Knights of the Crown

Chapter 3

At least it felt like an earthquake while it lasted There was only time enough for Pirvan to take a deep breath and leap for the nearest archway. From what he had learned in his travels, that was the safest place when the earth shook, if one could not reach the outdoors.

Silgor and his friends had not blindfolded Pirvan, so the thief had, as a matter of habit, memorized his route from the alley to the cellar door where he’d gone underground, then the twisting tunnels and corridors leading to this chamber. They were a long way from daylight.

Then the swaying of the walls and the thud of falling timber and stone ended as abruptly as they had begun. Pirvan pulled his neckcloth up over his mouth to keep out the dust, and realized that this had been a most peculiar earthquake. The walls had swayed, but he could recall no movement in the ground under him.

There would be time enough later (if there was a later) to consider such mysteries of nature. Right now he was hearing through the dust and the odd rattle and crash sounds that his honor obliged him to answer. Voices were crying out not far off, men and at least one woman in fear or pain.

“We had best put this aside until we have rescued our friends,” he said. He had to inhale after these words, and that brought on a coughing fit.

Yanitzia was coughing, too, but managed to squeeze out the words, “What friends?”

Pirvan’s temper snapped. “The people crying out, or are you deaf from a blow on the head? I doubted that we were alone here, or that you allowed a drinking party off the streets to use these chambers. So those who cry out must be here by our permission, which makes them our friends!”

Pirvan thought he saw the old man smile, but Yanitzia was undaunted. “If so, what made you our leader?”

“Nothing,” Pirvan replied. “But I have worked underground more than many, as you should know well. Perhaps I do not know these tunnels as well as one of you, but if so, then that person should lead and I will follow.

“But by all Gilean’s musty scrolls, let whatever be done be done quickly!”

If any of the others had been fuddled in their wits, Pirvan’s words seemed to prod them into movement. Silgor took command, and a sharp look from the old man silenced Yanitzia’s protest before it left her lips.

“This way, Pirvan,” Silgor said. “For common hurts we have common remedies enough. If anyone needs digging out, however, it is most likely to be along this tunnel. I would swear that some of this stonework is dwarven, old when Huma was born.”

What magic might linger in such stones, Pirvan neither knew nor cared to waste his strength trying to guess. He could only hope that his supple leanness and his skill in worming himself through confined passages would be enough.

If they were, his comrades might consider whether he deserved a lighter penalty than returning the jewels (plainly enough what they had in mind), or at least a fuller explanation of their reasons. Returning the fruits of night work was a demand seldom made of a thief who was not under some other sentence for dishonorable or even unlawful conduct, which so far did not seem to be true in Pirvan’s case.

Quite a company of thieves and those sworn to secrecy about thieves’ lairs were now emerging from the lingering clouds of dust. Pirvan counted at least a dozen men and two women before Silgor started asking who was hurt and who if anyone was missing.

“Chishun’s down,” one man said, “but Mara’s with him.”

“She is not-” Yanitzia began.

Both Silgor and the man made rude suggestions as to what the woman could do with her fears. “They’re in the uppermost chamber, which looks like a wine cellar until you see the secret door, which she hasn’t,” the man said irritably. “She rolled the barrel off him and is doing nice work on his leg. Neither he nor our secrets are in any danger.”

“Excellent,” the old man said. “Who else?”

One of the women shrugged. “Ghilbur, but only Mishakal herself can help him now. A crossbeam smashed his head like an eggshell. And Grimsoar One-Eye’s missing.”

Pirvan felt as if he’d been struck hard in the stomach with the pommel of his own dagger. For a moment it was more than the dust that had him fighting for breath.

“Grimsoar-”

“Missing, I said,” the woman repeated. “He was going down to the weapons-practice chamber when the-when everything shook. We think it fell in, either the chamber or the hallway to it.”

“At least we know where to start looking,” Silgor said. He wiped his face with the back of his hand, which succeeded only in transferring dust from fingers to cheeks. He spat, which raised a puff of dust where it hit.

“Everybody able-bodied follow me and Pirvan. Everybody who needs help, up to the wine chamber and see Mara.”

“Our secrets-” Yanitzia began.

The second woman made a rude gesture. “Sister, right now your tongue’s the most useless part of your body. If the dust doesn’t choke you-”

Silgor stepped between the two women before they could fly at each other. When he saw that peace would survive, he joined Pirvan.

“Did this feel like an earthquake to you?” he whispered.

“I’m not wagering. A quake, magic, maybe the years catching up with some fault in the construction.”

