Rascal flashed a big smile, bounced down on the bed, and took one of the ugly dolls. "The aroma of hard work in a hot sun," he replied. He squinted at the doll for a moment, then attempted a comical imitation of its tragic face.
Despite himself, Innowen almost laughed. He managed, though, to keep a straight face. He'd shown only a few of his dolls to Rascal, and never these. He'd bought them in Spyrid in a little town on the coast of the Tasmian Sea before he'd met Rascal.
"I call them my Shadowdancers," he said quietly. "They were the only dolls I bought that weren't supposed to have some magical property. They didn't make the corn grow, they didn't bring you luck, they didn't improve sexual prowess...."
Razkili put on an expression of mock disdain. "Well what good are they?" he interrupted. "Oh, I see." He held his up by its brass rod. "You stick this in a pot of dirt, set it on the window, and they scare away the flies!"
"They teach a lesson," Innowen said simply, ignoring his lover's teasing. "Look." He held up his own doll. "Wretched-looking, I admit. But look there."
He pointed beyond the foot of the bed where the doll's shadow fell on the wall. Razkili had to twist around to see as Innowen set the brass pole against his right palm and began to roll it slowly between his left fingers.
On the wall, the shadow began to turn. Its weighted arms lifted gracefully from its body. One leg lifted higher, too, as if the doll were somehow alive and in control of its limbs. Then the turn slowed, and the arms sank down, and the leg resumed its natural position. It stopped for a moment as if on the points of its toes, seeming to quiver as the oil lamp flickered subtly behind it.
Innowen rolled the metal rod between his fingers again, faster this time. The doll's shadow-arms flung up in a dramatic posture, the one heavily weighted leg lifted high, and it appeared to spin that way on the point of one toe.
By controlling the speed with which he twisted the pole, by stopping and starting it suddenly, Innowen made the shadow dance. "Now you do it with that one," he said to Razkili, indicating the other doll with a nod of his head. Rascal picked it up and began to play. Soon, there were two shadows dancing side by side.
"Don't stop," Innowen said after Razkili had gotten the hang of it. "But here's the lesson. Remember how ugly the dolls are?" From the corner of his eye, he watched Razkili nod. "Yet look how beautiful and graceful the shadows are. Which, then, is the true essence of the dolls?"
"I see!" Razkili exclaimed. His doll danced excitedly as he spun the rod in his hands. "Only their surface features are ugly, but when you understand what they really are, what they can do, and what they're capable of, they're wonderful! That's a marvelous lesson!"
"One that can be applied to people," Innowen agreed. "One that got me through a lot of years of self-doubt." He stopped his doll, cradled it in both his hands and peered into its seed-eyes. "Funny that we need a doll to teach us that, isn't it?" He looked thoughtfully at Rascal, then began to make the doll dance again. "Rather sad, too. There's one more thing that bothers me when I play with them," he added.
"What's that?" Razkili asked without looking at him, without taking his eyes from the pair of shadows on the wall as they pirouetted together.
Innowen stopped again and put his doll down on the bed. "It makes me wonder—whose hands spin us?"
Razkili made a face and put his down, also. "Did I ever tell you that you think too much?" he said. He turned back around on the bed, and his knee brushed against the fourth doll, which had lain ignored all this time. "What's this one do?" he asked, picking it up.
It was a slender doll, as long as Innowen's forearm, a lady, all carved from smooth, bone-white wood with a clinging sculpted dress and streaming sculpted hair. Her arms and hands were pressed against her sides in a regal, yet delicate pose. Her eyes were two tiny spots of blue paint, and her cheeks were daubed with red, as were her lips.
Innowen took the figure from him. "That's a gift for Dyan," he said. "You remember. You were with me when I bought this one in Ashmorn." He put the doll's head in his mouth and blew. A high, clear tone shivered through the air. "It's a flute. The Ashmoors believe the music their priestesses make on it brings blessings from their gods."
