musty, and dry. In the floor of the guesting room of the adjacent tomb they discovered a hole. Of this, the glassblower disclaimed knowledge, saying that it was new to him, and that it must lead down into the sarcophagus chamber. He stood to admire the work; after all, as he remarked, it took real enterprise to hack a man-sized hole through a basalt slab a handspan and a half thick!
Morkudz again allowed his light to fade, and they sat together in darkness so total that their eyes themselves created colours and phantasms, and the spirits of the ancient dead awoke to dance before them against the ebon curtain. The air grew close and bad, smelling of dryness and sweat and fear. Harsan allowed Itk t’Sa one last sad, mental farewell and found that his mind was already nibbling at the problem of breathable air here in this sepulchre. There ought to be cross-currents down the two open shafts from the great cavern above, should there not?
Tlayesha dozed in his arms; from close by, on his other side, he heard the cadence of the Heheganu’s heartbeat, its rhythm strangely different from his own. Rustling noises announced that Simanuya was still grubbing about in the rubbish for coins, stones, and whatever else the Gods might disclose. No sound emanated from where the Livyani and his warrior woman leaned together against the wall.
Only a Kiren or two could have passed; then something grated and slithered above. Colourless light, brighter than that of Morkudz’ spell, trickled down their original shaft to raise gleams and shadows amongst the wreckage of the funeral furniture.
Harsan was on his feet, through the storage room and the narrow passage beyond, and into the neighbouring guesting chamber almost before he knew it. Taluvaz and the Heheganu still arrived before him, however, and a large but feminine hand upon his shoulder told him that Mirure followed.
He guessed from the chaotic shadows that someone ahead had started to climb up into the second shaft: probably Taluvaz Arrio.
Noise exploded there: rattling, scratching, banging, and then a sound like a sack of grain striking the planks of a wooden floor. A voice gave a choking cry-Taluvaz? — and Harsan fell jarringly against the wall as Morkudz tumbled back upon him.
Something wet and unpleasantly familiar splashed Harsan’s legs. He struggled beneath the Heheganu’s weight and felt the nonhuman muscles stretch as the creature strove to rise. A foot, probably Tlayesha’s, stepped hard upon his thigh. He grunted involuntarily and rolled aside. Morkudz’ radiance, flaring and dimming like a lamp in the wind, brought the chamber to view as a painter unrolls a picture before an audience.
The Livyani lay half-stunned beneath a short, robust-looking man in a leather tunic and grey Firya-cloth kilt. The fellow lay face down, long braided hair hiding his features.
Mirure pushed past to deal with the intruder, but there was no need. At first Harsan thought that the man had been struck unconscious in his fall, but when the N’luss girl pulled him over, they saw that he lay in a spattered pool of scarlet. Whoever he was, he was dead, his tunic slashed across the breast by what must have been a terrible blow from a heavy weapon: a halberd or a two-handed axe. He was no one Harsan knew: thin-featured, wisp-bearded, perhaps ten years older than Harsan himself. He had the look of a hired mercenary.
Tlayesha tended to Taluvaz while Mirure and Harsan examined the body. The man now bore no weapons. He wore a helmet, shoulder pauldrons, and arm-wrappings of scuffed, common Chlen- hide; his clothing told them nothing. From a pouch at his waist, however, the N’luss girl extracted a handful of copper and silver coins. Most of these she threw down, but one she handed to Harsan. It bore an inscription in square, jagged symbols and, on the other side, a portrait of a thick-set, balding man with a square-cut beard.
The Baron Aid. Harsan had often seen Yan Koryani coins at the Monastery of the Sapient Eye.
Taluvaz Arrio was sufficiently recovered to reach out for the coin. He had suffered no more than scrapes and bruises, but, as Harsan noted wryly, he would have to pay a call upon his tattooer for repairs! The man’s boot had caught Taluvaz just at his receding hairline, and a longish flap of tom skin there dribbled blood down over one ear.
