Robert Asprin - Uneasy Alliances

"Come with me," the man said, crooking his finger. The prostitute smiled and fell into step beside her suitor. They left the niche and walked down the pebbled path.

Their tread made no sound!

Almost, Dayrne leaped from his hiding place, drawing his sword. Sorcery! If he struck swiftly, the fiend might not have time to react. A clean stroke through the neck-separate the head from the body-that was the best way to kill a wizard.

But he stopped himself. That might save this lady, but what of the other missing whores? He owed it to Asphodel to try and find them. He didn't relish the task, and he cursed his own sense of loyalty. Still, he owed. There was no more to be said about it. Of one thing he was sure, though. This villain was no Raggah.

Dayrne followed the pair. Apparently, the wizard knew the park well. Shipri's grove was isolated in a little-traveled area of the Promise. The walkways were empty. They wove a careful course toward the high wall at the southeast corner. Dayrne rubbed his chin. He'd expected them to make for one of the entrances. Where could they be going?

In the very corner where the two walls joined stood one of the tallest of the park's god-sculptures. Dayrne ducked behind a shrub while the wizard and his catch approached the Father of the Ilsigi pantheon, mighty Us.

The wizard left the prostitute in the god's shadow while he went to the jointure of the walls. He put his left hand on a certain brick about shoulder high in the east face. His right found another brick in the south face at belly level. The two bricks were barely within his reach, and he strained to press them inward.

Dayme heard a grinding of stone against stone as the statue of Us moved on its base.

The wizard crooked a finger, and the prostitute went to his side. He led her down into a black crack at the idol's feet and the darkness swallowed them. Dayrne bit his lip. She'd gone like a sheep to slaughter, without protest, smiling as if she'd smoked a whole bag of krrff.

Again came that grating sound, and the pit suddenly sealed. Dayrne leaped out of his concealment and raced to the wall. Which were the right stones? He strove to remember. He was taller than the wizard, and his arms were longer. He chose a pair and pressed. Nothing happened. He tried again. Still nothing. He was sure he had the correct left-hand brick. But which was the right?

Suddenly, Us moved. Dayme thanked his own gods, stepped to the edge of the opening and looked down. A set of stone steps descended into utter blackness. He spent only an instant wishing for a lamp or a torch, then took the first step.

The air was oppressive and stale. He glanced back upward at the square of moonlight and drew a final fresh breath. He didn't take time to search for the closing mechanism, but drew his sword and began to feel his way forward, brushing one hand along the slime-slicked wall.

The tunnel led in only one direction. He'd heard rumors of such tunnels, but all reports had confined them to the Maze. Apparently the reports were wrong.

The darkness made him pause. It was worse than being blind because he knew that he could see. His eyes were wide open, shifting from side to side, straining for some object or bit of light to fasten onto. His heart thundered in his ribs. Still, he pushed on, mindful of the promise he'd made to Asphodel.

A web draped over his head. He opened his mouth, a shout rising in his throat. Barely, he choked it back, and he rubbed his sleeve over his face in a frantic haste to free himself from the sticky strands.

Now, how in hell had that damn wizard dodged that?

He crept on, all too aware of the closeness of the walls, of the weight of the earth over his head.

Then-was that a light?

He moved a little faster, careful still to make no sound. The tiny spot of light became a flame in the distance, then a sconced lamp with another just beyond it. Dayme hovered at the edge of the darkness and listened.

A low voice rode on the stagnant air. Impossible to distirguish the words, but by the rhythms and stresses, Dayme thought it some kind of chant. He saw nothing ahead, though, so pressing against the wall, he ventured on into the light.

He stopped again. A too-familiar scent wafted through the tunnel. Dayme sniffed. His brows knitted together for an instant, and he clenched the hilt of his sword.

A death smell hung in the air, the unmistakable odor of rotting flesh. Too many years in the Rankan arenas as a slave and as an auctoratus had made him familiar with that stench. Gritting his teeth, trying not to breathe too often or too deeply, he followed the scent and the voice.

A shriek ripped through the tunnel. The fine hairs on Dayme's neck rose straight up. A woman's voice! Another cry echoed after the first, then a pause, and a long series of screams and broken sobbings.

Dayme abandoned stealth and ran forward. The chant had risen to match the intensity of the screams. A mad cacophony of sound swirled around him. He ran wide-eyed and fearful, yet the fear did not stop him. It drew him, instead, until he found the entrance to a side room off the tunnel.

He realized at once the tunnel's original purpose. He was surely close to the palace by now, and this was an old escape route used in times of emergency, built by the Ilsigs, perhaps still unknown to the current Rankan occupants. The side room was full of empty weapon racks where fleeing men might once had grabbed swords before emerging aboveground in the Promise.

But not all his arena experience had prepared him for the rest of the sight.

In the light of a dozen oil lamps Dayme saw the bodies of Asphodel's missing prostitutes. They hung by their necks from metal spikes driven deep into the walls, twisted ropes biting through the bloated flesh of their throats. Plainly, though, they had been killed before they were hanged.

The first few women had merely been stabbed through the hearts. The purpled, crusted wounds showed visibly on their bare breasts. The next one had been disemboweled; the flesh of her belly had been peeled back to reveal emptiness; she looked like nothing more than a gutted fish. The mutilations grew progressively more cruel. The skin and muscle had been sliced from one, leaving the organs in full view. Another had been left relatively intact with only dark holes showing where the organs had been removed. On yet another body the visible veins and arteries had been precisely, surgically opened, making a strange and gruesome mapwork.

Blood had stained the wall a nauseating color where the corpses hung. Old puddles and rivulets of blood had dried and crusted on the floor beneath them.

Dayme reeled at the insanity of it.

He fixed his eyes on the center of the room. Bound upon a crossshaped altar a woman screamed again, her terror filling the chamber and the tunnel beyond. It was the whore he'd followed from Shipri's niche. Whatever entrancement her captor had placed upon her had faded. Her feet and wrists bled as she struggled in her ropes.

At her head stood her captor. The wizard's eyes snapped open and fixed suddenly on Dayrne. The chant died in his throat. The gleaming knife he'd brandished over the prostitute turned point first toward the gladiator, and he snatched a second dagger from a table of instruments close at hand.

Outrage smothered any thought of fear. Dayrne started across the room, raising his sword. The wizard stepped swiftly to the altar's far side, putting his victim between himself and his unexpected attacker. As he moved he brought the points of his two blades together and barked a short command in a language Dayrne didn't know.

A pain stabbed the gladiator's heart. The breath rushed from him, and he clenched his teeth. Still he forced another step forward, fighting the sudden agony. The pain struck him again, and as he took another step, yet again stronger than ever. His knees buckled; the arcane fire in his chest consumed his strength. A red tide flooded his vision. His fingers trembled with seizure on the hilt of his sword.