Back | Next
Contents

Chapter Twenty

icon


The poles lying in the bottom of the flatboat were barely long enough to permit them to pole. They scraped along, only an ell or so from the rough cavern ceiling, for ten minutes. They followed Yammilku’s directions and his actions; he worked a pole and Manko sat reclining on top of his sword. The Gund also carried Munahim’s sword and the lamp.

Then the ceiling rose above them and pillars appeared. They had moved from a sluggish current into a faster one, and had to pole manically for a short time to get beyond the water’s insistent tug.

“Where does the water go?” Philastes asked.

“No one knows,” Indrajit said. “The center of the world. Or the most ancient level of Kish, laid on its foundations at the very birth of mankind, still inhabited, ten leagues down. Or out the other side, since everyone knows that the Earth is a sphere. If you want more speculation, I expect you can get your fill at the Hall of Guesses.”

“It returns to the ocean,” Yammilku said. “It has to. Water flows like air.”

“See?” Indrajit said. “Another guess.”

“Hey,” Philastes said. “Is that the skull we came through?”

Indrajit agreed that it was and they moored the flatboat, tying its rope through the bone of the skull’s eye socket. The clotted waters of the underground river were just a palm short of spilling over through the socket and into the skull.

“This is where I found you,” Yammilku said. “I’ll leave you now.”

“Attacked us,” Indrajit said. “We may need the boat again, so I can’t let you take it. And I can’t trust you to just swim away and leave it, so I’m afraid you’re still coming with us.”

Yammilku grumbled, but Manko honked.

“Very well,” Yammilku said. “What are these things we’re going up against?”

“Kattak,” Indrajit said. “I guess that’s both the singular and the plural. They are wasp-men. Approximately the size of horses. Venomous, as you have seen. Intelligent. Do they fly, Philastes?”

“I believe so.”

“We believe they fly.” Indrajit smiled. “Is that enough information?”

“Sounds straightforward. Kill wasp-men, rescue jobbers. Easier with a sword in my hand.”

“I’ll lead from here.” Indrajit cast his eyes about first, looking for Kattak nymphs. Thomedes Tunk had died here, exploding into infant wasp-men, but those infants were gone now.

Perhaps the Kattak had collected them.

Perhaps, having the memories of Thomedes Tunk, they had known their own way home.

Indrajit took the lamp back.

Indrajit retraced his steps from a few hours earlier. He hadn’t tried to place them in his theater of memory, but the needlelike bridge, the stairs, the puddle of water that had been the bottom of a waterfall crashing down from the unseen ceiling, and the stoa were easy enough to recall.

At the end of the stoa, under the watching stone eyes of a dozen gods he could not name, Indrajit drew his sword. “A few sharp turns and we’re there. Philastes, can you tell us any more about what we’ll find?”

“Once I was initiated into the mysteries of the Kattak . . . I threw purchased slaves and prisoners down a hole in the guest house floor,” Philastes said. “Their screams lasted for hours, so the fall didn’t kill them. I’ve never seen the pit itself, except the glimpse of the edge that you and I both had, a few hours ago.”

“We’re looking for Fix and Munahim.” Indrajit turned to the Gund. “Fix is a Kishi man, short, with dark hair. Munahim is a Kyone. Do you know Kyones?”

Manko groaned.

“It knows what a Kyone is,” Philastes said.

“It occurs to me to wonder how Gunds have a word that means sexually aroused,” Indrajit said. “I thought they were sexless.”

“They’re like mules.” Philastes nodded. “That doesn’t mean they don’t understand how other men reproduce.”

“How do they reproduce?” Indrajit asked.

Philastes made a chuckling noise deep in his throat, ending in a squeak. Manko groaned twice, in different pitches.

“Manko says you’re too young,” Philastes said. “Ask again when you’re older.”

Indrajit chuckled. “Speaking of young, the nymphs should still be too small to hurt us, right? So . . . how many mature Kattak do we expect?”

“I think the nymphs are probably too small,” Philastes agreed. “I have no idea how many Kattak there are.”

Yammilku cursed.

