peirol cursed, went back, and this time the ledge went on, step by step, downward, ever downward.

  He chanced leaning back, holding the torch far away from the wall. He saw that the ledge went up to where a rockfall had smashed narrow steps. He was also able to make out some of the carvings, and shuddered. Either the priests of this forgotten god — Slask, that was it — had vivid imaginations, or else the god didn’t care who worshiped him, in fact seeming to prefer the most fabulous monsters to mankind. Mankind was represented — either being punished by the nonhuman acolytes of this god, or else engaging in lascivious acts not even a tumbler could manage.

  Peirol went on, then there were no more steps to reach for. He was on firm, level ground — a stone floor, he corrected himself. His torchlight reflected from the stones, and he knelt. Polished quartz, tourmaline, jadeite — each cobble was a polished semiprecious stone.

  Peirol stroked his chin. If these priests could’ve afforded to pave their temple with rocks like this … No, he thought. Tales like this are never true. So let’s make a quick tour and get out. You’ve more than repaid Begee’s debt, just having courage to come this far.

  He held the torch high. The room he was in — room, cavern, whatever — was huge. Something loomed ahead, and he started toward it. After a few paces, he thoughtfully unsheathed his sword. The object was almost twenty feet high. It was the statue of a shudderous god, crouched on four clawed legs, with a spiked tail curling high, a scaled body, and a face tusked like a wild boar, but with strange features, perhaps a man’s, but stretched to fit a dog’s skull. It also had two taloned arms that sprang from its shoulders, held palm up in front of its eyes. Slask’s expression was somewhere between sneering arrogance and drooling lust, reminding Peirol a bit of Koosh Begee.

  Reflected light glimmered from between the idol’s forelegs. Peirol scooped up a handful of gems. All were uncut, unpolished. Black-green emeralds, dark rubies, citrine topaz. He tossed them in his hand and estimated that the biggest, cut and finished, might be just a bit over fivevarjas. Evidently the god of the underworld had welcomed offerings of jewels.

  Pfah! A great idol, far underground, a monstrous deity in a haunted temple. Now all we need to make this situation utterly absurd, he thought, is for that godsdamned sapphire to be nested in Slask’s hands. But if it is …

  Peirol clambered up Slask’s legs, sheathed his sword, and swung up to crouch on the idol’s forearm.

  Slask’s palms were empty. Peirol laughed angrily. The sound echoed and reechoed, and his skin crawled.

  What now? I must gather a bagful of stones, I suppose, go back and tell Koosh Begee the truth, and then wake up Old Abbas to test me and remove Begee’s suspicions. Perhaps Begee’d let me polish the stones and trade them, and perhaps that’d be enough to free me from debt, assuming he’d be patient for two, perhaps three Times, rather than wanting an instant slavey. Possibly. Now, if I took but half of those stones, left the rest, and came back in daylight —

  Peirol heard a loud hiss in his ear, and became ice. He slowly turned his head, and the snake hissed again, louder, more threateningly. Its head was green and mottled black, about the size of his chest, and its body, thick as a ship’s mast, ran down into darkness.

  No, Lorn, his mind went wildly. I can’t tell if it’s double-fanged…. The ones it’s showing are deadly enough, even if they’re not dripping venom, nor can I tell if it’s fifteen or fifty feet long.

  The snake’s mouth gaped further, and Peirol thrust his torch into its jaws, back-rolled off the idol’s hands, and dropped to the temple floor, pulling his sword. The torch dropped beside him and rolled, sending light across the great chamber in dizzying spirals.

  The snake struck, and he lunged, blade flickering in and out of the horror’s neck. It seethed rage, slashed as if its teeth were sabers. He ducked, struck again, then the snake’s body looped out of darkness around him, sending his sword flying, pinning one of his arms.

  The coil lifted him into the air. He kicked helplessly, saw the jaws nearing, smelt the sourness of the monster’s skin and the decay of its breath.

  Peirol’s free hand went to his waist, behind his elaborately worked belt buckle, and found a small dart, all metal, not much longer than a finger’s length. Do not miss, he thought: it is but a tavern game, a game of skill, a game of concentration. Almost delicately, he tossed the poisoned dart into the snake’s eye.

  The serpent convulsed, throwing him high into the air, spinning, falling, and he bounced off the snake’s body, hard, but better than rock, rolled off and away as the beast thrashed, shrilling in agony, like, he thought, an aelopile with a leak.

  Somehow he found his sword and came back for an attack, but the snake was writhing, rolling, and he was unable to get close, and then it was whipping, thrashing, into the darkness that had birthed it.

  He picked up the torch, listened to the snake’s hopefully dying agonies. A smile began, and then he heard sounds, soft whispers, from another direction, sounds another snake, bigger than the one he’d half-blinded, might make as it approached.

