Beyond the Pool of Stars Page 16

  “I don’t think it’s the Vanizhar,” Heltan said.

  Ivrian’s coughing rang off the stone in the tiny space, echoing loudly. If there was something here, the noise he was making would surely attract it.

  “Do you have any idea what it is?” Rendak asked. “Did your people keep crocodiles as pets or something?”

  “No.” Jekka sounded insulted. “We do not keep crocodiles as pets.”

  Mirian shifted her attention to Heltan. “The water must be connected with some outside source, or it would be stagnant. Do you know how large that source is and where it originates?”

  “I do not. Your reasoning is sound, though. Probably there are ancient grates so that unwanted animals could not enter the city, but water could. If one of those grates is broken, something may have gotten in.”

  Kalina surfaced beside her mate, patted his shoulder. The dull green light reflected brilliantly off the turquoise stones of the lizardfolk’s necklaces, as though conjuring a sympathetic glow. Mirian pushed over to check on Ivrian, who was still coughing.

  The elder Galanor was diving deeper to explore. “Keep an eye on her ladyship,” Mirian told Rendak, who nodded, fitted his mouthpiece, and ducked under the water. She addressed the others. “All right. We know there’s a predator in here. Let’s stick a little closer together. Heltan, how far do we have to go?”

  “Not too much farther. Follow me.” Heltan ducked his head and turned into the north tunnel. Jekka followed a moment later.

  “Come on, Ivrian,” Mirian said. “Breathe out before you try to breathe air, or this will happen every time.”

  “Right,” he gasped.

  It was much farther than Heltan had suggested. They swam deep into the tunnels, veering now right, now left. Heltan never hesitated, though he and the other lizardfolk rose occasionally for the necessary gulps of air. Seeing that they didn’t pause to converse, Mirian remained below, constantly scanning the passages. Twice they passed through cenotes that opened to the sky, which was a little reassuring. If they had to get out fast, at least they wouldn’t have to retrace their way through the entire maze.

  They finally arrived at a set of stairs that started in the water and led up into a soaring stone chamber. The tiny glowing, shell-like fungus grew here as well, spread out all along the sides of the wall. It cast eerie emerald light into the thick cobwebs that walled the place.

  “I hate spiders,” Rendak muttered.

  “Stay in the water for now.” Mirian stopped on the first stair above the water. Heltan paused just ahead, two down from the rim, and waited as Mirian pulled off her waterproof haversack and set it on the stair. “I don’t think there’s enough living down here for spiders to grow monstrous. But even little ones can be deadly poisonous. Heltan, are the books you seek close?”

  “They will be close,” Heltan promised.

  “Then I’ve no good way to clear these webs.” At Heltan’s inquisitive head-turn, she said, “Fire would destroy both the webs and your books.”

  Heltan gave a little coughing laugh. “Neither flame nor water will harm a Karshnaar book.”

  “What do you mean?” Mirian said. “Are they stone?”

  “My people wrote upon book cones formed of metal. Paper was unknown to them, but it would not have lasted down here in any case. Burn the webs if you wish.”

  “Oh, I wish. You’d best get back to the water for safety.”

  The lizard man seemed reluctant, but he retreated to Mirian’s side, his scales glistening from immersion.

  Setting the web ablaze proved simple. Mirian carried two wooden hafts for use as torches, along with cloth and oil, and it was the work of mere moments to prepare one, strike a spark with flint, and toss it.

  The barrier transformed into a vast sheet of flame. A blast of heat rolled over their faces. Rendak cursed in astonishment.

  Mirian had known what to expect. The surprise was the high-pitched scream and the skittering of something within the flames. A large shape blundered around inside.

  “What is that?” Ivrian whispered.

  “Let’s hope we don’t find out.” Mirian pulled her wand free and loosed her sword from its scabbard.

  Whatever it was never wandered out of the engulfing fire. Thankfully, the terrible noises stopped after the first minute. The inferno raged on, and when Mirian realized the entire expedition was almost hypnotized by the fiery destruction, she reminded Rendak to keep an eye out below. Shamefacedly, the salvager slipped his air bottle between his lips and dropped. Jekka went with him.