“Or a spell, intended to feign some fault giving way?”

“That, too. But I’ll be more apt for this sort of argument when we’ve found Grimsoar.” Or his body.

* * * * *

Nobody else seemed concerned about the earthquake’s being unnatural. They were worried more about what might have happened elsewhere in Istar. Were kinfolk and friends lying dead under rubble or trapped in the path of fires? Was the watch out and about, vigilant for looters and likely to see things the thieves would prefer to remain unseen?

One woman offered to take a look outdoors, and vanished up a debris-littered stairway. The rest of the able-bodied fell in behind Silgor and Pirvan.

They’d found Grimsoar by the time the woman returned, to report that the city was almost quiet. “A few chimneys down and some windows in the streets,” she said. “People looking over their shoulders, but not our way.”

Or rather, they found where Grimsoar was most likely to be, given the blood smears on the stone. It was not under a pile of rubble that must have crushed out his life, and for that everyone gave thanks, wherever they felt the thanks ought to go.

Grimsoar was at the bottom of a new hole in the floor, which had opened to swallow the big thief and then closed again. Or at least closed again, until it seemed that hardly anything larger than a dog would be able to crawl down and clear a path to bring Grimsoar out.

“If he’s still alive,” Yanitzia said.

“Alive or dead, we bring him-” Silgor began.

Pirvan had been crouching with his head thrust as far into the hole as he dared without a light. Now he stood, brushing gravel and splinters from his hair.

“I hear him breathing. He’s alive.”

“He or something,” a man said. Silgor and Pirvan both glared; the man flinched.

“Whether it’s Grimsoar or a dragon, the sooner we learn, the better,” Pirvan said. He began uncoiling the rope from around his waist.

“Ah, I think I should go down,” Yanitzia said. “I’m the smallest and-”

“I’m the next smallest,” Pirvan said. “I’m also stronger and much more practiced in this sort of work. No offense, Sister, for you would doubtless look better unclad than I, but our brother needs to see help and not just a fine figure coming down to him.”

The woman blushed under the dust, as Pirvan tossed the rope on the floor, unbuckled his belt, and began pulling off his clothes. The woman seemed to regard him with approval.

It occurred to Pirvan that if it hadn’t been for his comrades, he might even now have been getting such approving looks from Reida, as he undressed in her bedchamber. The thought did not sweeten his temper.

“Grease,” Pirvan said, when he was down to his loinguard and gloves.

“Cooking fat?” Silgor asked.

“Better than nothing.”

Yanitzia darted off, apparently determined to redeem herself. Pirvan faced the old man.

“You need not answer, but a brother’s life may depend on it. Can you heal from a distance? Or perhaps levitate stones?”

“Neither,” the old man said. “I have no true magic. What prayers I can utter, I will, and they may serve.”

They may also be a waste of your breath, Pirvan mused.

The woman returned with the fat, somebody brought a leather pouch with a flask of some healing draft and bandages, and several men pulled out more ropes. By the time Pirvan had greased himself from crown to soles, the ropes had been tied into two longer ones. He nodded silent approval as he knotted one around his waist.

“Don’t touch this unless I signal.”

“The common signals?” Silgor asked.

“No, a new kind, in the tongue of the minotaurs,” Pirvan snapped. “Your pardon, Brother.”

“If you bring up Grimsoar, Pirvan, it will be us pardoning you, and for more than a sharp tongue,” Yanitzia said.

Pirvan looked at the other faces around him and saw an encouraging lack of dissent. Perhaps this night will not be wasted after all, he thought, but losing a friend is too high a price to pay for regaining their trust.

* * * * *

Before he’d been ten minutes in the hole, Pirvan thought that he had never anticipated such a situation. He could die here, as finally as one cut down by the watch, savaged by griffons, or impaled on spikes. He could die here as slowly and perhaps more painfully, with friends above and perhaps below, no more than a spear’s-length away but as unreachable as if they’d been on Nuitari.

Had anyone ever said he would be in such a situation, Pirvan would have immediately subdued and bound the speaker. Then he would have summoned a wizard or cleric, for healing a person too terribly astray in their wits to be at large on the streets without it.

Dust seemed to crawl into every orifice of his body. Sweat poured out just as eagerly, coating him with a layer of mud over the layer of grease. Stones gouged every part of his body, including some that made him wonder about his future with women. The sides of the hole quivered and occasionally dropped loose stones on him or down into the shadows.

