The Bones of the Old Ones (Dabir and Asim) (30 page)

There were periodic breaks in the lines of shelves, wider by several feet than the space between cases. Dabir had seen this and was preparing for a leap.

My warning cry died before I voiced it, for he was already airborne. He was ever agile, as I have mentioned, and landed crouched on two feet, as though he had spent many years working as an acrobat. I frowned a little, and raced at the gap myself. The monster paced me on the right, and it may be I spent a moment too long staring at the horrible thing, because I stumbled as I landed. If it had not been for Dabir’s steadying arm I would have tumbled right over the edge.

He pointed across the aisles. “There is our way out.”

This lane between the bookcases stretched to both walls. Set in the farthest was a large wooden door. “I hope it’s unlocked.”

“Let us run a little farther on this case, then leap aisle to aisle.”

I immediately saw the merit to this plan—the monster would have farther to run, and would also lose sight of us. The flaw, of course, was that we had more leaping to do, and there would be less space to build speed. Yet what other choice did we have? I followed him twenty paces while the monster kept up with us. Then Dabir turned, quick as a rabbit, backstepped to the far edge of the case, and hurtled across the empty space. He landed almost as finely as he had on the longer jump, the spear held out in both hands before him.

I picked up my courage and followed. I landed more ably than the last time, though there was an ominous creak of timber as I hit.

“Good,” Dabir said. “Let’s keep moving!”

This we did, and we jumped between two more cases. I took Dabir’s spear as he lowered himself to the floor. The moment his boots hit the tile we heard something that sounded rather like thunder, and the ground shook.

Surely that did not bode well.

I handed him the weapons and slipped down, then Dabir and I ran for the door.

Distantly I heard shouts; closer at hand came the swift approach of huge wooden hooves on tile. The damned thing could not only see, apparently it could hear, for it had followed, and now galloped between the cases toward us.

It was only twenty lengths behind when Dabir reached the door, which fortunately opened at his hand. The monster was at my heels as I darted to safety. Dabir slammed the door closed and pressed his back to it even as a mighty echoing thump rang against the wood.

Dabir was knocked several paces back by the force of the monster’s strike against the door. I threw down the club and pressed with him against the barrier in time to feel it tremor mightily beneath my hands.

I glanced quickly to either side, and started at sight of what I first took to be men. We were surrounded by life-sized statues on stone plinths, each facing the narrow lane that led down the midst of the long rectangular room. There were dozens of them, and the twin pairs of lanterns flickering along the walls set their shadows moving in the gloom. I think I might have been even more troubled by the sight if there had not been a wooden monster with bloodstained teeth hammering on the door behind me.

“Can you hold it?” I asked Dabir.

“Hopefully,” he said. “Find something to spike the door!” He grunted with effort as there came another bang. I dashed over and briefly considered the first statue, a severe-looking young woman in a long dress. I put hands to her thigh and discovered she was crafted from wood. It pained me to dull my blade, but I hacked off the statue’s fingers and came running back.

While Dabir pressed himself to the door, I used my sword hilt to hammer the wooden digits into the narrow gap of the doorjamb. We stepped back cautiously, watching the door vibrate as the thing on the other side beat against it.

I allowed myself several deep breaths. Dabir, beside me, took in the same.

“That may hold it for a while,” he said.

“Now what?” I asked.

“Erragal. We must find him.”

We gathered up our gear and started down the aisle at the same moment the hammering started against a part of the wall behind us.

“It’s trying to smash through stone?” I asked. It struck again, and we saw a rain of masonry flakes.

“Nay,” Dabir said. “Much of the construction here is plaster designed to simulate stone. We may not have long.”

“We could set it on fire,” I pointed out as we hurried forward. It was my thought to douse it with flame from one of the lanterns as it emerged.

“Then a flaming monster with metal teeth would be trying to kill us,” Dabir pointed out. “And it might set the library on fire.”

A small hole had opened in the wall by the time we reached the door on the far side. Dabir suggested we just keep moving rather than spiking the next, and we stepped through into a narrow hallway, turned left, and almost ran into two of the snow women.

They did not face us, but were gliding up behind a short, broad-shouldered fellow in furs who wrestled one of Koury’s animated wooden men.

