"What?"
"Part of your assignment. You know, keeping the Scion happy. Making sure I slept well. Keeping the fear away. Was that it? Is that why you came to me?"
"Let go of my arm, Tig."
"Did the council tell you to sleep with me? Will it be part of your next report?"
"Tig!"
Her face was furious. I stared at her, a taste of hurt in my mouth, praying that she would deny it. She only drew herself up proudly and wrenched her arm free. My hand dropped away.
"I suppose I should have guessed," I said bitterly. "Tell me, Calla, did you enjoy your job?"
"Oh, balls of Oballef," she said with disgust, and moved ahead to join the others.
That settled it. Now I was sure.
We were at the rampart gate in excellent time. The Gilgard towered above us, massively foreshortened; an arc of silver traced the edge of the summit, where the early rays of the sun were just striking. A few other scullions were already clumped dejectedly at the head of the street, but we sidled past them, mindful of Calvo's instructions, and placed ourselves as near to the door as possible. There was a pointed quality to the silence in our little group: Calla and myself tight-lipped, Sibba and Beliso puzzled and uncomfortable, like children whose parents have quarrelled. Nobody ventured to speak.
If I thought of the Gilgard caves at all, it was, oddly, without fear. Or at least without the old, familiar belly-twisting terror that I'd lived with since the Flamens-in-Exile first slung me into the fishing boat. Perhaps I was still too angry, or more likely my deep-felt reluctance to be alone with Calla was a more immediate kind of dread. At any rate, while we stood shivering in the chilly dawn, I had to catechize myself: the search for the Lady must come first, the future of Gil must not be jeopardized. What did it matter if Calla and the council, maybe even Bekri, had made a fool out of me? No doubt their motives were the best, their devotion to the quest unimpeachable. This made them no easier to forgive.
I glanced at Calla's cold profile, expecting to hate her. It was a shock, therefore, to find that the sight of her left me drowning again in a rip-tide of tenderness. I badly wanted to throw my arms around her and beg her to make a fool out of me any time she felt like it. The voice in my head clamoured for attention. She deceived you, fishbrain. You can't possibly imagine you're in love with her, not at a time like this. I can so imagine it, I told myself sadly. It was true. My symptoms exactly matched what I'd read about in the erotic and romantic literature. And for that, I cursed Calla, and I cursed the council; I was just settling nicely into cursing myself when the rampart door was flung open and the Sherkin guards stepped out. It was not Flax who followed them, but Calvo himself.
"Good morning, shullbait," he growled, surveying the crowd. I remembered to cringe along with the others, but Calla nudged me forwards. Calvo shifted minutely to one side.
"Get to your places," he roared as we scuttled past him, the first through the door, "there's a mountain of crockery waiting, and more to come after breakfast. You! Let me see your hands!" He blocked the way of Sibba, who in her capacity as rearguard was blocking those behind her. Calvo's bellowing and her whines faded into the distance as we dashed for the scullery.
Miraculously, or by Calvo's cleverness, the Sherkin guard was not there when we burst into the scullery. We raced through the clouds of steam towards the hidden door, but as I came level with our vat, a pair of dark figures rose menacingly out of the floor in front of us. I slid to a halt, Calla smashed into my back, we both fell over; breathlessly untangling myself, I scrabbled for the knife hidden in the folds of my cloak. Typically, it eluded me. The figures loomed above us, at least ten feet tall—their hands reached out—
"Hurry, my lord, the guard will be back any second." One of them hauled me to my feet.
"Who are you?" I gasped. "How did you know—"
"We're doubling for you at the vat. Calvo's orders. Don't ask questions, just go."
Obediently, I dived for the cupboard with Calla at my heels. It was now a couple of spans away from the wall, the gap camouflaged by a tall pile of dirty crockery. Another moment, a tight squeeze, and we were behind it, crammed together, facing a small wooden door almost masked by cobwebs.
"Hurry up!" Calla whispered urgently. "I can hardly breathe."
"There's no handle—"
"Just push, stupid, it must be stuck!"
