The Dark Lord (66 page)

Torches guttered, whipped by the dying sundown wind. Thyatis stood at the top of the pit, now grown to a dozen paces wide and twice as long. The excavation revealed a pair of fluted, acanthus-topped pillars and a step buried long ago by the sand. Nervous, she bit her lower lip, watching men strain against stone. A massive granite slab closed the entrance to the tomb, but Mithridates and Vladimir leaned on a pair of iron pry bars, gleaming muscles tense with effort. The fellaheen made a crowd on the ramp, watching with trepidation. At least one was chanting nervously, making signs against ill fortune. Nicholas seemed terribly pleased with himself, caught in the excitement of opening something hidden for hundreds of years.

Mithridates grunted, a deep basso noise, and the bar in his hands began to bend, torqued beyond the ability of the iron to withstand. Vladimir braced his feet again and shoved, flat muscles rippling under a thick pelt of fur covering his back and upper arms. His effort was rewarded with a grating sound, then dust puffed from the edges of the stone door. Thyatis held her breath, fingers white on the hilt of her sword.

The slab groaned again, scraping, and then an opening appeared—dark and fathomless in the wavering light of the torches—on one side of the slab.

"That's it!" Nicholas shouted, scrambling down into the pit. He snatched up another pry bar and squeezed in, thrusting the iron into the crevice. Several of the fellaheen—seeing none of the Romans had perished so far—crept up and lent their own wiry muscle to widening the opening. After a long moment of grunting and sweat streaming from matted hair, the door rumbled to one side. All five men stepped back, grimacing. The tomb exhaled a draft of dull, dead air. Nicholas thrust a torch into the doorway.

Broad, crisply cut steps led down into darkness. Ruddy orange light revealed wall paintings in brilliant azure, umber, crimson and white—cranes and kings and delta fields thick with game birds and peasants working pumps, scythes, bellows. Nicholas stepped into the passage, reaching out with a tentative hand. His touch barely brushed the painted colors and they crumbled away to rose-colored dust, leaving only a faint memory on the smooth stone.

"Come," the Latin barked, gesturing for the fellaheen. "Bring the torches and the sled."

Mithridates and Vladimir climbed out of the pit. Thyatis caught the African's eye as he bent to lift the wooden platform with its greased rails.

"Betia?" he whispered, casting about for the little Gaul. Thyatis flashed him a quick smile, indicating the encompassing darkness with a momentary tilt of her head.

"I'll follow," Thyatis called down to Nicholas, "and watch our backs."

"Good." The Latin singled out two the fellaheen. "You and you, guard the camels."

Grinning in relief, teeth white against sun-darkened faces, the two Egyptians scrambled out of the excavation. Thyatis followed Vladimir and Mithridates down into the pit, blade now bare in her hand. The tunnel was already filled with flickering light as Nicholas and a crowd of fellaheen descended, torches and lanterns held high. She turned in the doorway, casting a wary eye at the desert, but could see nothing—not even the stars, or the late moon—beyond the torches thrust into the sandy ground. Some distance away, the camels honked and grumbled at the approach of the two men.

Frowning, the Roman woman turned and stepped lightly down into the tomb. Her neck was prickling again.
There is someone out there...
She hoped Betia would be careful.

Quiet and patient, Patik stood in the shadow of a nearby crag. A dozen yards away, torches guttered in the wind, illuminating the pit. The Persian watched with interest, a faint gleam of light sparkling in his eyes. He never failed to be intrigued by the ability of men—even experienced soldiers—to be blinded by the simple division of light and darkness. The torches were visible for miles across the desert plain, winking between the standing stones. He and his men had approached cautiously, but even the Roman watchers had remained within the circle of light, blinding themselves. Patik had no cause for complaint.

Two of the Egyptian workers approached the camels and gear piled in the lee of one of the stone pinnacles. Both of the animals were nervous, but the men—tired from a long afternoon and evening's labor—ignored their warning grunts. Amur, his armor and face blackened with soot, rose quietly from the ground as the two fellaheen passed and his scarred hand was over one mouth, his knife sawing in one neck before anyone could do anything. The other Egyptian walked two paces, then turned, curious, missing the sound of his friend's footsteps. The Persian thrust hard, driving his dagger into the man's throat. A choking, gargled cry was drowned by blood flooding from the wound and Mihr caught the body before it could fall to the ground.

