Had the Temple of Sarku mobilised all of its legions against them?
Harsan thought so. From far in the rear he heard a cracked, ancient voice shrilling commands: it could only be Vridekka. If these people knew their business, Jayargo would be in command of those descending the second shaft into the chamber in which they now fought.
Ruddy light glimmered up from the tomb robbers’ hole. The glassblower had found something inflammable in the sarcophagus chamber. Taluvaz Arrio lifted Tlayesha by the waist, dropped her into the opening, and followed himself, crying out to Mirure in Livyani. The warrior girl parried a halberd thrust by one of the Mrur, aimed judiciously, and stabbed; the wielder lurched backwards and fell.
“You, too!” Mirure shouted at Harsan. She followed this with a string of rasping syllables in her own tongue, cut and parried again, and was rewarded by a shrieking hiss from the serpent-headed thing.
He had no reason to stay, lacking any weapon with which to aid her. A moment to assess the drop, and then he jumped. Paper-dry corpse windings crunched beneath him, and he lost his footing to sprawl amongst crumbled bones and rotted wood.
There was no time to see what the room contained. He had only an impression of stacked coffins, open and tumbled helter-skelter upon the ruins of what had once been drapery-shrouded biers. The glassblower crouched by an impromptu bonfire made from these.
Tlayesha helped Harsan to his feet. A crash behind them told him that Mirure had arrived. Something else came with her, a threshing, hissing whirlwind of black cloth and sinuous limbs. The arms terminated in bluish-white tentacles rather than hands. The fire scattered in an explosion of embers as the N’luss girl battled to keep the snapping jaws of the Qol from her face, and its saw-toothed short sword from her belly. Harsan seized the limb nearest him and was whipped to and fro like a kite at the end of a string. The creature was strong! He glimpsed Taluvaz Arrio moving in behind the Qol; heard a thumping, hollow wound; and felt the sucker-covered tentacle go limp in his grasp. The Livyani stepped back, a small, gleaming brass tube in his fist, a canister from which a triangular blade protruded; a spring-loaded dagger, a weapon beloved of the assassin clans-and apparently by Livyani noblemen on foreign missions! Taluvaz carried more than a golden pomander in his waist-pouch, then!
There was a pause. Rustling and scraping sounds filtered down to them.
Vridekka’s familiar voice called, “Come up, priest Harsan. “Your comrades may depart unhindered. It is only you we want.”
“They are short fighters,” Mirure gasped. She was out of breath, and her breasts and flanks shone with the gleam of perspiration. She did not appear to have been injured, however. “The Yan Koryani must have killed many; otherwise they would risk an assault at once.” She wiped ichor from her hands, cleaned her blade upon her leggings, and methodically began to braid her hair. It had come undone and would have been a hindrance in further fighting.
“Say nothing, priest Harsan,” Taluvaz said. “Our foes prefer you alive* although they can still use you dead. We have a little respite, it seems. Let them wonder where you are and what you think.-All of you look about for any exit!”
“Where is Morkudz?” Harsan asked. Only now did he have time to inquire.
“Dead, I think,” Mirure said. “Or surrendered. This was never his cause.” She seemed indifferent, but Harsan felt a twinge of regret for the sly Heheganu.
Whatever Morkudz’ fate, that was the end of their light, except for Simanuya’s fire.
Indeed, the glassblower’s bonfire was spreading amongst the dry corpse-wrappings and shattered coffins. Smoke arose to choke them. Simanuya had not used all of the fuel available, but what he had would at least delay the Undead for a while; they, too, would bum.
“Here!” Tlayesha exclaimed. “Behind these caskets… An opening!”
Simanuya seized a brand, a painted coffin-board. The flames ate aw ay the glyphs of its owner’s rank and titles as he waved it. He plunge d into the doorway.-And stopped so suddenly that Harsan and Tlayesha b oth stepped hard upon his heels. “What-?”
“Hold, priest! Look there-upon the sill!”
Harsan let his eyes adjust. He saw only a scrawled, wavy mark in blue chalk upon the threshold just inside the door.
