Harsan awoke to an urgent sense of wrongness.
Interminable hours had passed. His logic-schooled mind had finally mastered his own fear of the in-pressing walls, the blackness, the silence, and the numbing terror of being buried alive. Someow he had also soothed Eyil. It was as Vridekka had said: what saved their sanity was the knowledge that this imprisonment would last no more than a few days at most. That-and being together-helped to bolster up their mutual courage. Alone, he might have given in to madness, clawed and scratched at the stone walls, and died howling in this smothering coffin.
He and Eyil gave one another strength. They made what adjustments they could against the narrowness and their cramped limbs, recovered from their hurts, slept, and rested. Three times- once a day, judging from the sharp remonstrances of Harsan’s stomach-a mixture of Dna-pomdge and water was poured through the hole at the top of the shaft. They caught as much of this as they could with their bare hands and licked more from the slimy stones as it trickled down past their bodies and out through the grating at their feet.
The grating?
That w^s what was wrong! His exploring toes encountered only empty space there. The grating was gone. That was what had awakened him!
Amazement, fear-a dozen thoughts-fled through Harsan’s mind.
“Harsan-! Something-my ankle!” Eyil gasped.
Even as she spoke her body slipped down against his, her face pressed against his chest. He fumbled for her but only barked his knuckles against the low ceiling. Eyil kicked out and screamed, and Harsan shouted as well. If these were the Prince’s soldiers come to get them, why did they not take them out of the upper door? Why did they not at least reply?
Something pulled Eyil inexorably downward. Visions of the nightmare denizens of Lord Sarku’s catacombs rose before his eyes. He got an arm around her shoulders but could not gain a solid purchase. No one answered their cries.
Eyil slipped down even farther, her nails raking the flesh of his hips.
“Oh-! Help me, Harsan!”
Her body threshed and bucked, and he could hear her nails rasping at the slime-slick walls. Her tangled hair whipped and coiled at his thighs as she flung her head to and fro. Harsan groped for her wrists, touched her head and shoulders but could not hold her. Now Eyil’s nails drew blood from his calves. Then her hands were pulled away entirely, and her screams dwindled into the blind darkness below.
Then they stopped.
Hard, clawlike fingers seized his own ankle. Harsan bellowed, humped up against the ceiling to keep from sliding, elbows and knees splayed out against the walls. Nothing availed. Slowly he slithered down along the mucky floor of their cell. Spikes of pain drove into his fingers, and he knew that his own nails were broken and bloody. The taste of fear gagged in his throat, and he threw back his head to yell again.
A voice from below hissed, “If you would only quit howling, priest, I could tell you that we are friends. Can you not hear me?”
Amazement choked him. Before he could collect his wits, the hands upon his ankles dragged him tumbling down through the opening at the foot of the cell to sprawl in slimy, stinking water.
More hands gripped him, pulled him to his feet. Bodies bumped against his. Someone swore fervently in the rude language of the gutters.
“Cha! How these two smell!”
“As you will for a month, after we’re all free of this!” another, higher voice answered. “No lights yet, not till we’re out of these sewers.”
“Eyil?” Harsan rasped. He heard ragged weeping near him and reached out. Her body came trembling into his arms, and relief swept over him.
“She’s all right, priest; just frightened,” a third, hoarse voice said. “If you’d heard us calling when we opened the grate, you’d have known we were no corpses from the pits!”
“We must have been asleep-”
“No matter now. Come, watch your head. This place is just high enough to stand. It’s used to carry off the sewage and remove the dead from the Chalices. Say no more as we pass below the other cells, or we’ll have all the other customers belling in chorus as well.”
Someone said something reassuring to Eyil, a smaller, lighter man by his tone. Guiding hands pulled Harsan around and led him splashing and stumbling along the narrow tunnel. Life returned to his legs in a numbing tingle.
Metal clanked against stone as somebody replaced the grating at the foot of their cell.
