by K. J. Coble
Lyssa shook her head, horror nearly overwhelming her, but confusion, too. There were so many. “How?”
Thyss-Ulea tsked at her. “I can see that your instruction has been of a depressingly conventional sort. Disappointing. However, since I’ve not had a pupil in so long, and we have the time; you must understand, my husband” the word nearly smoked with hate as she spoke it “and I reigned over Zadam and Xyxia over nine hundred years. Obviously, we did not sustain that through natural means.”
Lyssa shivered. “It is as the histories said; you became the undead.”
“Whatever histories it is you speak of oversimplify,” the dead queen replied with a snort, “and mischaracterize. We did not die. We simply ceased to exist in this world in the same state as lesser beings do.”
“Sounds like dying,” Lyssa snapped with a first sparkle of defiance.
“You are barely an infant in the ways of power.” Thyss-Ulea glowered at her with an ember glow fluttering in her deep, black eyes. “And you know little.” She again regarded the sad, sickening work of the child-mummies. “Long we lived,” she went on. “And even in his ascended state, my husband’s appetites did not abate.” Her lips twisted into a grin. “Nor did mine. But children created from our union did not quicken as normal ones do. They became...something else. They couldn’t be allowed to prowl the nights, feeding. We’d have no kingdom left, at all.”
Lyssa gulped. “Why didn’t you just...stop?”
Thyss-Ulea erupted in a maniacal cackle. “Oh...oh, my. So clever, yet, you’re so simple, so innocent!” She took a step towards her, lips peeling back from sharp teeth. “We didn’t stop because we didn’t want to!” She reached out and gripped Lyssa’s chin, forced her to look at her smoldering eyes. Her hand was almost hot on her face. “In our ascended state, the sensations of the flesh become more precious, more desired, not less. You crave them, as a starving girl craves food, and every bite, every little scrap is treasure.”
Lyssa pulled her chin out of Thyss-Ulea’s fingers. “Sounds like lust.”
“It most certainly was,” the dead woman purred back. “And lust, like many things, can be useful, when channeled.” She looked across the haunted chamber again. “As you can see.”
“You killed and carved up your own children,” Lyssa rasped. “What I see is atrocity.”
Thyss-Ulea sighed and shook her head. “You quickly begin to bore me, with your rigid thinking and cloying moralities. One with your gifts, I could teach so many things. You could be so much more.” She paused, nodded at some internal realization. “But it is for the better, I suppose—the world can hardly contain another of our magnitude. It could barely contain my husband and I.”
“Then why am I here?” Lyssa felt her strength beginning to build with her disgust. “Others have attempted to make me their playthings before. They’ve failed. So will you.”
Thyss-Ulea chuckled darkly. “Oh, my simple child, all mortals are my playthings. You’re just the one in front of me now. What do I want with you? Very little. Why are you here?” Hers was the smile a baby bird sees just as a snake is about to raid its nest. “As bait, of course.”
Lyssa couldn’t help a shiver. “Bait...for what?”
“For whom,” the dead queen replied and turned to stride up the dais to the twin braziers. She held out a hand to her left and the purple-limned flames there bloomed to full fury.
Within the flames an image began to take shape. Lyssa frowned in confusion at first, then winced in recognition as armored figures took shape in the blaze. Strayden and his Vothans staggered down a narrow corridor, lit only by scraps of flames from dying torches. Some carried others, obviously hurt. All looked battered and exhausted.
“These brutes have already proven quite the nuisance, as they’ve pursued you. But soon they will be useful. They’re lost, as you can see, and being drawn along at my design. Soon, they will rid me of the greatest nuisance of all.”
“I don’t suppose you encountered Vothans in your earlier life,” Lyssa said.
Thyss-Ulea turned to glower at her. “Just another barbarian tribe out of the north. We destroyed many of them.”
“Not like these,” Lyssa replied, a half-smile quirking her lips as she watched Strayden’s clench-jawed face in the illusion. “Vothans and magical schemes don’t mix; you’ll see.”
“As will you.” The dead queen held up her hand to the other brazier and the flames within that one roared to full fury.