  A moment later she felt the stairs themselves shift beneath her, and she started, worried she’d somehow set off a trap. But the stairs remained solid, merely shaking. Her eyes then tracked instantly to the ceiling, fearful a quake had struck and the whole city would come tumbling in upon them. But the motion ceased.

  “Are earthquakes common here?” Mirian asked.

  “Not that I have been told.” Heltan’s gold-flecked eyes never stopped watching the blaze. “The fire dies at last.”

  The lizard man was right. The last of the fuel had been consumed, and darkness followed in its wake, for the flame had burned all but occasional patches of the fungus.

  “Time for glow stones,” Mirian said. There were only six in all, and she’d left one with Tokello, so she restored her cutlass and stepped out of the water with one of the rocks, commanding it to life with a single word. She saw a tiled floor worked in bright greens and blues, scorched here and there. Off to one side lay a blackened heap.

  “Kalina,” she said without looking back, “get Jekka and Rendak. Forward, Heltan?”

  “Forward.”

  They walked on, and the light from the glow stone shone on a browned pile of bones.

  Heltan glanced at the skeletal remnants. “Boggards,” he said.

  They reached a branching corridor, one lined with archways into small chambers. Heltan hesitated only a moment before veering right.

  “You’re sure?”

  “I am sure,” Heltan said. He sounded almost as though he were.

  Mirian was troubled by the darkness beyond each of the archways and the thought of what might lurk within it. Though there had apparently once been a track along both the floor and wall, just as in the underwater tunnels, other fungus had mostly taken over from the sort that glowed.

  A hundred feet on they walked around the rim of another cenote entrance, veered north down a nearly identical tunnel, and discovered a second webbed hall.

  Mirian had them stand back while she worked the same trick. This time there were no screams from inside, though Mirian counted no fewer than eight piles of bones. Some in this group Heltan identified as lizardfolk, but most were boggards.

  “Were the spiders guardians of your people?” Ivrian asked.

  “No!” Heltan turned, his voice thick with disgust. “They must have crawled in here after our enemies drove us out. We would not have allowed such horrors in a place where our hatchlings walked.”

  After another turn, Heltan stopped, hissing, and shone his light midway upon a wall. He had discovered a metal plate inscribed with lizardfolk faces. Beside it was a round opening of decorative red stone. Unlike nearly every other surface, the frame was completely devoid of decoration. That, apparently, marked it as special.

  Jekka said something in his own language to Heltan and held up one hand, as if to motion his brother back.

  Mirian stepped forward with Jekka, wand in one hand, glow stone in the other.

  Mirian quickly had the sense of a large open space. The light fell upon a floor laid in alternating veins of blue and crimson marble. She couldn’t imagine how much effort it had taken to maneuver such stone into these corridors. Her light then spilled onto a skeletal rib cage of approximately human size. She plied the beam farther and found an entire being lying across the marble, humanoid but topped with what was certainly a lizardfolk skull.

  And then Heltan said a word behind her, and gentle amber light bloomed from the cei
ling, illuminating the entirety of a vast rectangular chamber. The ceiling was tall and supported by octagonal pylons as wide around as tree trunks, each carved with the minute figures the Karshnaar artisans seemed to love. Row after row of shelving stood scattered in an almost haphazard fashion between the pillars, each stacked with black cones incised with strange glyphs and symbols.

  Between and before the shelves lay bodies—dozens upon dozens of them, each picked clean to the bone, though there was no mistaking the cause of death. Spears and axes were thrust through rib cages and embedded in skulls.

  To Mirian’s eye it looked as though the boggards and lizardfolk had met in some great battle, though she was surprised that the victor had simply left all the bodies where they lay.

  “These aren’t Karshnaar, are they?” Ivrian asked.

  “These must be the Vanizhar, who drove us out,” Kalina replied. “And they were killed in turn.”

  “Stay sharp,” Mirian said, mindful of all the shadows and potential hiding places. She glanced back at Heltan, who stood frozen, one hand depressing a red square sunken into the door frame.

