by Laurence Yep
“Well, the place is re-opening for business—with us as the first customers.” Koko stuffed a pawful of potato chips into his muzzle. “But we were framed so we escaped.”
“Excuse Pärseri’s ignorance, but shouldn’t you escape by leaving the Chamber of Truth?” Pärseri asked, puzzled.
“We’re working on it,” Koko said through a mouthful of chips.
“We’re not hardened criminals,” Māka assured him. “You’re safe with us.”
“But not Pärseri’s property.” The creature wriggled a paw at Koko. “He’ll have his chips back, if you please.”
The badger tipped the bag upside down and shook it to show it was empty. “Sorry. You should have spoken up sooner.”
Pärseri stared mournfully at the now empty bag. “Oh, woe is poor Pärseri.”
“Aw, what are pals for?” Koko wheedled.
“You are no friend of Pärseri’s,” the rat snapped, “nor of Fenimore’s. His letter complained about a badger who never paid his I.O.U.’s.”
Before Koko could get into a fight with the rat, Kles spoke up. “How do you get in here, Pärseri?”
Pärseri nodded to the drain in the center of the alcove. “That leads to the sewer, or as Pärseri’s people like to call it, the Highway.”
The drain was at most nine inches square. Kles would certainly fit, but the rest of them would have to stay behind.
“At least we’ll have supplies for a siege,” Koko said as he began to examine the contents under the bench.
The akhu stamped a hind paw. “No, no, no. They are Pärseri’s!”
Kles sat on Scirye’s shoulder as he studied the drain. “The cell’s drain was probably used for the disposal of waste, but a torture chamber might need a much bigger drain, especially if several prisoners were being ‘questioned’ in the same session.”
“We’ll get lost in the sewers without a guide,” Tute said, grinning at the akhu. “But I bet you know the sewers like the back of your paw, Pärseri.”
Pärseri shook his head violently. “No, no. Pärseri will be much too busy taking his supplies to safety.” He gave a shrill squeal when Tute’s paw clamped around the back of his neck.
“Pärseri, if you don’t show us the other way out of here,” Tute said, almost purring, “you’re going to treat me to dinner.” The lynx leaned forward so that his whiskers brushed the trembling rat. “And guess who’s going to be the main course?”
Pärseri groaned. “Oh, pity poor Pärseri, kind sir. What harm has he ever done you?”
Māka squatted next to Pärseri and said in a soothing voice, “Let’s help each other. If you lead us, we’ll pay you.”
Pärseri perked up instantly. “Do you have chewing gum?”
“No, but you can use these to buy them.” Māka indicated the bells on the hem of her robe. “The bells are silver.”
“It’s always wise to be kind to strangers.” Pärseri beamed as he rubbed his paws together. “Especially when they’re bigger than you are. But you must help Pärseri carry his treasures to safety too.”
“Of course.” Scirye remembered then what the princess’s steward, Nanadhat, had said. “Do you know the way to the caravansary of the Urak? It belongs to the kin of a friend of ours, and I think they would help us. It’s on the edge of the krītam near the Eastern Gate and it has a sign with two palms.”
Pärseri was only too eager to help now. His head bobbed up and down. “Yes, yes, everyone knows the home of the great and mighty Urak. Long may their trash bins overflow. Pärseri can take you kind, generous people there.”
With a nod of thanks to the akhu, Scirye turned to Māka. The bells were attached to a strip of cloth, and Scirye helped her friend tear it off. “Just a moment ago, you found the torture room. Do you sense things as well as cast spells?”
Māka folded up the strip with the bells. “Not as far as I remember. I really don’t know what happened back there, but it was like the magic swelled inside me so I could suddenly hear and see and smell things much more strongly.”
“Maybe we’ve finally found what you’re good at,” Scirye suggested.
“It’s a gift I’d rather do without,” Māka said with a shake of her head.
Scirye gave her a little apologetic smile. “I’m afraid you may be stuck with it.”
Māka nodded sympathetically. “Just like you have to serve the goddess.”
