A Fortune for Kregen (18 page)

We walked over the wall and Naghan the Doom indicated an opening in the wall. I would have preferred to have found a boat and gone gliding down the stream to the outside world. But as no craft were available we were in for another confounded corridor. Anyway, there were probably more waterfalls, and things with jaws that were not fish, and all kinds of blood-sucking leeches and lampreys and Opaz-alone knew what down the river...

The room into which we pressed at the end of the corridor presented us with another puzzle. I let them get on with it.

Whatever it was Ariane had come here for, the scent was growing cold as far as I was concerned. Yet every step we took could bring a horrible death, and therefore this Moder had to be taken seriously, very seriously indeed, by Vox!

The room was some hundred paces wide and broad with a fire-crystal roof from which light poured. We had entered by a square-cut opening which was the right-hand one of three. Across the room towered a throne draped in somber purple. The throne itself was fashioned from gold, and surrounded by a frieze of human skulls. Bones and skulls formed the decorations around the walls. On the throne sat the wizened body of an old woman. She had, we all judged, died of chivrel, that wasting disease that makes of Kregans old folk before their time.

Her robes were magnificent, cloth of gold and silver, studded with gems and laced with gold wire. Her skeletal fingers were smothered in jeweled rings. Her crown blazed.

A series of nine white-marble steps led up to the throne. Each side, and tethered by iron links, crouched two leems, motionless, their yellow eyes in their fierce wedge-shaped heads fastened upon us. The fangs were exposed.

On the third step up to the throne lay the armored body of a Kataki. He had been a famous warrior, one judged, a slave master, powerful, in his prime. Now he moldered away and he had not been dead for as long as most of the Undead in this fearsome place. The silence hung as an intense weight upon us.

“He is not, I judge, a Kaotim,” observed Ariane. She was remarkably composed. “He was an adventurer, who failed the test.”

We all nodded solemnly.

On seven tables spread with white linen down the left hand side of the chamber a feast lay spread out.

The viands looked succulent, the wines superb. Not one of us was foolish enough to touch a scrap of food or a drop of drink.

Going as near as I felt sensible to the dead Kataki I saw that his face was black and his eye sockets were empty.

A small spindly-legged table to the right of the lowest step contained on its mosaic surface a golden handbell.

The lady Ariane paused before this little table, and looked down. She mused within her own thoughts before she said lightly, “To ring or not to ring?”

“To touch, or not to touch — anything,” I said.

“True, Jak the Unsturr.”

Mulishly, I said, “It is Jak the Sturr, my lady.”

She frowned. “I do not choose to be crossed.”

Well, it was a petty matter and not worth arguing about. Not here, where a ghastly death might leap upon us at any moment.

Faintly at first, and then growing steadily louder, the sounds of voices; the shuffle of feet and the clink of weapons sounded at our backs. We looked around as the noises strengthened.

“From the center door,” said Naghan. “Best, my lady, we keep out of sight.”

Silently, all of us, slaves fearful and retainers not much happier, we crowded behind the seven tables and crouched down. It was a jostle and we were cramped; but the fighting men positioned themselves ready to leap out if the occasion warranted.

The noises spurted into the chamber and then a voice broke out, hard, high and yet lighthearted.

“Thank Havil! There is real light ahead. Courage, my friend.”

“Courage?” came a wheezing voice. “It is more a pair of strong legs, like yours, I am in dire need of at this moment.”

Out into the light from the central opening stepped Deb-Lu-Quienyin and, with him and leading a small bunch of warriors and slaves, came Prince Tyfar. They stared about, much as we had done when we first entered.

The lady Ariane stood up, and smoothed her white gown.

“Lahal, prince!”

The shock was profound. Ariane laughed mischievously.

I frowned. She had risked an arrow through that pretty head of hers — the warriors with Prince Tyfar lowered their bows reluctantly. The prince smiled and walked forward, his hands outstretched.

“My lady Ariane! Lahal and Lahal. What a pleasant sight in this infernal prison!”

We all stood up from where we had hidden behind the tables and we all felt foolish, I daresay. After a space for mutual greetings, our stories were told. Very similar they were, too. As Ariane and the flying man had been separated, so the Wizard of Loh and the young prince of Hamal had been cut off from the main party by a falling block of stone. Now, together, we studied our present predicament.

