Fire Sea

22

The inhabitants of Necropous had taken advantage of a peculiar natural rock formation in building their city walls. A long row of stalagmites, poking up from the cavern floor, extended from one side of the back end of the cavern around in a half circle, closing it off at the other end. Stalactites flowed into the stalagmites, forming a wall that gave the visitor the startling impression he was entering a gigantic, bared-toothed mouth.

The stalactic form was ancient, dating back to the world’s origins, and was undoubtedly one reason that this point had become one of Abarrach’s earliest outposts of civilization. Old Sartan runes could occasionally be seen on the massive wall, their magic having once conveniently filled up gaps left by the natural architecture.

But Sartan magic had dwindled, the continual fall of drizzling laze had worn most of the sigla away, and no one now remembered the secret of restoring them. The dead kept the wall in repair, filling the gaps between the “teeth” with molten lava, pumping magma into the cavities. The dead also guarded the walls of Necropolis.

The city gates stood open during the dynast’s waking time. Gigantic doors woven of strong kairn grass reinforced by the few crude runes these Sartan remembered were shut only when the royal eyes closed in sleep. Time in this sunless world was regulated by the ruler of Necropolis, which meant that it tended to change depending on the whim of His or Her Majesty.

Time was, therefore, denoted by such appellations as “the dynast’s breakfast hour” or “the dynast’s audience hour” or “the dynast’s napping hour.” An early-rising ruler forced his subjects to rise early to conduct their business under his watchful eye. A late-rising ruler, as was their current dynast, altered the routine of the entire city. Such changes were no great hardship on the living inhabitants, who were generally at leisure to alter their lives to suit their ruler. The dead, who did all the work, never slept.

The Lord High Chancellor and his prisoners entered the city gates during the close of the dynast’s audience hour, one of the busiest times of day for the city’s inhabitants. Audience hour marked a last moment’s flurry of activity before the city shut down for the dynast’s luncheon hour and the dynast’s napping hour.

Consequently, the narrow streets of Necropolis were crowded with people, both living and dead. The streets were, in reality, tunnels, created either naturally or artificially, designed to give the inhabitants some protection from the constantly falling rain. These tunnels were narrow and twisting and tended to be dark, shadowy places, imperfectly lighted by hissing gas lamps.

Masses of people—both living and dead—crowded into the tunnels. It seemed barely possible for Alfred, the duke and duchess and the guards to add their bodies to the throng. Alfred understood that the law prohibiting beasts in the city streets had not been passed arbitrarily but out of necessity. A mud dragon would have seriously impeded traffic, the huge furry form of pauka would have brought movement in the streets to a complete standstill. Studying the crowds heaving and shoving and pushing around him, Alfred saw that the dead vastly outnumbered the living. His heart seemed to shrivel inside him.

The guards closed ranks around their prisoners, the several groups were almost instantly separated by the crowd. Haplo and the prince vanished from sight. The duke and duchess pressed close to Alfred, one on either side, their hands closing over his arms.

He felt an unusual tenseness, a rigidity in their bodies, and looked at each in doubt and sudden, sickening apprehension.

“Yes,” said Jera, her voice pitched low, barely audible above the noise level created by the multitudes jamming the streets, “we’re going to try to help you escape. Just do what we tell you, when we tell you.”

“But... the prince ... my fri—” Alfred paused. He had been about to term Haplo his “friend” and wondered uneasily if the word quite proper or even accurate.

Jonathan appeared troubled, glanced at his wife, who shook her head firmly.

The duke sighed. “I’m sorry. But you see that helping them is impossible. We will make certain you get away safely, then perhaps together we can do something to assist your friends.”

What he said made sense. How could the duke know that, without Haplo, Alfred was a prisoner no matter where he went on this world? He emitted a small sigh, that no one could possibly have heard. “I suppose it wouldn’t matter if I told you that I didn’t want to escape?”

“You’re frightened,” said Jera, patting his arm. “That’s understandable. But trust us. We’ll take care of you. It won’t be that difficult,” she added, casting a scornful glance at their dead guards, shouldering their way through the crowd.

“No, I didn’t think it would,” Alfred said, but he said it to himself.

“Our concern is for your safety,” added Jonathan.

“Is it?” Alfred asked wistfully.

“Why, of course!” the duke exclaimed, and Alfred had the feeling that the young man actually believed what he said.

The Sartan couldn’t help but wonder, with a gentle melancholy, how ready these two would be to risk their lives to save a clumsy-footed bumbling fool instead of a man who’d fulfilled “the prophecy,” whatever that might be. He considered asking, decided he really didn’t want to know.

“What will happen to the prince, to ... to Haplo?”

“You heard Pons,” said the duchess shortly.

“Who?”

“The chancellor.”

“But he’s talking about murder!” Alfred was aghast. He could believe it of mensch, believe it of the Patryns ... but his people!

