Aftermath tw-10

by Robert Asprin

  "Though it wouldn't," he added a few steps later, "be a good idea for anyone to force the door from the outside. Even if they were a much greater scholar than I. Ah, Setios collected some ... artifacts ... that he might more wisely have left behind."

  The reception room was chilly. Samlor thought it might have some- thing to do with the glass-smooth ornamental pond in the middle of the room. He tested the water with his boot toe and found it, as expected, no more than an inch deep. It would be fed by rainwater piped from the roof gutters. Barely visible in the shadow beneath the coaming were the flat slots from which overflow drained in turn into a cistern.

  Except for the pond, the big room was antiseptically bare. The walls between top and bottom moldings were painted in vertical pastel waves reminiscent of a kelp forest, and the floor was a geometric pattern in varicolored marble.

  "Well, which way now?" the caravan master demanded brusquely, his eyes on the doorway to the rear half of the house. Star was shivering despite wrapping her cloak tighter with both hands, and Samlor didn't like the feel of the room a bit either.

  "Down still," said Khamwas in puzzlement. He rapped the ferule of his staff on the floor, a sharp sound that contained no information useful -at least-to the caravan master. Perhaps it just seemed like the right thing to do.

  "There'll be a cistern below," said Samlor, gesturing with a dripping boot toe toward the pond. "The access hatch'd be in the kitchen, most likely. Not in this room."

  He started for a door, ill at ease and angry at himself for that feeling of undirected fear. Part of his mind yammered that the Napatan was a fool who again mistook a direction for a pathway ... and Samlor had to avoid that, avoid picking excuses to snarl at those closest to him in order to conceal fears he was embarrassed to admit.

  Star poked a hand between the edges other cloak. She did not look up; but when her finger cocked, a bright spark swam rapidly from it and began coasting the lower wall moldings.

  "D-dearest," said the caravan master, glancing at the withdrawn, mis- erable-looking face of his niece, then back to the light source. Star said nothing.

  The droplet of light was white and intense by contrast with the vague glows that both-he had to admit the fact-magicians had created earlier in the evening. It might even have looked bright beside a candle, but Samlor had difficulty remembering anything as normal as candlelight while he stood in this chill, stone room.

  Pulse and pause; pulse and pause; pulse ... He'd thought that the creature of light was a minnow, or perhaps no more than a daub of illumination, a cold flame that did not counterfeit life.

  But it surely did. A squid rather than a fish, too small to see but identifiable from the way it jetted forward with rhythmic contractions of its mantle.

  The marble floor was so highly polished that it mirrored the creature's passage with nearly perfect fidelity, catching even the wispy shadows between the tightly clasped tentacles of light trailing behind. The colors and patterning of the stone segments created the illusion that the reflec- tion really swam through water.

  "Star," the caravan master demanded in a restrained voice. "Why are you-"

  The reflection blurred into a soft ball of light on a slab of black marble, though the tiny creature jetted above it in crystalline purity. The squid pulsed forward and hung momentarily over a wedge of travertine whose dark bands seemed to enfold the sharp outline.

  Then source and reflection disappeared as abruptly as they had spurted from the child's gesture.

  "What?" said Star, shivering fiercely. She scrunched her eyes shut so that her uncle thought she was about to cry. "What happened?"

  Samlor patted her, blinking both at the sudden return of darkness and his realization of what he had just seen. Star might not know what she had done or why, but the caravan master did.

  "Khamwas, come over here, will you?" he said, amused at the elation he heard in his voice as he strode to the sidewall where the thing of light had disappeared. "You know, I'd about decided we were going t' have t* give up or come back with a real wrecking crew."

  "A hundred men are slain through one moment of discouragement," said the manikin on Khamwas's shoulder.

  "In this town," the caravan master responded sourly, "you can be slain for less reason 'n that."

  "I, ah," said the Napatan scholar. "What would you like me to do?"

