Called to Darkness

  And with that thought came the sudden, surprising realization that perhaps she was growing at least a little accustomed to the Skulltakers as well. The sight of them no longer elicited the same reflexive surge of disgust.

  She wondered if she should cling to her animosity. It was, after all, simply what every Kellid felt, and for excellent reason. But if she and the Skulltakers were working to bring down a common foe, what would be the point? Especially when said foe was the creature she truly hated.

  She decided that if her old antipathy was drowsing, she might as well let it. She could resume detesting lesser enemies when Eovath lay dead at her feet.

  Shortly after she came to that conclusion, it occurred to her that if she actually wanted orcs and humans to regard one another as comrades, such feelings were more likely to flourish if the two groups shared all labors equally, paddling included. So, kneeling toward the front of the lead canoe, she studied how Ikolch dipped her paddle and stroked when she deemed it appropriate.

  The Skulltaker didn't do it constantly, and it was plain that, heading downstream, the orcs weren't much concerned about pure motive power. The current bore them along at a fair pace. But they needed to steer.

  When Ikolch had labored and Kagur had watched for what seemed a reasonable time, she tapped the orc on her grimy, brawny shoulder. Her expression as vicious as usual, Ikolch looked around. Kagur pointed to the paddle and then held her hand palm up to signal, "Give me."

  Ikolch hesitated and then handed the implement over.

  Kagur shaded her eyes with her hand and turned her head to mime the act of keeping watch on what lay ahead. Then she pointed to the orc. She hoped that conveyed, "I'll paddle, but you need to tell me which direction to steer and when."

  Ikolch grunted and gave a nod.

  In fact, Kagur didn't always need the orc to warn her. Some hazards were unmistakable, like floating logs, snakenecks—more beasts that looked much like they had in her nightmare—standing submerged to their bellies, or carnivorous plants dangling spiny two-lobed appendages over the water.

  Yet at first, other perils were far from obvious. But gradually, studying the parts of the river Ikolch indicated even as she paddled to avoid them, Kagur came to recognize shallow places where a canoe could grind against hidden rocks or tangles of sunken deadwood.

  Her improved understanding pleased her. Although maybe that was stupid since she doubted she'd ever do this again.

  She was going to kill Eovath. Any other outcome was inconceivable. She was less certain she'd survive him by more than a moment, and as long as she avenged the Blacklions, that was all right. But if she did survive, she and Holg would presumably attempt the long climb back to the tundra, where canoeing would be about as worthless a skill as she could imagine.

  Still, doing her fair share and knowing herself competent were preferable to being useless and ignorant, and maybe the Dragonflies felt the same way. For in time, they too started offering to spell Skulltaker paddlers.

  Eventually, presumably knowing night was nigh thanks to the inner reckoning that still eluded Kagur, Ikolch turned the lead canoe toward a little treeless island in the middle of the river, and the other boats followed. After dragging the vessels onto the muddy shore, the travelers walked from one end of the place to the other swishing spears and javelins through the ferns, reeds, and brush, checking for any dangerous beast that might have swum or flown here since Skulltaker fishermen had last visited the place. They found none and made camp.

  Kagur gathered it was rare but not unknown for the xulgaths to venture this far upriver, and so it was a camp without a fire. Still, her companions sat in the usual circle to gobble their rations, and in time, Vom started a joke. Kagur only caught a word or two, but she recognized it for what it was. Just visible in the dark, the burly Dragonfly's impish smile reminded her of Roga's.

  But Vom's sense of humor was apparently superior. Other men actually laughed, and after a moment, even some of the orcs gave a grudging chuckle. Then a Skulltaker began a joke of his own.

  The moment made Kagur feel strange, like something was hurting and easing her at the same time. Then her insides clenched in a spasm of anger that impelled her to get up and walk to the edge of the black water. She stared out across it at the equally dark forest on the other side.

