by K. J. Coble
Trembling, uncertain she could trust her muscles any further, Asyra released and dropped what turned out to be only a short fall. Even that landing nearly sent her wobbling back onto the terrible spikes. Flinging out a hand, she steadied on a wall. But her relief withered instantly and she looked up to the top of the pit, where Clover’s light flashed wildly.
The other spy had gotten to the edge and begun levering herself down. Blood smeared off stone. She was struggling to keep a grip on the rope and her whole form quivered with the effort. Above, the wall blocks were nearly to the edges of the pit. She cried out something the rumble of stone made indiscernible.
“Hurry!” Asyra started towards the rope.
A terrible ping rent the air as the stone block reached the piton planted in the floor and crumpled it. The rope flinched its whole length like a snake kicked. Clover’s limbs flung out, the tension releasing explosively. The glare of her ring silhouetted her flailing, falling body.
Asyra flinched away.
The last grind of the stone blocks coming together above the pit stole all sound and sensation for long moments. Asyra clenched in upon herself, into a ball in the pit’s lowest, furthest corner. For a terrified moment, she wondered if the blocks would descend and crush her.
For another moment, she thought she deserved that.
She let the silence drag a long time before peeling her eyes open again. Cyan light shined over her, but beginning to flutter, to fade. She didn’t want to turn, didn’t want to know how. But she stood slowly, forced herself to pivot, knew she had to—if she wanted to live, herself.
Clover sprawled hideously over several of the spikes, two of them gone clean through, her form twisted upon them in a tangle like a spider stomped-upon. Crimson glistened in the ring-light, the details obscenely clear. As though by some mercy, one of the spikes had erupted through her chest. Death would have been instant. She’d known it, too. The cyan gleam of magic caught in bulging, staring eyes as her head draped back and upside down.
Staring at Asyra.
A sob burst from Asyra’s throat, caught, became a wave of nausea that exploded from her. She turned and retched into the corner. She’d eaten so little, only acidy foulness came out. Another convulsion dissolved in more sobs. She collapsed, rolled back into the ball and held on to herself. She cried like a little girl.
Through tears and shivers, she remembered that last, crimson night in the harem, when the beatings and crimes against her became too much. When the choice became escape or death. She’d cried herself into unconsciousness with the realization, then. Escape or death. That path could only be walked alone. She remembered. And she reminded herself why.
Escape...or death...
Fighting back vomit, Asyra took a step towards the Clover. The cyan of her ring was fading as the last life warmth of her body left it. Soon there’d be nothing, at all. Taking a long, steeling breath, Asyra reached out and with shaking hands began working the ring off the dead woman’s finger. Mercifully, stiffness hadn’t worked into her joints yet and the slickness of sweat remained on cooling flesh, eased the removal. The ring popped loose and Asyra drew it, and herself, away quickly.
The light fluttered out, no longer powered by its owner’s presence. Darkness of a sort so deep it could be felt closed in all around Asyra. Fear of a completely new sort clenched within her, of being trapped, of being locked away in this endless black. She fought back shivers and the howling of her mind as she turned the ring over in her finger, thought furiously of the word of activation Clover had used.
“Ilumno.”
The cyan returned with a dazzle, the pewter pulsing with warmth in her hand. With effort she didn’t look at Clover, turned away to pan the light about. A look up showed the blocks of the trap still closed over her. She wondered for an instant by what means they’d retract, but gave up on it. She turned and examined her prison.
And sucked in a breath of surprise. The way out had already been opened for her. The small, low door in the corner of the pit had slid back. A cramped passage beckoned.
Why? Asyra clenched with sudden suspicion. Why the elaborate death-trap and then just open a way out? But her thoughts flowed into realization right away. It’s like a puzzle, a sadist’s puzzle. These are tests. She thought of the bones strewn amongst the spikes—tried not to think of Clover. The fools are whittled down. The unwelcome or weak are slain. And, if she followed her thoughts through to their conclusion, that meant some were meant to get through.