"I remember," Razkili said, nodding. "Speaking of gifts, it's time you saw what I've prepared for you." He glanced toward the door and frowned. "I'm hungry, though, and I'll bet you haven't eaten, either. I asked for our meals to be sent up."
Innowen got up from the bed and placed his shadowdancers on his pillows. The doll-flute he set on the table. "I wouldn't expect things to run too smoothly around here," he warned. "No one lit our lamps, either. The servants have their hands full."
Razkili got up, too. "We'll stop in the kitchen and grab something ourselves. Let's go."
Innowen hesitated. "Are we leaving Whisperstone?" he asked, remembering that Rascal had been gone all day.
"Yes," Razkili affirmed, "but not the way you think."
"Then I'm taking a sword," Innowen said, snatching up, not his mother's blade, but the sword Baktus had given him in Parendur. He strapped it around his waist. As an afterthought, he picked up the doll-flute and thrust that into his belt as well. If they were going to the kitchens, he might find Dyan somewhere along the way.
The lower levels of Whisperstone were a marked contrast to the quiet upper levels. Nighttime had not slowed the frantic preparations for war, and people rushed about. The halls were full of strangers. One corridor was lined with cots and pallets for the wounded. Innowen thought he glimpsed Dyan on her way to the courtyard, and thought she glanced his way, too, but before he could call out to her, she hurried around a corner, and Razkili steered him down a different hallway.
The kitchen was nearly abandoned. All the cooking had been moved outside. Still, they managed to find half a loaf of bread, a few crumbs of cheese and some turnips, which they washed down with ladles of water from a bucket. It wasn't very good fare, but they laughed about it.
When their bellies were sufficiently full, Razkili led the way again. Down into the deepest levels of the keep they went, down to depths few visitors ever discovered. They took the last lamp from its niche on the wall and carried it to light their way.
At one particular door, Innowen stopped. In that room he had killed Riloosa to end the poor man's misery. He had killed again since then. Yet the Syraean's death had left a strange, bitter taste that lingered still.
Down more stairs and through dusty corridors they went. Innowen had not visited this level before, and he wondered silently what lay behind the locked doors they passed. There were mysteries to Whisperstone he had not yet explored. Apparently, Razkili had.
Recent footprints marked the soft gray pounce that covered the floor. Mysteriously, those footprints led straight to, seemingly through, a solid wall. Barely visible on the discolored stone was a face someone had painted there. The pigment and the once-horrible visage had faded with the years, perhaps with the centuries. It was possible, though, when Razkili held up the torch, to make out the green, twisting snakes which formed the face's hair, the razor-sharp fangs, the eyes that once had burned bright red.
"Can you imagine when this was new," Razkili commented, "coming around that corner with only a torch, not knowing it was here? It would have scared the hair off your chest."
"You don't have any hair on your chest," Innowen answered dryly. But he had traveled enough to know that was probably exactly why the face had been painted there, to scare away snoopers and prowlers.
"Minarik showed me this when I told him what I wanted to do for you," Razkili volunteered. "Did you know Whisperstone was originally built as some kind of temple?" He moved into the corner, bent down and simultaneously pressed two bricks in the very lowest row. There came a low rumble and the grating of old chains and gears, the grind of stone on stone.
"That was ages ago," Innowen said, watching the wall slide open to expose a yawning darkness. "No one even remembers the sect, or the god they worshipped. They just disappeared."
Razkili turned and raised his lamp against the deep darkness. Its sputtering glow revealed an end to the tiled floor just a few steps beyond, and the beginning of bare packed earth. "Minarik says we may use this route whenever we like," he told Innowen, "but he asks that we disturb nothing we find here. Now stay close in the light."
They began to walk. Soon, the smooth stone walls ended, and it became clear that they were in some sort of cave. The ground sloped downward, taking them ever deeper into the earth. The blackness beyond their small lamplight was utter.
"This better be a pretty damned good gift," Innowen muttered.
