Kagur found it difficult to believe the offer could be anything but a particularly brazen swindle. But the giant had already collected a sizable stack of trade goods and had a dozen disparate folk lined up waiting to consult with it, so maybe it could actually deliver what it promised.
Still, who would want it? How weak and cowardly would a person have to be to settle for a dream of revenge?
She and Holg worked their way from one trader to the next, beyond the point where the magic of understanding failed and he had to renew it. Some creatures professed to know nothing of any frost giant or sun shining in the depths. Some, surly, suspicious, or taciturn, proved unwilling to talk about anything but the raw gems, ores, mushrooms, dried bat wings, or slaves they wanted to barter. Others claimed they could help, but generally with a shifty air and always backing off when promised reprisal for a lie.
Finally, frustrated and frazzled by the crowds, the noise, the stenches, and the scenes of cruelty and grotesquerie unfolding on every side, Kagur said, "Let's find a clear patch of ground. Work your magic with the fetishes, and we'll move on."
Holg sighed. "I suppose we might as well. This was a good idea, but it's not working out." He started for the edge of the market, and she followed.
Three serpentfolk warriors stepped out into the street to intercept them. The one in the middle wore a crested helmet with a ratty black plume.
"The Lady Ssa wants you," it said.
Chapter Thirteen
The Lady Ssa
Now that she and Holg were climbing them, Kagur saw that the walkways winding up the cavern wall had no true angles or corners. Neither did the windows and doorways. Every shape was rounded in a way suggestive of the flowing, twisting way a snake would move.
Up close, her surroundings looked even older and more ruined. Invisible from the ground far below, a number of the crystal lamps no longer glowed, while a great many of the chambers beyond the openings were altogether empty. In others, only rats crouched, and lizards skittered.
But the city was plainly inhabited at the very top of the wall, just below the place where it curved out to form the cavern ceiling. Here, sentries flanked the well-lighted entrance to the Lady Ssa's apartments. Piping, rhythmic but shrill and atonal, wailed from inside.
The humans' escorts conducted them on into a big, long room that Kagur supposed corresponded to a Kellid tribe's communal tent. The luminescence of green crystals glinted on pale stone and the assembled snake-people.
The serpentfolk Kagur had seen hitherto were squat and burly despite their inhuman sinuosity. The creatures attending Lady Ssa were, too, but their mistress was willowy enough to make skinny Holg appear fat by comparison. Jewelry glittered on her body, from the spiky tiara on her head to the rings on the lazily shifting end of her tail.
Lounging in a high-backed golden chair, she stared at Kagur and Holg for a few moments. Then, bracelets sliding and clinking on her curling arm, she waved her hand, and the piper stopped the high, discordant droning.
"I've heard tales of your upstart race," said Lady Ssa, "and plainly, the stories didn't lie. You're animals, fit only for slavery, with minds too primitive to endure the touch of an advanced intellect. Be grateful I'm willing to lower myself and converse with you in your own fashion."
Kagur twitched her mantle back, making sure it wouldn't hinder her if she needed to draw her sword. She thought she was being sneaky about it, too, but Lady Ssa threw back her head and made a sibilant, pulsing noise that was just barely recognizable as a laugh.
"I didn't mean that I intend to enslave you," the reptile woman said. "Not that I wouldn't enjoy playing with you, infusing you with the rarest curiosities from my collection of venoms one tiny drop at a time ..." Rattling her countless ornaments, she shuddered as though the mere thought was almost unbearably erotic. "But much as I'd like to, I can't. If the Lady Ssa broke her own hard-won peace, folk would fear to come to market, and that would deprive me of any number of amenities."
"Why did you send for us?" Kagur asked.
Lady Ssa shook her head. "So blunt. So insolent. The stories didn't lie about that, either."
"Do you know any stories about the sun in the depths?"
"Yes," the serpent lady said, "as it happens, I do, and when my guards reported you were inquiring about it, I decided we should talk."
Kagur tried not to show the hope that had just flared inside her. "Others we've met here have claimed the same thing."
