The Barrow (82 page)

She slid forward a step or two back toward the antechamber and the lantern on the ground behind her suddenly guttered and almost plunged the passageway into darkness. Her instincts kicked in and she turned quickly, barely in time to parry a blow to her neck from someone behind her.

She fought the figure in the semi-dark, she wasn't sure what was happening to the lantern, it was as though a strong wind was catching the flame and making it flicker and gutter, threatening to douse it, but there was no wind in the tunnel, just a dark figure, cloaked in the shadows of the passageway and lurking behind a point of flickering steel. A rapier, wielded by a trained duelist, and Erim found herself desperately giving ground against an onslaught of cuts and lunges.

And yet,
I know this pattern
, she thought suddenly. A second or two later and she had just about seen enough to know how to run the dark shadow through, when suddenly a black shape flew out of the darkness at Erim and wrapped itself around her left thigh. She looked down. It was a giant millipede, glistening black in the flickering lamplight. She could feel its many legs start to dig into her flesh, even through her flared black breeches. As it began to crawl up her leg, she jumped up and back and whirled in a panic, kicking her leg and bringing the cutting edge of her rapier down to slash at the hideous creature.

But the millipede vanished under her blow as if it had never been there, and instead the cutting edge of her rapier sliced deep through her breeches and into her own leg.

The pain was enough to distract her. A hand appeared from behind her to cover her mouth and her eyes widened in shock as she watched a foot of bloodied steel spring from her guts, her mind briefly uncomprehending as to what her eyes were seeing.

Erim screamed into the hand as the pain and sensation and knowledge of being run through gripped her tight.

Annwyn stood before the three stone biers in the chamber and stared at the bodies of three desiccated women in barbaric jewels and cloth. She ignored the large tunneled opening in the wall to her left.

“We shouldn't be here, my Lady. It is not safe here, in this place,” whispered Wilhem Price. He stood near her, his arming sword at the ready in one hand, a lantern in the other to provide his Lady with light.

“I am quite tired of being continually warned about my safety, when we stand in the middle of a wizard's barrow in the Bale Mole,” chided Annwyn softly. “None of us are safe here.”

Too Tall had taken a spot by the entrance archway into the chamber, and while he would occasionally look out into the hall he spent most of his time watching Annwyn. Leigh stood impassively holding up another lantern, and he too watched Annwyn with beady eyes. She approached the woman's body on the central cairn, and began to walk around it slowly, studying it.

“This woman was a queen, I think,” said Annwyn.

“One of Azharad's brides, I would guess,” said Leigh. “It was said by both his enemies and his allies that he loved to indulge in the flesh of beautiful young women. In more ways than one. But these women must either have pleased him greatly, then, or themselves been witches and priestesses amongst the Nameless, to avoid his cooking pots and instead receive the honor of being interred here in his barrow.” Wilhem Price looked quite queasy at that.

“Look how women would dress in so dark an age,” Annwyn said. She ran a hand over the sheer garments that were left upon the body. Thin, sheer silks with slits that exposed legs and thighs and hips, now rotting with age, tightly wound tops banded with thin rings of woven gold, high gem-set necklaces and bronze bracelets made to look like twining serpents. “So crude, so revealing. I have been cloistered for so long, but still I would sometimes hear my brothers or our knights and servants talking, and I have heard that the temple-courtesans of Dieva, Goddess of Pleasure, still wear such things . . . where her temples are allowed, that is . . .”

“Dieva and her sacred prostitutes, my ass. A whore's a whore,” muttered Too Tall.

“Watch your tongue!” hissed Wilhem Price, his face blushing a deep red. “You are in the presence of a Lady!”

“I expect for you, we are all whores, isn't that right?” Annwyn asked. As she walked around the bier, she let her robe slide open a bit, showing a bit of pale ivory leg. Too Tall chuckled at his good fortune and turned to watch her more closely while Wilhem Price swallowed nervously. She indicated the body and its garb. “Perhaps you'd like to see me wearing such barbaric things . . . dressed the ancient Queen? Or the temple whore, if you prefer.”

Too Tall grinned at that. “Queen, whore, makes no difference to me how a woman dresses,” he said. Annwyn turned and looked at him, her robe now sliding off her body almost completely, revealing her pale shoulders and shapely breasts and hips and a flat, smooth belly. The pieces of the map appeared and disappeared in her skin, and seemed to be moving most around her nipples and down her belly, as though the words and images were touching her skin from within her. Wilhem Price gawked, totally confused at what was happening. “Only thing that matters is whether she's wet and willing when she undresses,” Too Tall said. “And sometimes I guess even that don't matter all that much.”

Annwyn smiled and stepped back a bit, showing off more of her body. Too Tall took a step forward, grinning as he started loosening his doublet. Wilhem Price was frozen, his eyes darting back and forth between them.

“Willing? Oh, aye,” said Annwyn breathily.

There was a flash of steel from behind Too Tall and his head popped off and a geyser of blood shot up into the air and spattered over the ground, even reaching Wilhem Price, and the short Danian man was suddenly much shorter.

The squire turned, wide-eyed, finally freed to move by the sudden act of violence, and he swung himself protectively in front of the Lady Annwyn, lifting both his arming sword and his lantern and facing the entrance to the chamber as the twitching, headless body of Too Tall fell to the floor.

