Lost Gods Page 20

  Neythan sighed and followed him to the wall.

  The shelves were filled with vessels of all sizes, mostly silver, some brass. A pair of seamless garments and a long woollen overcoat lay neatly folded further along the shelf, both covered in dust. Neythan stood impatiently by as Caleb ogled the contents. The wall’s entire length seemed packed with costly keepsakes of one kind or another – gold, silver, bronze.

  “They’d have counted much of this cursed, you know,” Caleb said. “That’s why it is all here. Some pretty pieces, no?”

  Neythan walked along at Caleb’s shoulder. He saw a fold of parchments on one of the higher shelves, stacked vellum overlaid with a cover of hardened leather and piled into the short space. It was the only messily placed thing they’d come across. He left Caleb softly rubbing dust from a golden lamp and wandered over to examine the stack more closely. He tugged it out from the shelf. There were several scrolls placed together. The pages had begun to fall loose. Neythan decided to take one out to reroll the page and place it properly. He lifted it carefully from the shelf with one hand.

  “Here, take this,” he said, and held out the torch.

  Caleb came across. “What have you there?”

  Neythan shrugged. “Scroll.”

  Caleb took the torch. “What does it say?”

  Neythan turned its coat, eyeing the coiled barrel of leather that encased it. A strange emblem marked the covering – what looked like a jaguar, its body elongated and set in a circle as though prowling after its own tail, except the tail was the head of an eagle. Elaborate patterns ringed the emblem and words were stitched at the corner.

  “Magi Harumai?” Neythan read.

  He lengthened the page, unrolling it from the pin. It was filled with glyphs and markings like nothing Neythan had ever seen. He turned it to Caleb.

  Caleb squinted. “Some sort of writing?”

  “A strange sort.”

  Neythan shook his head and rolled the page again. He put it back on the shelf next to another leather-coated scroll. He craned his head, curious to read the words stitched at the corner of that one too, and then, reading them, frowned.

  “What is it?”

  Neythan tugged the hem of the coat an inch from the shelf to show him.

  “Magi Qoh’leth… now that is interesting.”

  Neythan tugged it free and opened it. The markings inside were as the first, unfamiliar, indecipherable.

  “A puzzle for another day, though,” Caleb said. “As you’ve said, we cannot tarry long.”

  “No…” Neythan said quietly, lingering over the scroll, looking at the stitched name of the father of the Shedaím. “We cannot.”

  He slowly rerolled the page and put it back on the shelf and looked at it. He then turned and took the torch from Caleb and went back over to the chest and statues. Caleb remained by the shelves, stroking a jewelled silver pot.

  “Are you going to help me with this or not?” Neythan said.

  The chest was twice the length of a man. Caleb walked along its length and swiped at the cobwebs tangling between the lip of the ledge and the chest wall.

  “Be sure to put that down somewhere safe,” Caleb said, nodding at the torch. “Somewhere it won’t go out. Lose its light and we’ll be stuck in here a while longer than either of us would like.”

  Neythan carefully propped the torch against the foot of the statue behind him, letting the flame lick against the stone. He went to the chest and braced against the ledge. Caleb came around to the same side.

  “Together. Now.”

  They pushed hard. The ledge shifted, snagged, then scraped loose, opening a narrow triangle of space into the cavity beneath. Neythan collected the torch and lifted it over the opening. A glitter of brass and gold winked up at them from the gap as a waft of warm spongy air gasped free. Caleb, on tiptoe, saw and giggled.

  “Perhaps we ought to reconsider this no graverobbing thing. I mean, that’s more gold than either of us will ever see again.”

  “Do you see her?”

  “I see many things, darkly, but the corpse, no, I do not. She may be underneath. Perhaps you ought to… I don’t know… rummage a little.”

  Neythan looked at him.

  “I would myself but my arms are too short.”

  Neythan gave a wan smile. He looked again at the disordered trinkets of gold and copper – goblets, necklaces, rings, a diadem, a moth-eaten garment of purple slovenly spread beneath and through it all, tangled and silken despite the dust. There was even cutlery, and a strange rod of silver, like a sceptre, long and jewelled. Neythan leaned down and grabbed it, and then used it to feel around, searching for the queen’s corpse.