"Move," Patik hissed, padding forward silently across the loose sand. Despite his size and bulk, he showed a feral gracefulness in motion. The big Persian paused at the top of the excavation. No one was in sight, not even in the tunnel mouth. Tishtrya and Asha slid down the slope at the Persian's signal, then crept into the tunnel.

"Are you ready?" Patik kept his voice low, even doubting there were any Romans within earshot. Artabanus nodded, looking a little sickly in the poor, wavering light. Patik doubted the mage had ever seen a man killed before, at least not at such close range.

"Good." The big Persian descended into the pit, finally drawing his own sword. Asha was visible, ahead, crouched in the tunnel at some kind of turning.

Allowing herself a breath of relief, Shirin raised her head from the sand. The edge of the pit was only two strides away. Echoing, the soft voices of the Persians receded into the earth. As she watched, two more Persians slipped out of the darkness, one man wiping blood from a knife on his tunic and disappeared into the excavation.

"Lovely," the Khazar woman breathed out slowly, then carefully backed away into the darkness. Beyond the circle of light thrown by the torches, only starlight picked out the tumbled stones and massive pinnacles. But this was enough for a daughter of the house of Asena. Padding softly on bare feet, Shirin circled away from the lights and the buried door. She had hoped to follow Thyatis into the tomb, but had waited—unaccountably nervous—and the sudden appearance of the Persians had almost stopped her heart with surprise.

Who else is creeping around in the darkness?
she wondered, drifting behind another towering column of sandstone. Disturbed by the thought, Shirin looked to the east, hoping for the moon to rise, but Orion was still low on the horizon and when Luna did rise, she would be thin and pale. The land among the pillars was very dark and the intermittent, wayward wind obscured as many sounds as it carried.
I have to do something,
she decided, turning back towards the tomb.
I should warn Thyatis.

A faint sparkle caught her eye as she moved back around the wall of stone. Off to her right, starlight shifted on disturbed sand. Shirin paused, looking towards the circle of torches, then back to the pale, gleaming avenue between the stones. Gritting her teeth, she darted forward, iron knife bare in her hand. Stooping over the sand, she saw the faint outline of footprints arcing away from the Roman camp. The unsettled feeling in her stomach worsened.
There is someone else out here.

Head raised, eyes straining to pierce the night, Shirin followed the tracks in a half-crouch, one hand drifting over the sand, finding the shallow wells of someone moving lightly on the earth. After a few moments she reached another towering sandstone pinnacle. Gingerly, she picked her way around the scalloped, eroded wall. The breeze fluttered, disturbing her hair, then died.

She froze. A tremendous silence filled the night, without even the whisper of the night wind to disturb the sand. Counting thudding, enormously loud heartbeats, Shirin waited. Nothing moved in the darkness. Cautiously, she resumed creeping along the stone face. Twenty steps later, she froze again. A breath of air brushed her cheek, ruffling a wayward curl.

Anticipation mounting, Shirin's fingers explored the rock, finding a narrow vertical crack. Air hissed softly from the opening.
A cave,
she realized, remembering her uncles' tales around a winter fire, very long ago.
A big one.
She pressed against the rock, fingers pressing and poking in the hollowed stone. A sharp-edged groove revealed itself to her searching fingers, then another. Frowning in the darkness, Shirin traced a half-familiar pattern.
A bow? Newly scratched in the stone?

Without thinking, she traced the sign of the Archer in the air, nodding to herself.
The Daughters must have been here recently.
Putting her shoulder against the rock, the Khazar pushed, feet slipping on the sand. There was a scraping sound, then the stone face slid away and she fell, startled, into the greater darkness beyond. A rumbling creak followed as she scrambled up from a smooth floor and the counterweighted block rotated back into place, cutting off even the faint ghost-light of the stars.

Time passed, the eroded face of the pinnacle remaining stolid and unmoving despite the faint sound of metal banging on stone. Eventually the faint noise stopped and silence settled on the sand and rock.