And Lyssa despaired.
Within the fire, Asyra and another woman—one of her fellow spies, she presumed—scrambled down a dark passage. A light of sorcerous power lit their way. They paused as they reached an intersection, a side corridor branching off from the main one. The other spy sagged to the floor, breathing hard and badly bloodied. Asyra knelt at her side. Words weren’t possible to discern—only the crackle of the blaze—but it was obvious Asyra was trying to encourage her on.
“Such focus,” Thyss-Ulea said, licking her lips, “for her mission, for her comrades. Such passion, too” the dead queen looked at Lyssa “for her real purpose here.”
Lyssa started with a half-thought-out retort. But the words froze in her mind. This terrible being, with her ages-old cunning, was playing a game with her and anything she admitted to now would be another weapon in her arsenal. Forcing a blank expression, Lyssa said, “Friendship, you mean.”
Thyss-Ulea smirked. “The poor thing, I don’t think she really knows, herself.” The smirk sharpened to a glower. “Just like you. There is a hole within her, just as there is a hole within you, in a different place. In fact, I think the pair of you, were each of you to get out of your own way, might even be able to fill the emptiness in each other.” She mock-sighed. “How sad that neither of you will ever get to find out.”
Lyssa grimaced, couldn’t help it. That what the abomination before her said was true was undeniable. She knew it now, the realization slicing through her ribs to the organs within, burying there, trembling and then going still and dead. Worse was that she’d had Asyra in front of her, in her arms, telling her the truth of it, and she hadn’t been able to understand it, accept it.
“Like power,” Thyss-Ulea said, “love is wasted on mortals. One of the overriding drives of the cosmos and you squander it, trip over it, fling it carelessly about.” She clenched a fist and held it before her. “It is meant to be wielded, like a weapon.”
Tears welled in Lyssa’s eyes and she blinked, let them trail down her cheeks. “That’s not true.”
“I see your knowledge of the heart is as poor as your understanding of the Outer Dark.”
“Love gives life,” Lyssa retorted. “It doesn’t take it away.”
“And yet so many have died because of it,” the dead queen said. She turned back to the twin blazes, the images within them. “So many more will die for it” she flicked a glance over her shoulder “while you watch.”
ASYRA RIPPED STRIPS from the liner of her pack and bound them about Clover’s wounds as the other woman sobbed for breath. The light of her ring glimmered off streaks of sweat on her face, dripping off the tip of her nose as nostrils flared. The wrap around her injured forearm was crimson with fresh blood.
“Can’t...can’t keep this up.”
Asyra looked into the dark beyond the ring’s illumination, back the way they’d come. “We weren’t followed. Whatever triggered those things, its affect doesn’t appear to have extended past that hall.”
“I’m bleeding a lot,” Clover rasped.
“I’m not leaving you.”
“I wasn’t going to suggest you do,” Clover replied with a chuckle. “But I can’t keep up this pace.”
Asyra nodded. “Easier, then. You can keep moving, though?”
Clover nodded. “Just...carefully, now.” She held out her hand.
Asyra took it and lifted the other spy off the floor, draped the arm over her shoulder. “Keep that shiny pointed ahead, though. Can’t see a damned thing.”
&nbs
p; Onward they trudged into the dark. The hallway narrowed ahead, to barely ten feet across and the ceiling lowering. No markings adorned these rough-hewn walls and ages-old grind marks etched the floor, seen even through the patina of dust. Eyeing these, Asyra wondered aloud, “This passage seems more functional than the previous ones.”
“How do you mean?”
“Everything else before seemed to be for show, like the builders meant them to be seen by...someone.”
“No one down here but the dead and damned,” Clover said.
“And these ancient Xyxians expected both to live again, didn’t they? All the finery, all the treasure, was meant for them...later.” Asyra glanced up at the low, scarred ceiling. “This place, though, looks like some kind of maintenance passage, like where goods and materials were moved by the work crews, while they were still building.”
“Whatever it is,” Clover said, waving her ring light ahead, “it’s opening up.”
