by Mike Shel
There was a solemn silence in the chamber. Belech finally spoke. “The first death.”
“Aye, not the last,” said Morz, somber. “Ariellum argued they should lower someone into the pit on a rope, see if there was a ledge or the like that she had fallen to. Wallach was senior, now that Galadayem was dead. He made the point that they hadn’t heard the plate armor strike a ledge or any such thing—it would have made a terrible racket. Quintus said a requiem prayer, and they moved on.”
Auric cringed inwardly at the parallels between the place Gower Morz described beneath St. Besh and the place where Lenda and the others had met their fates. The iron disk at the entrance, the antechamber with its candles, the stone heads in the corridor, the pit. He tried to generate some spit in his mouth, but failed, instead drawing in a long breath. A strange relief washed over him as the monk’s story continued and the similarities seemed to end.
“Fifty feet past the pit, the corridor started making inexplicable turns. Ariellum called them back to me: left, right, slight left, till I could no longer make out her words. It was about an hour later—I can only estimate; I was in and out of consciousness as the benefit of the herbs waned—Quintus and Wallach came down the corridor, runnin’, breathin’ heavy. I called out as they ran past me—”
“Wait,” interrupted Auric. “They ran past you?”
“Aye, like all Fates and Furies of the Netherworlds were snapping at their heels. Terrified. I called out, asked where they were goin’ without me. Quintus—he sounded like he was weepin’—he said, ‘They’re all dead, we have to run!’ Wallach growled that they needed to leave me. Leave me, by Lalu’s sweet smile! Served with the man for eight straight years, saved his life twice, and he says leave me!”
“None of that sounds like the brave men Lictor Rae described,” said Del. Auric thought of the serene engraving of the man in his book of aphorisms, tried to imagine that face weeping with fear. So incongruous. Then he recalled with shame his own impulse three years ago to drive his sword into Brenten’s back in that god-cursed pit, and his flight as the dead made a feast of Brenten’s flesh.
“No, not at all,” Morz said, as though still confused and hurt all these years later. “He was scared out of his wits. Wallach was as daring a man as I’ve ever known. I’d never seen the man frightened before, let alone panicked. I mean, you’ve known warrior-priests of Vanic, eh? And Quintus, that one had always been as calm as a fresco saint in the face of some of the nightmares we’d come across. But the man was blubberin’!”
“What happened?” asked Del.
“Quintus insisted they couldn’t abandon me. Helped me up and out of that place, though he was tremblin’ like the last leaf on an autumn oak.”
“I mean, what happened to them deeper in the temple?” Del clarified.
“After many turns, they came to a shrine—this, of course, I found out from Quintus and Wallach later. Anyway, it was an oval chamber, about forty feet long, thirty wide. At the far end was an idol, about eight feet tall, an obese, frog-like thing, holding its bloated belly with its arms. They said it was the most repulsive thing they’d ever laid eyes on. The thing’s mouth was open, huge and toothless, didn’t have eyes. Set in the middle of its forehead was an emerald, so fat you’d need two hands to hold it. Apparently, some of the stone fitting around this gem had crumbled and there was a black tarry liquid oozing out of it. Ariellum dug at the stuff with a knife for a sample, and the gem just fell out.”
“Reckless,” observed Lumari, her eyes distant, her mouth a firm, straight line.
“More than you can know,” Morz responded, his chin trembling with emotion. “Wallach said Cosus picked up the gem from the ground, and the room grew cold. Suddenly—these are Wallach’s words—Ariellum was ‘torn to pieces.’”
All of them were silent until Del finally managed to speak. “Did they see anything actually touch her?”
“No. All they saw was Ariellum unmade in front of them, like a rag doll pulled asunder by a spiteful child. There was nothing to be done for her. Like…like an abattoir they said it was, blood everywhere. They fled the chamber, Wallach, Quintus, and Cosus. Out in the corridor, almost immediately, some sort of serpent-thing descended from the ceiling, laced itself around Cosus’s neck, snapped it like she was dropped from the scaffold in a hangman’s noose. The gem fell, Wallach grabbed it up—it was the only thing they recovered. After they passed me, and I’d shouted at them, they came to their senses, grabbed me up, and we got out of that terrible place.”