  He started to run, caught himself — Not with nothing, I won’t — pulled a soft chamois bag from his pack, and hastily scooped it full of gems from beneath Slask’s feet. He ran for the steps to the ledge, went up as fast as he dared as the whispers grew closer. Something smashed into the rock wall not half a yard distant, and he threw the torch at it. It bounced against the wall, fell clattering down the steps, then to the floor, and whatever it was, out there just beyond seeing, struck at it. He had the rope clutched in his hand, going up it hand over hand, as quickly as he’d climbed anything, even the crags of his native moors long ago, and something struck at him, hit the rope, and he spun back and forth like a pendulum. He felt rock above him, a narrow crack, and he held himself with one hand, shrugged off the pack and sword belt, forced himself into the crevice, never feeling its rough edges tear at him. He popped out of the f
issure into the welcome haunted moonlight of Thyone’s ruins.

  Eventually his breathing approached normal.

  Now all I have to worry about is wolves, he thought. Two-and four-legged.

  • • •

  Peirol was just beyond the shatter of Thyone’s onyx gates when the darkness beside the weed-choked road became ten separate shadows.

  “The temple exists,” Koosh Begee announced. “You were gone far too long for it to be otherwise.”

  “It does,” Peirol said. “As does the idol. Lorn will be delighted to know her snake-friends do, as well.”

  “The sapphire?” Begee hissed, sounding related to the serpents below.

  “That, my dear Koosh, either was never there, or was stolen by the priests if they were sensible, or else someone as brave as I came before.”

  “Search him!” Begee commanded, and two thieves had Peirol by the shoulders and a third patted him down.

  “Here,” he announced, finding the pouch and handing it to his lord.

  Begee opened it, poured gems into his palm, eyed them in the moonlight.

  “You did find it.”

  “I found those baubles,” Peirol corrected. “But old Slask seems to have financed a drunk with the big one.”

  “You’re lying!”

  “Now why would I do that?” Peirol complained. “Don’t be foolish. If I went down into that hell, which those beads suggest, and if the sapphire were there, wouldn’t I have brought it back, all skipping and singing?”

  “You hid it somewhere.”

  “Where? Inside Thyone? And then I came back to confound you? You’re even stupider than you appear,” Peirol said in a half-snarl. His only excuse was, it was very late, and Peirol became nervous around snakes.

  Begee backhanded him across the face, one of his rings drawing blood. Peirol licked it away from his lips.

  “Do not ever do that again,” he said calmly.

  Begee hit him twice more.

  “Now drag him off the track,” he started. “We’ll build up a little fire, hold this lying bastard’s feet in it to make him — ”

  Peirol lifted his legs off the ground, the thieves holding him up too surprised to let go, and kicked Begee in the chest. The thief-lord went spinning.

  Peirol’s feet came back on the ground, and he drove a fist back into one thief’s groin. The thief howled, clutched himself, stumbled away. Peirol back-butted with his head, smashing the second thief’s nose, then he was free and his blade whispered out as Begee clawed for the heavy sword he fancied. It never came out of its sheath as Peirol’s sword flicked into Begee’s throat. Again Peirol lunged as Begee, confusion, anger, pain, and surprise racing across his dying face, went down.

  Peirol spun, dagger coming into his hand, blade blocking the third thief’s slash, the dagger going into the man’s guts. Peirol pivoted away from a lunge, recognized Reim, spitted him, and ran. He saw a spark as someone uncovered a slow match and put it to his musket’s pan. A flash and a bang followed, and a ball spanged off a rock.

  “Get the little bastard! He won’t get far! Come on — Koosh’s dead — come on, you jackheads!” But Peirol wasn’t listening as his head went back and he wailed loud, the prey-cry of a moor wolf.

  He ducked around rubble, went between two narrow rocks, and was at a dead end, trapped. His lips pulled back in a snarl, he waited, sword ready, for the first man to chance the narrow way. Again he bayed into the night skies, hoping, having forgotten how to pray.

  “He’s in there — go on, in after him — hells with you — awright then, I’ll go, spit the cocksniffer like he’s — ”

  The wolves heard his cry, came as he’d called them years ago across barren, rain-drenched moors. A thief heard their howls and shouted in panic. Another musket banged, and dark gray shadows bounded out of the dark, snarling, tearing at Begee’s marauders.

  Finally the last man’s death gurgle died away. Twice wolves sniffed at the passage, and he growled deep, telling them this was a den not to be entered without a fight. There was silence then, but Peirol waited for a time before creeping out.

  Bodies were scattered in the moon’s dying light, and he went from one to the next, taking gold and silver, rings and jewels, until he came to Koosh Begee’s corpse.

  Peirol scooped up the scattered gems, put them back in his pouch, and tucked it away. He looked down at Koosh Begee’s face, dead eyes glaring back.

  “You see,” Peirol said quietly, “I do pay my debts. One way or another.”

  His smile died. “Now all I have to worry about is a thousand — rather, nine hundred and ninety — bravos who’ll try to kill me as a boon to their lord’s widow.”