“I saw them rarely,” Philastes said. “Tunk worked with them directly and he saw them more often.”

“You never had a list of names?”

“No.”

Indrajit considered. “Did you ever see more than two at a time?”

“I never saw more than one at a time,” Philastes said. “But Tunk always referred to them in the plural.”

“Wait . . . Pelthite has a dual form, doesn’t it?”

“Oh, you know languages, too!”

Indrajit harrumphed. “Just a smattering. But that means that there are at least three of them. And there could be a thousand.”

“I don’t think we fed them enough prisoners for there to be a thousand Kattak,” Philastes said.

“Three Kattak?”

“More.”

“Ten?”

Philastes hesitated. “More. I think many more. And remember that Munahim heard Kattak moving while we were in the embassy.”

“Frozen hells.” Indrajit considered. “Okay. So we’re rescuing our comrades, not trying to exterminate the Kattak. We don’t need to worry about hunting down every last wasp-man, but we also should not assume we’re safe from attack until we have our friends and are out on the surface again.”

“Also, we want the harness,” Philastes added.

“Also, we want the Girdle.” Indrajit turned and led them through the series of turns.

He reached the length of passage where, previously, the right side of the tunnel had opened into a vast empty space, carpeted with the bodies of men. Now that empty space, on the left side as Indrajit retraced his former journey backward, was hidden behind a veil of paper. A faint breeze made the paper expand and contract. Ragged strips only loosely attached to the rest flapped with the movement, and the main membrane made a taut snapping sound like the beat of a drum.

The pit was entirely hidden.

“Why do this?” Indrajit whispered to Philastes.

Philastes shrugged. “I have only recently become initiated to the mysteries of the Kattak, and to my great shock and dismay.”

Indrajit nodded slowly. He wished he had Munahim’s sense of smell to confirm that his friends were behind the paper, but it seemed reasonably clear, and he saw only one possible course of action.

“Give the Heru his sword,” he said to Manko. “Please.”

Manko groaned, but handed the weapon over.

“You and I first,” Indrajit said to Yammilku. With two long slashes of Vacho’s blade, he cut loose a flap in the paper wall.

Once Yammilku had done the same, they jumped into the hole.

The sides of the pit were not as steep as they appeared from above. Nor, strictly speaking, was it really a pit. Indrajit slid down a steep, moist wall of rock, and was stopped when his sandal came to rest against a shattered rib cage. His lamp illuminated shapes that must be stalactites and stalagmites, all wrapped in paper. Other lumps, more or less shapeless, were mysterious to him.

“None of this paper was here before,” he said.

Yammilku stuck close by Indrajit’s side. They scanned the darkness for movement as Manko and Philastes clambered down behind them. “The wasp-men make the paper?”

“We broke into their . . . home, I suppose you’d say, last night,” Indrajit explained. “The building was full of paper. Walls and ceilings covered. As if the Kattak live and breed inside nests of paper, and they had built the nest to fill out the convenient space of an old mansion on the Street of Fallen Stars.”

“And now they have built their nest here,” Yammilku said, “in a cave beneath the street. What does the paper do?”

Indrajit turned to Philastes. “Do you know?”

“I think it dries the moisture out of the air.” Philastes shrugged. “All Kattak nesting sites are full of it, I’ve been told. Inside temples, caverns, and palaces.”

Indrajit examined the space around him, finding tunnels, entrances to passages, and rounded chambers. “It also means the Kattak created this space and they know it well. Watch carefully for attacks.”

“If we find your companions and they’re already dead,” Yammilku said, “then I’ll light this nest on fire.”

“I’ll help,” Indrajit said.

Indrajit led them down a passage that ended in a stubby chamber. They returned, and followed another paper tunnel that seemed to wind back on itself and deliver them to the spot from which they’d departed. They walked on paper, which was sometimes thick enough that it felt like wood, but at other times seemed to be a thin wrapping over the top of a heap of bodies. Indrajit felt ribs cracking under his weight, and slipped twice as he stepped on skulls and they rolled out from under him.

“Can we call to them?” Philastes asked. “Thomedes was able to talk, right to the end.”