Voices were audible in the scullery behind us. I shoved at the door with my shoulder and it gave abruptly, but not very far, as if something on the other side of it was limiting its arc. Calla and I tumbled through. The door swung shut behind us.
The darkness was suffocating, solid, choked with dust. This was because we were not in the expected passageway, but trapped behind a curtain of some exceptionally heavy dark material, scratchy like goat-hair, closely-woven, impenetrably black. I flattened myself against the door and groped sideways for Calla.
"I'm here," she whispered. "And keep your hands to yourself. What is this? I thought the door led into an old passageway."
"It used to. Obviously it doesn't any more. Do you hear anything?"
"No. Yes."
On the other side of the curtain, and far off to our right, heavy boots echoed on the stone floor. I held in my breath and my belly, thanking the Lady that my paunch had been trimmed, praying that the abundant folds of the hanging would hide us. As an afterthought, I turned my feet parallel with the wall. The heavy footfalls approached, passed us without stopping, died away. We remained frozen for a long moment.
"I think it's safe now," Calla breathed at last.
"Safe, eh? Define your terms," I muttered.
"What? Never mind, let's see what's on the other side of this curtain."
I heard her rags rustle. Light shot up from the floor—Calla was kneeling, holding up the edge of the curtain and peering underneath. "Good Lady . . ." she whispered. The light disappeared as she slid into the open and let the curtain drop behind her.
I followed her example. What I expected to see was the other wall of a narrow passage, just broad enough for two to walk abreast. Instead, we were in a low cloister running along one edge of a vast, high-ceilinged hall, separated from it by a series of graceful pillars. The floor of the hall was tiled in a complex mosaic that I recognized at once.
"Ah. I understand now," I said in a low voice. "It's the Hall of Harps. The passage used to be part of it, but it was bricked up about four hundred years ago when Tallislef Second was remodelling the Lower Palace. The Sherank have opened it up again as a cloister, that's all. It's a bit of a joke, isn't it?"
"What is?" She glanced at me coldly.
"Well, that the Sherank have been using this supposedly secret passage all along."
"I don't think it's funny."
"Do I look like I'm laughing? If they've found this passage, what other secrets of the Gilgard do they know?"
Calla went pale under her dirt. "Why, where does it lead?"
"This one? Nowhere in particular, but there's a panel at the end that gives access to the between-ways. You know about the between-ways?"
"A bit."
"Good. Let's hope the Sherank don't. Come on, we can't stay here. This way."
We crept along the cloister, ready to dive for the curtain at the slightest noise. I became aware of a curious form of double vision as we went: although I was seeing this place for the first time in my life, it was familiar. Of course, I had studied the plans of the Gilgard, and could see them clearly if I shut my eyes—but the sensation went deeper than that. I seemed to have walked this cloister before; the view through the pillars of the Hall of Harps was old and beloved. I stopped for a better look by the last pillar, beyond which the cloister became an enclosed passage again.
There should have been trees flowering in great brazen pots under the tall windows across the Hall; an array of harps of all sizes should have crowded the far end, before an arras the size of a small meadow. The hall was empty now, the mosaic floor littered with dirt and horse-co
bbles, the arras probably ripped apart for its golden threads. I clicked my tongue sadly and turned away.
"What are you dawdling for—my lord Scion? Someone could come along at any moment." Calla beckoned impatiently from the shadows ahead.
"I'm coming." I looked at her mildly, wondering where my anger and hurt had gone. "You know, it's very interesting, in a horrible sort of way, to see what they've done with the old place."
"We've no time for sight-seeing," she exploded in a whisper. "Come on."
"I'm coming," I said cheerfully. I caught up with her and we ran on into the gloom towards the end of the cloister, beyond the reach of the light from the Hall.
We were out of sight just in time. There was sudden thunder from the Hall behind us: raucous shouts, neighing of horses, a sound like the clicking of a dancer's fingerdrums magnified a hundred times. Iron-shod hooves on ancient tiles; I realized they were using the Hall as a drill ground. This explained the strew of horse-cobbles.