“The argot of the tomb-robber clans! This place contains a trap. The ancients had as much love for underground visitors as your Lord Taluvaz!”
Harsan backed out, then stood in the opening while Simanuya inspected the place. The man was thorough: he held his torch high to peer at the ceiling, at the walls, at the floor beyond the sill. He prodded and poked with all the care of a hunter who wakes a sleeping Zrne. At length he twisted about.
“Ohe, Livyani!” he called. “We have a nice choice. These grooves in the doorway: a falling block, a portcullis. That sill-stone: a balance, a trigger. Whoever enters steps upon the trap; he is sealed into this chamber forever, while those in the entrance are crushed, and those outside cannot break through. Do you prefer to die of smoke, to surrender to the Worm priests, or hop over the sill and bring it down behind us once we are all inside? We can then suffocate in peace-a splendid tomb for our corpses until Lord Ksarul returns to illumine the world!”
“Another exit-from within?” Mirure’s voice sounded muffled in the narrow space.
“Possible. Not likely. The ancients provided tranquility for their dead, not a game of ‘your room or mine,’ like noble ladies in a palace!”
“Well, priest Harsan?” Taluvaz asked.
“Inside. Better unlikely than no chance at all. Show us what to do, glassblower!”
Simanuya said no more but leaped clumsily across the threshold, avoiding all contact with the sill-stone. Harsan handed Tlayesha across; then he jumped, followed by Taluvaz and the N’luss girl. They gathered themselves, hesitated.
Harsan himself placed a foot upon the trigger-stone. He pressed down firmly.
For a moment nothing happened. Slowly at first, then with gathering speed, the ceiling above the doorway slid groaning and rumbling down in its grooves to crash into place. The block was perhaps two handspans thick.
There was no return; the play was made.
The light of Simanuya’s brand brought forth glittering eyes, winking moons and planets, streaks of ruddy gold and scarlet-drenched silver. No robber had looted this place, afraid of the trap, perhaps, or pressed for time.
This was the sepulchre of a great noble, one of the mighty of the First Imperium.
All was crushed and ruined, nevertheless. Images of Queen Nayari’s dread gods leaned against one another in tumbled disarray; the shards of a delicate crystal pedestal reposed beneath the weight of an embossed casket from which gems spilled forth like fruit from a basket; fragile tapestries and draperies lay crumpled and tattered in the dust, tom by the currents of air and the weight of their own gold and silver thread. Beyond, in an alcove as large as the antechamber from which they had come, the sarcophagus itself loomed upon its bier, its comers guarded by time-blackened demon figures, its fallen canopy now no more than a gossamer coverlet for the carven face of the sleeper within.
“As I am but a slave to the Lord of the Blue Room…!” Simanuya breathed. “Oh, for the chance-” He glowered, brought back to the present by the urgency of their problem.
“An exit-search!” Taluvaz commanded.
“There is air aplenty for now.” Mirure put up her sword and looked about for something to use as a light. She had lost the torch she had brought from the glassblower’s cache above. A dainty table caught her eye, and in a moment she was igniting one leg of this from Simanuya’s flame.
They found nothing. The sepulchre had been cut into solid rock.
“One last possibility, priest,” the glassblower wheezed. “I have-ah-heard of tombs in which there was a secret stair beneath the coffin itself, a way out for one who might have been drugged and entombed while he-or she-yet lived.” His expression held more cupidity, Harsan thought, than any interest in escape. The fellow might still survive, even if Vridekka’s minions managed to break through. Wealth beyond dreaming lay here; the Temple of Sarku would profit mightily; and what, really, did one wretched merchant of Purdimal mean to the Worm Prince? it was a chance. No other course seemed open to them.
The remains of the canopy were swiftly brushed away as easily as swamp-spider webs to reveal the enamelled and gilded sarcophagus lid beneath. This, too, the glassblower inspected for snares. Then he gestured Harsan to the foot of the coffin and himself took its head within the narrow end of the alcove.