They proceeded a hundred paces or so along a black passageway. Then his unseen pilot helped him find the entrance to a winding stair that spiralled up to emerge into a larger tunnel.
“A light, let’s have a light,” a voice complained.
They halted, and a luminous blue sphere appeared from a pouch or sack. In its nacreous azure glow Harsan had his first look at their liberators.
There were three men. One wore the leather harness and brown livery of the Legion of Ketl, a grizzled older man, as thick as a Chlen — beast through the shoulders. The second was smaller, with a lined, bitter, big-nosed face. He was attired only in a frayed breechclout like that of a labourer or dockworker. The third man was young and whip-thin, with the indefinable air of a marketplace dandy about him. He had a sword slung in a leather baldric at his waist and a pleated kilt that might have started the day clean.
Yet it was not upon these that Harsan’s gaze lingered but upon the fourth member of the party, he who held the blue-glowing sphere.
It was a Pe Choi-a male, all gleaming black chitin!
“Chtik p’Qwe-” Harsan cried. But it was not his friend. Eyes that glinted with their own inner scarlet fires looked back at him in puzzlement. “No-you are not he. I–I took you for another…”
“Through here-to the river gate,” the soldier said gruffly.
“As riddled with tunnels as a tree full of O. w-beetles!” the small man growled. He must be from somewhere in the north; the beetle he named did not favour these hot southern climes.
“Come,” the soldier replied, “we must be out of here before I am missed. The watch changes at dawn, and some poke-nosed guard may wander in here to piss before breakfast.”
“You are of the temple of Thumis?” Eyil addressed the younger man, he with the sword.
He looked her raffishly up and down, let his gaze linger upon her nudity. “Not so, my Lady. Let us say only that we dance to the same measure in this endeavour.”
Harsan drew abreast of the Pe Choi. “Do you know one Chtik p’Qwe,” he asked, “a Scholar Priest in the temple of Ketengku? I seek news of him. ’ ’
The other shrugged, his small upper limbs pressed tight against his gleaming black thorax. “I have only heard his name.” The accent was oddly foreign and bore an uncharacteristic lilt. This Pe Choi was not from Do Chaka then-perhaps some place beyond the Mu’ugalavyani frontier to the west?
Harsan tried again. “We would know who you are. And whom you serve.”
“My identity is of no import. What matters is that you and the girl be delivered safely to Purdimal-to friends there.” The creature put out one of his middle pair of limbs to steady himself. “You must leave the city tonight.”
Something pricked at Harsan’s mind, but he could not think what it was. Could this be some charade of Prince Dhich’une’s, meant to coax him into easy collaboration? He had to know. He spoke again, this time in the Pe Choi tongue:
“Some currents lead not to the shore but out into the whirlpool. Tell me at least the name of him who sent you.”
The Pe Choi did not reply but only opened its long, lipless mouth in an imitation of a human smile.
The young swordsman came forward and hissed, “No more talk! Time for that later.”
The tunnel ended at a corroded metal door. This stood ajar, and Harsan smelled the cold, yet gloriously free, odour of the river. Beyond, a flight of steps led down to a ledge. A boat was made fast there to a green-crusted bronze ring, rocking and chuckling gently upon black water. The burly guard went down first, followed by the Pe Choi, then Harsan and Eyil. The hard-faced little man and the swordsman brought up the rear.
“Hand down the girl first,” the soldier called up. “Better for balance. Past this cavern is the river gate; then we’re out. The watchman there is my man.”
Eyil pressed close to him upon the stair. “Know you these people?” she whispered. “They are none of ours.”
There was time only to shake his head. The Pe Choi stood aside to let her by, then shifted the blue sphere from one of his central pair of hands to the other in order to help Harsan.
There was something strange about this gesture. Harsan stopped, and the bitter-faced man behind bumped into him.
