The Gods Return (26 page)

He settled himself onto his belly, his limbs drawn up under him. "They treated me well—except for the lack of intellectual companionship, of course. But they more than got value from my association with them. I owe them nothing, Princess, so you needn't feel that you've harmed them because I've decided to associate with you instead."

"I beg your pardon?" Sharina said sharply. She got up, rocking the bed on its rope suspension.

Burne waited till the bed had stilled before sitting up on his haunches. "Yes, I'm joining you now," he said. "I won't pretend that I don't have my own reasons for doing so, just as I preferred the mountebanks to living with rats. Other rats. There's a difficult time coming for this world, and I suspect that there'll be more safety with you than there will be anywhere else."

He groomed his right whiskers again and added, "In the long run, of course. The immediate future is likely to become unpleasantly exciting."

On a silver tray by the bedside was an earthenware jar with a tumbler upended over its neck. Though the tumbler was glazed, the jar itself was not; water wept through the sides, cooling the remaining contents. Sharina filled the tumbler and drank.

"I'm rather thirsty myself," the rat said pointedly.

Sharina paused.
If I were home in Barca's Hamlet and found a rat in my bedroom, I'd have
—

But Barca's Hamlet wasn't home any more, and even when Sharina was an inn-servant she'd probably have hesitated before trying to crush a
talking
rat. She grinned.
I
hope
I'd have had that much sense
, she thought.

She poured a little water into the tray. It wasn't perfectly flat, so a shallow pool formed along one raised edge. "All right," she said.

Burne hopped from the pillow to the table. He bent, his tongue lapping quickly but his bright black eyes still focused on Sharina.

"You'll find me good company," he said, raising his head again, "as well as being useful. For example—"

Burne shot up from the bedside table, rattling the tray with the suddenness of his leap. Sharina jerked back instinctively, but the rat struck the wall more than arm's length from her and dropped to the floor. Gripped in its forepaws was a finger-long scorpion.

The chisel teeth made a quick snap, shearing off the sting. His paws shifted their grip; the teeth clicked twice more, nipping the scorpion's pincers.

"One this size isn't really dangerous," Burne said conversationally, "but it can send information to places we'd prefer should remain ignorant."

He began eating the scorpion, starting at the head; bits of black chitin sprinkled the marble floor around him. He paused, cleaning his muzzle with his long tongue. "Useful, as I told you," he said.

Sharina giggled. She supposed it was reaction. She sheathed the big knife for the second time tonight.

"All right, Master Burne," she said. "Though I
will
make a payment to your former, well, associates. A considerable payment."

She giggled again. The scorpion's tail fell from the rat's jaws. It was still twitching.

"I can see," Sharina said, "that you're not going to be expensive to feed."

"
Barak knephi
. . . ," said Brincisa, kneeling before a basalt nodule originally the size of a child's skull but now split in half. The hollow interior was lined with amethyst crystals. She used it instead of drawing a figure like most of the wizards that Ilna had watched. "
Baricha!
"

Instead of a flash of wizardlight, a bluish haze spread from the nodule in all directions. It was as faint as the sheen of moonlight on nacre; Ilna saw only the boundary between light and non-light, moving outward at the speed of a man running. It vanished through the walls of the workroom

She felt only a faint tingle when the light passed through her body, and even that might have been the expectation that she
ought
to feel something. Ingens stood facing an alcove so that he wouldn't accidentally catch a glimpse of what Brincisa was doing. He didn't react at all to the haze; he probably didn't see it.

The wizard rose to her feet, then paused with her eyes closed and swayed. "No no," she said sharply when Ilna reached out to support her. "I'm all right. Come, the effect should last till dawn, but we don't know how long our business with the tomb will take. Master Ingens, bring the rope."

Ilna nodded curtly. She found Brincisa's manner brusque and unpleasant, which would amuse her former neighbors in Barca's Hamlet. On the other hand, Brincisa was commendably businesslike and obviously skilled in her arts. Perhaps Ilna's distaste was simply a matter of like being repelled by like. Though—

Ilna had eventually broken the link to the powers of Hell from which she'd gained her skills. Brincisa may well have had the same teachers; but if so, Ilna doubted that she'd turned her back on them.

Brincisa led the way down the stairs. Until she got to the first landing the wizard used the railing for half her support, but she had full control of her balance from then on.

A dark-clad servant waited in the entranceway. Ilna expected him to open the street door for them, but instead the man remained where he was. As they passed, she realized that the servant's eyes were open and staring: he'd been paralyzed by the incantation.

The full moon lighted the path up the bluff. Ilna wondered if the moon's phase had anything to do with the other business that was going on, but Brincisa was the only person who would know. Brincisa would say no more than what suited her—and would be pleased that Ilna was concerned.

Which she was, of course. She wasn't afraid to die, and she wasn't worried about meeting the test that waited for her in the tomb. Ilna didn't think she was arrogant, but she believed down to the marrow of her bones that she would succeed at any task having to do with fiber or fabric.

The night was silent except for the rustle of breezes through the needles of pine trees clinging to the rock. Their feet scraped on the path, and sometimes Ingens grunted from the burden of the coil of rope; those were the only animal sounds.

The
uncertainty
of what Ilna was facing—they were facing; she and the secretary were together in this at least—was what disturbed her. As they climbed, her fingers played with patterns: some that would guide her, and others that would deal with threats they might face.

As quickly as she'd tied one, she picked it out and started another; they only occupied her fingers. The answer would come, but it wouldn't come that way.

"Here," said Brincisa. They'd reached the top of the bluff. "We'll roll back the stone first. Ingens, set the rope by the post. You can tie it later."