Asyra strained her eyes into the dark, saw what Clover indicated, and began to slow her pace. A few paces further, the floor ended.
“Not opening up,” Asyra said, coming to a halt. “Unless you mean, to swallow us.”
A pit plunged into shadow beyond her leading toe. It took up the width of the passage and stretched ahead for another ten feet. The hallway resumed beyond it, stretching endlessly out of the range of their light. An odor of cool stone and stale air wafted up out of it, tinged with the faintest hint of what might be decay.
Asyra wrinkled her nose and leaned over the edge, peered into the depths. “Let’s have that light of yours,” she said to Clover.
The other spy extended her arm at an angle and pointed the beam emanating from the pewter eye into the gloom below. Dark points glinted back at them, the corroded steel blades of a hundred stakes stabbing up from the base of the hole, approximately thirty feet down. Cobwebs wove amongst them, almost hiding a shape huddled in one corner. As Clover’s magical light panned over it, the outline of nearly-disintegrated armor came into focus, crumpled around shafts of yellow-gray bone and run through by the stakes.
“Scintallos...” Clover cursed, even as she kept the light shining on the skeleton’s grisly smile. “Looks like someone tried this way before us.”
Staring hard at the pile of remains, the make of its antique-style armor, Asyra replied, “A long time before us.” She stepped back from the edge and helped Clover slump down to the floor, resting her back against the wall. “Just wait here.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Nothing stupid.”
“Can’t say I find that encouraging.”
Asyra snorted and crept back to the lip of the pit. She knelt and ran her fingers along the edge. Reaching the left corner, she traced the tip of one up along the wall, finding and following a crease between stones. It stretched beyond her reach, running into the ceiling. She paused, looked about, stepped to Clover’s side and took up her arm so she could point the light around the walls, the ceiling.
“I’m still using that,” Clover growled.
Asyra smile and patted her gently on the shoulder. “Just borrowing.” She focused the illumination upon the ceiling directly over the pit, found nothing, and shook her head as she released Clover’s arm. “Whatever the trapping mechanism was, I’d say that poor devil down there tripped it.”
“So, where does that leave us?” Clover asked. “That’s a long way across. You’re not going to jump it.” She swallowed once. “I’m not going to jump it.”
“No jumping,” Asyra replied, shouldering out of her pack and pulling its flaps back as a new thought sparkled in her mind. She reached in and pulled out her climbing tools and rope. “But we might be climbing again.”
“Asyra...” Sweat shined across Clover’s face, a slimy sheen of it casting her pain-wrinkled flesh in a sickly hue.
“I’ll go first.” Asyra set a hand on the other spy’s cheek. “Don’t worry. I’ll pick us the best way. But I’ll need you keeping that light of yours on me.”
She nodded.
“All right.”
Asyra crept back to the pit’s edge, tracing about with her toe until she found a crease between flagstones there, far enough back from the trap. There, she knelt and wedged a piton into the crack. The point inserted, she pulled out her hammer and smote it. Iron rang up and down the corridor and she flinched, held still and silent for an instant, listening for some hint that the racket would draw pursuit. When the ringing faded and nothing replaced it, she traded a glance with Clover, blew out a breath, and hammered it again, driving the piton home.
Running rope through the eyelet of the piton, Asyra secured it and gave it a tug to be sure. When there was no give, she nodded once to herself, looped the rope through her belt, stepped to the edge and cast the rest of it down into the pit. She turned, poised with her heels at the lip, and looked up at Clover.
“Be right back.”
With that, she slid down. The descent only took seconds, and only that long because she slowed herself to keep an eye over her shoulder at the forest of deadly points at the bottom. She had to tighten as she neared the base, to fit between two stakes, one of them splintered by some past, unknown impact. Then, she was down, looking about at cobwebs as thick as rugs and the skeleton piled into the corner.
“A little light?” she called up to Clover.
With grunts of pain and effort, the other spy sidled to the top edge of the pit and angled her eldritch illumination down. Again, the skull eyes stared back at Asyra as Clover’s light fell upon them. With effort, she pulled her gaze away, let it take in the pattern of the stakes. It didn’t take her long to pick a course through them and she took a step forward.
