They retraced their way down the corridor. The other false doors also bore numbers in vertical lines, along with carved words. Hiresha would be able to translate them in her sleep, and she suspected them either taunts or clues.
The wall was coldness on her back as she set herself against it. Her eyes drooped, then popped open again at the sound of Maid Janny screaming. Prickles of fear ran over the enchantress, and she half pushed her way back to her feet to help her maid.
Chandur had already begun sprinting toward the cry. Hiresha was thankful for him. This way is best, she thought. The Soultrapper could send wave after wave of aggressors, and they would have to battle forever unless Hiresha found a way through this pyramid to a source of his power.
“Attend to it, Chandur,” she said as she traveled down the stairway in her mind to sleep.
Something choked the light from the pyramid entrance. Chandur squinted. The blue from Hiresha’s earrings faded, but a purple glow spread over the corridor from her dress.
Janny bounded past him, jiggling. “Oh, it's dreadful! Awful-on-a-skillet!”
The maid's cheeks were streaked with tears, and she had gripped her fan hard enough to crack its pole. Chandur was about to ask what she had seen, when a lumbering sound forced his attention back to the darkness.
Crocodile fangs burst from the gloom. Long teeth reflected violet light, gnashing at Chandur's eye level. The thumping stomps of the monster sounded more like a charging bull than a shuffling crocodile. Has to be big as the passage, Chandur thought, and moving fast.
He sprinted forward to meet it.
Standing ground and trying to stop all that momentum seemed foolish to Chandur. Neither did he want to chance the beast shoving him aside and trampling the sleeping enchantress.
He swung the jasper sword back over his shoulder, letting its full weight carry it downward behind him. As he neared the creature, he had an impression of trunk-like legs, sagging black hide, and claws.
The maw bristling with teeth turned sideways to engulf him.
At that moment an awareness flickered past that he could be facing the Silver Crocodile. A bolt of terror and helplessness passed through him then was gone. He could do nothing but trust in himself, his sword, and fate. He had already begun to leap.
The jump gave him the clearance to swing the sword underhand. He Lightened it, whipping it forward, and he remembered to release his spell to return the wedge to its full weight.
The jasper sword snapped upward and splintered the jaws. The force of the collision ripped off the crocodile's head and powdered half the monster's spine.
Chandur did not smell blood, but the reek of salt pricked his nostrils. He tumbled over what looked like the leathery bulk of a hippopotamus. When he rolled past its stub tail and cauldron rear, he knew it was exactly that, except for the details of the crocodile head and claws.
The headless abomination stirred, flopped its flat feet against stone, and stumbled down the corridor toward the enchantress.
A freezing disgust washed over Chandur as he chopped off one of the hippopotamus' hind legs, and blackened strands of linen spilled from the wound. The abomination scraped forward against the wall. Off went another leg, and the monster dragged itself.
By the time Chandur had hacked it to motionless pieces, he was sweating and shivering.
“Excellent!” Hiresha strutted between pieces of carcass as if she often took her afternoon constitutional with a scenery of embalmed leather and broken bones. She stopped in front of a false door. “See the marking for 'three?' And the hieroglyphs mean 'sinking,' the closest the language comes to 'Burdening.'“
“I see,” Chandur said, “but I don't understand.”
Janny crept out of the shadows, shielding herself with her fan.
“It is quite simple,” Hiresha said. “This is the only door that matches. Burdening is a third-sphere or tertiary ability for enchantresses. That and the corridor slants, with this false door closest to the center of the pyramid. Rather obvious. I'm almost disappointed in the Opal Mind.”
“Obvious?” Chandur ran his hand along the rectangular indentations. “How do we go through this?”
“That is less obvious. You may have to attend to this door as well.”
He pushed at the innermost rectangle, but it did not budge. The door said 'Burdening?' I wonder....He pushed his consciousness into the stone and willed its ties to the ground to tighten, like he sometimes Burdened his sword. The skill exhausted him, felt like twisting a metal rope between his hands.
