We all looked up.
Up there the hooded form of the Cackling Leer showed, peering over and down at us. The horrid cackle scratched at our nerve-endings. The echoes bounced like a swarm of insects around the spiral stairway.
We all heard the creaking, groaning, heavy sound, and I suspect most of us guessed what it was instantly.
A round black shape appeared at one side of the hole. Like an eclipse, the lid slid over the light, making that inhuman groaning sound. The cackling faded and was gone. Gone like the light. Stygian darkness enveloped us and our sparks of torches.
“I believe,” said Seg, “that no matter how many slaves they try, they won't budge that stopper."
* * *
Chapter fifteen
Of the cost of discovery
The Chulik took his helmet off his belt and put it on, covering up the golden-covered skull of which he was so proud. Pride is one emotion Chuliks know. Trained from birth to be fighting men and mercenaries, they know little of the gentler human emotions. His three-inch tusks stuck up from the corners of his mouth and, of course, they were banded in gold.
“We will get out when we have to, my lady."
“Yes, Scancho, I do not doubt it for a moment."
At least somebody was trying to keep their spirits up, then.
The Lady Hebe went on: “It were better if the others do not hear of this at the front. Tell your men the same, Scancho. If they disobey me they know it will go badly for them."
“Quidang, my lady."
Giving Seg, Nath, and me a searching stare, shesaid: “You had best keep your black-fanged winespouts shut, too. Dernun?"
I was enchanted. She'd used a common flowery description more often found among the low-life of Kregen than among the nobs. Then, the way she'd cut that dernun out, capiche, savvy, gottit, marked her as well-habituated to command. I formed a pretty little theory regarding the Lady Hebe.
“I shall inform Kov Loriman and Strom Tothor,” I said equably.
Again that damn-you-to-hell stare. Then: “Yes."
The Chulik, who wore Jiktar markings, started to bristle up, but I started off down the passageway and Seg and Nath shouldered after. Still, the woman provided another interesting if unimportant enigma down in the mazes of the Coup Blag where the enigmas, besides hurtling at a fellow thick and fast, were important, frighteningly important, by Vox.
The others had marched past a series of doors which now stood open and I suspected they'd had a look inside each one. All were uniformly empty, some clean, some dusty, and some stinking with putrefaction still hanging on the air.
Hurngal had left a slave at the intersection of a cross corridor. The poor fellow shook on his naked feet, his bald head—alas unbuttered—shining with sweat. He directed us straight ahead and, with Hebe's party trotting along, we followed the slave to the next chamber. This was quite unremarkable save for the corpse of a man newly slain in the corner. He was apim, and, I thought, not one of our party. We hurried on through the center door of five and so, traversing a twisting passageway that turned generally left rather than right, we came to a brilliantly lit hexagonal room of considerable size. Here the expedition once again was involved in discussions on the best route.
Looking at the room, I said to Seg, “It is not the same, clearly, but it presumably serves the same function as the one we visited."
“Aye."
“In that case—"
“In that case, my old dom, I am going to broach some of this wine we are carrying outside instead of inside."
Nath the Impenitent stared at us; but he took his cup of wine readily enough. The rest joined up and the Lady Hebe stood closer to Hurngal than she did to Loriman.
Now this hexagonal room contained twelve doors set equally in the sides. Each door was of a different color.
The corpses of two chavonths lay toward the center, and just beyond them a pile of bones spilled in such disorder it would need a paleontologist to decipher to which species of diffs they had belonged. There were, also, and these I marked well, over by the black door, half a dozen hellhounds. They had been hacked to pieces. The slaves would not go near them, and the guards prodded them experimentally.
Eventually Hurngal led off through the green door and the rest traipsed along after. When the chamber was nearly emptied of our people, Nath said: “We'd best get on."
“Sit easily, Nath. They'll be back."
“Oh?"
“Unless the green door is the right one."
“I see."
I wondered if he did, but I let that pass. He'd find out quickly enough when the expedition marched back in through another door, tired and frustrated.