She shivered.
But she would not stop.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered to Clover’s broken form in the dark—couldn’t make herself turn. Whatever gods there might be, forgive her, but she couldn’t see that again.
Holding the glowing ring up before her, Asyra moved into the tunnel.
“ANOTHER ROOM,” DURRAK grunted, halting just ahead of Strayden and holding out his torch. Its light fluttered over another door, this one plain bronze, greened and darkened by corrosion.
Strayden paused and glanced over his shoulder. They were down to seven, had lost or left—which was the same damned thing—five to the mummy horde. And two of those remaining were obviously hurt. Hells, none of them were doing well. His every movement knifed with the pain of injuries he only now realized he’d sustained. And nerves had been scathed to nothing. He shivered with every stride. He imagined he still heard the hammer of fleshless fists punishing the door they’d closed behind them.
“Try it,” he said tonelessly.
Durrak nodded and gingerly extended his free hand to the face of the door, placed fingertips upon it. With a grunt, he pushed. Metal screeched and crackled over stone, but resistance seemed paltry, the door giving way with little effort from the big Nuburran.
Strayden grimaced as a foul, unrecognizable odor wafted out into his face. “Gah. Nice.” It seemed to be both faintly chemical and vaguely decay at once. “Now they’re going to try to stink us to death.” Durrak was looking at him expectantly. “I’ll go,” Strayden said. “Just keep that light close.”
Slowly, with axe and shield at the ready, he stepped into the chamber. Durrak’s torch light, fluttering behind his shoulder, illuminated a dust-hazed dark inhabited by rows of what looked to be stone tables. Dozens of these stretched out to either side, filled a room as large as a barracks. There was little of the grandeur they’d seen in the preceding chambers, here. This looked like a place of work.
But what work?
The others began to spread into the chamber at Strayden’s back, their torches adding more illumination. The shadows seemed to fight it, cringing into corners hatefully, waiting to spread once more. Yellowy light revealed alcoves along the walls, glinted off what looked like long-discarded tools, left at what appeared to be stations. Shards of clay indicated where vats had once stood. More crumbles in the alcoves suggested other containers left in wait.
Horsa stepped to an alcove and picked up one of the implements. Light flashed wickedly off a barbed hook-like device. Its edges seemed clotted with some past foulness and Strayden winced. “Put that down, damn it!”
The kid complied with a scowl.
Aelren had wandered ahead, between the tables, to a half-crumbled pedestal on the far side of the room. He held his torch over it, frowning in thought. His gaze went from the empty stone surface to the ceiling and his features tightened. “Gruzh’s spittle! Look at that!”
Those with torches held them high and lit up the ceiling. Across its stone surface marched images of horror. Human forms were dissected across the stone, the pigments of ancient paint still quite vivid, quite detailed. Skin was peeled back in garish, sinewy pink, bones laid bare in glimpses of yellow-white. Crooked tools of razor and barb and hook worked at the bodies, slicing, probing. Hateful script accompanied each horror, appeared almost to be instructions. And smaller images showed men wrapping their victims in the linens Strayden had seen crumbling off the mummies.
The mummies...
“Bring that her
e,” Strayden told Durrak, pointing to the slab nearest him.
The Nuburran did so. Holding the torch over the table reveal stone deeply stained with a rust brown Strayden knew well. Skin crawling, he glanced over the neighboring tables, saw more smears, splashes, the stains undimmed by time and the elements. Spatters of it could be found on the ceiling, the walls. Streaks of it drooled over the edges of the slabs, blotted the floors. With a shudder, Strayden recognized footprints, forever smudged into the flagstones.
“Gruzh and Vodor and Izzliv the Steel Serpent,” Strayden cursed. “This was where they made them!” He pointed a thumb over his shoulder, back the way they’d come, back where’d they’d fought for their lives against the lifeless.
Men looked at each other, features drawn in the poor light.
“Then let’s leave this place,” Durrak said hoarsely, “before anything tries to do the same to us.”
