Lord of the Silent Kingdom (28 page)

Osa turned pale. “I thought it was just another riot. We have to do something.”

Hecht ground his teeth. “He’s really down there?”

The boy nodded.

“Oh, damn! That is bad. We need that old man to get by. You and me both. You’re absolutely sure?”

“He went this morning. He got up way early. He said he’d figured out how to deal with what was down there. Whatever that meant. He doesn’t tell me nearly as much as you think. He left right after breakfast.

Whistling. Said he should be back in time for a late lunch.”

Hecht considered his options. And saw only one. Get De-lari out.

Osa said, “I’m going, too.” Before Hecht could demur, he whispered, “I am Sha-lug.”

He was. Yes. Before all else. And from the Vibrant Spring School.

“All right. Wear something that doesn’t make you look like a whore.”

“I’ll go change.”

Osa did so. And looked nothing like the rouged, perfumed bed bunny who shared Muniero Delari’s nights. Nor did he smell like it.

This Osa would have no trouble fading into the Brothen mob. His threadbare apparel suggested that he did so occasionally.

Osa smiled. “Part of the job, Captain. You know where we have to go. Lead on.”

Hecht wondered if Stile was taking the opportunity to unearth secrets never shared by his keeper.

They encountered traces of gray dust as they approached the baths. Inside, the staff were cleaning everything and skimming the pools.

Herrin intercepted them. “It blew in from back where nobody is supposed to go,” she explained. “Along with a lot of cold, stinky air. We can’t bathe you today.”

“Not a problem. We’re just passing through.”

Herrin’s eyes widened.

“We’re going back where nobody is supposed to go.”

“Be careful, sir. Something’s really wrong there.”

The map room was a disaster. The dust had not yet all settled there.

Osa asked, “What is this place?”

“You don’t need to know. Don’t ask questions.”

The priests and nuns had begun a halfhearted cleanup. Some just sat or stood, eyes glazed over. One sitting woman rocked steadily, hiding out in her own secret universe.

One senior priest intercepted Hecht. He spoke slowly, coughed a lot, and sniffled continuously. “You going after the Unknown?”

“Yes.”

The priest hacked. “He went through the Old Door. He hasn’t come back. We need his direction. This is a disaster. Three brothers didn’t survive.”

Not good. Hecht said, “We’ll find him. Meantime, do what he’d want done.”

“But …”

“What more, brother? Look around. What needs doing?” Hecht remained perpetually amazed that so many people would not pick up a stick unless somebody told them to do it. “You’re in charge. Get to work.” He pulled Osa along.

He could not make the speed he wanted. Hurrying raised dust, made breathing a pain. Breathing through cloth helped a little.

Hecht repeated the lamp instructions he had gotten from Principatè Delari. “I’ve only done this once.” He ought to be alone this time. Osa Stile did not need to know about the underworld. “The Principatè was adamant about these lamps. I’m sure he knew what he was talking about. We almost ran into something that had
him
shaking.”

“Probably what he came down here hunting, then.”

“What did he tell you?” Hecht examined the massive door. It had been left unbolted. Naturally. Delari wanted to come back through. A huge wind, carrying tons of dust, had blasted it wide open. It had not closed all the way again.

“Almost nothing. I couldn’t work him for anything he didn’t want to talk about.”

“Did he suspect you?”

“No. It just wasn’t any of my business.”

“Ah?”

“I’ve been less effective with Delari than you think. The association is useful, though. It opens doors.” He grinned his winning grin.

“Let’s go. Slowly. This dust may be dangerous.” Slowly was mandatory. Just stumbling on tricky footing raised choking clouds.

“This probably isn’t the smart way to do this,” Hecht said. But did not turn back.

He was surprised that he had so much emotion invested in Principatè Delari.

Avoiding deep breathing, Osa asked, “What was that place? With the old priests and nuns.”

“Ask Delari. He’ll tell you if he wants you to know.”

“You going to keep it from our masters in al-Qarn?”

“My masters in al-Qarn have abandoned me, brother.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I. But since I left Dreanger there have been at least seven attempts to kill me. Those that I could trace all led back to the Rascal.”