The group contemplated this for a time before Lumari asked a question, obvious, but it hadn’t occurred to Auric. “How did you get out? Past the gate? You said the quake had shut and locked it again.”
Morz frowned and took a deep breath, steeling himself for something. “When we got to it, Quintus shouted, pleadin’ like. ‘The way is still barred,’ like he was prayin’ to Belu for aid. Well, there came a voice, inside my own head…awful. I’d never felt such pure, sodding evil…made my bowels turn to water. It spoke a word, then the gate just…popped open. Later, Wallach told me what we had all heard was the voice of the Aching God, speaking to us, in our heads.”
“What was the word?” asked Del, almost breathless.
“It said, ‘More.’ The god said, ‘More.’”
14
Vintage 766
Gower Morz drew a map of the temple for them on a sheet of papyrus Lumari provided. Watching the blind man effortlessly reproduce the floorplan of the place was an amazing thing. It made Auric imagine the man’s skill when he had full access to his senses.
“This is my recollection,” he said when he finished. “Including what I was told after the theft of my sight.”
They spoke with him for another hour or more, answering his questions about their mission and the events leading up to it. The old man thanked them at last for their visit, and wished them success on the expedition, making a sign of blessing in the air before him. Then he returned to his perch at the edge of the terrace with the whistling totems, overlooking the sea.
It was early evening when they reached the dock, the winding mountain path no easier to negotiate in the opposite direction. Sailors from the Duke Yaryx were loading a longboat with six large crates, arranging them between the oarsmen so they wouldn’t interfere with the motion of the sweeps. Midshipman Larso supervised the men, standing at the edge of the dock with hands locked behind his back, attempting an air of authority he didn’t possess. When the young officer saw the party approach, his charade crumbled, and he waved in an excited, boyish motion that elicited a reluctant smile from Auric.
“Ahoy, friends!” called Larso. “I trust you found your man?”
“Aye,” answered Auric. “And it seems the captain has achieved his goal as well. Six crates he’s secured? A decent haul.”
“Oh, this is our fifth trip, Sir Auric,” Larso responded proudly. “The captain managed to negotiate for thirty crates of this Kenish wine. Twenty crates are his personal property, eight were purchased by us officers, one by the crewmen. We’ll all reap a considerable profit when we’re back in Hanifax! Captain got these for a song.” The midshipman glanced sheepishly at Brother Greeter, as though he had let slip some special secret.
“Twenty-nine. You’re one crate short, Mr. Larso,” observed Lumari.
“Huh?” he responded. “Ah! The sorcerers all chipped in for a crate as well.” The fresh-faced midshipman leaned in to Lumari and spoke in a stage whisper still quite audible to old Brother Greeter, who stood smiling toothlessly nearby. “Think of it: each crate holds eighty bottles. The reds go for a hundred twenty gold sovereigns a bottle, the whites a hundred apiece. That’s nearly ten thousand gold a crate for the red, eight thousand for the white! We paid five sovereigns a bottle, red and white. That’s a profit of—”
“Yes, midshipman,” said Lumari, impatient. “I can do the math. Quite impressive. But I thoug
ht the captain didn’t allow sorcerers to drink aboard his vessel.”
“Oh, he doesn’t,” replied Larso. “Maybe they’ll sell it, maybe they’ll drink it on leave. Who knows the muddied minds of sorcerers?” Larso looked at Del with chagrin, tipped his tricorn hat to her. “Forgive me, Miss Ogara.”
Del waved at him with a playful trill of her fingers and tapped the opal embedded in her skull.
“A hundred twenty sovereigns for a bottle of wine?” marveled Belech, incredulous. “Does imbibing it provide the gift of flight?”