Dabir and I slowed momentarily in astonishment, then lifted our weapons and charged the snow women. One had started to turn as my blow disintegrated it, but I did not see its face as it died, for which I was thankful. Dabir’s spear thrust destroyed the other.

At that moment the wrestler looked over his shoulder at us. He had a dark rugged beard, matched in wildness by the tangled locks of his hair. His eyes were a soft green, almost like those of a blind man, sad somehow even as he strained to pin the arms of the wooden warrior. This construct Koury had not bothered robing, and we could clearly see the rounded elbow and ankle joints; it was decorated only by a sharp knife held in one mittenlike hand. One wooden leg was broken.

The stranger returned attention to the thing struggling in his arms. He set both hands to the arm with the weapon and bent it the wrong way so there came a gratifying crack.

Since this was no feeling creature, it did not pause in reaction, and immediately swung its other fist at the stranger’s head. He ducked just in time.

And then came a loud smash from the direction of the room we’d just quitted, and the clatter of wooden hooves.

Dabir mouthed a curse I shall not repeat, then said, panting: “It is time again to move!”

“Come, man!” I told our new ally, and Dabir and I tore down the hall, our robes flapping behind. The wild man sprinted effortlessly ahead.

“Follow me,” he said. So we did. Behind galloped the bearded bull with its grotesque, kingly head. The wooden man limped after.

“You are Enkidu,” Dabir called to the man ahead of us.

“Yes.” He halted at an unremarkable section of wall, with the monster no more than twenty paces back. At his touch a door-sized section opened silently inward. Enkidu passed through, and then Dabir and me. From this side, it looked like a solid wooden door. I grabbed the locking bar set in its back to push the door shut. Just before it closed on the jamb, the monster thrust in, sharp teeth in that wooden mouth clacking at me.

I had dueled with corpses and danced with great serpents, but the sight of that thing’s dark, dead-eyed face, its metal-tipped teeth stained with blood, chilled me and set me near to panic. The head with its gnashing teeth was caught but a short distance from my face.

“One side!” Dabir called, and as I moved away I saw he’d picked up the club. A terrific blow smashed off some of the monster’s decorative curling “hair” and sent it rattling to the floor. It pulled away and I pushed the door toward its frame, slamming down the bar.

“Hurry!” Enkidu called from up ahead. “The hall’s defenses will go off any moment!”

“Come, Asim!” Dabir handed me the club.

I did not know what Enkidu meant, but I guessed that if he was worried, I should be. I raced after Dabir, who paused only to grab the spear.

This hall was narrower than the others through which we’d moved, barely wide enough for two of us to run side by side. Lanterns lit alternating walls. Some thirty paces ahead there was a stairwell up which Enkidu was running. Behind us came a series of heavy thuds, then a loud crash. Incredibly, the wooden monster had pushed itself in, smashing the door and much of the frame to the floor. It loped after us, building speed.

Suddenly there was a ringing clatter from the rear, and I risked a glance over my shoulder to see a rain of caltrops drop from the ceiling. A heartbeat later there came the distinctive twang of bowstrings and the rattle of dozens upon dozens of shafts against the corridor floor. The wooden monster was struck with ten or twenty of them. They stood out like quills, but neither caltrops nor arrows slowed it in the least.

“Hurry!” Enkidu shouted, and I then knew fear, for the urgency in his call made it seem as though worse things would follow.

Dabir and I sprinted for the stone stair ahead and my breath came now in such loud gasps I could not hear my friend. I risked no looks behind, but I heard the sound of liquid spraying from overhead and felt a few drops of something strike one shoulder. I smelled oil.

We had just set our foot upon the bottom step when we heard a roar of flame and felt heat against our backs. We pounded up, pausing only at the first landing to both turn and see curtains of fire rain into the hallway, completely obscuring our view.

“Bismallah!” Dabir managed.

The fire crackled loudly, but we could still hear the knocking steps of the creature ascending the stone, different now with the caltrops embedded in its feet. Further above, Enkidu was shouting that there wasn’t much time.

“You mean,” I gasped to Dabir, “it gets worse?”

We forced ourselves up the steps as fast as we could. I risked another look back and saw the monster emerge from the flames, wrapped in fire. The many arrows that stood out from its body were lit on their ends like candles.