The path sloped upward suddenly, but only briefly, then down at a sharper angle. For a short distance, the passage narrowed to little more than a crack, and the walls pressed in on them, forcing them to walk sideways with the earth pressing against their backs and chests. Innowen's heart thundered, and he bit his lip, but he trusted Razkili, who had come this way before, and fought down the primitive fear that gnawed at him.
"Look here," Razkili said quietly when the crack had widened a bit. He pulled Innowen into a side-chamber and played the lamplight around.
Innowen gave a short, choked cry. Rotting wooden shelves lined the chamber. Upon those shelves, skeletons and corpses half mummified from age and the cave's peculiar air lay neatly stacked and arranged with a careful, ritual precision. The skulls and faces had all been turned, a trick which had required the breaking of some necks, so that all those dark-socketed eyes stared eternally at the entrance—at Rascal and Innowen.
Innowen shivered and backed out quickly.
"Minarik says there are forty-eight such chambers," Razkili explained, joining Innowen in the passage again, "each containing the remains of forty-eight men, all laid out exactly like this one."
Innowen leaned back against the wall and rubbed his face with both his hands as he tried to get his breath and calm his racing heart. "Who were they?" he wondered aloud.
Razkili touched his arm, indicating they should continue on. "Minarik believes they were the priests who lived here—the ones who vanished—maybe the original builders of Whisperstone. The keep had no defensive wall then. That was constructed much later. He thinks the temple must have been attacked and the priests retreated into these depths."
Innowen did a quick calculation. "That would mean over two thousand priests. What kind of force could make two thousand men retreat into a hole in the ground and entomb themselves in such a grotesque manner?"
Razkili shrugged. "Only time and the gods know," he answered. "There are other chambers, some full of supplies that were never used. Apparently, they came down here and felt they couldn't come out again. Your father thinks they finally committed some kind of ritual suicide. It's a mystery."
The walls eventually widened further to allow easier passage, and they walked side by side. Other tunnels occasionally branched off, but Razkili pointed out the faded circles of red paint that marked the main artery.
Suddenly, the walls fell away dramatically, and the darkness before them came to life with thousands of sparkling lights. Innowen gasped and stopped, half afraid, completely awed.
They stood on the edge of a vast cavern whose ceiling dripped with thousands of jagged stalactites. The light of their small lamp, though frail and flickering, fired the embedded minerals and crystals and transformed the gloom to a mesmerizing beauty. In the center of the cavern lay a pool of shimmering black water, utterly still, smooth as a polished mirror.
Razkili led Innowen to it, and they peered into its depths. A single droplet fell from a stalactite above it, startling them as it shattered the perfect surface. But the ripples swiftly ended, and perfection restored itself.
"This is why Whisperstone's wells have never run dry," Razkili explained. "Minarik says there's an underground river that flows all the way down from the Razor Mountains. There are pools like this in several other tunnels, but none quite as lovely."
Abruptly, Razkili set down the lamp and began to remove his clothes. "I promised you I'd bathe," he reminded Innowen.
They bathed together in the icy cold water, whispering in reverent tones that echoed in the loftiness. Innowen thought it was the most beautiful place he had ever seen. He hugged himself, smiling and quivering, as he turned around and around in the water, watching the shimmering minerals. He didn't mind the gooseflesh that rose on his skin or the nearly aching hardness of his nipples. It was almost delicious that he was freezing.
With a half-open palm he launched a barrage of water at Razkili.
"Don't!" Rascal cried with alarm. "Don't! You'll drown the lamp!"
Innowen stopped himself from repeating his attack as he thought of the darkness that would greet them if the tiny flame went out. He cursed himself for engaging in such a stupid and thoughtless act, one that might have doomed them, for he saw by the look of fear on Rascal's face that their lives relied on that light.
"Sorry," he apologized. "I wasn't thinking."
