battle. Renthrette ran to meet him.
“Garnet! Thank God,” she cried. “We have to let Lisha and the others in. I’ll explain it all later.”
“I already know,” he said, smiling. “I have spoken to them and they sent me to you. Come back this way.”
He started to move back the way we had come, and Renthrette took a step toward him.
“No!” I shouted. “Renthrette, wait. That’s not your brother.”
She shot him a quick look and then called back to me, half laughing as she did so. “Of course it is. Who else could it be?”
“Look at him closely,” I answered, walking quickly toward them. “Make sure.”
She glanced at him, but only for a second. “Of course it’s him,” she said.
“Come,” he said, extending his hand to her.
“No!” I bellowed, breaking into a run.
She took his offered hand and he began to draw her back and up. She moved with him, easily, and as she turned from me, I had the distinct impression that she had forgotten my presence utterly. I called after them, but they did not turn or answer. I ran and, rounding a corner, saw where a black hollow had appeared in the rock wall: a tomb door, gaping open. Only yards from it, Garnet and Renthrette paced arm in arm. The oil lamp lay shattered and sputtering on the ground and Renthrette’s posture seemed limp, as if she were drunk.
The tomb they now stood before was little more than a vertical coffin carved into the rock. To my horror, Garnet slid his back against the wall and into the recess, drawing Renthrette after him. I shouted and flung myself at them. Garnet’s free hand caught my wrist, but now I saw it for what it was: a fleshless, bony claw.
It began to pull me in.
I tried to tear it away but some greater strength was guiding it, giving power to its dusty, fleshless bones, and in moments we were all three pulled in a horrible embrace into the tomb. The corpse which had taken on Garnet’s form released Renthrette, whose eyes were cloudy and sightless, and used that free hand to reach for the stone slab which was the sarcophagus lid. I kicked and flailed as best I could but the skeleton hand now had me firmly by the shoulder and its grip was like a vise. Renthrette was muttering to herself like one on the edge of sleep, and the door, the great stone slab that would entomb us, was shutting out the light. I stopped fighting, knowing that since Renthrette’s illusion was giving the thing power, only she could stop it.
I called her name. “Look at him, Renthrette!” I cried. “Look at your brother.”
Her eyelids flickered and opened for a second. They rested on the skull beside her face and she smiled.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Garnet. Now rest.”
“No,” I shouted, as the tomb door inched further across the opening, “it isn’t him. He’s different.”
“No,” she murmured, her eyes still shut. “No.”
“How did he find us?” I tried, desperate now. “How did he know we were here? He says he spoke to Lisha: Where? When? How could he have found them and why would he have gone looking? He didn’t know they were here. Lisha is outside the city and couldn’t have come to him. He must be lying. Renthrette,
Her eyelids rippled again and confusion crossed her forehead as the last of the lamplight was closed out of the tomb. In the last second before the darkness took us, her eyes opened all the way; she saw the hollow eye sockets, yellow and gnawed by rats; and she screamed.
In that instant the grip which seized me broke, the finger bones shattered, and the tomb door quavered and fell slowly into the passageway, crashing full length and breaking upon the flint floor with a deafening roar that seemed to resound through the earth. I staggered out after it, gasping the air, and Renthrette followed, shrieking and brushing at the torn limb which had encircled her. The rest of the corpse seemed to stand for a second and then tumbled in pieces, many of the bones turning to powder before they hit the ground.
Renthrette sank back against the opposite wall, the back of her hand pressed to her mouth and her eyes fixed on the empty tomb. She was wheezing, rather than sobbing.
“It’s all right,” I said. “It wasn’t him.”
For a while she said nothing, so I sat down beside her and slipped my arm around her shoulders. I had, after all, seen this little trick before. She didn’t rebuff me, or react at all, for that matter. She just sat there, breathing heavily and biting into the back of her wrist till the print of her teeth showed bone white.
“What was it doing?” she asked.
There were lots of possible answers to this, some of which I preferred not to consider, so I kept it simple. “Trying to stop us.”
“Why?”
“We’re about to fulfill a prophecy,” I said. “But we’d better be quick. If he, whatever that thing in the library is, has sensed us here, he’ll be sending troops. We have to find that passage.”
I helped her up. She could have rested a while longer, but I dared not risk it. We moved back down the passage to where the largest tombs were. The lamp oil was still burning in a pool on the floor, but we couldn’t carry it with us and visibility at the far end was almost nil.
“This is impossible,” I said. “How could we have missed it?”
“What’s that?” said Renthrette.
I followed her gaze steeply upward and my heart stopped. High above the other tombs was a figure, armored and crouching, ready to pounce. I took a step back, but the warrior didn’t move and, now that I got a second look at it, it seemed unlikely that it would.
“That’s it!” I said. “That’s the statue. Let me give you a lift.”
I locked my hands and she stepped into them wordlessly, using them as a stirrup to hoist herself up. Then she grasped the masonry and hauled herself the rest of the way.
“Are you up?” I said. “All right. Now, take hold of his spear, above his hand. Got it? Now, pull it toward you.”
For a moment nothing happened, then the spear seemed to break off and snap forward. But it didn’t fall, and as it moved, something heavy behind the wall disengaged. Renthrette jumped back hastily as the entire section of wall lurched back a few inches and then dropped vertically into the earth with a great rush of dust and a thunderous rumble. Behind where it had stood there was first darkness, then a lean, gray Stehnite face under a steel helm. It was Toth.
“You have proved many people wrong today, Mr. Hawthorne,” he said, as soon as he had leaped down. “I am glad, and grateful.”
Renthrette stared at him. I thought I saw her hand stray toward her sword.
“Renthrette,” I said, “this is Toth, a Stehnite chieftain.”
“Enchanted,” he said.
Renthrette returned his half bow with a kind of stunned nod, but there was no time to dwell on courtesies. Others were appearing at the hole in the wall and dropping cautiously into the passage. Among them were Orgos and Lisha. Renthrette came to herself instantly, embracing them heartily and with real joy.
“Quick!” I said. “They know we’re here. They’ll try to shut us in.”
“They will try,” said Toth, darkly, “but now that I have set foot in the city of our fathers, I will not leave it.”
At this utterance, many of those gathered in the passage made sounds of assent, but a glance up at where the statue had been told me that there were not many of them. About three dozen Stehnites and a pair of sleek gray wolves had come in through the passage. The rest would lay siege to the walls with Mithos and the other chiefs. I doubted it could possibly be enough.
Orgos, taller than almost everyone else there by a hand, conferred with Toth, and the unit began to move quickly back the way we had come, their weapons drawn. For a second I found myself face to face with one of the wolves and I saw thought, or perhaps even recollection, in its yellow eyes. It was a huge, pale beast, its fur gleaming like brushed steel and with a white blaze on its throat. As I looked at it I knew I had seen it before, long ago in that mountain cave where we had met Sorrail, and that it also remembered. The wolf held me in its gaze, and I, overcome by a rush of guilty regret for a lot of things, swallowed hard and held my breath. It watched, considering, then moved off, following the others. I blinked the memory away as best I could.
We hurried through the monuments and sepulchers, past the open tomb which had so nearly been my last resting place, and into the circular chamber near the steep staircase. There we stuttered to a halt. Orgos, at the
