The Hero of Varay (28 page)

I coiled the rope and slipped it over my shoulder, ready for the next time. We were closer to the shrine than I would have guessed, about two-thirds of the way across the maze, and we were able to gain another fifty yards moving on top of the labyrinth before we had to climb down again.

“When the deck’s stacked against you, cheat,” I told the elf. I was feeling pretty smart just then.

That was before the wall fell over on us.

    My danger sense gave me just enough warning to scream “Down!” and to drop to the ground myself. It was lucky that we had stayed in the habit of remaining next to a wall at all times. The wall that fell hit the wall next to us but didn’t shatter. We were able to run to the next intersection, past the fallen section of wall, before it folded in and collapsed completely.

I looked back. The wall had not broken. There wasn’t even a crack at either end of the fifty-foot-long collapsed section. The wall had simply warped at each end, then folded lengthwise to cover the passage we had been in.

We moved on, turning left, right, then left again.

“This way to the shrine?” I asked the elf, pointing. I was trying to keep track of directions, but I wasn’t positive.

“That way,” Xayber’s son agreed.

I got the rope with the grappling hook set to throw again. I didn’t know if the same trick would work twice, but I was going to try. There was an intersection behind us, so I had more space to stretch and swing the hook. It didn’t catch the first time, but it did the second. I gave the rope a tug … and pulled the wall over. Halfway. It rested against the side of the opposite wall. We backed off and waited to see if this section would collapse the way the first had, but it didn’t. And the grapple held, so we climbed to the top and moved along the canted section to where the wall remained upright and level.

When we had level rock under our feet again, we were very nearly at the inner limit of the maze. There was one more passageway, and one more wall, between us and the temple yard. And I could see an exit in the final wall, not twenty yards to our left.

“Let’s try for it,” I said. We scrambled down from the wall and ran for the opening, still linked together. I expected the opening to close in our faces, but it didn’t. We got through and ran on far enough that a maze wall couldn’t fall on us from behind.

Then we stopped to catch our breath before the next threat, whatever it might be, turned up.

The temple yard, hundreds of acres, had carefully manicured grass, a number of rock-bounded formal gardens full of blooming flowers in a dozen colors, and many wandering pathways of gravel that was a brilliant snowy white. A hundred and fifty yards away, more or less, the shrine of the Great Earth Mother rose more than a hundred feet high, gleaming white marble without visible seams, almost blindingly reflective in the sunlight. The columns along the facade were merely half-columns attached to the main wall rather than freestanding pillars, but the effect was still reminiscent of an ancient Greek temple. Gold double doors in the middle of the wall we were facing provided the only hint of color against the white.

“The shrine of the Great Earth Mother,” the elf announced in deep, important-sounding tones.

I fought back an almost irresistible compulsion to go down on one knee to bow my head toward the shrine. Lesh also stayed on his feet, but both Harkane and Timon went down.

“Get up,” I told them quietly, and they did, but they didn’t take their eyes off of the shrine.

“The jewel will be inside?” I asked Xayber’s son.

“The right one,” he said. “Inside, in the shrine’s most secret recess. I can feel its pull now.”

The double doors swung open without any evidence of anyone touching them. Twelve soldiers marched out in double ranks. They wore leather skirts and gold chest-plates and helmets, outfits that looked Roman in design. Short swords hung at their sides, and each soldier carried a spear taller than he was.

“More defenders?” I asked quietly.

“I don’t think so,” the elf said. “These are merely their tools, created for the moment. Disposable.”

“Then let’s dispose of them,” I said. “Don’t drop your packs until we get close, though. Our supplies might disappear.”

“And be careful of me,” the elf said. “I may be able to help you if I can see what’s going on.”

Harkane looked to me, and I nodded. “Set him down so he can watch the fight when it starts,” I said.