"But the others all retracted the claim when you persuaded them it would be dangerous to deceive you."
"Yes."
"Well, you mustn't hope to frighten me. I have warriors and sorcery to protect me. But I wouldn't stoop to lie to creatures so generally inferior. That would be unworthy of my majesty."
"No doubt, my lady," said Holg, "no doubt. Still, it might help to move this parley forward if you gave us a hint of exactly what you know or, at the very least, told us how you know it."
"Couched thusly, your demand is simply a subtler form of insolence." Lady Ssa's forked tongue flickered between the large gleaming fangs at the front of her jaws. "But I'm feeling indulgent. Whether a lady is a ruler or a savant—and I'm both—it's part of her vocation to learn everything she can about the world around her. To that end, I've purchased maps and collected traveler's tales. Thus, though I myself have never descended to the Vaults of Orv, I recognize the one you seek. I believe the surface explorers who made the map called it Deep Tolguth."
"Tolguth!" That was the name of a famed settlement east of her tribe's lands, in a region where eerily warm winds and rivers melted the snow. The Blacklions had never traded there in her lifetime, but all had heard stories of the great lizards that hunted its valleys, larger even than the mammoths. What ties could it have to this lightless realm?
Regardless, it wasn't important. Kagur saw Holg open his mouth to ask just such a question, and cut him off before he could speak.
"And you'll tell us how to get there," she said. "Even though you hate our kind. How convenient for us. What do you want in return?"
The snake woman hesitated as though choosing her words carefully. Then: "The tombs of my ancestors lie far below our feet. Something has ...infested and profaned them. I want you to clear it out."
"Why haven't you done it yourself," Kagur replied, "you, your warriors, and your sorcery?"
"The crypts are forbidden to serpentfolk except when our faith dictates. Whereas you are beneath the notice of the hallowed dead and the gods."
"How lucky for us," said Holg. "What form does the infestation take?"
"Shining blue mold and a thing like an enormous centipede. My people have only glimpsed it from a distance."
The blind shaman nodded. "I've done my share of poking around in tombs, but in this case, I'm hesitant—"
"We'll do it," Kagur said.
Chapter Fourteen
The Tombs of the Serpentfolk
The door was black except for the scraped edges of the oblong hole on the right side, which gleamed palely. Kagur realized the whole massive panel was actually silver, but tarnish covered the rest.
The snake man with the plumed helmet inserted a wavy bar of similarly blackened silver into the hole toothy end first, gripped the crosspiece on the back end with both clawed hands, and twisted. Something clacked inside the door, and Kagur belatedly understood that the reptile man was unlocking it.
She'd seen locks and keys before, but only in connection to trunks and boxes merchants sometimes carried along when they visited the tundra, not on doors. She supposed that wasn't surprising, considering that to her people, a "door" was a tent flap.
The serpent man took hold of the handle and heaved the portal open. The hinges groaned.
"Go," the reptile said.
Though Kagur had little experience of locks, she understood what it was to be trapped. "We're taking the key with us."
"No," the snake man said. "Knock when you're done. We'll let you out."
Kagur put h
er hand on her sword. "Give us the key, or we'll take it."
"We'll lock the door behind us," said Holg, "to make sure nothing escapes into the upper reaches of the palace. And if we come to grief in the crypts, surely a sorceress as powerful as the Lady Ssa can devise a spell to open the way."
The guard exchanged glances with its two cohorts. Then they all stepped back from the door, not handing the key over, but offering no further objection when Kagur pulled it from the hole.
As Holg had promised, she relocked the door after they passed through. Then they headed down a ramp, and the gleam of the green crystal lantern they'd borrowed flowed across the floor like water. Though dim to human eyes, it was still brighter than the red phosphorescence of their previous light source. Over time, the torch had faded as the fungus wilted.
At the bottom of the ramp, Holg murmured, "I hope you realize Ssa was lying to us."