Calla grabbed my hand and pulled me along. "You are not going back to have a look," she whispered grimly.
"Of course I'm not. No intention of it. Whatever made you think I had?"
"Well, you never know. I've seen that look on your face before. Ever since we came through the door, you've been like a scholar-child with a new scroll."
"Have I?"
"Yes. You're forgetting what's ahead of us and the danger we're in."
"I am not. Anyway, we're in no danger from them, if they're all on horseback. The passage is too low."
"Who says they're all on horseback? And the one we heard before was on foot, and coming from this direction. Just hurry, will you?"
I grinned as we scampered along in our soft shull sandals. Calla was wrong. There was no chance of me forgetting our mission or our peril, and my fear was still there, a goodly lump of it; but I was light-headed with the wonder of being in the Gilgard at last, dazed by the sense of homecoming. There was a strange sense of power filtering up from the Gilgard stones as I trod on them.
The passage was darker now, but we dared not risk a candle. We walked more cautiously, hands stretched out before us. Suddenly we were there: the passage turned to the left, a long dark tunnel with a dim rectangle of daylight at the far end. I ignored that and moved to the corner. The transverse corridor was wood-panelled from that point; I dropped to my knees and began tracing the outline of the flagstones, counting back, losing my place, starting over again. Calla hovered impatiently over me.
"Hurry up, Scion. What are you doing?"
"Looking for the right stone. Hush."
She fidgeted as I counted. Three stones forward from the panel and two to the side. I pressed on the stone with my hands. It seemed steady. Taking a deep breath, I stood up and trod carefully on one corner. It shifted under my foot with a tiny snicking noise. "That's it. Panel's open!" I pulled Calla with me through the wall, into a blacker darkness, an icier cold, into air stale as old breath and silent as a charnel-house. We had arrived in the between-ways.
* * *
21
CALLA STRUCK HER flint and lit a candle. We were, as I had known we would be, in a cramped chamber, low-ceilinged, stone-walled, with a narrow flight of stone stairs ascending from a doorway on our left; the far wall was invisible, though I knew it was only twelve feet away. Cobwebs, massed shrouds of them, filled the corners and encroached upon the centre, curtained the stairway, trailed shreds of dusty gossamer across our faces. I kicked at the thick layer of dust on the floor.
"Good," I whispered. "Nobody's been in here for a long, long time."
Calla sneezed. "Quit raising the dust."
"Sorry. Come on, there's a door on the far side of the room—we could take these stairs, but it's better to go up at the other end of the buttery."
"You do sound like you know where you're going, my lord Scion, I'll give you that," she said grudgingly, moving after me. A fragile peace seemed to have been established. "I suppose the between-ways are part of the Secrets of the Ancients, are they?"
I stopped and looked around at her in surprise. "These? Good Lady, no—there was no secret made of the between-ways. Not deliberately, anyway."
"What do you mean, no secret? Why doesn't anybody know about them, then?"
"They dropped out of common knowledge long ago. Quiet, I'm trying to visualize the plan."
"What were they?" she persisted.
"Just the old servants' passages, built into the walls. I thought you knew."
"How could I? Bekri mentioned them now and then, but never explained anything; he made a great mystery of them."
I did not answer at once. We were at the door in the far wall, and I took the candle from Calla and held it cautiously through the opening. My memory was correct—the doorway gave on to a passage leading to our left, dank, narrow and almost choked with cobwebs. Just at the edge of the candlelight, it made a dog-leg turn that brought it under the line of the staircase. I grunted with satisfaction.
"So?" Calla said impatiently.
"What's wrong now?"
"If they're not secret, why hasn't anyone heard about them except you and Bekri and a few other Flamens?"
"They were forgotten—not in use for about six hundred years, not since the Middle Palace was extended and the dumbwaiters installed. Bekri learned about them as a young Flamen, though he never entered them; they weren't important then, you see, they were just one of the curiosities of the old Lower Palace."
"What about you? How did you learn about them?"