“Oh, it’s rare, Mr. Belech,” responded Larso with glee. “Hardly anyone takes the trouble to come out here. You saw the difficulty we had making the voyage from Tessy. Then there’s a trader’s fear of pirates, and then hauling such a delicate cargo while fighting storms and fleeing buccaneers in a fat merchantman. Not much of the stuff gets through to the main islands of the empire, let alone the eastern duchies nowadays. If we head in that direction, Lieutenant Hobesson says we could get double for each bottle. Perhaps we’ll take Countess Ilanda back to Harkeny after we return you to Boudun. We’d make a fortune selling them in Marburand or the Karnes. I have a tenth share of the officers’ crates. I’ll be able to purchase my lieutenant’s commission!”
“Well done, lad,” said Auric, giving a kind pat to the man’s shoulder. “Can you tell us when you might ferry us back aboard the Yaryx? After dealing with your more valuable cargo first, of course.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Larso, remembering what drew them to Kenes in the first place. “Since our wine is already loaded, would you mind if they get it back to the ship before we transport you? The boys should return within the hour.”
“Of course, lad,” Auric said.
Smiling, Larso turned to the longboat and shouted for the sailors to shove off. “And return immediately for Sir Auric and his colleagues once the crates are offloaded,” he commanded, his tone an attempt at severity. The sailors responded with half-hearted salutes.
“The tide here is something to marvel at, eh?” said Larso as the longboat made its way back to the Yaryx, his sheepish grin in place again.
“It is, son. Well, if you don’t mind, my companions and I will wait on the beach,” said Auric, nodding to the young midshipman as he turned up the dock.
“That must be some wine,” muttered Belech as their steps crunched across the pebbles that carpeted the shore.
“I long ago gave up trying to credit how people assign value, Belech,” Auric responded. “I once saw an aristocrat spend a literal fortune on a simple ivory brooch that had belonged to the sister of Edmund III. If it had belonged to my Aunt Fanny the same piece of jewelry would have fetched no more than ten sovereigns.”
“A bottle of wine would have to transport me to the Courts of Heaven on angel’s wings for me to pay a hundred gold pieces for it,” Belech answered. “Not that I’ve ever even held a sum like that in my hands at one time.”
As familiar as Auric was starting to feel with the man, he recognized the gulf between him and Belech. With the considerable wealth earned as an agent of the Syraeic League, he could easily afford many such frivolous expenses. Had he come so far from the stinking vats of the tannery that he had forgotten the value of money to people like the old soldier? Was he too casual with his riches? Maybe not so profligate as the venal aristocrats he so often held in contempt, perhaps. He thought of his surly manservant, Hanouer, back home in Daurhim, probably raiding his larder. Had Auric become just another wealthy, self-absorbed man who warranted the churlishness Hanouer so freely delivered?
In truth, the nature of Auric’s retirement was unusual for a Syraeic agent. Agents generally didn’t retire to a country manor house with a sizable fortune, though much wealth passed through their hands even after the Crown’s mandatory bite and the League’s larger percentage. But much of that loot was spent on the next expedition, on better equipment, purchasing divination, ancient manuscripts, passage to remote destinations, or greasing the acquisitive palms of corrupt officials to bypass local bureaucratic road blocks. The rest many frittered away on silly luxuries that had little appeal to Auric. And Marta’s tastes had always been simple. She never lost the natural frugality of an innkeeper’s daughter. It was breathtaking how quickly gold could slip through one’s fingers otherwise. Retirement for most Syraeics was a distant daydream, far away in a future that never arrived.
Many agents, of course, were killed during one expedition or another. Others never left the League’s service, assuming positions of authority or instruction, or entering a second life of scholarship. So much field exposure to the world’s ancient history led more than a few to take advantage of the massive archives and libraries in the League’s possession. At one time, Auric had imagined himself acting as a preceptor at the Citadel in his later years, assessing and training novices and initiates, replenishing the intrepid cadres of the League while pursuing personal studies during his off hours. All pretense of such a life vanished with the deaths of Tomas and Marta. After burying son and wife, he stayed active, pushing his team of agents from one perilous task to the next, while at the same time trying to dissuade daughter Agnes from doing field work at all. On a few occasions, he had even done small things to impede her career, so that she wouldn’t share her dead brother’s sad fate.