This they did quite quickly, to see that we three sat at our ease, drinking sociably.
“How in a Herrelldrin Hell did you arrive here before me?” demanded Loriman. “I did not see you pass."
I said, “We did not, pantor. If the leaders of the expedition had listened, we could have told you that you stood ten chances out of twelve of returning here."
“Well, you rast,” cried Hurngal. “Which damned door is it, then?"
“That, we cannot say for certain. Last time and not from this chamber although from one very like it, the turquoise door led to a banqueting hall."
“Then I shall go through the turquoise door,” declared Hurngal, as though he'd chosen it himself.
“I would really like to rest for a while,” said the Lady Hebe. Her Chulik cadade, her guard captain, glowered at her shoulder.
Loriman opened his mouth, and Hurngal snapped out, “Very well, my lady. For a short rest only, mind, for by Hanitcha the Harrower, I mean to take away the gold from this place."
After we had rested, we trooped through the turquoise door and the lead fellow with his pole, a Rapa, had time only to let out a single screech before he vanished into the hole his prodding opened up.
We looked down the hole; but the torches showed merely blank walls as far as we could see.
We edged around the trap and went on, and now the prodders prodded with divine devoutness.
All the same, a tough-bodied and heavily armored ranstak, with those hooded eyes and compressed features, staggered drunkenly. A shaft from a slit in the wall had spat out and transfixed his neck. He fell over sideways, thrashing with his tail very much as a Kataki would do in similar circumstances. The prodders now regarded every slight shadow in the walls with the gravest suspicion.
Well, they were learning, and it was taking the lives of men to teach them.
I bent down to the ranstak. From his thick waist I unstrapped one of his leather belts. This one swung the scabbard for a short sword. The blade was neat, trim, not too broad, admirably suited to the close-in work one must expect in tunnels and caverns.
Giving the ranstak a salute with the blade, I committed him to the care of his god, whose name I did not then know, and went on.
“You did not,” observed Nath, “take his armor."
“Wouldn't fit."
With the short sword at my side to add to the longsword partially hidden down my back under the brown cloak, corded back, from Mistress Tlima, I was well on the way to equipping myself. Seg and Nath would do the same, in time, for it was quite clear the expedition was going to suffer more casualties.
I knew Seg had his eye on a tall red-headed fellow who strode along lithely, his bow in his fist.
What shifts we come to when needs we must!
All the same, I did say to Seg: “Maybe in confined quarters, Seg, a compound reflex may be handier than a long. Same as swords."
“Such beliefs may fester in the minds of the feeble, my old dom. I know what I know about bows."
Well, you couldn't say fairer than that, for in my view there is no finer bowman on two worlds than Seg Segutorio, known hereabouts as Seg the Horkandur.
At the next opportunity when we were traversing a bridge over a chasm boiling with fires, smoldering with fumes that sickened us, I eased my way close to Loriman. From the vast cesspit
in the floor rose a cloud of black winged figures. Their eyes gleamed red, their fangs were serrations of yellow needles, their clawed wings flapped black against the glow. With screeches wrung from hell they flew upon us in a swarm of biting, tearing, clawing terror.
At once everyone was smiting away, slashing and swirling their weapons, desperate to keep these furry little horrors off. Each was not much larger than a fairly grown crow, but their rows of needle teeth ripped flesh away; their claws fastened like grappling hooks. I had a brief glimpse of a Rapa covered with the things as though they nested on him. His feathers erupted among gouts of his blood.
The short sword proved handy, able to swat the flying horrors away as though I played at some macabre game of tennis. Loriman's blade dazzled alongside. How many of the things there might be there was no way of knowing. We all started to run across the bridge, swiping away over our heads. The slaves, as is usual, suffered badly.
Without stopping to reck that Seg stayed with me, I hung back, trying to give some protection to the half-naked slaves as they ran, using their burdens to give themselves some protection. The flying beasts stank of the cesspit below. The fires and fumes, the smoke, the dizzying swarms of furry devils, created a scene direct from an authentic portrait of hell.
