Star of Cursrah Page 13

  “Sure,” Reiver croaked. “Why not trip three and drill the whole corridor?”

  “If they weren’t corroded and stuck …” Amber said, turning to her other companion. “Did you see that, Hak? Hak! What’s wrong?”

  Facing a side tunnel, Hakiim stood stock still, his eyes raised to a stone lintel above a doorway. This main tunnel that spiraled down under the palace, they’d found, branched often and irregularly. Unlike the neat circular layout above ground that Reiver had commented on, the underground tunnels jutted at odd angles, curled back on themselves, shortcut through solid walls, were braced by lintels and stone posts, and showed gouged-out niches and closets and drain holes. The honeycombs had been used for centuries, Reiver guessed, and masons had constantly enlarged them and shaved them and tinkered with them. Intersections required arrows and pictographs. No doubt the twisting tunnels had confused ancient messengers, porters, and servants just as much as modern explorers.

  Still Amber couldn’t understand why Hakiim was fascinated by a painted image on a lintel. Thick black lines formed an all-seeing eye complete with lashes and tear ducts. She wondered what it signified. This way to the Eyeball Wing? To the fortunetellers? To the beauticians’ boutiques?

  As Amber stared, the glaring eye beckoned, until she shuffled beside Hakiim. The black-rimmed orb held her rigid attention, made her stand still and wonder what came next. The eye filled her vision and mind. Patiently Amber waited, staring back, content to remain rooted forever. The eye would talk, she hoped, and reveal a secret or grand truth, and then she’d know … what? Amber couldn’t imagine. So she waited—

  —until a grimy headscarf dropped over her face and blinded her.

  Startled, Amber snatched at the cloth, but Reiver spun her around as if playing Blind Man’s Bluff before removing the scarf.

  She snapped, “What are you doing?”

  “Rescuing you,” answered the smiling thief. “So much for gratitude.”

  “Rescuing—” Amber shook her fuddled head. “Wait, where’s Hak gone?”

  “No, you don’t,” Reiver said, and grabbed her arm before she could spin again. “Stay here and don’t turn around.”

  Eyes on the floor, Reiver skulked behind Hakiim and repeated his blindfolded rescue. Hakiim was even more fuddled, teetering on his feet, shaking his head as if drunk.

  “What—” he started, “What’s wrong with me?”

  “You’re beguiled.” Reiver crooked his fingers to form a big ring around one eye. Bug-eyed, leering, he intoned, “Stand and deliver, puny mortal! I am the All-Conquering Orb of Eye-See-You!”

  Amber whapped his arm and said, “Stop it!”

  “Eye? What eye?”

  Muzzyheaded, Hakiim made to turn, but his friends caught his sleeves and towed him away.

  “It’s a magic ward, a fixed spell of protection,” Reiver explained. “We find them all the time in Memnon. You use a potioned paint and chant a charm while painting the sigil: an eye or a hand, or a shooting star, anything. They’re one reason housebreakers work in teams.”

  Amber didn’t want details of her friend’s crime-ridden life, and the memory of that beguiling eye made her shiver despite the licking heat of her torch. She’d have stood there until doomsday waiting for nothing.

  “Thank you for the rescue, Reive,” Amber said. “Now I’ll display further ignorance with a question. How could these tunnels be used so often by common people, yet sport deadly traps like arrows in murder holes and enchanting glyphs? Surely they didn’t expect water bearers and dung carriers to jump over pressure plates in the floor or not to see beguiling runes.”

  Reiver pointed at the ceiling and said, “Think, Curly-top. What happened to the Phoenix Palace?”

  “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 ventured past this point.”

  “Because there’s treasure on the far side,” gushed Hakiim.

  “A good guess. Now what can we tread on that’s not leather?”

  “I know,” Hakiim said. He whirled and trotted back up the sloping corridor, then returned with an armload of bricks. “Stepping stones!”

  In a few minutes they’d plunked bricks on the shiny floor, crouched atop them, and bridged farther. With a thief’s instinct to leave the least trace, Reiver laid the bricks close to one wall, which also gave handholds. Still Amber and Hakiim held their breath as Reiver stepped from brick to brick to the far side.

  Balancing, the thief joked, “If I slip, you’ll have to saw my foot off at the ankle.”

  His friends didn’t laugh. Hugging the wall, the other two got across safely.

  Reiver pointed his torch at the descending darkness and said, “The last stretch.”

  “I’ll lead,” said Amber.