“I think indeed that I shall be willing to be the Queen of the Bale Mole,” whispered Annwyn in Wilhem Price's ear, as she slid an arm around him and pressed herself against his back.

A cowled and hooded figure stepped over the body of Too Tall. Gilgwyr slid the hood back from his face, revealing himself to the lamplight as he dragged Erim's body into the chamber behind him by the collar of her doublet. His face was marked by a strange, almost regal madness. He gave a great flourish of a bow to Annwyn and Leigh, and giggled a bit.

Her words finally registered on him and Wilhem Price looked over his shoulder at Annwyn, and when he saw her smile the squire realized instantly that he was in danger, though he could not understand for the life of him why. He freed himself from her arm and backed away from her, trying to watch all of them at once. His only exit was out the tunneled opening into the next chamber.

“My Lady?” he asked. “I . . . I don't understand what is happening.”

“Azharad will be glad that you have chosen to be his bride. So you shall replace Harvald, and now we are three again. Excellent,” Leigh said, as he stepped forward and started to approach Wilhem. “The others do not worry me, except Black-Heart.”

“Leave Stjepan to me,” said Annwyn quietly, her eyes on the squire. “We have . . . unfinished business.”

“My Lady? Please, what's happening?” Wilhem asked again.

Annwyn gave him a lurid and malevolent smile. Sword and lantern shaking, Wilhem Price whimpered and backed into the next chamber. Gilgwyr followed him in, walking slowly, his bloodied cut-and-thrust rapier in his hand, followed by Leigh.

Annwyn was the last in the chamber. She looked up, and then she stepped past Leigh, staring up at the ceiling behind Wilhem Price, her face shifting through confusion and anger and sadness until finally becoming a cruel mask of cold, hard disdain.

The squire turned and followed her gaze.

Suspended upside-down above what looked like a well was the dead, naked body of Malia Morwin, blood trickling from a dozen small wounds in her torso to drip down into the hole in the ground.

Wilhem Price opened his mouth to scream, but Gilgwyr moved first and faster.

They attacked the earth with pick and shovel and mattock, hauling dirt out of the growing, deepening pit by bucket and sack. They sang Danian folk songs, and argued over whether Aurian or Danian or Athairi women were better in bed (a short argument, actually, as everyone wound up agreeing on Athairi women). They wolfed down stale bread and nuts and dried figs, guzzled water and wine. They abandoned sect and cult and prayed for strength and endurance from any god or hero they thought might help. They prayed to Islik, King of Heaven; to his father, Illiki Helios, the Sun Bull; to Great Yhera, the Queen of Heaven; to Geniché, Queen of the Earth into which they dug; to Hathhalla, the Lioness of the Sun. They prayed to the Dragon Kings for the secrets of a dragon's strength, they prayed to Agall the First Hero for the strength he used to break the gates of Agrapios, they prayed to Ammon Agdah, the Keeper and Lord of Animals, for the strength he used to tame bulls and horses, they prayed to Yhera Fortuna and the Fates to bring them a treasure hunter's luck. And they sang some more, old songs of field and furrow, of men and sweat and labor, songs that had a touch of magic in them.

They lost track of time. And down they dug, until the bottom of the pit was almost nine feet down and the rough walls of the pit angled up almost like a funnel into the earth, almost twenty feet wide at the top. The displaced earth was piled about the walls of the circular room and formed a piled lip around the hole in the earth. And at the base of the funneled pit was an upright black iron casket, sticking up out of the earth like a pillar, now exposed to the air for the first time in almost four centuries. They had concentrated on clearing the earth from in front of the casket, so there was a bit more room on one side than on the other.

Stjepan was at the base of the pit, shoveling away a last bit of earth in front of the casket, while Godewyn and Caider worked above him on the slopes of the pit to haul up the last buckets of earth and unceremoniously dump them out on the lip. All three had stripped down to breeches and boots, their torsos and arms glistening in the flickering lamplight with sweat. Magical amulets dangled from chains and cords about their necks. Godewyn and Caider had exchanged a glance over Stjepan's nipple rings when they spotted them, but had said nothing. All three were very winded and slowing down while Arduin stood over them watching.

“Quite impressive, I think, that you have accomplished what you have,” Arduin said, quietly. “In fact, it almost seems impossible.” He surveyed the excavation from above, standing with one steel-shod foot on the raised lip of the pit and with his war sword in the crook of his couter.

“Perhaps a bit of old folk magic for you, my Lord,” said Stjepan, straightening from his last labors and trying to catch his breath as he looked up at the Aurian knight. “Maybe not as flashy as what you get from the University Magisters . . . but there's a reason farmers sing the old songs as they work in the field, and miners below the earth.” He turned back to look at the iron casket. “I . . . think we can get it open now,” breathed Stjepan. He turned and looked up at Arduin. “My Lord Arduin . . . the hammers please?”

Arduin looked annoyed but he glanced around him and spotted an open leather satchel filled with hammers and mallets and chisels and punches. He gathered up the satchel and passed it down to Caider, who brought it down to the base of the pit.

As Caider started to sort some of the tools, Godewyn refilled a pair of lanterns and set them halfway down each side of the pit to better illuminate the object of their attention. Stjepan performed a familiar ritual, though he was breathing heavily. He started to walk slowly around the upright casket. “Show us. Show us the . . .” He was so winded, he had to stop and start over.
“Show us. Show us the World. Open our eyes, and let us see what is hidden . . .”