A Gathering Of Stones

6

The empty corridor had no traps in it until they reached the first turn. No traps but ghosts like ragged bedsheets drifting around, oozing up through the floor and vanishing through the ceiling, or dropping down to sink like spilled milk into the elaborate parquet, or sweeping back and forth across the hall before and behind the intruders, passing through the darkwood wall panels like fog slipping through unglazed windows. Watchghosts supposed to warn the watchwitches if they saw a wrongness in the halls.

Simms sang:

Swingle, tingle ghostee bayyy beee, dance y’ shroudee, mama mine oh, timber time-bar, aren’t y’ prettee, round around the troudee tree oh, swingle mingle pattartateee, diddle doo dih dee dee dee…

His droning endless song was an insect buzz in the gray light, a crooning tenor buzz that was irresistible, it seemed, to all those ghosts.

He sang:

Pittaree pattaree prettee ghostee, prithee dance a shingaree round and round in silkee laces dance the laughee lovee thee…

Words, Talent, song, a mix of all three, whatever it was, it worked. Simms charmed the ghosts into a complex dance and kept them so occupied with his nonsense they forgot to issue the warnings they were meant to give.

At the corner, Felsrawg lifted her hand to stop them, rings flickering.

Simms leaned against the wall, closed his eyes, his face blank, cheeks drawn in, mouth pursed. His hands drifted through small circular movements, unfocused, apparently uncoordinated. The ghosts drifted around him; now and then they nuzzled against him like cats bumping their heads against him, begging for a scratch behind the ears, but he’d tamed them so thoroughly he could take his attention away and still keep them focused on them, fascinated by him. He sighed, opened his eyes and moved away from the wall. Holding his voice to a. murmur that fell dead two paces off, he said, “Triple trap. Firs’ part, five steps on, the floor melt under you, jus”nough to let y’ sink up to y’ nuts, then she get solid and you stuck. Second part. Rack of scythe blades taller’n a man they swing down fro the ceilin’, set s’ close together it take a snake standin’ on his tail to pass ‘em, sharp ‘nough to mince a bull. They come at you the min y’ start sinkin’, no time t’ jump back and if y’ did, you jump into the points of those blades. An’ y’ canna jump for’ard. f r one thing, you couldna get a hold and you wouldna go anywhere ‘cause you’d hit the third part. There some kind of pipe there shoots out fire from down where the islands was born; the firemountains come up underwater. Down where Coquoquin sleeps, y’ know. If y’ wan’ a v. Jrse-case event, the roarin’ of the fire wake the god. The fire it crisp what left after the scythes finish. Fifteen feet, you past it all, Laz. Count four lamp down, halfway to the next. Anythin’ else?”

“Solid beyond?”

“Yeh, for three-four feet. That’s far as I can reach.”

“Got it. You know the drill, grab on.” Danny grunted as

Felsrawg wrapped one arm about his biceps and shoved her other hand down behind his belt. Simms attached himself less impetuously but as firmly. Danny concentrated, tapped into the power stored in the flesh-accumulators, then snapped himself and the two thieves to the fifth lamp down. They landed heavily, Danny staggered, stood trembling as the other two unwrapped themselves and started on, both of them as matter-of-fact as if they did this kind of thing every day. It was a minute before he could follow them; he hadn’t been all that sure he could handle the weight and the complications of transporting them all together while he kept the shield intact. He’d half expected to fall short and end fried by that earthfire. He wiped the sweat off his face, caught up with that pair of idiots before they left the protection of the shield and hissed anathemas at them for their carelessness. Felsrawg laughed silently at him, patted his arm, then went back to work.

They moved on in a flickering grayness, the nightlamps burning at intervals too wide to do more than dent the dark, down and down in a jagged spiral with witchtraps in every flat, some double, some triple, all lethal to any intruder without the resources of the team. Danny Blue was surprised at how well it was working. Felsrawg and Simms were like hostile cats circling each other and neither of them had much opinion of him and he was not all that fond of them, who could be? They were primed to kill him once things calmed down and the job was done, but now they clicked, they were amazing; every step he took, he felt better about this project. Down and down they went, down and down to the earth-chamber of the Henanolee Heart.

Felsrawg was first again, senses taut, knives ready, dustpipe charged and clipped to her belt, her ring hand swaying in broad arcs before her. She was fierce, intent, silent. In an ordinary house she’d be unstoppable. Not here. Single traps she had no problems with, but her rings weren’t subtle enough to detect doubles and triples twisted inextricably together.

Simms followed close behind her, fingers brushing the paneling, reading the flow as he moved, his tenor buzz going on and on, nonsense to amuse and distract any ghost that might take a notion to flash ahead and alert the watchwitches that intruders were wandering the hallways. Though Felsrawg’s rings were more sensitive than his natural talent, warning of traps and hidden alarums long before Simms was aware of them, once they reached whatever it was, he was able to read the nature and extent of the trap from the walls and floor; even the ambient air breathed information into him when he was working at peak. The bumbling idiocy he wore as an everyday mask had dropped away, the lazy amiability had vanished; he was a deadly and efficient predator.

Danny Blue kept close behind, holding the shield tight about them, containing the psychic noise of their progress, lifting them again and again across the witchtraps he could not see. Again and again, sweating each time over his limitations. If he had all of Ahzurdan’s old skills he could jump straight to the Heart, bypassing all, the nasty surprises. He didn’t have them; what he had was a team of two thieves whose natural talents and hard-earned skill and, yes, some handy tools here and there, acted as a blind man’s white canes, showing him what he couldn’t see. What a team, he chanted to himself, what a team, too bad we can’t stand each other. What a team. What a team.

Down and down they went, around the great spiral that screwed itself deep into the earthen center of the island, down and around until they stood at the end of the corridor looking into the Henanolee Heart.