People of the Talisman

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Stark hauled himself up onto the wall and sat there, breathing hard and looking at the Quarter of the Blessed.

It was not a happy prospect. Kushat was a very old city, and a great deal of dying had been done in it. The area of this quarter was greater than any of those housing the living, and it had grown vertically as well as horizontally. Above ground the squat stone tombs had fallen and been leveled and rebuilt on their own debris until most of them now stood on humped mounds higher than the wall. Beside each one stood a tall stela, carved with innumerable names, most of them long obliterated, and these stelae sagged and leaned in every direction, bowed down with their weight of time, a dark sad forest with the cold wind blowing through it and the winter sun making long erratic patterns of shadow. Below ground, Balin had said, the rock was riddled with the even older shaft graves. Except for the wind, the silence was absolute.

High overhead, the somber cliffs brooded, notched with the gateway of the pass.

Stark sniffed the cold and quiet air, and the aborigine in him recoiled, shivering. He hunched around on the wall, looking back toward the increasing sounds of war and rapine. Columns of smoke were rising now, here and there, and the screaming of women had become incessant. The barbarian tide was rolling rapidly inward toward the King City. On the high tower of the king’s hall, the crimson banner had come down.

Lugh had clambered up on the wall beside him. He watched Stark curiously. “What is it?”

“I’m thinking that I’d rather go back where the fighting is hot, than in there where it’s far too peaceful.”

“Then why go?”

“Because Balin told me of a way used by the tomb-robbers.”

Lugh nodded, looking at Stark and smiling a crooked smile. “But you’re afraid.”

Stark shrugged, a nervous twitch of his shoulders. Lugh said, “I was hating you, Stark, because you’re too damned much of a man and you make me feel like a child. But you’re only a child yourself under all that muscle.” He jumped down off the wall. “Come on, I’ll keep you safe against the dust and the dry bones.”

Stark stared at him. Then he laughed and followed him, but still reluctantly. They went between the tombs and the leaning stelae, mindful of Ciaran’s riders and darting like animals between the covering mounds. Then Lugh stopped and stood facing Stark and said, “When you told me, ‘Another thing has been found’ what did you mean?”

“The talisman.”

The wind rocked Lugh back and forth where he stood, and his eyes were wild and bright, looking into Stark’s.

“How do you know that, outlander?”

“Because I brought it here myself, having taken it from the hands of Camar, who was my friend and who did not live to return it.”

“I see.” Lugh nodded. “I see. Then that morning at Ban Cruach’s shrine…”

“I knew you were lying. Yes.”

“No matter. Where is it, Stark? I want to see…”

“It’s in safe hands, and long out of the city.” He hoped that he was right. “Men are rallying to it, at the Festival Stones.”

“That’s where we’re going?”

“Yes.”

“Good enough,” Lugh said. “Good enough. Where is the door to this rat-run?”

Stark pointed toward the arched ceremonial gate that pierced the wall at the end of the street they had left. “I must count from that. Keep an eye out for Ciaran’s men.”

There was no sign of them. It was possible they had turned back. It was also possible that they had come ahead of Stark and Lugh into the Quarter of the Blessed and were now hidden from sight among the tumuli. He picked up his guide mark as quickly as he could and counted the stelae as Balin had told him, going past one that was cracked in half, and one that was fallen, and one that had carved on its top a woman’s face. “Here,” he said, and stopped below a tomb with a great slab of rock in its side, no different from any other in appearance. He began to climb up the tall mound, flinching from the icy touch of the stone and rubble that seemed somehow colder than other stones, and Lugh came scrambling up like a dog on all fours behind him.

“Stark,” he said abruptly, “what happens if you have counted wrong?”

“We go back and start over again.”

“I think not.”

Stark turned his head, startled. Lugh was looking off to his left. There was movement there among the tumuli. Stark saw the gleam of a bare red head in the sunlight, and then at a distance another as two riders came into view in the twisting lanes between the mounds. From those two he could extrapolate the whole company of riders. They had come ahead to the burying ground, while Stark and Lugh were struggling on foot along the mews. Now they were fanned out in a long line and working their way back toward the gate, hoping to flush out their quarry.

One of the men saw them and yelled, and Stark flung himself upward toward the stone slab.

