Dancer's Lament: Path to Ascendancy Book 1 (11 page)

What made everyone twice as sick was the news on all tongues of the Crimson Guard’s being seen riding out of the north gate, the Gate of the Plains, that very morning. Evidently, as he and Rheena had deduced, they’d not come to rescue Heng but to escort a Grisian royal brat on yet another of those idiotic campaigns to hunt down the man-beast, Ryllandaras.

Walking the main way, Dorin found he was close to Ullara’s family stable. He jiggled the few poor coins in his pouch – his share of the remaining takings, hardly worth his bother, but she could clearly use them.

Though it was light, he risked the climb up the side and ducked into the open gable window. Within, the usual crowd of birds of prey roosted. They stirred uneasily at his entrance, but soon calmed and returned to cleaning their feathers. The night-hunters among them eased back into sleep. Dorin peered about for the gigantic raptor he’d glimpsed on earlier nights but saw no sign of it. Not surprising, as he doubted it could even fit through any of the windows. He bunched up some straw and lay back to join the other night-hunters in their rest.

He awoke to the birds’ muted mutterings and yawned, stretching. It was mid-day.

‘Good morning.’

He turned over. Ullara was sitting on a box, feet tucked up beneath her, watching him.

‘Morning.’

‘You were working last night,’ she said.

He nodded, then frowned; that hadn’t been a question.

She jumped up. ‘I’ll get some tea.’

‘Well . . . my thanks.’

‘Thanks?’ Her brows shot up. ‘Again? Your manners
are
improving.’

He searched for a response but she was gone down the trapdoor. Alone with the birds, he studied one stately russet plains falcon – the namesake of one of the Seti tribes. It returned his gaze with the cutting superiority that only a bird of prey can manage. Ullara returned with a cup of weak green tea, and a bowl of yogurt and bread.

‘My mother makes the yogurt,’ she explained. ‘We have goats.’

Dorin sat cross-legged and scooped up the mix. ‘It’s very good.’

‘Thank you, Dan—’ She stopped herself, blushing.

‘What was that? Dan?’

She plucked at her threadbare tunic, her head lowered, obviously mortified.

He cleared his throat. ‘You don’t have to say . . .’ Her hair, he saw, had dirt and straw clumped within, and hadn’t seen a brushing in a good long time.

She dared a quick glance up, her lip in her teeth. ‘I . . . I name all my . . . rescues.’

It seemed to him that she was going to say something different there, but he did not comment. He waited, instead.

She gestured to the tall plains falcon. ‘That’s Prince.’ She pointed to a savage-looking split-tail hawk. ‘Keen.’ A huge dozing tuft-eared owl, ‘Biter.’ Several more names followed: ‘Swift, Watcher, Fury, Red, Cutter.’

Dorin nodded to each then returned to Ullara. ‘And me?’

She hid her face once more, whispered, hushed, ‘Dancer.’

He raised a brow at that; he had indeed been forced to train for a time as a dancer – for flexibility and speed. And his teacher had always treated duels as a dance as well. ‘Well, thank you, Ullara.’ His hand rested on his coin-pouch and he jumped, remembering. ‘Oh, yes. This is for you.’ He held it out.

She eyed it but made no move to take it. After a moment, he laid it on the boards of the floor amid the straw and bird shit. ‘It isn’t much . . . I just thought . . .’

‘Thank you. My little brother is sickly, and we can’t . . . my thanks.’

‘I see. Well. I ought to be going.’

‘Yes.’ Again, so sad. How was it that he seemed only to make her sad? She reached to take up the bowl and his breath hissed from him in shock. ‘Your hands!’

She tried to hide them but he was far quicker and took both, turning them over. The flesh of the fingers, backs and palms was cracked so severely that dried blood filled most of the deep crevasses and much of the ridged flesh was white – dead and hardened. ‘You work with lye and other such chemicals?’

‘It is my job to clean all the tack, and treat the leather for softness.’

‘It’s eating your flesh to the bone – you will lose your fingers.’

She yanked her hands away. ‘I’ll not let my mother do it! Nor my sisters!’

He raised his own hands in open surrender. ‘No – I’m not suggesting. I’m just . . . Here.’ From his shirt he drew another pouch and pulled out a packet wrapped in waxed parchment. ‘Use this.’

‘What is it?’

