Orb Sceptre Throne (16 page)

Down in the tunnel opening Ebbin crouched, lit lantern in hand, awaiting the captain. His dread was now like a caged rabid animal racing round and round his skull. What of …
it
? The figure? What if they … disturbed it? Yet what if they did? Gold held no fascination for him. Humble Measure was welcome to all the loot he wanted. Why should this alarm him?

Yet it did. He felt an unreasoning dread of that supine waiting figure. So exposed, so … inviting. He wanted to cringe from it in terror.

When the captain arrived Ebbin helped him find his footing in the tunnel, then backed up a little to make room for the others. Drin had picked two of his men to accompany him, leaving two at the well-top – along with Ebbin’s men, of course.

‘Captain,’ he said, whispering in the dark, ‘there’s a figure in the tomb … I don’t want you or your men touching it … disturbing it. Do I have your word?’

The man squinted at him, his face wrinkling up in scepticism. ‘What d’you mean?’

‘A body, lying on a plinth. It’s not to be disturbed.’

‘Whatever you say, scholar.’

Somehow Ebbin was not reassured.

When the next two had entered the tunnel, Drin motioned for Ebbin to go on. Lantern raised high before him, the scholar edged his way forward on hand and knees. Once within the large round burial chamber the three guards stood stock still for a long time, hands on strapped sword hilts, their eyes bright and big in the gloom. Eventually their gazes found the figure lying exactly as before, at the very centre of the chamber, within the arches that resembled two large rings carved of stone. The beaten gold mask gleamed in the lantern light. The graven smile seemed to welcome them. Their gazes rarely left the figure as Ebbin led them to the remaining sealed side-niche. He set down his shoulder bag, began getting out his tools.

‘Since your men are here, Captain,’ he said, ‘I could use some help.’

Peering back over his shoulder at the figure, Drin grunted his agreement. He motioned to one of his men. Ebbin handed the guard one of the special alloy chisels supplied by Aman. ‘If you’ll hold this steady …’ He showed the man where he wanted the chisel on the door slab, then raised the hammer he’d carried down the tunnel.

While Ebbin carefully tapped, the captain stood behind, watching. ‘Twelve,’ Drin mused, sounding much more subdued now in the dark confines of the tomb. ‘Like the stories my old grandpa used to tell. The Twelve Fiends …’ He shook his head in remembrance. ‘“Be good”, the old guy used to warn, “or they’ll come steal ya away.”’

‘This one’s still sealed,’ Ebbin said, and he blew on the scarring now visible on the face of the slab.

‘Aye. The others all looted. But not this one … nor him,’ and he jerked a thumb to the chamber’s centre. ‘Like they was interrupted, maybe.’

Ebbin swept at the face of the slab with a fine horsehair brush. It looked as if a crack was developing. ‘Perhaps they meant to return to finish the job – but never made it back.’

‘Maybe.’ The captain sounded unconvinced.

A desperate urge to hurry was on Ebbin, yet at the same time he was painfully aware that this was his one chance, his gods’ sent opportunity to salvage his reputation. To make a name for himself and overturn many past insults. And so he took his time despite the guard’s wandering attention and the heat that gathered in the confines of the tomb sending drops of sweat down his nose and neck, and making his hands slick.

Boredom had driven the captain and the second guard from his side. They poked through the other chambers only to report them all empty, as Ebbin knew.

A crack now ran horizontally across the slab, close to the top. He planned to take off the upper section, then reach behind to pull or strike the rest outward, thereby avoiding damaging any artefacts which might lie near the entrance. He grunted his frustration as a few shards fell within. The guard with him could not suppress a flinching retreat as the seal was broken. ‘It’s okay,’ Ebbin murmured. He raised the lantern to peer within, but couldn’t make out anything defining. The niche appeared no different from the eleven others. ‘Could you …’ He mimicked a yank on the remaining section of stone slab.

The guard reluctantly put down the chisel. Behind, the captain came from where he’d been leaning against one of the stone arches, staring at the figure on its black onyx plinth.