The odds weren’t really twelve to four. Timon and Harkane together were about as effective as one fully trained, moderately experienced soldier. They worked well as a team, though, Harkane taking the brunt of any attack, Timon covering his back, making up for Harkane’s youth with his own. But even if you viewed the odds as twelve to three, or twelve to three and a half, you wouldn’t be right. The Hero of Varay isn’t just some big dumb sucker who has to do everything just with muscle. I’m not that damn big to start with, and I hope I’m not that dumb. But the Hero of Varay is, according to the advertising, invested with a certain magic that comes down from the first of the line, Vara. And the elf sword I inherited on the Isthmus of Xayber after I killed my first dragon also possessed its own potent magic. If the soldiers marching out to meet us had been everyday mortal soldiers, the odds would clearly have been heavily against them. But they weren’t common mortal grunts, and I didn’t know how to figure in whatever magic the defenders of the shrine gave them. Of course, I have trouble handicapping a horse race too, and after growing up in Kentucky, not much more than a couple of stone throws from Churchill Downs, I find that embarrassing.

Harkane and Timon started using their bows when the soldiers were eighty yards away. Scratch two pseudo-legionnaires, one with an arrow through his throat, the other with a kneecap messed up. The other ten started running silently toward us.

“Let them do the running,” I said softly. I drew Dragon’s Death, and the sword song started to work its way past my lips. We slid our packs off and got ready to meet the attack. Harkane set the elf down, facing the right way to watch the fight.

Harkane and Timon had swords, good weapons forged of low-carbon steel back in my world. I had Dragon’s Death. Lesh used a short sword in his left hand, mostly as a defensive weapon, and swung a battle-axe with his right. Although Lesh had to be closer to fifty than forty, he had stayed in top fighting condition. He didn’t tire easily, and he was
good
with his weapons, experienced and cool.

Behind us, Xayber’s son started a chant that wasn’t quite his sword song. I couldn’t tell what conjuring he was doing, but I hoped it would work.

There was nothing extraordinary about the mechanics of the fight. The spears the guards carried were wood. They couldn’t stand up to sword or battle-axe. And their swords were shorter than ours, and not just shorter than my claymore. Their body armor wasn’t enough to make up for the deficiencies of their weapons. They all went down, most terminally.

We retrieved our packs and went on to the shrine’s entrance.

“What’s next? This eunuch you were talking about?” I asked our elf.

“Perhaps,” he replied, “or there may be other surprises. The building may have its own traps for unwelcome visitors.”

The golden doors had remained open, so we didn’t have to worry about picking locks or breaking the doors down. We walked right in and stopped just inside.

The inside of the shrine was brightly lit even though there were neither lamps nor skylights—no apparent source for the illumination. Columns ran along all four sides of the hall, different kinds of columns—round, square, fluted, smooth—setting off the outer portion of the building as a series of aisles, like the side sections of a cathedral. The central part of the shrine was one immense chamber, at least sixty feet high, one hundred and twenty wide, and maybe three hundred long … the size of a football field. The ceiling was a complex vault, but there were no central pillars to support that expanse. It was impressive.

“You could get a Super Bowl crowd in here,” I mumbled, more to myself than to my companions. I cleared my throat, then asked, “Where’s the jewel?” louder.

“Below us,” the elf said. “It’s in a basement or vault, something of that nature.”

“You have any idea where the stairs are?” I asked, hoping that there
were
stairs. We weren’t equipped to mine our way through a marble floor.

Xayber’s son closed his eyes and took what seemed to be quite a time considering that. When he opened his eyes, he said, “It feels like there are several passages to the lower levels, but I can’t tell which leads to the repository. In here, the magic of the defenders is much stronger than my own.”

“Another maze?”

“In effect.” If he still had shoulders under his head, I’m sure he would have shrugged them.

“Booby traps or just blind alleys?” I don’t know how the translation magic rendered those terms in the elf’s language, but he didn’t hesitate.

“I can’t tell. There is danger everywhere within these walls.”

I already knew
that
much.

It was time for another mental coin flip. We went left, clockwise, staying out in the aisle area that girded the huge central chamber. There were echoes, and echoes of echoes, as we walked. Whenever a blade scraped against wall or column, the clang seemed magnified in the distance. It wouldn’t take a supernatural talent to know that we were there. There were a lot of doorways off to the side. Most led to small side rooms. Some led to stairways, up or down, most of them up. The side rooms weren’t nearly as high as the aisles or the central chamber. The building was a rectangular block on the outside, so there was a lot of room above us on the sides, maybe as many as eight or ten floors’ worth.

