Barbara Hambly - 02 TRAVELING WITH THE DEAD

Through a gap in the houses, she saw by torchlight a man riding the box of a broken- down carriage-black-robed, gray beard streaming, waving a crucifix aloft. Men all around him raised flaming brands, clubs, the edged and pointed tools of marketplace trades. Women's voices keened like harpies.

"And part of that work," said that cool, disinterested voice in her ear, "will be to kill James and anyone else they find at the Bey's palace. If by chance Charles or Anthea are there, they will likely be imprisoned, and in no case to flee. Was your builder of refrigerators among those at the house just now?" He caught her elbow again as she stumbled, guiding her through a space between houses where a river of filth sucked at her shoes.

"Off the Tchakmakajitar Yokoussou near the Valide Han, he says. Third turning up the hill..."

"I've seen it," Ysidro said. "It was one of many I suspected, but dared not go close enough to be certain." Thin shards of moonlight blinked on shirtfront, cuffs, face, white on black, increasing her impression that she was being hastened along the insalubrious streets of Hell by a skeleton. "With any luck we shall reach the place before the mob, and-if James is in fact still alive-before the Bey decides to kill him to preserve his silence."

Asher knew he must escape or die. He'd been wakened hours earlier by gunshots in the streets, had lain listening as the sounds of horror-driven fury, the random ululation of violence, ebbed and then flared like the sullen quarreling of a drunkard who returns again and again to the wellsprings of his rage.

It was deep in the night, probably not many hours until dawn, when he heard them coming toward the house. Even in the Tientsin riots, the worst he'd known, this was the hour when such things quieted. Something, someone, was stirring them up, rousing them anew when they flagged.

And for the first time he could hear, among the confused buzzing shouts, words that he knew.

Vlokslak. Hortolak. Ordog.

They were coming to burn the House of Oleanders.

The vampires will flee, he thought.

Olumsiz Bey will kill me, rather than let me tell others what I've seen.

The spotted light of the stairway lamp still outlined the open door.

The thought of getting up appalled him. Just breathing was like being struck in the side with an ax. He rolled carefully off the divan and managed to get on his feet- achingly glad that a Turkish divan wasn't even as high as the average milking stool the floor icy under bare soles, cold breathing around his ankles and stirring the long cotton shirt that someone had put on him when they brought him upstairs. He found his clothes farther along the divan, and put them on sitting. The boots were the worst. His bandaged arm ached and the stab of his broken ribs left him breathless as he pulled them on, but he knew the streets of Constantinople and knew he'd need them.

To his enormous surprise, he made it to the door on his feet. The house below was soundless. They'd probably break in on the other side, through the crypt where the ice was delivered. If he met them in the crypt, they'd quite possibly kill him out of hand before they realized he wasn't a vampire himself.

Descending the stairs left him dizzy, but he didn't fall. The thing in the crypt hadn't been able to drink much of his blood, though a good deal had been lost. He felt desperately thirsty. Down in the courtyard the sound of the mob didn't penetrate, and it was hard to disregard the voice in the back of his mind that argued that he certainly had time to lie down on the nice, comfortable pavement and rest a little...

He took the vigil lamp from its niche and continued. In the Turkish part of the house the mob's fury sounded closer, a heavy sea surge that would stop at nothing.

The tiled room. The overgrown court. The Roman baths. The long stair and the stench of ammonia, of wet brick...

Of decay.

The leopard glimmer of the lamp suddenly outlined the dark form standing before him. The light gleamed in the citrine eyes and on the silver blade of the halberd, and Asher, leaning panting on the wall, knew he had lost.

He hadn't even the strength to turn and flee; the Bey would pull him down like a staghound a crippled fawn. Throwing the lamp would buy him seconds, but...

"God sent you," the vampire said softly. "Help me. I beg you."

He stepped forward, holding out one hand with its steel talons and winking jewels. "The others have fled. I have to get him someplace where the mob will not find him, have to get enough ice there, that he will live through the night."

In the corridor behind him, when Asher moved the lamp, he could see the wet diamond glint of ice where it showed through the oilskin in which it was wrapped. Masses of it, far more than a living man could carry. But even with a vampire's strength, he could not make it more wieldy. He couldn't carry it, and a body as well, up those twisting stairs.

"Please," the Bey said. "After that you may do as you will. I have the keys to the outer doors, you are free to go. On my honor, by the Prophet I swear it. But help me get him to safety. Please."

Asher set down the lamp. "Is he able to walk at all?"

The Bey stepped forward, some of the terrible tension lifting from the set of his shoulders, the angle of his shaven head. His snake-colored eyes seemed suddenly old, filled with the weariness of uncounted years alone. "With support, I thmk. We weigh not so heavy as living flesh."

Asher touched his arm, staying him as they edged between the ice blocks and the wall, to the silver bars that guarded the corridor to the crypts. The last time they were eye-to-eye had been here, with the Bey's claws lodged deep in his throat. Those wounds throbbed under a dressing of sticking plaster every time he spoke.

"You know it's not going to do you any good." He spoke, not in triumph, but in a kind of matter-of-fact compassion, for the creature beyond the bars was clearly beyond hope even if, by some miracle, Ernchester or some other vampire could be found to complete his transformation to the vampire state.

He half expected the same rage that, earlier in the night, had almost killed him, but the Bey only shook his head.

"If he can get through the night," he murmured. "If he can last through another day... The... transformation... of the flesh, when it takes place, is little short of miraculous. I have seen sere and aged crones return to the beauty of their girlhood once they have the power of the vampire mind. The flesh returns to the form that is in the mind. And in any case," he added, still more quietly, "though what you say may be true, I cannot leave him. He is... dear to me."

The body that the Bey brought forth from the crypt was wrapped in a sort of shroud of oiled silk, with oilskins on top of that. Still it stank, a limp and filthy thing in the tall vampire's arms, its wet black curls glistening between the bandages, its dangling fingers dripping brownish fluid. Asher flinched back from it, remembering the slimy lips mumbling at his arm, as the Bey set it on its feet beside him; his shoulders cringed from the limp arm the Bey laid over them. Then the bandaged head lolled, like a drunken man's, and the livid eyelids, almost black in the gloom, rose to show dark eyes flooded with agony, horror, and dumb pleading for relief.

The thing lived.

"He was beautiful," whispered Olumsiz Bey. He bent, gathering the corners of the oilcloth around the ice. He had laid down his silver halberd to carry the thing from the crypt, the first time Asher had seen him let it out of his hand. Now he slipped it through the knot of the oilskins, the haft where he could grip it at once. There must have been several hundred pounds of ice, but he lifted it easily, for it was only the awkwardness of it that had prevented him from bearing both it and the boy leaning, weaving drunkenly, on his shoulders. At close range the smell was suffocating, and he tried not to think about the consistency of the arm that held so desperately to his neck. He himself, with his cracked ribs sawing like broken bamboo within him, could barely keep his feet.