Deb-Lu-Quienyin walked across to peer at the dead Kataki, and I observed how these people, like ours, had learned to do nothing foolish until everything that could be worked out had been worked out.

He saw me. His face expressed surprise; but no great surprise, no shock. He smiled his old smile.

“Why, Lahal, Jak. How nice to see you again — you have had success, I trust?”

I greeted him in turn and then Ariane broke in to say, “So you two know each other? How nice!”

Prince Tyfar and I made the pappattu, and he gave me a hard look. “A lone adventurer, down here?”

“There are few people with you, prince.”

“Yes, true — your party?”

I pointed up, down, and around. “Havil alone knows.”

“You are welcome to join our party—”

I looked at him. He was a fine, sprightly, well-set-up young man, and the axe that dangled at his belt looked freshly cleaned. He was a prince of Hamal.

I said, “And you are at liberty to join me.”

His eyebrows went up. His right hand dropped betrayingly toward his axe. Then his face creased. He threw his head back. He laughed. “By Krun! You are a jokester — and that is good, down here.”

“If you two have finished?” Ariane looked cross. This was man’s business and she felt a little left out —

or so I judged the situation. “How do we go on?” She motioned to the three doors. “The left-hand one?”

Quienyin sighed. “That will probably take us back again where we do not wish to go. And the way is hard.”

In the pause that followed we all heard the noises from the third door. There was about them a familiar ring.

Quienyin nodded. “We have all been working our way through these places and have, by different routes, converged on this chamber. That, I judge, is the rest of the party.”

We all agreed and did not shelter behind the tables.

The Wizard of Loh was both right and wrong. When the newcomers walked out into the chamber we saw that they were the people belonging to Kov Loriman the Hunter. He strode ahead, swinging his sword about, enraged, looking for quarry. He had only two slaves and many of his fighting men carried bundles of loot.

The pappattu was made and he gave me a queasy look for which I did not blame him. After all, I could easily be a monster waiting the opportunity to rend him into pieces. But Quienyin’s word sufficed.

“These passages writhe like a boloth’s guts,” Loriman said, and his full fleshy face exhibited passion.

“When do we get to the real treasure house? By Spikatur Hunting Sword! I need to get my hands on—”

He checked himself and then blustered on— “Gold and gems! Aye, by Sasco! That is what I came for and that is what I will have!”

So, I said to myself, this fine fleshy bucko was down the Moder for something other than gold or gems...

While the slaves and retainers wandered about the chamber seeking to read its riddles, I got hold of Quienyin and steered him to the center where we might talk. From our fascinating conversations under the stars as we rested in that caravan in which we traveled to Jikaida City, I knew him to be a pleasant old buffer — for a Wizard of Loh! — who felt the loss of his sorcerous powers most keenly. Yet I had sensed in him a groping for comradeship passing strange in a thaumaturge and not to be simply explained away merely because he had lost his arts of sorcery.

“Spikatur Hunting Sword,” he said and puffed out his cheeks. “The kov let slip more — well, little enough is known of that secret order—”

“I heard rumors it was a new religion out of Pandahem—”

“You see? Stories, rumors, nothing known for certain. Whatever the truth, its members are Dedicated to Hunting. That, at least, is sure.” He pushed at his turban. “And it is the least — nothing vital is known.”

“I am most happy to see you alive and well, San. You seek your powers here—”

The intelligent inquisitiveness he had exhibited over this matter of Kov Loriman’s secret allegiances shriveled at my words. He rode the tragedy extremely well, and showed a brave and proud face to the world. He was a Wizard of Loh. Instant obedience from ordinary mortals had been habitual to him.

Sucking up, to find no easier way of saying it, from simple men who feared him had been his lot in life.

But this loss had changed him greatly. He was troubled. He and I had come to an understanding out there on the Desolate Waste.

“Thank you, Jak. But, I crave your indulgence, do not tell these people I am a Wizard of Loh.” His old eyes shifted to peer suspiciously at a massive Chulik, one of Loriman’s bully boys, who prowled past bashing his spear against the floor. “I have told them I am a Magician of the humbler sort, whose tricks are mere sleight of hand. I do not think it would go well if they knew—”

“Rest assured. And so you have a secret. Do not we all?”

