As they went down the next corridor, Verna realized that she was no longer sure where they were. The tomb area was a confusing maze that occupied several levels. In addition to that, most of the corridors were identical. They were all the same width and height and all made of the same white marble with gray veining through it. She knew that they were down in the lowest level, but other than that, she was depending on the others to know exactly where they were.
Behind, keeping their distance so as not to interfere, the soldiers, ever watchful, followed as quietly as possible.
The group of people in white robes finally came to a halt along a section of the corridor where there wasn’t an intersection. Farther down there were a number of halls going off in both directions, but in this place there were none.
Several of the staff placed the flats of their hands on the white marble. They glanced back at Cara as they lightly ran their hands over the walls.
“Here?” Cara asked.
The staff, most of them gathered around her like chicks around a mother hen, were all nods.
“What is it about this place, this corridor, that is strange to you?” she asked them.
Several people, with their hands held uniformly apart, made back and forth gestures toward the wall.
Cara didn’t understand. Neither did Verna. Dario scratched his fringe of white hair. Even he was puzzling at the strange show. The staff huddled a moment, using their signs, silently discussing the problem among themselves.
The people all turned back to Cara. Three of them pointed at the wall, then shook their heads. They all turned and looked at Cara again to gauge her reaction and understanding.
“You don’t like the way the wall looks?” Cara guessed.
The people all shook their heads side to side. Cara cast a questioning look back at Verna and Dario. Dario turned his palms up and shrugged. Verna could offer no suggestion either.
“I still don’t understand,” Cara said. “I know you think something is wrong with the wall”—heads nodded—“but I don’t know what.” She sighed. “I’m sorry. It’s not your fault. It’s my failing. I just don’t know much about walls. Can you help me understand?”
One of the men in the group took Cara’s hand and gently pulled her closer to the wall. He reached out and with the finger of his other hand touched the stone. He looked back at Cara.
“Go on,” she said, “I’m listening.”
The man smiled at the way she’d put it and then returned his attention to the wall. He began tracing some of the gray
veining. Cara leaned in a little and frowned as she watched. He looked back over his shoulder. When he saw her frowning in concentration, he went back to tracing the gray swirl. He did it several times, over and over in the same place, to make Cara pay attention.
“It looks like a face,” Cara said in quiet wonder.
The man nodded furiously. Others nodded with him. They all rejoiced silently. A woman reached out and eagerly traced the same gray whorl. Her finger followed a curl, an arc. She then punctuated it the same as the man, by touching the center in two places. Eyes.
Cara reached out and traced the same face in the stone, just as they had done, following the gray eddies with a finger, tracing out the mouth, the nose, then the eyes.
The white-robed group made happy-sounding grunts, clapping her on the back, thrilled that they had been able to make her see the face.
Verna couldn’t imagine what it could mean.
One man from the group motioned, then hurried to a spot across and a little farther down the corridor. He quickly traced out something in the gray veining. From where Verna stood she couldn’t see it, but she assumed that it was probably another face. He rushed to another spot along the corridor and traced out a small face there in the stone looking out at them. He rushed to another place and pointed out a larger face.
Verna was beginning to understand. These people were down here all the time. They had learned the individual markings in what appeared at first glance as indistinguishable slabs of white marble. But they weren’t indistinguishable to these people. To the crypt staff, who spent their lives down here cleaning and caring for the place, these markings were like street signs. They recognized them all.
Comprehension had come onto Cara’s face as well. She was also looking more worried.
“Show me again what’s wrong,” she said in a serious but quiet voice.
The people, excited that Cara was now following along with what they were telling her, all rushed back over to the section of wall where they had shown her the first face. Standing before the wall, all of them moved both hands back and forth, toward and away from the wall.
They paused, the whole group turning to Cara to see if she understood. She watched them.
One of the men then pointed at the wall and beyond in an arcing movement, as if indicating something away over a hill in the distance. Verna was confused again.
Cara stared at the face in the wall. Her brow drew down. She was suddenly looking gravely concerned. Verna was still in the dark, as was Dario, but Cara’s blue eyes were alive with dawning comprehension.
Cara suddenly circled her arms around the backs of several of the group and ushered them on their way back toward Verna and Dario. She put a hand on the backs of others and gently pushed, herding them away from the troubling wall. At the rear of the group, arms out, she shepherded the rest of them back up the corridor.
Along the way, Cara gathered up Verna and Dario, turning them around and moving them along. The mute crypt staff all followed close on her heels, looking both concerned that Cara was alarmed about something, and proud of themselves at the same time.
