P. Hodgell - The Sea of Time

The short scholar laughed. “When has Caldane ever thought through any of his grand schemes? My guess is that he talked some of this over with his uncle, then went off on his own. Corrudin would never support something so half-witted.”

“Good hunting, then,” said Ashe. “We go . . . to find Index.”

They continued down the stair. At its foot lay a great hall roughly hewn out of bedrock by Hathiri masons with Mount Alban’s main gate at the far western end. Shapes with torches moved around before it, casting gigantic shadows. On the other side of the hall was the door that led down to Index’s herb shed. It stood open. Kirien and Ashe paused by it, listening. Voices rose from below, and glass shattered.

“Who’s mucking about in my shed?” demanded a shrill voice behind them, and there stood Index, gray beard abristle, eyes glaring with outrage. “No, I won’t be quiet! Let go of me!”

They hustled him away from the door, still expostulating, and across the hall, but others had heard his sharp protests. Voices called from below and feet thundered up the stairs. The guards at the door came running, their shadows leaping before them.

“Quick,” said Ashe.

She led them back up into the wooden maze, but soon left the twisting stair for a murky, narrow hallway. This ended at an iron-bound door set in the college’s eastern wall, against the rock face. Ashe parted a slit in her robe. Underneath was a corresponding sword slice in her skin. The edges of the old wound were shriveled and bloodless. Under them, hard against a rib, was the outline of a key. This she fished out as if from an inner pocket.

“I am going . . . to take Index . . . out of Mount Alban . . . for safekeeping,” she said as she fitted the key into the rusty lock and turned it with effort. “You . . . stay here.”

“But, Ashe . . .”

“No.” Death-dulled eyes peered at Kirien from under the shadow of the singer’s hood. “You . . . will be safer . . . with Caldane . . . if he catches you.”

She forced open the door. Beyond was a tunnel ending in dim light.

“I don’t understand.”

Voices called to each other behind her in the maze. The Caineron were casting about for traces of the fugitives. Ashe pushed a protesting Index through the door and followed him.

“If you really . . . want to help,” she said through the crack as she pulled the door shut, “lead them away.”

The lock reengaged with a clunk of gears behind her.

Kirien was left standing in the hallway, surrounded by Mount Alban’s interior gloom. What in Perimal’s name . . . ?

A faint glimmer on the floor caught her eye. Ashe had tried to slip the key back into its hidden pouch of skin, but it had fallen through. Kirien picked it up and fingered its ornate wards. Should she? What would Jame do? She rarely found herself in the sort of situation that came so readily to the Knorth Lordan, except when Jame was present. That kind of thing was a bit too dramatic for her taste and, she thought, it called for different skills than those possessed by even a talented scrollswoman. But scholars were always curious, and so was she. At the very least, she should open the door since Ashe had just accidentally locked herself and Index out of the college.

Kirien inserted the key and carefully turned it. It worked more easily for her than it had for Ashe, perhaps because the singer had knocked off some of the rust. The door swung open with only a muffled protest. Beyond, at the end of a tunnel cut through living rock, was a wall of drifting mist, lit from above. Kirien had never considered what lay behind the college, assuming it would only be more stone. This seemed to be a cavity in the cliff, open at the top. She edged forward, stopping with a gasp as her foot came down half over the edge of an abyss. A pebble, kicked forward, fell and went on falling, it seemed, forever. Where had Ashe and Index gone? To the left, she heard their muffled voices. Index was still protesting.

Kirien felt along the wall with hand and foot. The latter detected a ledge, which became a narrow path. She edged out onto it. Once started, it seemed impossible to turn back, although the way sometimes slanted downward into emptiness and sometimes the stone wall bulged. More pebbles rolled underfoot, causing her to gasp and clutch at the rock face. The voices drew nearer.

“You’ve wrenched me away from my proper station,” Index was saying. “For my own safety, eh? Well and good. Ancestors know, though, what damage those louts are doing in the meantime. So I’m calling in all my barter chips with you, haunt. For the answers to two questions.”

Kirien’s hand groped around the edge of an opening. A side cave, she thought, and pulled herself toward it.

Down three stone steps, Ashe and Index confronted each other in a small, stony chamber lit by a torch held by the singer. At the back of it was an iron door, scabrous with rust, toward which Index gestured.

“Now, where exactly are we, and what’s behind that door?”

“That,” said Ashe, “is no concern . . . of yours.”

“I’m still asking. D’you want to be declared a cheat?”

For a scrollswoman, that was almost as bad as being called a liar. No one would ever barter information with Ashe again.

“You . . . are being unreasonable.”

Kirien thought so too. The old scholar was acting like a petulant child; his will thwarted in one direction, he was striking out in another. She wondered, for the first time, if he was going soft with age.

“This . . . is a secret prison,” said Ashe. “Bashtiri masons created it. Kendar builders found it. As for what it contains . . .”

The singer’s bony fingers touched her side, then groped futilely at it.

Kirien stepped forward into the light. “This is what you lost,” she said, extending the key.

“Ha!” Index snatched it from her. “Now we’ll see!”

He scurried over to the door and thrust the key into the lock. As he turned it, Ashe dropped the torch and grabbed him around the waist. She wrestled him away, but he clung to the handle and pulled the door open on screeching hinges as he went.

Light flickered across the floor inside. With a chitinous rustle, its surface seemed to split open as a carpet of black beetles seethed back into the shadows. Index craned to look.

“There’s a table in there,” he said, “and something on it. A book and a knife, both white. Sort of.”

He moved to investigate, but Ashe restrained him.

“You fool . . . stand still.”

She placed herself between the other two scholars and the open door, facing it, gripping her staff.

Ahhhhh . . . breathed the darkness.

Kirien thought she saw a figure standing in the shadows, slightly bent under the low ceiling. It looked over its shoulder at her—the crescent of a face with a silver-gray eye, a high cheekbone, and thin lips that twitched into a smile.

Ahhhh . . . ha, ha, ha . . .

It turned and advanced. Its eyes reflected the flickering light of the fallen torch. Kirien retreated a pace, still staring. The thing looked like Torisen before he had grown a beard, but with an obscene twist to its features. The three upward leading steps were behind her. She tripped over them and fell, sprawling.

Ha . . . ha . . . ha . . .

It ducked its head under the lintel and stepped into the antechamber, drawing the darkness behind it in a train of seething shadows, as if the noisome room it had just left was turning inside out. It raised a pale face masked with the fluttering wings of moths. Its smile spread and split open the lower half of its face. White teeth writhed . . . no, maggots. A mouth full of them.

Ashe snatched up the guttering torch and thrust it into the creature’s face. Moths ignited. Beetles popped in the heat and stank. It fell back a step as incandescent cracks opened across its face and chest. Then it surged forward again with a hiss.