  "Star, come closer, sweetest," Samlor cajoled when he realized his niece had not followed him. Something was wrong with her, or else she was reacting strongly to the malaise of this house-which affected even the relatively insensitive caravan master.

  She obeyed his voice with the halting nervousness of a frequently whipped dog. Her hands were hidden again within her cloak.

  Samlor put his arm around her shoulders, all he could do until they'd left this accursed place, and said to the other man, "Can you make it lighter down here? By the wall?"

  Khamwas squatted and held his staff parallel with the edge molding. The phosphorescence was scarcely any light at all to eyes which had adapted to the spark from Star's finger, but it was sufficient to distinguish the square of black marble from the pieces of travertine to either side of it in the intaglio flooring.

  Samlor could not discern a difference in the polish of the black marble from that of the rest, but the way it blurred the light which the others had mirrored proved what would have been uncertain under any other conditions.

  He tried the stone with the tip of his right little finger; the rest of the hand continued to grip the hilt of his long knife. The block didn't give to light pressure, neither downward nor on either of its horizontal axes, but it didn't seem to be as solid as stone cemented to a firm base ought to be.

  "Is there something the matter with the floor, here?" asked Khamwas, resting easily on his haunches.

  Samlor would rather that the Napatan keep an eye out behind them, but perhaps he couldn't do that and also hold the staff where it was useful. The glow was better than nothing.

  Besides, he doubted that any danger they faced would be as simple as a man creeping upon them from the darkness.

  "This block doesn't have the same sheen as the others," explained Samlor as he stood up slowly. "It's not on any path, particularly, so maybe it's been sliding or, well, something different to the rest."

  He stepped gingerly on the block, which was only slightly longer in either dimension than his foot. By shifting his weight from toes to heel and then to the edge of his boot, the caravan master hoped he could induce the marble to pivot on a hidden pin. He was poised to jump clear at the first sign of movement,

  There was none.

  Well, then ... if he pressed the block toward the wall-

  Samlor's hobnails skidded, then bit into the marble epough to grip as he increased the weight on them. The black stone slipped under the molding with the silent grace of mercury flowing.

  There was a sigh from behind them. The two men jerked around and saw that the ornamental pond was lifting onto one end. The water, which had dampened Samlor's boot a moment before, did not spill though it hung on edge in the air.

  There was a ladder leading down into the opening the pond had cov- ered.

  "Collector, you called him," said the caravan master grimly as he watched the reflection in the vertical sheet of water.

  "A good trick," responded Khamwas, nettled at the hinted contrast of his knowledge against that of the missing Setios.

  The Napatan stood and began muttering in earnest concentration to his staff. Samlor assumed the incantation must have some direct connec- tion with their task and their safety.

  When the phosphorescent staff floated out of Khamwas's hands, dip- ping but not quite falling to the ground, the Cirdonian realized that it was merely a trick-a demonstration to prove that Khamwas was no less of a magician than the owner of the house,

  It was the sort of boyish silliness that got people killed when things were as tense as they were just now.

  Apparently Tjainufi thought the same thing, bec
ause he turned and said acidly into the scholar's ear, "There is a running to which sitting is preferable."

  Star's hands wavered briefly from the folds of her cloak; Samlor could not be sure whether or not the child mumbled something as well. Flecks of light shot from her fingers. They grew as they shimmered around the room, gaining definition as they lost intensity-jellyfish of pastel light, and one mauve sea urchin, picking its glowing, transparent way spine by spine across a "bottom" two feet above the marble floor.

  The staff clattered and lost its phosphorescence as it fell. Samlor snatched it before it came to rest on the stone. He handed it back to his male companion. "Let's take a look, shall we?" he said, nodding to the ladder. "Guess I'll go first."

  "No, I think I should lead," said Khamwas. "I-"

  He met the caravan master's eyes. "Master Samlor, I apologize. It'll be safer for me to go first, and I'll spend my efforts on making it safe."