San Aramplo, the Khibil mage, crawled on his hands and knees and slaves were tripping over him. I got my left hand under his armpit and hoisted him. There was not a mark on him and I just missed a swipe at a little flyer who nipped in to rip down San Aramplo's face. The needle teeth rebounded.
“No time, no time,” the Khibil stuttered. He held out his right hand and tried to make a sign, and at once he almost fell, twisting himself out of the way of a fresh attack. That one I did not miss and smashed back into the inferno whence he came.
“If they cannot harm you, stand up and magic them away!"
“It is not as easy as that, you hulu—let me go!"
I gave him a hefty shove in the direction of the tunnel mouth at the end of the bridge. “And keep out of the way of the slaves!” I bellowed after him.
Seg's sword flicked a black-winged horror from my shoulder. “We appear to have an apology for a sorcerer with us this time, my old dom."
“Aye.” And slash, swipe, blow after blow, driving the things away.
We gained the shelter of the tunnel entrance, and turned to look back at the bridge. Bodies lay there, and scattered bundles, and much had fallen into the pit.
We were penetrating deeper into the heart of this evil maze of the Coup Blag; but at a fearful cost.
* * *
Chapter sixteen
"I never was fond of skelebones!"
Among the many half-obliterated marks cut into the walls at corners and turnings, the heart, lobed, slashed through with a sword, passed as just another sign among many. That mark was the sign of Spikatur Hunting Sword.
Hurngal had one of his people busily cutting a fresh mark at points where we changed direction. He used the Kregish block script initials H.h.H. I had to smile. I wondered just how many folk there were in Hamal with those self-same initials.
Loriman cast me a quizzical look. We'd paced each other since leaving that bridge of midget flying horrors and I had lost that opportunity of talking to him.
With floor, walls, and ceiling well tested before us, we marched on through a succession of chambers wherein the magnificence of the furnishings, the grandeur of column and pediments, of frieze and gallery, might have overawed but for the decay and mildew, the damp and worms that infested everywhere. This was like walking through a palace lost for centuries.
We ran across two Bearded Phantoms, fought and slew a scaled risslaca with horned head, managed to avoid some whining Mind Leeches, and were nearly done by a pack of skeletons. These last clanked and clattered out of wall-high slots of stone. Well, I'd handled skeletons before and, Zair willing, had the knack of it and would do it again.
I unlimbered the Krozair longsword and set to work.
With Seg at my side and Nath slashing and cursing away next to him, we went at it hammer and tongs. Yellow bones flew through the air. Grinning skulls toppled. People were screaming and running, the puffing dust stank in our nostrils, we sweated and hacked and hewed and slashed the skeletons into fragments about us.
Twice I hewed down a gangling but lethal bundle of bones from before Kov Loriman. He grunted and swore and swung his sword in massive blows that sundered the sere bones like kindling.
When it was all over, we waved our open hands to sweep the clinging dust away and to gain a little fresh air. The light remained level and constant, not as brightly yellow as in some of the rooms but amply sufficient for our needs.
Seg shook his wild black hair back.
“By the Veiled Froyvil! I never was fond of skelebones!"
“They'll do for you,” ground out Loriman. “I have hunted them before. If they fasten their jaws in you—you're done for."
“I,” put in Nath the Impenitent, “have not fought these skelebones of yours before this, having always lived a rational life. By Chozputz! One does see life down here!"
“And death, if you don't jump sharp enough.” Loriman abruptly turned from being a normal decent comrade into the domineering Hunting Kov as he bellowed at his retainers: “Collect up your bundles, you lazy cramphs!"
Then he swung back to glare haughtily at me.
“I said I had seen you before, Jak, the Bogandur, although you were not dubbed the Bogandur then. I thought you dead."
“You got out past the statue of Kranlil the Reaper,” I said. “Yes."
He sucked in a breath. He stared at me as though I'd risen from the grave before his eyes just like those poor damned skelebones.
Then he said, “We did well, did we not, in the Chamber of the Flame in that Armipand-begotten Moder?"
