Kako’s voice said from above: “Don’t be startled, Rafiq; but it’s going to get noisy soon.”
Rafiq started to say: “Noisy?” but the word was muffled by an unearthly wail that rose in the close air of the well and tore at his eardrums. He desperately tried to cover his ears, but by then the pull of the spinning water was so strong that he needed both hands just to stay by the wall. If he had felt a sympathy approaching horror for Akish’s part in this Circle, Rafiq now felt that the prince, in having his ears clogged with water, was the fortunate one.
The wail was so painful, in fact, that when it stopped all Rafiq could think about was the blessed relief of the silence. It took the rapidly rising water and Kako’s rather impolite remarks from her perch high above him to make him realise that something must have gone wrong.
Akish burst from the water shortly after that, spitting water and coughing.
“Curse you wench, you were trying to drown me!”
A barely audible mutter of: “Oh, for pity’s sake!” floated down to them.
“Repeat yourself, wench!”
“I said, your highness, that the water needs time to sink! You’re going to be under water for quite some time– longer if you keep letting go of your lever and have to fight the current to get back to the surface!”
Akish looked to Rafiq for confirmation.
“The water was sinking,” Rafiq said. “It was only a yard or two above your head.”
“You must have been able to feel the current!” said Kako exasperatedly.
“Mind your tone, wench! I shall dive again.”
There was another mutter from above them, but this time Rafiq couldn’t make out any of the words. It was probably just as well.
Akish evidently thought so as well, and since he couldn’t reach her anyway, he merely snapped: “Begin your count!” and dived again.
This time Rafiq was prepared for the ear-splitting squeal and the drag of the water. It didn’t make the experience any pleasanter, but it did make it possible for him to keep passing hand over hand in a steady, aching routine without panicking. He did that until Akish’s head broke water again. This time the prince was still attached to his lever.
Apparently Kako placed little trust in his continuing to do so, because she shouted above the wail: “Don’t let go! Don’t let go until the water is completely gone!”
By the time all the water had disappeared, vanishing through a round hole at the base of the well, Rafiq was shivering on a slimy bed of something unpleasant and organic, Akish was still clinging to his lever just in sight, and Kako was entirely out of sight in the gloom, presumably still with her lever.
“Shall I release my hold?” bellowed Akish, and it wasn’t until Rafiq heard a faint, garbled reply that he realised the prince was talking to Kako. She must have answered in the affirmative, because Akish began to carefully make his way down to the base of the well. The bricks were much slipperier as the bottom of the well drew nearer, and when the prince was still some way above Rafiq’s head, the hand-holds ceased completely.
Akish snarled, shifting his already perilous grip. He’d flung his chainmail over his shoulder, and with the added weight of his water-logged gambeson and the strain of clinging with his fingertips, it was looking exceedingly likely that he would fall. He dropped the chainmail with a grunt and it made a soft, wet slap against the slick floor beside Rafiq.
“You’ll have to slow my fall,” said Akish. “To break a leg at this stage in the game is insupportable.”
“The floor is slippery,” Rafiq told him, but Akish had already released his grip. The prince caught at his shoulders, Rafiq at his forearms, and Akish sank to the knee in slick, green algae.
Akish made a sound of disgust and tugged at his feet. They emerged from the algae with a wet sucking sound, but barely had the holes begun to soften around the edges and fill with thick green water before Kako dropped from the darkness and made another pair.
“It’s all a bit nasty, isn’t it?” she said cheerfully, catching at Rafiq’s elbow to prevent herself falling over. “The door is over there, I believe. Perhaps we should rest before we go through to the seventh Circle. I doubt we’ll have a chance to rest when we get there.”
“Why?” demanded Akish. “What is in the seventh Circle?”
“Not even the princess or the dragon know that,” Kako said; and this time, Rafiq was certain that she spoke the exact truth. “The Keep has one or two secrets known only to itself.”
“Very well, then: I see no use in waiting,” said Prince Akish. “Onward, Rafiq! Onward, wench!”
Rafiq saw Kako take a deep breath in through her nose, and felt her fingers tighten in the crook of his arm. Her eyes met his; uncertain, uneasy, and slightly apologetic. Rafiq wasn’t sure what his eyes told her, but whatever it was, it made her chin set suddenly. More pleasantly, it made her smile up at him; openly, honestly and cheerfully.
She said: “Shall we?”
They stepped into the seventh Circle together.
***
In a grand, high-ceilinged room somewhere in the centre of Shinpo, a pleasant-faced woman attending a well-filled meeting of state suddenly went very pale and ceased to listen to the main speaker. She whispered briefly and urgently to the tall girl beside her and vanished from the room at a genteel trot, her exit hidden by several large, broad-shouldered men and one particularly deadly-sharp woman.
Once in the hall outside, she fairly ran, her elaborate head-dress wobbling dangerously, and arrived via a circuitous route of back allies and secret passages to a comfortable, well-lit library, where a slightly chubby gentleman caught her at the door and embraced her soothingly.
“Mama!” said Zen, surprised into the childish appellation. He was in his usual seat, but he wasn’t reading. “I thought you were–”
“I was. What happened?”