  “I think I have her,” he said.

  “Can you bring her up?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Be careful, she’ll be little more than bones. If you catch on an eye socket and yank too hard you’ll bring only the skull and not the rest.”

  Neythan grimaced.

  Caleb smiled.

  “You’re joking.”

  “Of course I am. She will be bandaged, likely.”

  Neythan shook his head and slowly lifted the snagged sceptre. The trinkets and ornaments spilled away around it. The sceptre emerged clinging to the hole of a woollen mantle. Caleb reached in and helped. They pulled out a bandaged stiff mass of head and shoulder and propped it against the inner wall of the chest on top of the gold. The lower body, wrapped in starchy bindings, looked hollow and caved in.

  “Didn’t think she’d be so heavy,” Neythan said.

  “It’s not her, it’s her dress, her jewellery. Of all you see in here the best of it will be worn on the body itself, wrapped in with the bandages.”

  Neythan shook his head. “Sovereigns have so much they must be buried in it?”

  “Likely they just can’t abide the thought of it falling to others. Now, hold her still.” Caleb brought out a small dagger. “The bandaging will be hard, difficult to cut, so do not drop her.”

  He put the blade to the rot-dried cloth swaddling the neck and jabbed it in and began to carve – hacking and sawing and tugging – upwards along the neck’s flank to its nape.

  Neythan pulled a face at the smell.

  “What did you expect? Myrrh and spikenard?”

  “I expected bones. Dry ones.”

  “The way they treat the body at burial preserves the flesh, at least partly. She’ll be bones, yes, but not dry ones. Not yet.”

  He cut a square and pulled it away; sticky membranous strings clung after it to reveal a mess of black putrified grime at the collar and neck on one side.

  Neythan coughed.

  “You see why the ranger chose to stay by the door,” Caleb said.

  He cut another square, this time around the front beneath the jaw. A gob of rotted tissue pulled away, clinging to the cloth. Caleb held it up, looking for the glint of metal – the pendant – then, not seeing anything, tossed it back into the chest.

  “You seem to have a talent for this.”

  “I’ve seen and done many a thing, Neythan. But graverobbing? I’ll confess this is my first.”

  Neythan watched as Caleb cut and tugged and dug, ploughing through the bandaging and the clammy moist fabric of the queen’s graveclothes beneath as the putrescent stench of decay wafted up with every new ribbon of rot and rag he sliced off. Neythan’s grip of the corpse was starting to cramp. He was beginning to doubt the stone was even there when Caleb allowed himself a half-happy sigh.

  “Look.”

  “Do you have it?”

  “Perhaps.”

  Caleb held a pendant and thin chain. He took a rag from his pocket and cleaned them and then held them to the torch.

  “Yes, I think this is it. Let go of her. Take a look.”

  Neythan let the bandaged corpse slide back into the chest.

  “See the jewel? Have you ever seen anything like that?”

  The pendant was a half-globe of misty black stone prodding from a large
pebble-shaped seat of gold, like the burr of a chestnut cracked open.

  “Finally,” Neythan said. “Keep it in your pocket and give me a hand closing the lid.”

  They shut the chest, pushing the ledge back across the opening. Neythan looked around the chamber to be sure they’d left nothing behind and, taking the torch, went toward the doorway, Caleb following, and then stopped.

  “What is it?”

  Neythan went back in, around the chest and statues to the shelved wall opposite. He examined the scrolls and tugged free the one named Magi Qoh’leth.

  “Oh? And what happened to ‘we are not graverobbers’?”

  Neythan put the scroll under his arm and came back toward the doorway.

  “If you are to take something you could at least let it be something of worth, like all this gold.”

  “Come on,” Neythan said, walking quickly past and back out into the dank tunnel with the torch so Caleb had to follow. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Twenty-Four

  R O B B E R

  As it often is, the way back seemed quicker, as though the tunnel had shortened. They quickly found themselves scrambling up the cool stone steps and making their way toward the doorway at the top where the ranger waited. Neythan was carrying the torch in one hand and the battered roll of vellum in the other. Caleb, at his side, trying to keep up, hopped up the steps in twos, his fist thrust deep into his pocket clasping the amulet and chain. The stairway curved upwards into the airy cold until they arrived to find Yevhen still at the top, squatting on the first step like some grim beggar.