“Why,” Harsan asked in the Pe Choi tongue, “do you never use your uppermost limbs? Do you suffer a paralysis? Never was it the custom of your people to assist a friend only with your Fge-hands-your middle limbs!”
The creature hesitated, then turned away muttering something.
“Your nest contains despicable chewers of K’nekw- bark,” Harsan added conversationally in the same language. He switched to Tsolyani: “Do you not agree?”
“He knows, master!” the man behind him cried. And flung himself down upon Harsan striving to pinion his arms.
The attack was not unexpected. Harsan stooped and let the fellow lunge right over his back to tumble into the Pe Choi. The blue orb spun free and bounced out onto the ledge. The creature scrambled after it shouting words in a harsh, breathy tongue Harsan did not recognise. A slithering noise on the stair behind warned him that the swordsman had drawn his weapon. He yelled and heard Eyil’s answering cry in return. A string of oaths, a splash, and a barking scream told him that she must have got in a surprise blow against the prison guard.
He had no clear idea what to do; only a determination not to be taken alive for more of Prince Dhich’une’s subtle games! The sword whickered past him. Its owner was more practiced at slashing than at thrusting, and the blade scraped sparks from the rough stones of the wall. Harsan plunged back up the stairs to grapple with the man, but his prison-weakened legs betrayed him. He succeeded only in blocking the sword and gaining a handful of his opponent’s kilt. Fabric tore. He heard a crunch and a grunt of pain: the fellow had aimed a blow lefthanded at Harsan’s head, missed, and likely cracked his knuckles upon the wall! Harsan made a stiff wedge of his fingers, jabbed hard somewhere below his fistful of kilt, and was rewarded with a satisfactory whoof of expelled breath. The sword clattered down the steps past him. Did he dare let go of the man to pick it up? He thought not. Another successful push and he might break past this fellow into the larger tunnel above-but where after that he did not know.
Hands clawed at his naked back, wrapped around his waist. The ugly little man had untangled himself from the Pe Choi. Harsan let go of the swordsman, kicked out, twisted around, splayed fingers stabbing for his foe’s eyes. The man ducked his head, and Harsan’s hand thudded against his forehead-apparently hard enough to unbalance him, for he pitched backward down the stairs.
Brilliant blue light burst in upon his senses. Eyil’s voice cut off in mid-cry.
In the eldritch afterglow Harsan saw another thing: no Pe Choi now stood below upon the ledge but rather some creature out of an ancient bestiary, furred all over, a snarling animal muzzle rimmed with up-curving fangs, pointed ears like those of a Renyu, two arms that were over-long, jointed in places where no human-or Pe Choi-had joints. It was nude save for a harness of belts and straps and pouches; he could see six black breast nipples on its sleek belly but no visible sex organs.
Then the edges of the beast’s image sparkled, faded, and solidified into other features: a stout, fussy, middle-aged man in a pleated saffron kilt: Lord Arkhane hiPurushqe!
So this was how these people had gained access to the Pits: a creature who could take on the semblance of any he-she-it- willed! At some point this strange shape-shifter must have impersonated the prison governor to get in here!
Then Lord Arkhane blurred, too, and Harsan looked upon the Pe Choi once more.
The blue orb lifted toward him.
He never saw the second flare of azure light. He floated in a sea of warm honey, sweet and somnolent, serene as a ship upon a summer lake. He still saw and heard, but he could not move. He felt nothing of his own body, nor did he seem to care.
The figure before him swam at the bottom of a grotto of sapphire. It wavered, and Lord Arkhane’s face hung superimposed upon a Pe Choi torso. The lilting voice said, “I have taken care of the girl, Zhu’on. Do you go down and fish clumsy Quro out of the water.”
The big-nosed man arose, rubbing his bruises. He staggered down the stairs, and his voice floated up from below. “I see him not, master. Only foam and a bubbling…”
“The fool has drowned then. Or else the tales of the pits beneath this dungeon are true. Return and aid me with the priest!” The beast-muzzle approached Harsan. Glinting red eyes looked up past him. “Etqole, do you live?”
