The bones beneath his feet shifted, and he slipped back down to a sitting position.
In the darkness, silence blossomed.
“Lorenzo!” Florin cried, his voice loud enough to start his headache pounding back into life.
“Thorgrimm!”
“Kereveld!”
Nothing.
Florin sighed, and wrinkled his nose at the sour smell of decay. He supposed it came from the corpse. Then he felt for his matches. They weren’t there.
Then, so faint that he almost thought he might be imagining it, a noise. A tiny, constant patter, as chitinous and relentless as an insect’s rush.
Florin thought about the things he had seen scuttling within the darkness of the skull’s eye socket and swallowed nervously. Edging away from the sound he began to absent-mindedly scratch the goose bumps that had risen on his skin.
The noise grew louder. It seemed to be coming from the left side of the hole, although from where exactly it was impossible to tell. The whole wall was alive with tapping now, and Florin cautiously reached out to touch it.
“Hullo?” he called out, brushing his fingertips against the cold stone. There was no way this much noise could be coming from any kind of insect.
Please Shallya, there was no way that these noises could be coming from any kind of insect.
Was there?
Clenching his jaw Florin drew his fingers back from the trembling stone and hefted his sword.
“Hullo?”
There was no reply, although the beat of whatever was approaching grew a little faster.
Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it stopped.
“Hu…”
Florin never finished the word. With the deep groan of shifting masonry the wall in front of him shifted and began to rise.
Scrabbling back over the shifting bones of the temple’s previous victim he bumped the back of his head on the far wall.
But before he could even feel the pain the huge block which had formed the wall of the cell lifted up and out to hover in the tunnel above. From the thin gap it left a rush of noise, and a wash of orange torchlight, flooded into the chamber.
After so long spent in the darkness it seemed as bright as the noonday sun, and Florin blinked back tears as he gazed up at the two watery silhouettes that appeared against it.
“I told you to wait,” one said gruffly, and threw down a rope.
“I hope you realise how much you’ve embarrassed yourself in front of Master Thorgrimm here,” said the other, its tones rich with carefully constructed disgust.
Relief, sweeter than champagne, flooded through him, and for a moment his injuries were forgotten.
“What’s wrong?” Thorgrimm asked him, brows furrowed uncertainly. “Why are you making that noise?”
But Florin was laughing too hard to answer.
The tunnel into which Florin emerged was a different place to the one he had so blindly run down a few hours ago.
For one thing the bone-hard simplicity of its walls had gone, buried beneath a forest of rough-hewn timbers. They were green beneath the axe strokes which had just shaped them, and the sickly smell of fresh sap vied with the musty odour of the temple’s depths.
For another the wide passageway was lined on both sides with dwarfs and men. Their backs strained as they hauled on ropes, sweat pouring down them beneath the heat of the torches. Beyond them the ropes disappeared into a complicated nest of block and tackles, and from these down into iron hooks which Thorgrimm had fastened to the shifting stonework beneath.
Florin watched as Thorgrimm carried on with his rescue operation, his voice booming over the grunts of his workers and the squeak of pressurised wood. Despite his size the dwarf looked like some ancient fire god as he swaggered through the torchlight, bellowing the orders that were reshaping this sunken realm.
Men and dwarfs both worked with a will as, beneath Thorgrimm’s commands, they swung the block that had formed the side of Florin’s cell forward.
“Where’s Kereveld?” Florin asked Lorenzo, who was busily cleaning the gash on his skull with some burning spirit.
“Watch,” Lorenzo told him without looking up from his task.
Florin watched. The block that Thorgrimm had swung forward was now being lowered, eased down onto the stone beyond that had formed the ceiling of his cell.
Almost immediately, there was the slow, remorseless grind of stone upon stone. The lump of masonry sank as the slab of stone that had roofed Florin’s cell moved beneath its weight, falling away as smoothly as the paddle of a mill wheel. As it did so the wall of the passageway rotated down to cover the hole it left, the stone slabs revolving in a single movement.
