The Barrow (7 page)

“Fucking hill people,” he muttered to no one in particular, then raised his voice to a shout. “Black-Heart! What was she chanting?”

He looked up and was surprised to see Stjepan helping Harvald disappear into a hole in the ceiling above the great bronze idol.

“She was performing a summoning,” Stjepan called down. “Something's coming. We should go.”

Guilford turned and looked out the darkened arches that had spawned this horde. They yawned black in front of him. And where before the air had been still, now he could feel an ill wind, a weird wind, from beyond the arches.

Something was in the corridor beyond.

Guilford went very pale.

“Something's coming,” he said weakly.

“Get up here!” Stjepan shouted as Harvald's boots disappeared into the ceiling. “Now. Climb, climb!”

In a sudden panic, Erim, Guilford, and Gap Tooth Tims all rushed for the great bronze idol and started to clamber up, Gap Tooth stumbling and almost falling as he tried to run. Erim reached it first and she swung up the sides of the idol quickly, barely sparing a glance at its long curved phalli as she passed it. Guilford was next, and then Gap Tooth slammed into the base of the idol last. Throwing away his heater he tried to haul himself up, but his wounded leg made climbing difficult. Guilford was surprised to find himself slowed a bit by the heavy bag of loot tied onto his back.

“Fucking help me, you bastards!” screamed Gap Tooth. Guilford looked down, and saw that Gap Tooth was having trouble, and wavered for a moment. He cursed, and looked up. Erim had stopped, almost at the top, and was looking back down at them.

“Keep going!” shouted Guilford, and he turned and dropped back down to the crook of the idol's arm. He reached down, grabbed Gap Tooth's hand and hauled him up into the idol's lap.

Erim watched this for a moment, helplessly, and then she heard Stjepan above her speaking calmly. “Erim,” he said. “You have to keep climbing. Now.” She turned back and locked eyes with him, meeting his sharp gaze, and suddenly she felt very calm and sure. She nodded, and in a short move she was the first to reach the top, and Stjepan helped pull her up and then in one smooth motion he lifted her so she could reach the trap door. She quickly pulled herself up and out.

The torches and braziers in the temple chamber started to flicker and go out as Guilford sensed rather than saw something big and dark with glistening spikes and horns slowly squeeze its way through the arches into the room. A smell hit them all then, the smell of a thousand rotting corpses, boiling sulfur, and buckets filled with fresh shit and stale semen. Guilford vomited into his mouth, the stench was so foul, and he abandoned any thoughts of trying to help Gap Tooth. He turned and tried to spring up the sides of the idol.

Stjepan could see the darkness spreading, the scattered dropped torches guttering and dimming. The darkness slowly swallowed up Gap Tooth as he scratched at the bronze idol's chest, trying to find purchase to reach the idol's shoulder with only one leg to stand on. Gap Tooth retched and started to scream, and then Stjepan couldn't see him anymore, couldn't see what was happening to him, and Stjepan was thankful for the darkness then.

Stjepan reached his hand down as Guilford reached the perch of the idol's shoulders and started to clamber up its face. The darkness in the room was almost complete, the single heatless torch atop the idol was all that was left, and it barely illuminated the two of them. Guilford looked up at Stjepan, and their hands finally locked. Stjepan could barely see his face in the waning light, and Guilford wore a look of desperation and terror, as though he knew he was spent, the fatigue of the fight and weight on his back was draining him, and then suddenly his expression changed, his grasp went soft, and his eyes went slightly glassy. Guilford gasped softly.

And then there was a wet, chewing, rending sound that Stjepan thought was just about the worst thing he'd ever heard.

Guilford's eyes rolled, watering with tears, and then finally with a last bit of will he was able to focus them on Stjepan.

“Promise me, Black-Heart,” he hissed, suddenly fierce. “Fucking swear it!”

Stjepan nodded grimly. “Seven days of prayer, to guide you to the Heavens,” he said softly. “You and yours will have it, I swear it.”

Guilford nodded, and as he looked into Stjepan's sharp eyes it occurred to him that for the first time he wasn't looking into Black-Heart's usual gaze of hate or stern judgment, but instead saw nothing but a look of love and compassion. He was surprised, and opened his mouth to say something, when he was pulled with a sudden yank right out of Stjepan's grasp and down into the darkness.

Stjepan turned and leapt, catching the edge of the trap door and pulling himself up into the ceiling just as the last torch guttered out.

When Erim finally stumbled out of the rock onto the high hillside, she gasped and sobbed and fell to her knees and crawled and rolled. She did not think she had ever been so happy to see the light of day. Her mind was mush, driven into fear and panic by the wild run through the dark, following a single torch held up by Harvald and Stjepan with his map. She didn't know how he'd found their way out, but somehow he'd managed to orient themselves on his map, and up and down stairs they'd scrambled and climbed, legs burning with the effort, and then up, and up, and up again, until finally she'd felt packed earth under her boots and she'd seen an upright sliver of bright light up ahead.