  The multicolored jellyfish made the reception room look as if it were illuminated through stained glass. The sea urchin trundled its way for- ward to the opening in the middle of the floor, then continued downward at the same staccato pace as if the plane on which its spines rested lay in a universe in which sideways was up.

  That might be the case.

  The two men walked to the opening and looked down while Star hugged herself in silence.

  The room beneath the floor was a cube or something near it, ten feet in each dimension. Mauve light filled the volume surprisingly well, though the simulated urchin did not itself seem bright enough to do so. The floor shone with a sullen lambency.

  The furnishings were simple. A metal reading stand, high enough for use by a standing man and empty now, waited near the center of the room.

  To its right stood an elaborate bronze firebox on four clawed legs, a censer rather than a heating device. The flat sides of the box were covered by columns of incised swirls, more likely a script unknown to the caravan master than mere decoration. The top was smooth except for a trio of depressions-an inch, three inches, and six inches in diameter. Aromatics could be placed there to be released by the heat of charcoal burning in the firebox beneath.

  At each corner of the top was a decorative casting. They were minia- ture beasts of the sort which in larger scale could have modeled the censer's terrible clawed legs. The creatures had catlike heads, the bodies of toads with triangular plates rising along the spine for protection, and the forelegs of birds of prey. Serpent tails curled up behind them, sug- gesting the creatures were intended as handles for the censer; but anyone who attempted to put them to that purpose would have his hands pierced by the hair-thin spikes with which the tails ended.

  There was no other furniture in the room, but a pentacle several feet in diameter was painted or inlaid on the concrete floor to the reading stand's left. It was empty. The floor and white-stuccoed walls were other- wise unmarked.

  Khamwas's lips pursed.

  "Go ahead," said Samlor with a shrug. "Maybe your stone's on the ceiling where we can't see it."

  "Yes," said the Napatan, though there was doubt rather than hope in his tone.

  Khamwas thrust his staff as far into the mauve light as it would go while his hand on the tip remained above floor level.

  Nothing happened, but Samlor was not foo! enough to think it had been a pointless exercise. His companion was doing what he had prom- ised, concentrating his talents-better, his knowledge-on the task at hand.

  Still holding the staff out in his direction of travel, Khamwas backed awkwardly down the ladder. The ferule banged accidentally on the cen- ser as he turned. It made Khamwas jump back but did not concern Samlor, who saw what was about to happen.

  But the crash and shattering glass from upstairs spun the caravan master, his teeth bared and his left hand groping for the throwing knife in his boot sheath.

  "The wind," murmured Star, the first words she had spoken since the three of them left the study upstairs. She wasn't looking at her uncle or at anything in particular.

  But she was right. A door banged shut, muting a further tinkle of glass. One of the window sashes had not been secured properly. A gust had slammed it fiercely enough to shatter the glass.

  "Are you all right?"called Khamwas.

  The question impressed Samlor, for it sounded sincere-and in similar circumstances, he himself would have been worried more about his own situation than that of his companions.

  "We're going to get drenched when we leave here," the caravan master said. "Leaving'll still feel good. Any luck yourself?"

  The Napatan grimaced. "The room's empty," he said. "The brazier's as clean as if it was never used. I'm not sure it's here at all."

  "Do not ask advice of a god and then ignore what he says," snapped Tjainufi, who was rubbing his tiny face on his shoulder like a bird preen- ing.

  "Step back," said Samlor. "I'm coming down."

  He turned to his niece and said, "Star, dearest7 Honey? Will you be all right for a minute9"

  She nodded, though nothing in her face suggested that she was listen- ing

  The quicker they found what Khamwas needed, the quicker they- Samlor-could sort out his niece's problem He jumped into the cubical room without touching the ladder

  Samlor landed in perfect balance, feet spread and his left hand ex- tended slightly farther than the right so that leverage matched the weight of his long dagger Despite Samlor's care, his hobnails skidded and might have let him fall if Khamwas hadn't clutched the Ordonun's shoulder The floor was dusted with sparkly stuff, almost as slick as a coat of oil

  Jumping might not have been the brightest notion, but the caravan master hadn't liked the idea of doing exactly what an intruder was ex- pected to do.