This second revolving slab had moved no more than a couple of feet when a wild, bony figure flung itself out from behind it to fall with a loud slap onto the paving beyond.
“Kereveld!” Florin called out as the wizard got shakily back to his feet and blinked around in the torchlight.
“Get out of the way there,” Thorgrimm roared, and manhandled the wizard away from the huge stone spoke of the turning wheel that had trapped him.
It was the second time he’d saved the old man’s life. Kereveld had just got clear when the rope, strained beyond endurance, snapped. It flew whipping vengefully back towards the men who were pulling it and the stone, now completely unsupported, plunged as quickly as a guillotine blade through the trap door.
A bone jarring thud, an ear splitting boom, and the rotating wheel of trap doors was closed forever. The gap which had allowed the wheel to spin had been plugged by the falling stone as neatly as a corked bottle.
“Well, that seems to have solved that problem,” van Delft’s voice drifted through the falling dust and echoing concussion of the impact. “I wonder, Captain d’Artaud, if you’d be good enough to follow Captain Thorgrimm’s advice whilst underground. He does seem to know what he’s doing, doesn’t he?”
“Glad to, sir.”
“Good. I’ll leave you in his capable hands, then. Sergeant Frelda. Get all of these men back to work on the barricades, will you? Captain d’Artaud shouldn’t be needing them anymore.”
“Sir,” a Marienburger snapped off a salute and smirked at Florin before barking a stream of orders to the men.
Van Delft returned the salute then, without another word, turned on his heel and stalked back out of the temple.
“Sarcastic bastard,” Lorenzo grumbled when he was out of earshot.
Florin just shrugged sheepishly as his rescuers started to file past him. Occasionally one of them would catch his eye and he would mutter his thanks. Others offered a half mocking salute which he returned, despite the twinge of pain the gesture sent through his bruised chest.
Since the numbness had worn off his torso felt as delicate as a rack of tenderised beef ribs, although he wasn’t about to mention that to the commander, or to anyone else.
Injuries or not, if anybody was going to escort Kereveld and his precious book, it was going to be him.
He even managed an excruciating little bow as the wizard wandered up to him, bony wrists proceeding from his torn sleeves.
“Are you all right?” Florin asked solicitously, but the old man staggered past without a word. At first he seemed to be in shock; his eyes had a distant, glazed sheen, and his lips moved in a constant, soundless mutter.
But then he turned back to Florin and smiled, the expression incongruously innocent on the begrimed wrinkles of his face.
“Of course, I’ve got it now!” he said, as if they’d been in the midst of conversation. “That water wheel thing that was in the book, it was that very trap. Damned clever it was too, don’t you think? I suppose that originally there would have been water below the level of the floor here, enough to have drowned us like rats.”
“So the book was right then?” said Florin, raising one eyebrow. It made his scalp hurt.
“Yes, yes. Isn’t it fantastic? I knew that those signs wouldn’t be for nothing, and they certainly
weren’t. Why, if this was the rainy season we’d probably already be dead. I knew the book wouldn’t let us down.”
“Yes,” Florin deadpanned. “And what will we find next? Perhaps we should study the book before we go on.”
“No, no use,” Kereveld said. “There’s nothing there but some geometrical patterns. Quite disappointing, really.”
“You don’t say?” Lorenzo muttered. Kereveld looked at him as if seeing him for the first time.
“What are you hanging about back there for?” Thorgrimm’s voice echoed down the hall.
“Just coming,” Florin yelled back, and then turned to Kereveld. “After you, sir. Please.”
Kereveld smiled and rubbed his hands as he strolled back down the passageway. Florin, trying not to limp, picked up a torch and followed in the wake of the wizard’s flickering shadow, his men behind him.
They advanced cautiously over the fallen stone and into the darkness beyond. Thorgrimm strode ahead of them, stopping every now and then to brush his fingers across the stonework of the passage, or to sniff the air.