Two guards sat by a fire which had sunk to a pile of white ash and the ends of billets smoldering around it. The men were as stiff and mute as Brincisa's servant. A spear, a wicker shield, and an iron cap sat on the ground behind either man, but their real purpose here was the large bronze bell hanging from a yoke nearby. A stroke on the bell with the mallet beside it or even a flailing hand would rouse the whole town to deal with tomb robbers.

The silence made Ilna uncomfortable. Unlike her brother she didn't think much about nature, but its chorus was a constant backdrop to night in a hamlet: birds calling and rattling their flight feathers, the varied trills of insects, and frogs making every sound from the boom of a bullfrog to narrow-mouthed toads bleating like a herd of miniature sheep.

Brincisa's wizardry had stilled all that. Though Ilna didn't particularly care for the sounds, she disliked being without them.

The stone closing the entrance wasn't a slab as Ilna had assumed. It was a roller as long as she was tall, a large version of the querns women used in villages that didn't have watermills to grind grain.

It was limestone like the hill beneath it, pierced through the center so that the thick hardwood pole sticking out on either end acted as a handle for the men moving it to and fro. A fist-sized rock waited on either side to chock the tomb open while bodies were being lowered into the cave.

"We have to move that by ourselves?" Ingens said doubtfully.

"We'll manage," said Ilna curtly as she eyed the situation. Ingens probably hoped that Brincisa would use an incantation to open the tomb. Very probably the wizard could've done that if necessary, but Ilna knew that wizardry was better left for matters which nothing else could accomplish. Physical effort was less draining for any task that you could do either way.

Brincisa turned to the stone roller. The pole extended far enough that two people could push on either side if they didn't mind rubbing shoulders.

"Mistress Ilna," the wizard said, "help me on the left side. Your secretary can take the right."

Ilna looked at her. Brincisa was still breathing hard. She hadn't stopped to rest on the climb up the hill, but she was far from having recovered her strength after the incantation.

"Ingens and I will move the stone," Ilna said. "You brought along a lantern for me? Light it now."

She squatted and braced both hands on the pole. It was smooth from long wear, fortunately. Even if it hadn't been, Ilna's palms weren't soft like a fine lady's who might be gored by a splinter.

"Ready?" she said to Ingens. He nodded. Behind them, metal clicked on stone; Brincisa was striking a spark with steel on a chip of pyrites instead of using wizardry to light the wick of the candle she'd taken from the lantern.

Ilna and the secretary shoved forward together. The roller moved more easily than she'd expected; though the track sloped very slightly upward, years—centuries?—of use had polished it. Ilna's only problem was that she was too small to easily extend to the stone's resting position, but by hunching forward from her squat she was able to get the chock in place on her side.

She stood and looked back at the hole they'd uncovered. There'd been gaps big enough to stick an arm through when the stone was in place, but now that it'd been removed the opening didn't look any too big. She could crawl through without difficulty, but she wondered how much trouble it would've been to bury her Uncle Katchin—a pig in all senses.

She frowned. The air inside the cave was dank, like the interior of a well. She didn't smell rotting flesh, however. Three days even deep in rock should've been enough for Hutton to turn, quite apart from the reeking corruption of centuries of previous dead bodies.

"Mistress Brincisa," Ilna said, "I don't smell death." What she really meant was that she didn't smell corpses, but she was being polite since the woman's husband was one of them.

"There's a special property of this cave," Brincisa said with a flash of irritation, there and then gone. "It's of no consequence. Master Ingens, tie the rope around this post. And you, mistress, may want to tie the other end around your waist."

The 'post' was a thick bollard. Ilna rang it with her knuckles and found what the moonlight had led her to expect: it was bronze, not wood or even iron. It was set too deeply in the rock to quiver when she threw her weight against it.

Lowering bodies into the cave was obviously so familiar a practice that considerable preparation had been made to make it easy and dignified. More dignified than simply tossing them down a hole in the rock as though they were so many turds falling into a close chest.

Ingens threw his rope around the post. He started to loop the free end around the main length, then paused.

"I'll take care of that," Ilna said, trying to keep the disgust out of her voice. Ingens could read and write, after all. She'd have to be out of her mind to trust a knot he'd tied, however. "Since I'm the one who'll be hanging from it."

Ingens stepped out of the way obediently. Brincisa rested on one knee, her face set; presumably she was still recruiting her strength. Ilna let her fingers run over the rope for a moment; it was linen, new and easily strong enough for Ilna's slight weight even though it was the diameter of her fourth finger. It would do.

She tied it with two half-hitches, simple and satisfactory, then rose. "I'm ready," she said. "Give me the lantern."

"Mistress, how will you carry it?" Ingens asked in concern.

Ilna glanced into the hole. The moonlight showed that it slanted slightly for about the length of her body before dropping away. She couldn't see beyond the initial slope. The rope would rub, but not badly; and anyway, it was new.

She wore a silken lasso around her waist in place of a sash. Now she uncoiled a two-ell length and tied it around the lantern's loop handle.

"I'll carry it in my hand till I'm over the drop," she said to the secretary. Brincisa remained silent, watching like a cat attending the actions of human beings but holding aloof from them. "Then I'll let it hang so that it lights the floor of the cave before I reach it."

"It's not far," the wizard said. The fact she spoke was by now a surprise. "Twenty feet, no more."

"Fine," said Ilna, "but I still want light."

She supposed she'd be dropping into putrid corpses, the remains of centuries. She wasn't squeamish, but if she could avoid putting her weight on a spike of rotting bone, she would.

"Shall I lower you, mistress?" Ingens said softly. He seemed genuinely concerned, which made no more sense to Ilna than the other parts of this puzzle. Well, her own task was simple enough.

"No," she said. "I'll climb down myself."