A Fortune for Kregen (23 page)

The floor moved.

The floor revolved.

The ends of the side passages and the anteroom at our backs slid swiftly sideways — going widdershins! — and the floor on which we stood, petrified, turned and carried us around to face into the mysterious heart of the mausoleum.

A few of the mercenaries at last broke. They were not paktuns. With shrieks of fear they raced madly for the narrowing slot of yellow light, leaping off the revolving floor, screaming, tearing desperately away, rushing madly anywhere to escape the horrors of this place.

We who were left revolved with the Hall of Ghouls, swinging in to face whatever it was that had caused the Undead to rise in panic and flee.

We never again saw any of those mercenaries who had fled — not one, ever.

What we expected to see, Opaz alone knows. I do not.

What we did see was a solid wall of darkness. The floor revolved one hundred and eighty degrees, and halted with a shuddering lurch, as though we were suspended by chains over a fathomless gulf. The blackness smote our eyes. The yellow light within the Hall of Ghouls continued; but it remained thin and pale. The stone slabs lay empty of corpses. The detritus on the floor crackled underfoot as we moved.

Cautiously, we advanced toward that ebon wall, and it resisted, and we could make no impression on its immaterial substance.

The tall rows of empty biers frowned down. The light smoked somber upon us, and the silence stunned us.

Quienyin said, “The walls. The stone slabs. I think—”

“You are right, Master Quienyin!” Tyfar rushed to the nearest wall and put his foot against the bottom slab. With a slow remorseless pressure his foot was pushed along the floor.

“The walls!” shrieked Ariane. “They are closing in upon us!”

Steadily, with small screeching sounds as of trapped animals, the walls closed one upon the other. The wall of blackness ahead narrowed.

Now we could see that there was a finger-wide gap between wall and floor. And then the full diabolical nature of these stone jaws was borne in on us.

“The stone slabs!” shouted Ariane, and she tore her hair wildly, staggering. “See — they are not opposite!”

It was true. The stone slabs in one wall were set at a higher level than in the opposite wall. When they met, the stone juttings would pass between one another. Useless to jump up and cower in a stone slot so recently vacated by a corpse. The opposite stone slab would crush into that slot and...

We looked about frenziedly for a way out. “These are the Kaochun,” Quienyin informed us, although few of us were in a condition to appreciate the knowledge. “The Jaws of Death.”

These Kaochun, these Death Jaws, were going to squash us flatter than an ant under a boot heel if we did not quickly discover the answer. I saw the rock chippings fallen from the stones.

Without shouting, trusting to the others to see what I was up to and follow my lead, I picked up and discarded the chunks until I found a solid wedge-shaped piece. This I pushed point first under that finger-wide slot between wall and floor. I kicked it in savagely. The two hyr-paktun twins were the first to see and copy. Soon we were all ramming wedges under the walls as hard as we could. Some ground to powder, others slipped. But some held.

The chittering noise as of trapped animals faltered, and strengthened as wedges crumbled, and then dwindled again as we went ruthlessly along ramming wedges in as fast and as hard as we could.

The walls shuddered. A thin high whine began.

The walls trembled.

Dust blew suddenly in a cloud from the discarded corpse wrappings. We flailed our arms, heads and shoulders smothered in the gritty dust. We choked and coughed. But the walls did not move in. The tremble shuddered to a stillness, the dust fell away, and the walls stopped.

That high shrilling whine passed away above the audible threshold. We shook, suddenly, each one feeling the pain drilling into his ears.

Slowly, as an iris parts, the wall of blackness opened before us.

When the harsh actinic white light rushed in I saw that we stood in a slot between the stilled walls. There was space left for us only to walk out in single file, so narrow had been our confinement and so narrow our separation from death.

Prince Tyfar was the first to march out.

Head up, sword in his fist, he stomped out onto a black marble floor and into the white light. He stopped. As we crowded out he gasped: “By all the Names!”

Difficult to describe this Mausoleum of the Moder, so many impressions crowded in like a kaleidoscope.

A place of wonder, of awe, and of horror...