Under the akhu’s watchful eye, they stuffed his worldly goods into their clothes. Leech suspected that Pärseri knew to the last cracker what each of them was carrying.
The Pippalanta were still keeping watch at the door, but Kat turned when she heard them, raising her eyebrows when she saw Leech and his friends appear with their clothes bulging with food. “I didn’t know the chamber had its own market.”
Scirye introduced Pärseri, explaining that they were carrying his supplies while he showed them another way out.
Oko shook her head in admiration. “You really do have Nishke’s knack for getting us out of scrapes. And just in time too. They’re looking for something to use as a battering ram.”
“They ought to use the vizier,” Tute observed. “His head ought to be hard enough.”
Māka fell into step beside them as they headed toward the other door. They still had the Questioner’s ring of keys, but Scirye thought the otter charm would be faster. Sure enough, Scirye unlocked it as easily as she had the other doors. But this time, she took several long, calming breaths before she opened it. Chains hung from the walls but the torture devices had been removed.
Leech thought he could smell the stale odor of blood and sweat that still clung to the walls, just as Māka had earlier. And it felt like his feet could also feel the stones vibrating with the prisoners’ screams.
No, no, I don’t want to be here, the Voice whimpered.
“This is still an awful place,” Scirye said, echoing the thoughts of the Voice and Leech. She put an arm around the cringing Māka.
“But they also had the courage to stop such dark practices,” Kles reminded her. “It’s the vizier who wants to bring them back.”
Tute circled around a square metal grate two feet on each side. A huge padlock held it securely in place. It was hard to tell if the reddish-brown splotches on the grate and lock were blood or rust. Even if they had found the right key on the Questioner’s ring, the lock looked so rusty that Leech wasn’t sure the key would have worked. “Couldn’t we hold this fascinating discussion somewhere else?”
“Yeah, like maybe a hundred miles away from here,” Koko chimed in.
The air that wafted up through the grate smelled of rot and decay.
Pärseri took a deep, satisfied whiff of the stench. “Ah, home, sweet home.”
32
Scirye
Scirye had been shaken by the torture room. It was the opposite side of all the heroic Kushan epics she’d read. She couldn’t wait to leave this reminder of her people’s dark past. Even so, she was reluctant to touch the padlock on the drain because of what must have flowed down into the opening in the past.
She glanced around and saw the others waiting expectantly. Ashamed, she told herself, You can’t be fussy when everyone depends on you.
So she put aside her own feelings of revulsion and with one hand touching the otter charm, she bent over and grasped the lock in her other. The insides of the lock creaked as it slowly opened.
After that, Wali took Oko’s place guarding the entrance so the big Pippal could help Kat lift the grate, but years of debris had cemented the grate in tight.
“It’s going to take all of us to get it off,” Kat puffed.
Scirye leaned over to help with the others, her skin crawling when she grasped the metal bars. From her friends’ expressions, they didn’t like the contact either, but together they began hauling at the grate. It took their combined efforts to heave the grate to the side.
As she gazed down at the noisome darkness, Pärseri pointed to one side of the hole. “Pärseri s
ees rungs on one wall of shaft.”
The rungs were spaced for adult humans, but the akhu had no trouble dropping from one to the one below.
“Let Koko go next,” Tute drawled. “He’ll give the rest of us something soft to land on.”
“You’re the one that looks like an overstuffed cushion with legs,” Koko shot back.
“If you’re going to be so selfish,” Tute sighed. With his usual grace, the lynx slipped over the edge of the drain and down a few yards. “Come on, Māka.”
Māka seemed to have recovered some of her old spirit now that they were leaving the place. Lifting the hem of her robe, she lowered a leg. “Oh, dear,” she said as her toes searched for the next rung.
Tute clambered upward until his forepaws could guide her to the rung. For all of his sarcastic comments to his mistress, deep down he really cared for her. “Now you’ve got it.”