  After a while, not bothering to feel his way with his staff in the murk that was clarity to him, Holg came to join her. "I can cast another charm of speaking," he murmured. "You don't have to be left out."

  She scowled. "Somebody needs to stand watch."

  "Somebody else already is. The boys volunteered, remember? You know, I'm fairly certain that allowing yourself to enjoy something won't weaken your determination to kill Eovath."

  She spat. "Of course it wouldn't."

  "What's wrong, then? Do you believe it would be disloyal to your father and the other Blacklions to form new attachments?"

  "I don't want—" Realizing she didn't truly want to say what she was about to blurt out, she stopped short. "Old man, you and I both come from the same land. And you're a staunch companion."

  "Thank you."

  She waved the interruption away. It was annoying enough to say such mawkish things without him stretching out the moment. "The point is, you and I are friends. But these others ...they're our comrades for the time being. But they're not my kin or my friends. They're a weapon in my hands."

  "If you say so," Holg replied, and then something made a little splash a stone's throw away from the shore. "Did I ever tell you that when I was in the southlands, I learned to catch a fish with just my hands?"

  "Despite your eyes?"

  "Having to rely on one's sight may actually be a handicap. Things can look like they're in the wrong place under the surface of the water. Iacobus, a sage from Absalom, hypothesized that ..."

  Grateful for the change of subject even though the shaman's rambling discourse became incomprehensible almost immediately, Kagur watched the night and let him drone.

  Even after the sun flared back to life, the travelers lazed on the island. It would be useless if not dangerous to depart prematurely. The xulgath city that stood where the river met the lake was less than a day's travel away, and they needed to slip past it in the dark.

  Though Kagur understood the reason, the delay rekindled the seething impatience that had possessed her at intervals ever since waking in the camp of the Fivespears. She prowled around and around the island until Ikolch finally declared it time to depart.

  At one point, the current carried them in front of five canoes heading out of an inlet. Kagur's companions set down their paddles and took up their javelins. But the strangers, perhaps astonished to see men and orcs journeying together, simply goggled and let them pass by unchallenged.

  Eventually, darkness again engulfed the Vault, and, not trusting humans with their inferior night vision to steer clear of hazards, the Skulltakers took possession of all the paddles. Not long after that, clustered towers appeared amid the gloom.

  Since she and her comrades were trying to keep well clear of the city, Kagur couldn't make out much of it except for the vague shapes of the nearer spires, a step pyramid, and a tame spiketail grazing on the shore. But numerous points of firelight shined through windows and atop battlements, and a shrill atonal whining—was it truly supposed to be music?—set her teeth on edge.

  Suddenly, Ikolch stopped paddling, and the other orcs in the lead canoe did the same. For a moment, Kagur couldn't see what had made them cease, but she could hear it. Up ahead, something else was swishing through the water in the same rhythmic fashion.

  Its high prow carved with some sort of image, a larger boat emerged from the blackness. Much longer paddles—she thought they must be what Holg, in one of his many reminiscences, had called "oars" or "sweeps"—stuck out of the sides to push it along.

  Ikolch made a fierce slapping motion at the bottom of the canoe. Kagur crouched low, and her companions did the same. She assumed the men and orcs in
the other dugouts were taking the same precaution.

  But even if so, someone aboard the patrol boat still noticed something amiss. Inhuman voices hissed back and forth, and then one rasped a command. The oars on one side of the craft stroked while those on the other lifted out of the water, turning it in the raiders' direction.

  Kagur scowled. She had no idea if she and her comrades could contend with the bigger boat while fighting from canoes. Even if it was possible, could they manage it quickly and quietly enough to keep anyone on the shore from noticing the skirmish?

  Hoping for a magical solution, she glanced back at Holg. Unfortunately, the old man was simply bending low like everybody else. He evidently didn't have a prayer for the occasion.

  But then, from somewhere behind the lead canoe, something made a sound midway between a growl and a cough. After a pause, the noise repeated.