The chamber stretched about us, full four hundred paces in diameter. The roof rippled oddly, hung with black insubstantiality, ever-shifting so that it was impossible to estimate the height. And that height appeared to waver and alter and to press up and down.

Positioned some fifty paces in from the walls around the chamber stood fire-crystal tanks, each with a girth of at least twenty paces. In each tank coiled and writhed a monster from nightmare, tentacled octopus-like shapes that slimed and hissed and beckoned obscenely. They would have put the shudders up the toughest of backbones.

Deb-Lu- Quienyin started to talk at once, and I guessed he sought to hold our tattered nerves together.

“We are clearly below ground level here, and I imagine this to be the heart of the Moder—”

“You said there were nine zones and this is the eighth—”

“True. But the ninth zone is not for normal men.”

We walked slowly forward between two of the tanks. We did not look again at the gruesome denizens.

We all sensed that Quienyin spoke the truth and here was what we had come for — all of us, that is, except the Wizard of Loh... And myself.

Ranged in a circle within the circle of tanks, and crammed close together, stood cabinet and chest, box and trunk, glassed and bound with bronze. Small alleyways led through this circle. The treasures contained within this mass of cabinets defied the imagination. We halted, greedy eyes surveying the wealth displayed there.

Quienyin looked back.

“There will be time to sample these wares — after.”

No one had the hardihood to inquire of him, “After what?”

What lay in the next circle drew some of us on.

We could not look over toward the center of the chamber, because of the brilliance of the light that poured up in a wide shaft from the central floor, lifting and flooding up to be consumed in that shifting darkness of the ceiling.

Around that shaft of pure white light stood a fence, a wall, an insubstantial-seeming yet iron-hard barrier.

Passing through alleyways in the circles of displayed wealth and magical equipment we stood before the iron barrier. A silver gate showed immediately ahead, and a golden gate showed to the right. To the left a bronze gate shut off ingress beyond the barrier. Somehow, we all knew there would be nine gates leading onto the shaft of fire.

“I think, my friends,” quoth Quienyin, “that is our way out — after.”

“Through—” squeaked Ariane. “Through the fire?”

“Yes, lady.”

“Well, how do we pass the gates?”

“Climb the fence,” offered Tyfar.

“No, prince.” Quienyin spoke quickly. “That way lies a sure and ghastly death.”

We took his word for it.

The mercenaries were jostling before the cabinets. In there lay unimaginable wealth. I saw a trunk the size of a horse trough filled to bursting with diamonds. At its side stood another, similarly filled with rubies. The glitter of gold paled to insignificance in the luster of gems.

“Touch nothing until we are sure!” commanded Tyfar.

The paktuns growled — but even their greed was tempered by our experiences. And, do not forget, these were the hardiest and the toughest of those who had entered, for they had survived.

One quickly showed us a simple way to die.

The black marble of the floor that ringed the chamber gave way to white marble and then to yellow.

Where we stood before the flame the floor was broken into patterns, intricate lozenges and heart shapes, circles and half-moons of inlaid stone. This paktun, he was a Rapa, stood upon a crescent of green, without thinking anything of it.

The green crescent swallowed him.

One instant he was standing there, rubbing his wattled neck, the next he was gone, and the green crescent reappeared.

Ariane screamed.

“Test every part of the pattern before you trust it!” called Tyfar. From then on, every one of us cat-footed about like ghosts.

Remembering Quienyin’s ominous words, I looked into the recesses of the chamber, alcoves past the tanks and their hideous denizens. Shadows shifted there, eye-wateringly.

Tyfar was talking, quickly and softly, to the lady Ariane.

The Wizard of Loh said, “Jak, my friend. These things are real. There is no illusion here. Your weapons...?”

Displayed in glassed cabinets stood ranked many swords, many daggers, many different weapons of quality.

“I do not think, San, I will find a longsword like this. Until it vanishes from my fists, I will keep it.”

All the same, I did decide to replace the rapier and main gauche once we had the cabinets open.

But — opening the cabinets was the nub of the question.

We all knew that horror would burst upon us as we burst open this treasure.

