Warlord

Governor.' There was a slight tremor in his hands as he drew his pistol, swinging the cylinder out and checking the load. The unnatural gleam shone off the polished brass of the cartridges. He was conscious of the uselessness of the gesture; what good would a revolver be against the powers of the unFallen? Of course, it was no more useless than anything else he might do. .

'Priests. .' Thom visibly reconsidered. 'Priests aren't notably more virtuous than you or I, Raj,' he said reasonably. His eyes stayed fixed on the unwinking glimmer, shining slightly with an expression of primal hunger. 'Of course, if you're. . uncertain. . you can wait here while I check. I wouldn't think less of you for it.'

Raj flushed. I'm too old to be pushed into something stupid by a dare, he thought angrily, even as he felt his mouth open.

'I'll use the pry bar,' he said. 'Get it out, would you?'

Thom rummaged in his rucksack, while Raj advanced to examine the door. The feeling in his stomach reminded him of waiting behind the barricade during the street fighting last fall, when the sound of the rioters had come booming around the corner, thunder of feet and massed chanting of voices: Conquer! Conquer! Just like then; he had seen the eyes of the rankers flick toward him, as they stood at parade rest. He had strolled up to the chest-high barrier of carts and furniture and paving stones as if he were walking out the front gate of his father's manor, going to inspect the dogs. Sergeant major, first company to the breastwork; prepare for volley fire, if you please. His voice hadn't been the shaky squeak he'd expected, either.

You could get through anything, once you'd decided you had to. Look at it as a job to be done, and then do it, because somebody had to and it cursed well wasn't going to happen if you waited for the next man. Not to mention that his role in putting down the riots had gotten him a Captaincy and the still more important position of Guard to the Vice-Governor.

Closer, and the light was a narrow strip along one side of the door rather than a wedge; he pressed an eye to the crack, but it was reflecting around a tongue-and-groove socket that was almost closed. The air blew from inside to him, dry and metallic and tasting of. . old bones? he thought.

'Maybe I can get it open,' he said experimentally, trying for a grip with his hands. The crack was too narrow, but his friend slapped the octagonal steel of the pry bar into his hand as he reached around behind for it. The metal was as thick as he could comfortably grip and about a meter long; one end flattened out into a wedge, and the other into a hook. The wedge slipped in easily enough, a hand's width, and he braced one foot against the jamb of the door.

'Wait a second,' Thom murmured. He pointed to a rectangular plaque beside the blank gray rectangle of the portal. 'I've seen an old manuscript that describes doors like these, Annaman's Records of the Settlement. The inscription said 'touche thi squaire, und recessed it shall by.' '

'But will it work now?' Raj said, a little sharply. A Descott squire had better things to do with his youth than pour over ancient manuscripts and parse verbs in Old Namerique, to be sure. But it was still a little irritating, when some city noble trotted out a classical quotation. At least Thom's usually have something to do with reality, he thought.

For answer, Thom pointed at the light that picked out the highlights of their faces, and then slapped his hand on the control. There was a chink sound deep inside the wall, and the door shifted slightly. So slightly that he would not have been conscious of it, except for the tremor of metal against his palms.

'Well, let me try muscle if scholarship won't budge it,' Raj continued, forcing cheerfulness into his tone. 'And hsssssssaaaa!'

There was a moment of quivering tension, and then the door began to move; in a squealing jerk for the first centimeter or so, then more rapidly. Halfway open it stuck again with a soundless authority that told him something solid had fallen across the trackway. Raj leaned head and shoulders through, squinting and blinking against a fall of dust and the dim light.

'I can see where the light's coming from,' he said.

Thom crowded up beside him, craning for a look. Beyond the door was a corridor five meters across, running right into darkness; on their left was a square of brighter light, another door. And the floor was two meters down from where they stood, the sagging remains of a metal stairway offering more hindrance than help.

'If you lay and held onto my wrists, I could drop to the bottom, Thom said.

'And how in the Outer Dark would you get back up?' Raj said dryly. 'Here, let me have your belt.'

The smaller man handed over the narrow dress belt of his jacket; it was rogosauroid hide traded down from the Skinner country north of Pierson's Sea, and strong enough to hold four times their combined weight; Raj's was much the same, except that it was broader and less elaborately tooled. He looked thoughtfully at the door, tapping the heel of his palm experimentally on the edge. It seemed to have stuck fast. On the other hand. . The pry bar was just a little shorter than the width the door had opened; he laid it in the opening and stamped on it until it seated firmly, the wedge-end driven under the bottom between runway and door.

'This'll hold the belts,' he said, buckling one to the other. 'I'd better go first.'

Raj took the leather in one hand and his pistol in the other, bracing his boots on the wall and rappelling down in three bounds. Dust spurted up under his feet and bone crunched, spurting more dust. He swore and spat, unpleasantly conscious of how long it had been since he had a drink. Then he swore again, softly, as Thom dropped down beside him and the nature of the floor he was standing on became plain.

'Bones,' he whispered. Thom unshuttered his lantern and swung the beam around, brighter than the white glow from the doorway and better for picking out detail.

'Lots of bones,' his friend agreed, sounding more subdued than usual.

Not quite enough that you could not find clear space for your feet, but nearly, and the crumbled dust between them spoke of others still older.

'And look,' Thom continued. 'What the hell's that?' That was a rust-crusted weapon; Raj picked it up, and pursed his lips in a soundless whistle.

'It's a koorg-rifle,' he said. 'The Civil Government Armory stopped issuing them two hundred years ago.'

Raj might not have been to the schools of rhetoric, but there was nothing wrong with his grasp of military history. 'Double-barreled muzzle loader with octagonal barrels.'

His friend's light picked out other items of equipment; off by the other wall there was what looked like one of the ceremonial weapons the mannequins of the Audience Hall Guard carried. Raj looked closer: it was not, it was a real laser, the ancient Holy Federation weapon. The metal men in the Hall of Audience carried non-functional replicas, but this was the real thing. The soldier's eyes narrowed as he followed the line of the muzzle; there was a deep pit to the upper right of the door, melted into the stonework, with a long dribbling icicle of lava below it. Nothing on the metal of door or frame, although the melt would have crossed it.

'Thom,' Raj said briskly. 'This has gone too far; this is seriously strange. We should fall back and report. Now.'

Reluctantly, the other man nodded. And-

CRANG. The door above their heads slammed shut so quickly that the huge musical note of the pry bar breaking was almost lost in the thunder-slam of its closing. A fragment of the steel bar cannoned across the corridor and ricocheted back, falling at Raj's feet. He bent to touch it, and stopped when his skin felt a glow from the torsion-heat of breakage. Thom was standing and examining the linked belts; the buckle that had fastened them to the bar was missing, and the tough reptile hide cut as neatly as if it had been sliced with a razor. Raj felt a giant hand seize his chest, squeezing, tasted bile at the back of his throat.

'Well,' he said, and heard it come out as a croak. 'Well, it is still active.'

Thom nodded jerkily. 'Notice something about the skeletons?' he said.

Raj looked around. 'Pretty dead.'

'Yes, and no marks on the bones. Looks like they fell in place, and nothing disturbed them.'

Raj Whitehall nodded. The surviving skeletons were eerily complete, like an anatomy model; no toothmarks, nothing disturbed by scavengers.

'I don't think there's much point in going that way,' he answered, waving to the darkness on their right. The