We talked for a space about that fraught time. Loriman told me he considered this maze vastly inferior to that one at Moder.[7]
[7 See: A Fortune for Kregen, Dray Prescot #21.A.B.A.]
I said, “I have often thought of you and wondered how you fared.” Then, because I could not stop my prattling tongue from waggling, I added, “You are somewhat different now from what you were then."
“I have seen what happened to Spikatur. That would turn a saint."
I'd told Seg many and many a time a great deal of what had chanced down the Moder, so he was able to keep abreast of the conversation.
Loriman said, “That great damned bar of iron you call a sword convinced me. I did not really believe, not until you spoke."
The Krozair longsword had carefully gone back into the scabbard so cunningly hitched over my back. We walked on out of that chamber of desiccated skelebones and into another where we had a brief set to with a pack of Crippling Crabs. The next room offered the chance to get to grips with a herd of mummies, all duly linen-wrapped after one of the fashions of Balintol. Some of these we burned.
The Lady Hebe, sheathing her sword, walked over to say, “I would like a rest now, and Hurngal wants to press on."
Before Loriman could stop himself, so wrought up was he on this sore point, he burst out: “I see! When you want me to do something for you about that damned man then you ask. I see!"
“If that is the way you wish to speak to me, after all that has passed—"
“Aye, Hebe! Passed seems right. I'll tell Hurngal, d'you understand that? I'll tell him!"
On that instant a hullabaloo broke out from those in front who had just passed out of this chamber, exclamations of astonishment and cries of wonder and delight.
I believe I knew what this meant. Seg said: “Y'know what that means, Jak?"
Everybody ran off to see the new wonders for themselves. I put a hand to my chin.
“Aye. There's a big room up there beautifully furnished, with tables groaning under food and drink, and comfortable beds and curtains and everything weary delvers could require. And, Seg, y'know what that means?"
“I do."
N
either of us wanted to say the confounded name aloud. But both of us knew that Csitra had provided the repast and rest, and that was clear evidence that she had us under observation, was spying on us.
We were drawing closer to her. Slowly we were finding our way through her maze of tricks and traps, of monsters and magic. What we both recognized was that she was in control. She would allow us to reach her only when she wished, after she and her uhu Phunik had had their fun with us.
Had Khe-Hi and Ling-Li been with us, as had been planned, would there have been a difference? Perhaps this Khibil sorcerer might yet live up to his high reputation. I was confident enough to take a wager on it that had Khe-Hi been on the bridge when the little flying furry horrors attacked he would have banished them back to their cesspit before they could stick a single needle-tooth into anyone's flesh. Still, maybe the apparent lack of competence of our Khibil San Aramplo had not drawn Csitra's attention, for it was certain she'd have known if Khe-Hi and Ling-Li ventured in—unless, well, if Deb-Lu could sneak in here without her knowing, then so could his colleagues, surely...?
So with these muddled thoughts in my noggin I trailed along with Seg after the mob into the splendors we anticipated.
Seg and I sat down at one of the laden tables and began to eat and drink.
Loriman said, “Is that wise?"
Seg swallowed down and reached for a fresh bottle.
“The last time the food had no ill effects."
“By Numi-Hyrjiv the Golden Splendor!” bellowed Strom Tothor. “Save some for a thirsty fellow who's walked a wearisome way!"
Seg laughed and handed over the bottle and the lion-man upended it over his mouth.
Everywhere people descended on the food like famished warvols. The slaves ate themselves into stupors, and Hurngal had to order the guards to keep the slaves away from the drink. I wondered if these guards would stay away from it themselves for long enough to remain compos mentis. The notion of a pack of drunken slaves and guards rollicking about these treacherous passageways might seem attractive; it would be self-defeating in the end.
The pathetic way in which the Lady Hebe and Kov Loriman circled around each other, allowing far more than the usual required amount of body space, might have been amusing in other circumstances. Kov Hurngal looked to be in the driver's seat here, winning all the way down the line.
Omens of Kregen [Dray Prescot #36] Page 13