Osa stopped. By lamplight his wide eyes were strange, almost inhuman. “Truth?”

“Truth. And I can’t get my questions or messages through to Gordimer. So how can I help thinking that I’ve been discarded? That I keep on breaking hearts by not lying down to die?”

“But …” Osa Stile shook his head. He seemed baffled.

“There’s something bigger than me going on, too.” He told Osa about Hagid’s brutal murder. And that he had seen Bone in the Closed Ground only a few hours earlier.

“Hagid? Nassim Alizarin’s son?”

“The same.”

“That’s definitely a major mystery.”

“You really think?”

“Sarcasm isn’t necessary. That news could cause a major power shift back home. Nassim Alizarin al-Jebal had his whole soul wrapped up in his son. He hoped Hagid would become the next Marshal of the Sha-lug.”

“Knowing that, I feel more lost. There’s no way the Mountain would have sent Hagid to Calzir with the whole Chaldarean west swarming over the kingdom.”

“Calzir?”

“I saw some of my old company in al-Khazen. My guess is, they weren’t able to escape with the other Sha-lug and Lucidians.”

They were approaching the great underground cathedral. Something crashed in the darkness ahead.

Rubble surrendering to the blandishments of gravity? Or something stirring?

Both men shut up. Talking was dangerous. Who might be listening?
What
might be? The Night itself might be eavesdropping down here.

“It gets lonely,” Osa said. He said nothing more and did not need to. Hecht understood perfectly.

And Osa had been this side of the Mother Sea longer than he had.

Hecht had assumed the collapse had been into the subterranean cathedral. There could be no other voids that huge under Brothe. Could there?

Must be.

Moonlight leaked into the hall through a new gap in the overhead. Rubble lay scattered across the vast tiled floor. Bones were everywhere. A dense animal musk overlaid the odor of ancient death and modern sewage. Hecht’s earlier visit had not prepared him for what he could see even by the scant light of a partial moon.

Osa murmured, “Where did all the bones come from?”

“Ancient times. Brothe used to be a lot bigger. The early Chaldareans brought their dead down here. For centuries.”

“Some of them had some pretty weird bones.” Osa pointed at bones that were humanoid but unlike the rest. This can’t be the right place.”

“Yes.” Hecht stared at a clot of darkness. It had been just about there that he had sensed the something awful before. He felt nothing, now.

His amulet offered no warning. It was never inactive in the Chiaro Palace. He no longer noticed that low-level tickle.

Osa said, “We headed away from the hippodrome when we took that second turn. We should’ve gone the other way.”

“How could you know that? You’ve never been down here.”

“True. This is all folklore to me. But I have a perfect sense of direction.”

“Oh?” Something to keep in mind. “Lead on, then.”

Osa did so, returning to the cross passage where, he believed, they had gone astray. “The dust gets worse going this way.”

That dust made breathing miserable. The lanterns had trouble reaching far ahead. Hecht’s amulet remained quiescent, but —

He pointed, directing the strongest lamplight.

Footprints. People had passed this way.

“You good on fuel, Osa?”

“I’m fine.” Whispering. Following the tracks.

“Shall I take point?”

“I’m all right. I’ll bite them in the balls.”

Hecht let it ride. For the moment. He did draw the short sword that served as a mark of his status. It was not much of a weapon. But it was the tool he had.

His amulet began to respond to the proximity of power. Feebly. “Stop,” he whispered.

Osa froze.

“Where would we be if we were upstairs?”

“At a guess, roughly, somewhere just north of the hippodrome. Within a few hundred yards.”

A squeaky creak came from up ahead. It sounded like a huge stone sliding across other stone.

Hecht focused on his amulet.

No change there.

“What?” Osa asked.

“I’m listening.” True at a figurative level.

Principatè Delari had come down here hunting something big and wicked. Something at least as terrible as a bogon. Maybe something darker, considering his fear last time around.

That power would be wide awake and angry if Delari had stirred it up.

“I’m point, now. I insist.” Hecht eased past Stile. And wished he had a falcon rolling along behind, charged with silver and iron. “Oh.”

“What?”

“Something just occurred to me. Something I knew without fully understanding what it meant. I’m going to follow these tracks.”