  The concealed room had an underwater ambiance which wasn't wholly an effect of the glowing sea urchin trundling across an invisible bottom at waist height The mauve light had ripples in it, but neither the furniture nor the two men cast distinct shadows on the walls.

  "What does your"-Samlor said, making a left-handed gesture to indi- cate either Khamwas's staff or nothing at all-"your fnend say about what you're looking for9"

  "That I've found it," Khamwas replied, turning his head to view sur- roundings which were no less void on this perusal than on earlier ones.

  Samlor stamped his foot. Sparkling dust quivered, but the concrete was as solid as the bedrock on which it was probably laid. Then he kicked the nearest wall

  Stucco blasted away from the hobnails as they raked four short, paral- lel paths and squealed on the stone beneath.

  "Well, I think we know where t' look," said the Cirdonian in satisfac- tion.

  The stucco his boot had scraped was covering two distinct blocks of stone-a slab of polished red granite, and another of marble shadowed with faint streaks of gray. Both stones were inscribed, though on the softer marble the markings had been weathered and were further defaced by Samlor's boot

  He brushed at the stucco with his left hand, flaking away a patch his kick had loosened The writing on the granite slab was Rankan but of a form so old that the doubled consonants and vanant orthography made all but a few words unintelligible to the caravan master

  "Why, this is wonderful, my friend," said the Napatan with a smile brighter than the mauve glow as he bent over the cleared patch.

  Tjainufi beamed and added, "There is no good deed save a good deed done for one who has need of it."

  "We're not outta the woods yet," said Samlor with a dour glance at the walls around them If they had to clear all the stucco-or even half, if their luck were average-which it probably wouldn't be-it was going to take a lot longer than the caravan master wanted to spend in this place

  "No, that's all right," explained the Napatan with the uneasy hint of mindreadmg which he had displayed before. "I'll use a spell of release and the covering will come away at once He must use the ancient writ- ings because they focus the power with which the years have imbued them."

  Maybe that was what Setios used to
do with them, Samlor thought as his companion knelt before his upright staff again, but he'd bet Setios hadn't much use for them or anything else in the world just now.

  Khamwas was whispering to himself and his gods Samlor looked at him, looked at the dagger-saw that the watered steel blade was only that, only metal, probably all it ever was, except in his mind.

  "Star?" he called toward the rectangular opening. "You all right, sweetest?"

  He could barely hear the reply, "All right . . ," but a couple of the pastel jellyfish were drifting over him in placid unconcern. She'd be fine, Star would.

  If any of them were, she'd be fine.

  Samlor squatted and squeezed up dust from the floor on the tip of his left index finger It was colorless (save for the mauve light it reflected) and much too finely ground for him to be able to tell the shape of the individual crystals

  A caravan master has plenty of opportunity to examine decorative stones, jewels and bits of glass cut and stained to look like Jewels in the dim light of a bazaar The dust could be anything, powdered diamond even, but most likely quartz, spread in a smooth layer across all the flat surfaces in the room ...

  Except for streaks-shadows, almost-stretching from the reading stand and the legs of the bronze censer. The dust seemed to have been sprayed violently from the direction of the pentacle in which Khamwas was almost standing

  "K-" Samlor began in sudden surmise.

  The Napatan had been whispering, but now his voice rose in a cre- scendo Khamwas's eyes lifted also, they were wide open but obviously not fixed on anything in the room.

  Stucco shattered away on all sides, raining over Khamwas and the caravan master who reached for the ladder with his left hand and swung his blade at anything which might have slipped behind him as he crouched.

  Nothing had. The choking flood of sand and lime dust filling the air as the walls cleared themselves made Samlor pause where the attack he feared would only have driven him to swifter motion.