“No argument from me,” Aelren replied. He was kneeling, holding his torch over the floor. “The dust is disturbed over here. Trail goes this way.” He indicated the far side of the chamber and an exit, another half-corroded door left partially askew at the top of a small flight of steps.
“Then let’s get after it,” Strayden said by way of order to them all.
The Vothans followed him to the exit with no small amount of haste. There, he paused to touch his axe to the slightly open door. It squealed on a single, intact hinge, ground a little across stone as he hooked the weapon around its edge to draw it back. Beyond, a short corridor stretched a couple dozen feet to what looked like another flight of stairs.
With Aelren and his torch close behind, and the rest trailing, Strayden strode up the hallway to the next set of steps, climbed those, and passed through an archway into a broader chamber. A hot smell, like overheated metal met his nostrils, brought him to a halt there. Aelren sidled up next to him to play his torch about.
The fluttering light revealed a tall, circular chamber, ringed by ten-foot figures of stone, crafted to look like men in robes with hands folded prayerfully at their chests and stern, hook-nosed faces glowering down into the center of the chamber. Torch light flickered in rubies that formed their eyes. Each of these looked large enough to fill a palm and shimmered with unnervingly life-likeness.
The object of their stony attention occupied a narrow pedestal at the exact middle of the room. Stepping carefully towards it, Strayden saw that the item was no jewel or artifact, but a pocked iron implement, tarnished by age and handling. He glanced about at the humorless visages sneering down at him before ending his course, standing over it. It was a key, heavy and multi-pronged, a toothy head at each end. Smudges across the pedestal’s surface hinted at its recent disturbance—and perhaps use.
“Wonder what that’s for?” Aelren started to reach past Strayden for the key.
He grabbed the younger Vothan’s wrist, arrested the motion. “Look around, first.”
Aelren nodded after another glance at the object.
The others were filtering into the room, glancing about at the statues, checking corners and cracks. Durrak knelt over what looked like a long, blackened scar across the floor. His gaze rose, tracing it to the feet of one of the statues. Torchlight revealed more of the scorch marks, scrawled about the walls, other statues, even marring one side of the pedestal.
The far side of the chamber, opposite their entrance, opened into yet another flight of stairs. Strayden followed what was becoming a depressingly repetitive pattern and crossed to these, began to climb. He heard Aelren scuttling to follow, the other man’s torch light yellowing the way. The steps didn’t climb too far, though in his battered state Strayden was breathing hard by the top. There, they came to another short corridor ending in another door.
This one, though of the same time-blackened bronze as its predecessors, showed no sign of yielding. Strayden gave it a ginger push, confirmed that. Hatch-marked characters marked the cold metal. As his fingertips brushed them, he could almost feel them worm under his skin. Grimacing, he retracted his hand and looked down. What was obviously a lock occupied the center-piece of the door, ringed by bands made to look—as with the trap before—like the corona of the sun.
“Guess we know where the key goes,” Aelren murmured.
Strayden grunted. “Yeah, and it’s the obviousness of that that’s making me nervous.” He turned and strode back down the steps.
The others were waiting. A few had their eyes on the rubies in the stone faces, glimmers of avarice hard to miss—even in their current state of peril, that Vothan mischief was hard to suppress. Durrak was eyeballing the key. He looked at Strayden as he joined him. “Let me guess...”
“You don’t have to.” Strayden looked around the room again. “This damned place has been one trick after another and this stinks of another one. Wish we had the Ybbassid with us; this is her kind of game.” He glowered at the key, perched innocently on its pedestal. “Gruzh’s greasy taint...guess there’s no other way.”
“How do you want to do this?”
“I think that damned pedestal’s the thing,” Strayden said, pointing at it. He gestured about. “Everyone, either get into the stairway or the edges of the room.” He pointed at one of the survivors—another new recruit, a balding, gangly troll whose name he struggled to recall. “You...Grunnach. Stand over there.” He pointed again, to a spot at the feet of one of the statues.