The ceiling began to lower as they advanced, so gradually that it almost seemed to be doing it by stealth. The walls closed in. The darkness, which retreated reluctantly before the light of their sputtering torches, closed back in around them.
Thorgrimm came to a sudden stop, cocking his head to one side as though listening to some distant sound and lifted his torch a little higher. The flame reached a lump of bitumen and sizzled, flaring up in a sudden burst of fire which illuminated the passage ahead of them.
Or rather, the dead-end.
“That shouldn’t be there,” Kereveld cried out, his voice quavering with outrage. He started forward past Thorgrimm, but the dwarf just lifted his arm and shoved the wizard back.
“Wait,” he said and sniffed the air hungrily. Then he licked one finger and held it up into the air.
“Ha!” he said at last, and strode forward until he was no more than ten feet from the dead end.
There he stopped again and craned his neck to stare upwards.
“What is it?” Florin asked, stepping past Kereveld to look upwards.
“Chimney,” Thorgrimm told him.
“And what’s that?”
Thorgrimm looked down.
“Some sort of pressure plate. Don’t touch it.”
“Yes,” Florin agreed carefully. “But what’s it made of?”
Lorenzo and the two men they’d brought with them jostled forwards, and for a moment all six explorers gazed down at the metal plate. It gleamed in the poor light of their torches.
Yet even in this gloomy light there was no mistaking the rich, liquid warmth of the stuff from which the plate had been made. A complicated checkerboard of shapes had been punched into the smooth metal of its surface, strange cubic ideograms of lizards and feathers and skulls.
But it wasn’t these strange hieroglyphs that silenced the men.
“It’s gold,” Lorenzo whispered, rubbing the sweat from his palms before reaching out to touch it.
“Don’t,” said Thorgrimm, his voice choked with emotion. Florin glanced down at him and saw a fresh sheen of sweat glistening on his brow.
He wants it all for himself, Florin thought with a flash of sudden anger. The greedy little wretch.
Thorgrimm, who was thinking exactly the same thing, took a step backwards from the little knot of men, each of who now looked like a thief.
“We’ll have to build a scaffolding over it,” he decided, wiping his hand across his face and making an effort to pull himself together. It was always the way with this much gold, he thought with a wry smile. Even the most loyal of his kinfolk could be ensnared by it, driven beyond honour by the beauty of the wonderful, terrible metal. And as for humans…
His smile was replaced by a scowl.
“Look,” Lorenzo said with a sudden excitement. “Someone’s already shaved a piece off!”
“Where?”
“On the corner there.”
“Yes, I see it,” said one of his companions, pushing forward.
“I saw it first,” Lorenzo snarled and, before anyone could stop him, he’d leapt onto the plate and snatched the shard up.
This time there was no warning groan of moving stone, or crunch of snapping bones.
This time there was just a rush of air as the plate, with Lorenzo still on it, hurtled upwards and out of sight.
It happened as effortlessly as if gravity had simply reversed itself. Lorenzo had hurtled upwards so quickly that, but for the sound of screaming that floated down from the emptiness above, he might never have existed.
Florin, the gold forgotten, leapt forward onto the spot where the plate had rested and squinted anxiously up into the darkness.
“Lorenzo!” he called, his voice echoing against the sheer stone sides of the chimney.
A distant cry rang out as if in answer, and Florin raised his torch up into the void above. Something up there seemed to be moving. Or growing.
Then there was another cry, but this time it was his own as he hurled himself back and out of the way of the returning plate. It plummeted back down from the heights above, a wash of foetid air preceding it, before slowing down to a gradual halt and settling gently back down onto the floor of the passageway.
“Save you building a scaffold, won’t it Master Thorgrimm?” Lorenzo said shakily, and jumped off the plate like a cat off an oven.
“How did you get it to do that?” Kereveld asked jealously.
“If you step on these markings,” Lorenzo said, pointing to a spiral of what appeared to be tree frogs, “it goes down.”
“And to make it go up?”
“Those bundles of snakes.”