Scirye noticed the brown stains on the first rung. She hoped they were some kind of fungus and not dried blood. If she could, she would have gone down with her eyes closed. Kles rose into the air, hovering above her as she eased into the hole. She had to stretch her leg to find a rung.
As she descended into the drain, her hand reached out to grip the top rung. The very touch of the cold metal made her skin crawl, but she went on.
“These rungs were not made for badger legs,” Koko complained from just above her.
By the time Scirye was six rungs lower, it was pitch black. Only the number 3 glowed on her palm. Still, it was comforting in a small way, as if it were a sign that the goddess was keeping an eye on her even here. Finally she joined the others at the bottom, standing in the stinking stream up to her ankle.
Above her, she heard the fluttering of Kles’s wings. “Kles,” she called up. “I’m right here.” She heard the flapping of wings as her griffin groped for her and found her arm. Fluttering his wings, he followed her arm until he could settle on her shoulder.
“Ugh,” Koko said as his paws splashed into the muck. “And I finally got clean.”
Leech, Kat, and Wali joined them in turn. Oko was the last to enter the shaft, and Scirye heard the rasping sound as the big Pippal drew the grate back over the hole.
“Are you having any trouble?” Kat called up to her softly.
“It’s easy without the grit gluing it in place,” Oko grunted from above. There was a clanging sound. “There. It’s back.”
Pärseri had them follow him in a single line. With each step, their feet and paws seemed to raise new stenches. Their route twisted and turned through the labyrinth of sewer tunnels, the only light coming from the mark on her hand. And the longer she spent in the dimness, the more Scirye’s imagination pictured all sorts of horrid things still clinging to the walls.
They splashed through the noisome sewer so long that Scirye did not think they would ever leave the stink and the darkness, but eventually they came to a spot where moonlight fell through a grate.
The akhu jabbed a claw over his head. “Up here is the caravansary you seek. And now, if you would be so kind, leave Pärseri’s things on a ledge to your right.” He pointed a claw at a ledge in a niche that was just visible.
When they had deposited the last of his supplies, Koko chuckled. “You might want to be choosier where you stash your stuff next time.”
The akhu scurried up on top of his pile of loot where they could see his whiskers twitch in the faint light falling from the grate. “No one will ever find Pärseri’s supplies again,” he said, “especially lying, thieving, hungry badgers.”
Tucking her pistol in her clothes, Oko climbed up the rungs along one wall of the tunnel and lifted the grate from the opening. Then she went through it.
“It’s clear,” she called down softly to them.
“Good-bye. Pärseri is devastated that we have to part,” Pärseri said, but despite his friendly words, he sat protectively on top of the pile of his belongings.
One by one, they went up the rungs until they were all standing in their stinking, soggy clothes on the stones of a plaza, some of which were marked with the double palms of the Urak. Next to them was a small circular fountain into which Poseidon poured water from a large jar in his arms. He stood with a foot balanced on each of the strangest sea creatures. From the waist up, they looked like elephants but from the waist down, they had the scaly tails of fish.
The fastidious badger headed to it right away and began washing his fur vigorously. “I should’ve brought a towel along.”
Scirye and the others soon joined him, trying to clean up but unfortunately with mixed results. The only real way to get rid of the stench would be burning their clothes and dipping themselves in a barrel of soap bubbles.
Koko jerked a paw at the sea creatures. “Are they the latest in shoes?”
“They’re water creatures called makara,” Kles said. “And just hope you never meet one. They have tempers worse than a rhinoceros.”
As Scirye looked around, she saw that the plaza sat in the center of a two-story building of mud brick with narrow slit windows and numerous doors, including several large enough for an elephant to use. “Does this remind you of any place?” she asked the others.
Leech caught a whiff of spices that reminded him of the Sogdian caravansary where they had stayed in the Arctic. “The materials are different, but it’s laid out like Roxanna’s caravansary,” he said. Their friend’s home had been part warehouse and part fortress, just like this one.
Suddenly a gong began to sound from a watchtower.
“Protect Lady Scirye,” Kat ordered.
