Rats and Gargoyles (44 page)

"I can’t leave. I’m needed. I can’t abandon these
people!"

Zar-bettu-zekigal refused to meet his eyes. The
other woman had hunkered down again, sorting crossbow bolts from the debris on
the marble flagstones.

The brown Rat said: "
Now,
messire."

They do not see where a greasy-haired woman crawls
on hands and knees through the bodies outside the tents, shedding armor at every
move as if some insect abandoned its carapace.

She half-rises, grunts, slides down to lope
painfully along in the shadow of the wall, supporting herself with one or
sometimes both hands.

The Rats watch the darkening horizon, not the edges
of the square. Her dark red clothes disguise her somewhat in bloody shadows.
Unwatched, she limps towards the entrance of the station; pauses once to lift
her head and bark a hysterical laugh at the sky.

She slides into the stairwell and shadow.
Following.

Zar-bettu-zekigal clung to the brickwork either
side of the arch, squatting in the niche, her knees almost up about her ears.
She peered through the narrow slit at the back of the niche where a brick had
been missed out.

"Just more tunnels."

Without turning, she kicked back with her feet and
let go, arms and tail wheeling, landing four-square on the cinder track.
Moisture dripped down from the roof of the tunnel. She turned, looted black
ankle-boots crunching on the cinders. Elish-hakku-zekigal walked lightfooted
from sleeper to sleeper, the lantern swinging in her hand.

Ahead, in shifting circles of lamplight on brick,
the two Rats walked. Zar-bettu-zekigal shrugged, plodding to catch up with the
older Katayan.

"The birds will take them to the Boat."

"What?" Zar-bettu-zekigal looked up warily. The
hard toes of her unfamiliar boots caught on the railway sleepers.

"Souls. That’s what she’s doing."
Elish-hakku-zekigal held the lantern higher. Its barred light swung over the
curved brick walls. "The Lady Luka. She calls the birds to eat the
psyche,
the butterflies, before they’re drawn up into the Night Sun. So that the birds
can fly to the Boat and the
psyche
be reborn."

Zar-bettu-zekigal’s shoulders lifted. She took a
deep breath, mouth moving slightly. "Oh, what! I knew
that!"

The woman smiled, her gaze on the diminishing
parallel rails.

"Of course you did."

Zari skipped down from sleeper to sleeper, hands
thrust in her black dress pockets, head coming up as she gazed around at the
tunnel, bouncing on her heels. "Elish, why did Father let you come here?"

The older Katayan momentarily shifted her gaze from
the rails to her sister. "He doesn’t know I’m here."

"Oh, what! See you, you told Messire Andaluz that
you’re an envoy."

"I could hardly tell him that I’m a runaway."
Amusement made the Katayan’s tone rich.

Zar-bettu-zekigal slowed to walk beside her,
looking up at the pale face nested among lace ruffles, the cropped black hair
combed forward. She took one hand from her pocket and slipped it into
Elish-hakku-zekigal’s free hand. A black tail curved up to cuff her ear lightly.

"Elish, I love you."

"I know you do, buzzard. And I intend to see we
both come out of this crazy place in one piece."

"Back there . . . up there . . .
will
those
things from the Fane attack?"

The hand tightened on hers. Elish-hakku-zekigal
began walking at a faster pace. Her face in the shifting lantern- light might
have shown a smile or a grimace.

"Why ask me, little buzzard? I don’t know
everything."

She jerked the older woman’s arm sharply. "You
do
!"

Elish-hakku-zekigal’s laughter echoed down the
tunnel. The black and the brown Rat paused to look back. She shook her head, sobering. "Well, then. Yes. I
think they will. That isn’t our fight."

The big Rat stooped slightly, the pole of her
lantern in one hand and her drawn sword in the other. Yellow light shone on her
brown fur, on her naked tail and clawed feet. She raised her snout to stare at
the roof, incisors glinting.

"Are we right?" Zar-bettu-zekigal called.

"Certainly! I just have to work out—"

"–where we are?" the black Rat completed,
sotto
voce,
after a moment.

"It’s going to be fine, messire," Zar-bettu-zekigal
said as she came up with them.

Plessiez sighed. He carried a bull’s-eye lantern in
one hand, light glinting from the buckles of his harness, and his rings, and the
slender drawn rapier in his other hand. The cardinal’s sash glowed a brilliant
green against his black fur.