If he had counted wrong…

He set his hands on the stone in the way Balin had told him, and he pushed in the way Balin had told him, and for a moment nothing at all happened and the red-haired riders were racing toward them. Then the slab tilted with a sudden harsh groan. There was a puff of dead-cold, dead-stale air in his face, and the side of the tomb was open. He shoved Lugh into the dark aperture, glancing back as he did so at the riders. They were not quite going to make it, and both of them had their arms lifted for the throw. Behind them other riders were coming into sight, gathering to their shouts. Stark dived for the opening as the spears flew. One grazed his leg, cutting a gash across the back of the calf. The other came through the opening beside him, passed between him and Lugh and clattered harmlessly against the far wall of the tomb. “Close it up,” Lugh was saying. “Close it up, we’ll have the bastards in with us.” They flung themselves against the stone and it went back with a clang on its pivots, shutting out light and sounds.

They sat for a moment, getting their breath and their bearings. Very quickly there came a pounding on the stone and the faint shouting of angry voices.

“Can they open it?” Lugh asked.

“Not likely. The stone is cleverly made.”

The pounding increased, and now there were new sounds, of men clambering over the vaulted roof and probing with their spear-points for a likely crack. “They won’t get far with that,” Stark said, “but it won’t take them long to commandeer some men with picks and sledgehammers. We’d best be going.”

“What about light?”

Stark groped and fumbled in the darkness, remembering Balin’s instructions. “Even tomb-robbers need light to ply their trade. Here—if I can find it…”

He found it, neatly set out in a corner—a lantern, a supply of slow-burning candles, and a flint-and-steel lighter with an impregnated wick that gave out a tiny flame the second time Stark snapped it. He stuck one candle into the lantern and thrust the rest into his tunic along with the lighter. Let Ciaran’s men find their own. The banging and hammering on the outside was reaching a peak of angry frustration. Stark examined the gash on his leg. It was not deep but it was bleeding enough to be annoying. He stood while Lugh bound it up with a strip of dirty rag torn from some part of his garments, studying the tomb chamber in the dim glow of the lantern. It was quite large, and quite empty. The stone ledges had been used for nothing besides the storage of loot.

“All right,” he said, when Lugh had finished. “That stone over there, with the ring in it. It lifts aside.”

Underneath it was a pitch black and narrow shaft, with niches cut for the hands and feet. Lugh peered down it. Stark glanced at his face and grunted.

“What happened to your courage, fearless one?”

“It’s not the dust and the dry bones that bother me,” Lugh said. “It’s thinking what will happen if I miss my footing.”

“I’ll go first with the lantern.” Stark lowered himself over the edge, feeling for the niches, and started down, the lantern slung by a thong from his wrist. He looked up at Lugh. “Don’t miss your footing,” he said.

Lugh followed him, slowly and painfully, saying nothing.

It was a long way down. The upper part of the shaft had been constructed over many centuries, extending up through the layers of rubble as they formed. At the moment Stark had no interest in archaeology, but it was impossible not to observe the strata as he crept down through them. Then the shaft widened and the walls were of solid rock, and he knew that he was in the original, the gods knew how ancient, shaft. They had cut it deep, those long-gone builders, and Stark cursed them for every foot of it, the sweat starting on his forehead and his muscles aching, his attention shifting anxiously between his own next foothold and the soles of Lugh’s boots scrabbling uncertainly so close above his head.

He stood at last in the fine vaulted chamber at the bottom and waited for Lugh to stop shaking. The lantern glow showed the outlines of bas-reliefs as sharp and clear as the day they were finished. Otherwise the chamber was empty except for a few ambiguous fragments and a pinch of dust swept into a corner as though by some untidy housewife. The air was musty and stifling, though the candle burned well enough. Stark fought down a choking claustrophobia, holding himself firmly in hand. There was a doorway leading out of the chamber, crudely cut and brutally ruining one of the reliefs. Stark went through it, into a narrow rough-walled tunnel.

He had no idea how old this tunnel might be. Even more he had no idea why men would have gone to the immense and back-breaking labor of constructing it, unless every tomb it connected with was as rich as Tut-ankh-Amen’s, and even then it seemed as though it would have been easier just to work for a living. It did pass through a succession of chambers, all stripped bare except for an occasional heap of bones or potsherds. Side tunnels led off presumably to other tombs. Stark supposed that this tunneling had gone on since the first shaft grave was sunk in Kushat, and that had been time enough for a lot of expansion.

“Did you know about this?” he asked Lugh.

“There are tales about all sorts of holes and byways underneath the city. We never took much stock in them.” He added, “That’s only one of the mistakes we made, and not the worst, either.”