  “Rendak, I want you on watch by the door. Ivrian, stick with Kalina. Alderra, you’re with Heltan. We’re all to stay in sight of at least one other group at all times. Clear?”

  The rest of the team replied in the affirmative.

  “Heltan, how long is that light spell going to last?”

  “Until we depress the panel once more.” The records keeper’s voice was tense with restrained excitement. He finally withdrew his hand and crept forward, eyes bright.

  “Do you know where to find the books you need?” Mirian asked.

  “I never knew that there would be so many…” He trailed off.

  And there were so many. As a lover of knowledge and ancient secrets, Mirian understood something of Heltan’s reverence for the shelves of black rock and the strange dark cones stacked concentrically upon them, even if she could not read them. She felt herself drawn toward the nearest shelves as a needle toward a lodestone, but resisted. She refused to be distracted until she was certain the area was secure.

  Jekka’s presence was reassuring as they walked forward together. It was strange to think how threatened she’d felt beside him only a few days earlier.

  Each bookshelf stood as high as her own head, supported by intervening struts. Their perfectly smoothed black stone was chiseled with a parade of inventive images. Lizardfolk walking, running, lying down—and sitting in contemplation of book cones.

  The hollow black cones themselves stood upon their wider ends, sometimes with five or six cones stacked together, sometimes only one or two. All were covered in tiny red glyphs.

  “By the gods,” she said. “Heltan, this is beautiful. What’s recorded here?”

  “The history of my people. The history of the world. Poems and songs and deeds and discoveries.”

  Jekka advanced past the corner of the next shelf. He stopped short with an explosive hiss, and Mirian hurried to his side.

  Here was horror of a different sort. Not a monster waiting in ambush or some trap weighted to fall, nor even a macabre battle remnant. What Jekka had found instead was a makeshift oven assembled from broken pieces of stone and a vast pile of melted slag. Nearby, a long line of carefully prepared spear lengths stood propped against the wall, ready for the dusty metal points strewn on the floor beside the oven.

  Each of those points had been manufactured from the melting of ancient books.

  When Heltan rounded the corner, he let out a strangled cry unlike any sound she’d heard from the lizardfolk. The noise brought Kalina running, Ivrian puffing to catch up. Rendak shouted to make sure everyone was all right.

  “No one’s hurt,” Mirian called back. She looked at the grief-stricken lizard man. Words failed her.

  He chattered in his own language with his wife and brother. Kalina cooed and stroked the frill along Heltan’s neck while he babbled, hands rising and falling uselessly as he contemplated the ruin.

  Fully a third to a half of the books seemed to have been torn from the central shelves, many of which had been smashed to create the oven.

  “How many books do you think were lost?” Ivrian asked. “Who could have done this?”

  She’d momentarily forgotten the writer’s own love of the written word. Of course this would affect him. “I have no idea what was destroyed,” Mirian answered sadly. “There may be no way to know. This is a loss for all the world.”

  She turned away from the lizardfolk and scanned the rest of the area.

  Alderra Galanor waited quietly to one side, like someone come to a funeral to pay respects who hadn’t known the deceased especially well. Jekka stepped away. Mirian motioned to Ivrian to go with him.

  As the writer followed the lizard man, Mirian moved to Heltan and addressed him. “Records Keeper Heltan. I grieve with you.”

  He looked up. His color had dulled almost to a gray.

  “Have you lost the books you required?” Alderra’s focused question, her precise diction, cut through to the heart of the matter and awakened Heltan’s dignity.

  The records keeper climbed to his feet and adjusted his necklace. Some of his pallor faded. “I do not yet know. It may take me a while to find what I seek.”

  “Perhaps now that you know where the books are,” Alderra continued, “you can show us the jewels.”

  Heltan’s head bobbed in agitation. “But I don’t know for certain that the books I need haven’t been destroyed, or where they are. It may take some time.”

  “How much time?” Alderra’s tone cooled.