Cara leaned close to Verna when they had retreated up the corridor and around the corner of the intersection.
“Get Nathan,” she said in a tone of clear command.
Verna’s brow twitched. “Does it need to be tonight? Don’t you think that we—”
“Get him now,” Cara said in a deadly calm voice of authority.
Her blue eyes were cold fire. Verna knew that, as kind
and understanding as Cara had been with the staff, she was not to be argued with now. She was now in charge of the situation. Verna had no idea what the situation was, but she trusted the woman and knew that she needed not to question Cara’s word in this.
Cara snapped her fingers at the men waiting nearby. The commander rushed forward to see what she wanted. As soon as he arrived, he stood leaning close, focused on what she might say.
“Yes, Mistress?”
“Get General Trimack down here. Tell him it’s urgent. Tell him to bring men. Lots of men. Alert the Mord-Sith. I want them down here, too. Do it now.”
Without question the man clapped a fist to his heart and raced away.
Verna clutched the Mord-Sith’s arm. “Cara, what’s going on?”
“I’m not sure.”
“We’re about to throw the palace into full alert, drag hundreds if not thousands of people all the way down here—General Trimack, the First File, Nathan—and you don’t know why?”
“Didn’t say I didn’t know why. Said I wasn’t sure. I think there are faces looking at us that shouldn’t be looking at us.”
Cara turned to the faces all watching her.
“Am I right?”
The crypt staff broke out in excited, mute grins, thrilled to have someone understand and believe them.
Richard peered out from under the canvas tarp as the wagon rolled through the outer fringes of the Order’s camp. Every time a gust of wind buffeted the wagon he had to keep a good hold on the tarp to keep it down. The towering monstrosity of the ramp loomed overhead. Up this close he could see just how immense it had already become. It didn’t seem a false hope that it could eventually reach the palace at the top of the plateau.
After Adie had used her gift to help them make it through the fighting around the Ja’La field, it had been a relatively uneventful journey across the rest of the vast Imperial Order encampment. Regular soldiers wanted nothing to do with the potential trouble offered by a small wagon escorted by what appeared to be a high-ranking royal guard and a Sister. Men mostly ignored them as they passed.
The riot, as large as it was, had primarily been confined to the spectators at the Ja’La match. While it seemed that perhaps hundreds of thousands of men were involved in the fight over the outcome of the game, and it was a vast, gruesome bloodbath, the trouble was still limited to a fraction of the encampment. In much of the rest of the camp
commanders had rushed armed men in to clamp down on movement and contain the trouble.
Despite that effort, the turmoil had spread to a certain extent. Most of these men had not joined a struggle to be cold, hungry, and spend their lives digging dirt. They were becoming resentful of having to work at menial labor rather than being about the business of murder, rape, and plunder. Waiting for the prospect of conquest was one thing, but now the remaining spoils looked rather limited and the work of getting to them was considerable. It seemed that self-sacrifice for the cause of the Order had its limits. The line appeared to have been drawn at actually having to work.
Authorities, though, were not only quick but brutal in crushing pockets of trouble as they broke out. As unhappy as many of the men were with their conditions, when they saw what happened to some of those who stirred up unrest, they lost the stomach to join in.
Several times General Meiffert had had to bluff his way through groups of men. Once his bluster had needed to be reinforced by killing a man with a swift slash across the side of his neck. Other times Adie had quietly used her powers to ease their way through potential trouble. Having the soldiers think she was one of Jagang’s Sisters ended a lot of questions before they even began. Several times, when she had been stopped and questioned by soldiers foraging for loot, she merely stared at the men without answering. Looking into her completely white eyes as she glared at them, they lost their nerve and vanished back into the darkness.
Far behind them at the Ja’La field there were pockets within the riot that were finally being brought under control, but for the most part the night there had been abandoned to chaotic battles between drunken soldiers. The emperor’s guard hadn’t really cared about restoring order;
they had only been interested in saving the life of the emperor.
Nicci’s trembling pain told Richard that Jagang was still alive and able to exert his influence. That didn’t mean he was conscious, though. What Richard didn’t know was if Jagang at some point, when unable to force her to return, might decide to kill her through the collar. If he did, there was nothing Richard could do to stop him. Getting the collar off from around her neck was the only solution, and to do that they needed to get to Nathan up in the palace.