“The passage has vanished,” said Dai, biting her thumb. “It was just here, and now it’s gone.”
“Did Kako do it, or was it the Keep itself?”
“The Keep,” said Suki worriedly. “It’s closed up completely.”
“Where is Kako?”
Dai looked away. “We think she’s in the seventh Circle.”
“Is the dragon with her?” asked the plump gentleman.
“Of course he is, dear,” said Kako’s mother.
“Probably,” said Zen at the same time. “She’s got the shard, after all.”
“Will that be enough to keep him near her?”
Kako’s mother smiled, as if involuntarily. “That, amongst other things.”
Kako’s father said: “Other things? What other things? What have I missed?”
Dai laughed suddenly. “Never you mind, Father! Do you think you can open another passage?”
“Not a chance,” he said. “How Kako did it in the first place, I haven’t a clue. We’ll have to wait until it opens again.”
Miyoko, her lower lip sticking out, sat down by the curtains that had once contained a passage to the Enchanted Keep but now hid only solid brick. Zen, after a moment’s indecision, did the same. Dai, sighing, dragged a chair closer and threw herself into it, and Suki leant gracefully against the wall.
Kako’s mother slid her arms around her husband’s waist in return, allowed her head to sink on his shoulder...and they waited.
The Sixth Circle is ended.
The Seventh Circle
Prince Akish looked almost unbearably self-satisfied. Rafiq didn’t think he’d ever wanted to hit the man so much in all his life. The thought worried him a little. His more violent thoughts had always been distinctly dragonish, whether he was in human or dragon form: this was the first time his impulses had been human.
He felt Kako’s fingers in the crook of his elbow, and was reminded that perhaps it wasn’t exactly the first time his impulses had been entirely human.
He smiled down at her, but Kako wasn’t looking at him. She was gazing around the room with a particularly blank face. That
also troubled him slightly, since Kako with a blank face was a worried Kako. He followed her eyes around the room and discovered exactly what it was that was worrying her: there was no Door Out. She had said as much in one of the earlier Circles, but Rafiq hadn’t realised exactly how trapped that would make him feel. Prince Akish must not have noticed, because his smugness only seemed to expand.
“What is the manner of this challenge?” the prince demanded. “Wench! Cease your goggling! What is the manner of this challenge?”
“I don’t know,” Kako said, her hand slipping away from Rafiq’s arm. Against the brilliant white of the room her algae-soiled trousers looked even dirtier, and her cobweb-frosted head-dress looked particularly shabby.
“I’ve told you in every Circle so far that the seventh is unknown except to the Keep. I have no help to give you, and there’s no Door Out. You’re on your own.”
Prince Akish’s eyes seemed to glow with feverish excitement. “Very well! One last challenge! I shall be equal to it!”
All three of them gazed around in silence. It was a vast white room: white tiled floor, white walls, white ceiling. There were no windows and no doors—not even the one by which they had ostensibly entered—and the walls were all of a uniform height and length. The only difference to the walls was in the one directly opposite them, which had a wide, deep alcove in it. It was well lit, and bare except for a low, round piece of furniture that could have been a small footstool but didn’t quite seem to be.
The prince was already striding forward to examine it, and when he dropped to one knee to run his fingers over the surface of it there was silence for a good few moments.
Then he said: “Lizard. Look at this.”
Rafiq, strangely reluctant to approach the thing, did as he was told. There were criss-crossing straight lines chipped into the footstool, or low table—whatever it was—deep, certain, and vicious.
“That must have taken a bit of effort,” said Kako, who had wandered along behind them. She slipped between the two of them and crouched to examine it. “It’s marble too, isn’t it?”
“Indeed,” said Prince Akish. “Most curious. We will examine the room.”
“I don’t think there’s much to examine,” Kako said.
Rafiq had to agree. But for the alcove, there wasn’t anything to be seen. He walked around the room anyway, one hand trailing along the wall with the hopeful suspicion that a trick of the light hid a passage out in all the white that surrounded them. He found nothing: the walls were simply walls, the corners were corners, and the floor proved only to be the same marble tile as the rest of the Keep.
Akish was tapping at the tiles with his sabatons—checking for hollowed out tiles?—and Kako, who seemed to be doing something very strongly magical with one hand, very carefully walked so as to keep what she was doing hidden from the others. She was so very careful about it, in fact, that Rafiq began to wonder if she knew the way out of the seventh Circle too.
He considered the idea, observing Kako in his peripheral, but ultimately dismissed it. She had been genuinely concerned about entering the seventh Circle, unlike the other Circles. She had obviously been convinced that it was dangerous, and had done everything she could to convince Prince Akish to take a Door Out before they got to it. She had been very clear, moreover, about the fact that she didn’t know how to complete the seventh Circle. Rafiq didn’t think she’d been lying: he’d begun to know her quite well, and though she might have some idea of what needed to be done now, he was certain she hadn’t known when they entered the room.
Still, it seemed like a sensible idea to keep his eye on her.