  “Finally… I was of a mind to come down after you.”

  “A thousand pardons,” Caleb said. “The swaddling of the dead makes heavy work. Feel free to go down and see for yourself.”

  The ranger ignored him. His tongue danced nervously behind his teeth as he gathered to the torchlight. “So. Do you have it?”

  “The amulet? Yes. We do.” Caleb lifted it from his pocket and held it up. “And a pretty little thing it is.”

  The ranger smiled hungrily. “Let me see.”

  Caleb handed it to Neythan. Neythan looked at it and held it out to Yevhen. The ranger squinted, his eyes still adjusting; he’d been sitting there for over an hour in the dark. He took the amulet, stood by Neythan and the torch, and examined the jewel carefully, before, with obvious relief, exhaling and smiling again. He looked at Neythan and Caleb. “I thank you.”

  “You’ll have your chance to do so,” Neythan said. “When you show us the tailor’s dwellings.”

  The ranger nodded, still smiling. “Indeed I shall. Now, let’s be gone from here.”

  He took the torch from Neythan to return it to the fixture on the wall by the door. And then, before lifting it to its place, doused it with a damp rag stowed in his hand, putting out the light, turning everything dark.

  “What are you–?”

  Neythan heard the blow and the gasped grunt and soft muffled tumble of weight and limbs at his side.

  “Caleb!”

  The door swung open, a brief blink of waning day into the stepped shaft, the ranger running out, Caleb behind, sprawled on the steps, groaning.

  “Caleb.”

  “Go…” Caleb’s voice was weak. “I’m alright… go after him.”

  Neythan fumbled for the closing door and pulled it open. The evening lamps of the foyer glared brightly. He squinted to see the ranger sprinting away along the promenade by the atrium.

  He looked back into the shaft. Caleb, bloodied head, breathing hard, trying to lift himself.

  “Go,” the old man commanded weakly.

  Neythan went out into the back foyer. The atrium was to his right. He could see the ranger running along the arcade – darker now, the sun setting – and turning into the corridor on the other side. Neythan ran into the open, across and through the atrium and beside the reflecting pool to try and cut him off.

  “You there!” The guard on the roof. “You! Stop!”

  Neythan ran on to the other side and entered the corridor the ranger had disappeared into, the guard still shouting, calling to others. He arrived in the passage to see another door closing. He ran to it, yanked the door, went in.

  Dark room. No windows.

  The stave came at him from the side, hammered into his ribs, knocking him over a table and to the wall, the scroll dropping from his hand as he fell. The ranger hurled the stave at him. Neythan parried it, pushed himself up from the wall, picked up the scroll, and followed as the ranger rushed back out of the room.

  Across the atrium a pair of guards approaching, the one on the roof still bellowing commands. Neythan turned right, sprinting along the gallery’s walkway to the corner after the ranger.

  A dagger clanged against the stone wall ahead, weak and wide, the guards not armed with bows. Neythan ran past it and around into the passage at the end. He leapt down a short stairway. He could see the ranger ahead, scampering through the foyer, the image bouncing before him as he chased. Neythan was gaining when a sudden dull thud of weight abruptly drove against his shoulder. The impact shoved him sideways, nearly upending him, then a hot throbbing interior ache. Neythan looked and saw the long shaft of an arrow protruding from the top of his arm.

  “I’d hoped I’d be the one to find you.”

  He looked beyond the arrow to find a man approaching, strolling across from the other side of the hallway. He was tall, similar height to the ranger. Broad, sloped shoulders. Short dark hair and greying beard. Neythan brought himself to his feet.

  “Worse than a rat is a man who betrays his own words, his creed, and his Brothers.” The man dropped the bow in his hand and drew a thick broadsword, still speaking as he approached. “A man who has no covenant in his tongue is no longer a man. He is accursed, as are all who betray what words they’ve spoken against themselves. Such a man must be judged… I am that judgment.”