Some time later, the curved arm of the moon lifted above the eastern horizon, casting a pale, silvery light over the wasteland and the rocky knobs. The shadows grew deeper, though the sand glittered faintly. A figure, hunched and bent over the rippled sand, appeared in the dim radiance, creeping along Shirin's trail. After casting back and forth across the marks of her sandals, it reached the rocky face. Thick fingers, clad in burnished dark mail, examined the worn surface, poking and prodding.

A hiss of anger broke the silence. The figure drew away from the hidden door and moved back along the footsteps in the hard sand. Another shape, also cowled and shrouded, met the searcher and together they loped off towards the Roman excavation. The torches had burned down to glowing ash, which did nothing to prevent the entrance of the two wights into the tomb.

"Another dead end!" Nicholas cursed, backing up. Behind him, two of the fellaheen scrambled backwards up a sloping ramp. Their torches flared along the low ceiling, leaving washes of soot on the bare stone. Nicholas glowered at the rough-hewn stone wall closing off the end of the passage.

"Let's try the other way," Thyatis said. She was trying to hide a smile. Nicholas was covered with dust and grime from head to toe. Squinting with his bad eye, he crawled out of the square-cut opening into the larger tunnel. "There are plenty of passages to search."

"Funny," he growled. The entrance ramp had led down into a high-ceilinged gallery lined with plastered columns. Despite the excited shouts of the fellaheen, they had found nothing in the entryway but broken pottery and desiccated bits of bone and skin. Thyatis didn't think the remains were human, but she'd steered clear of the detritus anyway. "Does anyone
see anything
?"

The workers, squatting on the floor of the passage, shook their heads. Most of the men had lost their initial fear—no vengeful spirits had emerged from the painted walls to threaten them and the tomb was proving a dull succession of debris-filled rooms, rubble-strewn corridors and dead-end passages like this one. Thyatis did not respond. As before, she remained at the rear of the group, watching the passage behind them, squinting into the darkness beyond the light of their torches and listening. Sound echoed strangely in the contorted tunnels. A little while ago, there had been a clattering sound—like metal falling on stone—behind them.

"Vlad? Do you hear, see,
smell
anything?" Nicholas sounded worried and impatient.

The Walach looked up, eyes glittering in the torchlight. His beard and long hair were streaked with white dust and he looked miserable. "I smell you," he growled, "and these pitch torches. Not much else."

"All right," Nicholas sighed. "Let go back to the last junction. Vlad, you lead."

Thyatis waited, pressed against the corridor wall, while everyone reversed direction and crowded past. Mithridates brought up the rear, dragging the sled easily behind him. As he passed, Thyatis grinned at the Numidian. The wide-shouldered African smiled back, though he had to crouch to keep from striking his head on the ceiling.

Clanking and rustling, the group trooped back down the tunnel and into a junction of sloping, ramped corridors. One led up, back to the first gallery, the others went off in every direction. Over the heads of her companions, Thyatis could see Vladimir crouched in the octagonal room, casting about, nostrils flared. Nicholas, his long blade bare in his hand, was watching from the tunnel mouth. After canvassing the chamber, Vladimir paused at the bottom of a ramp trending upward.

"Someone's been this way," the Walach called, his voice echoing in the domed ceiling. "I can smell garlic, maybe, and some kind of metallic-tasting oil." Turning, he tasted the air in the other openings. "Someone passed this way too with incense, myrrh, beeswax, coriander..." He squinted down the passage. "A lamp with scented oil. Sweet."

Just in front of Thyatis, Mithridates turned, looking over his shoulder, one eyebrow raised skeptically. The Roman woman shrugged, stepping up beside the African.

"We're the first people in this tomb in hundreds of years," she whispered. "All those smells are just sitting here, undisturbed." At the same time, she felt a cold prickling, wondering just how good the Walach's eyesight was, if his sense of smell was so sharp. Sparring to pass the time on the
Paris
had already proven the barbarian was fantastically quick and strong. He didn't have the hard-won skill owned by Nicholas or Thyatis, but he could wield his long-bladed axe tirelessly.

"Are there any tracks?" Nicholas thrust his torch into the doorway of the downward ramp.

"No," Vladimir said, padding down the tunnel in a half-crouch. "The smell is getting stronger."

"Right." Nicholas followed, beckoning for the others. Most of the fellaheen followed, though two of them were peering up the other passage. Thyatis, following at the back of the group, scowled at them as she crossed the octagonal room.