The younger man limped down the stairs to pick up his sword. His left hand was bloody and had begun to swell.
“Help Zhu’on bear the priest down to the boat.”
“I cannot,” the man gritted. “He has broken my hand.” He swung his sword-hilt suddenly in a vicious blow at Harsan’s naked groin. The shape-changer reached out and knocked the weapon aside.
“No foolish revenge! He is not to be maimed. We deliver him to Purdimal-or slay him if we must.”
“I’ll have him then, when you’re all done with him. And his naked wench there as well to pay me for my pains. Once she is bathed, of course!” He sniffed in disgust.
The man named Zhu’on reappeared, and he and the shape-changer wrestled Harsan’s rigid body down into the skiff and flung him upon the damp decking beside Eyil. Harsan felt only a profound tranquility. Face down, he could see nothing, but his hearing was as sharp as that of any Zrne-beast.
“Can these be transported to Purdimal in this condition, master?” Zhu’on asked.
“No. They will die as their bodily processes slow and grow cold. We can get them out of Bey Sii thus, but thereafter we must use other means.”
“Alas that he discovered our masquerade before we had him safe at Purdimal,” the little man growled. He sniggered. “Never will he believe that we’re his precious grey-robes now!”
“I should not have taken on the seeming of a Pe Choi. -Etqole, it was you who counselled that this would reassure the priest.”
“Who was to know that he spoke the stinking insects’ language?” the other replied peevishly. “Only so much could be learned in such a short time!”
“We still take the girl?” Zhu’on interrupted.
“It is so. Prince Dhich’une showed wisdom in this-but in little else, I think. His slaughter of our good Hele’a, his eagerness to abandon his allies… This is only the first page of the accounting; there will be more later when our master has the whole tale.”
There was silence for a time, save for Zhu’on’s wheezing as he rowed. The plash of oars echoed back from the roof of the cavern.
“Master,” the little man said at length, “if your orb can keep these two cosy for a time until they’re out of Bey Sii, our network can supply the rest: a cubbyhole in a merchant’s cart, a leisurely route along the back paths away from the Sakbe roads, mayhap a party of harlots to take the girl-”
“Cha!” the swordsman called Etqole put in sarcastically. “Both the Prince of Worms and the grey-robes will have watchers out. And likely the girl’s people as well. You’ll be Xwm'-birds chirping in the net before a six-day is done!”
“No. We need fear only Prince Dhich’une,” the shape-changer murmured. “None other has reason to seek these two along the way to Purdimal-unless they, too, have spies within the Legion of Ketl.”
“Then?”
“The best hiding place is in plain view. My orb has other uses than those you saw. Once we Mihalli were a mighty race, as skilled as your human ancestors before the Time of Darkness- and more. A touch within the priest’s brain, and he shambles along as a poor victim of the shaking sickness, unable to speak, to write, or even to feed himself. When we are amongst friends in Purdimal he can be restored and made to do our bidding.” “The same for the girl?”
The shape-changer seemed to consider. “An addict to Zu’ur. Not in reality for she will also be needed. But my orb will give her the semblance of one: a pallid, frozen cataleptic. All within your human realms know that such a one can be roused to further frenzies of sexual ecstasy by another grain or two of the drug. There are those who buy such hapless slaves.”
“And the sending of them, master?”
“Openly. With Chnesuru the Salarvyani. Soon he takes a cargo of slaves to Khirgar, and he can carry these two as far as Purdimal. We know him: he loves gold more than any god.”
“A slaver’s caravan!” Etqole’s voice was full of scorn. “The first place I’d look, were I Prince Dhich’une!”
“The priest shall be disguised. His head is shaved, his face painted blue with Livyani tattooes. The shaking sickness hides his walk and his posture. None will heed him amidst a herd of field slaves. The girl, too, will be altered; she’ll travel in a sealed litter, the purchase of some lordling known for his curious tastes. Zhu’on, can you name such a one?”