“Here,” said Florin, slapping Lorenzo on the back and handing him a flask of cold tea.
“And where does it go?” Kereveld pressed him.
Lorenzo swallowed a mouthful of tea, his eyes glinting as he studied the wizard’s eager face. He wiped his mouth, belched, and returned Florin’s canteen before answering.
“Come on up,” he said, eager to move on before anybody remembered the shaving of gold that now rested inside his breeches, “and I’ll show you.”
It was difficult to tell how large the chamber was. Its ceiling and far walls were hidden by the darkness, invisible to the explorers who now stood in the little island of light their torches cast.
Around them, sprawled together as intimately as the participants in some grotesque orgy, lay the skeletons.
They weren’t all intact. Nor were they all human. Some of them had the short, blunt look of orcs. Others were smaller, their skulls elongated into snouts from which razor-sharp teeth still sprouted. Another, still held together by its chainmail, had bones as fine and delicate as porcelain. Whatever it was, it made Florin think of the tales he had heard of the elven folk that haunted Loren.
But although the skeletons differed in form and race, in one way they were all alike.
Every one of them, without exception, had been incinerated, the bones burned into powdery chalk. The motes of dust that floated through the acrid stench of this chamber were the same, dull white, colour. And that dust, the last stubborn remains of things long dead in some terrible holocaust, was everywhere. It hung thickly in the stink of the room, the shifting shroud of it that covered the dead like some frail attempt at modesty at the explorer’s presence.
Thorgrimm was unhappy.
“There is a trap here,” he told them, sniffing the air suspiciously. “And no gold. Maybe we should go.”
“No!” Kereveld snapped. “This is the place. I recognise all the skeletons from the book.”
“Do you?” Lorenzo asked, his voice slicing through the carnal atmosphere like a razor.
“Yes. There should be a lever here, or some other mechanism.”
“Which does what?” Thorgrimm demanded. Kereveld could only shrug.
“I don’t know, exactly. But it should open some sort of… some sort of window.”
One of the Bretonnians prodded a skeleton with the toe of his boot. It collapsed, crumbling into a choking cloud that hung in the still air of the chamber.
“Let’s see if we can find this lever, then,” Florin decided, tearing his eyes away from the phantom of dust.
“It should be on the east side,” Kereveld told them helplessly.
“Very well,” Thorgrimm decided after a moment’s hesitation. “If you insist on this folly, van Delft has bound me to help you. But if you’ll take my advice you’ll turn back while you have the chance.”
The dwarf looked up, but Kereveld just shrugged.
“This way.”
Clumping through the bones of their predecessors the five men followed the dwarf into the endless night of the temple. The entrance the plate had lifted them to was swallowed up by the darkness behind them, leaving them in a world of crumbling death and cold sweat.
But gradually, out of the gloom, the far wall appeared. In front of it there lay the heavy body of what appeared to be a stone sarcophagus. A great heap of bones were piled around the promontory like tinder for a funeral pyre. Thorgrimm pushed some of them to one side to make his way through.
“That’s not in the book,” Kereveld muttered, rifling through the pages as he followed the dwarf. Now that the flames of their torches had been brought to bear on the neatly cut stone Florin could see that it was no coffin. There was no sign of any lid, or of a name, or of any carving. Apart from the scorch marks that had blackened its corners, the slab was completely featureless.
Except, that was, for the spheres that rested on its surface.
There were eight of them. Eight cheerful little baubles that looked completely out of place in the darkness of this place. Beneath polar caps of dust their surfaces swirled with the bright, primary colours of children’s toys or winter decorations.
Above them, gaping open as hungrily ten holes awaited. Eight were empty, as black as empty stomachs, but in the first two, lying as neatly as eggs in a nest, were two more of the spheres.
“Looks like we found your lever,” Thorgrimm said, and took off his helmet to scratch his head. “The question is will we have any more luck pulling it than these others?”
[Florin & Lorenzo 01] - The Burning Shore Page 18