As he widened the passage, however, he ceased to be alone. Someone lowered a lantern, which drove back the shadows. Another lowered a bottle of water, which kept the dust from clogging his throat. A third lowered a bundle of scrap lumber. This was handier for shoring up passages weakened by removing ill-placed stones, and he moved downward more swiftly after that.

It took him the best part of an hour to descend from one floor to another, a distance that on a flight of stairs he could have climbed while holding his breath. By the time he reached bottom, only his gloves kept his hands from being red ruins, and he had no doubt that Grimsoar was alive.

He could see the man, sprawled on his back, one arm apparently trapped under a tilted slab of stone overlain with some ancient mosaic. Ancient? Pirvan thought it might have been laid by beings who came before men, when Paladine and Takhisis had still been mates. The thought of such lost eons chilled him, even without the Dark Queen’s name.

Grimsoar’s scalp was oozing blood, and his chest was rising and falling. It appeared that once he regained his senses and the use of his arm, it would not be hard to extract him.

Oh, and once the passage is a trifle wider-say, two or three times wider, thought Pirvan.

He crept as close to his friend as he could, soaked one of the bandages in the healing potion, and started patting the blood off the man’s scalp. This revealed a long but shallow gash, the sort that sheds ugly amounts of blood without doing great harm.

This healing also woke Grimsoar.

“Takhisis fly away with you!” Grimsoar said, halfway between a moan and a curse. Then he moved his head, his eyes widened, and he cursed plainly.

“Pirvan?” he said at last.

“Under the dust, the very same. And don’t mention names. We’re down among haunted stones, or I’m a cleric.”

Grimsoar nodded, winced, and swallowed. “Any water?”

Pirvan’s bottle was empty, but there was healing potion to spare. Grimsoar said that it tasted no better than it felt, but some life returned to his voice and eyes after it went down.

Meanwhile, up above they’d heard the call for more water, and two bottles came down. By the time they did, Pirvan would rather have had more grease. The stone slab had stopped its tilt short of injuring Grimsoar’s arm, but not short of holding it tightly. A little grease might give the big man’s largely intact strength a chance.

“As long as you hold that slab off my arm while I wriggle,” Grimsoar said. “I know this is giving my proper work to you and yours to me, but we can sort it all out some better time and place. Want to try?”

“If you’re ready-”

“I’ve been ready to be out of this place since I hit bottom, even if I didn’t know it,” Grimsoar said. “And you’ll need me with two good arms to get us back out of here. I doubt not that the hole’s cleaned out to your size, not mine.”

“It would fit you like a child’s loinguard on a minotaur.”

“I thought as much.”

“Your head-”

“-hurts like I’ve been drinking cheap dwarf spirits, but won’t hurt less if I lie around here until another rock falls on it!”

* * * * *

It took only five minutes and two or three lesser miracles to free Grimsoar’s now well-greased arm and pull him out from behind the slab. The open space was barely large enough for the two men unless they huddled close, and there was no room for Grimsoar to lift the smaller man on his shoulders as they had done in several bits of night work.

The only way out was to enlarge the hole until Grimsoar could pass outward, with as much help from above (the floor above, not necessarily the gods) as could be contrived. Pirvan called for some more shoring timbers and water, and they shared the water as Pirvan counted and judged the strength of the timbers.

After this night’s work, I’ll be able to take up mining in the dwarven kingdoms, if the thieving ever runs dry, Pirvan thought.

Without the help of gods or magic, getting out was going to take almost as much time as getting in. There would be two pairs of hands at work, as Grimsoar appeared remarkably fit for a man about to be rescued from burial. There would also be much more room needed, which Pirvan was making one rock at a time.

The problem was that every other rock he removed had to be replaced by a piece of timber. This could exhaust their supply of wood before the hole was safe, Pirvan realized. They might have to raid the timberyard across the alley from the Willow Wand, and though Pirvan had lost his sense of time, the night could no longer be young. It went against custom and pride among the night workers to pay for something, but these would not weigh heavily against the life of a brother.

What would weigh heavily on both men in the hole (besides a cave-in) was the matter of space. Every piece of shoring not only shrank the timber supply, it took up some of the space freed by the removal of stones. It was a question of more than philosophical interest: Could men save and doom themselves at the same time? Much more than philosophical interest, if you were one of the men.

“How are you coming down there?” Silgor sounded impatient.

Grimsoar grunted like a boar having a diseased tusk removed. “If we’d as much space down here as you’ve between your ears, we’d be long out and fondling Yanitzia on our knees.”