The stone shifted under his touch, moving downward. A beam shone through the opening, and then the wall slid forward. Light spilled in and blinded them, followed by a flow of hot air.
“A fine inference.” Hiresha blinked over his shoulder into a round room hidden behind the door. “This is the well structure I saw below the Heart of the City Lake.”
A motif of false doors continued in the circular room. Countless panels of them scaled the walls, ascending toward brightness. High above, daylight shone through the crystal peak of the pyramid. The quartz distorted the image of the sky lake above it into a jagged sphere, and Chandur realized the underside of the clear rock must jut with spikes or ridges.
When he peered down to the base of the cylindrical room, he whistled. A white sarcophagus waited there, dressed with opals. A woman's face carved of alabaster smiled up at them with invitation.
A marble path spiraled from their vantage point down to the stone coffin. Chandur could reach the sarcophagus in a quick jog. He lifted a foot over the sunlit ledge.
Hiresha gripped his arm. “Hold.”
Chandur stumbled back.
“Please, anything but waiting.” Janny's eyes peeped from behind the fan, looking down the corridor.
Wings flapped in dull feathery notes in the darkness.
The enchantress lifted the fennec into the lighted room. His fur shone gold, and his hair seemed to ripple once. His black whiskers curled upward as he squeaked in pleasure.
Nodding to herself, Hiresha folded the fennec against her chest and rubbed him. “Maid Janny, a coin.”
“They're coming, they are!”
Hiresha snapped her fingers. “A coin, if you please.”
The maid trembled as she handed over a silver piece.
“Observe.” The daylight reflected off the purple stones in Hiresha's fingers as she let go of the coin. It fell upward.
Chandur lifted his chin and tried to follow the coin's flight. It sped too fast, too far for him to hear the clink as it hit the jags of crystal on the ceiling.
“I call that a coin well spent.” He felt frail, woozy, and grateful for the enchantress. She had saved him from plummeting upward and splattering against the top of the pyramid. He wondered how long his corpse would have stayed there, like a dead fly trapped in a glass for all in the city to see.
“The entire room is enchanted,” Hiresha said.
She knelt, turned the fennec tummy up and held him to the side of the lighted walkway, where the marble path ended in a ledge. Chandur worried she was going to let the fox go. He'll fly to his death. Instead she pushed the fox onto the underside of the walkway.
The fennec trotted upside-down around the room's circling walkway, yipping and content.
“He does make a fine test subject.” Hiresha scrambled after the fennec, pulling herself into the room and below the marble path.
“Can't you hear them?” Janny's teeth chattered. “Wings, and not the petite bluebird kind neither.”
“You'd better go next,” Chandur said.
He helped the maid scramble down onto the ledge. When his hand grazed the heft of her bottom, Janny stopped her nervous mutterings long enough to chortle.
Wings thumped closer. Chandur stood with the daylight to his back, sword in front of him. His stomach clenched. I can't see a thing.
The darkness shifted, and he swung. The jasper clubbed something to the ground. A feather scratched his face. He expected a squawking
, but only the sound of more wings echoed down the passage. Many more.
Not liking his position, Chandur holstered his sword behind his back. He dove into the room and caught the ledge.
Black and white feathers gusted after him. He glanced down to see vulture wings pass between him and the warped sky lake. Instead of a red neck, this vulture had a length of white and brown scales stitched to its shoulders. The head fanned into a hood. Only when fangs dug into his dangling leg did Chandur recognize the bird as half cobra.
He heaved himself onto the ledge. Wish my prophecy had mentioned biting bird-snakes. Heat itched its way up his right leg, and he wondered how long before the venom made him collapse and tumble off the walkway into the sky pit.
The vulture-wing cobra flipped with a few flaps to adjust to the change in gravity. It circled past the false doors, up toward them. Hawks with sand-colored viper heads followed it, and one eagle with ram horns.
Drowsiness skewed Hiresha's sense of balance. The walkway seemed to shrink, to narrow with every step she took after the fennec. The heat of the trapped air made her gag.