  2

  OF GREEN EMERALDS AND A VALE

  It was dawn when Peirol of the Moorlands went up the winding path to the sorcerer Abbas’s tower, on the heights above Sennen. The gates stood open, for who would have the courage — or stupidity — to rob a wizard? There were a pretty pair of one-pound robinets on wheeled carriages with polished stone cannonballs beside the varicolored wooden door, but they were more for show than actual use.

  Peirol considered his words, how he would make his plea, lifted the knocker, and the door opened.

  A very beautiful girl stood there. She was perhaps sixteen, and her black hair fell in waves on either side of her doll-like face. Her porcelain complexion set off slightly rouged lips and green, inviting eyes. She wore a morning robe of silk and lace, and a smile. She had a thin scarf of emerald green silk tied around her neck. Peirol noted with a bit of a stirring, in spite of his fatigue, the gentle curve of small breasts.

  “Welcome, Peirol,” she said. “My grandfather is expecting you.”

  Peirol jolted away from a wisp of lustful thought. If no one robbed a sorcerer, certainly no one at all should consider …

  “You’re …” He let his voice trail off, not remembering the girl’s name.

  “Kima,” she said. “You made this bracelet for me, three years ago.” She held up her wrist, and Peirol, in spite of his better judgment, took her hand and pretended to examine the jewelry.

  “If I’d known you were going to become this beautiful,” he said, “I would never have put a price on it, but made it a present.”

  Kima giggled. “You said when you made it that one day you’d flirt with me. I see you do have the Gift.”

  “Not I,” Peirol said. “Merely common sense.” He brought himself back. “Abbas awaits? How could he know — ” He broke off. “Stupid me. Wizards and that.”

  “Yes,” Kima said. “Now, go into that first room on the right and wash. You look like you’ve been dancing with wolves all night.”

  “Would you believe that I have?”

  “No. Grandfather warned me about you.”

  “Hmph.” But Peirol obeyed, and came out a few minutes later feeling considerably better.

  Kima led him up three curving flights of stairs, past paintings of times and cities he’d never dreamed of, onto a balcony that opened over Sennen and the river curling past the ruins of Thyone into the Ismai’n Sea. There was a beautifully worked table set for three. On the balcony beyond, the magician Abbas waited.

  Peirol had never known why Abbas was called “Old,” for he appeared in his mid-fifties, exactly as he’d looked when Peirol had met him, five years earlier when he arrived in Sennen. Abbas was big, six and a half feet tall, thick-armed and with muscled legs. His precisely curled and oiled beard and hair were the deepest black, falling over a wine barrel of a chest and proudly nourished stomach.

  He was the most powerful and feared wizard in Sennen. Three times barbarians had threatened Sennen and he’d used his magic to confuse and divert them, which earned the people’s gratitude. However, no one sought his company lightly. There had been times when lightnings boiled around his tower and thunder clashed from a clear night sky. Some said they’d heard the scream of demons on moonless nights, and it was noted Abbas’s enemies came to rather abrupt and unhappy fates.
<
br />   Peirol preferred to have as little truck with sorcerers as possible. He feared them for their powers yet secretly held them in a bit of contempt, having consulted three over the years, paid their fees, and been told that the gods had doomed him to be a dwarf and they could cast no spells to change matters. Peirol always wondered what the reply would have been had he been richer. Sometimes he wished he had the Gift, but not often, having heard too many tales of magicians devoured by the demons they called up. And so, like most, he hired their services when he could afford them, from the cheapest of village witches to deadly thaumaturges like Abbas.

  “After your adventures,” Abbas rumbled, “I thought you might be hungry.”

  Peirol began to say he didn’t have the time, then caught himself. He waited until Kima had taken a chair, then sat. There were three varieties of eggs nested in multicolored onyx cups, steam rising invitingly; a dozen kinds of bread, heated and cold; a platter of smoked meats and fish; a covered dish that held poached fish; a half ham; spiced kidneys; jams, marmalades, and comfits. Peirol stopped listing delights and ate.

  “My attention was drawn toward Thyone last night. Koosh Begee will no longer bedevil the city streets. A pity, that,” Abbas said sarcastically.

  Peirol glanced at Kima.

  “Don’t worry about turning her stomach,” Abbas said. “She knows men’s hands are seldom blood-free.”

  “Koosh Begee being dead — Grandfather said you killed him — made me feel good,” the girl said. “I once paid to ransom a girlfriend’s ring from his gang. The man he sent had the audacity to think I was attracted to him, and made a rather crude suggestion.”

  “It was a pity,” Abbas said, “the ransomer happened to trip and break his neck after the ring was returned. A great pity.”

  Peirol’s eyes had been turning toward that cleft in Kima’s robe but now returned to watching his fingers spread red jam on a piece of bread. Suddenly the jam looked exactly like the blood that’d bubbled from Koosh Begee’s throat. His appetite vanished, and his stomach curdled.