“My prince,” said the slinger, Barkindrar the Bullet. “Let us all stand well away and let me smash a cabinet.”

Barkindrar had proved himself on this expedition down a Moder. Tyfar nodded. Quienyin pulled his lower lip and looked at me. I made a small gesture which meant “What else?”

A distant tapping noise that had irritated my ears for a short time now grew loud enough for me to turn, puzzled. The others heard it now. The banging echoed hollowly and sounded like devil-tinkers at work on a yellow skull.

Quickly we ascertained that the knocking noise came from a wall away to our left and we moved back, positioning ourselves, wondering what fresh horror would burst upon us.

Chips of stone facing the wall flaked off. Then a larger piece fell. The noise redoubled. Whatever was forcing its way through the wall was large and powerful. The banging bashed and boomed and rock fell and the wall split. In a jagged wedge-shaped gap the wall split from the floor to a point ten feet above and yellow light poured through with a spray of dust and rock chippings, glinting.

Dark shadows moved within the jagged opening in the wall. They looked black and evil against the streaming yellow radiance.

A form lumbered through, and stood up, and bellowed.

“Hai! I am through!”

We all stared.

More figures burst into this dread chamber, and there was Kov Loriman, smothered in dust, shoving through, a massive sledgehammer in his fist, panting, triumphant. He saw us.

“You famblys! And how many have you lost? Did I not say I would smash my way out?”

Quienyin called across, “Or, kov —
in
!”

To be honest, I could not understand why some horror had not carried off the Hunting kov and all his men sooner.

I could not understand that riddle then. But it was made clear to me, and, I owned, despite his despicable propensities for Execution Jikaida and other unmentionable acts of abomination, Kov Loriman materially assisted me by that bashing entrance through the wall.

We gave him warning about the green crescents, and his men were as wary as ours of the wantonly displayed wealth.

One interesting fact I noticed then was that, of these survivors of the expedition, there were more hyr-paktuns with the golden pakzhan at throat or knotted in silken cords at shoulder than there were of paktuns with the silver pakmort or of ordinary mercenaries who were not yet elevated to the degree of paktun. But, then, surely, that was to be expected?

Tyfar was your proper prince. However much of a ninny he might be in ordinary life, he was lapping up the marvels and terrors of this Moder. He was punctilious with Loriman.

“The suggestion is, kov, that my slinger puts a bullet through one of these glass cabinets while we stand back.”

Loriman grunted, and glared at his Jiktar, the commander of his Chuliks. This one, a magnificent specimen of the Chulik race, impressive in armor, fiercely tusked, pondered.

“Quidang!” he roared at length.

Chuliks have about as little of humanity in them as Katakis; they have given me a rough time of it on Kregen, as you know. But, at least, they are mercenaries born and bred to be paktuns, and not damned slave masters. And while their honor code in no way matches the nikobi of the Pachaks, they are loyal to their masters. And, they can be loyal even when the pay and food runs out, which is more than can be said for most mercenaries.

As we prepared for this fraught experiment, I realized that the place with all its creepy horrors was actually powerful enough to make me maudlin over Chuliks. By Zair! But doesn’t that stunningly illuminate the stark and overpowering impression this Moder was making on me!

So, with Chuliks as comrades, I hunkered down with the rest as Barkindrar the Bullet went through his pre-slinging ritual.

Did he, I wondered, do this in the heat of battle?

Prince Tyfar put store by him, as he put store by his bear-like apim archer, Nath the Shaft who hailed from Ruathytu. And, I should quickly add, neither of these two retainers were mercenaries, as Ariane’s numim retainer, Naghan the Doom, was not a mercenary.

As Barkindrar went through his preparation and whirled his sling another odd little thought occurred to me. As we had penetrated nearer and nearer this Mausoleum of the Moder, so Deb-Lu-Quienyin had grown in confidence. It was as though by merely approaching what he sought he took reverberations from his coming powers, sucking strength from his own future.

Barkindrar let rip. The leaden bullet flew. The glass cabinet splintered into gyrating shards. Splinters and shatters of razor-edged glass splayed out. Anyone standing nearby would have been slashed to ribbons.