She clung to the rectangles of the false doors. They were upside down in relation to her. Most every one had a number marked into it by lines, like the door that had opened into this room.
A glance up showed the sarcophagus closer. Or further away? The alabaster and opal coffin appeared smaller, somehow. Hiresha rested a hand against her brows as dizziness churned her insides.
Wings beat below her. Maid Janny was screaming. The fennec whined, his ears flat, chin pressed against his paws as he stared at the birds of prey below. Above, rather.
Not liking the pitiful mousy noises the fennec was making, Hiresha threw a fistful of jewels down at the winged abominations. Only one hit, a sapphire that Lightened a cobra-vulture. The bird slowed and had to swim through the air. A viper-headed hawk flew too close to a diamond that shone yellow on a wall, and the abomination was pulled into the marble with a crunch.
Hiresha trusted Chandur to fend off the rest of them. Picking up the fennec, she edged farther along the walkway. Only one of her slippers would fit at a time along the ledge. It has narrowed. She had to stoop because the wall that had looked straight up and down now warped. A sense of wrongness throbbed in her head.
“Hiresha!” Maid Janny sounded more surprised than alarmed now. “How'd you get huge? You're a giant.”
“This is no time for your ridiculous....” Hiresha noticed her hand could cover an entire false door. No more than a fingernail fit into the smallest frame.
She reached up, into the bowl of the ceiling. Her arm shadowed the length of the sarcophagus. It no longer looked like a grand coffin but a toy. The opals covering it were no bigger than flecks.
“An illusion of perspective,” Hiresha said.
The sarcophagus had appeared normal sized from above. Now Hiresha saw it was too small to fit the fennec, not that she enjoyed the thought of stowing the innocent creature in another coffin. Why, I could even touch the sarcophagus from here.
When she tried to open it, the miniature shifted. Stone scraped below, and the false door they had entered through slammed shut. They were sealed off with the embalmed birds.
Hiresha smacked her palm against her forehead. Wobbling, her balance shifted toward the drop. She feared the plunge to the crystal top was all too real.
The fennec squeaked as she tipped back toward the wall. She pressed herself against the stone in relief. Holding her breath, she shifted her hips around and took a step back down the walkway.
“Hiresha.” Chandur's voice cracked. He batted away a hawk then gripped one leg. “I think I've been bit.”
Hot anger cut into her chest at the thought of a winged snake striking him. “By which one?”
“The cobra.” He leaned against the wall, pinching his eyes closed.
The enchantress shuffled down the walkway as it widened. “Tend to me, Maid Janny.”
Setting herself against the wall, Hiresha closed her eyes. The beat of abomination wings was not much of a lullaby, but she reached her dream laboratory in a record time of sixty-three seconds.
Her reflection was pulling at her hair. “Oh, Fosapam must be in terrible pain. What if he passes out?”
“Not likely.” The Feaster was biting her sapphire claws. “Unless the cobra squirted every last drop of its venom.”
“Not helpful,” Hiresha said to them.
A rack of vials holding powdered gemstone flew from a shelf. The bauble orbited her hand, along with a diamond she was enchanting to Repulse apart the venom in Chandur.
While she worked, the mirrors spun with the images of the false doors that lined the cylindrical room. She had to find a safe path through the pyramid to the glyphed mummy.
“You think there is one?” the Feaster asked. “This could be just a death trap.”
“It is,” Hiresha said, “yet note the numbers on each false door. We entered through one with a 'three.' Those without marks must indicate zeros.”
“We don't see any patterns,” the reflection said.
“There isn't one.” The Feaster shut her violet eyes.
Hiresha stared at the blur of numbers in the mirrors. Excitement and fear coursed through her in equal measures. This tomb held the spirit of an enchantress god.
“I am listening, Opal Mind. What're you trying to tell me?”
Three mirrors closed in around her, and she gazed up to see the full swath of false doors. Over three thousand of them. Lines of light twisted over marble walls as she searched for sequences. She had to find a way. She needed the one true door.