It was fortunate that Kako happened to be on the alcove side of the room when something red and shiny began to appear beside the round marble block. It meant that Rafiq, who was still watching her, had a reasonably good view of what happened. It happened very quickly: a slight gleam of metallic red to the air beside the marble block that clanked in a horribly familiar way.
“Who goes there!” said Akish at once, wheeling toward Kako and the disturbance.
Kako gave a muffled squeak and sprang away from the impending threat, her magic-entwined hand flashing forward defensively. By then the red glint had become a tall, visored knight in shiny red armour, whose plumed helmet was only dwarfed by the battle-axe he carried.
Akish stared up at the strapping knight. “What in the–!”
Kako, putting her hand back into her pocket, said thoughtfully: “That looks awfully sharp, doesn’t it?”
Her eyes were flitting from the axe to the block, and Rafiq, who had seen his fair share of beheadings, felt a creeping sense of foreboding steal over him.
Still, the knight didn’t at first seem inclined to actually do anything. He looked very impressive, the massive bulk of him braced in his alcove at a battle-ready stance and his plume high and fierce, but for a few minutes he did nothing but stand there.
Akish said: “What happens now?” rather impatiently, but as he did so the knight moved.
His blood-red sabatons screeched against the marble tiles as he swivelled to face the marble block and raised his axe in a smooth clinking of metal against metal.
“A forfeit is paid!” said a voice from the depths of the knight’s visor. It sounded rather metallic itself.
“What forfeit?” Akish demanded. “We haven’t done anything!”
The knight didn’t reply. It simply brought its axe down in a sweeping arc of scarlet upon the black chopping block. The sound of blade meeting marble rang almost painfully through the room, a note of high, perilous, music; and the axe sprang back up.
“Ow!” said Kako, covering her ears.
The knight looked around him once while the sound of his blade still sang around the room, and began to disappear.
“Stop him!” shouted Akish.
Rafiq watched the knight disappear completely, and said: “How?”
“Blister it, how should I know, you son of a lizard! You’ve let him get away!”
“I don’t think any of us could have stopped him,” said Kako. “I’m not sure that I really want him here, if it comes to that.”
Prince Akish made a frustrated noise and flung himself away across the room. Kako met Rafiq’s eyes, amusement mingling with caution, and gave her half shrug.
A moment later, she said: “Is it just my ears, or is that clanging still going?”
“It’s still going,” said Prince Akish sourly. He had one hand against the far wall, his fingers tapping. “It’s got into the walls.”
“Into the walls? What do you mean?”
“They’re ringing,” the prince said. “Put your hand against one. You’ll feel it.”
Rafiq cautiously laid a palm on the wall closest to him, and the suggestion of sound in the air merged with the ringing in the wall. That was curious, but curiouser still was the fact that as he was pushing his palm against the wall, the wall seemed to be pushing back.
“Oh!” said Kako. She was just a little further down from him, and she was clutching her hand to her chest as though the wall had bitten her. “It moved! Rafiq–!”
“I felt it,” he said grimly. As a matter of fact, the wall was still moving. Rafiq took a step back, straightened his arm, and laid the palm of it flat against the wall once again. Kako, who had come closer in curiosity, watched as his arm was forced into a bend and until the wall encroached almost to Rafiq’s toes.
“How far by your count?” called Akish.
Rafiq met Kako’s worried eyes. “Perhaps two and a half yards in total.”
“I concur. This wall also moved by approximately two and a half yards. Did the others move?”
“The northern wall moved, but the southern didn’t,” said Kako. “The Keep obviously doesn’t want to obstruct the Knight.”
“Ominous,” observed Akish. “We’re at the top of the hour: I expect the pantomime will happen again at the next hour.”
Kako, her eyes very wide and thoughtful, said: “That seems
sensible. If the walls are moving at a rate of two and a half yards from every side, every hour, how long will it be before we’re crushed?”
Akish paced the room swiftly, counting aloud, and at length met them at their wall on a count of one hundred yards.
“That gives us a little less than twenty hours to find a way out,” said Kako. She blew her cheeks out and gazed around the room. “Nineteen, to be safe.”
“There must be another way out,” Prince Akish muttered. “Spread out! Find it! We’ll come together again for the hour.”
Rafiq, who had been puzzling over the room in the privacy of his own thoughts, said: “Why the knight?”
Kako’s eyes flicked up at him and away.
Akish said: “What do you mean, lizard?”
“The walls are drawing in,” Rafiq said slowly. “If we don’t find our way out we’ll be crushed.”
Akish shifted impatiently. “As we observed. What of it?”
“Then why the knight?”
“Why anything in this accursed place?” said Akish, but he looked thoughtful. “However, if we’re bound to die by one peril, why introduce a second?”
Rafiq gave a slight nod. It was the same question that had been exercising his mind.
“Turn your mind to finding a way out of this scrape,” Prince Akish said. “I will think on the matter myself.”
He was lucky, Rafiq thought with a slight, grim smile, that Akish hadn’t spoken his remark as a Command. The prince hadn’t yet been so dictatorial as to Command Rafiq’s thoughts, and it would have been remarkably short-sighted to begin now, when the problem to be solved required as much thought as possible.
Fire In The Blood (Shards Of A Broken Sword Book 2) Page 10