her, though, sir. She died when I was quite young. Childbed fever.'
'And your father?'
'He was a good Chaldarean. In Duarnenia that means he got to heaven early. I don't remember him at all. They say he came home just often enough to keep my mother pregnant.'
Delari seemed amused. He did not pursue the subject. 'The catacombs here belong to us.' He did not define 'us.'
'They're safe. Most of the time. There are wards. And watchers. Not much gets past. But you can't count on being safe.
The footing grew damper. The stone had been plastered at one time. The plaster had fallen into the muck underfoot.
The Principate said, 'We're near the Teragi, but deeper down. We could visit the Castella or Krois. Or cross over to the north side, if we wanted. But that isn't something you need to know how to do yet.'
Hecht muttered, 'This is real silent kingdom country.' He saw no evidence of life. No rats. No spiders. No vermin whatsoever.
'You're uncomfortable.'
'I don't like tight places. Tight places underground are worse.'
Delari chuckled.
Evidently he found everything humorous today.
Hecht asked, 'Where are the vermin?'
'Cruel things roam down here. They don't care what they eat. Including you and me if they could catch us.'
'That's no help.'
Delari chuckled yet again. 'You're in the underworld now, Piper. Like in the old mythology.'
'I'll keep an eye out for black rivers and blind boatmen.'
'If he was down here for real he'd get knocked in the head and robbed of the passage money.'
'You're so reassuring. Where are we going?'
'Nowhere in particular. I'm suffering from an inclination to share Collegium secrets.' Delari turned left into a cross tunnel. That led to a huge chamber. The lanterns revealed no farther walls, only ranks of ancient colonnades marching off into the darkness. It looked like an abandoned cathedral at midnight. A cathedral abandoned for ages. Debris lay everywhere. The lantern light took on a blue-white hue. Everything appeared in shades of bluish gray. Dust was thick and cobwebs ubiquitous.
And there were bones. Bones great and small, everywhere. Ugly bones, some of them. Bones that Hecht did not find familiar. Perhaps bones not human. There was little odor of decay.
Delari said, 'Flesh doesn't last long enough to putrefy down here.'
Some larger bones had been broken, presumably to expose the marrow.
'Another silent kingdom.'
'Not always. Though it is now. Bats sometimes establish colonies that don't last. Sometimes pagans celebrate demonic rituals. Which is an ironic twist. This is where the earliest Chaldareans got together to worship and to hide their dead. Now the demon worshipers use the far end, over there. And break into the crypts to get bodies to use in their wicked rites.'
'Really? How do they do that?'
'Excuse me?'
'What do they do with the bodies? There was a story I heard when I was little. Overheard, actually, and only part of it, because I was supposed to be asleep. The storyteller claimed it came out of the Grand Marshes and every word was true. It was colorful. But he only got to the part where the three brothers who were the heroes were coming home with the mummies of some old-time sorcerers when I started sneezing. I got whipped and sent to bed and never did find out why they wanted the mummies in the first place.'
Delari's frown was obvious, despite the lighting. 'This was a story?'
'Up north we have traveling storytellers. Like jongleurs down here. Only they don't usually sing. And they don't tell love stories. They're really grim hero stories, mostly. They always claim the stories are true, but mostly you know better. This storyteller-I can't remember his name-was famous for scary stories. This one about stealing mummies sounded real.'
'Mummified sorcerers, you say?'
'Yes, sir.' Had he said too much?
'Interesting. Tell me more.'
'Sir?'
'Who were the heroes? Where did they go for their mummies? Who were the dead men?'
'I was five years old, sir. Pybus. That was the name of the brother who was in charge. I remember that. It was all his idea. And there was a… Flogni? Something like that. He was the one who said they shouldn't disturb the dead. But he went along because brothers have to stick together. The place they were looking for was in the mountains way off to the east. It was a secret tomb. I don't know how they knew where to find it. One of the old- time horse people conquerors was buried there. One of the ones that those people still worship. The sorcerers in the story were murdered and buried at the points of the winds so their spirits would protect the tomb. They'd be in such a rage about what happened to them, they'd destroy anybody who got close enough to notice. The one buried in the south was a woman who was also the conqueror's lover. She laid some kind of curse on his tribe when she found out what they were going to do to her.'
'Good story. I wouldn't mind hearing the original.' Principate Delari never stopped moving, staying close to the wall, going round to their right. Hecht suspected they were making a long, slow circle, the Principate operating with no specific destination. Delari said, 'I've heard a story something like it, only this one happened in Lucidia.'
'Sir?'
'There's a hidden fortress in the Idium desert in Lucidia called Andesqueluz. Carved out of the living rock of a mountain. A long time ago an ugly, murderous cult operated out of there. They were exterminated by the rest of the world. Which always happens when that kind of people gets too ambitious. A few years back the great mage of Dreanger, er-Rashal al-Dhulquarnen, sent a band of Sha-lug warriors to Andesqueluz to steal the mummies of the slain sorcerers.'
'Er-Rashal al-Dhulquarnen?' He mispronounced it. 'Wasn't that the one…?'
'He was at al-Khazen. Yes. We distracted him while you and the Emperor eliminated his associates. We couldn't keep him from getting away. I expect he's back home and up to some other mischief.'
'So what would he want with dead bodies? Well, you said mummies. That's not quite the same thing.'
'Specifically, mummified sorcerers who were of the first water when they were alive. Some of the worst ever. More than one lord of Andesqueluz ascended before death dragged the rest down.'
'Uh… Ascended?' Hecht knew next to nothing about sorcery. He would have been damned if he did.
'They worked sorceries powerful enough to make themselves over into Instrumentalities of the Night. Demons, if you will. The djinn of the east were all human once. The cruel immortality was once much less difficult to achieve, and the more so near the Wells of Ihrian. One would suspect that the Dreangerean has a scheme to transform himself.' Delari took careful steps sideways. Hecht followed, round a skeleton wrapped in scraps of rotted linen. The skull had wisps of hair attached. The empty eye sockets seemed to track him.
There were dozens of skeletons, then. Someone had ripped open countless crypts. 'No jewelry,' Hecht noted. Grave robbers.'
'No. These are the earnest Brothen Chaldareans. They didn't believe in jewelry. They took nothing to the grave but what they brought into the world when they were born.'
'Times have changed.'
'Human nature will prevail.'
'If this sorcerer can turn himself into a god… Well, what's he likely to do if he does?'
'The conventional wisdom says ascendants lose interest in their old lives. They get busy doing the same old things inside the Night, going after more and more power. But that's really just speculation. Nobody really knows. They don't come back to chat about what it's like on the other side. And there hasn't been a lot of it happening in recent centuries. Stop!'
