The Scarab Path

Thalric had thrown himself backwards, a winged jump of ten feet that put him seven steps up the side of the pyramid, returning golden fire from his open palm. Osgan collapsed beside him, shaking, gasping, one hand held fitfully out towards the enemy.

Cheerwell Maker!

That voice, all within her head, was enough. It caught her by the chin and dragged her face round until she was looking back and up — up the stone slope, up past the poised stone giants.

He hung there, clearly visible even at night, a grey ghost in a foreign city. Here, girl! The voice snapped in her head, admitting no patience with her.

The Wasps were advancing: another two had dropped down, one to each side. The square was broad, so the range still defeated their stings, but they were moving in. Thalric was retreating up the pyramid side.

'Up!' Che shouted at him. 'To the top now.' And why? 'Take cover among the statues!'

Thalric glanced at her and nodded grimly. He has no illusions about how this will go. He reached the flattened top in a sudden rush, darting behind a stone thigh as broad as his own torso. A moment later he was calling out, 'Osgan! For the Emperor's love, come on!'

Osgan picked himself up, stingshot bursting close by him, and looked up.

He screamed, falling back, rolling down the steps and landing on his side at the pyramid's foot. Thalric cried out his name, but Osgan was pointing — pointing at something past and through Thalric. Che, halfway up, stopped in horror and realization.

He does see it. He sees Achaeos. She recalled Osgan's history, his fears. He saw Achaeos at the Mantis village: he thinks he's a Mantis.

'Come on, you drunken bloody fool!' Thalric roared at him. Che got most of the way to the top before turning. Osgan was clenched up into a ball, but she could still hear him cry out, 'It's him! He's come back!'

'It's not him, Osgan!' Che called. A stingblast cracked against the stones near her and she fell back, clawed her way over to where the statues could be her shield. 'Osgan, please-!'

The Rekef were now reaching the pyramid's foot. still spread out. Thalric's occasional shots made them start back, leap briefly into the air with a flurry of wings, before settling down again. Despite Thalric's promises, it did not seem that either flight or shot had tired them. They seemed all patience, closing carefully, while they kept a wary eye on Osgan. They could have killed him easily, but it was clear they would take him alive when they reached him. He would provide the leverage to force their other quarry into reach.

It was surreal, Che thought: they were standing in sight of the very fount of governance for Khanaphes, an armed insurrection in the heart of the city, with Rekef assassins running riot, and nobody else seemed to care.

'Osgan!' Thalric bellowed, just as a stingshot blazed from the Wasp on the leftmost flank and seared Che's shoulder. She cried out in pain and fell back. And fell further.

There was no solid ground behind her. What the grey stain of the ghost had been hovering over was the pit: the shaft sunk into the middle of the pyramid. She plummeted, too startled to call upon her wings. One outstretched hand scraped the pit edge, dragging its way through a layer of slime inches thick. Then she was gone, dropping into the darkness.

She heard Thalric call out her name and then he was diving after her. Still falling, in shock from the pain of her wound, she watched him outpace her with his wings flaring, sparking against the sides of the shaft.

Then he had her, arms tight about her, unimaginably painful where he grasped at her injured shoulder. His wings backed, trying to fight against their descent, their combined weight. She had a split-second glimpse of his face, his expression gone taut with the effort.

They struck bottom. She spilled from his arms, landing on her good side, scrabbling for purchase. It was dark, which did not matter to her, but it mattered to Thalric. He went stumbling away from her, arms out blindly. She tried for her feet and got there, swaying. 'Thalric,' she said, and he swung towards her.

There was a light, a lamp. It was getting brighter: from the shaft.

'They're coming!' he spat, backing away from it. She tried to make sense of their surroundings. The shaft gave on to a narrow room — Just how far below the ground are we? — and she saw a single passage beyond, branching three ways almost instantly. Thalric was making for it, hoping for cover, and she stumbled into him, clutching at him to hold herself upright. It hurt to move her right arm, but she could still move it. The sting must have just clipped her, for all the pain.

There was something about the tunnels ahead. She could not reconcile it, but there was something wrong there, hanging in the air like a ghost.

A pair of Wasps dropped down the shaft behind them, their stings blazing blind even as they did so, bolts of fire scattering within the confined space, their lantern glaring beyond. Che saw Thalric back away into the passageway, and a stab of panic overcame her, without any reason.

'Run!' she cried, then her wings hurled her at him fast, spoiling his aim as he tried to shoot back. The two Wasps were almost on her heels, charging forward to close with swords drawn.

She felt the stone around them shift, even as she collided with Thalric, striking him full in the chest, propelling him down the centre corridor. There was no mechanism, no click and grind of machinery. The stone moved as if it was alive.

She landed on Thalric hard enough to expel the breath from his lungs with a whoosh.

What landed on the two Wasps, only feet behind her, was the ceiling itself. A colossal block, the same height and width as the passage, thundered down on them. It cut off their scream, which was mercifully brief.

Thalric's eyes were wide, staring, unseeing in the pitch darkness.

She rolled off him with a groan, and lay flat on her back. Traps, she thought, traps for the intruder, the unwary. Traps laid by the Inapt, though. There had been no pressure point, no tripwire, that had brought that fatal load down. There had been a watching magic, and she had sensed it somehow, where Thalric and the dead Wasps had not.

She peered about herself at last, saw that the room was not large. There was Khanaphir picture-writing on the walls, but in bolder and larger characters than she had seen before.

There were no doors.

Sulvec perched on the lip of the pit, as the resounding crash died away below him. He had heard the momentary cries of the two men he had sent after Thalric.

'Gram!' he called down. 'Gram, report!'

Only silence replied.

Marger and the soldiers joined him there, crouching among the statues. They would have to go in, he realized. No matter what had happened to Gram, they would still have to go in. He opened his mouth to give the order.

At that moment he felt fear. It came steaming up like cold breath from the slime-edged mouth of the pit. It caught him in mid-word, freezing him, wrenching at his stomach. He felt himself gripped by an unreasoning terror.

We should not be here. The placid faces of the statues had become nightmarish without ever changing expression. They looked down upon the intruding Wasps with condemnation. Sulvec heard his own breath sounding ragged in his throat. We should not be here. This is a terrible place. Something terrible has happened to Gram. Those screams, so brutally stopped, had unnerved him, but now fear had taken hold and was shaking him in its jaws.

I am a Rekef officer! But in this faraway city the Rekef seemed just a pale dream. He looked over to Marger, saw the man's eyes wide, his hands shaking. The other soldiers were retreating down the pyramid, away from the statues and the dreadful pit.

'Back.' The word was dragged from him. 'Go back. We …' He could give no reason for it, could not justify the order. He only knew that to stay where they were, in this forbidden place, meant death.

None of them needed to be told again. They fled down the side of the pyramid gratefully, gathering near the archway to the Place of Foreigners.

'They must be dead,' Marger was saying. 'Thalric and the Beetle girl. Surely they must be dead, all of them.'