“Others have brought their own wine to the feast,” Harsan said fiercely. “The Yan Koryani appear to be quarreling with Lord Sarku’s folk. Did your sources tell you that it was the Baron’s servants who spirited me out of the Tolek Kana Pits- made me into a mind-sick idiot for a time?”
“I-ah-have heard the tale. It seems to be so.” The Livyani brighte ned. “If one feaster arrives, then may there not be more?” “Who?”
“The Gods know,” the older man probed his scalp, wincing as his fingers brought away redness. “Many sought you: your own people, the Omnipotent Azure Legion, Prince Eselne’s agents, the Yan Koryani. All have watchers, telepaths, sorcery… We can hope that there are more guests at the banquet!” Mirure returned from the base of the tomb-shaft. “Fighting above, Lord,” she said. “An explosion sound, a red light-” She looked as though she yearned to go and join in, but Taluvaz laid a restraining hand upon her wrist.
“We have no choice but to wait and see whether the Zrne eats the Mnor, or the other way round.”
They returned to the connecting passage. Mirure stood watch by the body near the second shaft, while Morkudz crouched at the base of their original entrance. Simanuya tried on the dead man’s helmet but found it too small. He preferred it first to Tlayesha, then to Harsan, but neither wanted to anger the spirit of one so recently deceased by wearing it.
They waited.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
“They come!” Harsan heard Mirure shout from the first tomb.
Simultaneously cold, pale luminescence poured down the second shaft, the one nearest him. He took a chance, put his head in, glanced up, and narrowly missed being struck by something metallic: a dagger, perhaps, or a throwing axe that clanged and went spinning off into the rubbish. Whoever they were, there was no question of their hostility-and of their disinclination to parley!
He backed out and looked around for the others. Mirure was visible at the door leading to the tomb through which they had first entered. Taluvaz, Tlayesha, and Simanuya were close by, just on the other side of the tomb robbers’ hole in the floor. Of the Heheganu there was no sign.
“Down-into the sarcophagus chamber!” the glassblower bleated. “There may be further tunnels there.” He suited action to words and thrust his not inconsiderable bulk into the hole. What he would use for light did not seem to occur to him.
The N’luss girl retreated further into the chamber, still fighting, the ancient sword (shorter by a handspan broken from its tip, Harsan saw) in her right hand, and her dagger in her left. Her opponents were more of the Undead: black and withered things animated by other-planar power and the fearful sorceries of Lord Sarku. Two were skull-faced: Mrur or Jajgi, as Morkudz had named them. Another just behind appeared mummified, greyish, wrinkled, and shrunken. The holes where the embalmers had inserted thongs into the lips to close the lich’s mouth still showed, and copper corpse-amulets swung like bridal necklaces from its raddled neck and arms. This must be one of the Shedra of legend: the Gods knew whether the tales of its hunger for living flesh were true! Harsan had no wish to find out.
All of the foe bore thick, bronze-bladed halberds-axes, poleaxes-Harsan did not know the proper term. These they swung skilfully in the cramped space, and Mirure was hard put to get within a range where her shorter weapon could do its work. The Temple of Sarku had the permanent pick of the best of its warrior devotees, after all; dead, they were only somewhat slower and less clever than they had been in life, and quantity made up for quality…
A different being glided in behind the Undead: a stooping, slender, dark-robed thing. Its face was a whitish blur, and Harsan first mistook it for another of the Mrur. It whirled to avoid one of Mirure’s blows, however, and he saw that the head curved out from the sloping shoulders upon a long columnar neck. Scales glittered at its throat. The face was flat, ophidian, the eyes wide apart and slit-pupilled. It opened a fanged mouth and hissed something to those behind it. Another creature out of children’s nightmares: a Qol, “They of the Serpent Faces!” Some of the epics listed the Qol among the creations of the Temple of Lord Ksarul, while a few spoke of them as a race artificially manufactured during the Latter Times and employed by all three of the Temples of the Dark Trinity, those of Ksarul, Sarku, and Lord Hru’ii. He could now declare the latter theory to be empirically proved, although whether he lived to report it or not was as yet undecided by the Weaver of Skeins.
There were more foemen, human and nonhuman, in the passage behind the Qol.
