David Drake - Master of the Cauldron

"It's worth less than the kingdom's safety," Garric said. He was repeatedly amazed at the way people saw themselves at the center of the universe. "As is my life. Take us to Dipsas and I'll make you a palace gardener in Valles if you're looking for safety."

"Go," Liane said crisply. "We may not have much time."

The spy led them into the north wing of the palace at a trot. Servants with frightened expressions squeezed into wall niches or stared at the running soldiers through doors that were barely ajar.

"Her suite's to the left of the corridor," Estin said. He appeared to have gotten over his anger at being identified in public; that, or it'd been put on to begin with. "The Earl's suite's across from it. There, the one covered in blue leather."

The door was set in an ornamental frame like the entrance to a miniature temple. No soldiers were guarding it, but it'd been barred from the inside.

Garric stepped back to kick the panel. Attaper touched his shoulder and said, "A job for boots, your highness. Attarus, on three. One, two-"

Father and son raised their hobnailed right feet together.

"Three!" and they smashed the door open in splinters and torn leather facings. Estin slipped through behind the Blood Eagles with Garric and Liane following closely. The remainder of the squad brought up the rear.

A few of the Blood Eagles carried javelins. Garric and the others had drawn their swords.

The ground level was a reception area and servant's quarters; Balila's bedroom and intimate chambers would be up the stairs. A maid in silk tunics knelt over a chair seat with her face in her arms, weeping in terror.

"Through to the back," the spy said. "The entrance is in Dipsas' quarters, and you can bet nobody but her and her mistress gothere."

He slid open a black velvet curtain. Attaper reached past left-handed and tore the hanging off its rod, then flung it to the side. There was a second curtain just inside the first. Estin wasn't able to tear it free, but again Attaper did.

The windows of Dipsas' room were shuttered. The only light was from a lamp of scented oil. Rugs piled in the center of the room must serve as a bed. The only other furnishing was a tall cabinet standing in a corner.

"The entrance is through that!" Estin said, pointing. Garric jerked it open. The cabinet had hidden brick steps leading downward.

"Wait!" said Liane, who'd pulled a pair of rushlights from her case. She held one in the lamp till the waxed pith ignited into pale yellow flame. She stepped to Garric's side and smiled, saying, "Now we can go."

They started down the stairs. Garric was a step ahead with his sword forward, but Liane stayed close to give him the benefit of her fluttering light. Estin from immediately behind said, "We go right in the passage at the bottom."

"Your highness-" said Attaper.

"I've been here before," Garric said. "Just not by the short route. I belong in front."

"With all respect, you donot belong in front," Attaper said in a tired voice. "But I won't knock you over the head and drag you out of here, so I've got to live with your bad decision. Your highness."

"He's right," chuckled Carus. "But so are you, lad. These aren't times for a king who thinks about ways he could hang back. If there ever was that kind of time."

They reached the passage, an interior hallway that survived from the building that'd been here a thousand years before. There were niches for decorative objects, but all had been removed except an alabaster urn that lay broken on the floor. There must have been people in every age prowling these tunnels, for loot or simply curiosity.

"Dipsas might've been told about the chamber below," Garric murmured. "Instead of searching it out herself."

"I wonder if we can block this up?" Liane said. Then, regretfully, she added, "I don't suppose so. There's just too much of it."

"Left at the end," Estin said. "And watch it, it's steep."

At the bottom of a natural cleft, Liane lit her second rushlight some moments before the first crumbled to orange embers. They went on, more quickly now because Garric recognized the route. In the darkness to the left was the way he and Liane had taken from their bedroom the previous night.

"I hear something," Attaper said quietly. "Voices, or…"

"Yes," said Garric. "I hear it too."

He couldn't make out the words, but there were two voices. One was the deep rumble that he'd heard when they entered the caverns before, the sound that hadn't come from anybody present in the vault. The other was high-pitched and scarcely human. It shrieked words in counterpoint to the thunder of the deep voice.

"By the Lady!" said a soldier farther back in the column. "By theLady!"

Occasionally Balila's pet screamed. The bird didn't like this business any better than Garric did…

Violet light quivered through the vault's egg-shaped opening. Garric had seen hints of it before, but he'd told himself that it'd been his eyes tricking him in the near darkness.

He glanced over his shoulder. "Master Estin," he said, "you can go back now if you like. I'll see to it that you're compensated for the dangers we've subjected you to."

"I'll see it through," the spy said. He didn't have a weapon. "I'll make sure you get back so you can take care of that compensation."

Garric shrugged. He crouched at the opening and looked through. Attaper moved Liane back with his arm and knelt beside Garric. He swore softly.

A lamp burned from a niche in the sidewall, but a violet shimmer filled the air itself. It trembled as the bass voice thundered words of power.

The great bird paced back and forth at the rear of the chamber, opening and closing its hooked beak. The horny edges clopped together, but the bird had ceased to scream. Its eyes flashed with rage.

Balila and Dipsas stood on opposite sides of a circle chalked on the vault's basalt floor. In the center, hanging by his blond hair from a tripod made of wooden poles, was Balila's cherub. He still wore his gilt wings. When the bass voice ceased its thunder, the boy's lips began to shriek a response in a high treble. As he spoke, his dangling body rotated slowly.

"They're demons," Liane whispered. "They're not human to do that to a child!"

"We'll end it now," Garric said, forcing the words out past the thick anger in his throat. He stepped through the opening, his sword before him. Dipsas had information which would be of value to the kingdom, but in his heart Garric knew that nothing the wizard could say would please him as much as the knowledge he'd rid the world of her.

The boy continued to swing and chant, but both women turned to face Garric. The air was alive with swirling phantoms, coalescing in the edges of his vision but never directly where he looked.

"That's enough!" Garric said, raising his sword.

Dipsas pointed her athame at his chest and shouted, "Temenos!"

Garric tried to take one further step to bring the wizard's throat within reach of his steel. He couldn't move. The word bound him in violet light.

"Sanbetha rayabuoa!" the bass voice and the cherub chorused together. Dipsas broke into cackling triumph.

The vault's basalt floor cracked across the middle. The halves tilted upward, knocking over the tripod and making the women stumble backward. Things as pale as the mushrooms growing on corpses began to crawl up through the cracks.

The wizard's laughter changed to a scream as one of the things grabbed her ankle.

Garric was deaf and frozen in a world of purple light. He couldn't swing his sword or blink, and his heart had stopped beating. He was fully aware of what was happening in the vault. Not happy about it, but aware.

The creatures crawling through the crack in the rock looked as though a child had tried to mold men out of clay. They were hideous, maggot-pale travesties. As many had three limbs or six as had four. Some were headless, their eyes and mouth gaping from their chest; one hopped on a single leg and held an edged stone paddle in its single hand. Yet clearly, and most horrible of all, they'd been meant to be human.