"You had no right to drag me down here, away from .
. ." He stared at Charnay still, adding in a lower tone: "I would be happier
with myself if I could regret the leaving more sincerely."

"This way," Charnay announced.

The big Rat padded away, following a curve of the
line. Zar-bettu-zekigal squatted down on a sleeper, pulling at the hard metal of
the rails where another joined it; looked ahead to realize the line split. She
hastily knotted a bootlace and rose to her feet, following.

"Suppose a train came?"

"Suppose nothing of the kind!" Elish-hakku-zekigal
reached out and ruffled her hair.

Zar-bettu-zekigal jumped from sleeper to sleeper,
twofooted, grinning at the echoes coming back off the damp tunnel walls. "How
far down are we?"

"The lower levels," Plessiez replied without turning.

Elish-hakku-zekigal lengthened her stride to catch up with the Cardinal-General.
"Two things you should perhaps be aware of, your Eminence. One is that we’re being followed— No, Zar’, be quiet!"

Zar-bettu-zekigal took her hands from her pockets
and loped to walk between the black Rat and the Katayan woman.

"And the other is that your friend will have to
take us off the track soon. You can’t get there from here."

The black Rat thrust the bull’s-eye lantern at
Zar-bettu-zekigal without acknowledgment, and she caught the handle just as he
let go of it. Heat from the glass and metal warmed her hands. Holding it at
arm’s length, she saw a splinter of light: Plessiez now carried in his
onyx-ringed left hand a triangular-bladed dagger.

Speaking across her head to Elish, the black Rat
said: "Who follows?"

"I can’t tell who or what it is."

"And the rest–you know about this ‘Night Council,’ I
comprehend? And the ways to reach it? Oh, come– you’ve been in the heart of the
world how long?"

Zar-bettu-zekigal muttered a protest, winced as the older Katayan woman’s tail slapped her leg.

"She’s a shaman," she protested, ignoring Elish.
"Messire, you remember, when we came out from below last time, what we saw."

Plessiez’s upper lip wrinkled, showing white
incisors. He quickened his pace.

A coil of mist brushed Zar-bettu-zekigal. She put
her free hand up to her face, touching dampness. The metal surface of the
lantern hissed gently, evaporating moisture.

"Look." She held up the lantern.

The light cast Charnay’s shadow ahead on to a bank
of mist. Niter-webbed brick walls vanished as mist thickened into fog. The brown
Rat strode on, her lantern bobbing on its pole, becoming a globe of yellow
light.

Plessiez’s hand tightened on the hilt of his
rapier. "Well, we can’t lose her now, I suppose."

Zar-bettu-zekigal, conscious of her aching arm,
held up the bull’s-eye lantern, and took Elish’s hand again. Her nostrils
flared. Fog pearled on her dress, on the hairs on her arms; and she glanced up
at the Katayan woman, seeing the sapphire at her throat dimmed by clinging
moisture.

She stumbled, stared ahead. No tunnel walls. The
clatter of her feet vanished into the fog, echoless. Three lanterns glowed,
yellow in the mist.

"It smells strange."

The black Rat briefly looked over his shoulder and
murmured: "Sewers."

"No."

"We’re too far below ground-level for anything
else, I assure you. Charnay, woman, slow down!"

Zar-bettu-zekigal shivered, chilled. She held the
lamp and lifted her head to stare upwards, seeing nothing but fog, no tunnel
roof. She pursed her lips to whistle for echoes; her mouth too dry. The
lantern’s muffled light could not even illuminate the cinders and sleepers
underfoot.

"It smells . . . salt."

Elish-hakku-zekigal’s grip tightened.

Faint at first, on the edge of hearing, she felt
the pulse and thunder of surf. A wind stirred the fog. She tasted seaweed and
salt on her lips, pressing on faster to keep up with Charnay’s lantern; brushing
the black Rat’s shoulder as she stumbled beside him.

"The sea!"

Wind roiled the fog, moving but not shifting it.
The thunder of waves came from all quarters, the pounding of waves and the hiss
of shingle sucked back. Zar-bettu-zekigal raised her head, neck prickling to the
cold wind, searching for a lightness that would mark sky or sun. Wet air choked
her. She loosed Elish’s hand and stepped away.

"No."

A black tail coiled around her wrist, pulled. She
jerked to a halt.

"I want to see the sea!"

"No."

Ahead, the bobbing lantern slowed. She caught a
glimpse of Charnay, sword in hand, raising her snout to quest after a scent.
Plessiez and the older Katayan woman hastened their steps.