"Yes," Kagur asked, looking back and forth at twisting corridors with arches cut in the walls. "She no doubt picked ‘Uplanders' to do this because she doesn't want to lose any more of her own warriors, and nobody else who knows what the blue fungus and the centipede-thing are would dare try."
"Yet here we are."
Kagur scowled. "We'll handle this, and then the scaly bitch will tell us what we need to know."
"Fair enough." The old man peered about. "I don't see any blue light yet."
"Keep moving, and we'll come to it."
Or so she assumed. But she soon realized the crypts were extensive and confusing. Even the main passages curved and doubled back unpredictably, and secondary ones, easy to miss unless a person checked each tomb carefully, snaked away to chambers that were otherwise inaccessible. Indeed, the layout was so mazelike, it might have been the Darklands in miniature.
Finally, scowling, Kagur said, "Use your magic to find the blue mold. Or the centipede."
Holg nodded. "Let's start with the fungus. We can presumably count on it to stay put once the spirits point to it."
He laid three fetishes on the floor and prayed. As usual, he spoke softly, but by now, Kagur had listened to the incantation so many times that she too knew the words. Thus, she realized when he hesitated and stumbled over a phrase.
At the end of the spell, he squinted down at the talismans on their rawhide thongs. None of them started crawling.
"Ssa lied to us," he said. "There isn't any blue mold."
"No," Kagur said, "you didn't say the words right. Try again."
His voice turned icy: "I know how to talk to the spirits."
"Up until now."
"I'm tired of your disrespect!"
"And I'm tired—" She caught herself. Holg could be odd, garrulous, and patronizing, and all of that irked her on occasion. But was she truly this angry with him, angry enough to drive her fist into his face? If so, why?
She took a deep breath. "Even though the magic didn't point a direction, Ssa must have sent us down here for a reason. If she'd just wanted to kill us, there were simpler ways."
Holg nodded brusquely. "I suppose that makes sense. We should explore the whole place before assuming the worst." He recovered his fetishes, and they prowled onward.
Kagur waited for her anger to fade, and in a sense, it did. But the underlying tension didn't subside. Instead, it changed by degree to a gnawing apprehension of the sort she'd felt when she'd first descended into the earth, a dread of being lost and buried.
She'd thrust the key through her belt, and she found herself touching it repeatedly, making sure she still had it. She assured herself that as long as she did, she couldn't really be trapped.
Like he'd read her mind, Holg said, "I should carry the key."
Her fingers clamped around it. "That's all right."
"You're the warrior. You don't want to be burdened with extra gear when it's time to fight."
"You need your strength for magic." Or at least he had before his skills forsook him. "You shouldn't grind yourself down carrying extra weight."
"I may be old, but I'm not a weakling! I kept up with you just as I promised I would!"
"Then do it now." She stalked onward.
Only to find that it made the skin on her back crawl to have him behind her. From there, he could cast a spell or bash her over the head, and she'd never know until it was too late. Until he struck her down and ran off with the key.
But that was ridiculous. Why would he? He was her comrade.
Yes, and Eovath was her brother. That hadn't stopped the giant from trying to kill her.
She was on the verge of insisting that, even in the narrowest passages, she and Holg must walk abreast. Then she heard a faint clicking coming from somewhere up ahead.
It must be the insect-thing. She dashed forward and burst into a tomb containing half a dozen stone sarcophagi. Carved in bas-relief on the walls and coffins, serpents seemed to slither in the emerald gleam of her lantern.
Something else was crawling, too. All but hidden behind one of the sarcophagi, a long, low, many-legged shape scuttled through a different doorway.
Kagur raced after it. Bounding stride by stride, she narrowed its lead and had all but caught up when she rounded a bend and tripped over something on the floor. As she flailed to recover her balance, she realized it was a dead serpent man—proof Lady Ssa had dispatched some of her own people to deal with the "infestation" before recruiting other agents deemed more expendable.
The stumble cost Kagur a moment. By the time she rounded the next turn and entered another tomb, one containing a single large and ornately carved sarcophagus, her quarry was disappearing through one of the other exits.