‘A healing unguent. Here – let me.’ He urged her to give him her hands. She extended them like a scared, wary animal, and he kneaded the honey-thick preparation into them. It softened with the heat, like a wax. He rubbed her fingers, careful to get it between.

‘This is alchemy,’ she said, her voice rising in alarm. ‘You bought this.’

‘Yes.’

She almost succeeded in yanking her hands from his. She hissed, ‘We – I – cannot afford this!’

‘Never mind. Consider it a gift.’ He returned to rubbing her hands. ‘Relax now.’ He hardly had to say it, as her shoulders had fallen, easing, and her eyes slowly shut. A dreamy smile came to her lips as he worked the unguent into the wounds.

‘This is infused with Denul magics,’ she murmured, seeming half awake.

‘Yes.’

‘You are wasting it on me.’

‘No. This is what it is for. Now . . . better, yes?’

‘Yes,’ she said, her voice barely audible. ‘Better.’

‘I’ve got to go. Will I see you again?’

She shook herself, blinking and straightening. ‘Yes. Certainly.’

‘Good. Now, take care of yourself.’ He rose, and, peering down at her, fought an urge to take her head in his hands and press a kiss to her forehead and whisper
It will be all right. You will see. Everything will be all right.
He shook himself instead and retreated to the window, waved, and started down the side of the stable. As he made the alley, it occurred to him that perhaps their roles were now reversed – he the rescuer and she the wounded trembling bird.

Alone, Ullara remained sitting. She allowed her eyes to close once more and tucked her hands under her chin and held them there, rocking. A smile came to her lips again, only this time much more fierce. She curled up among the scattered straw and breathed in the scents rising from her oh so warmed hands.

* * *

Silk knew of three hidden entrances to the catacombs far beneath Heng. One was through the sewers behind the palace, another was via a tunnel accessible along the riverside, while the third was theoretical: a door barred and secured in the very wall of the Outer Round. He opted for the riverside. He owned several river crafts and selected the one he used for his more clandestine journeys; one little more than a long narrow dugout. He unmoored it and paddled out among the forest of pilings that supported the countless docks, wharves, and waterside businesses.

Since he was out on the Idryn, he decided to swing by someone, who, if not really a friend, could be described as a compatriot. For while all Heng knew there were five city mages in the Protectress’s employ, what those five knew was that, in truth, there were far more than that. He idled for a time close to the shore of the muddy ochre course that was the Idryn here on its slow way to Cawn and the Bay of Nap. After tracing the flats among the shadows beneath the wharves high overhead, he spotted a hunched shape seated on a rock amid the mud, bare feet caked in the green-grey muck, hair a frighteningly tangled mass. The shape was hardly recognizable as female, but he knew her. She was holding up one of the exceptionally large Idryn crayfish by one claw.

‘Ho! Liss!’ he called.

The old woman peered up, squinting. ‘Who’s there? Is that that slick and smarmy fellow?’

Silk raised his eyes to the wood decking above. ‘Must we, Liss?’

She made a show of addressing the crayfish. ‘Why does he wear that hollow pretty mask?’ She held the creature to her ear. ‘No! Not that monstrous, surely!’

‘Thank you, Liss. I’m sure the crayfish are full of insights.’

‘They are full of Hengan citizens – I’ll tell you that!’

He rubbed his chin. ‘Well . . . I’ll have to give you that one.’

‘Come to drop the mask, Silk?’

Smiling, he shook his head. ‘Just a greeting. On my way to see Ho.’

She shook the crayfish like a warning finger. ‘Watch out for Hothalar, my friend. He is a haunted man.’

Silk bowed in answer to the warning. Liss, he knew, went far back here in Heng. The sluggish current dragged him onward.

‘Have a care,’ she shouted. ‘I see trouble ahead.’

‘What? The Kanese?’

‘No. Send King Chulalorn my way and I’ll squeeze the ambition out of him – along with all his seed! No, something else.’

‘What?’

She called back, ‘Don’t know. Something sly, hidden. I see it in the corner of my eye.’ Silk bowed again in answer to the warning as the figure disappeared among the forest of pilings.

Later that afternoon he found the gated access, magically disguised in the dark under the decking and raised walkways. He drew up his dugout, and, with extreme distaste, squelched his way through the muck to the entrance, and unlatched the iron grating.

