David Drake - Mistress of the Catacombs

Tilphosa frowned, trying to understand what he was getting at. “You see, mistress,” Cashel explained, “I’m used to people thinking I’m dumb. That’s all right.”

“No,” said Tilphosa, “it’s not. But for now let’s see if we can find something to eat.”

“Right,” said Cashel. “Let me…”

He slid his quarterstaff out from under the thwart. Stepping back from the girl, he began to spin it; slowly at first, but building speed as he worked out the kinks rowing had put in his muscles. He whirled the staff in front of him, reversing direction with a skill that only another man familiar with the heavy weapon would appreciate. He brought it over his head, then jumped and let the staff’s inertia carry his body around in a full circle.

“There,” said Cashel breathlessly. “ There !”

Tilphosa looked at him with wide eyes, the back of her right hand in her mouth. “Cashel,” she said. “That was amazing!”

“Huh?” he said. He seemed to say that a lot when he was around Tilphosa. “It wasn’t…I mean, I was just loosening up, that’s all. Anyway, let’s get going.”

He really didn’t see what the big deal was…or maybe he did, and it wasn’t flattering.

“Ah, Tilphosa?” he said. “Did you mean that it’s amazing somebody as big as me’s not clumsy?”

“No, Cashel,” the girl said. “I meant you’re as graceful as a God when you move. I thought I was…inventing memories about how you held off the sailors in the temple. But I wasn’t.”

Cashel still didn’t understand, but he had to say it made him feel good. Prince Thalemos was a lucky man; or anyway he would be, when Tilphosa finally reached him.

They walked into the city. The streets were slimy where the mud hadn’t dried yet, but gray-green slabs were cracking off east-facing walls. The stone underneath was pinkish, highly polished, and as hard as granite. The air smelled of slow death, but it wasn’t as pungent as that of salt marshes drying at neap tide.

“The river must have covered all this until just now,” Tilphosa said. She paused to duck through one of the doorways: low, narrow, and wider at the bottom than the top.

“Nothing there,” she said as she returned, still frowning. “Nothing but mud.”

“I don’t think we’re going to find anything to eat here,” Cashel said, “unless a carp maybe got stranded. We could go down the river a ways, maybe?”

Tilphosa shaded her eyes with her hand as she looked up. “East was a good way before,” she said. She smiled. “At least it was a good enough way, since you were there. I think we ought to keep on as we’ve started.”

Cashel grunted. He was glad to hear her say that, because it was pretty much what he was thinking. He didn’t have a reason to go somewhere in particular, but it seemed to him it was important that they anyway went on .

The streets twisted worse than the ones in the old part of Valles. When they met, it was always in odd numbers: generally three but sometimes as many streets as the fingers on a man’s hand. Cashel tried to keep the sun before him, but he knew he and Tilphosa were doing a lot of backtracking.

They came out into an open courtyard, different from anyplace they’d yet seen. The entrances through the circular wall, instead of being real arches, all had slanting jambs and a big stone across the top. Cashel walked into the clear space and stopped with Tilphosa at his side.

“It doesn’t feel like a ruined city,” Tilphosa said. “The walls are standing, and the edges aren’t even worn.”

“I guess the mud covered it,” Cashel said, feeling uneasy. “It would’ve weathered if it had been above ground, but buried…”

He started forward, picking the archway that seemed to go more east than the others. The streets into the courtyard all kinked, so you couldn’t see down them any distance from inside.

Tilphosa scraped her foot through the soft mud. “The plaza’s got a design carved on it, Cashel,” she said. She waggled her bare toe. “I wonder what they used it for? Whoever built the city, I mean.”

Metra stepped out of the entrance Cashel was walking toward. “The Archai built the city,” the wizard said. “They never occupied it, however. Until now.”

Archai warriors, their forearms raised, entered the courtyard from all the other entrances. Cashel lunged toward Metra, his quarterstaff outstretched like a battering ram.

Tilphosa shouted in fury rather than fear. Archai swarmed over Cashel from both sides and behind, grasping with their middle limbs instead of hacking him apart with their toothed forearms. He strained forward, but too many Archai held him; it was like trying to swim through an avalanche.

Cashel toppled sideways. He felt chitin crunch beneath his weight, but the grip of countless tiny, hard-surfaced fingers held him beyond the ability to do more than wriggle.

The Archai rolled Cashel over. He fought without any plan beyond wanting to resist whatever the creatures did. His struggles didn’t make any difference, except to prove that he wasn’t giving up.

They lashed his wrists and ankles together with fibrous ropes, then tied his wrists to his ankles. When they had him securely bound they stepped away, chirping among themselves. Cashel rolled sideways so that he could see again.

Four Archai held Tilphosa; she hadn’t been tied like Cashel. Metra watched the girl with the grin of a cat over a fish bowl. More Archai than even Garric could have counted stood around the edge of the courtyard and looked down from the surrounding wall.

“You were wondering the purpose of this courtyard, Tilphosa,” the wizard said. “It was a temple; it is a temple, now that you’ve arrived.”

“ Lady Tilphosa to you, mistress!” the girl said. Cashel had heard hissing snakes that sounded friendlier.

“I think we can dispense with titles now, Tilphosa,” Metra said; a tic at the corner of her mouth showed the insult had gotten home. “The moon will be full tonight, but you and I only have to wait for high noon.”

Metra looked down at Cashel. “While I waited…” she went on, “I performed a location spell. You had the ring all the time, didn’t you? If I’d known that…”

She shrugged and made a sound with the tip of her tongue against her palate. Two Archai bent over Cashel. He twisted, but one of them ripped his tunic cleanly with a forearm and the other clipped the silken cord which held the purse around Cashel’s neck. The Archa’s delicate, three-fingered hand passed the purse to Metra.

She took out the ring and held the tiny ruby to the light. Its facets scattered rosy blurs around the courtyard.

“Yes…” she said. “The Mistress has been waiting a very long time, but the wait is over now.”

Waiting like a spider in her web , thought Cashel; and he tugged at the ropes, but they were tight and had no more give than steel chains would.

Garric started for the corniche, tugging at the sleeve of Thalemos’ tunic to hustle him along. Vascay, his face bleak as Garric had never before seen it, was already moving. His step had a hitch in it; he hesitated each time his peg leg came down on the coarse soil.

“Wait!” cried Metron, looking up from his incantations. A litter of flaccid, bloodless animals lay at his side; his hands and ivory blade were red with the blood that hadn’t dripped onto his words of power. “Thalemos, it isn’t time yet!”

Thalemos didn’t turn at the wizard’s voice. His expression was calm, but his face was set.

“It’s time and past time, I think!” Vascay said. He poised at the edge, waiting for Garric to choose their path downward.

“This way!” said Garric from the notch where the recently fallen bank provided a steep ramp down to the sea which had undercut it. He pointed toward the rectangular shadow to the left where the catacomb lay open. He and his companions could pick their way across the slope, though they’d have to be careful not to slip into the sea.