Unwilling to waste an instant circling around it, Kagur vaulted over the stone sarcophagus. Dizziness assailed her, and she landed off balance. Her foot rolled under, and pain stabbed through her ankle.
But she didn't let it balk her. She charged onward ...into a small tomb that had no other doors, and that contained no sign of her quarry, just another dead reptilian warrior. Stinking, the corpse sprawled atop the lone sarcophagus. By the look of it, someone or something had cut the unfortunate creature down from behind.
Her ankle throbbing, Kagur hobbled around and looked behind the stone box for a hole that wasn't visible from the entrance. There wasn't any. She'd just finished her inspection when Holg appeared in the doorway.
"You left me!" he said.
She sneered. So much for a sightless dodderer's boast that he could keep up. "I was chasing the insect."
"So where is it?"
She hesitated. "It got away."
"Or else you never saw it in the first place. Do you want to abandon me to die? You need me."
Maybe I did at the start, Kagur thought, before senility got its teeth in you, and before I found out Lady Ssa can guide me on my way. But now—
She blinked. Whether she still needed him or not, of course she'd never just leave Holg behind. How had her thoughts drifted in that direction, even for a moment?
And how dare he insult her by suggesting that she was capable of such treachery, especially after she'd risked her life to rescue him from the fungus people? His suspiciousness brought the urge to strike him surging back.
She didn't, though. Instead, she sat down on the sarcophagus and extended her foot. "I turned my ankle. Fix it."
He glanced down. "It looks all right to me. I should conserve my power for when we need it."
"We need it now if we're going to finish our task." Or if she was going to finish it, while the charlatan stood helplessly by as usual.
"All right," Holg growled, "if it will stop you whining." He lowered himself stiffly to one knee so he could cradle her ankle between his hands as he prayed.
Something about his touch was noisome, and Kagur had the urge to yank her leg up and out of his grasp, or to snap a kick into his teeth. What if he bungled the magic or perverted it on purpose? What if, instead of taking away her pain, the spell well and truly crippled her?
Warmth tingled into the ankle, and th
e aching stopped. As he heaved himself back to his feet, Holg scowled at her like he suspected what she'd just been thinking.
She stood up. "Let's move."
As they prowled onward, he muttered under his breath. The sound rasped on her until it was all she could think about.
Stop it, she thought. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it or I'll stop you. Stop it or I'll stop you. Stop it or—
They rounded a bend, and soft blue light gleamed on the stone ahead.
The sight of it startled and dismayed her. She realized that until that instant, she'd forgotten all about it and the centipede creature—forgotten everything but Holg's incessant drone. Lord in Iron, something was wrong with her!
Still feeling dazed and muddled, she nonetheless decided she needed to get out of the crypts, and quickly. But the blue mold, or at least some of it, was right in front of her. After working so hard to find it, maybe she should destroy it before she withdrew to recover her wits. Supposedly, all she need do was sprinkle it with the herbicidal mixture Ssa had supplied.
She advanced into the next Vault. Holg's muttering and the tapping of his staff followed after her.
The shining blue fungus grew in patches on the wall, but primarily encrusted the four sarcophagi. There, it flourished in such profusion that Kagur needed a moment to discern how these boxes differed from the ones she'd seen hitherto.
They had lids made of clear crystal, not stone. The serpentfolk bodies inside appeared perfectly preserved, adorned with gold and gems from their heads to their feet and the tips of their tails just like Lady Ssa. Each box occupied the center of a complex circular design graven on the floor.
Something about the motionless but entirely uncorrupted reptilian forms was horrible. Feeling mired, stupid, paralyzed as she sometimes had in nightmares, Kagur couldn't stop staring at them.
Or maybe it was Holg's voice that was draining her of resolve and understanding. At some point, the muttering had gone from irritating to numbing.
"Sullen," the old man said. "Reckless. Heedless. Ungrateful. You don't deserve the spirits' help, and I can't fulfill their wishes if you get me killed along the way."
Called to Darkness Page 10