We checked eight doors before we found the first stairway leading down. The stairway was as brightly lit as the rest of the shrine, still without any visible source. We went down forty-three steps before we reached the bottom, and three more doors. Xayber’s son didn’t have any certain feelings about which, if any, of the doors might lead us to the jewel, so I started with the right-hand door. It led to more stairs, down another thirty steps.

“It’s above us now,” the elf said when we reached the bottom. “Unless there’s another stairway, or a ramp, leading up, this is the wrong way.”

There was a long corridor at the bottom, with a number of doors on either side. We opened each door. Some led to sleeping rooms—no beds, but with cushions and blankets on the floors. There were other rooms that seemed intended for people to spend waking time in. The corridor had a blind end, maybe halfway across the shrine, so we retraced our steps, went back up the lower flight of stairs, and tried the middle door. There was just a single room leading off of it, as bare as could be. Xayber’s son said that the jewel couldn’t be in there. It still felt too far away.

When we tried the third door, my danger sense went off the scale, completely berserk, and I couldn’t see the threat. Neither could the elf.

“The jewel isn’t in there,” he said. “I am certain of that.”

That was a relief. And no, I didn’t have the slightest urge to go in and find out what the terrible danger in that room was. I may be a certified Hero, but I am not a certified idiot.

We went back up to the main level and continued our circuit. A little farther on, we found another stairway leading down and took it. This one turned out to be as fruitless as the first. All we did was lose time.

On the way back up those stairs, Xayber’s son shouted, “Stop!”

We stopped and waited for his explanation, looking around, weapons out, ready to meet any threat.

“The jewel has moved,” the elf said. “It is above us now, on the main level of the shrine.”

“Someone has moved it, you mean,” I said.

“It can only be a defender, the Great Earth Mother’s eunuch,” the elf said.

“Found hisself one ball, has he?” Lesh said, trying to make a joke. Nobody laughed.

We got back to the main level and moved toward the large central chamber. As I moved around one column, I saw the defender standing in the middle of the room, with all that elbow room around and above him.

The Great Earth Mother’s eunuch needed all the room he could get. He was one big sucker, twelve feet tall and six times my weight—at least. He had a sword in each hand that made my claymore look like a toothpick. A gold chain hung around his neck with a brilliant ruby hanging from that.

“The ruby is the right ball of the Great Earth Mother,” the elf said.

“That figures,” I mumbled.

“All you have to do is take it off his dead body.”

“I thought he was immortal,” I said, sliding off my pack and drawing my sword again, while my companions made their own preparations.

“As far as I know,” Xayber’s son said, “he is.”

15
The Magnet

I could hardly avoid the thought:
One of these days I’m going to run into an immortal who really is, and I’ll be up shit creek when I do
. Elves were supposed to be immortal, but I had watched one die after a run-in with a dragon and I had lopped the head off of another elf—who might or might not actually be dead, depending on your definition; he was certainly talkative enough yet. Dragons were also supposed to be immortal. At least, they were allegedly unkillable by mortals. But I had finished off the one who killed the elf warrior, then another one that had been imported by the Dorthini wizard to do me in. Neither immortality was absolute, and if that seems to stretch the definition, I can’t help it. Fairy and the buffer zone run by their own mutable rules of logic and semantics.

The big eunuch waiting for me was supposed to be immortal. Maybe he was no more immortal than dragons or elves, but after all, the eunuch was alleged to be a special creation of the Great Earth Mother, engineered specifically to safeguard one of her two most prized possessions.

He was naked but for the swords in his hands and the ruby hanging on his chest. He was totally hairless and had skin that was almost pumpkin orange. Twelve feet tall, he had to weigh more than a half ton, and very little of it looked like fat. His legs were the size of my torso. He had been very thoroughly emasculated. Not only had his testicles and scrotum been removed, he had been left with only a tiny stub of a penis. He was made eunuch, not born that way. The scars were obvious and a vivid red. His breasts were enlarged, his eyes nearly an albino pink. He looked angry. I bet he was that way all the time.