The Livyani entered. Sharp, black eyes danced over Harsan and the others from above a complex, bird-like glyph that stretched from the man’s right ear over his nose to dangle red and black plumage down his left cheek to his chin and beyond into the creases of his throat. His left eye was encircled by red curleques, while tiny black symbols swept away from the other in wave-like undulations back to the line of his black and silver-shot hair. These were the Aomuz of a highborn noble.
“This one will do,” the Livyani said in the sibilant, blurred accents of Tsamra. At random he picked a ewer from a rack. His gaze never left Harsan’s.
One of the Heheganu signed toward the shadowed entrance to the staircase at the back of the room. Ormudzo nodded, and Harsan and the others began to move back toward it.
They never arrived.
Glass chimed and shattered out in the shop. Harsan heard a gasp and a muffled feminine cry; then the little storeroom erupted into light and motion. One of the lamps from without came crashing into the chamber to spurt burning oil over Sim^riuya’s racks.
A figure followed: one of the middle-aged clanswomen, but now transformed. The clan robes were cast aside to reveal a muscled torso, undeniably male, and a short-muzzled object that Harsan could not for a moment identify. The thing twanged, and a slender white splinter stood out suddenly from the Livyani’s breast. The nobleman fell back and plucked the dart out of what Harsan now saw to be a thickish pectoral-a small but efficient breastplate.
Tlayesha was at the stair. She whirled and shouted, “Betrayed, Harsan! The Heheganu are gone, and the way is closed!”
Itk t’Sa was somewhere behind one of the racks where Harsan could not see her. More glass shattered.
The heavy-set escort, plump and foppish no longer, appeared now at the door. Harsan found himself holding a long, blue bottle carved in the shape of a leaping fish. The neck of this vessel disappeared in a shower of splinters against the wall, and then the escort took the rest of the jagged cylinder directly across the eyes. Red exploded to drench the sapphire glass.
The N’liiss warrior woman, weaponless now, almost received the next stroke, but the Livyani cried something in his own tongue, and her arm came up in time to knock Harsan’s impromptu sword aside. Her rough blue over- tunic was slashed, and her left shoulder was drenched in blood. Harsan had no time to inquire whose it was.
“More come,” she gasped.
Where was the false clanswoman, the one with the little crossbow? A glance told him that she-he-now faced Tlayesha. Some other weapon was in his hand, a claw-like dagger. with three curved blades. For a moment the fellow feinted and then made to strike. Harsan saw the blow coming and knew that Tlayesha had no skill to dodge it. He shouted, but his words were drowned out by a clashing, shattering roar. The foeman disappeared under a glittering cascade of fine glass bottles. Itk t’Sa’s bone-white face, jaws agape in a ferocious grimace, appeared behind the fallen rack.
Tlayesha stooped, and when she rose Harsan saw that her iron physician’s needle dripped red in her hand.
The room was chaos: noise, shouting, the crackle of flames, moans from the man buried under the terrible shards and slivers of broken glass. Feet pounded toward the shop from without, followed by yells, the clatter of Chlen — hide armour, a glint of red copper and the swirl of brown military tunics. No city guards these, but troops of one of the Worm Prince’s legions!
They were trapped.
Simanuya appeared at the door, leaped nimbly over the prostrate escort, who lay clutching his face, and jerked a thumb at Harsan, the nearest. Together with the N’luss warrior woman, they wrestled the body of the blinded bodyguard aside and forced the door shut. The glassblower dropped a thick bar of the black Tiu — wood into its slot and leaned against the door panting. Bodies thumped against it from without.
Simanuya pointed. “Down!” he cried, “Down into the pit! The river is deep enough-torches, there, on a ledge beside the water!”
The Livyani was the first to react. He made no protest but took one quick, appraising look, then leaped feet first into the hole. Harsan seized Tlayesha’s arm, yelled encouragement, and half pushed her after the man. The big N’luss girl, teeth bared in a grimace and clutching her wounded shoulder, went next. From somewhere under the wreckage of broken glass one of the younger Heheganu appeared and scuttled over to jump as well. Harsan had not known the creature was still in the room.
Harsan motioned to Itk t’Sa and then stopped, appalled. The Pe Choi stood with all four arms limp at her sides, a stance he instantly recognised as utter defeat. Of course! She could not swim! Her chitinous exoskeleton contained little room for extra air, and the lung spiracles in her lower abdomen would fill and drown her in no more than hip-high water!
“Go on, Harsan,” she hissed. “This is my death-place. I shall defy them as long as I can!” She snapped the end off a glass rod, making it into a lethal javelin, the favoured weapon of her people.
“Jump! Jump!” The glassblower howled in his ear. Thunderous banging at the door gave urgency to his- words.
“Better drown than guest with worms!” Harsan muttered. He reached out a hand to Itk t’Sa as though to touch hers in farewell. Instead, he seized her small upper limb and jerked her off balance! She teetered, eyes wide with terror, all four arms flailing, and then plunged over the edge into the pit. A wailing hiss came up, followed by a splash. Shouts echoed below.
If only the promised ledge were handy! If only Tlayesha were safe and had the presence of mind to fish the Pe Choi out before she sank…!
“Who will pay me for this ruin?” Simanuya moaned.
“Ask it from Ormudzo!” Harsan grated. “Either jump with us or explain your folly to Lord Sarku’s soldiers!” He did not wait to see whether the glassblower took his advice; a final look around, and then he drew breath and plunged into the black abyss.
Chapter Thirty
Harsan spewed water upon cold, wet stones in total darkness. His feet had not touched bottom when he struck the river, but they had indeed passed through layers of soft, pulpy substances, and he felt nausea rising in his throat. At least the stream was deep enough to prevent him from striking any loads of broken bottles Simanuya might have previously dumped down the hole!
A hand touched his thigh. Hoping that it was Tlayesha, he reached down to grasp it. The fingers were long and slender but heavily calloused. He sensed that the hand was that of a woman: the N’luss.
“It is I, Harsan,” he managed. “The man your master came to meet. Can you make a light?”
There was no answer, but a whisper of movement and the scratch of steel against flint told him that she had understood. Tiny sparks danced against the impenetrable mantle of darkness.
Farther away, a ball of luminescence grew. It limned a squat, crouching figure. The Heheganu! The creature had enough sorcery, then, to be able to create light.
From the comer of his eye he caught the gleam of a blade emerging from a sheath in the thigh-high leather legging the N’luss woman wore. “Don’t kill him!” Harsan exclaimed. “At least not until we have learned all we can!”
“Harsan?” That was Tlayesha, her voice echoing with distance. It came from beyond the lip of the ledge above the black waters to his right. “Where are you? We-the Livyani and I-have Itk t’Sa here. She lives-”
They must be on a ledge similar to their own but on the other side of the river. Harsan took a breath and glanced around. The Heheganu’s light revealed a long tunnel, the roof low and arched, through which the Crystal River flowed silently out to the swamps beyond Purdimal. There was a crumbling ledge no wider than a man-height on Harsan’s side, and pools of stagnant water filled gaps and fissures in the ancient stones. He could not see Tlayesha in the spell’s glow, but she could assuredly see him.
The N’luss girl was on her feet, stooping beneath the rough blocks of the ceiling. A long, dark slash ran down her back from her left shoulder to the broad Chlen — hide cincture that wound about her waist below her heavy