That drew something between a gasp and a giggle from the woman. Otherwise there was silence, except for what Pirvan would have sworn was Silgor grinding his teeth.

“Truly, what do you need?” Silgor asked.

“More wood,” Grimsoar replied.

“We’ll have to start tearing out-”

“Do so,” Pirvan said, in a commanding tone, which he realized might be unwise only after he’d spoken. “Is this hidey-hole going to be of any further use anyway?”

“Probably less than you and Grimsoar, I admit,” Silgor said. “And not just to the ladies, either.” They heard him ordering out another wood-gathering party. By the time they’d left, Pirvan had an idea.

“Silgor,” he called. “I think that one of these big slabs is holding everything else in place. If you braced it on the top while we braced it on the bottom, we could probably clear out the rest of the passage.”

“Which slab?” Silgor called. “This one?”

Pirvan heard the sound of a boot striking stone. He also heard the rubble groaning and grating as it shifted and timbers cracking from new strains. Dust filled the hole again, and a fistful of gravel rattled down and bounced off Pirvan’s nose and forehead. He sneezed and thought rude things about Silgor.

Grimsoar said them aloud. He described Silgor’s parents, habits, brains, and likely fate in some detail and at considerable length.

When the big man fell silent, a repentant-sounding Silgor called down, “I think we can wait for the others to come back. The more hands, the better!”

“Assuming you want us out of here alive, yes,” Pirvan said. He wondered briefly if the witnesses had decided that the best way of solving the Pirvan problem was to “accidentally” bury him, even if they had to bury Grimsoar along with him.

If they do that, I will have their blood, if I have to come back from the Abyss to do it, Pirvan thought.

By the time the timber-gathering party returned, Pirvan was certain that he and Grimsoar had been down in the hole for a week. The next accident would be an underground stream breaking through into this hole, and if he and Grimsoar didn’t float to the surface on the timbers, they would drown.…

“Many hands speed work,” at least if they know how to do it. From the curses, coughs, and groans (echoed by groans from shifting rubble), Pirvan had to wonder. At least nothing serious fell.

“Almost ready,” Silgor called. “At least I think so. We had to dig a trifle to clear space for the bracing.”

“Just don’t clear so much that the whole cursed slab shifts again,” Pirvan called.

“I’ve learned that much,” Silgor replied. “Be easy.”

“Easy!” Grimsoar roared, loud enough to raise both echoes and dust. “Silgor, the next thing you learn about digging will be the first. Now are we going to climb out of here before the next coming of the dragons, or are we not?”

“Start climbing,” Silgor said. “And save your breath for that. We’re not going to-”

The longest groan yet came from the rubble. Grimsoar echoed the sound. He reminded Pirvan of a dying minotaur.

We’re both going to be dead humans if we don’t gamble that Silgor’s right, Pirvan thought. He pointed upward. “You heard him.”

“You should-” Grimsoar began.

“We don’t have time to argue, my friend. I can slip through a smaller passage than you, and I’ll be easier to pull out.” Apart from the fact that I haven’t come this far to have your blood on my hands!

Grimsoar’s speed had surprised many men, but until tonight not his friend Pirvan. The big man seemed to fly up the tunnel, casually snapping shoring timbers as if they were dry twigs. His feet vanished above, then a roar of triumph filled the hole, along with cheers.

Pirvan wasted no more time. When the cheers began, he was already halfway up the passage. Odd timbers clattered down and struck him on the head and shoulder. Splinters and sharp stones left sticking out added to the blood trickling across his greased skin and the smears he left behind. One large rock slid down and jammed itself under his chest; for a moment he wasn’t sure if he could pry it free or save his ribs if he tried to squeeze over it.

As the rock came free and slid on down into the shadows, the loudest groan of all came. Pirvan threw caution and several pieces of wood to the winds, and flung himself at the last spear’s-length of the slope. Only the grease let him slide upward until two strong hands gripped his wrists and heaved. Only the grip of those hands snatched him free of the hole, as the slab shifted and a score of stones larger than a man crashed into the hole. Before a thirsty man could have gulped a cup of water, anything bigger than a mouse would have been crushed into pulp, and the mouse stifled by the dust that poured up.

Pirvan was neither crushed nor stifled. He also drank no water. He lay on his back on the floor, and anxious hands thrust water at him. It dribbled out of the corner of his mouth, and finally someone noticed that his heart was beating but that his eyes were unseeing.

They lifted him on balks of timber and carried him out of the chamber.