Their voices sounded dim and muffled in that place, and made little furtive echoings in the side passages. They did not speak again.

After a while Stark realized that it had been some time since they passed the last tomb-chamber. He guessed that they had now left the Quarter of the Blessed and were under the King City.

The tunnel became a doorway into a vastly wider space. Stark held the lantern high, peering into the dim-lit obscurity. And now he understood the reason why the tunnel had been built.

“The catacombs,” said Lugh, whispering. “The tombs of the kings of Kushat.”

The words scattered softly away in the hollow darkness. Lugh held out his hand to Stark. “Light a candle.”

Stark lighted him one at the stub in the lantern, and then replaced that with a fresh one. Lugh ranged ahead, looking here, looking there, his face shocked in the candle-glow.

“But they were so carefully sealed,” he said. “There are three levels, and each gallery was sealed so that no one could ever break into it…”

“From above,” said Stark. “Where it would be noticed. That’s what they did with the talisman. Camar must have come at it from below.”

“Oh!” said Lugh, shaken with indignation. “Oh, but see what they’ve done!”

The kings of Kushat had been buried royally, each one carefully embalmed and sitting upright on a funerary throne, presumably wearing all the trappings of kingship and surrounded by the weapons and the wine cups, the offertory bowls and the precious ornaments suitable to his estate. The beautifully polished stone of the ceilings and walls had been carved in reliefs showing events in the lives of the rulers, who had sat stiffly all down the length of that very long, wide hall, each in his own space. The remains of hooks set into the roof showed where rich hangings had once served to separate these throne-rooms, and Stark could imagine carpets on the cold floor, and a great deal of color. There were many holes for sconces, and he thought that it must have been a fine sight here with the torches blazing and the long procession of priests and nobles and mourning women following slowly as a king was borne on his long shield to the place where he would hold court forever. At the back of each room was a rock-cut chamber, equally splendid in its own way, for the queen and other members of the royal family.

Of all that immeasurable splendor, the tunneling thieves of Kushat had taken every crumb. Even the metal sconces had been dug out of the walls. Nothing was left, except the thrones, which were stone and immovable, and the kings themselves, who were not worth the carrying. Stripped of their robes and their armor and their jeweled insignia of office, the naked corpses shivered on their icy thrones, and the irreverent thieves had placed some of those that were still sturdy enough in antic poses. Others were broken in bits and scattered on the floor or heaped like kindling in the throne seats.

“All this time it’s been like this,” Lugh was muttering. “All this time. And we never knew.”

“I expect that by now Narrabhar is in much the same case,” said Stark, and added, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

He blew out Lugh’s candle and hurried on, treading once or twice on the brittle fragments of royalty.

From the catacombs the way led straight enough, with only two side tunnels leading off to some other sources of plunder, perhaps the other catacombs Lugh had mentioned. Stark moved as fast as he dared, in a tearing rush to get out into the world again. At the same time he was calculating how long it would take Ciaran’s men to break into the tomb and follow them, and how long it would take Ciaran to think of sending patrols out around the city. In any case, the sooner he and Lugh got clear of this rathole the better.

He came to the end of it almost before he realized it. He had been watching for daylight and there was none, or so very little of it that he did not notice it at once. It was a change in the air, a fresh clean smell that warned him. He blew out the candle, and then he was able to see ahead of him a ragged patch of darkness much less absolute than that surrounding them. He touched Lugh’s arm, enjoining caution, and moved much more slowly and carefully to the end of the tunnel.

It opened into the bottom of a deep cleft in the rock, where the shadows were already black. Overhead he saw the sky with pale sunlight still left in it. There was no sight or sound of anything human nearby. Stark emerged from the tunnel, breathing deeply and covered suddenly with a cold sweat, as though he had just escaped some deadly peril.

“There is a path,” said Lugh, pointing to a narrow thread that slanted up the side of the cleft.

They climbed it, coming out at length in a sheltered place among the rocks where the plain sloped upward from Kushat. Here for thousands of years thief and merchant had met to bargain over the furniture of kings and rich men and the golden hair-pins of their wives. Now Stark and Lugh looked out between the rocks and saw the black smoke rising from the city, and heard the voices, thin and distant down the wind. Lugh’s chin quivered like a child’s.

“The Festival Stones lie there,” he said, and led off at an abrupt trot.

Stark turned to follow him. And high above him on his right hand, so close now that he could hear the huge whistling of the wind in its stony throat, was the Gates of Death.