Part 43 (1/2)

What are we nearing? How large is this place? She felt they had been exploring, admittedly at a cripplingly cautious pace, for hours. She felt they had been exploring, admittedly at a cripplingly cautious pace, for hours.

They stepped through the archway and stopped. For a long time they simply looked.

The ceiling was at least another six feet higher, and it was supported by great columns that had been fantastically worked into the shape of abominations. It was an old motif. She had seen carvings like it in Tharn, but never as grandly detailed as these. Human features were merged with those of beasts so that each column became a monster with its arms or claws raised high to support the earth. There were spiders with the faces of women, and scorpion-tailed men with pincered hands, beetle-headed, wing-backed, joint-legged. One depicted a woman who was partly consumed within the sh.e.l.l of a great mantis, and this image in particular Che turned away from, finding it obscurely, disturbingly familiar.

Between the columns were the tombs, arrayed in earnest now. Where Garmoth Atennar, whoever he had been, had kept a lonely vigil, here were an even score of great stone sarcophagi interspersed with the grotesque carved pillars.

The eerie light leapt and dwindled on them, these sleeping statues, the ranks of the forgotten, the Masters of Khanaphes. She saw their names: Hieram Tisellian, who Raised the Temple and brought Life to the Parched Land, Lord Architect of all Time ... Killeris Jaenathil, the Beautiful, the all-Knowing, Lady of the Utmost Sorcery ... Iellith Quellennas, Bringer of Death, the Harvester of the Old Lands, the Chariot of War ... Hieram Tisellian, who Raised the Temple and brought Life to the Parched Land, Lord Architect of all Time ... Killeris Jaenathil, the Beautiful, the all-Knowing, Lady of the Utmost Sorcery ... Iellith Quellennas, Bringer of Death, the Harvester of the Old Lands, the Chariot of War ...

'How many hundreds of years,' Che wondered, 'since anyone last saw this?'

'Always a.s.suming you don't count the lamp-lighters.' The sense of awe and reverence had pa.s.sed Thalric by, and he was becoming increasingly unnerved, looking up at the hybrid visages of the carved abominations and shuddering. For impossible monsters, they had been rendered extremely lifelike.

They were crude, however, compared to the likenesses that the Masters had decreed for themselves. Each one of these was an individual, as recognizable and distinct as they must have appeared in life. The white stone flowed smoothly over their musculature, each curve of gut and jowl and breast. Theirs was an alien aesthetic, but one that seemed to overrule all others. They were not delicately beautiful as Spiders were, or Dragonflies or Beetles or Moths, or any other kinden. They were simply beautiful de facto de facto, commanding and magnetic. Even their stone facsimiles confirmed it.

'No wonder they are still revered as they are,' Che said in wonder.

'Oh, true,' Thalric snapped. 'They'd be able to give our Slave Corps a few lessons: how to keep an entire population under your thumb for a thousand years after you've died! How about that? The greatest slavemasters in the history of the world lie here, and I'm glad that, beyond this stinking piece of sand and stone, n.o.body even knows about them.'

'How can you say that?' Che demanded. 'Thalric, what we're seeing here ... it's an age of history that Collegium has never guessed at. In all the Lowlands, there are probably only a few records of this mouldering in the Moth-kinden strongholds. I could go home right now and claim my seat as a College Master just for being here. This is history history, this is the past right here for us to look upon. Can't you see that?'

'Do you know what I see?' he asked her. 'I see those pillars in the main hall of the Scriptora the hall with the little fountain, where they held that reception for us both.'

'I don't-'

'They were just like these monsters: pillars carved into figures that were holding up the ceiling. Very artistic. Only those ones were carved to look like Beetle-kinden. Your Your people, the Khanaphir. What did these dead Masters think? That it was your lot above ground, and monsters for servants once they were dead? They were mad, Che. They're better forgotten, believe me ...' He trailed off just then, and she heard his breath suddenly become ragged. She turned to see what had caught his eye. people, the Khanaphir. What did these dead Masters think? That it was your lot above ground, and monsters for servants once they were dead? They were mad, Che. They're better forgotten, believe me ...' He trailed off just then, and she heard his breath suddenly become ragged. She turned to see what had caught his eye.

One of the stone coffins was bare.

The sight the absence chilled her. For a moment neither of them moved. Then Thalric said, 'So, we're both thinking the same ridiculous thing just now, and we should stop it. After all, they wouldn't be the first people not to finish crafting a tomb. It's something you tend to have built late in life.'

Che walked closer and wiped slime away from the inscription to read it clearly.

'Elysiath Neptellian, Lady of the Bright Water, She whose Word Breaks all Bonds, Princess of the Thousand,' she translated.

'Maybe she didn't care for the likeness,' said Thalric harshly. 'Now, can we get out of this festering place and ...' His voice choked off and Che looked around wildly.

'What? What now?'

'I ... thought I saw something ...' he said, voice openly shaking. 'Ahead there. Something pale ...'