  “Shedaím,” Neythan said.

  “Ah, so you do not forget the name of the one who bore you… heretic.”

  The man lunged forward, swinging his sword.

  Neythan spun away. Then reeled back as the man’s foot hammered his ribs and drove him off his feet, wincing at the dig of the arrow in his shoulder as he hit the ground.

  He stood and drew his sword as the man rushed in again. Blades locked. Neythan tried to hit him with the scroll. The man dodged, countered, punched Neythan’s ribs, then shoved him back again.

  “Child’s tricks,” the man smiled. “I’d expected more from you – the famed son of Ruben, the nephew of Master Sol? They were of my sharím, you know. I see their likenesses in you now, the same betrayer’s blood.”

  “I am not a betrayer.”

  The man grinned. “Do you await your companion? Is that it? Tell me, where is she? Perhaps she has betrayed you too. Seed sown one season and reaped the next. It can happen that way.”

  He rushed in again.

  Neythan ducked and stepped in this time. Too close for swords. Arms tangled. He batted down a strike, worked an angle and leapt, letting his head crack hard against the man’s jaw before he spun away, slicing back with his sword as he stepped out of reach.

  The man staggered back and went down on one knee, bleeding from his mouth and flank. He looked down at the gash, spat out what may have been a chunk of his own tongue.

  Neythan was about to speak when he saw more guards approaching from the rear. He turned and sprinted across the foyer to the kitchen door they’d first entered through. The door was locked. The man, still bleeding, was coming after him, the guards at his back chasing. Neythan ran out of the foyer into the palace’s main antechamber. Two guards stood waiting by the main door. The others were chasing from behind.

  Neythan ran on into a flanking passage that fronted the palace, running parallel to the arcades on the west. He leapt through one of the empty windows head first, landing hard and skidding against the arcade’s paving.

  Outside, the sky dimming and deep blue, few clouds, dull smudges
lit by the moon, lamps and torches in the street, evening coming on. He got up quickly, sheathed his sword, picked up the scroll and ran hard again to the low walls of the grounds, the shouts of the guards behind him, his breaths hot in his lungs. He swung his body over, leaping and planting down with one hand; stumbled a little as he landed and kept on running into the city street.

  The alley was crowded. Dim forms. Lamplit faces. Shadows from the tall housing, pale adobe walls heaped high and looming, darkening the oncoming night further, all of it rushing by as he ran.

  He turned down another alley, thinner than the first. No torches. No people. The narrow way guttered and dipped inwards like a shrunken valley, slime slithering through its middle. Neythan felt the stray splash of puddled sewage against his ankles as he ran along the passage. He came to a corner and crouched, panting, waiting, staring back along the alley and willing his breaths to quieten so he could listen for pursuers.

  He waited there for a while, watching the passing by of men and women at the alley’s end as he squatted in the dark. Word would soon go to the city gates. Likely less than an hour to get out that way. Caleb had looked badly hurt in the dark of the stairway. Had he been caught? Might he still be there? Was their theft yet known? The ranger, he’d be trying to depart the city too. Perhaps by the gates, perhaps by some other way – an advantage for him in that he’d planned this all along. Neythan would need the horse to make it to the gates swiftly but it was still by the tent booths near the market. Too busy, too many people. And then what of Caleb?

  He took hold of the quarrel still sticking out from his shoulder, grasped it tenderly, wincing with the touch. The arrow was hard to reach and get hold of, aside and to the rear of his shoulder. It would be difficult for him to pull it himself without tearing across the flesh, if at all. He snapped the shaft instead – painfully – and tossed it into the slow-moving river of sewage and watched it float, resting on the lubricious froth of the water as it carried along the sewageways to be dumped out of the city.

  Out of the city. The sewageways.

  Neythan stood and looked along the alley to see where the water was going. He began to walk, keeping pace with the broken shaft as it drifted along the greasy current. The alley continued along as a back street between the housing until coming to a crossway where other rivulets had converged. At the centre was a hole into which they were all pouring. The opening was smaller than he’d hoped. He crouched down on hands and knees to examine it, gagging a little at the rancid waft of the sewage as it poured in. He stood up again and looked around. No other way.