All of that led at last to the Djao temple that lay about seventy-five miles west of Serekirk, in the dusty range of the Wyskings’ foothills. The five of them had entered through a circular portal of iron etched with Higher Djao script, into an antechamber of ancient candles that smelled as though they had been lit only moments before. Then down a long corridor to that fateful circular room, lined with niches. The niches featured carved pedestals serving as perches for idols, Djao gods and their Netherworld minions, alien and disturbing in form. There was a pit at the center of the chamber of undetermined depth, filled to the brim with desiccated corpses, all exhibiting signs of violent death: slit throats, puncture wounds, snapped and shattered bones. Sacrifices to some long-dead deities? Probably. So little was understood of the Djao religion and its vast pantheon of bloodthirsty gods, but it was a given they had practiced human sacrifice on an appalling scale.
Each idol was adorned with pieces of gold jewelry, intricate, delicate, set with precious stones. After checking for traps, the five of them looted the idols, removing those treasures and dividing them between one another’s packs. Meric was estimating the enormity of their haul’s value when the first of the corpses in the central pit stirred, dragged itself out, and began advancing on them. At first, they thought the thing was an especially juiceless hollow man, dangerous, but easy enough to dispatch. But when Ursula swung her short sword at the ambulating corpse, expecting to lop off its head and watch the rest of its body discorporate into a pile of dust and bone shards, the edge of the blade sunk into its flesh and held fast, as though she had struck a block of dense clay. She struggled to dislodge the blade, but as she did, the corpse reached down to her belly with startling speed and dug its claws in. As her insides slopped onto the ground with a sickening sound, the expression on her face read as though she’d just heard an especially vulgar joke.
The events that followed happened so quickly it was difficult to track the order in which they occurred. The rest of the corpses began disentangling themselves from one another, crawling out of the pit in pursuit of human flesh to feast upon. Meric, priest of Belu, began a potent prayer of invocation, calling on the power of Belu to repulse these undead creatures. As he did so a trio of the things descended upon him as though the invocation had no power. Two of the corpses held his arms while the third pulled his head from his shoulders, slurping greedily at the gout of blood that burst from his neck. Screaming panic enveloped all of them; raw, unthinking panic. Brenten was first through the exit, Auric a few steps behind him, followed by Lenda. In less than fifteen minutes, he was the only one of them left alive, scrambling like a frightened rodent for egr
ess.
Waves lapped against the pebbled beach as Auric ruminated on these things, his companions absorbed in their own thoughts. The uncanny parallels in the account of Gower Morz deeply unsettled Auric. Was it coincidence that his nightly visits to that ill-starred temple erupted again the very day he was summoned back to Boudun and the League’s service in this desperate matter?
He reached a decision. He would need to tell his colleagues about this history, no matter what pain it caused him, or if it undermined their confidence in his leadership. They needed to know what they might face in the Barrowlands. He would wait for the right moment, when they were all together—he didn’t want to tell the story twice. But he needed to do it sooner rather than later.
“And here’s our longboat,” said Del a half hour later, looking at the Duke Yaryx in the distance and their transport heading back toward the shore.
“Let’s review what Morz told us with Sira and Gnaeus after dinner,” said Auric, relieved to have something else to occupy him. “The captain will want us at his table, of course. Follow my lead as far as what we let Hraea and his officers know. If I’m correct, the conversation will center rather drearily on the qualities of Kenish wine and its market value in various ports across the Cradle—the need to dissemble or divert them from the topic of our mission may not be necessary.”
His three companions nodded their agreement. Del scratched her tattooed chin as she spoke. “Honestly, I won’t mind the dull talk if it comes with a glass of that wine. Maybe it’s as divine as Captain Hraea says.”
After dinner, with the Isle of Kenes lost over the southern horizon as the Duke Yaryx sailed toward Barrow Sound, Del complimented Auric’s oracular powers: Hraea had spoken endlessly of Kenish wine, of his negotiating skills, how he had cleverly outsmarted the poor bearded monk from the vineyards to secure a shockingly low price for so rare a vintage.