“Had I my powers, young man, I Would Read Your Secret!”

He spoke in capital letters, our San Deb-Lu-Quienyin.

He pulled his shortsword around. That betrayed him, if folk knew he was a Wizard of Loh.

“We have descended many levels within the zones. I think we are on the fifth zone now. What I seek lies on the lowest zone of all, the ninth zone. San Orien advised me.”

“And is there truly a way out?”

“Yes. If you have the nine parts of the key. They fit together to unlock the outer door. But without the nine parts you will never leave.”

“I hear Prince Nedfar has two.”

“He had three when we were parted. His son, Prince Tyfar, has one. We must ask that boor Loriman—”

“Cautious, San, how you speak of him!”

“Aye, young man. You are Indubitably Right.”

“And what of this famous sorcerer, San Yagno? Is he real?”

“He has powers. Great powers. But — he is not a Wizard of Loh, by the Seven Arcades, no!”

“And the creature — apim or diff — within the swathing red and green checkered cloak, this Tyr Ungovich?”

Quienyin looked troubled, and scratched up under his massy turban. A wisp of red hair fell; but not all men from Loh have red hair, and not all men with red hair are Wizards of Loh.

“He is an enigma. Without my powers I cannot riddle him.”

“He it was, I believe, who arranged your expedition?”

“That is so.”

The others were still searching around and finding nothing of use. And — no one had been messily killed, either.

“Now, San, these keys — or parts of the key. How are they recognized?”

He did look surprised now. “How is it that you venture in here and do not know that, Jak?”

I stared at him. “A secret for a secret, San?”

“Ah!”

“I came here with your expedition as a slave. I won free — from that heap of foulness, Tarkshur the Lash—”

The look that passed across the Wizard of Loh’s face was not so much unreadable as amazing. I saw compassion there, and sympathy, a lively indignation.

“You are fortunate, my friend, to be alive and whole.”

“So now you understand my dilemma. I must pass myself off as one of the notors—”

Now he smiled, a creasing of his face that charmed. He was no fool.

“Oh, but, Jak. On the Desolate Waste, when we played Jikaida with Pompino and Bevon — why, I knew then you were more than a paktun, more than a hyr-paktun — a notor?” He shook his head. “I shall retain a
few
powers.”

“Well, for the sweet sake of Opaz—”

“Ah!” Again he smiled. “This dreadful place, to a normal man, is addling your wits, Jak. You are a prince, at the least. But, I will Keep my Own Counsel, as You will Keep Yours. We are, each of us, In the Other’s Hands.”

“Agreed. If we chance upon Tarkshur—”

“Then we bluff. I observed the slaves, looking at each establishment, all eight of them. Ionno the Ladle is with the main party. I did not recognize you—”

“You would not expect to see a man you knew, as slave, surely? Especially here?”

“Every man may be slave.”

Before I could make some mundane acquiescent reply, Loriman walked past, ostentatiously poking at the floor the Chulik had already sounded. “Some of us,” said this Loriman the Hunter, “are seeking ways of egress instead of chattering.” He walked on and gave us a mean look.

He would have said more, but I called across in as cheery a voice as I could muster, “We confer on a plan.”

He bridled at my lack of proper respect for his exalted rank of kov, and I heard Quienyin’s wheezy chuckle. “Give us a moment more — kov.”

When he had gone on with his useless floor-prodding, the Wizard of Loh said, “You do have a plan?”

“Tell me how you recognize the parts of the key.”

“Each zone carries its own notification, its symbol. The three topmost ones are bronze, silver and gold, for they are the petty baubles men struggle for, and kill.”

“Yes.”

“The next three are named for gems. Diamond, Emerald, Ruby.”

“That follows. We are in the Emerald zone now. And the lowest three?”

“Gramarye, Necromancy and — and the ninth I will not, for the moment, say.”

“As it pleases you. But — what you seek lies there?”

“Yes.”

“Emerald,” I said. “Nothing as simple as that emerald and gold crown that poor old lady on the throne wears?”