'The whole upper works were demolished.'
'Right. Someone-or many someones-tore the walls down and threw them into the moat. Obviously the palace wasn't needed any more. They piled that stone hut out of pieces of rubble and enchanted the moonstone as another magical trap. These tunnels under the palace weren't needed either, so they were trapped too.'
'What do the traps protect?' Amber asked, though she thought she knew the answer. There was a mysterious 'great treasure' that she'd glimpsed in her mind.
'A better question is, why destroy the palace?' asked Hakiim. 'The city's pasha has to live somewhere.'
Reiver shrugged and offered, 'Maybe they destroyed the pasha too.'
'Cheery thought,' grumped Hakiim. He looked over his shoulder as if expecting ghosts.
Careful of their footing and trying to look everywhere without being mesmerized again, which they realized made no sense, the friends trudged onward. The main corridor always ran round and sloped down. Amber insisted they stick to it. They found dust and side passages, and once a fistful of loot: coins of gold and electrum, and two milky jewels that Reiver identified as malachite, a semiprecious stone beloved by dwarves.
They divided the goods as evenly as possible, but Hakiim groused, 'Not much treasure for such a huge palace.'
Reiver snorted. 'You wouldn't find coins and gems lying in the corridors of the Sultan's Palace in Memnon, either,' he said. 'People lock treasure away. These are just dribbets someone spilled hurrying somewhere… maybe running for his life.'
Reiver glanced around the tunnel walls, dipped his failing torch to brighten it, failed, so tipped another resin- needle ball into the iron tongs.
As the light increased, he said, 'Probably there's loot hidden behind these false walls, but there are so many-'
'What false walls?' his two friends asked in unison.
Stepping to a seemingly solid wall, Reiver blew at dust and scritched his dirty fingernails in an invisible crack.
'Do you see?'
'No,' answered both.
With the sigh of a professional suffering amateurs, Reiver handed his torch to Amber and untied the grimy black sash from around his skinny waist.
Squinting, he mimicked an aged lecturer's warbly voice, saying, 'Question: why do thieves, who are poor, always wear expensive silk sashes? Anyone? Didn't you dunderheads attend yesterday's lecture? The answer is: a silk sash is a tool of the trade. Remember that everything a thief carries has two or three uses.'
Snapping the sash flat, Reiver laid it against the blank wall and in a normal voice said, 'Feel.'
Tentatively, Amber put her fingers against the scarf, traced a small circle, and said, 'Blocks.'
'Let me,' Hakiim said. Sure enough, Hakiim felt the outline of square bricks under his own fingertips.
' 'What the eye misses, the heart perceives,' ' quoted Reiver, 'or a thief's fingers find, since gold is near to our hearts. The silk is thin enough to let your fingers feel the creases, and smooth enough to slide over stone. The trick finds dents and cracks in precious metals too, like a punch bowl or a bracelet, to see if it's been repaired, or to find patched paint on a carved chest-'
'What are we waiting for?' Hakiim cut in. 'Let's open the wall and see what's inside.'
Reiver and Amber just looked at him while Hakiim thought.
'Oh,' he said finally. 'No tools.'
'It might contain nothing,' added Reiver. 'We've passed a dozen bricked-up doors. I don't bang my head against walls unless I know there's a reward on the other side.'
'How can we find out?' asked the rug merchant's son. The thief just shrugged, so they moved on… and on, steadily spiraling downward. There were fewer rusted traps, but two beguiling eyes. Once they heard vague whispers like voices, but they couldn't locate the source nor discern the words, so they moved on again. Black, gaping doorways revealed rooms one or two deep that stank of chemicals and rot. Ancient jars and pots, crusted and dry, and rusted butchers' tools and dusty bandages marked the lair of alchemists or apothecaries. The furniture consisted mostly of crooked shelves, marble slabs, and soapstone sinks. A few doors were partly bricked up, some ancient mason having quit before finishing.
Reiver pointed a torch at a corner and said, 'I wonder who they were.'
Amber peeked under a table where lay two forgotten skeletons, the bones scrambled by scavengers. 'We'll never know,' she said, 'poor things.' Amber shivered, for the dank air was chill. The searchers passed on.
The walls grew solid, with no more intersecting tunnels. Reiver assumed they were in the true cellars of the palace, below the common traffic.
Amber called a brief halt, and they ate dried dates, scorchmeat, and pine nuts, which made them thirsty. They sipped sparingly of water, since they didn't know if this dead city birthed any living springs. Their stomachs fluttered as they pressed on, for all sensed they neared their goal.
They drew up short when Reiver suddenly blocked the way with a scrawny arm. Amber and Hakiim crowded, but leery of traps, didn't push past. The passageway bulged at an intersection where a ramp and wide stairway both ascended. The floor common to all three was black. Unlike other stretches of tunnel the floor here glistened as if wet and lay free of dust.
'It can't be wet, can it?' asked Amber.
'Looks like rock oil,' said Hakiim.
'What's rock oil?' asked the other two.
'Black goop you find in the desert in pools or floating on a dead marsh. It's black and burns. It stinks too. Sheep and goats sometimes blunder into it and sink.'
'Maybe that's what killed these vermin,' Reiver said, crouching.
Torchlight revealed bunches of bones like matchwood. Rats and snakes had stopped just inside the shiny patch. In one case, a rat skeleton lay a cubit into the black area. Close behind lay the curved form of a rat snake.
'It must be poison,' Amber whispered. 'You see dead goats and even vulture skeletons at pools of bad water. This looks the same, but there's no water. Maybe it's dried up, but then it'd be dusty.'
'If it's like the other traps it's corroded, or its power has faded.' Hakiim scratched his ear and ventured, 'So we can walk across?''
'Odd poison,' Reiver said, shaking his head. 'That rat was running for its life, and the snake slithered hard behind. They went fast, so crossed farther into whatever this gunk is. These other rats and things got caught at the edge, so they were walking. It'd be quick acting poison to soak through their feet and stop them cold.'
Frowning, Reiver fished in a pouch and drew out a string of rawhide. He touched the line to the black gleam and it stuck fast.
'Teeth of the First Trader,' chirped Amber. 'These poor rats just stuck there till they starved to death?' 'You die of thirst first,' Reiver told her. He jerked the rawhide hard until it snapped. The trapped length stayed stuck. The three scratched their heads.
'It's, uh, magic glue?' asked Hakiim. 'Or just the gummiest glue ever made,' admitted Reiver.
'Can we circle around?' asked Amber. 'We must reach the lowest level.'
The young men looked at their friend. 'How strong is this compulsion?' Reiver asked casually. 'If Hak and I trussed you up and toted you to the surface, would you struggle? Fight us? Go raving mad?'
Hakiim hissed, and Amber made the fig sign to ward off evil. The notion of not venturing deeper sent panic sizzling through her. Shivering, she tried to sound calm.
'We've done all right so far,' she said. 'We can reach the bottom… and the treasure.'
Hakiim sighed but thought too of things he could buy with gold. Reiver just shrugged.
'You have to die of something.' The thief returned to their current dilemma, adding, 'Many people in the paintings went barefoot, right?' Reiver wiggled his own dirty, bare toes. 'Leather sticks, so sandals and skin would stick. Let's try something else.'
Producing the lead fishing weight, Reiver attached it to his garrote chain. Careful not to fall forward, he flipped the weight onto the shiny blackness, then dragged it back.
'Lead doesn't stick!' said Hakiim.
'Nor would steel hobnails, such as soldiers wear.' Reiver rubbed his chin. 'Maybe only palace guards