  The xulgaths on the patrol boat did more hissing back and forth, and then the leader snarled another command. The rowers maneuvered again and headed straight upriver, between the drifting canoes and the towers on the shore.

  Ikolch waited until Kagur couldn't hear the splash of the oars anymore. Then the orc straightened up, and everyone else in the lead canoe did the same.

  Ikolch pointed at the next canoe in line. "Nesteruk," she whispered.

  Kagur guessed the boy, perhaps merely for his own amusement, had taught himself to imitate the call of some river beast with a long, low shape, and he'd just done so. Duped into believing they were peering at such creatures, the xulgaths had decided they didn't need a closer look.

  Kagur nodded to show she understood. "Good trick."

  The acknowledgment seemed to remind Ikolch that even a hint of maternal pride was at odds with her customary surliness. She scowled, spat in the river, and took up her paddle once again.

  Once they reached the lake, the orcs paddled hard. They needed to reach the xulgaths' holy site with most of the night still before them.

  Motionless as its sun, the Vault's stars silvered the water falling from upraised paddles, while enormous beasts periodically rose to the surface of the lake. The breaching only made a little noise, but for the most part, Kagur could still hear the creatures better than she could make out their shadowy forms.

  Once, just a stone's throw to the right, a relatively small head reared high above her, and she wondered if a snakeneck had waded or swum this far offshore. Maybe not, for after the head plunged back under the surface, it stayed there as the canoes sped onward.

  Gradually, at first visible only because of the fire that burned atop it, the dark pyramid came into view, and then took longer to reach than Kagur expected. It was bigger than she would ever have imagined, and, like a mountain, kept looming larger and larger.

  A lengthy approach gave sentries plenty of time to spot the raiders drawing near, but as far as she could tell, nobody did. Maybe she had the darkness to thank, or maybe she'd guessed right that the xulgaths had grown complacent in the assumption that their foes could never assault them here.

  The canoes glided parallel to one face of the ziggurat as their occupants looked for a likely place to put in. Holg spotted it first, a row of small boats perched on the edge of the bottom tier. With luck, their canoes would sit unnoticed beside the others.

  The ledge was about waist high above the water, and though it was impossible to be certain in the dark, Kagur had the impression the pyramid simply continued stair-stepping into the depths. She wondered if it did so all the way to the bottom of the lake, and just how far down that was.

  The raiders tried to lift the canoes out of the water quietly, but the bottom of one still scraped on the wet, dark stone. Kagur gritted her teeth, and Rho's wince confessed that he was to blame.

  Fortunately, no one came rushing to investigate the noise. Kagur took another glance around, and then she and Holg pulled off their boots and stashed them in their canoe. The humans and orcs of the Vault didn't wear anything on their feet, so their new allies couldn't, either.

  Nor could folk who were supposedly slaves openly carry weapons. The raiders stowed theirs in the bundles that, they hoped, looked like innocuous burdens for thralls to haul around. Holg stowed his staff as well. But he needed to keep his fetishes ready to hand for magic.

  First, whispering, he restored the gift of universal speech to Kagur and himself. Then, murmuring another incantation she'd come to recognize, he set three talismans on the stone.

  The one pointing straight ahead at the core of the ziggurat was the one that crawled.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The Ziggurat

  The raiders shouldered their bundles and trudged along the tier. Kagur resisted the urge to touch the hilt of her longsword inside the roll of hide to make sure the blade was still where she could find and draw it quickly.

  In time, boats like the one that had nearly caught them on the river emerged from the gloom ahead. Unlike canoes, these were too big to haul in and out of the water on a daily basis, and the xulgaths had built railings along the water to tie them to. Some sort of paste glued the wood in place. Perhaps that was easier than drilling holes in the stone. Pads of woven reed kept the vessels from bumping and scraping their hulls to pieces.

  Holg pointed and murmured, "There."

  Squinting, Kagur just made out what he was indicating. A rectangular opening led into the pyramid. A xulgath sentry stood there, its spear leaning ready to hand against the wall.