“It’s been done before this,” said the duke grimly. “And will be done again after.”

“You must think of yourself,” Jera added softly. “There’ll be time to think of helping your friends escape when you’re safe.”

“Or at least we might be able to rescue their cadavers,” offered Jonathan, and Alfred, looking into the young man’s eyes, saw that the duke was completely in earnest.

Everything within Alfred went numb. He was walking in a dream, but if it was a dream, it must be someone else’s, because he couldn’t wake up. The warm hands of the duke and duchess steered him among the sea of dead, combating the chill flow from the blue-white flesh of the cadavers pressing around them. The odor of decay was strong in his nostrils and emanated not only from the dead but from everything in this world.

The buildings themselves, made of obsidian and granite and cooled lava, were subject to the constant, drizzling, acid-filled laze. Dwellings and shops, like the cadavers, were crumbling, falling apart. Alfred saw, here and there, old runes or what was left of them; sigla whose magic would have brought heat and light to this gloomy, forbidding city. But most were obliterated, either washed away or covered over by makeshift repair work.

Duke and duchess slowed their pace. Alfred glanced at them nervously.

“Up ahead is a cross-tunnel,” Jera said, drawing near him. Her face was firm, resolute, her tone urgent, impelling. “We’ll encounter the normal traffic tie-ups, confusion. Once we reach that point, be ready to do what we say.”

“I think I should warn you—I’m not very good at running, fleeing pursuit, that sort of thing,” said Alfred.

Jera smiled, a rather right smile and lopsided, but her green eyes were warm. “We know,” she said, patting his arm again. “Don’t worry. It should all be much easier than that.”

“Should be,” breathed her husband, gulping with excitement.

“Calmly, Jonathan,” ordered his wife. “Ready?”

“Ready, my dear,” said the young man.

They arrived at a junction, where four tunnels converged. People flowed in from four different directions. Alfred caught a quick glimpse of four necromancers, clad in plain black robes, standing in the center of the intersection, directing the streams of traffic.

Jera turned suddenly and began to push and shove irritably at the cadaver guard, who marched directly behind her.

“I tell you,” she shouted loudly, “you’ve made a mistake!”

“Yes, be off with you!” Jonathan raised his voice, stopping to remonstrate with his guard. “You’ve got the wrong people! Can you understand that? The wrong people! Your prisoners”—he raised his hand and pointed—“went off in that direction!”

The cadaver guards came to a standstill, remaining tightly bunched around Alfred and the duke and duchess as they’d been ordered. People stumbled to a halt around them, the living pausing to see what was going on, the dead attempting single-mindedly to continue on whatever errands they’d been assigned.

A bottleneck occurred. Those in the back of the crowd, who couldn’t see, began to push and shove those ahead of them, demanding in strident tones to know what was holding up traffic. The situation was deteriorating, and the necromancers moved with alacrity to find out what was wrong and attempt to clear up the snarl.

A cross-tunnel monitor clad in plain black robes made his way through the mass. Noting the red trim on the black robes of the duke and duchess, the necromancer recognized minor royalty and bowed low. He did, however, glance slightly askance at the cadavers, who wore the royal insignia.

“How can I assist Your Graces?” asked the monitor. “What is the problem?”

“I’m really not sure,” said Jonathan, the picture of innocent confusion. “You see, my wife and our friend and I were walking along minding our own business when these . . . these”—he waved a hand at the guards as if there existed no words to describe them—“suddenly surrounded us and began to march us off toward the palace!”

“They’ve been ordered to guard a prisoner, but they’ve apparently mislaid him and latched on to us,” said Jera, glancing about helplessly.

Traffic was growing more and more snarled. Two of the monitors attempted to direct the flow around the group. A fourth, appearing harassed, tried to herd them over to the side of the road but the walls of the tunnels prevented them from moving very far. Alfred, standing head and shoulders above most of the rest of the crowd, could see that the backup was spreading through all four streets. At this rate, the entire city might be brought to a halt.

Someone was treading heavily on his foot, someone else had his elbow in his ribs. Jera was plastered up against him, her hair tickled his chin. The monitor himself was caught in the tide and had to battle his way out or he would have been carried along in the surging mob.

“We came in the front gate at the same time as the Lord High Chancellor and three political prisoners!” Jonathan shouted to be heard in the echoing tunnels. “Did you see them? A prince of some barbarian tribe and a man who looked like a walking rune-bone game?”

“Yes, we saw them. And the Lord High Chancellor.”

“Well, there was a third man, and this lot was guarding him and then suddenly they were guarding us and he’s escaped somewhere.”

“Perhaps,” said the increasingly flustered monitor, “Your Graces could simply go along with these guards to the palace—”

“I, the Duchess of Rift Ridge, marched before the dynast like a common criminal! I could never show my face in court again!” Jera’s pale skin flushed, her eyes blazed. “How can you even suggest such a thing!”