“Captain...?”
“Do it.” Strayden moved to the pedestal, securing his shield to his back again and taking his axe in both hands. He half-circled it until he stood opposite Grunnach and waited for the other man to take his place. “Here’s what I think; whoever touches that key there gets something bad happening to them. So, nobody’s going to be there when the bad thing happens. I’m going to knock it off there, send it flying to you. Got it?”
Sweat beaded on the man’s brow as he nodded.
“All right.” He glanced at Durrak, standing beside Aelren at the exit stairway, the Nuburran looking uncertain. “Any better ideas?”
“None from here,” he answered. “Just...don’t be near that pedestal after the key’s gone.”
“Believe me,” Strayden replied, cocking his axe back and judging the position, “I’ve got no intention of it.” It wouldn’t take much. Just a slow, well-placed swing. Strayden reversed the axe blade, blew out his breath, and let it fly.
The back of the haft struck the key perfectly, barely skidding across the surface of the pedestal, and sent it hurtling with a ping. It described a lazy, momentary arch through the air, torchlight winking off metal. Grunnach flung up a hand and caught it with a smack of iron on flesh. He stood with it in his hand for an instant, smiling stupidly at Strayden.
And nothing happened.
And then the room exploded.
Shafts of crimson light split the air, carving brilliant rays from the vision and converging on the key in Grunnach’s hand. He didn’t even have time to scream. His hand and the arm up to the elbow went white as the beams met. Strayden saw mouth and eyes spread wide an instant before simply puffing away in flames and oily smoke as a shaft burned through his skull from above and behind on its way to connect with the key. The flames spread, enveloping his upper body.
With a twitch, Grunnach collapsed in upon himself, little more than legs attached to flaming shards of bone. He glanced off the statue behind him and came apart in a puff of sparks. The key rang off the wall as the convulsion sent it flying. The beams traced its path and the whole room writhed with their spasming energy.
Strayden dropped to the floor, could think of nothing else to do. His fall slammed him off the pedestal and he sagged down beside it. The air filled with screams. He realized they were not all human, were the shriek of the energy beams burning the very air. He shrank down unashamedly, cowered with hands over his head, waited as the chamber throbbed with the red light around him.
The key came to a rest to Strayden’s right, a few feet away. The beams continued to punish it, the
heat of them turning it white-hot and the floor beneath it blackened, beginning to smoke with a molten-stone stink. A pair of them angled right above him, the rest slashing from above and around, a quivering web of red death.
Squirming about so that he wasn’t so close to their heat, he looked about, saw that the beams blazed from the ruby eyes of the statues. He noted, again, the scorch smears marring the chamber and realized their source.
The screech of their unearthly energy had fallen to an oppressive hum and the human screams had settled down to moans of pain. A burnt-off leg sprawled nearby—Strayden wasn’t sure whose. Horsa lay with his face to the wall, but intact and still moving. The others sprawled or cringed or cowered in various odd postures around the chamber, but all beginning to recover enough to gauge their perilous state.
“Gruzh curse these Xyxians!” Durrak growled from his spot at the exit stairs, crowded in with Aelren. “What the hells do we do now?”
Strayden shrugged awkwardly from his spot beside the pedestal. He could probably worm under the beams, crawl his way over to the Nuburran. But he’d have to convince mind and muscles to move first, and he wasn’t ready for that fight. “How bad we hurt?”
“Grunnach’s gone,” Durrak replied. “Thorkil, the same. Horsa?”
“I...I’m hurt,” the youth answered breathlessly. More significantly, he didn’t move or try to look towards his comrades, just laid there.
A sparkle of fear went through Strayden’s gut, thawed the ice from his sinews. He started to sidle around the pedestal on his backside, to get a better look, halted when his course brought him close to another set of beams. “Just stay where you are, kid. Same for all of you!”
“But what do we do?” Durrak repeated with frustration trembling towards rage.
“Put it back on the pedestal,” Aelren suggested. “Taking it off is what triggered them.”