The viper lashed out in a rush of speckled brown wings, stub horns above its reptile eyes. The abomination erupted in feathers and linen stuffing when a sweep of red stone severed it.
Chandur sagged against the wall, trying to control his breathing. It felt as if he stood barefoot on a brick white hot from a kiln, and the blistering pain pulsed up his leg.
The enchantress rested against the wall further up the walkway. The cobra stretched its neck toward her, dragging its wings through the air. It flailed more than it flew, a jewel stuck to its back.
Hand against the wall, Chandur limped toward her. He was afraid the cobra would slide its way to the sleeping enchantress first.
Janny smacked the winged snake with her fan. “Get back, you ankle-biting head-shitter!”
The waving fan blew away the Lightened abomination. Wings and hooded snake spun around each other down the room, up toward the sky.
The maid held the fan like a sword, panting. “All this vanquishing can't be good for my heart.”
“Better than the other way around.” Chandur set down his sword and pinched his hands around his leg to try to stop the venom from leaking higher.
Not counting the wallowing cobra, only one abomination still flew. The curved horns of a yearling ram circled beneath them, the tips of its eagle wings spiked with black feathers. Chandur kept an eye on it.
The fennec swished his tail as the enchantress woke. She handed a brown jewel to Chandur. “Swallow this.”
The gem tickled his tongue. He tried to swallow it but only succeeded in scratching the back of his throat. Three more attempts failed. What, I can face down a croc-o-potamus but not get down a little jewel? He tucked the gem in his cheek and hoped that would do.
Hiresha was speaking to Janny. “...you simply must have something on which to write.”
“Well, there's this, but....”
The enchantress snatched the papyrus. Not seeming to notice the sketch of the naked man with a stomach pleated with muscle, she turned it to the blank side. “It will do. Kindly hold the fennec.”
The maid flattened herself against the wall as much as possible for a vigorously dimensioned individual. “Can't. I'm allergic to fangs.”
“Honestly, Maid Janny, they could not cause you any lasting damage.”
Chandur took the fennec for her. When the small creature looked down to see the eagle w
ings below, he squeaked and shivered against Chandur. He comforted the fox as best he could, making cooing sounds. Janny gave him strange looks.
Thinking over his own situation, he was upside down in a tomb, and venom seared up his leg, and the wall door they had entered through had swung shut, and even trying to open it would mean hanging over a drop to his death. Even so, holding the fluffy-eared fennec made him feel a little bit of all right.
“Bless my knees,” the maid said, “you don't want to see what she's doing right now. You really don't.”
Chandur glanced at Hiresha. The enchantress had picked up one of the feathers strewn about and was writing with her eyes closed, in her own blood. A rivulet of red curved from her finger through the air to the feather's pointed end.
He suspected that this was not something most women would do, even most enchantresses. Chandur had noticed Hiresha tended not to take half measures. “She's writing numbers?” He could see the first few were, “three, one, four.”
The maid shuddered and fanned away the cobra again.
When the enchantress woke, she did not act as if she had done anything out of the ordinary. Holding the bloody paper in one hand, she took the fennec from Chandur and walked to the end, the ledge separating them from the false door that had slammed shut.
She lowered the fennec below the walkway. Chandur rested a hand on her back, worried she might tip over. “Careful.”
The enchantress turned the fennec sideways and set him against the false door. She loosened her grip. Chandur held his breath. The fox scampered up the wall as if walking over level ground.
“Stop!” Hiresha reached for the fennec, then she squirmed over the ledge, kicking Chandur when he tried to hold her back. “Fennec!”
The fox hopped onto a nearby false door and squeaked as he fell. Nothing remained between him and a tumble through hundreds of feet to crystal spikes.
Hiresha stood on the side of the wall, leaned forward, and snatched the fennec. She cradled him. “You can't walk on any section of wall you please.”
Chandur asked, “How'd you know which sections are the enchanted ones? And which are the drop-to-your-death ones?”
Fox's Bride Page 21