“I—I’m sorry. Your Grace,” the monitor stammered. “I wasn’t thinking. It’s this crowd, you see, and the heat—”

“Then I suggest you do something about it,” Jonathan stated loftily.

Alfred glanced at the cadavers, who stood stolidly in the center of the confusion swirling about them, faces set in expressions of fixed, albeit mindless, purpose.

“Sergeant,” said the necromancer, turning to the cadaver in the lead of the small troop, “what is your assigned duty?”

“Guard prisoners. Take them to the palace,” answered the cadaver, its hollow voice mingling with the other hollow voices of the dead milling about in the tunnel.

“What prisoners?” the monitor asked.

The cadaver paused, searching its past, latched on to a memory. “Prisoners of war, sir.”

“What battle?” asked the monitor, a hint of exasperation in his voice.

“Battle.” A trace of a smile seemed to touch the cadaver’s blue lips. “Battle of the Fallen Colossus, sir.”

“Ah,” said Jera, bitingly.

The necromancer heaved a sigh. “I am extremely sorry, Your Graces. Would you like me to deal with this?”

“If you please. I could have done it myself, but there’s so much less bother involved if you take care of the matter, you being a government official. You’ll know how to submit the proper reports.”

“And we didn’t want to cause a scene,” added Jonathan. “The dead can be so stubborn sometimes. Once they got it into their heads that we were their prisoners .. .” He shrugged. “Well, they might have proved difficult. Think of the scandal if Her Grace and I were seen arguing with cadavers!”

The monitor evidently thought of it, for he bowed, then began to wave his hands in the air, tracing the runes, and chanting. The cadavers’ expressions wavered, became slightly confused, lost, helpless.

“Return to the palace,” stated the monitor crisply. “Report to your superior that you lost your prisoner. I’ll send someone with them, make certain that they don’t annoy anyone else along the way. And now, Your Graces,” said the monitor, touching his hand to the cowl of his robe, “if you will excuse me—”

“Certainly. Thank you. You’ve been most helpful.” Jera raised her hand, traced a sigil of polite blessing.

The monitor returned it, hurriedly, then hastened off to deal with the traffic tie-up clogging the tunnel. Jera linked her arm into her husband’s, who took hold of Alfred’s elbow. They steered the Sartan down a tunnel heading in a direction at right angles to the one they’d been traveling.

Dazed by the noise, the crowd, the claustrophobic atmosphere of the tunnels, it took Alfred a moment to realize that he and his companions were free.

“What happened?” he asked, glancing behind, missing his footing, and stumbling over himself.

Jonathan balanced him. “A matter of timing, actually. Do you think you might speed up your pace a bit and keep an eye on where you’re walking? We’re not out of this yet and the sooner we reach the Rift Gate, the better.”

“I’m sorry.” Alfred felt his face burn. He paid close attention to where he was putting his feet and watched them travel in the most extraordinary places—down holes, onto other people’s feet, turning corners never intended to be turned.

“Pons was in such haste to get you back to the dynast—here, allow me to help you up—he neglected to renew the dead’s instructions. You have to do that periodically or they do what this lot did. They revert back to acting from memory, their own memories.”

“But they were taking us to the palace—”

“Yes. They would have managed that task quite adequately. Clung to it tenaciously, in fact. One reason we didn’t dare try to get rid of them ourselves. As it was, that other necromancer confused them enough to break the thin thread still attaching them to their orders. The smallest distraction can send them back to bygone days. That’s one reason the monitors are posted around town. They take charge of any dead who’re wandering about aimlessly. Look out for that cart! Are you all right? Just a bit farther, then we should be through the worst of the traffic.”

Jera and Jonathan hustled Alfred along at a rapid rate, each glancing nervously about as they did so. They kept to the shadows when possible, avoiding the pools of light cast by the gas lamps.

“Will they come after us?”

“You may be sure of that!” the duke said emphatically. “Once the guards return to the palace, Pons will have fresh guards sent out with our descriptions. We must reach the gate before they do.”

Alfred said nothing more—he couldn’t say anything more, he didn’t have breath left to say it. The passage through Death’s Gate, followed by the emotional upheaval of the cycles’ shocking events and the constant drain on his magic to help him survive, rendered the Sartan weak to the point of collapse. Blindly, wearily, he stumbled along where he was led.

He had only a vague impression of arriving at another gate, of emerging thankfully from the maze of tunnels, of Jera and Jonathan answering questions put to them by a dead guard, of hearing that someone was taken ill and wondering vaguely who, of a large fur-covered body of a pauka appear out of the mist, of falling, face first, into a carriage and hearing, as in a dream, the voice of Jera saying, “... my father’s house . . .” and of the eternal, horrible darkness of this dreadful world closing over him.