“There is a certain Lord Keleno, master, a High Priest of Ksarul lately posted to Mrelu. Men say that he favours eccentric delights: the waxen pallor of a Zu’ur addict would send him into spasms of lust. No ordinary watcher would question a slaver bringing such a present to him.”
“This is madness,” the swordsman snarled. “We do not deal with ordinary watchers! Great master-lord-we humans may be innocents in your ancient and all-knowing eyes, but-!” He broke off and began again in a more conciliatory tone. “We shall certainly be caught out, Lord! The Tsolyani are not fools. Even if the grey-robes think that the priest is being sent to Ch’ochi, there are only two routes west: the direct one across to Tumissa, and the northern road through Purdimal, Khirgar, and Chene Ho. They’ll be sitting on both, as a bird squats on her eggs! We must plan, master, devise a means, make arrangements…”
“And find the Worm Prince’s huntsmen sniffing upon every path? We dare not give him time to organise a pursuit.” The creature added slyly, “There is, of course, a third way to Purdimal: the tunnel-cars built by your ancestors before the Time of Darkness. We could be in Purdimal-or even in Ke’er-in a trice. I know where they lie in the Underworlds beneath the city for I travelled hither by that means. Those who guided me would demand further payment, of course, which I cannot now provide. The labyrinths are risky-and the favoured province of the Worm Lord. Would you dare that route, Etqole?”
“You do not hoodwink a child, Mihalli-master! I have heard tales of those places-and of what guards them! You paid me money for my services, and you shall see me earn it. But I’ll not offer my tasty flesh to the Dlaqo-beeties or to any others of the horrors of the pits! Still, your slave caravan is no better-nay, worse! Try it, and the last journey we take is the ‘high ride’ on the impafer’s stake!”
“Ah, brave Etqole! No one asks you to go. Indeed, Zhu’on and I can travel in a separate party-charcoal merchants, tanners of Chlen-h\de, coppersmiths-and thus keep an eye clapped to old Chnesuru.”
“Shall I then be cheated of the bigger share of my pay?” the swordsman cried, “and of my revenge upon the priest-and a little time with the girl? You would cast me aside so soon?”
The creature made an odd, non-human growling sound. “Then join us. Or shut your shop and go your way!”
For a time there was only the soft wash of the oars. Finally the swordsman grumbled: “Cha, I’ll not be left behind! Yet let us risk no more than is needful. We make no visible connection with the slaver but remain apart-as you say. I shall travel as a noble, with sufficient coin for good food, wine-”
“Ohe, and a golden palanquin, and a cortege of little girls to sin g as you journey, and a pisspot all set with emeralds, and-” “Shut up,
Zhu’on. Else you’ll wear a second gullet!”
“Be silent, both of you! We approach the river gate. Tell me, Zhu’on, when does Chnesuru depart?”
“Tomorrow is the twelfth of Pardan. He leaves the day after, master. ’ ’
“Find him. Give him several golden reasons to advance his calendar a day. We must make haste.”
“Ohe, there’s one more crack in the pot,” Etqole interrupted in still-sulky tones. “What of the white globe and the silver rod? Quro said the Worm Prince got the first, but the second…” “The globe has no value now. As for the rod, who knows where it is? Still in the temple of Thumis, mayhap? And perhaps our employer has no need of the rod but seeks only to find the Man of Gold and destroy it… This is no affair of ours.” Fingers of mist and a dappled greyish light curled along the deck before Harsan’s staring eyes. They were out upon the river, then, and it was dawn.
Zhu’on’s voice came once more: “Master, what of the real Lord Arkhane?”
The Mihalli gave a low chuckle, almost human. “Why, let him wake where I put him, in the Chalice of Silence. His Legion of Ketl may believe his pleas and pull him forth-or they may serve him boiling water for his breakfast…”