  “We shouldn’t delay down here for long,” Mirian pointed out. “There are boggards above and scavengers below.” Not to mention something that the boggards themselves feared in the water.

  “I have no certainty how long this requires. Will require. I would like to verify the books are here first.”

  Alderra’s age showed as lines deepened around her frown. “Perhaps you can tell us where to find the jewels for ourselves.” She glanced to Mirian. “We can briefly split our forces.”

  “I’m not certain that’s wise,” Jekka said. Mirian was inclined to agree.

  “I don’t see a problem,” Alderra insisted. “Heltan’s going to be busy here for a while. How far away is this treasure vault?”

  “Not so far,” Heltan said. It seemed to Mirian that he had grabbed on tight to this suggestion. “I can describe the path for you.”

  “Lady Galanor—” Mirian began.

  “We have verified that what the lizardfolk wanted is here,” Alderra said without looking at her. “I want to verify that what we want is here.”

  Ivrian stepped forward with parchment, ink, and even his desk. Mirian hadn’t realized he’d brought that as well. “Can you draw us a map, Heltan?”

  The lizard man bobbed his head. “Yes. A map.”

  Mirian joined Ivrian beside the records keeper. Heltan’s gray-green coloring brightened as he played with the desk’s drawers and ran his hands over the dark wood. Perhaps all Karshnaar were crafters at heart. After a moment he took up the pen and dipped it into the ink that Ivrian opened for him.

  Heltan called to his brother. “Jekka, you must take them. Kalina will stay and assist me. Come. Look.”

  Jekka approached reluctantly, leaning on his staff as he peered over Heltan’s shoulder. Mirian stood on the other side while Alderra and Ivrian watched with interest.

  Heltan drew with no real facility. There were vertical lines and horizontal lines that crossed them. At least they were straight.

  Heltan pointed. “Here is the hallway outside. Follow it north past two cross points.” He pressed a green finger against a hash mark. “At a third cross point you will arrive at a water entrance. Take it to the lower crossway. Pass another cross point and turn south. Pass another cross point and turn east, then surface. You will arrive at the Chamber of Ancestors.”

  “The Chamber of Ancestors?” Ivrian repeated. “What’s
that?”

  Heltan turned his head farther back than a human could have managed. “A repository of beautiful things made by our people.”

  “And you’re certain that the jewels will still be there?” Alderra seemed focused keenly upon the money. As well she might, Mirian thought, given that it was her job to recover the jewels for the state. But it still made the aristocrat sound grasping.

  “Yes.” Heltan bobbed his head swiftly. “Now listen with care. Once you arrive, you will see a wall of Karshnaar faces. You must push in the proper sequence of stones to enter, and wait no more than a slow count of five between each depression. Anyone who fails will not live. Pay close attention.”

  “‘Will not live,’” Ivrian repeated. “How will they die?”

  “That information has not been passed down.” Heltan looked seriously up at the young man. “Consider, though, that my people designed Jekka’s staff. Such spring blades might hide within the walls. Or there may be some other danger. So you must pay attention. I wish neither my brother nor my human allies to perish.”

  Heltan then described the order of the faces, and their look. He quizzed Jekka and Mirian until he was satisfied, then handed his rudimentary map to Mirian and the desk to Ivrian.

  Mirian stared at the map, committing it to memory.

  “Well,” Alderra said with forced pleasantness. “What are we waiting for?”

  “It’s a little farther off than I’d expected.” Mirian was still uncertain. “Jekka and I will scout out the area. The rest of you—”

  “Now hold on a moment,” Alderra objected. “How are the two of you going to carry back a fortune in gems?”

  Mirian shook her head. “You’re staying here. This place is too open and exposed, and needs more warriors to protect it. Jekka and I will leave most of our supplies with you so we can carry whatever we find.”

  “I’m afraid I must insist that I accompany you,” Alderra said icily.

  Mirian’s gaze was cool. “Remember when you promised to obey me? We already know there are giant vermin and boggards down here.”

  Lady Galanor drew herself up. “Then take Rendak and Ivrian. They can help carry, and I daresay they’re stronger than I am.”