And stopped. A tingling of instinct called from within her. She knelt carefully, put out a hand, and tore aside some of the cobweb curtain among the spikes. The motion revealed more bones skewered upon the shafts, and tinier, insectine—or perhaps spidery—shapes scuttling amongst them.
Changing course with a shudder, Asyra traced the edge of the pit, rather than take the direct way. Clover’s light followed her, shafts of it glimmering like blades between the stakes, casting weird, cutting shadows. One of these picked out a detail at the left lower corner of the pit as she passed it and she paused. Dust had settled into a long crack there. As Asyra touched it, cautiously ran a finger along it, the outline of a stone block, clearly separate from the others around it, became clear. It was a door of some sort—low, perhaps four feet by three; a person would need to crouch to enter it. She pushed on the face of the stone. There was no give.
“What is it?” Clover called down.
“Nothing.”
Asyra scampered to the other side and ran her fingers along the face. Finding imperfections, she rummaged in her pack again, got out her hand-spikes, and put them on. Clapping palms and metal to the stone blocks of the pit wall, she gripped and lurched upwards the first few feet. Certain of her hold, she pulled out her left and reached higher. So she went, quickly, scuttling up the side to the opposite end.
With Clover’s light silhouetting her, Asyra reached the top and found herself staring off into endless hallway. She experienced another tingling of unease, wondered if it just kept going, forever, would leave the pair of them wandering endless dark until they starved or went mad. Nonsense. She gave herself a shake and clambered to her feet, took a few steps down the corridor.
Clack.
A flinch went through Asyra like a blow. There was no mistaking the snap of something retracting under the ball of her left foot. Gingerly, she pulled back, retreated a pace. Clover’s light, weaker at this distance, played over a small square of stone, obvious now that Asyra’s footprint had revealed it beneath the dust, retracted slightly into the floor after her weight had depressed it.
Pressure plate...shit...
Asyra retreated another step, every sinew tense as she listened, sensed for any shift in her environment. Faintly, she felt the air shiver. Distantly, something gro
und. A hint of stirred dust hazed the air. Suddenly, Asyra realized it was purling down from between ceiling stones.
“What’s happening?” Clover called.
“I don’t—”
A shuddering boom swallowed her words. Up the passageway, a great slab of the ceiling broke loose and began to slide down, stone growling on stone, a choking plume of dust gusting up the hall into her face. Covering her mouth, she retreated until the edge of the pit was at her heels. As she watched the massive ceiling block descended till it filled the hall, blocked it, and came to a halt.
A squeal from behind whipped Asyra about. A mirror image of what happened before her was playing out behind Clover, as well, the ceiling descended, descending, and then sealing the hallway behind her. For a moment, all stilled, and Asyra and Clover stared over the open pit, through the dust at each other, stunned.
Another boom rippled through the floor and the blocks resumed their growling motion, this time sliding along the length of the hall at a slow walking pace. Asyra’s gaze shot to the ceiling once more with a spasm of realization. The grind marks along the inner faces of the corridor were scars of the trap’s previous workings. She knew now how the bones had filled that pit—not fallen in, as though the pit had opened beneath them.
The blocks were griding inward.
They’d been pushed.
“Asyra!” Clover cried.
“Down!” she replied, already falling to a crouch at the pit’s edge and extending a leg over it, feeling desperately for the edges she’d used earlier. The walls were coming on, not quickly, but inexorably. She glanced over her shoulder as her toe found a groove. Clover had struggled back to her hands and knees, had crawled to the piton and the rope still fastened to it. “That’s it! Climb down! It’s the only way!”
Asyra started down, slipped almost immediately and had to grasp the lip of the pit for a moment to reacquire a grip. Hand-over-hand over hand, one leg at a time, she worked her way down, all the while watching the wall advance up the corridor towards her. Hand spikes scrawling, she lowered herself further, kept going, down, down. Dust rained over her as the walls and ceiling shook. Stone quivered beneath her like a living thing. She nearly slipped again, could almost feel the sharp points at her legs.