I went on, gaining the final landing a moment before Dabir. I spun to aid him just as the stairs dropped completely away. One moment Dabir was there, the next moment some twenty steps broke into pieces and dropped. By pure reflex I reached out and snagged at Dabir, missing his arm but catching hold of the spear he still clutched. His weight unbalanced me and I staggered on what had become a ledge. The leaping monster and crumbling masonry fell away into a cavernous darkness, a pit lit only by the flaming monster itself, which was still opening and closing its shining teeth when I last caught sight of it careening off a rocky vertical surface.

I dug into the grainy stone wall on my left with fingernails. This steadied me, and I grabbed out for Dabir’s sleeve. Then there came a ripping noise and I saw the whites of Dabir’s eyes as he stared up in consternation.

But Enkidu joined me then, and the two of us hauled Dabir up over the rim. My friend stumbled along the stonework until he hit the wall across from me, where he leaned, spent and panting.

“That would have been a long fall,” I said.

“Indeed,” he said, gasping. “Thank you.”

Enkidu waited a few paces on, leaning with hands upon his knees.

“Are all of Erragal’s halls like that?” I asked him.

“Only the few to his personal chambers. I used a lever to activate his protections.”

“Next time,” I said, “you should wait a moment longer.”

Enkidu let out a short, barking laugh.

“Do you know how far both groups of enemies have penetrated the palace?” Dabir asked.

Enkidu considered him with his sad eyes. This, I thought, was the strangest wizard I had ever met, for he looked like nothing so much as a gentle hermit. He smelled of wild places, and his clothes were fashioned all of dark, untanned leather and fur.

“I do not,” he answered. “I had come up the river way to seek Erragal, but before I could find him, one of Koury’s things found me.”

“And the frost women are here,” I said. “Again, both sides attack at once.”

“Do you know where Erragal is?” Dabir asked.

“He should be beyond that door.” Enkidu pointed to the rough stone against which Dabir leaned. “This is the safest of his rooms, the place to retreat when under attack.”

I saw no door anywhere close to Dabir, though I looked now for seams. We stood in a rounded space no greater than ten paces across, walls on every side, the pit behind us. A single lantern flickered in one wall, at Dabir’s right.

“He told us he was going to fight them,” Dabir said.

“Then the way is still through here,” Enkidu said after a moment of reflection. There was no other apparent choice that didn’t involve leaping into a pit.

Enkidu touched a notched recess below a bracketed torch and another silent section of wall slid away. A short flight of stairs led down to a door of burnished bronze adorned this time with the image of a huge stone bridge arching over a river alive with fishes.

Enkidu descended without hesitation and pushed open the door.

Here at last we had come upon more living beings—a handful of older men and women clothed in simple robes. They were huddled together at one end of a long room furnished comfortably with rugs, pillows, and couches.

Apparently Erragal did not trust all his chores to skeletons.

The folk started at our entrance, though they calmed before the unkempt wizard with us, whom they must have recognized.

“Have you seen your master?” Enkidu asked them.

The servants, or slaves—I was never sure which they were—told us that they had fled here when the attack begin. There followed a harrowing account of their fellows’ deaths at the hands of strange wooden beings. They spoke Arabic, and I wondered if they had been recruited from Mosul.

Enkidu pressed for more details, and Dabir crowded in, listening closely.

They finished with the servants, who seemed much more content now that they’d told their story. Some even smiled. And, indeed, when the Sebitti turned to us, I, too, felt a flush of good fellowship.

“I think I know where Erragal is,” Enkidu said. “Come with me.”

We passed then through another door, to a landing where we could follow steps up or down. Enkidu went upward. From somewhere there came a rumble that shook the ground around us.

“I hope that’s one for our side,” I said.

We climbed behind Enkidu up those old stone stairs, much like the ones I’d descended with Lydia to enter this death trap warren, then emerged finally at a landing with another dead end. Enkidu pressed a faded red stone halfway up the wall, and we were met immediately with a blast of cold air as a door-sized swath of stone swung outward. We then looked upon a darkened field of snow-topped ruins. The wind whistled and little bursts of frost danced beyond the doorway, cleverly concealed in a substantial pillar fragment. We seemed to stand at the end of what had once been a wide avenue. Half-tumbled walls and blocks of stone lay to left and right, stretching ahead of us under the starlight.