Tlayesha was beside Harsan. There was no time to explain. He made himself thrust her aside and scrambled to seize the other half of the globe before Taluvaz or his N’luss woman could retrieve it.
Neither paid him any attention. Taluvaz knelt beside the warrior girl, eyes wide and stricken, his black and red tattooes vivid against the pallor of his cheeks.
“It is only a little cut, my Lord,” Mirure said in her soft, foreign voice. A line of red showed against the smooth curve of her breast where neck and shoulder joined.
The Livyani reached for Simanuya’s dagger. Its tip was gone. He sniffed, and his head snapped back from the acrid odour of what the weapon had contained.
“Physician-?”
“I have nothing with me,” Tlayesha moaned.
“What is the poison? How long-?”
“ Ajura, I think. A swamp-fruit, common in Purdimal…”
“What does it do?”
“I–I am not certain, Lord. It immobilises, numbs, almost at once. I do not know if it-kills-or how soon. I am not even certain that it does kill. Many merchants use it to ward off footpads…”
“At least it is not instant.” Taluvaz clenched his fists, beat them upon the stone floor. “We-we must surrender-call for terms.-No, we cannot!” He clutched at his greying hair in anguish. “If only-”
Tlayesha supported Mirure, let her lean against her shoulder. The N’luss girl seemed dazed, confused. Beads of perspiration showed upon her upper lip and her forehead. She tried to smile but slumped dizzily instead.
Harsan came to stand before them. He said, “It is quite all right, Lord Taluvaz. There is no exit through the sarcophagus. I am willing now to surrender. The game is done, and you may summon Lord Vridekka and his minions. But be assured that I shall bargain them a good bargain for your woman’s life.”
They goggled at him uncomprehendingly. Harsan held the globe, both halves joined into a perfect sphere, in both hands. His face appeared as though lit from within, but by what strange emotion perhaps only Lord Taluvaz Arrio could guess.
“Come, call to those outside. Let them break down the portcullis. Your Mirure must live-and I shall take Lord Sarku’s servants to the Man of Gold.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
It took longer than expected. Mirure was only semi-conscious when the slow, skeletal Mrur battered down the portcullis and hauled the last fragments out of the doorway to admit Jayargo and a handful of copper-helmeted temple guards. Taluvaz Arrio refused to let them touch Mirure, and he and Harsan together carried the stricken girl out through the smoke-smelling anteroom to one of the shafts where ropes and a leather swing-seat dangled. Soon they stood once again in the upper cavern of the domes. More of the Undead and another half dozen guardsmen milled about here, together with two Qol and a miscellany of smaller creatures of the Underworlds that Harsan could not identify.
There were others, too: five warriors, their leather tunics innocent of any clan colours or insignia, squatted on their haunches apart from Vridekka’s followers. They were visibly uneasy though just as unmistakably allied-or neutral-to Lord Sarku’s contingent. With this latter party was the man Tlayesha had known as a tanner and whom Harsan had once named a Mihalli. He sat, unconcerned and aloof, upon a fallen stela next to his assistant, the same vulpine-faced little rogue who had slain the young nobleman upon the Sakbe road platform. Tlayesha touched Harsan’s arm and pointed.
He was looking at other things. The flaring light of torches and bronze lanterns silhouetted a party of Mrur and their Jajgi overseer. The creatures were collecting bodies, obviously dead; these they passed to others of their kind within one of the domes. What better hiding place than the bottom of a tomb-shaft? Armour glinted beneath a bloodied cloak: a military cuirass, Harsan realised with astonishment. The mantle, too, had a soldierly look about it, and it was scarlet with more than blood: the colour of Lord Karakan and Prince Eselne’s legions! These, then, were the opponents Vridekka’s monsters had defeated while Harsan and his comrades hid in the tomb chambers below! From the look of it, the Yan Koryani had been the allies of the Worm Prince’s servitors, too, and for the moment at least, they were clearly working together. He noted that Taluvaz Arrio also had not missed this connection.
Vridekka came bustling up. He took the Globe of Instruction from Harsan but tossed it aside when he saw that it was blank and empty. The golden hand he ignored: a religious relic from an age much later than that of the Man of Gold itself.
“Well, priest Harsan?” he said. “Good Jayargo here treats your warrior girl, whilst we make a quick tour of the further depths, eh?”
“First the treatment, then the trip.”
The older man motioned indifferently to Jayargo, who went to kneel beside Mirure. “Agreed, priest.”
He looked beyond the girl to Taluvaz Arrio. “We must pay our respects to this noble visitor as well. What possesses a high envoy of a foreign land to overstep his welcome and explore our labyrinths at such an hour of the night?”
Taluvaz gave him a small smile but said nothing.
Vridekka eyed him narrowly. “Surely not a love of archaeology? Not a desire to make sacrifice at the tomb of some noble ancestor? Not the lure of funereal treasures-which you seem to have found aplenty.” He glanced down at Mirure’sface, empty and childishly innocent now as though she lay asleep. Jayargo touched her throat, applied an ointment, ran his long fingers over her temples, and cast a minor spell of healing magic.
The N’luss girl stirred and opened her eyes.
All of the Temples used healing sorcery, and in spite of its theological preoccupation with death, the Temple of Sarku was no exception. Such spells, Harsan knew, worked by drawing power from the Planes Beyond to cleanse the body of poisons and inimical substances, speed tissue and bone regrowth according to some mysterious blueprint inherent within the physique of the patient himself, and rebuild lost strength and energy. Whoever had devised this magic, long ago during the Latter Times or before, had possessed greater skill than all of the modem physicians and sorcerers of the Five Empires put together.
Vridekka spoke again. “Your comrades are also unsuited to such a venture: a fugitive priest of Thumis for whom there is an Imperial warrant, a slaver’s physician doxy, a sometime glass merchant and tomb-robber, now deceased, and one poor N’luss warrior-girl as bodyguard! Really, my Lord, it appears that you were drawn into this affair by accident, as unready for your adventures as one of Lady Dilinala’s virgins for a harem! — At least I think it politic for us to say so. When we are done here, you will be escorted back to the mansion of the Livyani Legate in Purdimal-and you should consider making an extra sacrifice to your Shadow Gods that you are out of it so easily.”
Taluvaz still made no reply.
There had been no mention of Morkudz. Harsan bit his lip to keep from blurting out the question. Nor had Itk t’Sa been named, but their pursuers must surely know that she had been with them and that she was dead. Yes, dead. He still could hardly think the word.
“-Ah? Ah. So. There will be time later for more of this one-sided discussion.-Yes?” Vridekka broke off to engage in a whispered and apparently acrimonious conference with the Yan Koryani tanner.
“No, there will be no handing over of any of our guests!” he said with finality. “They remain together-and will be so taken above. All but this priest here, with whom we have our business.” “And to that I say no!” Harsan interrupted. “Where you take me, you take them. Else you may well slay them once they are apart from me!”
“Crude fancies do you no credit!” The Mind-seer sounded sincerely offended.
“It will be as I desire. You know that my secret is sealed to you, and you cannot come to it, save with great difficulty and waste of time.”
“Let me-” the tanner began.
“-And keep this scarlet-eyed shape-changer far from me- from all of us! Else I shall use my powers to put my own head ‘around the comer’ and destroy my value forever! Nothing can be elicited from a corpse whose skull is lost in the raw energies that flow in the Planes Beyond!”
He had no idea whether this was so, or even whether he could accomplish this feat if he chose. He only