Oko immediately seized Scirye and placed her behind her as Kat and Wali closed in to form a triangle about her.
“This is bad,” Tute said as gun barrels began sliding out of the slits, “very bad.”
33
Leech
Instinctively, Leech reached for the armbands—was it himself or the Voice guiding his hand? But his fingers closed on only cloth and skin. He felt helpless, then angry that they had been taken away.
Why did you give up the armbands? the Voice wailed. We can’t fly out of this trap. You’re just another snotty punk without them.
Deep down, Leech thought that was all too true, but as the Voice went on complaining, Leech ignored it as he hunted desperately for something he could use as a weapon. He was starting to learn how to focus on the task at hand and treat the Voice like background noise.
Even if we had them, I wouldn’t leave my friends, Leech said to the Voice as his eyes hunted desperately for a weapon.
You can’t trust anyone, the Voice insisted.
Don’t you have any friends? Leech asked.
I thought I did, the Voice said sadly, once, but they were quick to turn on me.
The Voice spoke no more and Leech found himself feeling sorry for it.
Māka started for the drain from which they had climbed. “Hurry. Back to the sewer.”
But a voice warned them softly, “Don’t move.” From a door came a large, handsome man with pale brown skin. He looked to be about thirty with all of the hair shaved off except for a long blond topknot that hung all the way down his back. He was wearing a kilt and vest of brocade, and his yellow linen shirt had lace about the collar and cuffs. “Usually only akhu come out of that drain.”
“We’re friends of Prince Tarkhun,” Scirye said quickly. “And we’re here to see Princess Catisa.”
His thin, wispy voice didn’t match the man’s bulk. “And how would you know Prince Tarkhun?”
“We had the pleasure of saving His Highness’s life,” Kles said. When they had been traveling the Arctic, they had rescued the prince from bandits. The griffin tactfully avoided mentioning that they’d almost gotten his daughter, Roxanna, killed while she had been guiding them during their search.
“Ah, so you’re the heroes,” the man said. “Her Highness has been expecting you—though not quite in this manner.” He waved to the unseen guards. “It’s all right. They’re friends of the clan.”
Leech breathed a sigh of relief as the rifles slid out of sight, and then the man led them through a second doorway and up a staircase. The smells of spices was stronger here and the bright fiery colors of the walls and furnishings on the second floor reminded him even more of Roxanna’s home.
The man ushered them into a large room where the walls were hidden by rich tapestries showing strange cities and creatures, and on the floor were carpets of rich hues, artistic designs and a weave so plush it was like walking on springs. Against one wall was a dais about eight inches high and the man told them to sit down on cushions laid out before it.
A little while later, a woman entered from a side door. She wore a short tan robe of a light but strong cloth and her thick yellow trousers were stuffed into her black boots. Robe, pants, and footgear were studded with designs made from small pale white stones. Despite the cost of her clothes, she was no hothouse flower, for her skin had been burned a rich nut brown by the sun. She held her head up with the same air of authority—like someone used to being obeyed instantly—that Roxanna had had.
“I am the Princess Catisa, the great-aunt of Prince Tarkhun. And this is my faithful servant, Nandi.” When she motioned toward the man, the bejeweled gold bracelets on her wrists jangled together. Leech had never seen so much jewelry in his life. Every one of her fingers was covered with rings and dozens of necklaces hung from her neck. Several pair of earrings hung from her ears and dozens more pendants dangled from her thick crop of gray hair. All of her jewelry held more white stones of different sizes. He wasn’t sure how the woman could move with so much jewelry. “I welcome you in the name of the House of Urak.”
Fluttering into the air, Kles bowed deeply. “On behalf of my mistress, the Lady Scirye of the House of Rapaññe”—the griffin gestured to her—“I offer you a thousand and ten thousand greetings, O Mighty Princess.”
The elderly woman’s lively, curious eyes reminded Leech of Roxanna. “And a thousand and ten thousand greetings to you, oh wise griffin. When I’d heard the vizier had you, I thought it would be a long time before I saw you.”