Her hands dug into dirt and peat moss, and somehow that steadied her, even though she knew that somewhere deep underneath the solid earth was hidden a chamber of horrors. She crawled to get away from the opening into the rock, seeing Stjepan and Harvald downhill a bit, also slumped to the ground, panting and heaving. Harvald was on all fours, his head buried in his chest, whispering in prayer, and she briefly wished she had a god or goddess to pray to. But there were none but the Damned that would take the likes of her, so the temple priests had assured her when she was young and they had played with her in the dark.

The sun had broken through the clouds while they were below the ground, and she leaned back on her haunches, reveling in the light and heat. She unstrapped her water bottle and brought it to her lips, the cool clean liquid tasting unbelievably sweet on her lips, in her mouth, in her throat. Harvald had slipped the copper scroll tube out of his satchel, and he was staring at it in wonder. She saw Stjepan stand and walk a few feet to face the sun, and he sank to his knees, his hands open as if in supplication.

Stjepan was Athairi, and like most of his people he was of the Old Religion, and worshipped the Queen of Heaven and her Court. He would never have uttered the Divine King prayer for the Dead. But most of the men who they'd just left behind had been brought up in the cult of the Divine King, as was the wont in most of the eastern Middle Kingdoms. And so it was a variant he uttered, the so-called Erid Prayer for the Dead, first worded by the Athairi to pray for Danian comrades who had died by their sides.

Dawn Maiden. Awaken!
Bright Star. Awaken!
Sun's Herald. Awaken!
And announce the death of
loyal servants to the Divine King!
Dread Guardians, light their way
on the Path of the Dead!
Seedré, Judge and Gatekeeper,
welcome them below, and know that they are claimed!
Islik, King in Heaven, once King on Earth!
Your servants fall to Death, your hated enemy!
King in Heaven, know their names:
Jon Pastle; Colin, son of Corwin of Loria;
Smitt, son of Heoret; Jack Porter of Vesslos;
Tims Orwed; Llew, son of Duram Tain;
Cole, son of Gable Gower;
and Guilford, son of Guy of Vesslos.
Send your bright messengers to the
place of Judgment, to claim their spirits
from the grasp of their accusers!
Bring them from Darkness
to your Heavenly Palace!
Save them from Death!

She knew without having to ask that Stjepan would utter that prayer each morning day and night for the next seven days, until either their spirits had found their way to peace in Heaven or judgment in the Underworld, or had been lost forever. She frowned.

“Cole, son of Gable?” she asked.

Stjepan looked over at her. He thought she looked exhausted, frightened, exhilarated. He smiled softly. “That was the Stick's real name,” he said.

He looked at the ground for a moment, and then stood and surveyed the horizon with his sharp gaze. He listened to the wind, to the faint jangle of unseen bells, to a song that seemed to be sung backwards. He sniffed the air, smelt wet earth and old stone, moss and scrub thickets and tree heath, and from somewhere near the hint of something dead and rotting. The sadness in him grew deeper and was joined by . . . anger? Hate? His gaze grew piercing and unsettling, as though he was a man with murder on his mind.

“Let's get going,” he said finally, and started off down the hillside. Harvald shook himself, and followed, rubbing his hands as though he was a child about to open a present.

Erim looked about, at the three of them on a sunny hillside, with ancient
menhirs
ringing the hilltop and the high range of the Manon Mole off in the distance, the blood of a dozen men splattered on her clothes to mix with dirt and mud. She suddenly thought to herself that if anyone asked her, she would say she was Stjepan's man. She shuddered in the weird, high wind, and looked back over her shoulder at the cleft in the rock.

“See you in Hell, boys,” she whispered. It was the closest thing to a prayer that she could offer. And then she turned and was off down the hillside.

Somewhere in the dark, a woman whispered, and something huge and hungry feasted and fucked.

The walls of Therapoli normally shone with a sandy, sienna color that could look like burnished gold in the right light. But in the hues of early morning before the rising of the sun, the city was just blue, as blue as the rest of the world. Erim could hear the quiet conversations of men and women in the morning gloom, waiting for the West Gates to open: farmers from the High King's Demesne, bringing fruits and grains to market; traders and tinkers, with wagons and carts piled high with barrels, sacks, and baskets; horse sellers and cattle men, pilgrims and weary travelers, all of them waiting patiently, bleary-eyed in the sleepy light of the pre-dawn hour. A donkey brayed nearby, and further away several roosters answered. From her vantage point atop her horse, a large part of the city was visible beyond the gate and walls: the crowning heights of the High King's Hall and the noble tower houses in the High Quarter, the University on its rise past the Gate of Eldyr, and then the lower parts of the city down by the docks below. She could see small, faint sparks of orange and red appearing amidst the blue where fires were being stoked. Bakeries and smithies would be the first to stir, to get their ovens and kilns hot for the workday. The Morning Star hung bright in the blue sky above the city to the east, and as these were Divine King lands the prayers she could hear to Ami the Dawn Maiden from amongst the more devout in the waiting line named the star as the Divine King's Herald.