He did so slowly. The stone sound came again. A chill crawled his spine. His amulet responded mildly.

There was something there, but … They came to a pile of rubble, loose stone from the passage wall.

Ages passed. The advance grew slower and slower. The dust became as much as an inch deep. Then, in a few yards, almost vanished, all blown outward.

Hecht spied a glimmer, a sliver of silvery light. It proved to be a spot of moonlight, come through a small gap high overhead. Rubble nearly blocked his path. A chamber lay beyond, dimensions indeterminate because of the collapse and lack of sufficient light.

“Obviously not the main cave-in,” Osa said.

“No. We’ll need to make a huge effort to find all the places like this. Otherwise, the city will keep falling in under us.”

“Principatè Delari,” Osa said. To keep him on task.

“Yes.” He was tired. It was past his bedtime.

He was getting old. And soft.

Life in the west was damnably seductive.

He heard that noise again. Closer. “What does that sound like?”

“Stone on stone. Or the lids of those big terra-cotta jars or grain storage.”

“You’re right. That does sound like one of those being dragged off the mouth of a jar.” Those huge pottery containers forestalled mice and rats.

“Sshh.” Hecht heard voices.

“I hear them.” In a breathless soldier’s whisper.

Hecht adjusted the shutter on his lantern till it shed almost no light. Osa did the same.

Hecht went on, thinking that he must have an affinity for the world underground. Here, now. Al-Khazen, during the Calziran Crusade. And Andesqueluz. That had been terrible. Despite there having been no living thing inside the holy mountain of the extinct cult.

His amulet tickled him as the terra-cotta on stone sound recurred.

The rattle of a small rubble slide followed.

“My point,” Osa breathed. “I’m shorter.”

Hecht yielded. Light flickered ahead, limning hip-high flows of rabble. Those had washed into what resembled a deep mine where large blocks of material had been left to support the earth overhead. There was almost no dust here. The little still in the air gave the light a pumpkin hue.

The voices were clearer but no words stood out. Hecht decided he was hearing a foreign language.

Two men were arguing. A third added a tired whine while a fourth rambled through a “Why me?”

soliloquy.

What were they doing? They could be up to no good. Not down here.

Osa stopped him with a touch. The boy set his lantern down, crept forward.

Hecht breathed hard, heart hammering. He sweated. His exposed skin grew muddy.

Stile had not lost his Sha-lug skills. Which meant there was hope for a Sha-lug captain seduced by western decadence.

Osa sank down behind a rubble sprawl. Hecht joined him, looked at six men on what might have been a tiled floor as expansive as that of the underground cathedral. Most of which was now buried. All six wore monk’s robes. Their hoods were up and their faces were concealed by cloth — because of the dust, not any desire to be sinister. Though that effect resulted.

The argument continued between two of the six. Another two kicked in randomly while a silent pair stood on the far edge of the light cast by six earthenware lamps. Those two seemed obsessively intent on something in the darkness beyond them.

Now that he could hear them clearly Hecht felt he ought to be able to understand what was being said.

He had heard that language before.

He thought he should know the voices, too.

The grinding returned. It came from beyond the silent watchers. Grumbling, the whole band surged that way, into the darkness.

“I don’t understand,” Hecht breathed to Osa. “I don’t like this.”

“They have a prisoner. It keeps trying to get away. They’re waiting for instructions. They’ve sent two messengers. There’s been no answer. The argument is over whether to send another.”

“You understand them?”

“They’re speaking a Creveldian dialect. Hard to follow but what they’re saying is pretty basic. They can’t go but they’re afraid of what will happen if they stay.”

Another heavy groan of terra-cotta.

Osa finished, “They’re Witchfinders. And they’ve caught something that won’t let them go.”

The two who entertained themselves arguing returned to the light. Which was like none Hecht had seen before. It was not just the dust that made the lamps burn an odd color.

They must do the same work as Principatè Delari’s lanterns.

And the more so when one Witchfinder removed his face covering to clear his nose by blocking one nostril while blowing through the other.

He was the man who had given Hecht dispatches for Sonsa when he and Ghort were about to sneak out of Brothe.

Osa squeezed his left arm fiercely, cautioning him against sudden movement.