The Seventh Shrine

“A motive for the killing can be seen there. Isn’t that so?”

She looked stunned. She waved her arms helplessly about, the palms of her hands turned outward in appeal. A long moment passed before she could bring herself to speak. But she had recovered much of her composure when she did.

“Majesty, what you have just suggested is greatly offensive to me. I am guilty of hiding the tomb discovery, yes. But I swear to you that I had nothing to do with Dr Huukaminaan’s death. I can’t possibly tell you how much I admired that man. We had our professional differences, but…” She shook her head. She looked drained. Very quietly she said, “I didn’t kill him. I have no idea who did.”

Valentine chose to accept that, for now. It was hard for him to believe that she was merely play-acting her distress.

“Very well, Magadone Sambisa. But now tell me why you decided to conceal the finding of that tomb.”

“I would have to tell you, first, an old Piurivar legend, a tale out of their mythology, one that I heard from the khivanivod Torkinuuminaad on the day that we found the tomb.”

“Must you?”

“I must, yes.”

Valentine sighed. “Go ahead, then.”

Magadone Sambisa moistened her lips and drew a deep breath.

“There once was a Pontifex, so the story goes,” she said, “who lived in the years soon after the conquest of the Piurivars by Lord Stiamot. This Pontifex had fought in the War of the Conquest himself when he was a young man, and had had charge over a camp of Piurivar prisoners, and had listened to some of their campfire tales. Among which was the story of the Defilement at Velalisier—the sacrifice by the Final King of the two sea-dragons, and the destruction of the city that followed it. They told him also of the broken Seventh Pyramid, and of the shrine beneath it, the Shrine of the Downfall, as they called it. In which, they said, certain artefacts dating from the day of the Defilement had been buried—artefacts that would, when properly used, grant their wielder godlike power over all the forces of space and time. This story stayed with him, and many years later when he had become Pontifex he came to Velalisier with the intention of locating the shrine of the Seventh Pyramid, the Shrine of the Downfall, and opening it.”

“For the purpose of bringing forth these magical artefacts, and using them to gain godlike power over the forces of space and time?”

“Exactly,” said Magadone Sambisa.

“I think I see where this is heading.”

“Perhaps you do, majesty. We are told that he went to the site of the shattered pyramid. He drove a tunnel into the ground; he came upon the stone passageway that leads to the wall of the shrine. He found the wall and made preparations for breaking through it.”

“But the seventh shrine, you told me, is intact. Since the time of the abandonment of the city no one has ever entered it. Or so you believe.”

“No one ever has. I’m sure of that.”

This Pontifex, then … ?”

“Was just at the moment of breaching the shrine wall when a Piurivar who had hidden himself in the tunnel overnight rose up out of the darkness and put a sword through his heart.”

“Wait a moment,” said Valentine. Exasperation began to stir in him. “A Piurivar popped out of nowhere and killed him, you say? A Piurivar? I’ve just gone through this same thing with Aarisiim. Not only weren’t there any Piurivars anywhere in Alhanroel at that time, because Stiamot had locked them all up in reservations over in Zimroel, but there was supposed to be a curse on this place that would have prevented members of their race from going near it.”

“Except for the guardians of the shrine, who were exempted from the curse,” said Magadone Sambisa.

“Guardians?” Valentine said. “What guardians? I’ve never heard anything about Piurivar guardians here.”

“Nor had I, until Torkinuuminaad told me this story. But at the time of the city’s destruction and abandonment, evidently, a decision was made to post a small band of watchmen here, so that nobody would be able to break into the seventh shrine and gain access to whatever’s in there. And that guard force remained on duty here throughout the centuries. There were still guardians here when the Pontifex came to loot the shrine. One of them tucked himself away in the tunnel and killed the Pontifex just as he was about to chop through the wall.”

“And his people buried him here? Why in the world would they do that?”

Magadone Sambisa smiled. To hush things up, of course. Consider, majesty: a Pontifex comes to Velalisier in search of forbidden mystical knowledge, and is assassinated by a Piurivar who has been sneaking around undetected in the supposedly abandoned city. If word of that got around, it would make everyone look bad.”

“I suppose that it would.”

“The Pontifical officials certainly wouldn’t have wanted to let it be known that their master had been struck down right under their noses. Nor would they be eager to advertise the story of the secret shrine, which might lead others to come here looking for it too. And surely they’d never want anyone to know that the Pontifex had died at the hand of a Piurivar, something that could reopen all the wounds of the War of the Conquest and perhaps touch off some very nasty reprisals.”

“And so they covered everything up,” said Valentine.

“Exactly. They dug a tomb off in a remote corner of the ruins and buried the Pontifex in it with some sort of appropriate ritual, and went back to the Labyrinth with the news that his majesty had very suddenly been stricken down at the ruins by an unknown disease and it had seemed unwise to bring his body back from Velalisier for the usual kind of state funeral. Ghorban, was his name. There’s an inscription in the tomb that names him. Ghorban Pontifex, three Pontifexes after Stiamot. He really existed. I did research in the House of Records. You’ll see him listed there,”

“I’m not familiar with the name.”

“No. He’s not exactly one of the famous ones. But who can remember them all, anyway? Hundreds and hundreds of them, across all those thousands of years. Ghorban was Pontifex only a short while, and the only event of any importance that occurred during his reign was something that was carefully obliterated from the records. I’m speaking of his visit to Velalisier.”

Valentine nodded. He had paused by the great screen outside the Labyrinth’s House of Records often enough, and many times had stared at that long list of his predecessors, marvelling at the names of all-but-forgotten monarchs, Meyk and Spurifon and Heslaine and Kandibal and dozens more. Who must have been great men in their day, but their day was thousands of years in the past. No doubt there was a Ghorban on the list, if Magadone Sambisa said there had been: who had reigned in regal grandeur for a time as the Coronal Lord Ghorban atop Castle Mount, and then had succeeded to the Pontificate in the fulness of his years, and for some reason had paid a visit to this accursed city of Velalisier, where he died, and was buried, and fell into oblivion.

“A curious tale,” Valentine said. “But what is there in it that would have made you want to suppress the discovery of this Ghorban’s tomb?”

“The same thing that made those ancient Pontifical officials suppress the real circumstances of his death,” replied Magadone Sambisa. “You surely know that most ordinary people already are sufficiently afraid of this city. The horrible story of the Defilement, the curse, all the talk of ghosts lurking in the ruins, the general spookiness of the place—well, you know what people are like, your majesty. How timid they can be in the face of the unknown. And I was afraid that if the Ghorban story came out—the secret shrine, the search for mysterious magical lore by some obscure ancient Pontifex, the murder of that Pontifex by a Piurivar—there’d be such public revulsion against the whole idea of excavating Velalisier that the dig would be shut down. I didn’t want that to happen. That’s all it was, your majesty. I was trying to preserve my own job, I suppose. Nothing more than that.”

It was a humiliating confession. Her tone, which had been vigorous enough during the telling of the tale, now was flat, weary, almost lifeless. To Valentine it had the sound of complete sincerity.

“And Dr Huukaminaam didn’t agree with you that revealing the discovery of the tomb could be a threat to the continuation of your work here?”

“He saw the risk. He didn’t care. For him the truth came first and foremost, always. If public opinion forced the dig to be shut down, and nobody worked here again for fifty or a hundred or five hundred years, that was all right with him. His integrity wouldn’t permit hiding a startling piece of history like that, not for any reason. So we had a big battle and finally I pushed him into giving in. You’ve seen how stubborn I can be. But I didn’t kill him. If I