‘Go ahead,’ Drin said to his man. The fellow took hold and pulled. The stone ground and scraped. The man tried again, jerking, pushing against the wall with one booted foot. He grunted, cursing, but the slab would not budge.

‘Let me.’ Drin pushed the man aside and took hold, tensing. Ebbin was impressed by the breadth of his bunched shoulders, his thick roped forearms. The man snarled, his breath hissing from him as he pulled. A crack shot through the slab like the strike of a slingstone. Dust billowed from the seal round its edges, then it juddered outwards to fall crashing to their feet.

Studying the fallen rock, Ebbin suddenly recognized the pattern. All the other niches shared it. All their doors had been pulled outwards to fall into the chamber. Pulled out … or pushed. Sudden renewed panic clenched his throat. He could not swallow; his heart seemed to be bashing against his ribs. He raised the lantern to reveal something lying on the plinth within. A corpse.

It was nothing like the figure behind them. This thing was quite obviously dead. And not human. It was massive, its bones far thicker and more robust than those of any human. Its desiccated fingers ended in bear-like yellowed talons, as did the toes of its naked feet.

‘Demon,’ Captain Drin breathed.

Ebbin stepped within for a closer look. He was confused. This was not what he’d expected. Not at all. Where was the artwork? The funerary offerings?

Something caught his eye: a cold white gleam shone from deep within the cadaver’s hollow chest cavity. Ebbin bent closer. It was a pale stone bearing the oily shimmer of the insides of shells. Perhaps it was a pearl itself. Ebbin reached for it.

‘Find something?’ the captain warned, his voice suddenly tense.

Startled, Ebbin snatched his hand away, glanced over. ‘I’m sorry …?’

Drin was reaching out one hand while his other held his drawn weapon. ‘No, scholar. It’s me that’s sorry. Measure’s orders, y’see …’

A yell of warning from behind snapped the man’s attention round. He gaped, cried ‘
Shit!
’ and ran.

Ebbin ducked from the niche to see the two guards struggling with the figure from the plinth beneath the spans of the arches. The two mouthed yells and screams yet no sound reached Ebbin. The captain was running for them.

Ebbin shouted, but too late. The captain swung a great two-handed blow that hammered home, yet appeared to have no effect on the cloaked and masked figure, which had lashed out and caught one of the guards. While Ebbin watched, petrified, it gripped the man’s neck with one hand and with the other pulled the gold mask from its own face. Ebbin glimpsed a ruin of sinew and rotted flesh over bone, and stood rooted to the ground in horror as the fiend ignored the increasingly frenzied attacks of Drin and the other guard and slowly, inexorably, pressed the mask to its victim’s face.

The guard fell to his knees, pulling frantically at the mask, but he was unable to move it. Transfixed, Ebbin watched as the cloaked figure disappeared in a great swirling cloud of dust and the dark cloak fell empty to the floor.

The captain and remaining guard now beat at some sort of invisible barrier beneath the intersecting arches. They screamed unheard commands at Ebbin, who could only shake his head in mute appalled terror while behind the two men the corpse of their fellow climbed to his feet. The gold mask shimmered brightly in the lantern light, its mysterious graven smile now horrifying in its promise. Ebbin pointed, his other hand covering his mouth.

The two men turned. It seemed to Ebbin they both leapt in shock, dismay and terror as they realized what awaited each in turn. The captain swung a huge two-handed blow at his ex-guard’s neck but the corpse took it on an arm. Though the strike slashed along the bone, flensing that arm, no blood flowed, and the revenant was not slowed.

The captain danced away out of reach. The remaining guard punched at whatever barrier it was that held him captive. Falling to his knees he held out his arms to Ebbin, pleading, begging, as if this were somehow all the scholar’s doing. From behind, his dead companion wrapped an arm round his neck, and tearing the mask from his head – in the process pulling away the flesh, which brought up Ebbin’s gorge in a gasping heave of vomit – clamped the mask over the other’s face.

When Ebbin looked up, wiping his mouth, coughing, only two figures remained within the arches. The captain and his last guard. Drin was retreating round and round the onyx plinth, always giving ground before the slow relentless advance of the masked fiend.