"That's all right," Rascal answered nervously. "I've been this way numerous times now, but never without a light. I suddenly realized that. I don't think I could find the way out in the dark. We could wander down here forever."
They got out and dried themselves with their kilts before they wrapped them back around their waists. When they left the pool to continue through the cavern, Razkili set a faster pace, as if he were eager to stand under open sky once more. "Someday, I'll thread a rope through the main route. That way, if the light ever goes out, we can grab hold and follow it."
Innowen stopped suddenly and held up his hand for silence. "Did you hear anything?" he whispered intensely.
Razkili's brow furrowed as he listened. "Just the drops falling onto the pool back there," he suggested. "The echo can carry quite a ways."
The cavern grew narrower and narrower, becoming a mere cave again. Still, there was room for them to walk abreast, though in places they had to duck their heads to avoid the ceiling. At last, the end of the tunnel was blocked by a huge stone slab that completely sealed them from the outside.
"What now?" Innowen asked patiently.
Razkili approached the slab and ran his hand around the side of it, touching something Innowen couldn't see. Immediately there came a grinding of mechanisms and the clink of chains. The slab fell slowly forward and settled to the earth.
Innowen stared at what appeared to be an enormous staircase. But each step was as high as his waist, and each was carved with a line of unreadable characters. He recognized it as a very ancient form of the Isporan language but could not begin to read it.
"Minarik believes the priests brought their initiates or acolytes to this point. After a long, terrifying journey through the darkness, they faced these steps. On each one is written a question, he says. If they could answer the question, they rose one step. Only by answering all the questions could they reach the top and escape."
"No," Innowen said with a sudden admiring insight. "That's not quite the right interpretation. It's more subtle than that. Not a restrictive test, but an enlightening one. When all the questions were answered, all the answers understood, then they would emerge out of long darkness into light. The symbolism was important, not mere escape."
Razkili nudged him in the ribs. "Hmmmph. And you make fun of Osiri philosophers!"
They levered themselves up onto the first step and then the next. "This place is a marvel of engineering,"
Innowen commented.
Razkili agreed. "Sometimes I think we've forgotten more than we've learned. There are twenty-four steps, by the way. You might note that's half of forty-eight, the number of funeral chambers and bodies in each. Make of that what you will. But the acolyte's final test was a test of strength."
"What do you mean?" Innowen asked. He was beginning to breathe a little harder. If there were
twenty-four steps, they were halfway up.
He soon found out. He could only stand in a half crouch on the final step. He ran a hand over the horizontal slab above his head and chewed his lip thoughtfully.
"There's no mechanism," Razkili called out from the step below. "At least, none anyone has found. And there's only room for one person at a time on these higher steps. Just reach up and lift it."
Looking down from the final step, Innowen frowned at his lover. "I suppose you've done this dozens of times yourself."
Rascal grinned and nodded. "You might have to strain a bit. Give it all you've got."
Innowen took a deep breath and rubbed his hands together. He set them against the slab and heaved upward. The weight proved far lighter than Razkili had led him to believe. It flew open on hidden hinges and fell back with a slam. A refreshing breeze surged in around Innowen, and the starry sky greeted him.
"You must be stronger than I thought," Rascal said, smiling at his prank.
Innowen put his hands on either side of the open hole and pulled himself out. He stood slowly and waited for Rascal to join him.
He found himself on a hilltop in the open air under a bright night sky. The moon hung over the landscape, almost full except for a small missing splinter. It was not ground beneath his feet, but a smooth floor of square marble tiles, one of which was the slab he had pushed open. Broken columns rose, forming a neat square barrier against the rest of the world. Beyond the columns were chunks of old rubble, recently piled.
"These are the old temple ruins on Sparrow Hill," he muttered half to himself. Minarik had shown him this place while teaching him to ride years ago. "The altar used to stand here, almost where our doorway is." He stared south in the direction of Whisperstone, but he could see nothing of the keep in the far distance, not even the watchfires on its walls. "We came all that way underground!"
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