“So was Lysander,” Indrajit said, shuddering at the memory. “They’d wrapped his entire body, but left his face free. To be able to breathe, I suppose.”

“Your friends may be unconscious,” Yammilku said. “The same venom that kills in large quantities may render comatose in small doses.”

“Fix!” Indrajit called.

They listened.

“I think I heard him,” Philastes said.

“I thought I did, too.” Indrajit shook his head. “But where?”

He took another angle and passed into an adjoining spherical nodule of what he was beginning to think of as the main chamber. The floor here was covered with paper, but a complete ylakka skeleton sat atop the paper, unwrapped. Perhaps it was dry enough not to be a problem for the Kattak.

Who must not like water, he reflected. Fire burned the paper of their nests, but it was a risk they took, because the paper dried the water out of the air. Perhaps the Kattak needed that dryness.

Perhaps it was their young, the nymphs.

Perhaps the nymphs who had burst from the belly of Thomedes Tunk had all perished in the flood of sewage into which they’d been born. He hoped so.

This chamber had three exits. One dead-ended quickly. The other bored horizontally for ten paces and turned abruptly vertical. Staring up the length of the paper cylinder, Indrajit could make out nothing.

The third tunnel led them in an elevated loop that again dumped them where they had begun.

“Loops and loops,” Yammilku said.

Manko groaned.

“Has anyone been watching the walls for concealed doors?” Philastes asked.

“How would you conceal a door in these walls?” Indrajit pressed him.

“I’m imagining something like a slit,” the Pelthite said. “I’m just imagining, I’ve never seen one, but we seem to be in a sealed-off space. It serves no use.”

“Maybe it absorbs water,” Indrajit said.

“Maybe it absorbs water,” Philastes conceded. “But also, if there were slits in the wall that a Kattak could detect, or maybe the Kattak know the location of the slits because they made them, and if the Kattak could press their way through, they’d work like doors.”

“Secret passages,” Yammilku said.

“I’ve seen no such slits.” Indrajit looked at the tunnel exit they’d just emerged from. The tunnel formed a loop that rose and fell again, which would have left a central space enclosed within the loop. The previous circuitous tunnel had followed a similar loop, but lower down . . . presumably, below the elevated loop. Leaving the same internal space untouched.

Which could be a stalactite. Or solid rock. Or some ancient building, or heap of glass, or an abyss.

But it could also be a chamber.

“What are you thinking about?” Philastes asked.

“I’m going to make my own slit.” Indrajit walked slowly into the lower loop, probing at the wall with Vacho’s pommel. It was sturdy paper, but not the multiple layers that was so dense, it felt like wood. The paper had give to it; it wasn’t plastered over a rock wall. It was also consistent; he found no slits, or stretches made of thinner paper. The others followed, watching. Indrajit handed the lamp to Philastes. “Be ready, just in case.”

He slashed through the wall. Once, twice, three times, and then a triangle of heavy paper fell askew and to the side. Lamplight flickered into the space beyond, and Indrajit saw Munahim’s snout and nose. The Kyone’s body was wrapped to leave only his face visible, and he hung by a thick paper cord.

“Munahim!” Indrajit plunged into the triangle, sword-first. He immediately looked left and right, searching for ambush, but found none. He was in a low chamber with walls and ceiling of paper, and a second bundle hung from above, with Fix’s face protruding from the top.

“Watch for Kattak!” he cried. “I’ll cut them loose!”

He held Munahim with one arm while he hacked at the stem holding him, until he cut the Kyone down. As he laid him on the paper floor, he found a paper-wrapped bundle that clinked when touched. He palpated it with his fingers—by the shape and size, it probably contained Munahim’s bow and some weapons. He thought he felt Fix’s falchion and ax.

Holding Vacho halfsword-style, he cut a slit down the length of Munahim’s paper cocoon and tore away the worst of the paper. Munahim stirred. “Too late,” the Kyone murmured.

“I hear wings out here,” Yammilku called. “Hurry up!”

Indrajit cut open the bundle. Munahim’s bow and Fix’s weapons were indeed inside, sticky but unharmed. “Munahim,” Indrajit said. “Get up. We need to get out of here.”