Many tunnels and rickety ladders later, he was within the stonewalled catacombs. In the utter dark, he summoned his Warren and a tiny flame flickered to life upon his upturned palm. It gave no heat, of course, just illumination, as Thyr was his Warren. Many, he knew, assumed that he was a mage of Mockra – one specializing in what some named the art of glamour. But in fact his allure came naturally rather than deliberately. Or perhaps he did somehow innately draw upon Mockra. He didn’t know. What he could do, however, through his years of discipline and study, was touch this one Warren of Thyr and even, in moments of his greatest inspiration, catch glimpses of a wellspring of might that lay beyond it.

The tunnel was a narrow semicircle of crudely dressed sandstone blocks. Narrow, but tall. Rats scampered from his light. He stilled, listening. All he heard was his heartbeat and water dripping. He picked a direction and followed it.

Beams of light streamed down here and there, illuminating short stretches of the anonymous stone tunnels. A stream of cascading water flooded one intersection. He stepped carefully through puddles for some time after that. At one point he thought he glimpsed a human figure moving among the shifting shadows and would have dismissed it as just such another but for a faint tapping that seemed to accompany the blurry disturbance.

‘Hello?’

The rippling, shifting darkness that might or might not be an actual person turned at a corner. Silk found the junction and cast his sorcerous light beyond. The tunnel lay completely empty and utterly quiet. He snorted at his overworked imagination and moved on, coming at last to a gate of very thick iron bars. It was locked and there was no way he could open it. However, the bars were quite far apart and he was very slim. He almost tore an ear off, but he made it through. His shirt was now frankly ruined, as were his trousers of fine imported Darujhistani silk. He brushed at his clothes, cursing Ho, then carried on. A few turns later he came to a tunnel faced by a series of iron doors. He studied the flagged floor. The dust was disturbed. Someone walked here regularly. He listened at the nearest door. All was quiet. Eerily so, as he was so far underground. Yet he thought he heard
something
. Movement.

‘Hello?’ he whispered.

The door struck him in the side of his head as something rammed or punched it from within. He staggered away, holding his head, cursing again. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded, ears ringing and head throbbing.

‘Lar!’ came in an animal-like growl. Or some sound resembling that. ‘Lar, Lar, Lar!’

‘Lar? Lar who?’

‘What are you doing here?’ a new voice rumbled from far down the tunnel.

Silk spun, hunching, his Warren readied. A dark shape came shambling up. It filled the tunnel completely from side to side and top to bottom – the giant form of Koroll. Silk straightened, eased the knot of tension in his shoulders and neck. ‘Greetings,’ he offered.

‘It is dangerous here,’ Koroll murmured, his voice low. He waved Silk back up the tunnel. ‘Come.’

Koroll unlocked the barred gate and had Silk shut it behind him. Then the giant led him on through the maze.

Another door, this one a stone slab two hand-lengths thick, opened on to a much wider and taller complex of stone-walled tunnels. Silk found that he could now walk next to Koroll as the Thelomen-kind giant slowly strode along, rather like a rocking shack. ‘What was all that back there?’ he asked.

‘A prison.’

‘Yes. I gathered that. For whom? Or what?’

‘Things dangerous to Heng. Things that over the centuries Shalmanat has been forced to subdue.’

Silk felt the hairs of his arms and neck prickling as he considered this. Ye gods!
Centuries!
And what
things
might lie in those cells? Daemons? Creatures of other realms? Perhaps even murderous fellow mages . . . Silk shook himself as the cold subterranean air left him feeling chill and clammy.

Koroll led him into a broad chamber, round and dome-roofed, rather like some sort of ancient tomb. Silk was alarmed to hear chains – the reverberation of very large chains clunking and thumping in the dark. Reflexively, he raised the power of his light, revealing a tall block of stone at the chamber’s centre and his fellow city mage Mister Ho at its side.

Ho crossed his thick arms. His scowl had turned even more wary than usual. ‘What brings you down here, Silk?’

‘The view,’ Silk answered, absently. His gaze rose to where an equally large block of stone hung suspended over the first. It was held there by numerous thick chains all extending off into the dark where stone counterweights waited. A single chain led up into the gloom of the hidden roof, and there Silk thought he caught a faint glimmer of light. ‘What is this?’

‘A work in progress.’

The block was far wider and longer than any man. Silk rose on to his tiptoes to peer over the top. It was hollow, with thick sides. It resembled, to all appearances, an enormous . . . sarcophagus. As the thought came, Silk flinched away. What might it once have held? He shot a glance to Ho – one just as wary as his. ‘What are you doing here?’