Peeking out from under the tarp, Richard spotted a confusion of vast pits spread out ahead in the torchlight. Richard could see lines of men, animals, and wagons leading out of pits where material was being dug up. Clouds of dust streamed away from areas where men were actively digging. The lines of men and wagons coming out of those pits stretched all the way to the ramp. Those lines were all in constant motion as they conveyed the dirt and rock to the construction site.
Richard again glanced at Nicci, lying in the low wagon bed right beside him. She had his hand in a death grip. Her whole body trembled. He ached with sympathy for her agony. He knew what it felt like. He had endured the same magic from a collar. His ordeal hadn’t lasted as long, though. He didn’t know how long she could live through such pain.
Jillian lay on the other side of Nicci, holding her other hand. Bruce lay beyond Jillian, carefully peering out from under the tarp on that side from time to time, sword at the ready in case he had to help them fight their way out of trouble.
Richard wasn’t sure how much he could trust the man. Bruce had more than once stepped in to protect Richard at great risk to his own life. Richard knew that not every single man in the Order’s camp would choose the Order, if really given the choice. There had to be some, even if only a
few, who would rather have nothing to do with the Order. Richard didn’t really know Bruce all that well, so he didn’t know what experiences the man had lived through that would cause him to take this chance to side with him, but Richard was glad that he had. In a small way it gave him hope that not the whole world had gone mad. There were still some people who valued their own lives and wanted the freedom to live those lives as they saw fit. They were even willing to fight for it.
As the wagon wobbled to a halt, Adie stepped close, laying an elbow casually over the short sidewall beside Richard. She glanced over. “We be here.”
Richard nodded, then leaned close to Nicci. “We’re here.
We’re near the ramp.”
Her brow was tightly creased in agony. She seemed to be in a faraway world of suffering. With great effort she released some of the pressure on his hand, then squeezed again to let him know that she’d heard him.
Despite how cold it was, she was drenched in sweat. Her eyes were closed most of the time. Occasionally they opened wide as she gasped from a terrible twist of pain.
It was making Richard crazy that he couldn’t help her right then and there, that she had to wait, suffering in her isolated world of torment, enduring the dragging eternity it seemed to be taking to get her to Nathan.
“Nicci, can you tell me what we need to do? We’re here, but I don’t know why. Why did you want us to go to the ramp?”
He gently pulled back hair that was plastered to her beaded brow. Her eyes opened wide with a stitch of overpowering pain.
“Please…” she whispered.
Richard leaned closer yet so he could hear her. “What is it?”
He put his ear closer to her mouth.
“Please…end it. Kill me.”
She shook with a moan as another bout of pain cascaded through her. She started to sob.
Richard, terror rising in his throat, clutched her close. “We’re almost there. Hold on. If we can get inside the palace I think Nathan can get that collar off. Just hold on.”
“Can’t,” she wept.
Richard pressed his hand against the side of her face. “I’ll help you get it off. I promise. We just need to get inside. I need to know how do we get in.”
“Catacombs,” she said in a gasp as her back arched.
Catacombs? Richard blinked at the word. Catacombs?
He lifted the flapping canvas tarp a little and peered out again. The ramp stood nearby. Beyond the ramp the black wall of the plateau, only some of the fringe at the bottom visible in the torchlight, soared up into the night.
As he looked at the plateau, it made sense.
Jillian leaned over Nicci. “Could she mean catacombs like at my homeland?” She looked down at Nicci. “Catacombs like in Caska?”
Nicci nodded.
Richard again looked out from under the tarp, searching for anything that looked different, for any sign of where the entrance could be. He went over in his mind everything he could remember about the ancient catacombs in Caska. Deep within those underground rooms was where they’d found the
Chainfire
book. The maze of ancient tunnels and chambers had run on for miles. Richard had spent nearly the whole night searching through the catacombs and he knew that he’d only seen a fraction of them.
Finding the entrance, though, had been difficult. It had been only a small opening that had led him down into the
hidden underground world of the catacombs. Finding such an opening out here in the open, with all these men around, was going to be far more than merely difficult.
He turned back. “Nicci, how did you find catacombs down in the palace?”
She shook her head. “Found us.”
“They found you?” Richard peered out again as the realization hit him. “Dear spirits…”
It all started to make sense to him. Jagang’s men, digging the pits, had uncovered ancient catacombs. They must have used those tunnels to get up into the palace.
“They got up into the palace and captured you? Is that what you mean?”
Nicci nodded.
But if they had gotten up into the palace, then why would they still be working on the ramp? He realized that if the catacombs were anything like the ones in Caska they would need more than those tunnels to get an army up into the People’s Palace. It would be like trying to force sand through an hourglass.