Ebbin could only sit and watch, fascinated, helpless. As time passed he decided that there must have been good reasons why this man Drin was a captain. How long had he held out? How many hours caught there in the confines of his inescapable prison, avoiding his unkillable foe? He himself would not have lasted more than the first minute. Yet for what seemed half a day this man had ducked and flinched aside, postponing his end. Occasionally he would dash in to aim a blow at his enemy’s neck, perhaps in the hope that decapitation would end the curse. But Drin faced something extraordinary – blades damaged it, but it seemed that none could bring it down. No blow could dismember it, or slow it.

Finally, after hours of that macabre dance around the raised plinth, Captain Drin turned his strained, sweat-sheathed face to Ebbin. He mouthed something, perhaps ‘Remember me’. Ebbin wasn’t sure. And though no soldier, he roused himself to salute the man.

The captain nodded in bleak acknowledgement and then, throwing aside his sword, launched himself upon the creature. Legs clamped around the revenant’s waist, he clasped both hands on the mask and worked to yank it free. Ebbin’s heart leapt in admiration:
Yes! If he can dislodge the mask before it is set upon his face! Perhaps then this curse will somehow be broken
…

Though a bear of a man, Drin was no match for the fiend. One by one, his fingers were prised from their grip on the gold, and the fiend took hold of the mask himself.

Ebbin looked away.
Gods! Was there no escape for anyone? Was this to be his end as well?

After waiting a time, his limbs twitching in dread, he could not help but glance up.

All was as it had been before under the arches. A figure lay upon the black stone plinth, dark cloak wrapped tight, gold mask covering its face. But Ebbin knew that Captain Drin, or at least his body, now bore that mask. As for the others, all the countless others who preceded him, well, there was plenty of dust on the floor of the chamber.

The scholar staggered to his feet, gathered up his shoulder bag. There was nothing here. This whole tomb was just one gruesome trap. A trap for those foolish enough to come digging up the past. Everything he had ever hoped for was now shattered. He stumbled for the exit. On the way he froze and his gorge rose again in a wrenching dry heave.

Set in the stone floor of the chamber lay three fresh skulls. The bare bone of two still gleamed wet with gore.

*

After the guards descended, Scorch and Leff peered down into the darkness of the well for a time before wandering over to the shade of a lean-to to return to teaching the two Gadrobi youths how to play troughs. The boys didn’t seem able to grasp the basic arithmetic; or perhaps the problem was their own disagreements over the rules. Humble’s two guards sat down to lean against the stone lip of the well.

Leff tucked an arm under his head, sighed, ‘If only we were still with Her Ladyship, hey? Too bad …’

Scorch threw the carved knuckle dice so hard they bounced from the board to disappear into the dirt. The two youths hunted for them. ‘What was that?’ he answered, his voice low.

‘What was what?’

‘Was that an impercation? ’Cause it sounded like maybe you was makin’ an impercation!’

Leff pushed himself up on his elbows, rolled his eyes. ‘Gettin’ all huffy won’t change the facts, Scorch.’

‘
Facts
? And just what facts might those be?’

‘That it was you that lost us the job with Lady Varada.’

‘I did not—’ Scorch threw up his arms. ‘Tor explained it. The lady didn’t want so many guards no more. So who gets the axe? Why, us outside guards, right? Plain and simple. That hierarchy thing, right?’

Leff waved that aside. ‘Didn’t you see through all that bullcrap? I did. Tor was just coverin’ up the truth. Sparin’ our feelings.’

His shoulders falling, Scorch frowned, uncertain. ‘Really? Then … what was he really sayin’?’

‘That it was you lost us the job.’

Scorch threw himself aside to sit facing the opposite direction.

Towards noon the old hag came limping up to the lean-to. She shooed the youths away, gabbling in Gadrobi, then turned on Scorch and Leff. ‘You two, get out!’ she spat. ‘You go! Bad things come. I see in the sands. In smoke!’

Scorch and Leff shared a knowing look. ‘Better stay off that fermented goat’s milk,’ Leff said. ‘That kefir can sneak up on ya.’

The old woman waved an angry dismissal. ‘Die then … Daru dogs!’ And she scuttled off.