"They're marked on the original plans for the Lower Palace, which are in the Exile archives—fortunately for us. Please, Calla, trust me."
She shrugged, shut up and followed close at my heels, both of us batting at the veils of cobweb clogging the passage. Dust billowed around our feet and danced in the candlelight, filling my nose, birthing pallid monsters in the corners of my eyes. Calla sneezed again, explosively, but the cobwebs muffled the echoes like a blanket. The passage descended gently for a short distance and then levelled out and veered diagonally to the right; one wall was masonry, the other native rock. We were below the level of the Lower Palace floors now, below the buttery itself by my calculations. Our feet whispered through the dust.
"I'm confused," Calla muttered behind me.
"Really? Don't worry, I know exactly where we are."
"Fine. So tell me. You said the between-ways run throughout the Lower Palace. They don't run through the Middle Palace, right?"
"Right."
"And the Middle Palace is between the Lower Palace and the Temple Palace up the mountain."
"Right again."
"And the entrances to the Gilgard caverns are in the Temple Palace."
"Right. What's your point, Calla?"
"Don't be so dense. How do we get through the Middle Palace?"
"I don't know yet."
"You what?"
"Keep your voice down. Not all the air vents were plugged."
Calla grabbed my shoulder and pulled me around to face her in the narrow confines of the corridor. "Bekri told me you knew exactly what to do," she whispered fiercely.
"Well—"
"Did the two of you make no plan at all?"
"No, not exactly—"
She slammed her fist against my shoulder in exasperation. I sighed. "Listen to me, the Sherank have made numbers of changes in the Gilgard, and we don't know exactly what and where. I'll make a plan when I see what the situation is—in the meantime, the between-ways will get us more than halfway to the caves, quickly and safely. I hope. Understand?"
"I understand, my lord Scion," she said, but grimly.
"And another thing: I wish you'd go back to calling me Tig. I'm not angry any more about—I understand that you and the council were only trying to help."
I had begun to turn away when Calla's face caught my eye. I'd seen that look before—it was on the face of a rippercat into whose den the training Flamens had shoved me, with deadpan instructions to be quick and merc
iful in the kill. Calla was much more attractive than the rippercat, and she did not have fangs the length of my hand, but the effect was astoundingly similar. I stepped back.
"You're not angry any more. That's very nice of you, my lord," she said levelly. "You call me a whore, and the council a pack of pimps, and then you decide not to be angry. You're much too forgiving."
"Calla," I began, but she pushed past me, grabbing the candle in transit, and stomped down the passage. I stood stupidly for a moment, and then hurried after her. I thought she was behaving very strangely for a person who had just been forgiven.
"Wait," I called. The candle was a dim silver glow diffused by the torn spider-webbing and the thick haze of dust. Suddenly it cut off, and I realized Calla had turned the corner into the branching place; I stumbled on through the darkness, one hand groping along the wall, muttering to myself, until I reached the turning. It was a biggish chamber where the buttery passage broke into four: one to the old barracks complex, one to the south stables, one to the law courts, and the fourth a staircase to the old royal nursery, which had been turned into the College of Flamens when the Middle Palace was extended. It was this staircase that I wanted to use, and I was relieved to see Calla's web-frosted form hunched on the lowest step, waiting for me. I started to cross to her. The floor crunched under my feet.
"Here, take the candle," Calla said stonily, "I've seen enough already." Reaching her was like treading across a bed of dry twigs. I took the candle from her hand and knelt to examine the floor.
For a moment, I could not quite make sense of what my eyes told me. Twigs and branches, yes, long and dry and splintered, but not grown on any tree ever rooted in the ground. They were bones, clean and shining in the candlelight, crushed and scattered where Calla and I had heavy-footed through them; the skulls were queued neatly along the wall at intervals of a couple of spans. Something metallic shone below one toothy smile, and I reached across to pick it up—a miniature of the Lady in Gil, in silver, attached to a chain that was still looped through a strew of disarticulated vertebrae. That one had been a Flamen in life.
Gil Trilogy 1: Lady in Gil Page 15