"Oh, wait, will you!" Pebbles dragged at her feet
and ankles, slid down her boots. Zar-bettu-zekigal stopped, bent, and put the
lantern down on the beach; lifting her foot and reaching for the heel of her
boot.

She froze. "Elish! El!"

Brown pebbles crunched underfoot: friable, fragile.
The lantern, standing tilted, shed illumination on the round shadow-pocked
pebbles. All of a size: no larger than a walnut.

Tiny skulls.

Ragged eye-sockets caught shadow, lamp-light.
Cranial sutures gleamed, black-thread thin; the articulate and precise joints of
jaws shone. She stared, seeing some with lower jaws, some with only upper teeth;
the ragged slits of noses. Thousand upon thousand, million upon million,
stretching out under the fog in piled banks and valleys.

Underfoot, as far back as lamp-light shone, tiny
crushed skulls marked their path. Zar-bettu-zekigal wavered, balanced on one
leg, hand still gripping the back of her left boot.

"Elish!" She wailed. "It doesn’t matter where I put
my feet, I’m going to break more of them . . ."

"I see it, little one. Keep walking."

Zar-bettu-zekigal hooked off her boot, balancing
onelegged, shook it and replaced it. She seized the lantern and lifted it. Fog
swirled about her ankles, mellowing, concealing. The slope dragged at her feet
as she ran after Elish-hakku-zekigal and the Rats.

"This place stinks," she said bitterly. "Ei,
Charnay, aren’t we there yet? How far now? Which way?"

She grabbed the brown Rat’s sword-arm, fur slick
and fog-dampened, shaking it. Charnay looked down at her.

"I forget," she confessed.

"Oh,
what
—"

Plessiez, a yard or two ahead, interrupted. "I
think we’ve arrived."

Lights shone through the fog. Zar-bettu-zekigal
plodded on over the fragile beach, refusing to look down.

The fog thinned.

Ochre and red cliffs reared up before her and to
either side; summits lost in distance. The sea echoed softly from wall to wall.
A great amphitheater of rock, in the flares of torches.

Warmth breathed from the stone, as if the sun had
only just ceased to shine and it still gave back heat. Zar-bettu-zekigal
stretched out her hands.

Hacked out of the bedrock brown granite, still part
of the cliffs, great squared thrones formed a semicircle.

Zar-bettu-zekigal bent to place the bull’s-eye
lantern at her feet. Tiny skulls crunched under her boots. She reached back
without looking, and Elish-hakku-zekigal gripped her hand. The older Katayan
came to stand at her back, setting down her lantern, folding her arms about
Zari’s chest and resting her chin on the top of her head.

Charnay drove the pole of her lantern deep into the
beach, brushing bone splinters from her fur. She straightened up.

Plessiez trod a few paces forward, past Zar-bettu-
zekigal, until he stood at the focal point of those inward- facing thrones,
lifting his head and resting his rapier back across the drying fur of his
shoulder.

"Old . . ." Elish’s chin jolted her skull as the
woman whispered. Zar-bettu-zekigal gripped her sister’s hand, pulling her arms
tighter.

Silence breathed from the stone. Silence and a
tension, the bedrock brown granite dense with aeons of geological compression.

The squared thrones jutted from living rock that
continued above them into square pillars, soaring up. She tilted her head to
follow; lost the sight in dim distance a quarter of a mile overhead. No sky.
Nothing but foundation rock below the world.

Dizzy, she dropped her gaze to the empty thrones.
Crude seats and arms and backs, smoothed not by artisans but by time.

"The carvings." Elish’s voice in her ear.

Lines marked the back of each brown granite throne,
cut with no metal tools, cut with bone and wood and stone itself. She stared up
at the human figures cut in stylized profile, the planes of muscle, the
nakedness of bodies. She faced the central throne. Raising her eyes,
Zar-bettu-zekigal followed the line of the giant figure’s chest and shoulders.
Scales marked the neck; the head not human but the head of a cobra.

She looked to the next throne, and the next. A man
with the head of a viper, a woman whose black lidless eyes shone in the head of
a python, a young man with the blunt head of a boa, a woman whose shoulders
supported the blue-and-crimson head of a coral snake . . .

Movement caught her peripheral vision; Elish’s arms
tightened; she heard Plessiez swear an oath, and Charnay grunt with
satisfaction. Color and movement. Each figure changing as her eye left it,
changing from bas-relief to solidity . . .