  Amber’s heart clanged like a leper’s bell as she peeked around a corner. Straight ahead, in a short corridor wreathed in shadows, loomed two huge figures with poised halberds.

  Reiver said over his friends’ panting, “A real guard would’ve cloven us in half by now.”

  Slowly, barely breathing, the adventurers crept to within six feet of the armed figures. Guarding the short corridor were two huge demihumans, a man and woman. Each had a huge nose topped by a bump, curled and pointed ears, kinky, thick hair, fat-fingered hands, and the the body of a rhinoceros. Each loomed almost ten feet high, and their curious halberds with lyre-shaped blades were just as tall. They wore leather armor across their thick chests and mantles over their hindquarters like war-horses. Each statue was inches thick with dust, but underneath lay bright and precise paint.

  “Rhino people?” breathed Hakiim.

  “Not even in The Tales To Be Remembered have I heard of such things,” added Amber, “and look there.”

  There were more guards, and Amber and Hakiim gasped. Eight were human, dressed in old-fashioned red tunics, holding spears and tall, triangular shields. Two more demihumans stood or rather crouched behind. Their upper torsos were human, with ruddy and rough skin, but their hands were three-fingered claws. Their torsos were segmented armor and they stood on eight spidery legs.

  “Manscorpions,” breathed Hakiim. “I thought the last of them died out ages ago.”

  “They may have been standing here for ages or more,” countered Reiver. “See what they guard?”

  Past the phalanx of guards stood solid double doors. A bisected phoenix of gold glittered in the torchlight.

  “These are marvelous statues,” Hakiim said. He poked a rhinaur and found it hard as marble.

  “They resemble the Askar of Stone who killed Wythal the Vile,” murmured Amber.

  “Before we go past,” Reiver cautioned, and lowered his torch, “first look at the floor.”

  All the tunnel floors had been plain stone or fitted stone that bridged holes. This short corridor was laid with square flagstones of polished, pink-white marble same as the palace far above, but with one difference. Here each tile bore a central hole big enough to pass a wine bottle through.

  Spooked but still game, Amber went first, creeping down the corridor careful not to touch the cold statues or step on a hole. Her hands shook as she handed Hakiim her torch and pushed at the heavy doors. They resisted, crumbs of cedar resin trickling from cracks. Amber shoved harder, and the doors popped open.

  She stopped, stunned, then said, “It’s the palace all over again.”

  Like its twin far above, the room was round, paved with pink-white marble and painted with colorful frescoes that glowed even under a
coat of dust. Seven false doorways were painted black, as were the backs of the doors they’d opened. Arches and columns ornately carved with zigzags supported a domed ceiling. Recessed was a circle inlaid with a nighttime mosaic of stars and a crescent moon, so the intruders realized the original Phoenix Palace must have boasted an open roof. The room was slightly smaller, all the floor tiles had the same fist-sized hole, and this room was occupied.

  Mostly they were guards, Amber noted, packed as tightly as sardines in a net. Soldiers ringed the room in ranks five deep, the only clear space being here by the doors. There were five hundred or more, Amber guessed, and a tenth of them rhinaurs or manscorpions, all at rigid attention with spears or halberds upright. The hall’s center sported a raised dais, and more soldiers were ranked elbow to elbow around it, facing outward, dusty and blank-eyed.

  Amber whispered, “Just soldiers?”

  “No,” the thief said. Taller than Amber, Reiver could see past the guards ringing the dais. “Someone else.”

  On mouse feet the three friends minced up to the outward facing soldiers and peeked between them. The first ranks were servants, to judge by their simple clothes and close-cropped heads. Then came files of ornate courtiers or advisors or secretaries, their gaudy colors muted by dust. Behind them clustered occult priests with shaven skulls branded with bizarre sigils. Some sixty statues formed the ring, Amber guessed.

  At the very center, directly under the fake crescent moon sky, was grouped a family.

  Hakiim blurted, “That’s the pasha!”

  “Is this it?” Amber wondered aloud. “What I heard in the summons? The city’s ‘greatest treasure’ is statues of a royal family?”

  On a low chair sat a dour man with a hawk’s nose, striped headcloth, and a headband in the shape of an upright cobra. Flanking him were four women of various ages, regal and serene, obviously queens. Ranged nearby, all facing out, were two dozen relatives from ancient crones to children. All were still, silent, layered with age and dust, mute. Silence, threatening and smothering as darkness, pressed upon the living trio as they circled the ring of soldiers to glimpse all the royal family.