It could also be that the ramp was a diversion to buy them time to do just that.
Diversion or not, Jagang might have gotten spies up into the palace through the catacombs. If there was a way in, there was no telling the damage such a breach could cause.
It had to be Sisters who had snuck in. It would have taken Sisters to have captured Nicci. With their powers weakened by the spell of the palace, he knew that it would have taken more than one.
“The crews digging dirt for the ramp discovered catacombs,” Richard guessed out loud to Nicci. “Sisters went through the catacombs and found a way to get up into the palace. That’s how they captured you.”
Though the trembling and pain, Nicci squeezed his hand in confirmation.
Richard leaned close to Nicci. “Does anyone up there know that Jagang has a way in?”
She rocked her head from side to side. “Gathering inside,” she managed.
Richard’s heart missed a beat. “They’re gathering men inside to attack the palace?”
She nodded again.
“Then we’d better get in there and warn them,” Bruce said.
“Adie,” Richard said to the old woman standing right beside the wagon, “did you hear all that?”
“Yes. The general be right here. He heard as well.”
Richard looked out from under the tarp. Off in the distance to the right a little he saw a pit where there were no lines of men and wagons.
Richard pointed out from under the tarp. “Look there, around that pit. There are men standing evenly spaced around the entire area.”
“Guards,” General Meiffert confirmed.
“That has to be where they found the catacombs—down in that pit. Look at the way they’ve halted all digging between there and the plateau.”
“Why would they do that?” the general asked.
“The catacombs would be ancient. There’s no telling what condition they might be in. They don’t want to risk caving in any of the tunnels running in under the palace.”
“It must be so,” Adie said.
“How are we going to get down into the pit?” General Meiffert asked.
“If we had more royal-guard uniforms we might be able to get down in there,” Bruce suggested.
“Maybe,” Richard said, “but what about Nicci and Jillian?”
Bruce didn’t have an answer.
“They certainly couldn’t walk in there,” General Meiffert
agreed, “and a wagon going down into a guarded pit would obviously be cause for suspicion.”
“Maybe,” Richard said, thinking out loud. “Maybe not.”
General Meiffert looked back over his shoulder. “What do you have in mind?”
Richard gently shook Nicci’s shoulders. “Are there books down in the catacombs?”
“Yes,” she managed.
Richard turned back to the general. “We could tell the guards that, with all the trouble in the camp tonight, the emperor wants to bring a load of important books back to his compound to be sure that they’re safe. He sent this Sister along to see to getting the books he’s concerned about. You tell them that you need them to organize a contingent of guards to escort the wagon back to the compound.”
“They’ll want to know why we didn’t bring guards with us.”
“Because of the trouble,” Bruce suggested. “Tell them that with the rioting the officers didn’t want to risk any guards taken from the duty of protecting the emperor.”
Richard nodded at the idea. “While they’re busy going off to gather us some men, we slip down into the catacombs.”
“Not all the guards are going to leave the site to go gathering up men for you,” Bruce said. “It would sound awfully suspicious if we even suggested such a thing. Any men left in the area will see the two women—especially since we’ll have to help Nicci.
“Don’t underestimate these guards. See their uniforms? These are men the emperor trusts. I know what these men are like. They aren’t fools and they’re not lazy. They don’t miss much.”
“That makes sense,” Richard said as he considered Bruce’s advice. He frowned in thought as an idea came to him. He turned to Adie. “It’s windy out tonight. Do you think you could help the wind?”
“Help the wind?” Her completely white eyes gazed at him in the dim torchlight. “What be your idea?”
“To have you use your gift to stir up the air. Some random gusts, that sort of thing. Make it appear that the wind is kicking up stronger all the time. After General Meiffert has told them to begin gathering some of their men to serve as escorts, we move the wagon down into the pit. Then an even bigger gust of wind comes through and blows out the nearby torches. When it goes dark, and before the guards can bring more torches down there to relight the ones that went out, we slip Nicci and Jillian down into the tunnels.”
“All right, so we get down into the tunnels,” General Meiffert said. “There will still be guards down there and who knows how many troops. What do you propose about that?”
Richard shared a troubled look with the man. “We have to get past them, one way or another. But you’re right, there are liable to be a lot of them.”
Bruce propped himself up on an elbow. “It will be difficult to fight in tunnels. That helps to even the odds.”
“You have a point,” General Meiffert said. “To a certain extent it doesn’t matter how many guards are down in there. They can’t swarm over us. In such confined spaces they can only have a few men at a time fighting us.”