  "Here we go," Kagur whispered. "Hang your heads and act scared."

  As she and her companions shuffled forward, she realized she was scared, or at least uneasy. She didn't fear the reptile itself, but she feared all the holes in her plan. What if slaves were expected to greet or salute their masters in a particular way? Or what if the xulgaths never assigned men and orcs to the same work crew? Or—

  She wrenched her mind away from such thoughts. It was too late for them. She, Holg, and the cave dwellers were here now, and if things went wrong, they'd simply have to cope.

  This was the first time she'd seen a xulgath up close. Had the scaly gray reptile straightened up, it would have stood as tall as a man. But it hunched forward like it was on the verge of dropping to all fours, and its arms were long enough that maybe that was how it sometimes shambled around. It didn't pick up its spear as the raiders drew near, but it did finger the coiled whip hanging on its knotted belt.

  Seeking to pass through the doorway, Kagur kept as far from the xulgath as possible. The expression on its face—if the reptilian eyes and jaws were even capable of expression—was impossible for a human to decipher, but it stepped back as though giving her and her companions room to pass. When it reached for its hip, she realized it was actually giving itself room to use the lash.

  Her sword hand twitched with the impulse to draw her own weapon. She made herself cower instead.

  The xulgath flicked the whip. The lash snapped across her bare calves. The sting made her go rigid.

  She pointed to her bundle. "Please! A master ordered us to take these things up!"

  The xulgath brandished the whip to wave her onward, and she realized it hadn't struck her to punish her for some proscribed behavior. It had simply felt the urge to hurt her.

  If fate was exceptionally kind, maybe she could do likewise on the way out.

  On the other side of the doorway, lamps of luminous green crystal in wicker cages glowed at intervals along the walls. She and her companions wouldn't have to grope their way through total darkness. That was reassuring, but even so, after several paces, something started nagging at her.

  She knew nothing about xulgaths or immense stone structures, either. But she realized she'd expected the interior of the ziggurat to reflect the same simple symmetry, straight lines, and right angles as the outside.

  Had she simply turned out to be mistaken, she would have discerned as much and forgotten about it. What was bothering her was an irrational feeling that she was right and wrong at the same time.

  The
shadowy green-lit passage before her was level and ran at a right angle to the tier outside. Yet she felt that it diverged infinitesimally from true. No matter how she peered and squinted, though, she couldn't spot the discrepancy, and the effort threatened to put an ache in her head to go with the smarting in her legs.

  "Does everyone feel that?" she whispered.

  "Yes," Holg answered. "It may be the aftereffect of some evil working. Or countless demonic rituals performed over generations. Ignore it as best you can, and keep moving."

  That sounded like good advice, and they heeded it. Their progress took them toward another sentry stationed at a doorway.

  The new xulgath was guarding orc and human slaves huddled in the chamber beyond the opening. The space stank of filth and sickness, and the captives were packed in tight, even though other rooms nearby were empty.

  Like Kagur, her companions trudged past the opening trying not to display any obvious interest in the prisoners. Still, she suspected they were peeking from the corners of their eyes and deciding that if the things went awry, death in battle was preferable to the wretchedness they saw before them.

  Not far beyond the slave cell, they came to a point where the strings of crystal lamps ended. Fortunately, at the same spot, a doorway in the left wall granted access to a flight of stairs leading upward.

  Holg fished out the fetishes he'd hidden under his tunic, laid a couple on the floor, and whispered his prayer of finding. The wolverine fang on its knotted thong slithered toward the steps.

  "How often can you do that?" Ikolch asked.

  "Not as often as we'd like," the old man answered, picking up the talismans. "But the magic should at least guide us to Eovath's general vicinity."

  Ikolch sneered. "I can do that much just by beating some answers out of a sentry."

  "But then," Kagur said, "you'd leave a corpse behind for other xulgaths to find. Stick to the plan."