front of the line, had raised his palm in a call for silence. No one moved.
Over the sound of my heart I heard a sloshing sound, like barrels of ale being drawn up from the cellar, followed by a harsh splitting thud, like an axe biting lumber. An acrid scent drifted down the stairs. With it, trickling black down the steps and collecting in pools at our feet, came the oil.
A dozen of the Stehnites realized the same thing in the instant that I did and began shouting in their own language and jostling backward. We moved as a unit, panicked and erratic as the flames started rushing down the steps toward us, bluish for a second, then red. A young Stehnite who had strayed to the front of the column found himself suddenly engulfed in the blaze. He came running toward us, screaming, but I suppose the shock was too intense, for he fell suddenly, and was lost in the fire. The heat followed a moment later. It filled the passage like a wall, and our attack broke against it like water on stone.
SCENE XX The Soul of the Arak Drul
“Is there another way out?” demanded Orgos. Toth shook his head.
“Not that I know of, but it’s been generations since we were last here. There may be an exit that we don’t remember.”
“We can’t go this way,” said Orgos, “and if we wait for the flames to die down, the battle will be over and we will be at the mercy of our enemy.”
“There is another way,” I said.
“What?” said Orgos, wheeling.
“There are stairs at the other end,” I explained. “I don’t know if they go anywhere, but I saw them when Renthrette and I first came down here. They may also be burning, but if the enemy reacts to our actions as we think of them, we may have a moment’s advantage.”
“What do you mean?” Toth asked.
“I think that whatever it is that lives in the library senses our actions rather than truly reading our thoughts, and only when we are either physically close to him or unusually focused. It can feel the impulse behind an action, but nothing more complex. It didn’t know I was lying to Sorrail when I came back. I’m guessing, and it would be too much to hope that it doesn’t know we’re here now, but I think it can only act through other people, so we may still have time. Follow me!”
And with this dangerously heroic cry I bounded off, a pack of Stehnites at my heels. The perceptive reader will need no reminding that running toward the stairs I had seen beyond the tombs was also running away from certain death in a blazing stairwell, so you can hold back the “hero” judgment for a bit. We retraced our steps for, it seemed, the dozenth time, passed the gaping hole through which our companions had entered, and found the tight spiral staircase I had glimpsed earlier in the shadows beyond the rubble.
I didn’t even have to point it out before Orgos and Toth had barreled past me like a pair of startled bison and bounded up the steps with their weapons drawn. I hesitated for a second, wary of getting caught in another cascade of fire, but we seemed to have a moment’s advantage, so I joined the pack behind Lisha which was, I thought, as good a place to be as any.
The stairs went up for some distance and the whole unit began to slow perceptibly as we got higher. I slipped closer to the back of the column with each step, my breath coming in great sucking gulps as if I was a tadpole in a drying mud puddle. But unless I missed it somewhere, your average tadpole never has to climb stairs for the privilege of doing hand-to-hand battle with a vastly superior force, a prospect which rarely quickens my step.
And suddenly the company stuttered to a halt. I crawled up to them and lay wheezing on my back while the Stehnites above me relayed the message: The way ahead was blocked. A heavy slab of stone (at the very least, since no one knew what was on top of it) lay over the stairwell. We were stuck. I sat on the steps, breathing heavily. I was wondering whether it said something about my heroism that I had started at the front of the unit and was now at the very back, when something sounded below.
I had not minded being the last of the group on the stairs since the fire had cut off any possible pursuit, but now something was moving a bit below us. It was an unhurried, shuffling sound, but it was getting louder. Uneasily, I took a cautious step down, but the spiral was too tight to see anything more than a few feet away. I took another step, then another, and was considering going lower when a figure half-dragged, half-lurched around the bend in the stairs.
It was large and it bore an ancient sword, and though the light was too low to see detail, I needed no time to consider the nature of what was facing me. I had seen its hand, the pale bones wound tight round the sword hilt. As I fled upward, I looked over the rail of the stairs down to where the ancient Stehnite tombs were emptying one by one, their bodies moving with single and uncanny purpose.
For a moment my voice forsook me, and I ran headlong into the Stehnites on the stairs before they had even seen me coming. “Move!” I managed, unhelpfully. “They’re coming. The dead are coming after us.”
I didn’t need to say more, because the first was already upon us. I pushed past one of the Stehnites and then turned, astonished at his lack of response to what he saw. But then, I don’t know what he saw. He looked on the foul and ragged skeleton and he did nothing. None of them did. Only when it leaned forward and precisely thrust its rusted sword through his lungs did any of them react.
In the screaming that followed I took the scimitar which fell from the dying Stehnite and hewed the arm from the ancient corpse. It came on and its bony fingers reached for my face. With an instinctive and horrified surge of emotion, I cut wildly at its neck and the head tore free in a spackling of dust and tiny bone shards. The body fell under the feet of those that followed it and we, pawing desperately to get away from them, climbed over each other in the madness of fear.
Then Renthrette passed me going down and her sword sang on their dead crowns. After they had got over the initial shock, some of the Stehnite turned to aid her. I, on the other hand, kept moving until I was in sight of Toth and Orgos, their shoulders set against the slab of marble above them and sweat glazing their features. Others pushed along with them, and one of them counted, trying to time their surges of energy.
“Dead goblins!” I sputtered. “Coming from behind.”
“We heard,” said Orgos. “But we’re kind of busy. . ”
“Try harder,” I said, glancing behind to see if the corpses of the ancient Stehnites were cutting through our ranks yet. “It can’t be
“You’d be surprised,” said Orgos, with commendable patience.
“Too bad you didn’t bring one of those immense beasts that you had with you the last time you attacked the city,” I said.
“Alas,” gasped Toth, “she was the last of her kind. Her aid now would indeed be. .”
“She?” I repeated, aghast.
He glanced at me and a question rose in his face, but whatever he was going to say was forgotten as they heaved at the slab once more. With a great shout they all strained at the rock and something seemed to shift. More joined in, pushing upward, levering with the hafts of their weapons until a crack of light appeared around the stone rim and spread like the sun breaking from clouds. With one great surging roar, the slab was pushed up and clear and gray light fell into the shaft.
Toth was the first out, swinging himself up and into a crouch like a hunter. Orgos followed, with a brace of Stehnites on his tail. Then me, and I needed only a second to see where we were. Ranged about us were shelves of books, and two vast staircases led up to a gallery that skirted the great translucent dome which arched above us.
We were in the library, and there were soldiers everywhere.
They seemed to be coming from all sides, running fast like hounds converging on a wounded sheep. Arrows whistled through the air and skipped off the marble floor. One of the Stehnites fell clutching his leg and rolling, as the others spewed out of the hole like water from a geyser. I ducked and scuttled toward a pillar, thinking vaguely that this is where I would normally be taking leisurely shots with my crossbow. But the crossbow was lost and I was left diving for cover, clutching a rusted scimitar and wondering what the hell kind of use I could possibly be, even if I could stay alive for another five minutes.