“It’s too late,” Munahim said. “You should leave us.” The Kyone leaned over and vomited a thin string of black liquid.

Indrajit hacked Fix free and lowered him to the ground. Fix was mouthing something, and when Indrajit leaned close, he heard, “Alea. Alea.”

“She’s not good enough for you, brother,” Indrajit said. Snatching one of Fix’s own knives from the bundle, he slashed Fix’s wrapping and pulled his partner out. In the process, Fix’s eyes opened and he groaned.

Fix was wearing the Girdle of Life.

“They’re here!” Philastes shrieked.

Indrajit kicked Munahim. “Get up!”

“It’s too late.” The Kyone rolled over onto all fours and stared at Indrajit. “Don’t you understand? They did it to us already!”

“We’ll worry about that once we’re out of here.” Indrajit stood, dragging Fix with him. “Pick up the weapons!”

In the tunnel outside this chamber, he heard shouting and the buzzing of enormous insectoid wings.

“They hate this city,” Fix muttered. “They ruled once. They resent it.”

“A lot of people hate this city,” Indrajit said. “Welcome to Kish! Time to get out of here!”

But as he spoke, Philastes was backing into the chamber through the opening Indrajit had made. Manko and Yammilku fought in the shadows beyond. They stood back-to-back, the Gund punching with his fists and stabbing with his insect arm, and both men swinging swords. The Gund still had Munahim’s blade, Indrajit remembered.

“Stand!” Indrajit shook Fix. “Pick up your gear, right now!”

“I can remember so much,” Fix murmured. “I was at the embassy parties. Ambassadors. Bureaucrats. Highly placed servants of the Lords of Kish.”

“We’re getting you to the Vin Dalu, right now!” Indrajit slashed a hole in the chamber opposite the first. Then he grabbed the lamp from Philastes and a strip of loose, heavy paper, and stepped through.

He turned right, listening for the sound of more Kattak, and closing in on the Kattak fighting Manko. He saw the wings and arching back of the Kattak as it thrust its sting forward again and again. Manko dodged and blocked, but it looked as if he was wearing down. Indrajit took the oil flask from his pocket, twisted paper into a wick, and lit the paper on fire.

He wasn’t sure it would work. But he threw the flask at the center of the wasp-man’s body.

Oil splashed all over the Kattak’s thorax and burst into flame. The Kattak spun about, shrieking dryly, and lunged toward Indrajit. The Gund behind caught it by the base of its stinger.

Then Manko snapped the stinger off with a single sharp movement.

Indrajit ducked and the flaming Kattak raced past him. He heard thuds and saw dull reflected glows as it slammed its way through the paper caverns, screaming.

The Gund turned. It had Munahim’s sword in one hand and a raw Kattak stinger in the other, and it charged the second wasp-man. Yammilku cowered, shrugging away from the sudden thunder of the charge, but the Kattak sprang to the attack.

The wasp-man stabbed his stinger into the Gund’s chest. At the same moment, the Gund plunged the stinger it held into the forehead of the Kattak. The stinger sank a full two cubits into the Kattak’s head.

Then the Gund and the Kattak both collapsed, clutched together and still.

“No!” Philastes rushed back out into the tunnel. His shriek quickly became weeping as he checked Manko and found the Gund unmoving. Munahim and Fix emerged more slowly, attaching weapons to belts. Indrajit handed Munahim his sword.

“There may be others,” Indrajit said. “We have to leave.”

“Did Munahim tell you that we contain eggs?” Fix murmured.

“Yes,” Indrajit said. “I see you found the Girdle of Life. We’re going from here straight to the Vin Dalu.”

“I need to return you to Zac Betel,” Yammilku said. “For the Conclave.”

“Sounds good,” Indrajit said. “First, there’s a little detour we’re going to make. Just to make sure we don’t lose this little device again.” He sheathed Vacho and wrapped his fingers around the shoulder strap of the Girdle of Life.

Dragging Fix by main force, he headed for the exit from the Kattak nest.

<


Back | Next
Framed