'The lamps. The shadows of the lamps,' Che said hurriedly. 'The lamplight on the stone.' She was tense as a drawn bow, waiting for whatever terrible thing was about to descend on them. The air was thick with it.

When it came, it came from behind them: a long, drawn-out scream of human agony. Thalric whirled around, his sword in his hand instantly.

'Wait-' Che started but he snarled, 'Osgan,' and was away from her at once, plunging back the way they had come, and leaving her to scurry in his wake.

Thirty-Nine.

Totho was awoken by the sound of stone, great loads of it being hauled up the span of the bridge by sled, and by the noisy efforts of a labouring draught beetle.

Are we building the barricade now? he wondered vaguely, but had they not already built it? Had they not defended it for a day already? he wondered vaguely, but had they not already built it? Had they not defended it for a day already? I refuse to go through that again I refuse to go through that again.

He sat up, seeing the great bow-backed animal settle, antennae twitching, as the sled was unloaded. By the barricade itself, the centre had been reinforced, going some way towards repairing the petard's damage, and some complex woodwork was being lashed together, a slope on either side of the central point, with what seemed like a vast quant.i.ty of rope lying about. He could make nothing of it.

He jumped up, looking for authority, and spotted Amnon. The big man was supervising the unloading. Meyr, whose watch it was, leant against the barricade well out of the way.

'What's going on?' Totho asked him. 'When did this start?'

'Hour ago,' Meyr said. 'That Amnon, he's got an idea or something. Look down at our end of the bridge.'

Totho did so, seeing a great many torches down below, and what seemed like two hundred Khanaphir busy hauling stone about. A second barricade A second barricade. 'Amnon!' he called out. 'I told you, once they get a leadshotter up here, they'll sweep away anything you put down at the sh.o.r.e. They'll just smash it to pieces.'

'That is indeed what you told me,' Amnon confirmed.

'Then what?'

'I have been speaking with Praeda about the engines of the enemy, and what they are capable of,' Amnon revealed.

'Yes, that's exactly what I meant when I said you should go home to her,' Totho remarked drily. 'So what did she have to say about it?'

'Firstly, she said she is an artificer, and a professor of artifice at their College, so she knows about these things,' Amnon told him.

Totho shrugged. 'That covers quite a range of competences.'

'She then also says that our stones cannot resist their shot, because our stones are rigid. She says that Collegium walls have a soft core to them, where the mortar is, that makes them move when struck, which is why these engines would not beat them down so easily. True?'

'True,'Totho admitted, 'all true. So what's going on?'

'Down there they are preparing a very great deal of stone, all of it we have dressed and ready to place. As of now there is a narrow pa.s.s to one side, to let the defenders here escape, but that will be filled at need,' Amnon said. 'We are building bands of wall: stone backed with wood and wicker, then stone again, and so forth, the whole of it a score of feet deep at least, and high as we can build it. The s.p.a.ces of softer stuff, Praeda says, will give the stones somewhere to go when they are struck. The enemy will take twice as long to batter through. And she says, when the leadshotters shoot at it, they will only be turning standing stones into rubble that they will have to climb across. We will have archers on every roof. What do you think, about my Praeda?'

'I think she's thought it through,' Totho conceded. 'As last lines of defence go, I can't think of a better one. I should have thought of that myself.'

'Good to be appreciated,' he heard a female voice interrupt. Praeda herself came walking towards them up the slope. She had traded her Collegium robes for hard-wearing artificer's canvas, and there was a crossbow of Iron Glove make slung over her shoulder. 'Amnon, you're sure the barricade can hold them off here while they complete the barrier down there, after you fall back?'

'Of course.' Amnon was looking at Totho as he said it, and the wince was evident, that told of the lie.

Every plan has its flaw. 'So what's this up here?' Totho asked hastily, to ward off more questions from Praeda.

'When this barricade is due to fall, my soldiers will still need time to flee down to the eastern sh.o.r.e,' Amnon explained. The labourers were loading great blocks of stone on to the ramps that flanked the barricade's mid-point, building them high and securing them against the slope with ropes. Totho extrapolated, seeing two big columns of stone, poised and straining, waiting to thunder together in the centre, an instant breach-blocker.

'That's mad,' he said. 'What if the ropes go? Anyone fighting in the centre will be squashed flat.'

'We make good ropes, and we know our stone,' Amnon replied. 'We have been building like this for a thousand years. The ropes will hold until we cut them. I will be in the centre of our line. It is my own life that I stake on this.'

Totho shook his head at it. Oh you say that here and now, with that confidence, because your lady is with you. It would not do to point out the cracks in this plan Oh you say that here and now, with that confidence, because your lady is with you. It would not do to point out the cracks in this plan. It would not take the Scorpions long to break through the barricade, as soon as its defenders had retreated. Another petard would suffice and they would surely have one ready. If there were sufficient bodies on the far side, or if they possessed the Art, then they might even just swarm straight over. At the foot of the bridge the fleeing soldiers would either be trapped by the barrier's completion, or the barrier would not be finished in time, letting the Scorpions through.